When Jay Alberts, a biomedical engineer at the Cleveland Clinic and an avid cyclist, noticed that a friend’s Parkinson’s disease symptoms improved after rides, he and Dr. Micheal D. Phillips started studying exercise’s effect on Parkinson’s patients. What they found is that patients who pedaled at a rate of 80-90 rpm for 40 minutes three times a week had a 30 to 35 percent improvement in their symptoms — about the same relief drugs and deep brain stimulation offer. “The same brain regions that become active when you give someone medication are also seen from exercise,” Phillips says.
Best Doctors 2010: Eliminating Parkinson's symptoms with exercise
Dr. Michael D. Philips
