Playing Golf Improves the Mobility in People Living with Parkinson's Disease More Than Tai Chi
If you love to play golfing, know that the benefits to this outdoor sport extend beyond your course's 18 holes. A new study presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 73rd Annual Meeting found that playing this sport can help the balance and mobility in those living with Parkinson's disease, even more than doing tai chi. The team examined 20 people with moderate symptoms of this condition who played golf or practiced tai chi for ten weeks. They timed the participants when performing the action of getting up from a chair, walking ten feet, and going back to the chair and sitting back down.
"We know that people with Parkinson's disease benefit from exercise, but not enough people with the disease get enough exercise as therapy," said Dr. Anne-Marie Wills, the study author from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, in a statement. "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."
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The team uncovered that those who practiced their golf swing at a driving range were faster and more agile by the end of their 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," notes Wills. "More research in larger groups of people, over longer periods of time, is needed."
Additional findings? Eighty-six percent of the golfers planned to keep up the sport, whereas 33 percent wanted to continue practicing tai chi. "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," said Dr. Wills. "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."
