Therapies Offer Support for Those Living with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Aware­ness Month offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn more about the dis­ease, its symp­toms, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to sup­port loved ones with the dis­ease. Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG) offers ther­a­pies for patients with Parkinson’s dis­ease to help improve their dai­ly func­tion, speech, and independence.

Lee Sil­ver­man Voice Treat­ment, or LSVT, is a two-part reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gram devel­oped to assist patients with Parkinson’s dis­ease. LSVT LOUD focus­es on speech, while LSVT BIG focus­es on whole-body move­ments for activ­i­ties of dai­ly living.

QMG Speech Ther­a­pist Kelsey Von­der­Haar is cer­ti­fied in LSVT LOUD, and QMG Occu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­pist Claire Stull and QMG Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pists Sarah Hibbs and Yvonne Robi­son are cer­ti­fied in LSVT BIG. Both ther­a­pies have proven to offer ben­e­fits to patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Although every patient expe­ri­ences Parkinson’s dis­ease dif­fer­ent­ly, Von­der­Haar said begin­ning the ther­a­pies in the ear­ly stage of the dis­ease is sug­gest­ed, but both LSVT LOUD and BIG can offer sup­port at any stage.

“Rec­om­men­da­tions are to start the ther­a­py at the first sign of symp­toms. Even if you have just been diag­nosed and you’re not show­ing many symp­toms with voice, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or phys­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, it’s impor­tant to get evaluated.”

Accord­ing to the Parkinson’s Foun­da­tion, approx­i­mate­ly 60,000 Amer­i­cans are diag­nosed with Parkinson’s dis­ease each year, and more than 10 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are liv­ing with Parkinson’s. Symp­toms gen­er­al­ly devel­op slow­ly over years. The pro­gres­sion of symp­toms varies from one per­son to anoth­er due to the diver­si­ty of the dis­ease. Peo­ple with Parkinson’s may experience:

• Tremor
• Bradyki­ne­sia
• Limb rigid­i­ty
• Gait and bal­ance problems
• A soft or low voice
• Swal­low­ing difficulty
• Reduced speech intelligibility

LSVT LOUD is the first sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed pro­gram for treat­ing voice and speech dis­or­ders for peo­ple with Parkinson’s dis­ease and oth­er sim­i­lar neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions. LSVT LOUD is proven to improve vocal loud­ness, into­na­tion, voice qual­i­ty, and poten­tial­ly swal­low­ing of indi­vid­u­als with Parkinson’s dis­ease. This is achieved by focus­ing on one sim­ple tar­get: increas­ing vocal loudness.

LSVT BIG is an exer­cise treat­ment pro­gram for peo­ple with Parkinson’s dis­ease. It is based on the prin­ci­ple that the brain can learn and change. Like the LOUD ther­a­py, LSVT BIG uses a sin­gle tar­get: BIG­NESS of move­ment to improve move­ment qual­i­ty and bal­ance in patients.

“Specif­i­cal­ly, research shows that LSVT BIG treat­ment can lead to faster walk­ing with big­ger steps and arm swings, bet­ter bal­ance, and more abil­i­ty to twist at the waist. Clin­i­cians also report that LSVT BIG often helps peo­ple with but­ton­ing their clothes, writ­ing, and oth­er small­er-move­ment (“small motor”) tasks, as well as large (“large motor”) move­ments like dress­ing, get­ting up from a seat, and get­ting into bed,” Von­der­Haar shared.

Both pro­grams teach patients skills nec­es­sary for them to con­tin­ue con­sis­tent and effec­tive home exer­cise pro­grams to lim­it the return of symptoms.

For more infor­ma­tion on the LSVT LOUD and BIG ther­a­pies, call QMG at (217) 222‑6550, ext. 3282.