In 2021, Parkinson Canada profiled the work of Kaylena Ehgoetz Martens, a neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo who builds virtual environments designed to make people with Parkinson’s freeze. The scenarios she chose are ordinary ones: crossing a threshold in a virtual apartment, or turning a corner in one.
That choice of scenery is worth sitting with if you have Parkinson’s and you live on your own. The risk it points at sits in the hallway, at the bathroom door, on the turn out of the kitchen.
This page covers what Parkinson’s changes about falling, and what is worth arranging if you are the only person in the house. It is not medical advice and it does not attempt to be. Your neurologist, physiotherapist and occupational therapist are the people who know your particular case, and Parkinson Canada runs a support line and a CareFinder directory for questions this page cannot answer.
Parkinsonism is the umbrella term for a group of movement conditions, and Parkinson disease makes up the majority of them. The Public Health Agency of Canada, in its parkinsonism resource updated in August 2026, reports that over 100,000 people in Canada aged 40 and older live with parkinsonism, nearly 60 percent of them men.
PHAC’s Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System data blog, published in 2025 on 2022 to 2023 figures, adds the numbers that matter for anyone reading this at home: about 38 people in Canada are diagnosed every day, almost 8 in 10 of them after the age of 65, and the total living with parkinsonism grew from roughly 81,000 in 2012 to 2013 to roughly 111,000 in 2022 to 2023. PHAC notes that once you account for an aging population, the proportion held relatively stable. It also flags its own limits honestly: Northwest Territories and Yukon data were unavailable, New Brunswick data were unavailable for 2022 to 2023, and pandemic disruption means the figures should be read with care.
Parkinson Canada lists four primary motor symptoms: tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement, and poor balance and coordination. That last one, postural instability, is the one that list ties directly to fall risk, and its description of it is specific. Parkinson’s can affect the reflexes that help maintain balance. It can slow reaction times and movement speed. It can slow the body’s ability to automatically adjust posture to stay upright.
Slowness of movement shows up in the same places. The same source describes it as difficulty initiating movement, such as rising from a chair or starting to walk, a shift to shorter shuffling steps, reduced arm swing, and trouble getting in or out of bed. Every one of those is a moment when a person living alone is unsupported and in motion.
Parkinson Canada reports that up to 80 percent of people with Parkinson’s disease will eventually experience freezing in place, and describes it plainly as a debilitating symptom that precipitates falls and curbs independence. The Waterloo research above is investigating whether anxiety sits underneath freezing episodes or follows from them, and the scenarios it uses to provoke an episode are the ordinary ones described above.
Note the word eventually. That figure describes what can happen over the course of the condition, not what any one person should expect in the year ahead.
Strategies for managing freezing exist, and they belong in a conversation with a physiotherapist or an occupational therapist who works with Parkinson’s. Its management list includes assistive technologies and allied health support among the ways motor symptoms get managed, alongside medication adjustments, lifestyle change and, where appropriate, surgical options.
Want to talk through how a help button would work on an ordinary day in your house? Call the Bedford team at 1-888-755-3055 and speak with a Canadian care consultant. No pressure and no obligation.
A fall with someone else in the house is an event. A fall alone is an event plus a wait.
That wait is the thing worth planning against, and it is well documented. Our page on the long lie after a fall sets out what the research says about lying on the floor for an extended period and why the time spent on the floor does so much to determine how a fall ends.
Parkinson Canada describes rigidity as muscles losing the ability to stretch and relax, with diminished range of motion as one result. Whether getting up unaided is realistic for you is a question for a physiotherapist, and a good one to settle in advance.
Medications sit underneath all of this too. Our page on medications that increase fall risk in seniors sets out which drug classes carry that risk and what the evidence behind it says. Bring your full list to your pharmacist or physician and ask them directly.
This is where a general medical alert page stops being useful and a Parkinson’s-specific one has to earn its place. Three things about Parkinson’s change what you should ask a provider.
Pressing. Tremor often begins in one hand, and a help button is only as good as the hands that have to work it. Bedford Medical Alert® offers help buttons that are easier to trigger, for people with more advanced arthritis. Whether one suits you is a question to raise at setup, and our page on accessible medical alert devices covers what can change on the device itself for hearing, vision, hand strength and memory.
Speaking. Parkinson Canada lists softer speech and changes in vocal strength and clarity among the ways slowness of movement shows up. A medical alert system talks to you through a two-way speaker, which quietly assumes you can be heard. That assumption is worth testing out loud, in the room where you spend most of your time, before you need it.
It also raises the value of what is already on file with the monitoring centre. Bedford operators follow a personalized response plan for each person, which means the contacts, medical notes and wishes set up in advance are what guide the response.
Recording the details. The free Bedford Medical Alert app, available for iPhone and Android, includes a Senior Profile where allergies, directives, medical conditions, prescriptions, doctors and pharmacies can be kept in one place, along with device status, battery level, alerts and on-demand location for family members and designated caregivers the person has chosen. For a condition managed through a medication schedule, having that written down somewhere other than one person’s memory is worth doing. The Senior Profile lives in the app; the response plan the monitoring centre follows is set up separately with Bedford, and it is worth doing both.
One note on the location feature, because it matters for dignity as much as for safety. It works properly as something a person agrees to, so that family can stop phoning to check.
Automatic fall detection uses motion sensors to recognize patterns that may indicate a fall, and can begin a response without a button press. Bedford offers it as an option on both its in-home and its mobile systems.
Two honest limits apply. No sensor on the market catches every fall, which is why fall detection is a layer on top of a button rather than a replacement for one. And freezing is not a fall, so no detection technology will tell anyone that you are standing in a doorway unable to move. If that is a regular occurrence, the plan has to be a human one: a neighbour with a key, or a family member who knows the pattern and calls at a set time.
PHAC lists memory loss and dementia among the non-motor symptoms associated with parkinsonism. Where that is part of the situation, the wandering and locating questions become central, and our guide to living alone with dementia covers them properly.
Worth writing down before you go. The first four are for your care team, the last four for whichever medical alert provider you are considering.
A provider that answers those last four vaguely is telling you something.
PHAC’s figure that almost 8 in 10 people are diagnosed after 65 means the diagnosis usually arrives into a life that is already built. Planning is how that life stays the size it is.
Bedford Medical Alert is Canadian owned and operated, with 24/7 monitoring based in Canada and operators who follow a personalized response plan written for the individual. We are a member of the Ontario Community Support Association, we are trusted by clinicians across Canada, and we have supported hospital education programs and research initiatives from UHN Toronto Rehab to Trillium Health. Canadian families have given us a 4.9-star Google rating. Bedford brings three generations of experience to this.
The commercial terms are deliberately plain. Equipment is included with the subscription, so there is no device to buy separately. Service starts with a three-month minimum and then runs month to month for as long as you want it, with optional 6 or 12 month initial terms if you prefer the savings. There are no cancellation fees. Easy Setup means it is ready to use quickly, and there is a person on the phone if you want a hand with it.
The moments described on this page, the doorway and the turn out of the kitchen, are indoor ones. The Bedford Home Freedom in-home system pairs a base station with a waterproof help button worn as a pendant or on the wrist, or a neck-worn pendant with automatic fall detection, and no long-term contract. Call 1-888-755-3055 and we will work out which setup fits how you actually live.
