Yoga can help Young Onset Parkinsons Disease

Young Onset Parkinson’s is the new scourge of our times. A study conducted in India indicates more and more patients in their late 30s are being diagnosed with the Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement, speech and posture.

The incidence of the disease in the age-group between 30 and 40 in India, as the study indicates, has risen from 3 % to 10% in the last five years. The disease afflicts both men and women almost equally.

Holywood star Michael J Fox suffers from Parkinson’s desease. But unlike several famous personalities – Salvador Dali, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Mohammad Ali, Pope John Paul II- associated with the degenerative disorder, Fox was just 30 when he was diagnosed with the disease.

Hardly known in the 1990s when Fox announced he had the disease, the phenomenon of Young Onset Parkinson’s is now becoming a global reality.

0ver 60,000 newly diagnosed cases every year join the current 1.5 million tally of those affected by the disease in the USA. While the condition usually develops after the age of 65, 15% of those diagnosed are under 50, according to National Parkinson Foundation of the US.

In India 360 people per 100,000 suffer from the disease, which has no known cure. Over 5% of those over 60 are afflicted in the country.

According to specialists at the Parkinson’s disease clinic in New Delhi, the increasing prevalence of Young Onset Parkinson’s has turned the popular perception on its head. Till recently it was thought to be an old man’s disease appearing mostly in people in their 60s. Today patients in their 20s are being diagnosed with the disease. Such cases are relatively few though.

The doctors suspect the main cause to be the fast-paced modern day lifestyle marked by increased stress, improper diet and inadequate sleep. Other known reasons are genetic, environmental, high levels of toxins one has to live with and drug induced Parkinson’s.

The effects of stress, environmental pollution and pesticides in our food and water are successfully managed by time-tested regime of yoga. A well-defined system of breathing exercises under the name of pranayama and physical exercises called yogasanas have been found to be very helpful in mitigating the effects of Parkinson’s disease. Experiments to investigate the effect of yoga on the Parkinson’s disease have revealed encouraging results.

Add comment September 14th, 2006 Written By: lalitgambhir