Making it Better

Make It Better

We know exercise is good for us, right? Aside from oodles of scientific evidence that tells you so, it just makes common sense. But exercise isn’t just for the health of our bodies, it’s for brain health too.

Regular exercise is something every single person will benefit from.

For those of us with Parkinson’s (and other neurological conditions) the benefit is even greater. It just makes everything better.

If you’re like me though, you might have spent some time trying to figure out what the best thing is to do in terms of exercise.

Look for something that you will get aerobic exercise from, or in other words where you are pushing your cardiovascular system, raising your heart rate and making you breathe harder. The beauty of this is that it is increasing the blood flow to your brain, which is what you want for your brain to function well. This includes walking, running, biking, swimming, and interval training. But you can also turn any activity into an aerobic exercise – it just needs to raise your heart rate to a moderate level. If you’re puffing a bit, and sweating a bit that is good. It is  recommended people do 30 minutes at a time, 3 times a week, but just starting and doing whatever you can is good.

 

woman (emma) exercising on a bosun ball, punching the air.

Emma punching it out at home, working on her karate skills. 

Keep On Skill Training

A second factor to consider is doing something that involves an element of skill training. This is where you’re focused on a goal of learning something that becomes progressively more difficult over time as you improve. This helps you build neuroplasticity. Constantly learning new things has been proven to be a really important factor in preventing neurodegeneration. Even better when the thing you are learning incorporates  performing two tasks at once, while moving.

When you are learning a new skill – particularly with things like karate, boxing, and dancing – you are having fun and achieving success along the way, which really helps you stick at it and keep challenging yourself. Don’t worry about what level you start at – focus on just improving you, start with what you can do, and build slowly up. Keep challenging yourself over time, to keep doing a little bit more than you could before, and this will help you not just maintain motor skills but also keep improving on them.

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