Those with early-stage PD who exercised regularly over five years also performed better on cognitive tests and had slower progression of their symptoms, including disability, the researchers said. In addition, they noted, those who engaged in at least four hours per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity (think: walking or dancing) saw slower declines in balance and walking five years later than those who didn’t get that much exercise.
Regular Activity, Even Small Doses, Makes a Difference
“The maintenance of regular physical activity levels and exercise habits is critical to improve the disease course of PD — in other words, regular physical activity and exercise habits, even in small doses, can make a difference when maintained,” says a coauthor of the study, Kazuto Tsukita, MD, a neurologist at Kansai Electric Power Hospital in Japan. If you have early-stage PD, “it’s never too late to start doing something physically active,” Dr. Tsukita adds. Notably, varying forms of physical activity appear to have different effects, with exercise-related activities such as walking and biking leading to improvements in posture and gait function, and working activities such as gardening and the performance of household chores boosting brain processing speed, which is known to slow in late-stage PD, according to Tsukita. RELATED: Best Exercises for People With Parkinson’s Disease
How the Exercise Study Was Done
The findings are based on assessments of 237 people with early-stage PD. The study participants, who were an average age of 63, were followed by researchers for up to six years. People in the study were asked to report their own exercise levels at the start of the study, using a questionnaire that measured the time and intensity over a one-week period of activities such as walking and biking and household work such as gardening, cleaning, and taking care of others. The researchers used common cognitive tests to measure participants’ verbal and memory skills and how much time it took them to complete typical mental tasks. They also used a common test to rate each person’s PD symptoms on a scale of zero to four, with higher scores indicating more severe disability.
More Exercise Was Associated With Less Decline
Study participants who engaged in below-average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, or less than one to two hours once or twice a week, saw their average symptom score increase from 1.4 to 3.7 over six years, the researchers said. In contrast, those who got above-average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise weekly saw their scores go from 1.4 to 3.0 during that same period. On a cognitive test used in the study, which gave participants 90 seconds to match numbers with geometric figures and has a maximum possible score of 110, people with early-stage PD who engaged in less than 15.5 hours of work-type activity per week, on average, saw their scores fall from a 44 to 40 over the six-year study period, according to the researchers. Meanwhile, those who did more than 15.5 hours of work-related activities per week had drops in average scores from 44 to 43 over the same period, they said. Still, the study doesn’t prove that physical activity slows the progression of PD; it merely shows the two are linked, the researchers said. But it does expand on previous research suggesting the protective effects of exercise, including a study published in December 2021 in BMC Neurology, which showed that regular physical exercise was significantly associated with better cognition among 533 people with early-stage PD. But the BMC Neurology study was not able to specify the type and quantity of exercise needed to show a benefit.
Research Supports What Many Neurologists Already Believe
“Two hours twice per week of moderate exercise isn’t a huge ask, not like going to the gym, which is difficult for many people with Parkinson’s,” notes Indu Subramanian, MD, a neurologist who treats patients with the condition at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and who wasn’t part of the Neurology study. “My colleagues and I have long believed that exercise is medicine in Parkinson’s, but it’s exciting that these researchers found it may also improve brain function,” says Dr. Subramanian.
