Exercise
What sort of exercise should people with Parkinson’s disease be doing, on a regular basis?
My name is John Pepper. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1992, at which time I had been in the habit of doing regular exercise since 1970, including gym exercises and jogging. In 1994, I started doing regular aerobic walking, in order to try and get fitter. My walk, at that time, was akin to that of an old-man. I was only sixty years old, and should not have been walking like that.
Walking is one of the movements, with which we Parkinson’s disease patients often battle. When I was Diagnosed in 1992, I was shuffling and taking short steps. Despite the awkward gait, I was determined to walk as fast as I possibly could, three times a week. Within five months of starting my walking program, I was walking for eight kilometres (five miles) in a little over one hour. I soon got that down to less than fifty-five minutes, with which I was very happy. However, I was not happy with my awkward walking gait. In 1998, I decided to pay less attention to my speed and more attention to the way I walked.
It took me many months to achieve this, by focussing on each movement, instead of letting my subconscious brain control it. I managed to achieve this - as many others, who have had accidents, have managed to do in the past – by focussing on the actual movements.
Why can I walk properly, when I focus my attention on each movement?
Not having had any medical training and not being a scholar, I have to give my answer, as a person with Parkinson’s disease?
“I don’t know!”
Why is walking so important?
Here, I am on safer ground! In 2006, the results of a lengthy scientific study, done in the USA, gave the answer to this interesting question. These results were announced at the First World Parkinson’s Conference, held in Washington, DC:
Certain types of energetic exercise can slow down or even reverse Parkinson’s disease.
These results should be displayed on the walls of every neurologist, throughout the world!
This was the reason why my Parkinson’s disease took so long to be diagnosed, in 1992, nearly thirty years after my first symptom appeared in the early 1960’s! It was because I did a lot of exercise, on a regular basis. It seems obvious that:
This exercise had the effect of slowing down the progress of my Parkinson’s disease.
Read all about this type of exercise and what I had been doing since 1970, which slowed down my Parkinson’s disease. My book, ‘Reverse Parkinson’s Disease’ tells my whole story, so that others can benefit from knowing what I did, in order to overcome my Parkinson’s disease.
This is the most exciting story for all Parkinson’s disease sufferers. It is the first story of:
REAL HOPE, based on someone’s successful experience, we have ever had!
The real question is:
Does the medical profession regularly tell their patients about this good news?
We know that busy doctors have no compulsion to educate their patients, with all the news that is coming out of laboratories and hospitals; but it would help to be pointed in the right direction!
All we know is; doctors were trained to diagnose medical problems and prescribe medication. That’s what doctors do!
However! Before anybody with Parkinson’s disease would be willing to do regular energetic exercise, with all the risks and discomfort it entails - they would need to know that what they are being advised to do, especially by another non-medical patient,
will really work!
They would want their doctor to advise them to do it. Better still, they might even need to be told that they had to do it!
We automatically assume that we have to take medication, but there must also be other things we can do to:
Help ourselves?
There certainly is!
Why has my condition got better?
On the subject of exercise, I assumed, in the beginning, that being a movement disorder, the more I moved, the longer I would be able to move. Whether I was right or wrong does not matter. I was in the habit of doing one hour of daily exercise, in a good gym, six days of the week.
After the diagnosis, I became very disenchanted with my performance in the gym. I had watched the level of my performance on every machine, slowly get worse and worse. I had been told, by my neurologist, that I must expect my Parkinson’s disease to get worse, because it is a degenerative condition. But I did not expect it to get worse so quickly. The weights on each machine had to be reduced almost every month. In the past, I was used to them slowly increasing, but now they were decreasing,
fast!
This made me very despondent, and within two years, I gave up going to the gym. I decided, at my wife’s insistence, to start walking with her walking group. They only walked three times a week, and for no more than one hour a session. Hell! What did it matter? What had I got to lose? I did not really care any more.
THEN! Within five months, my performance had improved to such an extent that I could not believe it.
What had happened?
Read my book and listen to what I did, that changed my whole attitude to my Parkinson’s disease. I am not advising you to commit yourself to spending a cent on anything to help you start to
Reverse Parkinson’s disease.
There are no catches to this story. I feel that if I could do it, then so can everybody else.
I spend most of my time these days, helping other people, at no cost to themselves, to:
Learn how to walk properly.
I go all over South Africa, encouraging people to start exercising and changing their life style.
Have I had any success?
Yes!
Has everybody been able to get exactly the same results as I?
No!
Why not?
Without doing a study, which would take forever, I feel that my commitment is probably more substantial than that of most others, and my belief in what I was doing was absolute!
Was it because other people were not able to exercise the same as I do?
No! I had no trouble teaching anybody how to walk properly, while they focussed on what they were doing. The problem has been that most of them don’t appear to want to do it on a regular basis, with total commitment. Many have said that walking bores them. I understand this, but there are other ways of doing exercise, that will bring about the same result, but as many of us have problems walking, why not kill two birds with one stone. Others say they have nowhere safe to do their walking. I know this is probably true, but how much effort would they have to put into looking for somewhere close-by, that would be safe?
It is all in the mind.
I have had a certain amount of success with other patients. But as it took several years before my hard work translated itself into positive results, I do not expect any miracles. Many of the people I have worked with have written glowing letters to me, and some of those letters can be viewed on this website. I have not kept all these letters in a convenient place, so that one day, I could show them to other people on my website. What a pity!
Why not commit yourself to starting an energetic exercise program, now?
If nothing else, it will improve your general health and your whole attitude to life!
What are you waiting for?
Why Not Order My Book - Reverse Parkinson's Disease
Go to my Website - reverseparkinsons.net