Surviving with movement disorders will potentially affect your daily activities and make your life more complicated. Typically, movement disorders are considered one of the toughest ones to diagnose neurological conditions, while the individual’s life will be uplifted when the symptoms are effectively detected.
Globally scientists looking for new ways to help people with movement disorders no matter how severe or mild the disorder is, further, in this blog let’s take a close look at the tips to improve the quality of life with movement disorders.
What Are The Common Movement Disorders?
Movement disorders are caused by changes in brain function, which can disturb different parts of the body. They disturb the parts of the brain that help with balancing, coordinating, and muscle movement. Further, let’s see the most common movement disorders and genetic movement disorders.
- Dystonia: This condition is caused when involuntary muscle spasms that lead to sustained twisted postures. You can feel this spam in any part of the body, while commonly experienced in a single body region or group of muscles.
- Essential Tremor: Tremors cause rhythmic shaking, usually in the hands. The head or voice can be affected by tremors. It may also lead to decreased balance.
- Huntington’s Disease: This is a hereditary disorder and is characterized by involuntary movements, cognitive impairment, and mental health issues.
- Parkinson’s Disease: It is one of the progressive neurodegenerative disorders caused by non-motor and motor symptoms. Nonmotor symptoms include speech impairments, cognitive function, sleep, depression, and anxiety. Motor symptoms include shivering, slow movement, and difficulty in walking.
- Tourette Syndrome: This is a hereditary condition that causes involuntary repetitive movements or sounds known as tics.
What are The Causes And Symptoms Of Movement Disorders?
Movement disorders can be caused by brain injuries, like head trauma, infection, swelling, metabolic disturbances, toxins, or unexpected side effects of medications. At the same time, they can also be a symptom of other underlying conditions. Just visit a movement disorder hospital in Coimbatore to get better treatment.
Symptoms can be classified into two different types, one is hypokinetic form, and the other is hyperkinetic form. In hypokinetic forms, motors will slow down, like in Parkinson’s disease. While in hyperkinetic forms, there will be excess movements. Further, the common symptoms are:
- Dystonia
- Tics
- Tremors
- Chorea
- Athetosis
- Ballism
What Are The Tips To Improve The Quality of Life With Movement Disorders?
- Rethink Your Walk:
Losing balance is the primary difficulty you will face in this condition. Start doing physical therapy like exercises or other skills with the guidance of your physical therapist to cope with these balance-related issues.
When it gets severe, you will find it difficult to walk and balance due to a shuffling gait or freezing in place, when you will feel like your feet are stuck to the floor. To overcome this issue, you should change your way of thinking about walking. Try the following tips from the Parkinson’s Foundation:
- Have a steady beat in your head and make one step with each beat. Practice with a metronome if required.
- Visualize you are walking over a line with each step.
- Override your brain’s desire for tiny steps by purposefully lengthening your stride and making large steps.
Another potential issue is anxiety. It is common to feel anxious when you lose your balance or are suddenly unable to move. Even anxiety can increase the feeling of freezing. Consult a neurologist or even a physical therapist regarding the ways to address anxiety problems, so they don’t contribute to your issues with mobility.
- Exercise For Better Balance:
Exercise plays a pivotal role in helping people with movement disorders or Parkinson’s disease. Apart from strengthening muscles involved in walking and maintaining balance, it also enhances endurance and strengthens the mind-body connection. You can initiate with small exercises, all of which can assist with balance issues.
- Aerobic exercise: These exercises will improve your heart rate for an extended period of time. For instance, treadmills and cycling. This exercise potentially helps to combat your movement disorders.
- Muscle Strengthening: Studies suggest that resistance training like weight lifting is a crucial component of an exercise regimen for movement disorders.
- Dancing: Some dances make you move backward, forward, and sideways with a combination of small and large movements.
- Identify The Proper Assistive Devices:
As like the name suggests, assistive devices help you to do your daily activities and assist you cope with tremors, forgetfulness, difficulty speaking, and other symptoms of movement disorders.
- Adaptive Utensils: These devices help people with tremors to avoid spilling food while eating.
- Alarms and Calendars: They will assist you by remaining you to take medications on time and notify you regarding your medical appointments
- Canes and Walkers: Helps for balance
- Electric Shavers and Shower Chairs: These can enhance bathroom safety.
- Wheelchairs: This allows you to travel fast for longer distances.
A best neurology hospital in Coimbatore will assist you with suggesting the assistive devices that are best for you.
- Concentrate On Your Mental Health:
With movement disorders, you will often go through depression and anxiety. They can be part of the disease process or a response to managing a health condition. Follow the below-mentioned approaches to mental health for the greatest effect on the quality of life.
- Find Support: Try to connect in person or online with people or groups who are managing similar challenges. You can share struggles and successes as well as tips to enhance your physical, mental, and emotional health.
- Adjust to a New Reality: Movement disorders can modify your ability to do your daily activities. Understand your limits and don’t beat yourself up over little accidents and stumbles.
- Talk About It: Luckily, the mental health stigma is slowly receding, simply movement disorders are observable to others. So when you are open with friends and family, you can feel comfortable in social situations. While sharing your feelings with friends and loved ones, you will gain more friends.
- Track Your Thoughts: Understand how you feel and become aware of what triggers your anxiety, depression, or other difficult feelings. Once you have raised your awareness, you can be mentally prepared for these situations.
Conclusion:
To conclude, if you diagnose movement disorders in the initial stages and are treated by a neurosurgeon, there could be multi-specialty approaches done to enhance the quality of life for such patients. Take compassionate care as a primary treatment for movement disorders, and every patient can have their life elevated over a period of time.
