I first heard about Kevin Burkart’s aspirations to jump 100 times in one day back in January. I posted an article about him back in January. For months I have been anxiously anticipating this endeavor. I’ve heard of this being done before, but I am amazed that somebody can pull it off. I mean lets break this down a little bit and put it in perspective. Each jump requires obvious precision, discipline, and endurance. For each jump a parachute needs to be ready for the jump, now I’m not sure how many he officially used, but I’m guessing he probably used no more than 20, I could definitely be wrong here. If he did use only 20 then he would have to use a some kind of a ground crew to repack his parachute over and over until he hit jump 100. News sources state that in order for him to pull off this feat he will have to jump every 6 to 8 minutes!
Good thing Kevin wasn’t alone, many people were involved in his 100 jumps: two pilots, a cab crew, a grounds crew, volunteers, and of course news agents. I’m sure this kind of event can be compared to a marathon, but a little more difficult, because it’s not exactly financially feasible to train for something like this. Kevin mentioned in a news article that the most jumps he has ever done was 12 in a day… yikes. So I guess most of his physical preparation had to take place in a gym or running the streets of the twin cities area.
Anyways, I’m proud of Kevin and just wanted to write this thanking him for his dedication, heart, and hard-work for Parkinson’s disease. I hope my readers will take some time and thank him as well, you can reach his blog by clicking here.
The pedunculopontine nucleus is a new target for deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s patients, especially that that have had trouble with their stride and postural instability refractory. This part of the brain is very much unknown for neurosurgeons, so the recent focus will be interesting to flush out. We’ll keep you updated as we hear how deep brain stimulation of the pedunuculopontine nucleus goes.
This morning I read about a study that showed that functional electrical stimulation of the peroneal nerve via a neuromuscular stimulator has helped Parkinson’s patients improve their walking. After receiving the electric stimulation researchers conducted a couple of tests to measure their results.