There's a brief article in Scientific American on the relationship between smiling and mood that may have implications for our community. A friend with PD told me the other night that it "hurts to smile" and, while it doesn't hurt me, I too have noticed that smiling takes a bit more effort at times than it used to and at other times is all but impossible.

I also notice a subtle sagging around my mouth and jaw that makes my default expression (you know, the one we have when we're not trying to communicate anything but are engaged in some task) increasingly resemble a frown. My then 7-year-old was the first to notice the changes last year before I was diagnosed.

Questions that come to my mind include:

Does our changing ability to express an emotion alter our experience of it and, if so, are facial exercises more important than we realize (beyond communication and feedback implications)?

If frowning is deleterious to our health, would Botox or other cosmetic therapies/interventions have a medical benefit for PWP?

Any thoughts on this, friends? Has PD changed your facial expression? What sort of effects do you notice? Have you employed any strategies to address these issues? Have they helped?

Smiling as I type this,
Rose

Smile! It Could Make You Happier

From Scientific American:

We smile because we are happy, and we frown because we are sad. But does the causal arrow point in the other direction, too? A spate of recent studies of botox recipients and others suggests that our emotions are reinforced—perhaps even driven—by their corresponding facial expressions. Charles Darwin first posed the idea that emotional responses influence our feelings in 1872. “The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensi*fies it,” he wrote. The esteemed 19th-century psychologist William James went so far as to assert that if a person does not express an emotion, he has not felt it at all. Although few scientists would agree with such a statement today, there is evidence that emotions involve more than just the brain. The face, in particular, appears to play a big role.
This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is comp*romised by cosmetic botox inject*ions are happier, on average, than people who can frown.

More here.