Anecdotal Progress – Am I Seeing What I Think I’m Seeing?

Exercise is thought to have beneficial effects on Parkinson’s disease.

Jay L. Alberts, Ph.D., neuroscientist at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute in Cleveland, saw this firsthand in 2003 when he rode a tandem bicycle across Iowa with a Parkinson’s disease patient to raise awareness of the disease. The patient experienced improvements in her symptoms after the ride.

“”The finding was serendipitous,” Dr. Alberts recalled. “I was pedaling faster than her, which forced her to pedal faster. She had improvements in her upper extremity function, so we started to look at the possible mechanism behind this improved function.” As part of this inquiry, Dr. Alberts, researcher Chintan Shah, B.S., and their Cleveland Clinic colleagues, recently used fcMRI to study the effect of exercise on 26 Parkinson’s disease patients.”

RehabDeb says: The above is a quote from an article regarding research looking at the benefits of exercise for Parkinson’s patients, found on Science Daily dot com, and as I read it this morning, I thought it to be a perfect example of the practice protocol I have developed that has proved beneficial for several orthopedic conditions in lieu or surgery…whatever reasons one might have for not having surgery performed on their pet.

I am one person working alone, however I have over 35 years background and experience in principles of human sport science, exercise physiology, program design, and the like. There are a few others with similar backgrounds working in veterinary rehabilitation. I began using simple principles based on years of experience, and I’ve seen much success, as evidenced by improved quality of life, improved function, and veterinary professional confirmation.

I don’t have money to drive clinical research, and while I have ideas about whom I could approach about getting involved with this research, I am busy in my practice and haven’t wanted to take the time aside to pursue individuals, grants or corporations. At some point I intend to write more about the beneficial outcomes and to further discuss cases, however in the meantime, take the first paragraph as affirmation that science is observation of a particular outcome or experience as well as the steps to prove what we imagine/postulate/thought we observed.

It has been proved anecdotally time and again that when the conservative and slowly progressive non-surgical interventions I have outlined in the homework discussions on this site and/or in my books are followed within the parameters I outline, improvement of the condition ensues, barring extenuating circumstances. I do not see the discussion as being whether surgery or no surgery is better; I present the protocol I use as beneficial guidelines instead of not giving a program of recovery to those who choose to wait or altogether forego surgery for some conditions.

AND, I have provided return-to-function programs that are for pets that have had surgery. Following a program of progressive and structured recovery will only serve to improve the outcome and the pet’s quality of life if done well and correctly.

In other words, for injuries and conditions that are not “life or death”, the fact is there are very many people who will not choose surgery for their pet (or for themselves, for that matter). The instead-of-surgery protocol I develop and use fills a need to help the pet recover.

Keep moving forward; there is no time constraint on the “one step at a time” methodology…you can always begin, again, now.

Blessings-