Thaw Out the Freezing of Parkinson's Disease...Learn How to Keep Your Feet Moving!!
If you have Parkinson's disease and you find that you have what we call sticky feet, you find that your feet just kind of want to stick to the floor no matter how hard you're trying to move them and pick them up, I've got a few tips for you that will help drastically if you put them into play in your daily life.
So people with Parkinson's often experience what we call sticky feet. It can be called festinating or freezing, where it feels like your feet are just kind of choppy at certain points, where they want to kind of just flutter on the ground without actually lifting your feet to actually walk forward. What we find and is classic with people with Parkinson's is that when they experience that feeling, it's usually when they're changing direction, such as making a left or a right turn. It often occurs when they're going through doorways and the threshold is something that they have to think about. It often happens when they're approaching a more narrow space, and it often happens when they're approaching something new in their pathway, such as going in and out of a grocery store door or things like that.
So if you have that feeling to any degree in your daily life with Parkinson's disease, I've got a few tips for you that help quite a bit if you employ them often. So what happens when you get that sticky feeling is your body and your brain try to continue to fight their way out of it. So you end up with this kind of fluttering feeling where your feet just don't want to come up, but it still feels like your body is moving forward. As you progress, that can be very dangerous because your body will continue to move and your feet will be stuck to the ground, and that leads to many falls.
So what we encourage is the second you begin to feel that kind of freezy sticky feeling in your feet, you simply stop, relax yourself, don't try and move for at least 10 seconds, and that relaxes that sensation where you're not trying to push through it, you're just going to reset your system by the 10-second stop.
After you stop and you reset, the most important, number two tip is to march your way through it by thinking about stepping with your knees. So when our lives are going well and we're not dealing with any kind of morbidities like Parkinson's disease, our walking is just natural. We don't have to think about it. Our brain tells our feet to move one ahead of the other. When we develop something like Parkinson's disease and there might be those sticky feet, your automatic response is to start thinking about lifting your feet higher so that you can get through that stickiness. What I think works much better is to generate some more force through the bigger muscles in the legs, which are more connected to the knees.
So I find if you think about lifting and walking with your knees, lifting them up and marching, you have a much better chance of being able to prevent that sticky feeling.
The other thing involved in the marching strategy is when you're changing direction to any degree, that might be making a left or a right-hand turn, it might be turning your body so that you're approaching a chair to sit down, you march through those direction changes. Now, you don't have to march where your knees are coming up to your chest, you just have to think about marching so that there's sort of a dance to it, left, right, left, right, left, right, and it's kind of musical. So if you're able to do that as you're going through your day, it helps quite a bit.
Now, as you advance with your Parkinson's, you will notice this happening more often. So the earlier you start with these strategies, the better you are going to be. So if you feel the stickiness come on, stop 10 seconds, which resets your system. March through as you initiate that movement again to restart your walking. You're going to be thinking about lifting your legs with your knees, which will generate more power from the bigger muscles around your knees and your hips. When you have to change direction, march through those direction changes. Don't let your body lead the activity. March with high knee movement.
If you have that freezy sticky kind of feeling with your feet with Parkinson's, I hope these tips can help you quite a bit. Please watch the video over again whenever you feel like you need a little guidance. It helps my patients quite a bit, and I think it can help you. If you like this video, literally press the like button, subscribe to our channel. We hope to be able to give regular content for people just like you in the future.
