Parkinson’s Disease effects over 1 million Americans, including 90,000 new diagnoses annually. With no known cure for Parkinson’s disease, research suggests that exercise is one of the most effective ways to slow its progression.

Exercise slows the Progression of Parkinson’s Disease

Exercise can actually help slow the progression of Parkinson’s by reducing the brain inflammation at the root of the disease, according to Merrill Landers, interim dean for UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences and a practicing physical therapist for the past 30 years.

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder most commonly diagnosed between ages 55 and 65. It affects movement, sleep, cognition, and even control of your bladder. This means for someone over the age of 60, a slight tremor in the hand, slowness of movement, or a loss of smell can signal a greater issue to address.

Until a cure is found, one of the biggest goals in Parkinson’s research is finding a treatment that can actually slow or stop the disease. One of the most promising candidates for slowing progression is aerobic exercise. Research is currently focusing on treating Parkinson’s with aerobic exercise.

Landers has spent decades working with people with Parkinson’s disease as a practicing clinician. As part of his research, Landers and a small group of students from UNLV’s physical therapy department work with people who have Parkinson’s disease, guiding them through exercise at different aerobic intensities. They then collect blood samples from these sessions to help understand what amounts and levels of exercise may be most effective for people living with Parkinson’s.

The Importance (and Benefits!) of Exercise

Exercise acts as “fertilizer for the brain,” Landers said. It generates an increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that promotes the survival and growth of neurons.

BDNF also dials down inflammation throughout the body and brain by triggering the release of anti-inflammatory signals from muscles and tissues during exercise. While inflammation is critical to the body’s immune system, too much inflammation can damage otherwise healthy tissue.

Simply put, inflammation accelerates the death of neurons, but an increase in aerobic exercise decreases your resting inflammatory state.

Exercises to Participate in

Landers recommends any form of sustained aerobic exercise — treadmill walking, cycling, dancing, or any other activity that gets your heart pumping. He also recommends exercising at a moderate but challenging intensity; hard enough to speak in short sentences, but not easy enough that holding a full conversation feels effortless. This sweet spot, roughly 60%-75% of your maximum heart rate, produces the biggest boost in BDNF.

You want to be in this intensity zone so that you can sustain it over a relatively long time, if the exercise is too intense, you would not be able to do it long enough to get the boost in BDNF.

More About Parkinson’s

Actor Michael J. Fox’s experience has raised awareness for Parkinson’s disease. Fox was diagnosed with the disease at 29, a rarity for Parkinson’s. Now, at 64, he still lives with Parkinson’s but experiences dyskinesias, which are involuntary and erratic movements.

Bringing more attention to Parkinson’s is a good thing. It not only brings more people into the conversation, but we hope it ultimately leads to more funding for research that could change lives.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that slows the brain’s process of several different neurotransmitter systems, including dopamine, a chemical that helps to control movement.

Parkinson’s Symptoms

Earliest pre-diagnosis symptoms of Parkinson’s disease include constipation, R.E.M. sleep behavior disorder, excessive daytime fatigue, depression, and loss of smell. 96% of newly diagnosed individuals with Parkinson’s have had their sense of smell altered.

Constipation and the loss of smell are typically noticeable before the motor symptoms occur. People with Parkinson’s disease have already lost about 70% of their dopamine-producing neurons before they get more overt motor symptoms.

Currently, there is no way to predict whether a person will develop Parkinson’s disease and, if so, when. Unfortunately, Parkinson’s is diagnosed late in the course of disease, when many brains cells have already been lost. An accurate tool that could help identify a person at risk of Parkinson’s would be helpful in many ways.