What does it mean to truly live with Parkinson’s disease, not just manage it, but live? For Sister Phyllis Supancheck, a physical therapist (PT), educator, missionary, and self-described “Super Chick,” the answer involves mule rides in the mountains of Peru, Bible correspondence courses with prisoners, a receptionist desk at an assisted living facility, and a love of plants.
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What does a registered dietitian do when she discovers she has young onset Parkinson’s? She turns her diagnosis into a mission — building the tools and programs she wished had existed for herself and the thousands of others navigating the same uncertain road.
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What happens when a man loses his voice to Parkinson’s disease — and responds by making an album with some of Britain’s greatest musicians? For Ian Grant, Paul Mitchell, and John Caulcutt, the answer is Think Loud 4 Parkinson’s: a limited-edition vinyl and CD collection that brings together legends from The Stranglers, Fairport Convention, Big Country, the Sex Pistols, and more, all in service of finding a cure.
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What does it take to go from hiding a diagnosis in silence — popping pills in secret, withdrawing from the world — to becoming one of Ireland’s most visible advocates for Parkinson’s awareness? For Gary Bole, it started with a simple, persistent nudge from the person sitting beside him: “Speak up.”
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What happens when a rare neurological condition affects the clarity and confidence of someone’s speech — and the research on treatment is limited? That was the question behind a recent study exploring two intensive speech therapy approaches for people with Friedreich’s Ataxia.
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As LSVT® Certified Clinicians, you’ve seen how transformative LSVT LOUD® and LSVT BIG® can be for people living with Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions. After the intensive, one-on-one therapy ends, though, many of your patients ask, “What’s next?” That’s where LOUD for LIFE and BIG for LIFE come in.
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Imagine having a tool that tracks your client’s vocal intensity in real-time with calibrated accuracy, automatically calculates progress, stores all your data, and even provides visual feedback to keep your client engaged. That’s not wishful thinking, that’s LSVT Coach.
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Duffy (2013) defines speech intelligibility as the “degree of accuracy with which a listener recovers the acoustic signal or message produced by a speaker.” Kent (1992) considers intelligibility as the paramount issue in speech pathology, “the behavioral standard of communication.”
Speech intelligibility can be severely reduced in Parkinson’s disease (PD); it can be among the main concerns of people with PD (Miller et al., 2007). The validity and reliability in assessing speech intelligibility in PD may be affected by several factors.
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If you are a physical (PT) or occupational therapist (OT) working with older adults or neuro populations, you are most likely familiar with LSVT BIG® treatment approach, which is built on a very specific treatment dose: 60‑minute, individual sessions, 4 days per week for 4 weeks, for a total of 16 visits. This “dose” is not a preference or arbitrary in nature; it is the parameter used in the research on LSVT BIG that results in clinically significant improvements in amplitude, gait, and functional mobility in people with Parkinson’s.
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Research studies are fantastic. They give us the evidence we need to justify treatment choices, advocate for clients, and feel confident in what we’re doing. But let’s be real, reading a research article and actually implementing an approach with your own caseload are two very different things.
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