Here are some common ailments for which exercise is good medicine. If you have one of these conditions, even the thought of exercise may be daunting. But give it a try – you won’t regret it.
Arthritis
If you’re one of the more than 4.3 million Australians and New Zealanders (about two-thirds of them women) who have arthritis, exercise can help reduce the pain and inflammation and preserve or restore range of motion and flexibility in each affected joint. Low-impact aerobic exercises like swimming, walking and bicycling are ideal for arthritis patients.
Cancer
Experts have long emphasised that a healthy diet has the potential to stave off certain cancers. Now they’re saying the same thing about exercise. One reason for that conclusion: research indicates that the risk of breast cancer may be directly related to a woman’s exercise habits, possibly because physical activity helps to lower the amount of oestrogen bombarding breast tissue.
In one major study, women under 40 who exercised at least 3.8 hours a week were found to have reduced their risk of breast cancer by about 60 per cent. More frequent exercise was shown to be even more protective. Another large study found that highly active women appear to be at a much lower risk of ovarian cancer, regardless of their age.
Other intriguing findings: a look at the health of men revealed a direct link between their activity levels and their risk of colon cancer. Men who did physical work had about half the lifetime risk of men with desk jobs who spent most of their days seated. And researchers at Harvard Medical School found that people who walked about 16 km a week (equal to a brisk 30-minute walk, five times a week) were half as likely to develop colon cancer as more sedentary subjects.
How does exercise ward off cancer? Several explanations have been offered. First, exercise leads to higher levels of NK-cells, the frontline defence against the emergence of tumours that might produce cancer. Second, being seriously overweight is statistically related to the development of certain types of cancer – breast cancer in particular. It seems logical, then, that people who exercise regularly would be less likely to be obese and therefore more likely to avoid the types of cancer that are influenced by body size. Exercise also speeds the passage of food through the body, leading to faster elimination of potentially cancer-producing compounds in food. This might explain, in part, an exercise-related decrease in colon cancer.
Depression
If you’re suffering from the blues, don’t be surprised if your doctor scribbles out a prescription that reads, ‘Take an exercise class.’ US research shows that regular exercise can have longer-lasting benefits than antidepressant medication. One study involved 156 people aged 50 and older who had been diagnosed with depression. Each was randomly assigned to one of three treatments: exercise classes, the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft) or a combination of the two.
At the end of four months, all showed lower rates of depression. But when researchers checked again six months later, they found that the people who exercised were much less likely to have suffered a relapse into depression than those in the medication-only group or the medication-plus-exercise group. |
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