I've found if I take sinemet 5 minutes before a meal it gets absorbed pretty good. If taken after a meal, or even a couple hours after, the drug takes much longer to take effect. Much longer. Not sure of your dosing schedule, I take it just before breakfast and lunch...another dose at 4:30PM..which is 2 hours before dinner. I take another shot of sinemet at 8:00PM..a couple of hours after dinner. This dose takes the longest to act, and often my symptoms will crash and burn before the drug will take effect.

I avoid stuff like cheese or yogurt before the dose as well.

C

OK, I'm not very clear on that. My schedule is every 4 hrs., 6 X daily (24 hr. "day"):

7 am - 2 25/100 Sinemet generic + 1 Comtan
11am - 2 25 /100 " " "
3pm - 2 " " "
7 pm - 2 " " "
11 pm - 2 " " "

OK? I read and was told to take the meds on an EMPTY STOMACH ( which equates to 1-2 hrs. no food prior to any
meal or snack) using Sinemet or Comtan. I had thought this meant that it needed to dissolve into the system w/o any food in the stomach. I also found that everytime I eat protien foods of any kind, and in any amount (even only 2 grams per meal!), that the meds did not kick in and give me any mobility till 3-to 4 hours later. And often not at all, so I'd end up unable to do anything for a whole 4 hr. cycle or longer.
Can you please write out a sample of one or two meals you eat & name the protien food plus how much of it you are eating? I'd like to compare to see what it is I am doing wrong, and why I get no results so often. I've avoided protien foods like eggs and dairy (wow, do I ever miss drinking a little milk once a day!!) because they seem to shut off my meds like a virual light switch, and I eat so little meat/chicken/fish/typical protien foods that I feel like I am starving myself to death. I've dropped 40 lbs. in 5-6 months. I cannot continue like this. Eating mostly starches, breads, nuts, vegetables & fruits only is not helping me either.
I have never tried taking the meds 5 min. prior to a meal, for fear of quashing any mobility for the next 4 hrs. I guess I'll have to try it and see if the advice I had been given from the docs & pharmacists was all wrong.

With a dosing scheme like yours every four hours, it would seem there is always food around in your GI tract to interfere. Its hard to say considering everyone is so different, but if you limit timing your meals to say 1/2 hour AFTER your dose with a big glass of water with little or no snacking (this is hard, I know) it seems this would be optimal to get the drug absorbing into your GI track before any protein will. There are liquid options to sinemet, which might help.

I find if I take it just before or say 1/2 hour before a meal the drugs pretty much goes straight to my blood stream -sometimes too much. :)

C

I take my first sinamet, just as l wake up, approx 20 minutes before eating..... that is 6am.......then breakfast at around 6,20

next sinamet is 11.30 ,,,,,,,,, lunch at 1.30

next sinamet is 3.30.......... next meal at 6pm

Thats about it,,,,,,, l try to take it away from food, works better

Good information from you all, thank you! Now for the hardest question: what do you really eat and how much of it do you eat IF the meals you eat contain Protien (milk, egg, yogurt, cheese, chicken, fish, beef, nuts, etc.) ?

I'm hoping to find a method of meds that will hold me capable of moving around longer than 2 hours per dose. Right now it's :

In a continuous 4 hr. cycle, I can get only 2 hrs. of ability , per dose. I'm sure you have faced being "stranded" and unable to drive or do much of anything because of meds (referring to OFF TIME of the meds) ? It's rotten to live this way. Every other 2 hours I'm not able to function. Am recovering from trying out Mirapex with the Sinemet & Comtan. It went very bad. I stopped the Mirapex because the side effects took over and shut down life completely. So I find it amazing to read that some of you can do well with doses of Sinemet & Comtan that give you mobility longer than 2 hrs. Will see my doc next week to try to fix this, so I can eat and so I can still move about.
Thanks very much!!

Sorry to hear of your difficulty optimizing your med scheme. This damn illness is so different for everyone its hard to specify what works and what won't till you do a lot of trial and hopefully little error. How long with PD for you?

Today for example I'm off work and thus I don't eat as much as normal...thus after my 11:00 dose it knocked the crap out of me, had to have a 1/2 hour nap. Usually during the work week its ok...but today something was off -it was lack of food.

Typical breakfast at 6:00 AM for me could be some toast, or 4 egg whites, or cereal with milk...I could sprinkle some sinemet on the cereal but I'm not sure what it would taste like. But seriously the sinemet is taken say at 5:45 AM. I have some nuts at say around 9:30...then another batch of pills at 11:00 or 11:30 if the damn meetings don't last too long. Then some protein at lunch. I really don't know the amounts, but I don't eat overly much.

A good rule for protein amounts, is whatever you can fit in the palm of one hand is the max you should eat in one sitting. The rest of the calories should come from carbs, complex fats, veg's etc.

Let us know what your doctor says.

C

I honestly think that the more natural the diet, the better off you will be.

No wheat! No Dairy! Try to eat as organic as possible. Try to stay away from processed foods.

We all need to feed our body with food that will feed us correctly, and unfortunately processed foods will not help us.

Fruit , vegetables, meat , fish etc....

The caveman type of food

Thank you so very, very much. I see my doc this Friday. then will share what is new & if it helps. I'm a diagnosis 2004 kid. Thanks so much for all the info and sharing, these past weeks had been so hard for me that the sharing back & forth with all of you here has helped more than you know. It's easy to feel so horribly alone in this. Thank you for your kindness. Hoping that you will all have some very good days. Hugs & see you soon.

Well, not much to report. No w my doc is having me try to use Azilect with the carbodo/levo & Comtan, but all it has done is give me bad side-effects with no actual benefits. Back to very limited life. Wish I had some good news, but not at this time. Depressing stuff. How aer you guys doing??