“Life is about movement - everything that is alive moves.”
(1)
What a great thing to remember!
No matter your age, you have
to move. As you age, you have to move more (than
you may desire)! Life
is motion. Motion is life. Researchers are really delivering
some great information on this topic that will motivate
us all (and our loved ones!) to exercise so that we can all age
gracefully. Vancouver Disc Centers and our Vancouver chiropractic patients will all grow old better working together, exercising, moving, and meeting at the office for gentle Cox® treatment!
BED REST AND MOBILITY
Bed rest isn’t always best! It may be less
frightening than moving and be even a bit
calming. Vancouver Disc Centers will give you that! When hospitalized, there’s lots of bed rest, maybe even a bit too much for a patient’s
liking! A study of patients in an
acute care hospital ward found that inpatient
mobility was negligible despite their individual capabilities and desires to get up and move around. (1) It
is so important to keep acute patients - and those with new bouts of back pain and/or neck pain, too - moving to get them better! Beneficially, acutely hospitalized older
patients improved their muscle strength and power while hospitalized following a personalized
multicomponent exercise program that integrated power
training in as little as 3 days! (2) In a review of the good that exercise offers for frail older adults,
researchers emphasized the value of preserving
functional abilities for those who want to age healthily.
They further put emphasis on the
fact that exercise and physical activity are valuable
for the prevention of falls, hospital stays, improved
cognition, etc. Exercises from power training (yes – power training for older
folks!) to resistance training, balance exercises, aerobic training, walking,
etc. (3) Mobility is part of keeping frailty at bay, and
Vancouver Disc Centers encourages that!
FRAILTY AND MOBILITY
Those of us over 65 years old are said to be more at
risk to frailty, amplifying our risk of lot
of other adverse health issues, both cognitive
and physical. The hope we all have is that frailty is reversible.
Researchers have studied this issue by reviewing
published studies on this topic of frailty reversal. Luckily,
56.7% of the papers proposed that it is reversible (returning
a person who is frail/severely frail to a state of being ‘pre-frail’ or just
mildly so). (4) Those are promising
outcomes! One study shared that frail and even “pre” frail older
patients demonstrated better physical performance and function following
a short (6 week) facility-based exercise program that
involved a walking-based high intensity interval training. 64% improved
their frailty rating. Specifically, muscle power went up
by 47%, muscle strength rose 34%, and aerobic capacity rose
19%. (5) And other additional benefits with physical
activity in general: energy and a better emotional state! Frailty and aging are
more apt to decrease energy levels and increase
fatigue and emotional distress. Moving and physical activity has been reported
to contend with those feelings in older women as well as increase
life expectancy and lower some negative effects of a
sedentary lifestyle. (6) Vancouver Disc Centers thinks you will
agree that these are positive things!
CONTACT Vancouver Disc Centers
Listen to this PODCAST
with Dr. Tom Menendez on The
Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he
shares the effectiveness of the gentle
protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the elderly.
Schedule your Vancouver chiropractic
appointment today. You’re alive. What a wonderful thing, one to be thankful for by moving!