Is the glass half full, half empty or just twice as large as it needs to be?

Obviously, I am not alone with my positive results with beating back PD symptoms through exercise. Someone at the Michael J. Fox  Foundation (MJF), was kind enough to send me  information  they recently published on what they have found related to exercise and Parkinson’s symptoms. Because my blog is personal, I decided to compare my experience with that of the MJF article. I see similarity and differences too. My expectations have been different and more demanding than the MJF program,.

First of all, I started my exercise program because I saw my muscles shrinking and my strength going away and it scared the shit out of me. I had been in very good physical condition my whole life, even running a 26.2 mile marathon, and suddenly I was a shriveled weakling. I attacked my muscles with a program of mostly light weight-lifting and got immediate results. As the disease keeps trying to advance, I have responded with more intense exercise. The surprise with my initial program was that most of my  symptoms including a dead leg, inability to do detailed hand manipulation, a lack of arm swinging while walking, some clumsiness while moving, etc., either improved or went away. This made perfect sense to me because a strong muscle should be able to work better than a weak muscle.  I still don’t understand why more study of this phenomenon has not been done.

The MJF studies referenced are sort of “if you do this, you will feel better. So why not exercise.” Maybe it’s the engineer in me that wants a better response, even an answer to why exercise works to halt the progression of PD. Some thoughts and questions logically need answers. This point begs answers. Remind me to get back to this point later. It’s just the way engineers approach life.

There are a couple of critically important take-aways from the MJF studies,. (Please memorize these points and think about them daily. You may even want to thank me some day for pointing these out.)

1.       People who exercise regularly are less likely to contract Parkinson’s Disease. (No, that is not a misprint. It is real.)

2.       People who exercise regularly but do contract PD anyway, are likely to have the severity of PD lessened as a result of exercise.

In my next post, I will compare my program to that recommended by MJF. They are significantly different.

I am reminded of the story of the engineer, the optimist and the pessimist. The optimist sees the glass as half-full. The pessimist sees it as half empty. The engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to be. 

Photo was taken last night in Bryant Park during a play.