Parkinson's: seven tricks for a smooth walk

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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People with Parkinson's suffer from gait disorders, among other things: They shuffle or shuffle, freeze in the middle of movement, are uncoordinated, stagger and even fall. That is a great burden in everyday life.

There are a number of strategies that can make the sequence of movements when walking smoother. However, many sufferers know only a few or none of these mental tricks, according to a recent study.

For the study, researchers led by Anouk Tosserams from Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, interviewed 4,324 people with Parkinson's-related walking disorders. 35 percent of them stated that their walking difficulties impaired their daily activities, 52 percent had fallen once or several times in the previous year.

"We know that people with Parkinson's often spontaneously find creative" detours "to get their walking difficulties under control and to remain mobile and independent," said study author Tosserams.

Seven Effective Running Strategies

The researchers explained the seven main categories of compensation strategies to the participants:

• Use of internal clocks, e.g. B. walking after a count in the head
• Use of external clocks, e.g. B. walking to the rhythm of a metronome
• Relief of balance, e.g. B. by running further instead of tight curves
• Change in mental state, e.g. B. through relaxation techniques
• Observation of action and visualization of motor models, e.g. B. imitating another person while walking
• Alternative walking patterns, e.g. B. Jumping or walking backwards
• Use of other modes of transport, e.g. B. Cycling

On average, the participants knew three of the strategies.But 17 percent had never heard of one of these methods, 23 percent had not tried any of them. Only 4 percent knew all seven categories of compensation strategies.

Relaxation techniques and clocks

The best known strategies were the use of external and internal clocks such as listening to a metronome or internal counting. They were known to 47 and 45 percent of the respondents, respectively. Action observation and motor visualizations were the least known category - only 14 percent of the respondents knew this strategy.

The techniques are quite helpful: For example, 76 percent of those surveyed said that strategies that make it easier to keep your balance, such as wide bends, had a positive effect. 74 percent said a change in their mental state did so.

It also showed that the strategies work differently depending on the context. Internal clocks appeared e.g. B. to be very effective when you start running with a success rate of 73 percent. But only 47 percent found this tactic useful when trying to stop again. Visualizing the movements had an 83 percent success rate when participants used it while walking outdoors. When running in a tight space, the success rate was only 55 percent.

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution"

"There are no one-size-fits-all solutions: Different contexts require different strategies - and some people respond better to one strategy than others," says Tosserams. It is therefore important to teach people all available compensation strategies, for example via a special online learning platform. " This could help every Parkinson's patient to find the most suitable strategy for him, "says the researcher.

According to the German Society for Parkinson's and Movement Disorders, Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's. The disease risk for men is 2.0 percent and for women 1.3 percent. On average, the first symptoms usually appear around the age of 60.

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