On Parkinson's Tremors and How Weighted Spoons Help Control the Tremors

Abstract

The tremor is a cardinal and the most notable symptom for Parkinson's Disease. It makes it difficult for patients suffering from the disease to partake in meals comfortably. They are also self conscious as they dine with other people since they will be spilling food all over, dropping things and missing their mouths.

Weighted and smart spoons have been invented by adaptive living companies. The smart and weighted spoons are geared to either counteract the tremors or make the tremors to be less pronounced and therefore give the patient comfort as they eat. We examine their efficacy.

Full text

Introduction
Parkinson’s and essential tremors have been found to affect the quality of life of patients.
Primarily, they affect how one dines, uses the bathroom, walks or dresses themselves. In this
experiment, a test was conducted to find out how two spoons: the gyenno smart spoon and the
weighted spoon could help in dining for people with Parkinson’s tremors.
Three products were tested for their efficacy in helping control Parkinson’s tremors. They were:
1. The Gyenno smart spoon—this is said to reduce tremors by 85%. How it works is that it
counteracts the hand tremors so that if you were shaking up and down, it will instead
move down and up. It is attached to a gyroscope that can rotate on an axis. It is also
connected to a computer that detects your tremors so that it can produce a gyro
movement in the opposite direction.
2. Weighted spoon—with a weighted spoon, there is no counteraction of the tremors. It is
just some extra weight that is expected to calm the trembling.
3. Standard dining spoon—this was used as a control to see how better the above named
spoons are as compared to it.
Test:
A Parkinson patient was served with a meal of gruel and they were expected to eat using three
spoons: a standard dining spoon, Gyenno spoon and the weighted spoon. The number of times
they were unable to eat because of either trembling to have it spill over, messed up and smeared
it on their chins and cheeks were recorded. The number of times they were also able to correctly
scoop the porridge and direct it to their mouth was also recorded.
For all the spoon test, the patient was allowed to try and scoop the gruel 10 times.
Results:
Spoon Number of successful
scoop to mouth
Number of
unsuccessful scoop to
mouth
Gyenno smart spoon 7 3
Standard Spoon 2 8
Weighted spoon 5 5
In 10 attempts, the patient was able to get 7 successful scoops with the gyenno smart spoon 2
with a standard spoon as well as 5 with a weighted spoon.
Conclusion
The Gyenno smart spoon does a better job at controlling the tremors. The patient was able to eat
better with it as compared to the weighted and standard spoon. The weighted spoon came second
while the standard spoon was the last.