Exercise has been shown to improve many of the non-motor symptoms of PD, including stress and anxiety. Interestingly, a recent article published in the journal Movement Disorders, explored the relationship between exercise, stress and PD. The study showed that doing high intensity endurance exercise reduced morning cortisol levels in patients with PD.
Cortisol is the body’s main stress hormone and although it is crucial to many of the body’s functions, levels that are too high or too sustained can cause health problems including anxiety.
Beyond helping with stress and anxiety, exercise has many other benefits for people with PD. Check out our Be Active & Beyond exercise booklet and our Staying Healthy, Keeping Fit webinar for more info. As always, be sure to talk with your doctor before starting any exercise program."
All the doctors say exercise is good but no one says much about how much or how little or WHY it's needed. A report published here says HIIT is needed BUT again, how much of how little? Dr Mercola wrote about HIIT, saying three times a week is optimal for stimulating growth hormone. I'm guessing Growth Hormone is similar to BDNF. I do HIIT three times a week. i use a treadmill. I know the maximum heart rate for my age is 170. And Mercola says 85% of max for 30 seconds three times a week. it used to be VERY difficult it get to 85% of maximum. But now the best I can do is 75%. So I need to figure out how to make the treadmill work better. I set the mill at 15% grade, the highest it will go. Maybe I can put bricks under the front legs.
In some Parkinson’s affects the ability of the heart rate to increase with exercise due to autonomic dysfunction, so getting it up to 85% max is not possible for some and instead of using heart rate they recommend gauging it on perceived effort (14-17 on a 20 point scale of RPE ( Rate of Perceived Exertion).
I was talking to my sister, whilst in her car, a number of more sedentary 'runners' passed by, my sister has always been pretty fit, now retired, but made the point, all these 'runners' encouraged to do fun runs, mini marathons, in later life, eg over forties, must be putting a tremendous stress on their joints, by these exercises, they being new to this and their joints certainly are not!🦵🦶🦿😱
I'm stuck between hard places, I have diabetes2 so I need exercise, I use an indoor exercise bike, but I have a damaged skull/brain damage so due to equilibrium I can't walk uphill, slow walking maybe but definitely not running🙃 actually I have osteoarthritis in my knees, currently the 2,000 metres a day does relieve the knee joints [weather 🤞providing?]
my husband rides the exercise bike but can't always do it because he will sometimes have knee pain - he injured the ACL years ago and had a surgery that replaced the ligament with muscle fibers and it stabilized the knee but not as good as the original ligament
"Surgery to replace a damaged ACL with muscle involves a procedure called arthroscopic ACL reconstruction. During this procedure, a surgeon removes the damaged ligament and replaces it with a graft, or new tissue, from the patient's body or a donor. The graft is placed through holes in the bone and anchored with a screw or implant. The graft can be made from tissue from the patient's own iliotibial band, hamstring, quadriceps, or patellar tendon"
A friend in a similar situation has just started with injections, my brother had kneecaps done, it's good weather at the moment, got to keep the weight down, threatened with statins🙄 That graft sounds very expensive?
As a 50-year marathoner, I've seen the walking vs running argument a thousand times. When I was a youngster I thought only decrepit old codgers walked. Now I know better. Walkers have joint problems that can be helped by exercise. BUT they must be mindful of over-doing it. And replace your shoes every 2-300 miles. This was something I could never do. I kept my shoes well past the 1000 mile mark. And suffered ankle and knee problems because of it,
But this is a PD website. Exercise helps. Stressing the cardio beats PD back. I mentioned getting heart rates 80-85% of max. If you can't run, consider swimming. Or running in the pool. I'm taking a yoga class. Each time I'm surprised by how much I'm sweating by the end of class. Sitting in a sauna will get your heart rate into the stratosphere. Same is sitting on an exercise bike. Anything that works the large leg muscles will benefit you.
I can't get my heart rate into the 85% level. So I thought of putting bricks under the front legs. But realized that's dumb. I do 30-second sprints at 12:00 pace AKA 5MPH. So why not try 5.5 or even 6MPH?
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