Brain: Bicycling as a Way to Improve the Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
A Natural Brain Health and Wellness Essay.
An estimated seven to 10 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s disease with about 100,000 of them living in Canada. Over the last few years more and more research is surfacing on the benefits of physical activity in keeping your brain healthier for a longer period of time.
If you are like me, you want to run out of life before you run out of brain health. Bicycling as you age may be one way to accomplish this as well as significantly extending the quality of your life.
A 2008 study investigating the associations between recreational physical activity and Parkinson’s disease risk followed 143,325 participants in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort from 1992 to 2001. Recreational physical activity was estimated at baseline from the reported number of hours per week on average spent performing light intensity activities (walking, dancing) and moderate to vigorous intensity activities (jogging/running, lap swimming, tennis/racquetball, bicycling/stationary bike, aerobics/calisthenics). Among participants there were 413 cases of Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers noted that risk of Parkinson’s disease was less in people who participated in moderate to vigorous intensity activities such as jogging/running, lap swimming, tennis/racquetball, bicycling/stationary bike, or aerobics/calisthenics. The results were similar for both men and women, according to Thacker, E. L., H. Chen, et al. (2008). “Recreational physical activity and risk of Parkinson’s disease.” Mov Disord 23 (1): 69–74.
A more recent study looked at people with Parkinson’s who used bicycling to improve their walking and balance. “We recently presented a video case of a patient with longstanding Parkinson’s disease and severe freezing of gait (trouble walking), who showed a remarkably preserved ability to ride a bicycle,” reported Snijders, A. H., I. Toni, et al. (2011). “Bicycling breaks the ice for freezers of gait.” Mov Disord 26 (3): 367–371.
Jay L. Alberts, a Parkinson’s researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, discovered how good intense cycling could be quite by accident eight years ago, as he rode a tandem bike across Iowa with a friend who has the disease.
On a tandem bicycle the person sitting in the back is moving their legs along with the peddles whether they are pushing or not. The key component seems to be the reciprocal movement. As one leg pushes down (or is pulled down passively by the peddle because of the other person peddling) while the other leg comes up. The right side of the body is doing the opposite of what the left side is doing. The nerve signals from each leg meet at the spine and travel up the spinal cord to the brain. There is a crossover of signals at the base of the brain as the impulses from the brain to the muscles and joints come from the opposite side of the brain. The right side of your brain controls the movements on the left side of your body.
In people with Parkinson’s disease as well as progressive supranuclear palsy and other neurodegenerative disorders there is often a degeneration of the corpus callosum, the part of the brain which connects the right and left side.
Bicycling, running and some forms of swimming are reciprocal movements where each side of the brain and body are doing the opposite of the other side. This requires the information and sensations to cross from one side of the brain to the other and can improve the coordination of movement, balance and decrease tremors. Music, singing in a choir and other creative activities also support greater function and healing of the corpus callosum, connecting the two sides of the brain.
Research seems to indicate that you can bicycle away some or all of Parkinson’s symptoms and improve your brain function. The effects seem to be equally good if you are on an outdoor road bicycle, a tandem bike or an indoor bicycle or recumbent trainer.
Keep the rubber side down and enjoy the natural world safely!
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
