It’s never too late to start the exercises as the studies suggest that moderate to hard level exercise can prevent chronic musculoskeletal pain due to aging.
The Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain And Intense Exercise As The Solution
Regularly and correctly performed exercise has many benefits related to health as various studies over time suggest that the body adapts actively to regular exercises thereby decreasing the mortality rate substantially over time.
With the development of modern sciences and modern machines, human life expectancy has increased from less than 30 years to approximately 70 years. In that sense, people do look for ways to keep themselves healthy and live an active, energized life.
People who are looking for a happy and active life with age without worrying about the side effects of aging- bone, joint, and muscle pains that don’t go away easily- might have to rethink their lifestyle and start doing intense and vigorous exercises at least once a week as the studies suggest moderate to mild physical activities don’t have much effect on developing chronic pain.
Studies suggest that a hard exercise if at least done once a week- running, digging, hard labor work, swimming, etc- can ward off chronic musculoskeletal pain due to aging.
The latest study done by Dr. Nils Niederstrasser at the University of Portsmouth, and his team evaluated over 5805 people aged over 50 years in 10 years.
The study found that at least half of them- over 2400- were found with musculoskeletal pain over a period of 10 years.
Dr. Nils accordingly concluded that chronic pain is a serious and widespread issue that many people are facing currently due to non-physical activities thereby taking off at work. He expressed concerns that there is a lack of longitudinal studies among older people related to factors promoting aging-related pain.
Accordingly, Dr. Nils included in his study four factors related to chronic pain- BMI, Weight, Financial Health, and age- over a long period of time.
Dr. Nina Attridge, also at the University of Portsmouth, and the report co-author concluded that all activities lower the chance of suffering pain in the future, but when it comes to hard exercises, it reduces the chances of suffering from chronic musculoskeletal pain to a great extent. Also, being poor, overweight and a female independently increases the risk of chronic musculoskeletal pain.
The author of this study is hopeful that the people who design programs, weight loss plans, exercise plans, for other people would find encouragement and fresh insights to go ahead with. Not only this, but the same people could also come up with a way to help people from low income in reducing their risk of chronic pain with age.
The moderate activities in this study include dancing, walking, stretching, and gardening, and the mild activities in this study include gardening, laundry, and DIY.
According to Dr. Nils, activities that are mild won’t possibly reduce the risk of developing chronic pain, rather the activities should be intense and done at least once a week.
As for people who do cycling once a month, with little household physical work would be classified as somewhat inactive, and such people might have the risk of developing chronic pain in their later years.
The study conducted by Dr. Nils also suggested that women are at more risk of developing chronic pain than men, possibly because of hormonal imbalances, being overweight, or being poor. Being overweight adds a burden to the joints of the body thereby increasing the risk of chronic pain. As for low-income people, a higher share of their income goes in for basic survival as they have less disposable income to take care of themselves. Not to mention, a portion of that goes to insurances and national health services to treat general ailments or diseases.
