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Home » Exercise Programs » Beat Parkinson’s boxing program in Branford helps ease symptoms … – Shoreline Times

BRANFORD >> Picture this: Eight roughly Medicare-aged men and women, scattered around a dance studio, all wearing boxing gloves, jabbing at punching bags and shouting out the count of how many punches theyve thrown. One man is throwing punches at the unsurprisingly lithe trainer, Terry OHara, and she is shouting, Jab cross, jab cross, jab kick. (The kick is shouted fortissimo.)

The man delivers a swift kick in the direction of OHaras mitt, and she smiles and says, Good.

Whats happening here is an exercise class for people with Parkinsons disease, the progressive neurological disease that results in muscle weakness, stiffness, poor balance, a shuffling gait. Some lose their voices, some have severe tremors. There is, at this time, no cure.

No cure, but some programs that give hope for slowing the progress of the disease. Beat Parkinsons Disease Today, a for-profit organization, is the name of the boxing/exercise program with classes in nine towns (including Branford and Old Saybrook) that was founded and designed by Michelle Hespeler of Marlborough. She has special understanding she was diagnosed with Young Parkinsons Disease 10 years ago when she was 40. A former physical education teacher, she started doing research and focused, she says, on balance, posture and gait and movements that you use every day, like picking something up...You have to exaggerate movements to compensate for slowness.

Boxing, she finds, is good for balance, and also valuable because it uses both the left and right brain. Youre doing two things at the same time....Also it gets frustrations out.

Participants clearly like the boxing part of the exercise classes. Joann Hogan of Madison, after a bout sending punches to a partner (cross punch, jab, cross, hook hook hook), called it strenuous but invigorating.

Allyson Kinney, of Branford, is an avid exerciser/boxer she attends two classes a week the one at the dance studio, Studio One in Branford, and another at Branford High School. She was diagnosed two and a half years ago, at age 69. She has noticed her voice getting softer and softer...You have to practice speaking loud so you dont lose your voice. Like her fellow boxers, shes a believer in the program It jolts the muscles, it helps with rigidity, she says. She exercises daily, and believes exercise is what keeps the symptoms at bay.

Kinney, who was a computer-science teacher for almost 40 years, is the leader of a Parkinsons support group that meets once a month in Branford for a program of speakers and sharing time when Parkinsons patients can meet and share, while families or friends meet separately. The speakers are varied a physician who specializes in Parkinsons, a state legislator who is interested in fund raising to finance research. (Attendance at the meetings, which began with 20 people a little more than a year ago, now averages 40 to 50.) The support groups are organized under the umbrella of Connecticut Advocates for Parkinsons (CAP), a nonprofit also founded by Hespeler and her husband.

Support groups, exercise classes that get people who would normally be past boxing age moving (and punching and kicking) are giving PD patients hope. Kinney says, Im very optimistic about myself because Im taking charge. Im being pro-active. Im not going to sit around and let Parkinsons beat me. Im going to do everything I can to stave off symptoms. So far Ive done a good job.

For further information, see the website http://www.beatpdtoday.com or call 860-463-3747.

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Beat Parkinson's boxing program in Branford helps ease symptoms ... - Shoreline Times

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Home » Exercise Programs » Beat Parkinson’s boxing program in Branford helps ease symptoms … – Shoreline Times