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.
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.
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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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Coloring and Dot-to-Dot Book Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
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.
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.
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Impacts of Diagnosis on Parkinson's Disease
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.
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Waking Up the Senses and Parkinson's Disease
As I've improved my condition, both mental and physical, I'm more able to tune in to what is actually happening in my mind and body when the Parkinson's takes hold. As I've pushed the envelope of my understanding and incorporated more interventions into my own life, tested, tried, self-experimented, it has become clearer to me...
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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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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.
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.
Read MoreDrug Induced Dyskinesia in Parkinson's Disease
In this first entry, many of you will be getting a first glimpse of me and hearing my voice for the first time! But as far as first impressions go, please be warned: you might be shocked, for this was recorded purposefully when the side of effects of my medication were very acute. In fact, I often take another drug to alleviate these medication induced symptoms, so this is not my typical state. The important point to note however is that, over the course of years, without other interventions, what you see here in the initial part of the video will become a more and more frequent state for me. For those who experience such extremes with the condition on a daily basis, our total sympathy – we release this video for you.
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