I have been taking care of parkinson's patient for years. there are lot of things to learn and do when you are caring for one or if you are the patient. besides having your own doctor or neurologist you need to know what are the things you and your patient must do.

Poor posture and loss of muscles mass is the first noticeable changes in parkinson's disease. Besides giving the patient his medicines. the patient needs to have an everyday exercise to build up his strength and muscle because the patient tend to lose muscles easily. You have to train the patient to do resistance exercises before the disease gets worse. By exercising you will avoid the patient to experience a stoop posture problem. exercise will help the patient to live a normal life as much as possible.

The second one to look our for is swallowing problem which always lead to pneumonia. in this case it's called as aspiration pneumonia . As the disease develops you must observe if the patient has difficulty swallowing or if the patient aspirate everytime he eats. this just shows that a person needs to be checked by a doctor if he is really swallowing well the food. some of the signs of swallowing problems: 1) are coughing or throat clearing while eating or after a meal 2) waking at night, coughing 3) changes in voice quality, especially a wet or gurgling sound 4) long periods needed to eat a meal 5) weight loss or dehydration 5) beverages are required to wash down foods 6) complaints that foods or liquids get stuck in the throat or go down the wrong way 7) fever 8) pneumonia. if you suspect the patient has this symptoms have him check by his doctor and ask if the patient has pneumonia already to treat it at once.

Another complication is the slurred speech. The patient should have speech therapy every week. one the early symptoms is slurred speech which should be treated by speech therapist.

Other things to take note are that the medicines and the disease itself cause the patient to have hallucinations. this comes at the later stage of the disease. some patient experience it earlier. this will be hard to deal with at first. you must ask the advice of his doctor on what to do with this.

Other complication is constipation. The patient will experience that he have difficulty controlling his bowels and bladder and suffer constipation. changes in diet, exercise, and drinking plenty of fludids can often alleviate constipation. if this won't help you will need to give stool softener. One good medicine is lactulose. there are many brands of lactulose. it's important to give them lactulose everyday if they can't have a regular bowel movement. this medicine should be given regularly.

There are many other symptoms but i have listed what most patients or caregivers are not aware of or could not easily or fail to notice. but being aware of these things you will be able to deal with these problems immediately and avoid more complications.