your five senses and pd

I recently read Gretchen Rubin’s new book called Life in Five Senses and in it she talks about how we can learn to better use our senses to navigate and engage in our world. She offers a test on her site to see which is your most neglected sense and ideas to enhance that sense.

I took the test and my most neglected sense was touch. That got me thinking about how having Parkinson’s has impacted all my senses. That touch was my most neglected sense doesn’t surprise me. I notice with a tremor and a weakened grip it’s more difficult to lean into the sense of touch. Gently touching something is difficult.

Then there is smell. Losing or lessening of smell which is a common symptom, impacts two senses, your smell and your taste.

Vision is next. Did you know that PD can impact your vision? Symptoms can include dry eye, double vision, the dulling of seeing color, or even dyskenesia.

Boy, that’s four out of five senses that can potentially be affected. As for hearing, the things I was able to find were suggestive about potential hearing loss but not much more at this point.

It showed me how important it is for me to look for ways to enhance my senses, to practice paying attention to them. Sometimes it seems like I’m walking around in a little bit of a hazy cloud and that might be because the dulling of my senses. Do you sometimes feel that way also?