Healthy Aging Month

Central Idea: Exercise and physical activity are a great way to feel better, gain health benefits and have fun.

1. Exercise can help improve arthritis for seniors who suffer from it. Range-of-motion, strength and endurance exercises can all relieve stiffness, improve flexibility and lessen pain.

Exercise or activity can improve your long term health and prevent risk of several diseases. The German Research

of physical exertion. Regular physical activity has significant health benefits, and even modest increases in energy expenditure can have health enhancing effects.

This article tells us what the advantages of exercising are. “Physical activity is essential to optimizing both physical and mental health and can play a vital role in the management of arthritis” (Bartlett) This type of physical activity helps the joints move more easily and helps enlarge the muscles. Another main point is that doctors of arthritic patients can motivate them to start exercising their joints and muscles. These patients trust their doctors to give them the right information and listen to them and do what they tell them to do rather than listening to non-professionals. Moreover, arthritic patients should be mentally ready to do physical activity. They need to be ready to exercise and be confident. Exercising not only helps with

With the New Year comes a renewed passion for fitness goals, whether it is running your first 5K, competing in a triathlon or simply committing to walking a mile every day. But if you have chronic pain caused by a stiff neck or degenerative disc disease, it may be difficult to find the motivation to achieve the success you crave or take control of your overall health and physical fitness.

This literature review was conducted with 5 research databases through peer reviewed journals from 1998 to 2005. Recent studies show that late life exercise has a positive outcome on the relief of pain, more flexibility, or range of motion, but it does not however, validate that this late life exercise or physical activity reverses or stops function in limited disabilities. Further research lead to the findings that arthritis has a great benefit when it comes to late life exercise. Research also lead to the findings in the psychological aspect as well. Lower levels of depression, worry about falling, and stress of completing activities of daily living effectively were some of the positive outcomes that exercise brought about for the older populations. There is not sufficient scientific evidence to show that any corresponding health methods are beneficial for rheumatoid arthritis, and there are safety concerns for a few of them. Not all physical and psychological practices can help with rheumatoid arthritis to manage symptoms. So may be helpful to have additions to conventional rheumatoid arthritis treatments, but there is not enough evidence to draw

When Jones et al. (2014) distributed the 32-item questionnaire on the NRAS website and e-newsletter 1,842 people were members of the NRAS, but once the study was complete only 247 people participated. This included 217 females and 30 males. Approximately 96% of NRAS members are from either England or Scotland. The participants ranged in age from 40-60 years old, disease duration, physical activity levels, and self-efficacy. Researchers found positive correlations between the age of the participant and the duration of the disease and also a correlation between physical activity levels and self-efficacy for exercise, as expected. Although 58% of participants stated they had previous medical conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol, and osteoarthritis, this test was carefully and professionally designed for joint issues associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The final questionnaire represented a S-BX2= 774.47, df=692 (degrees of freedom, number of values in final study), p<0.001, RMSEA=0.06, 90% CI, and SRMR-.10. The most important value in validating our data is the low p-value indicating strong evidence against the null-hypothesis (Rumsey, 2013). This means that the data collected shows strong evidence against no relationship between physical activity and joints Rheumatoid Arthritis patients. From the 32- factor questionnaire, each question was put into the 5 subscales developed by the initial small focal group. The final results revealed that 72 % of patients

According to the National Institute of Health, participating in regular exercise is one of the most beneficial things a senior can do for themselves. Not only does exercise produce many long-term health benefits, but it can help seniors maintain their independences and quality of life. The opposite is true as well, a sedentary lifestyle can be quite damaging to a seniors health. Per the NIH, "When older people lose their ability to do things on their own, it doesn't happen just because they've aged. It's usually because they're not active. Lack of physical activity also can lead to more visits to the doctor, more hospitalizations, and more use of medicines for a variety of illnesses."

The doctor preforms a physical exam, checks for symptoms, and sometimes x-rays the body to diagnose arthritis. In the article “Diagnosis and Management of RA”, it speaks about the earlier the disease is caught and the more physical exams and studies are performed then the better the outcome of the disease (Majithia, 2007, p. 936-939). My grandmother has arthritis, and treatments vary from medications to therapy and she functions off the use of medications to reduce the pain. The article, “Arthritis Prevalence and Activity Limitations in Older Adults” says that there are physical activity limitations when diagnosed with Arthritis such as a small use of affected joints and stiffness during activities (Dunlap, 2001, p.212-221). From my training

In addition to helping improve your asthma control, the short- and long-term benefits of exercise include boosting your mood, improving your balance, strengthening your bones, and lowering your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Exercise can reduce risk of major illnesses such as heart diseases, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer by up to 50% and it can lower your risk of early death by up to 30%.

Engaging in physical activity can reduce your chances of getting diseases including certain cancers, heart disease and stroke. This is because during physical exercise your heart becomes stronger and therefore isn’t so prone to developing these diseases, especially heart disease and strokes. Coronary heart disease and stroke share many of the same risk factors such as high LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, physical inactivity, and being overweight or obese. (American Stroke Association, 2015, p. 1). Being physically active reduces the chance of you becoming overweight, and overweight individuals again are more likely to experience these diseases. Being physically active can improve your hearts ability to work by lowering your blood pressure and increasing your ability to have blood flow around the body. Strokes are mostly caused when an artery that takes blood to the heart gets blocked. This results in the blood not being able to get to where it needs to go. Being a healthy

It is well-known that exercise applies physiological stress on systems; for instance on the muscular and cardiovascular systems, causing long term physiological adaptation if it is occurs persistently over a period of time. Exercise could be utilized in rheumatic diseases if applied correctly in order to interrupt the cycle of chronic inflammation by inducing anti-inflammatory effects via releasing cytokines with anti-inflammatory properties (Petersen and Pedersen. 2005). In the long term, exercise can improve muscular function which is diminished in RA due to muscle cachexia. Exercise is also beneficial to reduce the risk of attaining a comorbidity such as cardiovascular or metabolic diseases (Benatti and Pedersen. 2014). Research is required on the prescription of exercise and how to apply it into the lives of patients. Studies are being done in these areas however these are different in terms of the principles of training (Frequency, Intensity, Duration and Type of exercise). They also differ in the types of patients used in the studies. Thus further study needs to investigate the optimal prescription, exercise delivery and assist adherence to training (Cooney, Law et al. 2011).

In the United States, arthritis has become the second most common disorder, in the past years. Moreover, the condition affects more than 34 million Caucasians, 4.6 million African-Americans and nearly 3.1 million Hispanics with women being the most affected (Helmick, 2008). 28.3% of people suffering from arthritis are women whereas 18.2% are men (Helmick, 2008). By the year 2030, it is predicted that the number of patients with arthritis will double if prevalence rates remain the same. Apart from being cost-intensive, Osteoarthritis (OA) affects nearly twenty seven million Americans, which effectively limits their work (Reid, Shengelia & Parker, 2012). The statistics show that Caucasians are the most affected and the Hispanics to be the less affected from Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans. It also shows how women also have greater possibilities of getting arthritis than man ever did.