A new study finds that people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease who regularly get one to two hours of moderate exercise twice a week, such as walking, may later have less trouble balancing or performing daily activities. can. The study is published in the ‘Journal of Neurology’. Researchers found that people who exercised regularly over five years performed better on cognitive tests and had slower disease progression in several aspects. Parkinson’s disease is a brain disorder that causes difficulty in movement, stiffness and walking, balance and coordination. The study looked at 237 people with early-stage Parkinson’s. Their average age was 63 years and the researchers then followed them for six years. Participants’ exercise levels at the start of the study were determined using a questionnaire that measures time and intensity during the previous week’s leisure activity, such as walking and biking; household activity, such as gardening; and professional activity, such as taking care of others. General cognitive tests were used to measure people’s verbal and memory skills and how long it took to complete mental tasks. It was found that maintaining physical activity was more important over time. The researchers used a common test to rate each person’s Parkinson’s symptoms on a scale of zero to four, with higher scores indicating more severe impairment. Those who got below average levels of moderate to vigorous exercise, or less than one to two hours, once or twice a week, increased from an average score of 1.4 to 3.7 over six years.
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