Retired Dover doctor uses exercise to combat Parkinson’s
DOVER – It’s not uncommon to see 86-year-old Keith Van Epps hustling around the track at Crater Stadium on a warm afternoon.
The former Dover doctor says regular exercise has been a key to living with Parkinson’s disease for 11 years.
Van Epps, his father and his identical twin brother Kenneth were all doctors at some point in Dover.
Keith Van Epps says shortly after he and his brother retired, Kenneth was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2014, then Keith himself was diagnosed with Parkinson’s five days later. He told his brother to exercise, but Kenneth refused.
“I told my brother, I said, listen, it’s important that you exercise, because the recommendations for Parkin since is there is medication you can take, but it only helps about 40% of patients. On the other hand, exercise is of benefit, and it helps about 50%. I told my brother, ‘You’d better start to jog or get busy exercising.’ He said it will be a cold day in hell before he starts to exercise.”
Three years later, Kenneth became bedridden and died not long after. But Keith kept slogging between 15 to 20 miles a week.
“I call it slogging, because it’s not very fast jogging. It’s as fast as I can go with my Parkinson’s.”
He feels his longevity through exercise compared to his identical twin brother who did not exercise is a case study for the benefits of regular physical activity.
“Definitely so. I feel that if he would have exercised, he would have been able to do much better with his Parkinson’s. And it’s a shame that he didn’t. He just did not want to put the effort into exercise
“I would tell other people with Parkinson’s disease, start to exercise, but if you’re over the age of 40, don’t go out and try to jog or run five miles the first time. Start off slow. Start off maybe with a quarter of a mile.”
Van Epps is a 1957 Dover grad and was a doctor in Dover for around 40 years.