Parkinson’s Disease is a struggle on many levels, but one of the most common day-to-day frustrations is that it keeps sufferers from doing even simple tasks. Just eating a bowl of cereal becomes difficult and messy, let alone handwriting a letter. But a few British researchers have come up with a solution that gives those with Parkinson’s back some control in their lives.
One of the key problems with handwriting when you have Parkinson’s is that your hand and wrist cramps up the more you write. The more you cramp up, the smaller your writing gets, until you have micrographia, letters so tiny they’re impossible to read. If you’re attempting to draw something, you can see how this is a problem.
The ARC Pen, found by Medgadget, is designed to help prevent cramping. It uses high-frequency vibrations to essentially massage the hand and keep it from cramping as much, as well as make the pen easier to push across the paper. Here’s a video overview, with a warning that you may need to pretend you’re cutting onions:
The results are striking; in tests with 14 Parkinson’s patients, there was an overall 86 percent improvement in handwriting. Considering that with micrographia, you can get basically a straight line, that’s no small feat.
It may seem minor, but restoring any sort of autonomy to somebody with a chronic disease is often an enormous victory. There’s no word yet on when the ARC Pen is hitting the market, but one hopes it’s quite soon.