A number of studies suggest that a variety of exercises may help people with Parkinson’s disease in different ways.
According to a study that tracked 237 patients over a five-year period, those with early-stage Parkinson’s disease who were more active had better physical outcomes than less active people with the disease. “Higher physical activity levels were strongly associated with better functioning in activities of daily living, cognitive processing speed, posture stability, balance, and gait,” Dr. Tinaz says.
Other research shows that high-intensity exercise appears to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Researchers asked patients to engage in high-intensity exercises (cycling or using treadmills) three times a week for six months. They assessed the study participants’ motor symptoms before and after the six-month period. They also compared the participants’ progress to other Parkinson’s patients who didn’t participate in the high-intensity exercise program.
“They found that the disease in the exercising group did not progress much based on their neurological exam findings,” Dr. Tinaz says. “That’s what we call ‘slowing down clinical disease progression.’”
Taking it one step further, Dr. Tinaz and her colleagues conducted a small research study to see if engaging in high-intensity exercise (reaching 80% of a person’s age-appropriate maximum heart rate) would not only slow disease progression but could improve neuron function in the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Their work suggests that it does.
“We knew from human clinical studies that high-intensity exercise can slow down the clinical disease progression for Parkinson’s patients, but it had not been shown whether it actually protects the human Parkinsonian brain,” Dr. Tinaz says. “We found that high-intensity interval training three times a week for six months did increase the dopaminergic signal in the brain, which suggests it might actually improve neuron function. Whatever dopamine-producing neurons still exist in Parkinsonian brains seemed to become more viable and healthier—and they produced more dopamine.”
Because the findings of this small-scale, proof-of-concept study were encouraging, Dr. Tinaz and colleagues plan to conduct more research using a larger cohort of patients with Parkinson’s to confirm whether high-intensity exercise is neuroprotective.
