Daily Exercise The Key To Combating Chronic Pain

October 16, 2019 / Thomas Cohn, MD

As someone who has suffered from chronic back pain for more than a decade, I know just how hard it can be to manage a chronic condition on a daily basis. You have good days where you feel like you can conquer the world, and you have bad days where you don’t even want to get out of bed. No matter what kind of day you’re having, it’s important that you push through any discomfort and find time to exercise, because that’s likely your best bet at stringing together more good days than bad.

Daily exercise isn’t something that comes easy. Most of us can find some spare time throughout the week, but we can’t always carve out time every single day, and when we do get spare time, oftentimes we’d rather use it on anything other than exercise. However, it’s this consistency that might be just what you need to put your chronic pain in the past.

The Benefits Of Daily Exercise

A recent study decided to take a closer look at the benefits of moderate versus daily exercise when it comes to helping control problems associated with chronic pain. For the study, researchers conducted a small, weeklong study of 40 healthy women on their sensitivity to pain before and after exercise. The individuals were asked to walk briskly on a treadmill for their exercise, and patients were separated into three different groups. One group walked three times per week, another group walked five times a week, and the final group walked 10 times a week.

After reviewing the data, researchers found no differences in pain perception following exercise for those who exercised three times a week, but the findings were significantly different for those who exercised at least five times a week.

“We asked them to rate that pain,” said neuroscientist Benedict Kolber, lead researcher on the study. “And at the end of the study, they rated the same pressure — the exact same pressure — as 60% less painful than they rated it at the beginning of the study.”

In other words, a small dose of exercise did nothing for helping manage chronic pain, but a bigger dose worked wonders. A good motto to live by is to “Strive For Five” in terms of striving to exercise at least five times a week. However, it’s also worth remembering that you need to start slow. If you haven’t been a frequent exerciser, don’t go straight to exercising for an hour each day. Ramping up your activity too quickly can lead to overstress injuries and exacerbate inflammation. Start slow, be it 5-10 minutes a day, and work your way up from there. Focus on doing small amounts daily instead of a longer session 1-2 times a week, and work your way to longer durations.

There have been days where the last thing that I wanted to do was get up before work and work out, but I knew I needed to do it if I wanted to function at my best throughout the day. I try my best to work out every day, and my back pain has been much more controlled than in years past, even though I’m years older. Controlled exercise can be your best friend when it comes to caring for your pain condition. If you need help developing a safe exercise routine, or you want some tips on what types of activity might be best considering your condition, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

What Does It Mean To Be Physically Fit?

December 10, 2018 / Thomas Cohn, MD

fitness Everyone is told to exercise and become physically fit. However, what does it mean to be “physically fit?” The definition that is commonly used is as follows; a set of attributes that people have or achieve that relates to the ability to perform physical activity. Fitness can help prevent some diseases, improves body composition, strengthen the heart and circulation and improve muscle fiber ability. Factors involved in fitness include cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, body composition and flexibility.

The Components Of Fitness

The first factor often discussed with physical fitness is the cardiovascular and respiratory components of fitness. It includes the ability to perform aerobic activities like walking, to more intense exercise like sprinting. Aerobic activities increase the heart rate for a sustained period and improve the strength of the heart as a muscle and maintain the integrity of the vascular system. The lungs are a partner in this system moving air, extracting and delivering the needed oxygen. The recommended amount of aerobic conditioning is five times a week for 30 minutes total at 65% maximum heart rate for your age. Exercise can be done in small segments daily, 5-10 minutes at a time, while maximum heart rate is calculated from (210) – (your age) = (maximum heart rate).

Muscular strength is the ability of muscles to exert adequate force during activity. Any activity that works muscles against resistance and that causes muscle fatigue will increase strength. Muscle strengthening can be done by any number of activities such as weight training, using a rowing machine, performing Pilates, doing Tai Chi, or even just using gravity and your body for resistance. A physical therapist or an athletic trainer can often set one up with a program to build muscle strength. Along with exercise, protein from your diet is required for muscle development.

A third component of fitness is endurance, which is classified as the ability of muscles to continue to exert effort over a period of time without tiring. Two types of muscle fibers are used for endurance activities and they are slow twitch and fast twitch fibers. The slow twitch fibers are those used to perform endurance activities. They need lots of oxygen and can carry out prolonged tasks without fatigue. The fast twitch fibers contract quickly, can be used for sprint type activities and do not require significant blood and oxygen.

The most nebulous component of fitness is body composition. This is the relative amount of muscle, bone, water and fat in a person’s body. Your genetics, your fitness routine and your diet help to determine your body composition. The body type of a distance runner will be different from a weightlifter or a swimmer. The overall issue would be to have an appropriate body composition for the activities that one wants to perform and avoid having a high level of body fat.

The last component of physical fitness is having overall flexibility, the range movement across your joints. It is dependent on the tightness of muscles, tendons and ligaments across your joints. As one becomes older, deterioration of the joints from the natural aging process can sometimes limit flexibility. Surgical procedures such as fracture repairs, spinal fusions or joint replacements can also limit flexibility. Stretching exercises are often necessary to maintain flexibility. Again, some exercises like yoga and Tai Chi are excellent ways to maintain flexibility as part of a fitness program. If you have low back or neck issues, flexibility and stretching are helpful to reduce pain by preventing excessive muscle tightness. Muscles naturally try to tighten to prevent too much movement of a possibly painful area such as a joint. However, maintaining more normal motion in an area tends to improve structure health and decreases pain from abnormal stress on the region.

Physical fitness means maintaining regular exercise to benefit your health. It involves five aspects: cardiorespiratory performance, strength, endurance, flexibility and body composition. Optimizing each of the above components leads to becoming physically fit. It is a process and needs to be done on a daily basis.

How Exercise Affects Your Brain

June 2, 2015June 3, 2015 / Thomas Cohn, MD

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune by Julie Deardorff gives a person another reason to exercise. Physical fitness has a crucial role in how the brain develops and functions. From infancy to old age, exercise is linked to positive changes in the brain.

Starting in infancy, movement is necessary for proper development. In children, exercise has been shown to improve attention and focus, as well as developing coordination and ability to perform complex motions. In the elderly, new work is showing the benefit of physical exercise in staving off dementia.

Brain Benefits

Physical exercise has a broad range of benefits for the brain. These effects are true across our whole life span. Higher cognitive functions of attention, memory and multi-tasking are improved by exercise. In the 1990’s, the protein brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) was found. This protein supports the growth of brain cells. Exercise triggers the production of BDNF.

Now we know exercise is good for all aspects of the body, and doctors and health associations are taking note. The American Heart Association has promoted exercise for the improving your heart health. Pain physicians have promoted exercise to reduce pain by elevating endogenous opioids in the body. All physicians promote exercise to help in healing injuries, as exercise is critical to keep us healthy in mind and body. There is no perfect pill that will alleviate your ailments; sometimes the best course of action is to get off the couch and go for a run.