Articles and Advice
Exercise can help with health problems, study reveals
Exercise has been cited as a key factor for improving the mood of people with chronic health problems, Reuters reports.
According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, those with chronic health problems such as cancer, heart disease and back pain could alleviate fatigue, depressive symptoms or other mental health issues through exercising.
This could spark older people with health problems to renew their gym membership in a bid to combat fatigue, mood swings and other by-product symptoms of health problems.
Researchers searched through 90 previous studies which included more than 10,000 people with chronic health problems. In each study, people had been randomly chosen to do either a variety of exercises three times a week for 17 weeks - or no exercise at all.
Matthew Herring PhD, the study's author, noted a drop of 22 per cent in depressive symptoms from the exercise group, cites scopeblog.standford.edu. Exercising is important because depressive symptoms could make people "less likely to take their meds" and decrease their quality of life.
In addition, at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week seemed to help more than 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise per week did.
Herring commented on the study: "The magnitude of the effect of exercising training on depressive symptoms among patients found in our reviews is small but significant."
