Parkinson's Disease and postured

 

Time to learn a bit more about Parkinson’s Disease this week at posture and dribbling, first off is posture. Many people thing of the characteristic posture of a slight stoop, with rounded shoulders and arms, legs, hips, and knees bent.

This posture places added strain on the joints and muscles and may cause pain.  While sitting the suffer may find themselves leaning to one sided, this one reason they should sit in chairs with arm support.  You may see a suffer waling with one arm held across the body instead of swinging normally by the side.

With concentration these problems can be corrected but sadly at times the suffer isn’t even aware they are doing these things.

Now dribbling this for me and many other suffers is distressing and it’s caused by excess saliva, it is more about how Parkinson’s reduces the amount of automatic swallowing we all do. Also, if the suffer has a posture problem causing their head to tilt forward which causes the saliva to accumulate at the front of the mouth.  People who find their head tilting forward are told to practice having their head tilted backwards.

Connected with dribbling is swallowing and swallowing can be so difficult at times due to many fac

tors including the disease itself but the drugs we take can make swallowing worse as well causing dry mouth or spasms of the muscles in the throat.