PHOENIX — One of Jamie Nesbit’s patients suffered from slow movements, poor balance and stiffness for 10 years. Parkinson’s disease had set in, and the patient’s symptoms showed no signs of slowing.

Through physical therapy and perseverance, Nesbit provided the patient hope she could live a healthy life despite the disease, along with helping her with physical therapy activities aimed to alleviate the debilitating condition.

The physical therapy exercises significantly enhanced her quality of life. Nesbit brought better movement and the ability to participate in exercise for the patient, a former physical education teacher.

But it was one of America’s fastest growing sports that truly helped her turn the corner.

While undergoing the rehabilitation process with Nesbit, the patient found pickleball and soon realized the movements of the sport are very familiar to the physical therapy exercises Nesbit had been working on with her.

“One thing that we’ve tried to do is instill some sort of wellness plan when (our patient) is not in physical therapy and she found pickleball,” Nesbit said. “She had found benefits in it and we were inspired by her testimony to it.”

Nesbit and Dr. Tara McIsaac from Creighton University’s health sciences campus in Phoenix, along with doctors Suzanne O’Neal and Patrice Ayala from Midwestern University in Glendale, collaborated on the study and enlisted student researchers from both schools to track how pickleball can improve Parkinson’s disease symptoms within patients.

Parkinson’s disease is a debilitating condition that wears down the body physically and mentally. There is no cure for it but continuous exercise and physical therapy help deal with motor and non-motor symptoms, which led to similarities in sports.

People who suffer from Parkinson’s disease often experience tremors, bradykinesia, rigid muscles, poor posture and balance, loss of automatic movements, speech changes and writing changes, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Physical therapy exercises for Parkinson’s tend to be big, amplified, fast and coordinated movements to combat the disease’s symptoms — the same kind of motions that work well on the pickleball court. Pickleball is all about fast movements, action and reaction timing and visual tracking, which is why the sport fits so well for the study.

“If you think about everything that we want (the participants) to do, pickleball fits so well,” O’Neal said. “It seemed like an appropriate time to do this study.”

The study included a program spread across six weeks where participants with Parkinson’s attended two one-hour pickleball sessions a week. The study featured 15 participants who were in stages one through three in the Hoehn and Yahr scale.

The Hoehn and Yahr scale is used for the staging of the functional disability associated with Parkinson’s disease, according to Physiopedia.

The study had pre-testing, post-testing and one month follow-up data after the six week program. Tests were done for grip strength, gait speed and balance while also including a non-motor questionnaire, a Parkinson’s questionnaire and a Montreal cognitive assessment. The program showed improvement in grip strength and dexterity using handheld dynamometry tests and the nine hole peg test.

The shirt buttoning test showed patients with the most improvement. Participants were timed putting on, buttoning and removing a shirt. Participants were, on average, 20% faster after the completion of the program and improved to over 35% percent faster a month later.

It is recommended by Nesbit and O’Neal that people who are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease see a physical therapist and get an evaluation to assess their safety before taking any steps toward playing pickleball.

The study showed physical benefits of what pickleball can do for people who suffer from Parkinson’s disease and the mental and social benefits as well.

“One of those things that provides a dopamine hit is the social aspects,” Nesbit said. “A lot of the participants still all play together. I think it has potential for improved social wellness and the longevity of the sport.”

The response socially and mentally was great from the participants, with some saying “they forgot that they had Parkinson’s” and “it was so nice to be competitive again,” according to O’Neal.

Parkinson’s disease not only affects people physical but also socially and mentally. People who have Parkinson’s disease lose the ability to produce dopamine over time.

Studies have shown that symptoms of Parkinson’s develop in patients with an 80% or greater loss of dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Other non-motor symptoms that people suffer from can include depression, anxiety, constipation and sleep problems.

In February, Creighton students Andy Quach, Luis Beltran and Elizabeth Chico along with Nesbit and McIsaac presented their research findings at the Combined Sections Meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association in Houston.

“We had a lot of traffic come by our poster,” Quach said. “A lot of people that were interested in Parkinson’s disease asked about the pickleball study and they were wondering if they could implement something like that.”