Surviving and Parkinson's Disease

October 28, 2016

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.

Moving in the Mind and Parkinson's

October 24, 2016

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.

A Hop, Skip and Jump Forwards in Parkinson's Recovery

October 23, 2016

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.

Basket Balls, Music and Reversing Symptoms of Parkinson's

October 20, 2016

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.

Diagnostic Discovery and Treatment of Parkinson's Disease

October 14, 2016

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.

Coloring and Dot-to-Dot Book Therapy for Parkinson's Disease

October 8, 2016

I immediately had a gut feeling this was likely to be one of those "ah ha!" moments, due to the following reasons:

visual stimuli are massively important for People with Parkinson's;
the shrinking of handwriting is a classical symptom of Parkinson's onset and we need to constantly challenge all such symptoms to keep the disease at bay;
relaxation and escaping ingrained stress response is absolutely key to improving symptoms of Parkinson's;
continually trying something new and challenging our brains to create new neural pathways is key to pushing the disease back and back.

Food As Medicine, Food As Poison in Parkinson's

October 3, 2016

I cannot stress these concepts enough for PwP: food is absolutely critical to symptoms, good and bad. Food interacts with the medication too. It simply is not enough to rely on drugs, and if you have periods where the "drugs aren't working" it is vital to look to your diet.

Out-Thinking Parkinson's Radio Interview

August 13, 2016

In this interview recorded for a local radio station back in April 2016, I discuss more about the origins of the Out-Thinking Parkinson's project telling my own background story and discussing some of the things we discovered along the way.

Neurologic Music Therapy for Parkinson's Recovery

July 29, 2016

I recommend anyone interested in Parkinson's Recovery to take a look at Jim Kennedy's research and follow his journey of self-experimentation into NMT. You will find Jim to be very positive and upbeat - no doubt because he has chosen to fill his life with music. You can follow Jim's work via his Facebook Page.

The Overlaps Between Stress and Parkinson's Disease, Part 1

July 14, 2016

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.

A Helping Hand with Movement Recovery Exercises

June 19, 2016

In my previous diary entry, I showed, by developing our ideas about incorporating balls-on-elastic into our gentle movement therapy, how we came up with a simple exercise regime to open up the fingers of my hands. In the sequel video included in this post, it is becoming ever clearer that our concept of "applied neuroplasticity" does work. Here, I demonstrate the further evolution in my own movement, resulting from practicing these ideas over and over again.

Focusing on Wellness: A Companion's Piece

June 17, 2016

I have been able to make it to my mid-forties without sitting on the opposite side of a diagnosis desk. There is a whole lot of luck involved, but also a belief that I am in charge of my own life, health, and wellness. I have always paid attention to my body. I understood that body and mind are in a partnership that constantly needed to negotiate. I have always seen the signals of pain, tiredness, and wellbeing that my body gives me as an integral part of how I needed to plan my days and live my life.

Impacts of Diagnosis on Parkinson's Disease

June 1, 2016

I hope that my experience might be a catalyst for change, because, in speaking with a significant network of people with PD around the world, there are many with diagnosis and aftercare treatment experiences even poorer than my own. I feel, therefore, we do need an overhaul of how the healthcare diagnoses and treat people with Parkinson's. Simply stated, the current experience of too many PwP (People with Parkinson's) is that they are prescribed drugs as a singular treatment pathway and given a narrative of hopelessness at diagnosis.

Movement Recovery with Yo-Yo Stress Balls

May 30, 2016

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!

The Beast Within and Parkinson's Disease

May 11, 2016

There is a beast inside me. The beast is not my Parkinson's illness. The beast is myself. Parkinson's is just the empty cage. Let me explain, because although this is difficult reading, I believe it is important to share this epiphany.

Learning How to Walk Again with Parkinson's Disease

May 3, 2016

.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.

Parkinson's Disease: A New Hope

April 23, 2016

In this video, I want to begin to show you what happens when we start to integrate the Out-Thinking Parkinson's strategies into new combined interventions and that, indeed, the whole quickly becomes much greater than the sum of the parts. This, then, represents the Out-Thinking Parkinson's whole. I carried on playing with these ideas for some time after making this video. And then I laughed. I laughed long, loud and deep. It was the type of laugh which hasn't left my lips in over seven years. This is why I decided to call this "A New Hope", because not even PD can withstand the power of Giggles and Glee.

Ball Game Based Therapies for Parkinson's Disease

April 22, 2016

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.

The Dyskinesia Control Hat

April 18, 2016

This is an earlier video (from 12th February 2016) which we never fully released due to the not-so-good quality of the picture and sound. However, this week I received a tweet from Selfie4Parkinsons about a campaign to raise awareness of Parkinson's, which asks people to take a “selfie with something silly on your head” and then share it to social media. This reminded me of our Dyskinesia Control Hat concept which we had developed through self-experimentation. As I indicated in my reply to the tweet, I have something not only silly, but also quite profound on my head regularly!

Why People with Parkinson's Should Share Their Stories

April 15, 2016

PwP and their primary carers have an enormous collective wisdom about the disease. The sum total of this hard won knowledge is immense. Dismissing anecdotal evidence is fraught with peril, because it can often lead to people then being coy about sharing their own experiences if it is contrary to the dogma. When enough anecdotal stories are combined, they can become the complete narrative itself. So we encourage PwP everywhere to share their acquired wisdoms and to understand that, together, we are the Experts in Ourselves.