Parkinson’s Disease (PD) has received public attention because of its occurrence in a number of celebrities such as Mohammed Ali, Michael J Fox, and Linda Ronstadt. PD is a disease of the central nervous system that attacks the dopamine neurotransmitter system in the brain. There are around one million people in the U.S. living with PD and about 60,000 people are diagnosed with PD every year. PD is associated with aging as the vast majority of patients are diagnosed after age 50.
PD is a progressive degenerative disease. Its symptoms include resting tremor, slow movements, muscle rigidity, problems with posture and balance, loss of automatic movements, and slurring of speech. PD itself is not fatal but is often associated with related complications can reduce life expectancy, such as falls, choking, and cardiovascular problems.
Because PD is exclusively a physiological disorder it is surprising that mindfulness practice can help improve the symptoms. But it can as shown in today’s Research News article “Mindfulness Training among Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease: Neurobehavioral Effects.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460233/
Pickut and colleagues demonstrate that mindfulness training improves motor performance and quality of life but increases pain in PD patients.
These are exciting and remarkable findings that a simple practice like mindfulness training could relieve the symptoms that result from degeneration of a neural system. But this just goes to illustrate that the separation of mind and body is far less than we assume. What are the mechanisms by which mindfulness training might improve PD symptoms?
A key mechanism might be via stress reduction that is so emblematic of mindfulness training. There is a clear relationship between stress and PD symptoms. When PD sufferers experience stress their symptoms get worse and when stress is lowered the symptoms improve. So, the stress reduction produced by mindfulness may well be responsible for the improvements.
Mindfulness training is known to produce significant changes directly in the nervous system. It has been shown that mindfulness training in PD patients increases grey matter density in the hippocampus and the amygdala. The same thing was found in areas of the right and left caudate nucleus, left occipital lobe, and left thalamus. These areas are known to be damaged in PD. So mindfulness training may act by improving brain areas that deteriorate in PD thus reducing symptoms.
Remarkably, mindfulness training has not been shown to produce improvements in the cerebellum, a structure responsible for motor coordination. The cerebellum increases in size by the usual care for PD. This may suggest that mindfulness training acts in a different way than directly working on the motor systems, perhaps by accentuating the activity of structures that take over and compensate for lost abilities.
One rather surprising finding was that mindfulness training actually increased pain perception in PD patients. This is exactly the opposite of its normally pain reducing properties. Pickut and colleagues, however, observed a marked increase in mindful observing in the trained PD patients. Buy becoming better at observing their bodies these patients may be becoming better at noting their pain levels.
So, mindfulness should be employed to help patients with Parkinson’s Disease.
CMCS