11/02/2025
What if providers didn’t just dole out medications in response to a Parkinson’s diagnosis, but offered an entire wellness prescription, including exercise, social connection, nutrition, mental health practices, sleep tools, and more? In a new paper, Indu Subramanian, MD, and her colleagues did just that using evidence to show that a holistic (whole person) prescription matters.
This prescription puts the power into the hands of people living with Parkinson’s, switching care from a reactive, symptom-based model to an empowering, proactive framework where people with the disease are front and center in helping to make their own health decisions. In fact, the prescription centers the patient’s goals for their quality of life in a way that meets them where they are—socially, economically, and culturally.
The authors also insist that any wellness prescription must be accessible for all. They write, “Wellness recommendations should not be dependent on material resources or luxury…It is not what you can buy, but what you can do for yourself to live better.”
Check out their empowering prescription: https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mdc3.70381
