A few years ago, Sara Whittingham, M.D., was sitting on the couch at her home and noticed that her arm was shaking. So, she did a search on the symptoms. She was aware of the disease — Parkinson’s — that kept appearing in the search results but didn’t know a lot about it. She had experienced other small signs before. Now she was discovering more about neurodegenerative disorders via Google.

1,200,000 United States residents will be living with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by 2030. Studies revealed that the disease usually gets worse over time and that there was no cure. Sara became concerned about quality of life, particularly as a mom of two young girls. Research shows that exercise heals the brain. As a competitive triathlete, she sees how her regular workouts benefit her neurodegenerative condition. Sara also wears a lot of hats – she’s a physician at Cleveland Clinic and a clinical faculty member at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED).

After Sara’s diagnosis, her neurologist at Cleveland Clinic, Benjamin Walter, M.D., gave her a list of research studies on Parkinson’s at the Clinic. One of them was the CYCLE (CYClical Lower Extremity Exercise for Parkinson’s trial) study run by Jay L. Alberts, Ph.D., vice chair of innovations within the Neurological Institute.

Sara enrolled in the trial, through which Dr. Alberts aims to determine if long-term, high-intensity aerobic exercise can slow the advancement of PD. She soon realized how much exercise helped reduce her symptoms. She had always been an athlete but because of increasing stiffness and fatigue had given up running.

Seeing the research that’s also being done by NEOMED researcher Sheila Fleming, Ph.D., a key opinion leader in behavioral neuroscience and Parkinson’s disease, Sara says that research offers a lot of hope for the quality of her future. And when Dr. Fleming recently received a $1.5 million Notice of Award from the Department of Defense/United States Army Medical Research to support her research, “Modeling Cognitive Dysfunction in Parkinson’s Disease and the Impact of Exercise,” the two became even further connected – Dr. Sara Whittingham is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. And Dr. Alberts is a consultant on Dr. Fleming’s project.

Sara earned a spot at the 2023 Ironman World Championship in Kona in October. It was an opportunity to raise even more awareness and support for Parkinson’s disease research, including fundraising to support research at NEOMED.