??? Ideomotion and neuro diagnosis

[rex08]

I wonder if people diagnosed with movement issues such as parkinsons, dystonia, and etc would benefit from the practice of ideomotion. I am wondering if anyone has experience with this patient population.

I had a patient who was referred to our office for neck pain/cervicalgia as her medial diagnosis. She was also diagnosed with dystonia which is minimized with medication since and it is something she has been managing since she was born.

during her initial evaluation, her active cervical range of motion was as follows:

Flexion: 0-40 (degrees)
Extension: 0-30
Rotation Right: 0-40 - (she had a firm endfeel with PROM at about 40 degrees)
Rotation Left: 0-65
Sidebend R and L: 0-20

Then following 4-5 min of simple contact, she was able to independently express it. As I went to print out instructions for her, She independently promoted ideomotion for a few minutes. Upon re-measurement, her right rotation improved to 75 degrees, she felt her body soften. She stated something like "ideomotion makes total sense me because my body wants to move, but medication prevents it to move the way my body wants to."

After 4 treatments consisting of ideomotion, graded motor imagery, moving into ease, movement awareness, her AROM was as follows:

Flexion: chin to chest with ease
Extension: 0-85 degrees
Rotation Right: 0-90 (she had a firm endfeel with PROM at about 40 degrees)
Rotation Left: 0-90
Sidebend R and L: 0-45

I am planning to contact the Parkinson's and Movement Disorder Department about Ideomotion and was wondering what you all think.

Rex

[Barrett Dorko]

Rex,

It has always been my, uh, contention that ideomotion reduces the abnormal neurodynamic and by virtue of this sympathetic increase is also reduced. I think that's a direct relationship if not a linear one.

It's simply possible for people with neurodegenerative diseases also possess these problems and that they are affected as we would hope with a method like Simple Contact. Improvement does not imply that the disease has been affected - only that something good for all of us has been employed.

How would you justify our thinking otherwise?

[Barrett Dorko]

More thinking.

By all means, talk to the appropriate departments, but speak to them of movement, authenticity and understanding of painful and potentially painful processes and their affect on movement.

Expect plenty of push back from the therapists who are making money without your understanding. They aren't bad people, but they're willfully ignorant.

[Jo Bowyer]

I have made no measurable difference to the expected progression of neurological conditions over the last 36 years, but have probably expanded patients' horizons by the introduction of a novel movement experience.