exercise

Leave a comment Posted on Incontinence, Multiple Sclerosis

How to Help Control Incontinence with Food and Exercise – A massive issue for the multiple sclerosis community!

How to Help Control Incontinence with Food and Exercise

How to Help Control Incontinence with Food and Exercise

Urinary incontinence – stress, urge or both – affects many people. So much so, many sufferers rely on various incontinence products to help them manage it on a daily basis.

There are many different ways of controlling incontinence, from practicing specific pelvic floor muscle exercises to understanding how food and drink can impact on incontinence.

The digestive system is part of the body and so it makes sense that we eat and drink, as we well as how active we are, will be reflected in our overall digestive health. Being aware of your diet and striving to maintain your fitness are both important factors in regaining and maintaining control over urinary incontinence issues.

There is a saying that 80% of the results in the gym happen in the kitchen and are related to the choices we make when it comes to food and drink. What you consume on a daily basis can have an impact on your incontinence too, with common bladder irritants already identified.

However, the effects on people will vary from one to another. You may find that spicy foods do not seem to irritate your bladder but consuming citrus fruits or juices does. If you do consume these foods, take note of how they impact on your incontinence issues and how much, eliminating them from your diet accordingly.

Fluids

There is no ‘diet’ to cure incontinence but what you do consume can have an effect on incontinence. There are symptoms you may be able to manage by making small changes to your diet. Some people complete a food diary for a time, monitoring their food and fluid intake to see if they can establish a link or a pattern between what they are eating and drinking, and urination.

Drinking more water may seem counter-intuitive but, by decreasing your water or fluid intake, you could actually be making incontinence worse. Decreasing fluids can mean that the bladder becomes more irritated because urine becomes more concentrated. It can also trigger a growth in bacteria that can also trigger or make incontinence worse.

Drinking between six to eight glasses of water a day – around 8oz of water per glass – can have beneficial results. Spread your drinking throughout the day, rather than gulping it all in one go.

Strengthen the whole body

It is common to focus solely on certain areas, such as the pelvic floor muscles, when dealing with urinary incontinence. But, there is a school of thought that suggests developing an exercise regime that engages the entire body will be just as beneficial.

Enhancing the cardiovascular system, becoming more flexible and increasing stamina all contribute to both physical and emotional well-being, important in dealing with incontinence.

Strength

Your strength is the ability of your muscles to generate force for everyday tasks. For example, standing up from a chair requires strength in the legs. Our strength peaks when we are in our 20s and 30s but this does not mean that after this age, our strength simply disappears.

What we do need to do as we age, is to exercise so that we slow the progress of the weakening of our muscles. And this can be done from using free weights, to using resistance bands to using tins of canned food to perform arm curls.

These exercises need to be done daily and have an almost immediate impact on the body. The pelvic floor is a muscles, responsible for supporting the bladder and bowel; by performing pelvic floor exercises on a daily basis, you can regain strength and control of these important muscles and prevent the incidences of loss of control over your bladder. Again, age is no barrier!

Healthy weight

The advice is everywhere and although the advice on how to best and safely lose weight can be conflicting, the message is still clear – losing 10% of your body weight (if you are overweight) can have significant impact on your overall health.

Maintaining a healthy weight to height ratio has never been easy but for those people suffering from urinary incontinence, excess body fat can place pressure on the bladder, bowel and digestive system. Again, when combined with regular exercise, losing weight will impact on urinary incontinence, decreasing the likelihood of accidental urine leaks.

In summary

For some people, urinary incontinence is a by-product of an illness or condition and managing it on a daily basis with incontinence products is necessary.

There are also cases, however, where urinary incontinence can be controlled and managed by avoiding certain food or drink irritants, as well as maintaining a healthy weight and lifestyle.

 

HARTMANN Direct provides a range of incontinence products to both men and women. Managing the symptoms of urinary and bowel incontinence is important and knowing that you can trust the products you use is just as important. Small changes in lifestyle can also have a big impact.

Posted on Autism

Praise may motivate young adults with autism to exercise more

Autism and exercise

Autism and exercise

Due to the special benefits of regular physical activity for people with autism, researchers explored how to increase their engagement in a regular exercise routine through positive reinforcement.

Simple statements of praise may have a big effect on the amount of exercise young adults with autism complete, according to preliminary research from the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). The study also found that praising people with autism by pre-recorded messages through iPhones and iPods shows promise for producing more exercise.

“As people with autism age, they tend to exercise less and less than their peers without autism,” said FPG’s Melissa N. Savage, who headed the study. “Previous studies have shown that individuals with autism are at special risk for health challenges like obesity, as well as for secondary conditions like depression and diabetes.”

Savage said that in addition to health benefits that regular physical activity carries for everyone, it also can be especially powerful for people with autism.

“Prior research has demonstrated that regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise for people with autism can increase their academic engagement in the classroom,” she explained. “They tend to spend more time on task and display fewer challenging behaviors.”

Due to the benefits of regular physical activity for people with autism, Savage wanted to explore how to increase their engagement in a regular exercise routine through positive reinforcement, a well-established practice for use with people with autism. FPG’s autism team had recognized the value of positive reinforcement in a seminal 2014 report on evidence-based practices and subsequently developed groundbreaking training on it with its globally popular AFIRM online instruction.

Savage’s study was different from prior research on reinforcement, though, for two main reasons. First, she focused on the impact of praise in and of itself, rather than pairing it with other reinforcement. Second, she examined the impact of how that praise was delivered–either in person or by technology.

“With technology use in physical activity becoming more commonplace, it was important to determine its advantages or disadvantages to provide needed support,” Savage said. “We wanted to know under which condition participants would engage in more aerobic activity and which condition they preferred.”

For this small single-subject design study, she implemented an exercise program for three young adults with autism, ages 20-22, and followed their daily progress through multiple sessions under different conditions.

While participants were running laps around cones, they heard the same voice either in-person or through headphones on a fixed schedule, delivering various praise statements, such as “Good job running around the cones!” or “You are doing a great job running Mason!” These praise statements incorporated the target behavior (running), which the autism team’s AFIRM online instruction highlights as an important feature of effective reinforcement.

“We found that introducing praise statements corresponded with more physical activity for all participants,” Savage said. “The number of laps increased for all of them, regardless of whether they received praise in person or through technology.”

According to Savage, though, the impact of praise on exercise may not have been the most important finding.

“When it comes to motivating young adults with autism to exercise, part of the solution may lie in making use of technology,” she said. “Participants who excelled when hearing praise statements through technology also maintained their performances even when we thinned out the praise statements and generalized the exercise to a new setting.”

Savage also said that using technology has several additional advantages. Especially among young adults, cell phones and iPods are popular and carry no stigma. Using them for support may also help people with autism feel more independent.

Relying on technology to deliver praise statements or provide other support also saves time.

“In-person praise required much more attention to the participant during intervention, and it was harder to be consistent with the time-based schedule,” she said. “Using the mobile devices required about 5 minutes to record and upload the praise statements, but there wasn’t any additional work needed once that was done.”

With funding from the Organization of Autism Research, Savage has begun the new “Step It Up” study at FPG to evaluate the effectiveness of a self-managed exercise program in which adults with autism and an intellectual disability will use Fitbits.

“As technologies become more available in schools and homes, we have to keep abreast of the advantages they can have for people with autism,” she said.

Posted on Multiple Sclerosis

Researchers propose conceptual framework to study role of exercise in multiple sclerosis

MS experts advise systematic approach to exercise research: The PRIMERS (PRocessing, Integration of Multisensory Exercise-Related Stimuli) Conceptual Framework

 

CAPTION

Dr. DeLuca is senior vice president of Research & Training at Kessler Foundation.

CREDIT

Kessler Foundation

 

 

Researchers have proposed a conceptual framework for examining the relationship between exercise and adaptive neuroplasticity in the population with multiple sclerosis (MS). The article, ” Integrative CNS Plasticity with Exercise in MS: The PRIMERS (PRocessing, Integration of Multisensory Exercise-Related Stimuli) Conceptual Framework”, was published in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair 2018 Sep 12. (doi: 10.1177/1545968318798938). The authors are Brian Sandroff, Robert W. Motl, William R. Reed, Aron Barbey, Ralph H.B. Benedict and John DeLuca.

Researchers are increasingly exploring the effects of exercise in various clinical populations, but little attention is being focused on the neural mechanisms that underlie positive changes in mobility and cognition. Using this conceptual framework will enable scientists to systematically examine the effects of exercise on brain connectivity, brain structure, and molecular/cellular mechanisms in the population with MS, and develop new strategies for rehabilitative care.

“Many individuals with MS develop disabling deficits in mobility and cognition,” said John DeLuca, PhD, senior VP of Research and Training at Kessler Foundation, and a co-author of the article. “Exercise is a low-cost, non-invasive modality that relieves both types of symptoms,” noted Dr. DeLuca, “so we are very interested in learning more about how activity results in these improvements. Rethinking how we view exercise in our plans for the long-term management of people with MS and other neurological conditions is our first step. We anticipate that use of the PRIMERS framework will accelerate advances in treatment by integrating the contributions from neuroscience, neurophysiology, and neurorehabilitation,” Dr. DeLuca concluded.

###

Article link: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1545968318798938

Supported by National MS Society (CA 1069-A-7)

About Kessler Foundation

Kessler Foundation, a major nonprofit organization in the field of disability, is a global leader in rehabilitation research that seeks to improve cognition, mobility and long-term outcomes, including employment, for people with neurological disabilities caused by diseases and injuries of the brain and spinal cord. Kessler Foundation leads the nation in funding innovative programs that expand opportunities for employment for people with disabilities. To learn more, visit KesslerFoundation.org.

Posted on Fibromyalgia

10 Best Exercises for Fibromyalgia

Image result for 10 Best Exercises for Fibromyalgia youtube

Fibromyalgia is the inflammatory muscular disease that causes wide spread pain in several muscles simultaneously. Exercising can be quite beneficial is helping you cope with the fibromyalgia pain in neck and shoulder blade muscles.

Leave a comment Posted on Exercise

Light activity ‘may be enough to help you live longer’

Light exercise

Light exercise

“Pottering around the garden or walking the dog is enough to help older men live longer,” reports The Daily Telegraph.

UK researchers used monitors to track the activity levels of 1,181 men aged 71 to 92. They found those who were the most active were likely to live longer.

People in the UK are advised to take at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week in bouts of 10 minutes or more.

But the study found even light activity was beneficial. It didn’t matter how long each bout of activity lasted, as long as the target of 150 minutes a week was met.

The problem with this type of study is that it’s hard to know whether people live longer because they do more physical activity, or whether they do more activity because they’re generally in better health and so live longer.

Even though the researchers tried to account for other factors that might have affected how long the men lived, this study can’t prove that being more active increases your lifespan.

That said, the study’s take-home message is simple and positive: short bouts of light activity of any duration all add up and may increase your chances of living longer.

If you can only manage a short walk or some gentle gardening, that’s a lot better than doing nothing.

Where did the story come from?

The study was carried out by researchers from University College London, Bristol Medical School and St George’s Medical School London in the UK, and Harvard Medical School in the US.

It was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute of Health Service Research.

The study was published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Sports Medicine and is free to read online.

The study was widely reported, with most UK media reports being reasonably accurate.

The emphasis on “a few minutes of light exercise” being enough to help people live longer, however, could make people think there’s no point in doing more than that.

In fact, the study showed that the more active people were, the better.

What kind of research was this?

This was part of a long-term cohort study involving survivors of a study that began in 1978.

Researchers wanted to investigate the effects of objectively measured physical activity on length of life in older men.

Cohort studies are a good way to spot patterns and links between factors – in this case, physical activity and length of life – but they can’t prove that one directly causes the other.

What did the research involve?

Researchers approached 3,137 men who were part of a long-running study of men’s health.

They asked them to come for a health check and to wear an activity monitor for 7 days. They followed them up until the end of the study (an average of 5 years).

They then looked at how many men survived to the end of the study, and whether their activity measures at the start of the study were linked to their chances of still being alive.

The researchers adjusted their figures to take account of potential confounding factors.

The activity monitors recorded:

  • minutes spent in sedentary activity (such as sitting or lying down)
  • minutes spent in light activity, such as gentle walking
  • minutes spent in moderate to vigorous activity, such as brisk walking or cycling

As well as total time, the monitors tracked bouts of activity – for example, hours spent sitting down without moving or minutes spent walking without a break.

Potential confounding factors included:

  • cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption
  • usual length of sleep at night
  • whether the men lived alone
  • cardiovascular disease at the start of the study
  • walking disability
  • social class and geographical region

What were the basic results?

Half the men approached agreed to take part. Researchers excluded those who’d had a heart attack, heart failure or stroke.

They had sufficient activity monitor data to include 1,274 men in the study.

The average time men spent wearing the activity monitor was 855 minutes (14 hours) a day.

Average activity levels were:

  • 616 minutes spent sedentary
  • 199 minutes spent in light activity
  • 33 minutes spent in moderate or vigorous activity

Men who were more active were likely to be younger (average age was 78), non-smokers and drink less alcohol, and less likely to have a walking disability.

During the 5 years they were followed up, 194 men died.

Time spent sedentary or active was linked to how likely people were to have lived to the end of the study:

  • each additional 30 minutes a day spent sedentary was linked to a 15% increase in chances of death (hazard ratio [HR] 1.15, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.07 to 1.23)
  • each additional 30 minutes a day spent doing light activity was linked to a 15% reduction in chances of death (HR 0.85, 95% CI 0.78 to 0.92)
  • each additional 30 minutes a day spent doing moderate to vigorous activity was linked to an 8% reduction in chances of death (HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.98)

Men who managed the government target of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each week were about 40% less likely to have died by the end of the study, regardless of whether they did this in bouts of 1 to 9 minutes, or bouts of 10 minutes and more.

How did the researchers interpret the results?

The researchers said their results “could refine physical activity guidelines and make them more achievable for older adults with low activity levels” by “stressing the benefits of all activities, however modest”.

They added that guidelines should encourage “accumulating activity of all intensities without the need to sustain bouts of 10 minutes or more”.

Conclusion

The importance of staying active in older age is becoming increasingly clear, but many older people find it difficult to meet targets set for the wider population.

This study provides useful information about physical activity levels in a group of older men in the UK and how activity may be linked to length of life.

It’s particularly useful that the group wore activity monitors, as much research about physical activity is based on people estimating what they did, which can be inaccurate.

But this study has some limitations. It only involved older men in the UK, who were mostly white, so the results may not translate to women, other ethnic groups, or younger men.

Although the researchers tried to account for confounding factors, these may still have some unmeasured effects.

That means we can’t be completely sure that physical activity was the reason that the more physically active men lived longer.

And activity monitors can’t always tell the difference between someone sitting still and standing still, so may overestimate sedentary time.

The general message of the study is positive for older people: it’s worth keeping active, even if you can’t do very vigorous activity.

Short bursts of gentle activity of any duration all add up and may increase your chances of living longer.