UAMS Offers Free Cooking Workshop for Parkinson’s Patients

LITTLE ROCK — The Movement Disorders Clinic at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) will hold a free cooking workshop for patients with Parkinson’s disease and their caregivers on May 19.

The workshop, this time featuring a Mother’s Day theme including tea sandwiches, will be from 10 a.m. to noon in the Culinary Medicine Kitchen on the ground floor of the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging.

Cooking workshops teach culinary skills, and how to avoid safety hazards that can result from tremors or other Parkinson’s symptoms.

Teaching the classes are Alyssa Frisby, a registered dietician at UAMS, and Jasmine D. Washington, a food preparation supervisor in the UAMS Department of Nutrition Services. An occupational therapist also will provide safety tips in the kitchen.

Participants create a healthy meal using the kitchen’s induction cooktops and tools, and then sit down together to enjoy the meal.

Registration is required. To register, email Suzanne Dhall, DRPH, at sjdhall@ uams.edu or call or text her at 602-635-0739.

Parkinson’s is a progressive nervous system disorder affecting dopamine-producing areas in the brain. It is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States and affects about 6,500 people in Arkansas.

The UAMS Movement Disorders Clinic, part of the Neurology Department in the UAMS College of Medicine, has been designated a Parkinson Foundation Comprehensive Care Center, signifying that it has met rigorous standards of excellence in clinical care, community education and resources, and community outreach.