We all know the importance of exercise in staying fit and avoiding health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and stroke. However, exercise has become the superdrug for seniors who want to avoid changes to their thinking skills or push back against Parkinson’s.
A growing body of research has demonstrated that exercise is not only safe and effective for keeping people moving, it is also a fountain of youth for your brain. When exercise is completed as medicine neurotrophic factors that include BDNF, GDNF and IGF-1 are released. These factors protect the brain’s cells and provide a reduced stress environment that keeps the cells we rely on alive longer. This allows us to preserve our thinking skills, memory, and dopamine producing cells which is key for moving well, thinking sharply, and feeling emotionally good as we age and in PD.
The key to exercise getting these effects is to treat your exercise as medicine or think like an athlete and incorporate four key principles. These include exercising intensely enough, adding complexity, timing and saliency.
Intense Exercise
When we talk about intensity a good rule of thumb is to exercise harder than you would self select. Meaning your aerobic exercise, exercise that elevates your heart rate, should get you breathy. It should be hard to say 3 words as you challenge yourself. You can also utilize your heart rate zones with the target 75% to 80% of your heart rate max. There are many ways to go about this and working with a skilled provider such as a physical therapist or personal trainer can be a good place to start.
Adding Complexity
Complexity, or continually challenging your brain to learn new things, is the second key. Finding new types of exercise to learn keeps your brain and body challenged and what challenges you, will change you. This challenge can also come in the form of dual task training during agility or strength and balance style classes. The key is to keep your brain engaged and challenged as well as your body.
Saliency
Whatever we are doing, we want it to be fun and engaging. This is saliency. If I enjoy what I’m doing and believe it is beneficial for me, I am much more likely to continue participating. Which brings us to timing… I have to keep it going. If I don’t take my medicine it won’t help me! Exercise is no different. I have to continue to exercise regularly and continue to challenge myself to see the beneficial effects.
Timing
What are those effects? Well if I follow my exercise prescription of 150 minutes a week of high intensity aerobic exercise and get my heart rate up to 75% of my heart rate max, engage in functional strength and balance training 2-3 days a week, and flexibility training daily then I can expect to prevent cognitive or Parkinson’s related changes if I am young and have not been diagnosed yet. If I have more mild symptoms, I can expect to see improvement, more moderate symptoms I can expect to maintain and slow the progression, and severe symptoms I can expect to enhance my neuroplasticity so that other areas of the brain more easily help out to complete tasks. That is some powerful medicine!
This truly is the secret sauce to aging well and keeping our brains healthy. It can be challenging to do this on your own though. We know that finding a community and group that understands the unique challenges you are facing is key to pushing past all the barriers that prevent us from translating knowing what I should do to being in action. A great place to start is either one on one with a professional or a group class at Parkinson’s Pointe. Click here to see the class schedule and get more info. Questions, reach out to our trained instructors and founder, a doctor of physical therapy. ppinfo@ParkinsonsPointe.org.
Stay fit and stay well,
From all of us at Parkinson’s Pointe
