This study, reported in News-Medical.net, offers a multi-pronged approach to improve mental, physical and emotional health. It sounds great to me. Now if I only had the time!
The research participants were young adults (and none had Parkinson’s), but the study’s authors suggest the same benefits could happen with older people. I sense it would be great for me as a Parkie.
Here’s a summary of the study: Thirty-one college students participated in the experiment. Half of them followed the below regimen, the other half (the control group) didn’t. The regimen consisted of doing all of the following every day, five days a week, for six weeks (Note: I’m pretty much copying-and-pasting many of these details directly from the article) (Note: You can see regimen nicely illustrated by the pictures I’m sprinkling throughout this post):
- 2.5 hours of physical exercise
- 1 hour of “mindfulness practice”
- 1.5 hours listening to a lecture on topics such as sleep, nutrition, and exercise
The experimental group also slept 8-10 hours a night, ate mostly whole foods, and drank no more than one alcoholic drink per day.
The experimental group was compared to the control group in a number of ways, including physical fitness, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. They also underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of their brains to examine areas known to be associated with a range of cognitive functions.
The results? I’ll quote directly:
Participants in the intervention all showed dramatic improvements in more than a dozen different outcomes, including strength, endurance, flexibility, working memory, standardized test performance, focus, mood, self-esteem, mindfulness and life satisfaction.
And:
Overall, the results were clear and striking, [researcher Michael] Mrazek said. Even six weeks after the intervention, participants continued to show improvement in all areas. “We predicted that the intervention would lead to substantial improvements in health, cognitive abilities and well-being, but we didn’t know how long they would last. It seemed possible that some of the benefits wouldn’t extend beyond the training. So I was surprised that even without any contact and support, participants maintained significant improvements at the six-week follow up.”
The 2.5 hours a day of physical exercise speaks most to me. I tend to go to the gym for just an hour a day, four days a week. On other days I swim in the town pool or do yoga/stretch exercises at home. I feel now that I need to increase my time at the gym. Check out my workout calendar to see if I follow up on this!
And come back soon to this blog. I intend to post a review of major research that looks at Parkinson’s and exercise.
