We have written quite  a bit about the importance of exercise as well as activities that take coordination, studies have found exercise that takes coordination can help improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.  We have recently written about dancing and how it has helped many people.  Here is one article that discusses dancing that I found enjoyable and informative.

Carl Ewert, with a grin acknowledging the unlikelihood of his executing all the twirls, hops and dips the dance requires, is waiting for a jitterbug. “The jitterbug’s my dance,” he says.

But when a merengue comes up, Ewert, 88, of Surprise, needs no coaxing. Red Nebraska Huskers cap planted securely atop graying hair, he sets aside his walker and joins more than a dozen others warming up to dance at Shepherd of the Desert Lutheran Church in Sun City.

There are no wallflowers at these ballroom-dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease.

On a recent afternoon, teacher Kathleen Henry plays Latin-flavored music to lure people to the dance floor, where they practice grapevine steps, holding hands in a circle for stability until they’re ready to dance in pairs.

“Turn your shoulder and hip slightly so you don’t get your feet tangled up,” she says.

Her classes, low-key and nurturing, are offered through the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, part of the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center campus in Phoenix.

Dance may seem an unusual choice for supplementing treatment of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder marked by tremors, slowed movements, stooped posture, stiffness and balance difficulties.

“People with the disease ask me, ‘Why can I dance better than I can walk?’ ” says neurologist Abraham Lieberman, director of the Muhammad Ali center. “Well, when you dance, your spine is straight without your thinking about it, you’re using both sides of your body equally and you’re following a rhythm and a pattern.”

The activity is one more tool – a pleasurable one, in this case – for improving management of the incurable disorder, he says.

Lieberman says Parkinson’s strikes about 3,500 people out of a million. Most of them are 60 and older, their symptoms developing when nerve cells in a section of the midbrain die or are impaired and can’t secrete dopamine. Dopamine is a naturally produced chemical that transmits signals to the brain’s movement-control centers.

Ewert, diagnosed with the disease in 1988, played right guard for the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football team in 1937 and ‘38 and worked as a contractor until his retirement in 1982.

Now, he says, “I’m lost without my walker.”

You’d never know it to see him scoot across the floor to rumba and salsa music, dancing with another patient, Elsa Howard, 63, of Phoenix, or her sister, Cheryl Krause, who drives Howard here and stays to dance. Extra partners, including church volunteer Ladonna Hardt, fill in as needed so everyone has a full dance card.

Francis MacDonald, 69, an Avondale resident who has had Parkinson’s for almost 10 years, tries new steps with others who share his disorder. But he reserves most of the dances for his wife, Elaine, and he sings Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime to her as they do the box step.

“It’s amazing how the music sustains him, even when he’s not feeling well,” Elaine says during a break for the apple cider and cookies that instructor Henry brought. “When he’s not dancing, he usually can’t move like this.”

Better quality of life

John O’Donnell, 66, struggles a bit to keep the beat to the music – maybe playing 18 holes of golf before class wasn’t the best idea – but Karen, his wife, tells him not to worry about that for now.

Just try this, she says: “Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow.” She brushes back his hair, mussed by their fancy footwork and their spins, and they laugh about his progress.

“Once today I actually started on my left foot, like I’m supposed to,” the Sun City man says.

But dancing, however wrong-footed, is helping him resist the Parkinson’s-related tendency to curl his body inward, he says. He and his wife are having fun together, too, and that’s as important as the exercise.

Brings back joy

Darolyn O’Donnell, recreation therapy coordinator for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center and no relation to John and Karen, says dancing can temporarily dissolve spouses’ (or relatives’ or friends’) patient-caregiver relationship and restore their pre-Parkinson’s partnership.

Dancing – and laughing about it – also stimulates the release of protective endorphins in the brain, Darolyn O’Donnell says.

As she takes a few turns around the dance floor with class participants, O’Donnell sees how dance makes their movements easier and their quality of life better.

Lily Bell starts tentatively but with the innate grace of a longtime dancer. Confidence building, she performs a slow cha-cha to Stormy Weatherwith Starr Fetzer, her friend since 1979.

Like many Parkinson’s patients, Bell, 63, of Phoenix, sees her doctor regularly, does recommended exercises, follows a healthful diet and takes prescribed medicine for her condition. But these classes are bringing one of her greatest joys back into her life, she says.

Until the disease struck four years ago, she loved going dancing with her husband, Gary, and Fetzer every chance she got.

“When Gary got tired from taking turns dancing with both of us,” Bell says, “Starr and I would dance together while he rested.” With Gary at work during the classes, Starr is once more filling in as Lily’s dance partner.

Neurologist Lieberman, who also is movement-disorders department chief for Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s, says physical therapy alone is not enough for patients with Parkinson’s disease. To relieve symptoms consistently, they need to follow through with regular activity of their own.

“But if I say I want you to exercise,” Lieberman says, “it’s another chore. If I tell you to dance for at least half an hour a day, with a partner and to music, you’ll do it.”

The benefits can be unexpected. Dance requires what Lieberman calls “a General Patton stance.” A straight spine keeps the head and chin lifted, and that makes speaking and chewing easier for people with Parkinson’s, he says. It also allows their lungs to expand more fully and their leg muscles to propel them better.

Dick Varnau, 86, already is convinced of the value of staying active. Before this day’s class, he walked a mile, exercised for an hour, picked tangelos at his home in Sun City West and scooped leaves out of the swimming pool.

But he has energy to spare for a few dances with his wife, Joan, the love of his life for 61 years. “She’s always easy to dance with,” he says as today’s class ends.

Before Dick and Joan turn in tonight, they say they will – as is their daily habit – play three rolls of music on their electric player piano. And they might even make time for another dance.

Source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0304parkinsonsdance0304.html