My friend, Bob Nelson, who is the bike leg of my triathlon relay team this Sunday, forwarded two excellent New York Times articles about the benefits of biking for Parkies. And actually, one article reinforces via a controlled experiment the anecdotal evidence I’ve already blogged about (bingo! bingo! bingo!), whereby Parkies who engage in tough aerobic workouts report a lessening in their symptoms.
Let’s jump to conclusions! No, let’s tell the story: (1) Initial Anecdote, (2) Experiment, (3) Results/Conclusions.
(1) Initial Anecdote: Dr. Jay Alberts, a Parkinson’s disease researcher, rode a tandem bicycle across Iowa to raise awareness about PD. His riding partner: Cathy Frazier, a Parkie. One of Cathy’s PD-related symptoms was micrographia (minuscule, illegible handwriting). The surprise: after Cathy spent a day pedaling furiously on the back of Dr. Albert’s tandem bike, her handwriting returned to normal.
Here’s my first quote from the article; bolding mine:
But something unexpected happened after the first day’s riding. One of Ms. Frazier’s symptoms was micrographia, a condition in which her handwriting, legible at first, would quickly become smaller, more spidery and unreadable as she continued to write. After a day of pedaling, though, she signed a birthday card with no difficulty, her signature “beautifully written,” Dr. Alberts said. She also told him that she felt as if she didn’t have Parkinson’s.
(2) Experiment: Dr. Alberts paired many Parkies on tandem bicycles with experienced riders. The experienced riders sat in front and were told to pedal fast to keep the Parkies on the backseat working hard. (When they were pre-tested, the Parkies typically biked at a comfortable cadence of 60 rpm. Dr. Albert instructed the front-seat riders to pedal at 90 rpm – outside the Parkies’ comfort zone.) The experiment lasted eight weeks.
(3a) Results: Let’s just quote the article.
After eight weeks of hour-long sessions of forced riding, most of the patients in Dr. Alberts’s study showed significant lessening of tremors and better body control, improvements that lingered for up to four weeks after they stopped riding.
(3b) Conclusions: Let’s quote the article again.
The forced pedaling regimen…did lead to better full-body movement control, prompting Dr. Alberts to conclude that the exercise must be affecting the riders’ brains, as well as their muscles, a theory that was substantiated when he used functional M.R.I. machines to see inside his volunteers’ skulls. The scans showed that, compared with Parkinson’s patients who hadn’t ridden, the tandem cyclists’ brains were more active.
So what does this mean for the rest of us Parkies? Engage in aerobic exercise that’s more rigorous than you’re used to, and get that blood pumping to your head. You can do it on a bike, a treadmill, a rowing machine, or at a dance class where the instructor plays a 33 rpm record at 45 rpm. (Sorry, Young Onset Parkies, if you don’t get what 33 rpm and 45 rpm refer to. Just drop by your nearest vinyl record shop or café and find out!) Just do it!
Bob’s other article is even more fascinating, albeit primarily anecdotal. It’s about a 58-year-old end-stage Parkinson’s patient who was so severely crippled by PD that he couldn’t get out of a chair and walk by himself for more than a few steps. However, he regularly got on a bicycle and rode for miles with no problem. His doctor discovered that other Parkies were capable of this feat, too. Click here for the article, then get on that bike!
I’d write more, but I’m off to the gym….
