Parkinson’s and Tremors
Helping people with Parkinson’s disease has recently been getting more and more clinical evidence and substantiation.
This disease was brought to public attention with the wonderful 1990 movie Awakenings with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams and with the diagnosis of Michael J. Fox.
The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease vary from person to person. Early signs may be subtle and can go unnoticed for months or years. Symptoms typically begin on one side of the body and usually remain worse on that side. Parkinson’s signs and symptoms may include:
- Tremor. The characteristic shaking associated with Parkinson’s disease often begins in a hand. A back-and-forth rubbing of your thumb and forefinger, known as pill-rolling, is common
- Slowed motion (bradykinesia). Over time, Parkinson’s disease may reduce one’s ability to initiate voluntary movement. Tasks become challenging and walking slowed to a shuffle.
- Rigid muscles. Muscle stiffness often occurs in limbs and neck. Sometimes the stiffness can be so severe that it limits the range of motion and causes pain.
- Impaired posture and balance. Posture may become stooped as a result of Parkinson’s disease. Imbalance also is common, although this is usually mild until the later stages of the disease.
- Loss of automatic movements. Blinking, smiling and swinging your arms when walking are all unconscious acts that are a normal part of being human. In Parkinson’s disease, these acts tend to be diminished and even lost. Some people may develop a fixed staring expression and unblinking eyes. Others may no longer gesture or seem animated when they speak.
- Speech changes. Many people with Parkinson’s disease have problems with speech. You may speak more softly, rapidly or in a monotone, sometimes slurring or repeating words, or hesitating before speaking.
- Dementia. In the later stages of Parkinson’s disease, some people develop problems with memory and mental clarity. Alzheimer’s drugs appear to alleviate some of these symptoms to a mild degree.
Clinical experience with Parkinson’s disease through Endonasal Cranial Adjusting is encouraging.
A branch of endonasal cranial adjusting that has had the most clinical research on people with Parkinson’s is called Neurocranial Restructuring or NCR. They note that initial treatments may increase tremors before decreasing them. I have had success in tremor reduction in two patients with early stage Parkinson’s.
Evidence is mounting and results are promising.
A theory on why endonasal cranial adjusting is effective for what is considered to be a degeneration of the basal ganglia of the brainstem is that there is impaired circulation of blood and cerebrospinal fluid into this area of the brain for Parkinson’s sufferers and with this treatment circulation is increased. By changing the shape of the skull with endonasal cranial adjusting, the flow patterns and cerebrospinal fluid are improved. This changes the neurotransmitter availability in the affected part of the brain.
Meningeal tension is also eased which can give improved function to the nervous system. The meninges are a covering around the brain and spinal cord.