By now, everyone knows that exercise is an important part of staying healthy into old age. Exercise has many benefits, both physically and mentally, and helping your elderly loved ones to stay physically fit is a key component of any senior health strategy. But, the more that researchers look into just how senior exercise can be beneficial, the more benefits that they are discovering. A recent study has found that not only does exercise help improve skill, coordination, and overall health, it also can help alleviate lower back pain. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but it is another piece of information that should help encourage more and more families to stress the importance of staying fit to their loved ones.
The concept is very simple. Participants in this study were given exercises to help improve the use of their core muscles. These exercises were supposed to help with balance, strength, and functioning. Core muscles can be defined as abdominal, pectoral, and back muscles. When these muscles were focused upon, those who took part, as a general group, experienced less back pain. This was one of the muscle groups that was focused upon, but the fact that pain went away is a very positive result, regardless of the original intent of the study.
If your elderly loved one receives no exercise, try taking steps to help change this. If your loved one cannot do things easily on their own, then you should consult a doctor to see what activities are safe. They may tell you that exercise should not be attempted without the supervision of a trained professional, or that physical therapy is needed. These are normal, safe approaches to this. Regardless of the hurdles that need to be jumped over, they should at least be attempted. If anything, the worst that can happen is that your mom or dad is in the same shape that they were in before. Best case scenario, their quality of life is improved and they live healthier and happier for the rest of their days. As long as it is approached correctly, this is what you should be hoping for.
For those that are in need of in-home care or some other type of senior care, exercise might be the furthest thing from your mind. However, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t important. Even if your loved one is under the supervision of a caregiver, simple things, such as flexibility exercises and strengthening activities can be done. Even if this just means using a couple cans of soup to do makeshift resistance exercises with, there are things that most people can manage without a professional physical therapist by their side. Still, make sure that a doctor approves anything that there might be even small doubts about.
Other studies have also shown that education in conjunction with exercise can have even better results in relieving pain. When people know what it is that they are exercising for, the purpose is made much clearer and goals can be more accurately reached.
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