LAUSR

PD has prodromal utmost importance to find factors that may change the pathological cascade of events even before PD diagnosis and help slow neurodegenerative progression. The results of the cohort study by Zhang et al 1 are promising and suggest that maintaining a healthy diet and higher levels of recreational physical activity is associated with improved patient outcome by preventing earlier mortality. These results not only reinforce the public health recommendations to engage in these behaviors for staying healthy in general but also add to a growing body of evidence of such behaviors providing protection against PD-related neurodegeneration specifically. 2,3 Healthier eating has been found to protect against PD incidence in both the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. 2 A meta-analysis of 6 prospective cohort studies has also reported an association between physical activity and lowered risk of PD. 3 a diet and higher levels of recreational physical activity may able to do: slow the pace of progression 1 ; is, if the factors associated with PD susceptibility and mortality were the same factors associated with disease severity over time. To this end, other studies have shown healthy food and/or physical activity to be inversely associated with, and thus possibly lead to, improved nonmotor features of PD, such as constipation, excessive daytime sleepiness, and depression, that greatly affect patients’ health-related quality of life. these results also haveimportantimplicationsforneurologistswhodiagnoseandtreatpatientswithPD,indicatingthat health professionals need to encourage patients to maintain a healthy lifestyle to, at a minimum, reduce mortality risk, which is higher in individuals with PD than those without PD in the same age range.