For years when I was an active RN, our main treatment for people with Parkinson’s was to administer medication and help to manage the progressing symptoms of the disease. Now there’s a lot of new research and helps for Parkinson’s disease — we’re finding that things as diverse as Tai Chi, riding a bicycle, and listening to music while walking all help.
But oh my heavens! The help to the nervous system that exercises from strengthening basic body skills like interoception, proprioception, primitive and postural reflex integration directly TARGET what the others do.
Nothing has yet been discovered to help with the progression of what’s going on in the brain, but the only lady with Parkinson’s I’ve been asked to work with had actually regained lost ground!
Emily was a spry but barely-walking 79 year old. Her right side was so weakened from the Parkinson’s that every step looked as though she’d fall over, and her daughter quite rightly hovered at her elbow. I worked with her as well as her daughter, who would be teaching her siblings exercises to do with their mom in rural Nebraska, for an hour a day, three days in a row.
The second day, Daughter was quite excited: Mom’s level of consciousness and awareness was MUCH better.
At the end of the third day, I slapped my forehead. When had the transformation taken place?
Emily could now easily and quite steadily walk, very symmetrically, down the sidewalk without anybody at her side!!! Three days, an hour a day’s worth of work. Continuing the exercises, three months later, she was walking 3/4 mile a day.