Bicycling & Parkinson's

Bicycling and people with advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease have been popping up in the news in 2010 because a 58-year-old man in the Netherlands who had PD and could not walk well was able to demonstrate that he could ride a bike. The "New England Journal of Medicine," in its April 1, 2010, edition shows a video of the man riding and actually making a U turn. This has profound implications for the study of the disease, but it is not entirely unknown.

Potential

Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands has been studying the role of regular exercise in people with Parkinson's for some time. He stated in a New York Times article that, "regular exercise might slow the progress of Parkinson's disease." He further stated that it does in rats and he is running a clinical trial in 600 patients to see if exercise also slows the disease in humans.

Effects

This effect, though different from other examples, known as the kinesia paradox, does not last long. In addition, it must be mentioned that it happens when the person is under the treatment of levodopa therapy. Many neurologists have seen similar examples of this effect, one being the study of using visual cues to "unfreeze" a PD patient.

Significance

Oliver Sacks, another neurologist, has studied the effects of music on PD patients and has come to the same conclusions about various cues. In his article titled "The Power of Music" that was published in 2006 in "Oxford Journals: Brain A Journal of Neurology," Sacks says that "This motor power of rhythm may be especially strong in various forms of motor and impulse disorder---and music can indeed be therapeutic here. Thus, patients with parkinsonism, in whom movements tend to be incontinently fast or slow or sometimes frozen, may overcome these disorders of timing when they are exposed to the regular tempo and rhythm of music."

Theories/Speculation

In 2006, neurologist and movement specialists were studying exercise and its role as a neuro-protective mechanism in people who had not developed Parkinson's. In her article titled "Exercise Associated With Reduced Parkinson's Disease Risk," Susan Jeffrey notes that researchers from Harvard School of Public Health wrote that "Overall, risk of PD declined at high levels of physical activity. Compared with participants who reported no physical activity, those with the highest quartile for recreational activity---for men more than 25 MET-hours, metabolic equivalents, per week, for women greater than 18 MET-hours per week---had a reduced risk for PD."

Benefits

If indeed bicycling proves to be neuro-protective, it will open a veritable wide field of study. Not only does it combine the theories of visual cues, movement and exercise, it also offers hope and a bright light for people suffering from Parkinson's Disease. Davis Phinney, an Olympic gold medalist winner and Tour de France biker, developed early onset PD. His website, Davisphinneyfoundation.org, offers information on PD and the positive effects of regular exercise.