Parkinson’s: playing golf delays the progression of the disease

Maintaining regular physical activity throughout your life is essential to maintaining good health. Regarding Parkinson’s, sport can delay the development of the disease and even prevent it from developing. Of all the activities available, Tai Chi, a Chinese martial art, consistently emerges as the most effective and pain-reducing for seniors. A new competitor could well steal the place of the sport that offers the most advantages in the face of neurodegenerative disease: golf.

Better balance and greater mobility

Golf improves balance and mobility to higher levels than Tai Chi, both important for people with Parkinson’s who are often prone to falls. “We know people with Parkinson’s benefit from exercise, but not enough people with the disease are exercising enough as therapyexplains Anne-Marie A. Wills, principal author of the pre-published study on the site of theAmerican Academy of Neurology and which will be presented at its annual convention, which takes place from April 17 to April 22. Golf is popular among the over-55s, which might inspire people to try it and stick with it.”

For this study, the researchers compared the practice of golf to that of Tai-chi to determine which of these two activities is the most beneficial for people who suffer from Parkinson’s. “We decided to compare golf to Tai Chi in our study because Tai Chi is the gold standard for balance and preventing falls in people with Parkinson’s.”, justified the scientist. For this, they offered two one-hour golf lessons per week for 10 weeks to 20 volunteers with a moderate form of Parkinson’s. Among them, 8 participants took free Tai-chi classes for 10 weeks as well.

Golf, when you start you don’t stop

The volunteers were tested, before and after the sports activity, on their walking ability and the risk of falling. To do this, the researchers timed them as they had to get up from a chair, walk a few steps before returning to sit down. The results showed that after 10 weeks of training, the golfers gained speed (0.96 seconds faster) while those who practiced Tai-chi lost speed (0.33 seconds slower). “Surprising results”, noted Anne-Marie A. Wills before recalling that “the number of participants in our study was small and the time we studied them was relatively short. More research on larger groups of people, over longer periods of time, is needed.”

Another advantage presented by golf, the participants were 86% to indicate thinking of continuing the activity against 33% of those who practiced Tai-chi. “Our finding that golfers were significantly more likely to continue their sport is exciting because it doesn’t matter how beneficial an exercise is on paper if you don’t actually do it.concluded the researcher. So if swinging a golf club is more appealing than practicing Tai Chi, go to a driving range and hit some balls for an hour instead!”