Exercise and Parkinson’s Disease By Mrs Vera West

It is turning out that exercise is going to help with most ill health. A study has found benefits from intense exercise for people with Parkinson’s disease, a disease that worries me as my father died from it. How exercise actually does this seems rather complex and need not concern most of us (see abstract below), but the main challenge will be how older people like me, already suffering from arthritis, can get to do such intense exercise. But, I suppose it is all relative. Anyway, this is something that should be checked out with your doctor first.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh1403

Abstract

Intensive physical activity improves motor functions in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) at early stages. However, the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of exercise on PD-associated neuronal alterations have not been fully clarified yet. Here, we tested the hypothesis that an intensive treadmill training program rescues alterations in striatal plasticity and early motor and cognitive deficits in rats receiving an intrastriatal injection of alpha-synuclein (α-syn) preformed fibrils. Improved motor control and visuospatial learning in active animals were associated with a recovery of dendritic spine density alterations and a lasting rescue of a physiological corticostriatal long-term potentiation (LTP). Pharmacological analyses of LTP show that modulations of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors bearing GluN2B subunits and tropomyosin receptor kinase B, the main brain-derived neurotrophic factor receptor, are involved in these beneficial effects. We demonstrate that intensive exercise training has effects on the early plastic alterations induced by α-syn aggregates and reduces the spread of toxic α-syn species to other vulnerable brain areas.”