Treating Parkinson's disease is complicated. The main drug for the disease is levodopa, which is often called L-dopa. L-dopa can work well at first. You may even forget you have the disease when you start taking it. But after taking L-dopa for two to five years, you may get serious problems from the drug. About half of all patients do.

Because of the problems that can happen with L-dopa, your doctor may try to delay when you start taking the drug. You may also take other drugs with L-dopa to make it work better. What treatment you take also depends on your age, your symptoms and how your disease affects your life.

There are many ways that your doctor can use L-dopa to treat your Parkinson's:

• Using a different drug first
• Using L-dopa occasionally (for example, only when your symptoms are bad)
• Starting L-dopa earlier if you're older
• Taking L-dopa more often (if it wears off)
• Using other drugs to make L-dopa work better.

• Wearing off: This happens when your L-dopa dose wears off, so it works for a shorter time.
• On-off effect: Your symptoms may come back and go away suddenly. When your symptoms come back, this is called "off" time. "Off" times may last a few minutes or hours. When your symptoms go away, this is called "on" time.
• Movements you can't control: Doctors call these movement dyskinesias (abnormal jerking movements) and dystonia (a type of movement problem that causes abnormal twisting and body positions). These problems may not go away even after you stop taking L-dopa. However, some of the movements might not be related to L-dopa. They could be a part of a later stage of Parkinson's.

There's no one right time to start taking L-dopa. It all depends on how you are coping with your symptoms. If you're not coping with your symptoms, you may want to take L-dopa. Figuring out when to start L-dopa can be difficult, and there isn't much research to help you decide.

The only studies that have been done on L-dopa have looked at treating people who are in the early stages of Parkinson's. These suggest that if you take L-dopa early on in your disease, the drug may start wearing off or causing side effects sooner than if you start taking the drug later on.