Parkinson’s Disease

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:00:06] Tonight, we address finally a disease that affects more men than women. We’re talking about this week and what topic we’re going to have on our 30th anniversary of the Humpday conversations. If you’ve enjoyed these conversations so far, we’ve had 30 of them. Give us a thumbs up. We’ve shared a lot of information in these last 30 episodes. It’s something that we, you know, that we’ve love to share.

We’ve had question periods. We’ve had a few invited guests on there. So thank you so much for being with us. And tonight on our 30th anniversary to talk about Parkinson’s. Already prevalent, we have a live guest tonight who’s had his family touched with that. And so, yeah, we want to begin Ben.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:01:12] Sure. Yeah, I would love to start this off. Parkinson’s, it’s a condition that’s very near and dear to me. It doesn’t run within my family. None of my close family members were impacted by this disease. However, this is one of the first conditions that I started working with. When I started to develop this passion to become a doctor and work with certain populations. I had started working on the Parkinson’s project, which was a project through Saint of X. Geared for kinesiology students, working with the clinic locally in Antigonish. To help those living their lives with Parkinson’s reach goals, mobility goals, flexibility, goals and strength goals.

We put together programs of care and worked with individuals with Parkinson’s to help them have increased mobility. So when we sort of talked about, OK, what do we want to do tonight? And Dr. Roach had mentioned maybe we should go to neurological stuff. Parkinson’s had come up. And so Parkinson’s is a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement. And so it actually slows down the individual’s movements.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:02:37] And it’s the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. And so the symptoms are starting very gradually and then they progress and get worse over time. By the time that symptoms are bad, that’s when people really start to notice something is happening. Yeah. Facial expressions are impacted. You can have a wide stare with a lack of blinking. Normally notice it in your 60s. But you can start to really notice it when you’re forty-five to sixty-five years old. Especially with difficulty with movements and the tremor.

So the tremor is the number one thing that you’re going to notice first. And a tremor for those of you who are familiar, for those of you that are tremors is shaking of the hands. So the movement is very much impacted and so when the individuals trying to move that the movement has slowed and uncontrolled. And so you can kind of see I’ve got this sort of like that.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:03:41] And the expression is always when you talk about the facial features, they say it’s almost mask-like if you see somebody wearing a mask, there is no facial expression. It’s just a blank stare. A family friend was affected by Parkinson’s. They would just stare into the middle of nowhere and very, very characteristic of Parkinson’s.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:04:12] And so the individual may not have a specific complaint, but they may still show signs like very rigid motions bradykinesia, which again is the slowing of movement, resting tremor and walking difficulties. The individual will often present with what we call a shuffling gait. It’s a very wide stance gait with very short steps, almost like shuffling, and they’ll even slide their feet on the floor there. So the stooped posture is very common.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:04:50] One thing that happens when, one second Ben, with the gait. While you’re mentioning the gait, what happens? They have a very hard time initiating movement. So they almost have to you could see them get up from a chair and then you got to take that first step, but the motor cortex, the brain doesn’t process this. And we’ll talk about why later. And they almost have to lean forward to the point where you think they’re going to fall and then their feet catch up from underneath them and in short, little steps. So, you know, it’s the inability to initiate movements. And then finally the feet catch up with short shuffling steps.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:05:31] Yeah, and that is a really good point. And just going back to the first thing that we sort of talked about that I alluded to when I worked with this population, some days we were having great success. Some days it was very easy to get going. Other days there were a lot of balance issues and then some days it was good. And so it is one of these conditions where it’s in waves almost. And so there are other complications as well, and not just the physical manifestations, but also thinking difficulties. So a lot of these individuals will also have things like dementia or other thinking issues, and those normally occur later on depression or emotional changes so they can change from one feeling to the next.

Very quickly, you can often see this, an early on anxiety, loss of motivation, swallowing difficulties. We have to think about all of the muscles. And so it’s very difficult for these individuals in late stages to actually swallow saliva. So oftentimes you’ll see the individuals, you know, drooling from the mouth. Right. Swallowing difficulty and difficulty chewing will be slowed down.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:06:51] Including bladder control, digestion, constipation. The muscles aren’t active. What is peristalsis? You know, the digestive tract pushing footlong into finally the big intestine is slow. So a lot of people develop constipation. Any muscle can be impacted by Parkinson’s. Hmm.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:07:21] One of them and just before we move this slide, I just want to point out a few things, because this photo here does a really good job with some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about later on. Anslem And so because, again, it affects the muscles. The arms are used to help us ambulate and walk to have a proper gait and to have a proper swing face. The opposite arm has to raise while the opposite leg takes a step forward. And so you can’t get that proper swing phase. You can’t swing through and have proper balance if your arms aren’t moving and ambulating with your legs. I just want to mention that before we carry on because we’ll be talking about that later.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:08:01] Yeah. And one last thing somebody can ask is, is it hereditary? Parkinson’s can be a relative, but it’s not common to be. Transmitted in a hereditary way, but although it can, it’s just it’s not that common, is that

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:08:21] Yeah, that’s what the current research is saying, is that it’s you know, there are links, but the links are very small. And so it’s a lot of things, too. They often say environmental factors can also play a role. I’d read one thing it just said toxins. So I’m not 100 percent sure about those exact environmental factors. However, when it comes to hereditary running in the family sort of thing, it’s a very loose connection.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:08:52] Yeah. The symptoms will progress. God knows that maybe there was a lack of clinical diagnosis that was specific and there is still kind of undetermined. And then, later on, you get the symptoms that happen that happened later and then more later stages. Those are going to happen no matter what whether the diagnosis is early or not, although sometimes some of the medications that you can be put on can help process a little bit. But yeah. Yeah, he got here.

What is the cause of Parkinson’s?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:09:35] Yeah, so we have a cross-section of the brain here and a little bit of a cross-section of the area of the brain impacted thereby Parkinson’s disease. And so this is basically the findings. Right. So in Parkinson’s disease, certain nerve cells in the brain gradually break down. The area is known as the substantial Negril actually begins to break down. They’re supposed to produce a chemical messenger known as dopamine in the brain. And dopamine is supposed to help us initiate movement. However, when dopamine levels decrease, it causes abnormal brain activity, especially in the frontal cortex leading to impaired movement and other symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:10:24] Yeah, so, I mean, dopamine is super, super important. And when you don’t have dopamine and we can talk about this now is that you have nerves to communicate with other nerves that make it down a muscle and give you the ability to contract the muscle. And also part of our ability to contract our motor nervous system comes from the brain as well. What happens when there’s less dopamine hanging around the brain than the conductivity of those motor impulses that allow us to move and ambulate start to slow down. We call that inhibition. So we have inhibition of the motor cortex and premotor cortex, which doesn’t give you the ability to move as fast as you should. Everything starts to get slow down with Parkinson’s when it comes to muscles.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:11:22] Yeah. And so we’re not able to send these sort of efferent messages. Right. So when the brain communicates the muscle down, we can’t stand that because of the information that’s being sent to the brain from this area of the brain. Right. If we just think maybe the area of the brain that’s impacted here, if it’s trying to send the information here, this efferent impulse is not getting sent there properly. It’s all mixed up. So in the information that’s coming, there are all kinds of upside down and it’s being sent upside down to the body. Just looking at the. Yeah, did you want to mention that cross-section and what we’re seeing there?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:12:02] Yes. But one thing I wanted to say is this is also the reason why, like with the dopamine shortage, why you will see changes in behaviour, depression, and also because dopamine is super important with that as well. Right. Like your drive when that starts to slow down, that’s why you have that mood, psychological depression, all that stuff happening at the same time that you’re seeing muscular deficiencies and all that. Right. This area here where the substantia nigra is is called your basal ganglia and your basal ganglia is basically where you are going to have the ability to control movement. There are different types of movement and specifically different types of tremors. One thing that we want to mention is that when you have an intention tremor versus a resting tremor. Parkinson’s is known for its resting tremor.

As a matter of fact, when you start moving, part of the tremor starts to go away. You’re just slow-moving. But when you have a tremor that’s controlled by the smaller part of the brain called the cerebellum, that’s when you go to bring a fork to your mouth and the tremor gets worse as you get closer to the mouth. That’s called an intervention because there’s an intention to bring the for close to your mouth. But Parkinson’s, the tremors are going to be resting. So you can observe somebody as they’re sitting on a chair, they’ll have their hands in their lap and their arm, their hands are going is going like this. That is called a resting tremor, very, very what’s called the path of the monarch, or it signifies that this could be a Parkinsonian type of reaction.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:13:58] And so when we look at that basal ganglia there, just on like the image to the right, you can see that the lines are pointing to the substantial nigra. And so substantia nigra is supposed to be a dark-coloured structure there in the basal ganglia and so on the right there that Dr. Roach is circled. That’s normal. You can see it’s nice and dark. And we look to an individual with Parkinson’s disease and we see that there is very little of that substantial nigra left. It’s lost a lot of its pigmentation. And so the loss of these nerve cells is usually a very slow process, and so the symptoms of this disease are usually only seen and that’s what the research says when 80 percent of those nerve cells have been lost.

So really, by the time that you’re starting to see some severe symptoms, you’ve already lost 80 percent of those nerve cells, which is fairly significant. It’s more significant then than anything else at that point. So that’s really the big finding as far as that cross-section is concerned. There’s also something and this is going into some of the research that’s being done on Parkinson’s these days is that researchers are finding something called Lewy body, which is a substance in the brain, and they find this in individuals with Parkinson’s and they believe that these Lewy bodies are involved in that process.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:15:32] However, more research needs to be done to confirm how these Lewy bodies are involved in the disease and eventually coming up with a cure to help determine how we can stop the destruction of the cells.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:15:46] Yeah, and Lewy body. I’m sure some of you have probably heard the term Lewy body dementia is when people start to have dementia, not really Alzheimer’s, but it’s related to Lewy bodies. And now we’re starting to see a link between Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s. So that’s great, great information. So, guys, at this point, as we always do here, if you like this information, just give us a little bit of a thumbs up or a heart if you’ve learned something so far. Again, this is a disease that affects more men and the second most common neurological disease here in North America and In the world.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:16:27] I think that’s it’s really common in North America worldwide, common as well.

Chiropractic and Parkinson’s Disease

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:16:36] All right. So what can we do about Parkinson’s? Obviously, we’re not going to solve Parkinson’s. This is a slowly progressive disorder that, you know, even the brightest minds of medicine are still not figured out. There are advances being made. But what we want to do is provide perhaps a prolonged slowing or increased quality of life through making sure that your activities of daily living are being improved to the full potential of what they can be based on what’s going on neurologically with Parkinson’s. Right. I think that’s yeah.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:17:18] Yeah. I mean, we talk about some of the things like the stooped posture that the patient presents with the shuffling gait. They’re going to be some compensation’s developed from that idea of Parkinson’s alone. And so when we talk about balance, when you’re head is falling forward in front of the feet, this can lead to a fall. Right. Falls are the number one cause of disability and individuals over the age of 70. A fall can be detrimental to an individual. Managing the risk of a fall is one of the more important things other than just managing the symptomatology of Parkinson’s alone. You can we can enhance your quality of life by giving you that improved balance.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:18:05] Yeah. When you think about people with Parkinson’s have a lack of extensor tone. Literally, it’s almost like you’re sitting all the time and we know how detrimental sitting all the time can be, like your hip flexors get tight, your back is. Imagine if you were like that every day bending forward. We always see you stand up tall, have good posture while these people can have great posture because there is a neurological pathway that’s being generated that’s allowing this to happen. A lot of these people end up with low back pain and they’re shuffling all the time. Nothing is the way the body was moving to ambulate. It’s all different. There are tons of compensatory muscles that start to chime in. So that’s a great point.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:18:58] Yeah. And my second point, like the second point I was in here, is removing nervous system interference and stress reduction. And so one of the points that I like to talk about is new patients is that whenever we have restrictions, whenever we have issues in the spine, it’s a little bit subluxation. They’re the muscles in the front get really tight. Namely, I always talk about, you know, the pecs are really tight, are our neck flexors get really tight. Part of adjusting the spine is to remove some of these interferences.

We can activate the muscles in the back and reduce the amount of tone in the front. This is one of those conditions where that’s just a perfect example of how these restrictions in the spine are associated with this hyper Tony on the front and lack of tone in the back, which has a chiropractor. Now, we look at that and say, well, we’ve got to start removing these restrictions so we can get some tone going in the back here.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:19:56] A lot of times we can even see because of the flexitarian tone in the head going forward, you can start seeing people with Parkinson’s. And I’ve seen plenty that starts getting numbness in their hands, which is basically by virtue of their positioning that the condition is putting them in. So to alleviate some of the things that are I mean, they’re already going through a whole lot. So anything that we can reduce by virtue of treating the compensation’s, it gives them a better quality of life is what it comes down to.

Chiropractic and Parkinson’s Study

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:20:26] Yeah, proper development of the function of the brain relies on the structure and the movement of the spine. And so we have to work on moving the spine, keeping the structure nice and strong with that mobility so that we can have less of the other issues. Right. We haven’t even gotten through. Well, this predisposes somebody to arthritis and disc issues, right? We talk about. Yes, pain dropping down the hand. So there are other things that can happen that aren’t necessarily Parkinson’s that are happening, that can be taken care of with chiropractic care. I’d also written in your range of motion mobility and coordination exercises. These are things that can be given at home as a sort of like homework for yourself.

And like I said, when I was at St of X, we worked a lot. I was in kin. And so this is the study of human movement. And so we did a range of motion exercises, mobility, balance, coordination exercises with these patients to help them have a better quality of life so that they could go in and manage their symptoms by themselves. Absolutely. So one of these things as well, and I wanted to look into the research, has been a little while since I’ve taken up a study for you guys and took it out of the vault there. And this is chiropractic management of an 81-year-old with Parkinson’s disease. The individual had the signs and symptoms that we spoke about earlier.

So this resting tremor or shuffling gait photic or Ben spine with a forward head posture, use a walker and had shorter steps and he fatigued fairly quickly. And you would stop all the time because he couldn’t go very far without feeling like he couldn’t even make it there. Severe into your head. Carriage in his kyphosis was twenty to twenty-five degrees forward flexion. That’s quite significant. Like Dr. Roach was talking about, they have hyper tonier and so they’re very tight in the front. And he was unable to actually straighten his back because of how tight things were on the front. Now, this is basically this is all in the research. You guys are welcome to read this as well.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:22:44] One second. I just want to say, like a lot of you don’t realize the importance of extensor tone, right? When a child is born, it doesn’t have an extensive tone. Right. That’s why, you know, as soon as you put it straight, it falls forward. So extensor tone is developed. That’s why it’s important for kids to have belly time and important for kids to be born naturally so that when they go through the birth canal, they can lift their heads up to have an extension. That creates that neurological reflex for the extensor muscles to start to develop. Belly time is very important. So when the inability to Create extensor tone or the inability to control flexor tone.

Comes into play, a lot of things cannot occur. For example, when you go to get out of a chair, you need to go into an extension to get out of the chair. A lot of these people in terms of we’re talking about activities of daily living, a lot of these people can’t get out of a chair because they’re stooped in it and they can’t extend and go upright, which requires an extension. They can’t do that. So it becomes a very, very huge hit on their quality of life when you don’t have extensive time.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:24:08] Yeah, totally. Definitely a great point. So that’s why part of this adjusting and what they did in this study here is they adjusted the individuals actually standard. This particular chiropractor adjusted this individual with this lack of tone standing to encourage that extension, to encourage that up, that upside, that upright posture there and going back to this walking gait. Right. And so they’re trying to create this neuroplasticity. We’re trying to create changes in the brain pathways so that the individual has better communication between the structures that are not functioning properly and the structures that want that it wants to go to in the rest of the body. So they worked on working, swinging and doing exercises to help coordinate those movements so they could eventually create those pathways because if you don’t use it, you lose it.

So you need to practice. Yeah. And so especially with a condition like this where you’re beginning to lose some of those things, you have to make sure that those pathways stay well lit up. Yeah. Another important concept here with neuroplasticity, and this is right out of the study, some of the adjustments were done faster. Reflexes were done to elicit intrinsic spinal musculature to excite the cerebellum. So they’re trying to get this area of the brain to excite. So I think it was and yeah, they just want to send information with proper information down to the body so that it’s no longer getting this like this poor lack of dopamine type movement. That’s why I encourage that. I just want to reiterate that point there.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:25:53] Yeah, that’s very important, because what you can do in neurology is you can do what’s called fast stretches. So let’s say, for example, your biceps is contracted, which a lot of these people are. You can do a fast stretch of the biceps. So you basically stretch it real quick and you kind of put an impulse, kind of a chiropractic push. And when we push on the spine and what that will do, it goes the brain and then automatically allows the extensor to contract. So that’s called a cross cord reflex. And definitely, that can be used to excite parts of the brain that we know are deficient.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:26:30] So, yeah, and that’s also a really good point, too. And it brings me to this point that I have about vibration therapy. So they actually did this thing called vibration therapy in this study as well. And it was used to elicit that plasticity in the basal ganglia sort of as a distraction. Right. And just to provide temporary relief to the patient’s tremor. And so when they actually did this vibration and provided this almost this distraction to that area and caused that tremor to go away, the exact mechanism still is as poorly understood. But the idea of using vibration as a distraction mechanism to help sort of taking away a tremor is really interesting.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:27:15] Yeah, no, absolutely, I think, you know, there’s a lot of things that can be done with Parkinson’s, what we call functional neurology is a good example. And I kind of step away from Parkinson’s for a second. You know, people that have a stroke and they’ve lost the ability to move one limb. One of the amazing things you can do is you can actually trick the brain and a lot of them do what’s called mirror therapy. So they’ll put a mirror here and they’ll put the arm that can move. And what the person does is looks at the mirror, see the hand, they can move, move, but the brain thinks that it’s the left arm that’s actually moving.

So now you’re creating synapses to the brain that now thinks that you’re moving the left arm to get some excitation, to get movement in the arm that’s been paralyzed by the stroke. So there are many things that can be done neurologically to help these people. I can’t think of a good parallel example with Parkinson’s, but definitely neurologically. You can improve these patients up to a certain degree until the disease takes over. But again, from the activity of the activities of daily living standpoint, quality of life, my gosh, there’s a lot of things that you can do for that.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:28:40] Yeah. And so that was kind of the big result of the study was that the patient saw improvements in the activity of daily living and well-being, which should be the ultimate goal. Right. Because in a progressive neurological disorder, the condition only gets worse or it stays the same. The idea would be to keep as much as you have at this point. That’s exactly what we did with the Parkinson’s project, which was to keep individuals moving in that way. And that’s what they did in the study here. The chiropractor.

The individual saw most of the improvements take place in the first two months of care, and this was twice a week. And so the individual began a twice a week for a certain number of weeks, started feeling really good, and then continued that once a week and continues, according to the study, at the once a week frequency to maintain the structure built and maintain the progress. Because once you start seeing the progression, you don’t want to sort of see any of that digress and go downhill. It’s just completely understandable.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:29:43] Yeah. One of the things I mentioned, too, is once the gait starts to be really affected, one of the things that I told patients, you know, it’s tough to go to a cane because the cane allows you to be able to flex like it’s far easier to have a walker where you can have both hands and you can have both hands trying to push you up into extension. So, again, thinking of the overall effect on the spine, know having a unilateral device like a cane tends to push you in an asymmetrical posture that again, is not going to help your overall condition.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:30:22] Yeah, having a lean and whatnot. One side. Yeah. And you know what? The study even goes on, it’s a pretty amazing study. And, you know, the individual actually stopped using their walker. They could stand up much straighter. Now, this was done performed in twenty fourteen. It’d be great to have another follow-up with this case study, but I just thought that was an interesting point to bring up, especially considering that we’re talking about, OK, how can chiropractic play a role in a disease such as Parkinson’s?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:30:51] So that is that’s a great, great study. You know, I like the fact that you know, he wanted to continue care because he was afraid he would return to his previous state. Like, once you improved and you realized. How many problems you were having to say people that have pain and now they have no pain and even though they said, well, the pain is not so bad, but when they don’t have to realize how much it was impacting their life and they go, oh, my gosh, I don’t want to go back to where I was. So that’s true even without Parkinson’s, what else you want to mention? Ben. Is there anything on this slide? Something else.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:31:30] That is everything on that on that slide, you know, and really just hitting home on the benefits of the adjustment and hitting those, you know, working on those motor patterns and getting those grooved in and getting the tone in the back muscles working properly. I think that’s our greatest benefit, that that tone for the patient encouraging those back muscles to the fire.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:31:59] I see a comment that just came in and here’s what I want to say. If you have someone that you love who has Parkinson’s and you tell them, look, you know, maybe you should check out a chiropractor. One of the things that they’re going to say is, well, you know, I’m going to ask my in my medical doctor, I’m going to ask my neurologist, the answer to that is going to be well no, you shouldn’t see a chiropractor because they’re making the assumption that the reason they want to go to a chiropractor is to fix their Parkinson’s. As you can attest tonight, we did not say that we want to fix Parkinson’s. So to them, it doesn’t make sense why you would see a chiropractor for a condition that’s neurological, that’s going to continue to progress.

Parkinson’s Management

Dr. Clayton Roach: But our goal is to help them with their quality of life, with the compensatory things that happen because of Parkinson’s. And my gosh, if we can increase their quality of life by five percent, 10 percent, who is not going to want that in a condition that’s going to continue to get worse? That creates depression already. Why would you not want to get rid of something that you can get rid of or at least control to a point where, you know, their life is more comfortable or they’re given a little more freedom because you can move a little bit better and prolong the whole thing?

Right. So just want to be clear on that, that there is going to be a disconnect as to why a medical doctor would say, no, you shouldn’t see a chiropractor with Parkinson’s because it comes from his mindset. And what like it doesn’t make sense to him because Parkinson’s is going to be Parkinson’s, a chiropractor is not going to do anything for that, and that is not the avenue that we’re talking about. It’s about the compensations that we can help with. Just want to say that cause I saw that comment come in.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:33:44] That’s a great point because I think it has to come with a certain angle and this goes for a lot of these neurological conditions as well. We all know that these conditions progress. We all know they either progress or they or they stay that way or they slowly progress. But there are many things, many compensations that can be helped. Like just because you have Parkinson’s doesn’t mean that you’re going to stop working on your balance, right? Exactly. It doesn’t mean that you’re working on your flexibility.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:34:14] Yeah, it’s the same thing as MS-like those are all conditions that you can help with, with other things.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:34:20] It’s like I’m not just like if I have this condition, it’s not you know, I’m not just going to sit around and take my medications and not do anything else on the side. You have to be very, very proactive in this care. And, you know, a doctor that will just prescribe you your meds for this condition and not talk to you about anything else isn’t serving the whole. And so that’s why we’re here to make that connection, because if he’s not serving the whole, then maybe we can make this a whole piece. Right, instead of just putting the whole one.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:34:52] And talking about the whole physiotherapy Might help in this, too, and prescribing a certain range of motion exercise and stuff that, you know, as chiropractors we can also do. But we definitely don’t want to exclude any other practitioners that can help. Massage therapy will help as well. But I don’t do massage. I don’t do physio, physio doesn’t do chiro, massage doesn’t do chiro. There are certain things that we do that only we can do in terms of activating the spine and you know adjustments and stuff like that and the impact that has that only chiropractors can do, just like I can’t do some of the things that physios do. So I think many times it has to be a team approach.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:35:33] Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean, that’s working with the medical doctor, working the physio. And I just want to quickly give a shout out to massage therapist, you know, that will work with these patients to try and get that toned, calm down, because the muscles are extremely tight and it does take an experienced professional to go in there with their hands and sort of work through that. And then another shot out to our friends, the physios as well, who are working to improve the balance with these patients, you know, encouraging them to move properly.

You get that full range of motion, giving the exercise what’s safe and what’s not using certain modalities. I suppose that may be helpful at this. There is definitely a team-based approach, a team-based approach. That can work for the patients and definitely help improve that quality of life. There are lots of options out there. We’re just saying that one of the more important things to improve upon for sure is definitely working with that nervous system interference and getting the time worked in the spine adjusted number one would be my take.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:36:38] Yeah, no, absolutely. So, guys, you know, up to now, if you’ve learned something, please show your appreciation by sharing this episode. Why don’t we just go and just do that right now, share this episode to your page, to your Facebook groups? A lot of people will not think about going to a chiropractor if they have Parkinson’s, not for Parkinson’s, but for the health of their entire body and helping with mobility. So definitely do that because I guarantee you chiropractic is not top of mind for people that have Parkinson’s.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:37:16] Yeah, just that just because that was such like such a good point to bring up because there are so many conditions that people will go to the gatekeepers and then they’ll be put right into a box. Right. And in that one word is what keeps you in that stagnant position. Right. And so being able to have that choice of knowing. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess my you know, not all my back pain is due to just Parkinson’s alone.

So all of this and actually be managed and worked on is a thought that we have to be thinking about, especially in this new age where we are trying to stay out of the only starts you can carrot and stick approach and look more towards. I should be taking care of my body when I’m feeling well because there is the opportunity to feel even better.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:38:09] So here’s one thing that’s crazy, guys. This is how something you hear could affect your health forever. So I had this patient who came in to see me. It was funny because she was having back pain and her doctor said, well, you know, maybe you should see a chiropractor, you know, and so anyway, she starts to see a chiropractor started coming to see me getting great results. I didn’t see her for a while. Anyway, she shows back up and I said, you know, you stopped coming, you know? I said, no, I was doing well. At one point the back pain came back, but it came back and there was a numbness going down the leg. She goes to see her doctor again and he says, well, you know, back pain, you can go see a chiropractor.

But because the pain is going down your leg, you can’t see a chiropractor anymore. I was like, oh, my God, you know, like because the pain is going down the leg, you know, how many patients we see with sciatic pain, like, you know, and for him to think that all of a sudden because there’s the pain going down the leg, it’s now no longer a chiropractic problem. If that happens for something like low back pain and how many times it happened for something like Parkinson’s, where they have absolutely no idea about how chiropractic might help, could manage that particular condition. Right.

You know, if it can happen for something as easy as that, then for sure it happens with neurological conditions where they’re like, well, why the hell would you see a chiropractor? And we’ve basically listed all the reasons why tonight. Yeah. So go ahead and share these episodes because definitely somebody might say, wow, I never thought about it. We’re going to check a chiropractor. And it doesn’t matter if they come to us if they’re listening to this episode in the US or in New Zealand or wherever they’re at. Good for them. And we help somebody without being in their hometown.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:40:10] Absolutely, absolutely, so a supplement of the month, omega three, this is the last day of the month of June, a supplement of the month, omega three been talking about this all month long. And food, joint health and bone strength decrease inflammatory molecules. Our great office assistant Alicia was talking with orthomolecular recently, and we have a product called Cerenity PM. Cerenity PM is another great product that helps reduce that nervous system stimulation. We’re trying to get that nervous flow to calm down. And so on a condition such as this Cerenity PM may be helpful. I won’t say that it generally will help with Parkinson’s specifically. But if you’re looking for something that’s natural, that’s looking to calm down some of that nervous flow, Cerenity PM, a product that we have at the office, Orthomolecular.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:41:05] Yeah. And I’ll just add one little thing. B-Complex as well. You know B-Complex is definitely going to be helping with the nervous system, which is why we use it in conjunction to help people sleep with the calm things down. But outside the just from a general effect on the nervous system, you can definitely see benefits from Cerenity. So here we are, guys. Definitely a pertinent topic. And we’re seeing a lot of love here tonight from people that have been affected by Parkinson’s. We had a great friend from our family die of Parkinson’s, and it obviously affects a lot of people.

So all we’re trying to do is help people here and give them their options and help you guys gain knowledge over what the condition is and what it can do for perhaps yourself, perhaps a family member or friend or colleague. And we appreciate your reaching out to them by sharing this episode. I know some of you already mentioned that. You share that. I appreciate that. Very. So go ahead and do that. If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, you can definitely do that as well. And yeah. Thank you so much, guys. This is our 30th episode. We could not do this without you. We love doing this. And thank you for your feedback so far.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:42:28] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Just last point, everybody, whoever is having a holiday tomorrow. Enjoy your day off. However, the way you decide to spend your day, spend it your way. And thank you, Dr. Roach, for a great topic this evening. And I think we touched on some really great stuff here and as well, one of the benefits, I think is, is just us reaching out and being in the community and, you know, having this time to talk with everybody about topics that we feel passionately about, something like this.

Just take me right back. Like I said to my days working with some of this population very closely, you know, and you never know when something like this is going to come up again. So when you have the opportunity to work with specific populations, do so and expose yourself so that you know what these conditions are like and the people that are living with these conditions and who they are and the difficulties that they’re going through. And you never know. You might say, I watched this conversation one week with these two guys, these two chiropractors in Halifax, and they shared some really cool stuff.

One should look into it because you just never know how far-reaching can be. So thank you guys so much for tuning in tonight. Absolutely. So, guys, thank you so much. We’re going to be live again next week on Wednesday, as usual, at nine o’clock if you’re new to this. Thank you. If you’ve been with us Since the beginning. Likewise. Thank you so much. And we look forward to doing this every week. And we will see you guys very soon with Humpday conversation number thirty-one. Take care, guys. Love you and appreciate you. Good night. What’s up? Listen, if you like this episode, you’ll probably like the other ones are pretty good.

So here’s what you need to do. You need to like us and follow us on Facebook. Following means, you get notified when these two guys are alive. Next, family, friends, you need to share these episodes because you never know. You might help them because they need this information as well. And guys, if you ever miss an episode, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. That way, you can watch the episode over and over and over again. Guys, we love you and appreciate you. Take care.