Parkinson's exercise for posture improvement
Parkinson's Disease is a neurological disease that presents most often with tremors, stooped posture, rigidity, slowness of movement, and loss of flexibility. However, with daily consistent exercises, you can improve your posture. Learn 3 exercises that are easy to do and can improve your posture.
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This video is about Parkinson's Disease and posture. One of the common characteristics of Parkinson's is forward head posture and a rounding of the thoracic spine.
When we have a forward head posture, our head ends up being supported by only two or three vertebrae. Now, all of a sudden, the weight of the head jumps up to about 30 pounds. And as they continue to get further forward, the weight jumps up to about 40 pounds, which is why, unfortunately, a lot of people, if they don't do the exercises, they end up almost stooping forward.
So, what it's supposed to look like, ideally, is you want to try to have that cervical spine, ear lobe lines up with your shoulders. So, how do we fix this? You need to be willing to put the time in, but you can make a difference with it. First exercise is pretty simple. I'm just going to give you three simple exercises. First exercise is pretty simple. What we want to try to do is we want to try to sit up as tall as we can and bring that head back over the shoulders. So, we're making double chins. Make sure you don't go down, make sure you don't go up. We're just coming straight back over here. How many double chins are we going to do? We're going to do two sets of 10. with about a two or three second hold. Two sets of 10, a two or three second hold.
The next exercise basically involves is putting our "scapula or our shoulder blades in our back pocket". I'm going to squeeze my shoulder blades together and I'm going to put them down into my back pocket and I'm going to hold it there for a five second count and then I'm going to let it relax. . Once again, we've got two sets of 10 with a five second hold. This will help your posture and try to correct for the rounded shoulders.
The last one we're going to do is we're going to try to open up that chest a little bit. It's going to require a chair with a low back. You'll take a deep breath in and as you exhale, you're going to try to open up a little bit over the back of the chair. It's almost like you're using that as a hinge to kind of open that thoracic spine up a little bit. Has to be a firm chair since you need that pressure to open up because that thoracic spine is going to get stiff.
You can also do this exercise, if you're not too stiff, on a foam roller, but I recommend starting off doing it in a chair initially. So, the three exercises: the chin tuck, shoulders back and down, and then a low back chair, we're working on opening up that thoracic spine. We're doing two sets of 10 with a five second hold on the thoracic spine opener.
Three simple exercises. Get them done daily. Just no excuses. If not, your head will get "heavier" and just imagine walking around instead with a head that weighs 40 pounds instead of 10-12 pounds Good luck with the exercises!
Ed Deboo, Physical Therapist
Integrative PT
Bellingham, WA 9822