You can lower your risk for developing Parkinson’s disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The majority of cases of Parkinson’s disease aren’t related to genetics, research shows, while some environmental exposures increase your risk to develop the condition. Liana Rosenthal, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins, names a few factors that are under your control to help lower your risk.

Rosenthal: There are things that you could do to reduce bad exposures and other things that you can do to protect yourself. Higher caffeine consumption lowers your risk of Parkinson's, higher physical activity lowers your risk of Parkinson's disease by 30%. Strenuous activity in early life is actually 60% lower risk in men. In women though interestingly, strenuous activity in early adulthood was a 50% reduction. Exercise and activity seems to be protective across genders in a slightly different pattern.   :30

Rosenthal says it isn’t known exactly how exercise reduces risk but it also does so for other diseases and conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so is well worth adopting for the impact on health across the lifespan. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.