The "So Hows Your Gait...Or How You Walk?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an article in my local newspaper that may be of help to many of my readers titled "What can your gait tell doctors about your health?  Article began with...How does your gait - or how you walk - relate to your brain health?  Considerably, says Dr. Farwa Ali, a Mayo Clinic neurologist who specializes in movement disorders.  Assessing a person's gait can offer insight into various brain health conditions.  The hope is that early diagnosis of gait and balance problems will lead to better treatment and outcomes for patients with degenerative brain disorders.  Ali explains how testing gait works and what it can tell clinicians.  Put one foot in front of the other.  This simple gait test can tell a clinician a great deal says Ali.  "How someone's body is moving through space, what their balance looks like, what their joints are doing," she explains.  The gait test can measure, for instance, how fast or slow a person walks compared to peers in their age group.  It's then analyzed to access whether a neurological problem is already present.  "For example, someone with Parkinson's disease, may walk slower, or with smaller steps and not move their arms enough," says Ali.  Many neurodegenerative diseases affect gait and balance before diagnosis.  She is hopeful about improving ways to measure and quantify these.  "We need more research, but my hope is to be able to detect gait abnormalities early and reliably, to augment clinical diagnosis and help clinicians detect patients with neurodegenerative disease earlier," Ali says.  She adds that everyone is different, and its important to understand why a person might be having issues with their gait.  Analyzing gait is one step in understanding a person's brain health.  Perhaps this article that I have reproduced here may be of help to you and prevent you from getting any movement disorders.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.