Wii Boosts Parkinson's Treatments 122
mmmscience writes "Scientists are investigating the use of Wii Sports as a form of treatment for Parkinson's sufferers. After a four-week study, researchers found that rounds of tennis, bowling, and boxing improved rigidity, movement, fine motor skills, and energy levels as well as decreasing the occurrence of depression. It is thought that combining exercise with video games helps to increase levels of dopamine, a chemical that is deficient in Parkinson's. The therapy is gaining notoriety under the name Wii-hab."
Re:Preventitive Medicine? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://classes.uleth.ca/200901/chem2600a/Designer%20Drugs%20PPT.pdf [uleth.ca]
Re:...lol (Score:5, Interesting)
The great thing about today's video games are the reward schedules that make games so damn addictive. These rewards cause dopamine release, which helps offset Parkinson's.
What I wonder is if there's a "Flowers for Algernon" type effect -- like with Levadopa, is tolerance built up quickly? Do patients doing Wii-hab for Parkinson's need to take a "Wii holiday" the same way Parkinson's patients on Levadopa need to take a drug holiday to reset their tolerance?
Free Wiis (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:...lol (Score:3, Interesting)
Exercise is like sex, when you're doing it your body is spewing dopamine, endorphins, and bodily fluids in all directions. If you're doing it right, it feels great.
I can't debate the physiology of this, but I don't think the effect is universal. I have friends who love to lift weights, and others who love to run. I hate both: The only thing it makes me feel is tired and hungry. I've hear them wax poetically about loving "the burn" or "the runners high" and I've gone with them, and never felt it.
However, I love to play DDR and Ultimate Frisbee. I could play any of those until my body can't take any more - and then I keep going. It is not the physical activity alone that makes it fun - it is the mental challenge. I can only assume that people are just wired-up differently.
Re:Preventitive Medicine? (Score:3, Interesting)
They do know what causes it. Death of dopaminergic neurons in a specific part of the brain, and/or inactivation of dopamine receptors on those neurons.
The underlying causes, though, are still not completely clear. As from your link, certain chemicals can cause this.
But it's important to note that dopaminergic receptors die off regularly, anyway (IIRC ~5% per year) but no Parkinson's symptoms are exhibited until there are very few dopaminergic receptors in that part of the brain... sure wish I could remember the name of the region.
Re:...lol (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, once my heart rate gets up I feel great. I spend my whole exercise cycle thinking, "Jesus, why don't I do this 3 times a day?" Then I hit the cool-down period, and all the pain catches up, and I stagger around for an hour or so wondering if I'm going to die.
I don't do weights though. It's only cardio that makes me feel good. And even there, I have to be moving. Riding an exercise bike is a chore. The only "stationary" cardio I can do for any period of time is jumping rope, because it's entertaining.
Re:...lol (Score:3, Interesting)
Exercise is like sex, when you're doing it your body is spewing dopamine, endorphins, and bodily fluids in all directions. If you're doing it right, it feels great.
Only if you're lucky.
Some people have bodies tuned to do this. You're obviously one of them, and I envy you: you get rewarded for exercise. Other people don't. I find exercise uncomfortable, very hard work, and unutterably dull. I don't zone out, I don't get endorphins, I just have to keep working at it, and it never gets any easier --- if I train, all that happens is that I can keep going longer, which means I can prolong the agony. Some reward.
And yes, I am doing it right. A couple of years ago I entered a 10km road race in my town, and with that deadline as an incentive I carefully trained up over a couple of months, and eventually did the race and got a decent time (about 1 hour 5 minutes, IIRC). I've still got the pot-metal medal they gave me for completing it somewhere. Did I get a feeling of accomplishment for doing this? Yes. Was it worth my time? No, not really.
Of course, you probably won't believe me, telling me that I simply need to find the right technique, or the right sport for me, etc. The problem is that athletic types tend to have metabolisms like yours, and because you get a biochemical reward you find it very hard to empathise with people like me, who don't. While you find working out etc to be a goal in and of itself, the only way I can do it on a regular basis is by iron willpower. I'm sure that if I were to exercise hard every day for six months or so my metabolism would change gears and I'd get those mythical endorphins, but dear god, the mere thought makes me cringe...
(BTW, I can only recall one case of an exercise related endorphin rush: I was spending New Year in Switzerland, in a hutte at the top of a 600m ascent. The first day I climbed it I felt really, really good, disturbingly so, for about 30 minutes afterward. The other 13 days of my two week holiday? I climbed that sodding mountain every day, and all I felt was tired...)
Re:...lol (Score:4, Interesting)
No need to make exercise fun. Exercise is like sex, when you're doing it your body is spewing dopamine, endorphins, and bodily fluids in all directions. If you're doing it right, it feels great.
Pheh. For some people. Generally, endorphins, the thing that actually gives you the high, doesn't get going until you're a long way into the exercise regimine and even then it usually doesn't counteract the pain and tedium of plain-ol weight lifting, running, or whatever other boring thing.
I've done em all, regularly for years even, and well I just never saw this "no need to make exercise fun" thing. My friend who was heavily into running and marathons and such, once said when I asked him about runner's high. "That's a bunch of crap," he said, and you only feel it when you've been running for miles anyway. Which is not something Parkinson's sufferers are going to do.
So yeah. "Exercise" by itself is boring as hell and praying for an endorphine high as payoff isn't going to work for a lot of people. Fun things that also happen to be exercise are fun. I like rock climbing. That gets me going. For others, Wii Sports or Wii Fit might be what they need.
Re:...lol (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, I am doing it right. A couple of years ago I entered a 10km road race in my town, and with that deadline as an incentive I carefully trained up over a couple of months, and eventually did the race and got a decent time (about 1 hour 5 minutes, IIRC). I've still got the pot-metal medal they gave me for completing it somewhere. Did I get a feeling of accomplishment for doing this? Yes. Was it worth my time? No, not really.
I posit that there is some other form of physical exertion that would give you more of a mental/emotional positive-feedback loop, which will help push you to that physical state of endorphin-induced satori. Maybe it's marathons, maybe it's marathon orgies; for me Mountain Biking is the only all-physical sport (I am the only engine - I bike up, too, which is the tedious part) which holds my interest enough to get me into that state.
Think of it like sex; you ran the race, that's like getting your nut. Sure, you finished, and there's a sense of achievement. But maybe if you had participated in a biathlon (my example because it involves endurance and I think it's cool; useful skills in a nuclear winter) you would have had the full experience, and actually died the little death. (As opposed to the big one, which happens to runners all the time. If you're not built to run, you should try to avoid it.)
re.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm. If you could purchase a discrete device that would release endorphins whenever you were doing exercise. Would you buy it?
Would you voluntarily rewire yourself?