In a study comparing physical activity routine for Parkinson’s patients, golf produced greater improvements than tai chi.
Previous studies had shown that tai chi practice was beneficial as physical activity for Parkinson’s patients, resulting in balance and mobility gains, and is also safe and popular with patients.
“We know that people with Parkinson’s disease benefit from exercise, but not enough people with the disease get enough exercise as therapy,” said study author Anne-Marie A. Wills, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital Boston. “Golf is popular—the most popular sport for people over the age of 55—which might encourage people to try it and stick with it. We decided to compare golf to tai chi in our study because tai chi is the gold standard for balance and preventing falls in people with Parkinson’s.”
The study involved 20 people with moderate Parkinson’s disease, who were offered 10 weeks of two one-hour group classes a week, randomly assigned to either golf or tai chi.
Researchers evaluated everyone with tests, including ones for mobility. For the test, a person is timed while getting up from a chair, walking 3m and then returning to the chair and sitting down. Golfers were 0.96 seconds faster on the test at the end of the study.
“While the results for golf might be surprising, it’s important to remember that the number of participants in our study was small, and the period over which we studied them was relatively short,” Dr Wills said. “More research in larger groups of people, over longer periods of time, is needed.”
While overall satisfaction was similar in both groups, 86% of golfers compared to 33% of tai chi participants were “definitely” likely to continue the activity.
“Our finding that golfers were much more likely to continue with their sport is exciting because it doesn’t matter how beneficial an exercise is on paper if you people don’t actually do it,” Dr Wills said. “So if swinging a golf club is more appealing than practicing tai chi, by all means, go to a driving range and hit balls for an hour instead!”
Source: Medical Xpress
