The power of ping pong over Parkinson's

"If you go, I will go with you," said Lars Svensson to his elder brother Jan-Erik Svensson upon hearing that the latter wanted to take part in the 1st World Championship for Parkinson in Pleasantville, a small village separated from the New York by a fifty-minute train ride.

Mid-October, the Swedish brothers turned up in the event, which saw 62 players from eleven countries taking up paddles to play for health, for a sense of camaraderie, and to "shake the world", to use the words of Nenad Bach, a Croatian guitarist living in New York whose own life experiences have inspired the event.

"There are 9 years in between my big brother and I," said Lars Svensson, 67, who was born with condition that prevented him from walking. He came to the event on a wheelchair. "When I was a young boy, he was always very supportive to me… We came from a country where a lot of people played table tennis. Naturally both of us started to play at a young age, around seven or eight. And we played together, with my brother helping me with the tactics."

Despite the daunting physical challenge, the young Svensson was so good that he later joined the Swedish National Team for the Disabled and competed in Nordic and European competitions representing his country. But both brothers eventually stopped, either finding new interests or becoming preoccupied with family duties.

That was until 2011, when the elder Svensson was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. "We started playing together again, since table tennis is considered among the best exercise for Parkinson's patients," said the younger brother. "And when he told me that he wanted to participate in the championship in New York, I try to be there for him to the extent that he wants."

The Parkinson's has clearly affected the elder Svensson's ability to move and even to speak. But there's no missing on his part of any of the fun and jubilation. During the finals, a player's arrival at the table was always accompanied by upbeat music pumped into venue by a DJ. Unlike in a conventional championship where tension is palpable and everyone watches with abated breath, cheers broke out from time to time from the surrounding crowd, sometimes solicited by the players themselves, many of whom took time to interact with the audience.

The event was held by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Foundation in conjunction with Ping Pong Parkinson (PPP) , a local NGO set up in March 2017 with the goal of halting the progression of the disease by utilizing ping pong as a form of physical therapy. Members of the PPP – called "Pongers" among themselves meet every Wednesday at the Westchester Table Tennis Club to play with volunteers.

Margie Alley, a social worker who for the past 20 years, has been offering counselling for disabled children and their parents, is an active member. A natural-born athlete who once played tennis professionally, Alley said she was "freaked out" upon knowing that a mysterious condition that had given her clamping feet and elbow stiffness was the Parkinson's. "That was in March 2012 and I was just one month shy of 49," she said.

What followed was a round of physical therapy, in a place located in the same building as the Westchester Table Tennis Club. Out of curiosity, she popped in one day and was immediately seduced by sport she used to with her father in the basement of her family house.

Alley was the women's singles winner for the just-ended championship, a victory witnessed by her 80-year-old father. At PPP's weekly event, she was both a patient and a volunteer who's paired with other patients during play.

"All the brain and body activities combined together has made me feel better and function more fluidly than I did prior to playing table tennis," she said. "The Parkinson's are affecting my motor skills but not so much my reflexes. With ping pong, you shuffle instead of running around, you use your forearm instead of the entire arm. Although I'm right now playing ping pong, boxing and tennis, my future is with ping pong."

For the past 6 years, Alley has been participating in a research on how exercises can help stop the progression of neuro degeneration, led by Lori Quinn, associate professor of movement science & kinesiology from the Columbia University.

"People with Parkinson's disease have difficulty initiating movement, and can often perform better when movements are in response to an external stimulus," wrote Quinn in an email to China Daily. "Table Tennis is a unique activity because movement is largely initiated based on response to a visual stimulus- an approaching ball that needs to be hit."

"Table tennis also has several other features that make it a great sport for people with Parkinson's disease. It challenges a person's dynamic balance -their ability to maintain upright standing while reaching with their arms in many different directions. It also can have an aerobic component if the skill level is high enough – aerobic exercise requires the heart rate to exceed a certain percentage of its maximum (usually 55 to 85%), and this can be achieved with continuous ping pong activity," she wrote. "Finally, table tennis requires hand-eye coordination, which is important for many everyday functional tasks."

Quinn's observation is echoed by Navin Kumar, an American with Indian background who came from Maryland, has been actively playing table tennis since his diagnose in 2013.

"Table Tennis is very unusual because with the speed at which that ball moves, it does something to the brain that allows me to escape all the medical struggles that I face, the tremor included," he said, hitting a few balls with a fellow player to demonstrate how the shaking stops once he picks up a paddle.

Another who has benefited from ping pong playing is Nenad Bach, founder of PPP. The music composer and guitarist, whose meeting last year with officials from the ITTF Foundation gave birth to the championship in Pleasantville, nearly lost his way with his beloved instrument.

"I stopped playing the guitar five years after I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, but then I started playing table tennis and I felt 50% better. Now I am playing the guitar again," he said.

For other people, the act of playing ping pong in public alone is profound on a personal level.

"I didn't know before that our event could become a chance to people to come out of the closet and admit that they have Parkinson's," said the director of the ITTF Foundation Leandro Olvech, reflecting on the fact that some players have travelled by plane for 15 or more hours to be at the event, from countries including Japan and Australia. "I've personally learned it here."

According to Olvech, there are more than 40 million table tennis players worldwide. The number of people with Parkinson's disease is estimated at around 10 million.

"This is a championship not just for the 62, but the 10 million," he said. "Everyone who got our message and act on it is a champion."