Brain Exercises Aid in Disease Treatment, Quality of Life

When 65-year-old Paul Person was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease this year, the first thing he did was contact a personal trainer -- not for his body, but for his brain.

Though somewhat limited by a heart condition, Person has always been physically active, walking about two miles each day. He is also a regular golfer. But now his daily routine includes about an hour of "brain aerobics" -- vocal cord exercises, exaggerated movements, word games and other mind-stimulating activity he can fit into his regular life, like moving money from one pocket to the other while he walks.

"Another one is reading some sentences at the same time that I bounce a tennis ball," Person said. "That's one I find difficult."

Person's personal brain fitness trainer is Tucson physical therapist and neuroscientist Becky Farley, who is part of a growing movement of health experts emphasizing mental fitness, or "neurobics," -- a phrase popularized by late neurobiologist Lawrence Katz to describe mental exercises that do for the brain what aerobics does for the body.

But like physical fitness, brain fitness takes effort and discipline. Boredom and complacency are to be avoided.

While Farley mainly focuses on specific exercises for people who have diagnoses of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's, she's hoping to expand the practice she's developing -- Southwest NeuroGym -- to include the general senior citizen population. Her biggest emphasis is on challenging people. If it's not difficult, then it's not effective, she said.

"If it doesn't feel hard, you are not working hard enough," Farley said.

Farley, who is working with the local Mid-Valley Athletic Club, is not the only local person advocating cognitive calisthenics. The Fairwinds Desert Point retirement community has a brain fitness area in its gym, and a 2-year-old business called MindWorks Studio focuses solely on mental fitness.

Nationally, there's a growing number of brain fitness companies with names like Happy Neuron Inc., CogniFit Ltd. and Vibrant Brains.

"A generation ago, exercise training revolutionized our notion of aging and physical decline. It is now accepted that most of the physical decline we experience as we age is unnatural, resulting from a lack of exercise," said Dr. Michael J. Maximov, an internist with Saguaro Physicians in Tucson who works closely with Tucson Medical Center's Senior Services.