How Microcurrent Therapy Can Help You Overcome Parkinson's Disease

The role of microcurrent therapy in treating Parkinson's - simplified.

Around 60,000 Americans are affected by Parkinson's disease every year, and the number of patients is only growing. Sadly, Parkinson's has no cure, but you can influence its course and improve your quality of life. 

With drug treatments causing various side effects, practitioners are now turning to more holistic treatments for this chronic disorder. One of them is microcurrent therapy, and here's how it makes you and your loved ones thrive with this life-altering condition.

What Happens In Parkinson's Disease

To understand how various treatment work for Parkinson's disease, let's first have a look at what changes happen in the disorder that causes its main symptoms.

Parkinson's disease's exact cause is unknown, despite our growing understanding of its pathophysiology. Parkinson's disease symptoms are caused by neurotransmitter loss, especially dopamine.

As diseased cells die, symptoms worsen. Some patients develop few symptoms as they age, while others develop them quickly.

Sadly, Parkinson's is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. That means its symptoms get worse with time. 

It affects the dorsal motor nucleus of your vagus nerve and the olfactory bulbs and nucleus first, then the locus coeruleus, and finally the substantia nigra. 

Later, the cortex is affected. Damage to these neuronal systems causes pathophysiologic changes impairing motor, cognitive, and neuropsychological systems.

Can Microcurrent Therapy ImproveThe Physical Symptoms Of Parkinson's Disease?

Doctors sometimes use the word "parkinsonism" to describe these main physical symptoms of Parkinson's disease:

• A tremor is shaking that usually starts in your hand or arm and happens more often when the limb is at rest. 
• The slowness of movement or bradykinesia is when the body moves more slowly than it should. It can make daily tasks hard and leads to a slow, shuffling walk with minimal steps.
• Muscle stiffness or rigidity is tightness and stiffness in the muscles, making it challenging to move around and make facial expressions and can lead to painful muscle cramps/dystonia.

Other physical symptoms include but aren't limited to:

• Balance problems
• Anosmia
• Nerve pain
• Sexual dysfunction
• Urinary continence

Can the use of currents that match the endogenous current of your body help reduce your Parkinson's symptoms or those that your loved ones are experiencing? The short answer is, yes!

Microcurrent Therapy May Reduce Tremours In Parkinson's Disease

Electrical stimulation is a promising treatment for pathological tremors, such as the tremors seen in Parkinson's disease. 

Research suggests that cranial electrical stimulation (like microcurrent therapy) can cause deactivation in the cortical areas of your brain. It also changes the neural networks in the dorsal motor nucleus of your vagus nerve. 

As we've discussed, these areas are implicated in Parkinson's disease, and electromedicine can reverse or prevent the worsening of symptoms in neurodegenerative disorders.

Microcurrent Therapy Can Help Reduce Pain In Parkinson's Disease

Pain symptoms of various natures can affect 40 to 85 percent of people with Parkinson's disease. The CES form of microcurrent therapy can help alleviate this discomfort.

Microcurrent therapy can help bring neurotransmitters in stressed participants back to more normal levels. It also increases the feel-good chemicals and endorphins in patients with chronic back pain. 

In a double-blind, randomized, crossover pilot trial from 2009, researchers investigated microcurrent therapy's efficacy in treating specific, chronic low-back pain. It recorded an improvement in patients' conditions.

Microcurrent therapy has also been used to treat painful neuropathy, a secondary symptom of Parkinson's disease.

Microcurrent Therapy May Reduce Muscle Cramps In Parkinson's Disease

Dystonia or painful muscle cramps may be due to Parkinson's disease or a side effect of the medications used to treat the disorder in around 30% of patients.

Luckily, microcurrent therapy has been used in sports medicine for decades now. It helps athletes recover from injuries as well as post-exercise. It does so by promoting ATP production as well as electrically stimulating muscles.

Can Microcurrent Therapy Treat Mental Symptoms Of Parkinson's Disease?

Contrary to popular belief, Parkinson's disease doesn't only cause debilitating physical symptoms that can affect your or your loved ones' entire life. 

The same brain changes that result in the physical symptoms of Parkinson's disease also cause noticeable mental symptoms, which can affect your behavior and mental faculties.

We divide them into the psychiatric and cognitive symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

The psychiatric symptoms of Parkinson's disease include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Visual hallucinations
• Delusions
• Sleep disturbances

Similarly, the cognitive symptoms of Parkinson's disease include:

• cognitive impairment
• memory issues 
• Difficulties with organizing
• Difficulty planning tasks

Microcurrent Therapy Improves Anxiety In Parkinson's Disease

Up to 40% of people with Parkinson's disease experience anxiety, which is a startling number.

People with Parkinson's disease can develop anxiety because of various factors.

They have abnormal levels of a neurotransmitter, GABA, in their brain. Anxiety is linked to these low GABA levels. 

Anxiety is sometimes associated with motor disturbances in Parkinson's disease. In others, it's related to the daily personal and social struggles one faces with Parkinson's. 

Irrespective of the cause, microcurrent therapy can help resolve anxiety symptoms in Parkinson's disease. 

When microcurrent therapy is used to relax the brain areas involved in an anxious, hyperarousal response to stimuli, anxiety is lessened.

Microcurrent therapy also causes a lot more alpha brain waves in your nervous system putting you in a non-anxious, calm state of mind. 

Microcurrent Therapy Improves Depression In Parkinson's Disease

Around half of Parkinson's patients struggle with depression alongside their physical symptoms.

Parkinson's disease changes how certain parts of the brain make neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.

When people don't have enough of these chemicals, it can affect their mood and even lead to depression.

Research shows that microcurrent therapy boosts electrical brainwave patterns in the alpha range. It makes people feel calm, happy, and at ease.

Also, after treatment, the beta frequency of brain waves goes down.

These have been associated with negative emotions for a long time.

The subcortical parts of the brain are also affected by microcurrent therapy, which brings them back to normal neurophysiology. 

This way, microcurrent therapy restores the imbalances that cause depression in Parkinson's disease.

Microcurrent Therapy Improves Sleep Disturbances In Parkinson's Disease 

The National Sleep Foundation says that up to two out of three people with Parkinson's disease have trouble sleeping. 

Some of the problems are caused by the disease itself, while in other cases, it is a side effect of the drugs used to treat Parkinson's disease. 

In either case, microcurrent insomnia treatment is used to bring the brain's electrochemical signals back into balance.

As a matter of fact, microcurrent therapy is an FDA-approved treatment for insomnia alongside anxiety and depression.

TES might prevent the brain's field from oscillating slowly, increasing slow wave activity and enhancing low-frequency EEG activity.

All of these changes result in better sleep for your body.

Microcurrent Therapy Improves Dementia In Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease often causes utter of several different ways for cognitive problems to show up. 

About three-quarters of patients who have battled Parkinson's disease will get dementia at some point. This is scary for the patient and their family.

As Parkinson's slowly spreads through the brain, the person may also notice changes in their:

• memory
• ability to pay attention
• make good decisions
• planning

Parkinson's disease, as well as Parkinson's disease dementia, are linked to abnormal microscopic deposits made chiefly of alpha-synuclein, a protein that is found all over the brain.

Alpha-synuclein may be very important for keeping cells from dying because it helps fix DNA. This function can be lost in brain diseases like Parkinson's, which can cause many neurons to die. 

Microcurrent therapy targets the blood vessels in the brain. It improves vascular homeostasis by restoring normal blood flow in the arteries and veins. 

Doing so also improves the metabolic supply of neurons whose supply was disrupted by vasoconstriction in neurodegenerative disease, thus improving the cognitive symptoms of Parkinson's disease. 

In addition, microcurrent therapy has long been lauded for its regenerative effects on various tissues. 

Similarly, brain stimulation techniques are being researched for managing the symptoms of dementia. 

So, the future of neurostimulation therapies like microcurrent therapy looks bright in managing Parkinson's disease dementia.

Conclusion: Microcurrent Therapy Is A Hope For People With Parkinson's Disease 

Even though microcurrent therapy is still a novel adjunctive treatment for many health problems, its role in helping symptoms in chronic conditions like Parkinson's disease can't be ignored. 

In fact, we have a whole series of devices you can use to administer microcurrents to your body, including your brain safely. Remember to check them out!