Own measures
It has been shown that there is a whole range of things that a Parkinson’s patient can do himself to positively influence his disease. Exercise: As with many diseases, regular exercise helps with Parkinson’s disease. Although it is true that there is a progressive restriction in mobility, a patient does not have to give in to it.
Regular walking or running can have a positive effect, especially if back pain is a common feature of the disease. Movement has also been proven to have a positive effect on mood. Even light gymnastic exercises can improve the overall picture.
However, you should be careful not to overdo it. Competitive sport is not a particularly recommendable measure for Parkinson’s disease. Occupational therapy: Occupational therapy involves exercises that focus on training fine motor skills.
These exercises are mainly intended to train the so-called “everyday practical skills” (tying shoes, buttoning a shirt, etc.) Speech therapy:As one of the first symptoms, the volume at which a patient can speak decreases. This is due to increasing stiffness of the respiratory muscles.
This can be positively counteracted with regular training and breathing exercises. This can be done either under the guidance of a speech therapist (speech therapist), or at home with loud psychotherapy:There are trained therapists who can help patients deal with the disease.Most depressive episodes are easily treatable. Mental requirements:Even regular “brain jogging” can keep a patient quite active.
Although the disease can lead to a slowing down of the thought processes, it is possible to counteract this development. A wide variety of mental activities are suitable for this purpose: be it crossword puzzles or sudoku exercises, magazines or arithmetic exercises. Anything that stimulates the brain and is also fun is recommended in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Operations
For decades, there have been approaches to surgically address individual symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In the past, various areas of the brain were operated on by means of heat sclerotherapy (thermocoagulation). However, such a procedure was only used for certain types of Parkinson’s disease (unilateral tremor that cannot be controlled by medication).
Attempts to perform such an intervention even in cases of bilateral complaints have in the past often led to speech disorders or even a reduction in the patient’s motivational ability. Derived from this type of surgery, nowadays a so-called “external pacemaker” is implanted in certain areas of the brain (e.g. thalamus and subthalamic nucleus), which in the best case significantly improves acinesia. In this way, the L-Dopa dosage can be significantly reduced.
Such a pacemaker can improve the disease-related inhibitions in the “communication” of different brain areas. Furthermore, there is the (ethically much discussed) surgical approach of implanting brain tissue from human embryos into the patient’s brain in order to “repair” lost areas.
