An imaging study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan suggests that everyday activities may be better than strenuous exercise for protecting motor skills in Parkinson’s disease patients.
The study is available online in Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, according to a media release from the University of Michigan Health System.
Motor symptoms such as gait, balance problems or falls could lead Parkinson’s patients to become sedentary due to a fear of falling, notes the study’s principal investigator Nicolaas Bohnen, MD, PhD, director of the U-M Functional Neuroimaging, Cognitive and Mobility Laboratory, in the release.
In their study, Bohnen and the rest of his research team investigated whether participation in exercise, like swimming or aerobics, could help alleviate the motor symptoms.
“What we found was it’s not so much the exercise, but the routine activities from daily living that were protecting motor skills,” Bohnen says in the release. “Sitting is bad for anybody, but it’s even worse for Parkinson’s patients,” he adds.
The release explains that the researchers investigated the relationship between the duration of both non-exercise and exercise physical activity and motor symptom severity for 48 Parkinson’s disease patients over a 4-week period. They performed PET brain imaging to measure dopamine levels and used a questionnaire to learn about how physically active the patients were, including both exercise and non-exercise activity. They found that non-exercise physical activity was linked to less severe motor symptoms.
Although loss of dopamine is a key brain change for Parkinson’s patients, and has been thought to be the main reason why Parkinson’s patients become more sedentary, the researchers found non-exercise physical activity protected motor skills even among patients with differing levels of dopamine, the release continues.
“This may have a big impact for Parkinson’s patients,” says co-author Jonathan Snider, MD, clinical lecturer of neurology at the University of Michigan, in the release. “Not only worsening Parkinsonism but also increasingly sedentary behavior may explain more severe motor symptoms in advanced Parkinson’s disease.”
“I tell my patients to stand up, sit less, and move more,” says Bohnen, also professor of radiology and neurology at the University of Michigan, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System staff physician and investigator in U-M’s Udall Center for Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research, according to the release.
[Source(s); University of Michigan Health System, PR Newswire]
