In taking us along with you on your journey you have realised that we are all different yet also all the same. It matters little what kind of music helps us, the fact is that there is some music for each of us that heals our symptoms. For me it's The Shadows music. I discovered this when I was recovering from a mini stroke and the friend came round to play his guitar for me. I could literally feel my brain responding as though I had guitar strings in my head.
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Playing Card Therapies for Parkinson's Disease
I find I can shuffle, deal, turn, tidy up, halve and gather the pack of cards. It can be quite stiff and difficult but this seems to be one of those things, like playing with my basketball, which allows me to almost always access some movement, this time for my fingers. Indeed, I find this is giving me more and more knowledge of my hands again. You can see me performing this type of exercise at the end of the video below.
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CoQ10 and Parkinson's Disease
Research has found that the level of CoQ10 is substantially lower in the mitochondria of people with PD and that a CoQ10 deficiency can increase the risk of dopamine cell death in the substantia nigra region of the brain.
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Surviving and Parkinson's Disease
By Jennifer Oldroyd, Contributing Author and Person with Parkinson's.
Just like the family of a person who smokes can suffer from passive smoking, the carers of people with Parkinson's suffer from Passive Parkinson's. If they still want to do things together they have to slow right down to accommodate the Person with Parkinson's. The question is - is this necessarily a bad thing? While we do not draw Parkinson's into our lungs, a negative way of looking at things can be infectious and negative thinking is stifling.
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Moving in the Mind and Parkinson's
Certainly, whether I am correct or not that the mind dancing has significantly contributed to this change, clearly there are health and wellness benefits to the gentle movement therapies I have been developing and espouse. I believe that this kind of muscle growth is unusual in Parkinson's, which is often associated with muscle atrophy.
Read MoreA Hop, Skip and Jump Forwards in Parkinson's Recovery
Here I am outside in the Garden. I am using the patterns of the paving slabs (visual stimulus), getting into the groove of the music (audio stimulus) and the feedback with the ground(motor stimulus) to help my brain and body remember the joy of movement.
Read MoreBasket Balls, Music and Reversing Symptoms of Parkinson's
I highly recommend anyone with Parkinson's get a basketball or a netball - the weight and feel matters a lot - and just play, feel, stimulate the muscle memories which are still there. Bounce, balance, catch, throw your way back to moving, every single day. Explore, play, be curious. Practice, but make sure you have fun with it. Enjoy whatever movement you can release, no matter how small. Feel good when you manage to extend your range. Feel good factor = dopamine reward = more movement = more feel good - and that is science fact. In the video I am playing by myself, the therapeutic effects are magnified by the social quotient of playing ball with family members and friends by massive amounts.
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Diagnostic Discovery and Treatment of Parkinson's Disease
K.O.R.E. is based on Wellness Engineering techniques (which is how, I believe, "Complementary Therapies" should be more properly termed). K.O.R.E. employs kinesiology muscle testing to identify root causes of health issues and then uses bioenergy and biomechanic techniques to seek to resolve them. We are looking at how such strategies might work for resolving Parkinson's symptoms, through experimenting on myself.
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The Overlaps Between Stress and Parkinson's Disease, Part 1
I have been reading Dr Jim White's "Stress Control" afresh, but now from the perspective of a Person with Parkinson's (PwP). This is a course written about stress itself, without any reference to or context in Parkinson's. Yet, anyone affected Parkinson's who reads it will be very familiar with what they find. I will be writing extensively on this subject, but to set the scene, first I would just like for us to consider a list Dr White provides which covers how stress can affect the body. People affected with Parkinson's the world over will recognize very many of these as the acute symptoms of their condition - but remember here Dr White is writing purely about Stress.
Read MoreMovement Recovery with Yo-Yo Stress Balls
Deb had the unique insight that a kind of stress ball (a squeezy, bouncy ball which fit the human hand well) which comes with an attached elastic string and a velcro finger or wrist strap would be hugely beneficial. She based this on our discoveries of how some hand-eye co-ordination movements are relatively easy for people with Parkinsonsim's. She was right!
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Learning How to Walk Again with Parkinson's Disease
.People with Parkinson's tend to shuffle when we "walk". We take very small steps, hardly lifting our feet off the floor at all. We often trip over things and lose our balance. It is part and parcel of that terrible posture, the stooped over "Parkinson's Stance", which many of us develop when we do nothing to correct it. The resulting "Parkinson's Shuffle" is an extremely inefficient way to move around and is so very tiring.
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Ball Game Based Therapies for Parkinson's Disease
A very simple, but extremely effective therapy for movement recovery and progressive symptom reduction in Parkinson's Disease is to incorporate playing with balls of various types, sizes and textures. The hand-eye co-ordination and sensory feedback seems to open up access to movement considerably, presumably because it brings in other pathways and regions of the brain in to help.
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Boxing Exercises for Movement and Balance Recovery
I had an amazing afternoon learning boxing at Rock Steady Boxing Seattle and the best part of the whole process was the support that all the participants gave to each other. I met the owner, Karen Johanson, via LinkedIn, and since I live in Seattle, and have an interest in exploring all avenues to help People with Parkinson's, I sent her an email and asked to meet. She was very welcoming and I offered to show up and volunteer in anyway needed so I could get an in-depth understanding of what a class entailed.
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Vitamin D for Potential Neuroprotection
“Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that plays a vital role in calcium and phosphate absorption. In recent studies, several associations between low levels of vitamin D, and neuropsychiatric disorders have begun to surface....including Parkinson's”
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Coconut Oil and Parkinson's Disease
Back in march 2016. I started melting a teaspoon of pure coconut oil in to my hot tea, two or three times a day. I'd heard seemingly miraculous things about this unique natural oil. For me, the results and benefits were immediate and unambiguous. Some time after taking that first drink, I encountered my initial taste of something I'm calling "coconut clarity". I would describe this experience as the clearing of the "brain fog" associated with Parkinson's - that lack of ability to concentrate and sluggish thought processes. But it was also about the clearing of the mists of depression and anxiety. I felt happy. Not manic, not bouncing of the walls, but just happy. I also felt my eyes widen.
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Bat and Ball Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
A simple bat & ball set was just about the first thing I bought when I started exploring toys which could help me unlock movement to start pushing back my Parkinson's Disease symptoms. Once I began to play with them while my PD drugs weren't working - in an "off" state in which I didn't have my much access to movement - it was a complete revelation! The shear degree of movement that suddenly came back in just playing "keep it up" with the bat and ball was a joy, especially in terms of neck movement and core rotation. The fact that while I was doing it, much of my other symptoms (rigidity, unfocused eyes, breathing problems, pain) went away, at least in the moment of play, was massive in re-thinking about my condition, and how to live well with it.
Massageable Magnesium for Relaxing Muscles
For me this intervention has been highly beneficial and really helped me to re-open the pathways to movement we have since developed. I also believe, that having used it daily for over a year now, it has had a cumulative repair effect. However, back at the start, I had been describing to Deb how, when the Parkinson’s stiffness and rigidity of muscles took hold (Bradykinesia), the very worst part was the pain in my shoulders.
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Caregiving for a Person with Parkinson's Disease
Here at Out-Thinking Parkinson's, it is our mission to help not only People with Parkinson's, but also the people who love and care for them, those who also have, in a very direct way, their own lives touched by the disease.
One of the most valuable contributions we can make, we feel, is simply to express the feelings and thoughts of what it is like to be a person affected by Parkinson's or to care for someone with the disease. We hope this humanization of PD will help others in the same situation come to terms with living with the disease and bring new understandings for the wider community too.
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