Ping Pong for Good Co-Founder Trent MacLean shares his personal story about combatting PD with Exercise + Ping Pong
Trent MacLean has cycled, lifted, skied and jogged his way to optimal health and fitness. His daily workouts make the rest of us exercisers look like powder puffs. Super fit. On his bike or off, at all times, Trent is also extremely mindful of his physical alignment, posture, and core strength. It’s fairly mandatory these days.
Ten years ago, maybe even 12 or 14 years ago, Trent – a serial entrepreneur and a well-known business consultant in the consumer space – began feeling hand tremors and a lack of control in his foot on the right side of his body. “I’d throw my leg over my bike, for example, and I’d sort of buckle or feel momentarily off balance and unsteady,” Trent says. He was only 55 years old at the time of his official diagnosis.
“I knew something was wrong for a while, and I wasn’t too surprised at my diagnosis,” Trent says. “At the time, I thought of all the other terrible illnesses I might have had, and I felt somewhat relieved to have an answer.”
“What was going on with my body? What was I going to do about it?”
About 10%-20% of those diagnosed with Parkinson's disease are under age 50, and about half of those are diagnosed before age 40. According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, approximately 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's are diagnosed each year in the United States, meaning somewhere around 6,000–12,000 are young-onset patients.
More than 10 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson's disease, and the risk increases with age. This neurodegenerative disorder is caused by the gradual reduction of a chemical in the brain called dopamine. The advent of symptoms is different from one person to the next due to the different stages of the disease.
The goal, says Trent, is to slow the progression of the disease as much as possible, and to stay as strong, agile, and flexible as you can. “Flexibility training is key to the quality of life,” Trent says. Research suggests that activities such as dancing, boxing, spinning, cycling, and ping pong (or table tennis) help delay degeneration of motor symptoms associated with PD. Maintain daily activity that keeps you on your feet, urge the experts.
Ping Pong to the Rescue
Some years after he was diagnosed, Trent started playing regularly with a good friend and colleague who had competed during college and in leagues. With his innate physicality, and the inherent need to maintain his agility, speed and functionality, Trent found this high-energy activity to be a great addition to his exercise regimen.
Like many of us who played mad games of ping pong in our youth, Trent has vivid, comforting memories of playing with his brother in the basement of their home. “We’d put our portable ping pong table right on top of the pool table as kids, and we’d just play for hours,” he says.
“Playing ping pong has become so challenging and aerobic for me. It quickly helped increase my strength and hand-eye coordination. It still helps with weakness on the right.” Today, along with medications and ping pong, hardcore exercise and other coping mechanisms are an inherent part of his active, everyday life.
Trent’s gone on to informally help others with PD and co-founded our very own Ping Pong for Good, in the hopes of improving the quality of life for those living with brain diseases. He is battling the effects of PD as only a warrior could. Trent says, “My ultimate goal is to reverse the effects of Parkinson’s and help other people conquer it, too.” Anything’s possible.
Featured Partner, JOOLA has partnered with PPG to provide portable and retractable nets to transform any table into a ping pong table!
Symptoms and side effects of Parkinson’s may include, at some point:
Depression and apathy
Temporary amnesia
A distorted sense of smell
A shuffling, unbalanced gait
Digestive issues
Trouble swallowing
Mild hallucinations