Parkinson's therapy aims to help retrain brains

By JENNY WAGNER Beaver County Times

BRIDGEWATER, Pa. (AP) - Parkinson's robs people of the ability to control their movements, but some patients in Beaver County are seeing big results from a physical therapy program designed to counteract the symptoms of the degenerative disease.

While there is no cure for Parkinson's disease and little is known about the cause, experts know that people with the nervous system disorder have trouble with slowness of movement, and their movements are also small, said Dale Reckless, facility director of M-R-S Physical Therapy in Bridgewater.

But the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment Big (LSVT Big) therapy program, which Reckless brought to M-R-S and Beaver County earlier this year, is aimed at keeping people's movements big and quick in order to counteract those symptoms.

People with Parkinson's experience an internal queuing problem, so even if they are taking shuffling steps, their brains believe they are walking at a regular pace, Reckless explained.

The idea behind LSVT Big, he said, is to overcompensate with big, bold exercises and essentially retrain the brain to get a person's movements back to normal.

"We're helping the patients to think big but in the real sense they're actually coming out to making normal movements," Reckless said.

People with Parkinson's also often experience tremors, stiffness and rigidity, and posture and balance issues, Reckless said, in addition to speech problems, which a related program, LSVT Loud, was designed for.

There are other treatments for Parkinson's including medications, but research has shown that exercise as well as physical and occupational therapies, including LSVT Big, can help improve mobility in some patients.

Reckless worked at HealthSouth Harmarville Rehabilitation Hospital for more than two decades before joining M-R-S in April, and he said he is now the only physical therapist certified to offer LSVT Big in the county.

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Parkinson's therapy aims to help retrain brains