It’s true what they say, exercise really is the best medicine – particularly when it comes to managing Parkinson’s.
An Adelaide-based research project has underscored the benefits of regular physical activity, thanks to funding by The Hospital Research Foundation Group – Parkinson’s.
Led by Flinders University Senior Lecturer and Accredited Exercise Physiologist Dr Joyce Ramos, 20 people took part in the 44-week long study which assessed how exercise and light therapy impacts the non-movement symptoms of Parkinson’s, compared to a ‘sham’ placebo device.
Dr Ramos said the results showed that regular activity made the biggest impact, but light therapy can also be effective, particularly for people who are unable to exercise regularly.
“For the exercise intervention, 47% of people had a clinically relevant improvement in their non-motor symptoms; and 100% reported no worsening in their symptoms,” she said.
“Light therapy also found that 100% of participants reported no worsening in their non-motor symptoms.
“In the sham intervention and the combined light and exercise intervention, only 82-83% reported no worsening.”
Taking part in four eight-week blocks, each participant rotated between cycling on a spin bike, light therapy using a handheld and helmet device, a combination of the two and the sham device.
For the light therapy block, participants used the handheld laser and helmet device on the head, neck and abdomen at red to near-red light levels to stimulate the cells that produce dopamine.
While medications are primarily used to manage Parkinson’s, these can sometimes cause side effects and lead to a decline in quality of life.
Research has shown that exercise can help the brain rewire and targets the same areas of the brain as the medications.
But for those who aren’t able to exercise, Dr Ramos said her findings showed that light therapy could be a good starting point.
“The recommendations based on the findings of this small study, although very tightly controlled compared to other studies, is that exercise is indeed medicine,” she said.
“But for those unable to be physically active from the beginning, maybe light therapy can help to hinder progression of their non-motor symptoms for starters until they can progress into doing more physical exercise.”
Dr Ramos said a larger study is needed to really validate the findings, which could take on a slightly different design with patients starting off using light therapy but switching to physical exercise if no change was recorded.
