How Stress and Stress Management Impact Parkinson’s
In today’s fast-paced society, with more people spending large amounts of time connected to technology, stress has become the norm. Whether it is short-term, acute stress that comes from situations — such as moving to a new apartment — or long-term, chronic stress caused by long lasting problems — such as ongoing financial or health worries — stress can negatively impact mental and physical health. People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) commonly report that acute stress worsens their motor symptoms, such as freezing of gait, dyskinesia and tremor. People with PD also notice that chronic stress seems to worsen non-motor symptoms, particularly anxiety and depression.
Of note, there are also PD mice studies suggesting that chronic stress can accelerate PD disease progression. A better understanding of how stress impacts PD — and an exploration into possible coping mechanisms — are key to improving PD management.
A recently published study in the journal, Parkinson’s Disease, “Stress and mindfulness in Parkinson's disease - a survey in 5,000 patients” (van der Heide, Speckens, et al., 2021) sought to investigate four questions:
- Do people with PD experience more stress than a control group?
- Which personality and disease characteristics are associated with stress?
- Which PD symptoms are especially sensitive to stress?
- What strategies might successfully help reduce stress for people with PD — with particular attention to mindfulness (defined in the study as moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness).
Study participants included 5,000 people with PD (average age of 67.3 years, average time living with PD 5.9 years, and 48% women) and 1,292 people without Parkinson’s (average age 60.8 years, 78.0% women). Of those that responded to the survey, 93.9% were Caucasian, 0.5% African American, 1.0% Alaska native, 1.5% Asian, and for 3.0% race was unknown. The majority (82.6%) lived in the U.S. A multitude of well-respected, validated scales were used to measure perceived stress, anxiety, awareness of one’s thoughts and feeling in the moment (dispositional mindfulness), excessive and intrusive negative thoughts (rumination), and self-compassion. Additionally, the study allowed for open-ended feedback from participants, allowing them to list other symptoms affected by stress.
Results
Understanding the effects of stress:
- People with PD scored significantly worse than those without PD in nearly every category, including anxiety, perceived stress and depressed mood.
- Stress worsened all PD symptoms measured in the survey, including sleeping problems, depression, dyskinesia (involuntary movements), freezing of gait (feeling stuck in place), and bradykinesia (slowness of movement).
- The PD symptom with the strongest stress effect was tremor — experienced by 81.8% of patients.
- Participants with PD with higher stress levels ruminated more, scored lower on quality of life, lower in dispositional mindfulness and lower in self-compassion.
- People with PD under higher levels of stress reported worse disease severity on a daily basis.
- Self-compassion did not differ between people with and without PD.
- People with PD also added to the list of stress symptoms cognitive impairment, loss of focus, confusion, impaired executive function, speech and communication issues, emotional symptoms (anger and frustration, anxiety, nervousness, and apathy, and pain).
Studying stress management methods:
- Exercise (walking, cycling, swimming, sports, yoga, Pilates, or Tai Chi) was most frequently used to reduce stress (83.1%) – with beneficial effects reported on all motor and non-symptoms.
- Mindfulness, practiced by 38.7% of study participants with PD, was linked to improvements in both motor and non-motor symptoms — most notably 60.2% noticed improvement in depression and 64.7% in anxiety.
- Of the 38.7% of people with PD practicing mindfulness, 85.7% recommended it to others with Parkinson’s.
- The more often mindfulness was practiced by people with PD, the greater the perceived improvement in their Parkinson’s symptoms; approximately half (53.2%) practiced mindfulness at least once a week, and 21.5% practiced once a month or less.
- Mindfulness was experienced as helpful, regardless of PD medication use, and regardless of how long a person had been diagnosed with PD.
- Among the non-mindfulness users, 43.4% were interested in gaining mindfulness skills.
- Mindfulness users in both groups scored higher on dispositional mindfulness and perceived stress.
These study findings clearly suggest that people with PD experience greater levels of stress than the general population. It is of particular concern that extra sensitivity to stress translated into a significant worsening of both motor and non-motor symptoms.
Mindfulness (the intentional, active awareness of the present moment, observed without judgment) may improve PD symptom severity. This study demonstrated a significantly positive effect of mindfulness on anxiety and depressed mood. Physical exercise also had a positive effect. Whether or not exercise improved symptom severity in PD directly, by reducing stress, is unclear.
Previous studies have found mindfulness to be a helpful complementary therapy. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over time, the continued strain on the body from chronic stress may contribute to serious health problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other illnesses, including mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Chronic stress can also disturb the immune, digestive, cardiovascular, sleep, and reproductive systems, as well as trigger headaches, sleeplessness, sadness, anger, and irritability.
As stated by the study authors, stress has been shown to have a “considerable and detrimental influence on quality of life and on symptom severity” in the PD population. This study also suggests that there are self-management strategies that the PD population can incorporate that are potentially beneficial - particularly mindfulness. However, additional studies are needed with greater diversity of study participants to better understand how mindfulness and physical exercise might be optimized to maximize benefits to motor and non-motor functions.
Learn More
The Parkinson’s Foundation believes in empowering the Parkinson’s community through education. Learn more about stress and mindfulness in the population by visiting the below Parkinson’s Foundation resources, or by calling our free Helpline at 1-800-4PD-INFO (473-4636) for answers to all your Parkinson’s questions.
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