A friend alerted me to this article about an Italian doctor who enjoys playing Irish music and who noticed that a man with Parkinson’s seemed to lose his symptoms when he did Irish dancing.
So the doctor, Daniele Volpe, conducted an experiment with 24 Parkies. Half of them received conventional physical therapy for six months. The other (lucky) half took (luck-of-the) Irish dance lessons. The results:
Testing followed the six-month trial, and while all forms of therapy were beneficial, the Irish set dance group improved more in their control in every measurement category.
Here’s video proof:
As one participant said,
“I first read about the Volpe discoveries in October 2012 and I was overjoyed. I have had Parkinson’s for many years, with onset in 1997. I also love Trad [the Irish music] and noticed that when listening to it, I could perform some dexterity tests — such as the tapping the thumb with the pointer finger — for significantly longer durations than when without music. Moreover, I found my improvement with dexterity occurred only with Trad, and a few distant relatives, like a Cajun two-step….”
This is great news and offers lots of hope to Parkies everywhere.
Update!
Another official World Parkinson Congress blogger, Sharon Krischer, wrote about the same topic earlier this week, with a link to a different article about Daniele Volpe! Whoa!
Check out Sharon’s website here: Twitchy Woman
And check out the entire lineup of the 2019 World Parkinson Congress Blogger Partners here: click!
