#26 BRAIN GYM EXERCISES PDF HOW TO#

In the early stages of ParkinsonвЂ™s, more often than not, you can still achieve movements that look вЂnormalвЂ™, but your brain has already begun learning to take your foot off the accelerator pedal (with or without medication). ItвЂ™s the same when your body learns to move with smaller movements. The fuel is no longer driving the engine forward. This learned nonвЂ“use and resizing of your movements is best described with this analogy: think about what happens when you take your foot off your carвЂ™s accelerator pedal. Despite medication, your body will continue to adjust over time вЂ“ your body starts to move less вЂ“ producing smaller, slower movements, which becomes your new вЂnormalвЂ™. However, medication only is not enough to give you the best quality of life possible. Exercise helps to slow symptom progression as well as to maintain general health and ward off concurrent cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic conditions, frailty and falls.ДЄppropriate dosing of medication is crucial in the management of ParkinsonвЂ™s long-term.

This means that alongside medication, the right kind of exercise may improve your overall physical ability, your symptoms and the quality of your life. Research is showing that a tailored ParkinsonвЂ™s specific exercise programme is important for your health. In the last few years, the importance of exercise has become even more significant for people with ParkinsonвЂ™s. BENEFITS OF EXERCISE AND MEDICATION IN PARKINSON'S If you want to acquire or re-learn a movement skill you need to do your exercises every day and under the right learning parameters. To achieve skill acquisition, you need to train regularly, you need to train intensively, you need to train in a variety of environments and you need to train specifically to the task you want to improve. The reason it is so important to train daily if you are learning/re-learning to move better is precisely because of the plasticity of your neural circuits. If you are exercising to improve your bradykinesia, stiffness, tremor or agility, then you need to be exercising every day to improve your balance and movement. If you are exercising for cardiovascular fitness, most of the research suggests that you will not gain anything extra from more than four sessions a week. Any more than 4 sessions a week can typically lead to a reduction in your strength gains. As a rough guide, if you are doing any form of strength training, you need two days between sessions in order to let your muscles recover. Effort levels вЂ“ intensity is not negotiableДЇrequency of exercise can change depending on the demands of your programme. By increasing your overall activity level, ParkinsonвЂ™s specific exercise may also slow down the symptom progression of your ParkinsonвЂ™s.

#26 BRAIN GYM EXERCISES PDF HOW TO#

ParkinsonвЂ™s specific exercise will teach you how to move with amplitude, power and speed in everyday tasks so that you can get back to doing the things you enjoy doing. These exercises focus on the amount of effort and size you are putting in to your movement. Training to improve difficulties in your movement specifically is important because it will help you in all of your everyday activities, not just while you are exercising, but throughout the day вЂ“ every time you put your arm through a shirt, open a heavy door, walk up a step for instance.

It is the chronic reduction in a movement that makes big movements like walking and small movements like writing so challenging. Instead of getting up from the chair first time round, it may mean that you have to use your arms to push up, or rock back and forth a bit to get enough momentum to stand up. Your brain is receiving constant feedback about the environment (height of your chair, the hardness of a bed, the weight of the cup) so that it can move with the appropriate amount of speed, power and accuracy to be effective and efficient.Дopamine deficiency can lead to the continuing reduction of movement, speed and power. You may not have noticed, but, getting off a low chair, rolling in bed and picking up a cup of water all require infinite amounts of fine-tuning as your brain prepares, conducts and evaluates the task. It learns from all stimulation applied to it, including exercise, and has an enormous capacity to re-wire the neural connections for improved movement. Your brain has the ability to help you move better. ItвЂ™s important to practice ParkinsonвЂ™s specific exercises rather than general exercise training to improve movement because of the type of brain stimulation each type of exercise produces.

26 brain gym exercises pdf