Jamie Askari shares strategies for overcoming exercise barriers in Parkinson’s, from low motivation to adapting routines safely. Read Askari’s column, The Bright Side.
Transcript
Hello, everybody. My name is Jamie Askari, and I am a caregiver to my husband, who has Parkinson’s disease.
So, in terms of barriers to exercise for people with Parkinson’s, within the Parkinson’s patient themself is motivation. It’s incredibly hard to get motivated to even get up to go to the bathroom, let alone get downstairs or wherever it is to a class to exercise.
It’s a double-edged sword because exercise is the best way to slow progression and, you know, to keep moving. It’s so important, but yet it’s not easy.
Creative solutions that we’ve done to get him to exercise, well, No. 1 is, he has me as his motivation. Towards the end of the day, if he hasn’t exercised yet, I’ll say we got to go downstairs and I’ll say, “Even if you just ride the bike for 10 minutes, let’s just get you down there.” And usually once he’s down there and gets started, then he gets motivated to continue with it.
But I know that he’s modified things quite a bit. He used to be really invested in lifting weights and things like that. And he, he uses a lot of bands now. Those have been great for him. So he’s really adapted his exercise program to accommodate his Parkinson’s.
He really likes to run on the treadmill, so we found a strap that can go around him that keeps him steady. Basically, for him with his Parkinson’s, retropulsions are his biggest issue.
In other words, he falls back without warning, and so wearing the strap around him when he’s on the treadmill keeps him safe. He can be downstairs on his own without me there, and I know that he’s Velcroed in there. He can’t go anywhere.
So I think, you know, depending on what your particular brand of exercise is, what you like to do, there’s ways to do it. But you got to really focus on safety, too.
I asked him about his exercise goals, actually to get his perspective on it, because I wasn’t really sure what the answer was to that. He said the biggest thing for him is to “Set achievable goals because you don’t want to set yourself up for failure and you don’t want to get disappointed in yourself. You want to set achievable goals, things within reason that you think you might do today and try not to think too far in advance.”
So, in terms of finding an adaptive program, my husband, I asked him his advice on this and he said, “One of the most important things with Parkinson’s is to check your ego at the door. Because you’re not the same person you were before your diagnosis.” Maybe you’re better, but most of the time it’s, you know, it’s a progressive neurodegenerative disease.
So talk to your your physician, talk to your physical therapist, find out what programs are in your area. We think that physical therapy is one of the most important things that, that we’ve done for him. I mean, we try to get there if we can, a couple times a month, depending on insurance issues. But the PT is very, very important.
And so I would definitely talk to your doctor about getting that PT referral, work with your insurance to get as many covered as you can. Because with PT it’s like you’re being proactive rather than reactive and just keep pounding. That’s his philosophy. Keep going.
I don’t know if anyone knows that quote, “keep pounding,” but it’s a good one. So remember that when you’re getting tired and you don’t feel motivated, you just got to keep doing it.