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Hello, and welcome to our HEART Bunch video.
We are with USU Health Extension: Advocacy, Research,
and Teaching Initiative.
Today, we're going to be talking about exercises
for chronic pain management.
And to start us off, I'm going to send it over to Maren.
Great.
Thanks.
So there are several things that exercise
can do to improve chronic pain, and I'm just going
to mention six of the benefits.
The first one is it builds muscle strength.
And so a lot of times when pain starts to limit our activity,
our muscles can weaken over time.
And so to rebuild that muscle strength is such a benefit.
It also reduces fatigue.
Physical activity.
You'd think you'd get more tired,
but it actually has been shown to reduce fatigue.
And then there's the added benefit of improving sleep.
So a lot of times pain disrupts sleep,
but if you get some physical activity in the day,
we sleep a little bit better.
So important when you have chronic pain.
Another thing it does is it reduces pain sensitivity.
We know that when people experience a lot of pain,
the brain shifts in the way it responds to normal stimuli
and it becomes overactive, and we just
become more sensitive to stimuli and more things produce pain.
But exercise and physical activity
can reduce that hypersensitivity,
and reduces pain sensitivity because of that.
Another thing it does is it reduces inflammation.
We know inflammation causes pain,
and physical activity can help to reduce chronic inflammation.
And the last thing I'll mention as a benefit,
is it reduces depression, anxiety,
and overall, we get a boost in our mood, which
is a wonderful benefit of physical activity.
So those are few of the benefits.
So now let's learn a little bit about some
of the forms of exercise and activity that we can engage in
and help our chronic pain.
Thanks, Maren.
First up is strength training.
And strength training specifically
increases your muscle mass, which would otherwise naturally
decrease with age or inactivity, and also increases
bone density, which reduces the risk of fractures.
And the best part about strength training
is that you don't have to strength-train
with heavy weights or in a gym.
You can use your body weight, resistance bands,
even do exercises in a seated position,
or simply use items found around your house as weights.
Thanks, Rachel.
I'm going to talk about endurance next.
Endurance includes activities that
keep your heart, lung, and circulatory system healthy
and improves your overall fitness.
Endurance exercise improves your ability
to maintain energy for longer tasks.
You may also experience reduced inflammation and pain,
and have improved quality of life.
Endurance activities include walking or the low impact
activities like biking, swimming, water aerobic
to keep you moving for an extended period of time.
We've run out tasks around the house like vacuuming.
Sweeping and gardening also build
endurance to provide options for activity
for those with chronic pain.
As with any exercise programs, remember to begin slowly.
I'll turn it back over to Gabby.
Thanks, Tim.
And I'm going to finish this out with talking
about flexibility and balance.
Flexibility and balance, they help
us be able to maintain balance.
Basically they help us develop strength and the ability
to basically not fall over.
If we had issues with falling over or tripping, then
strengthening our balance, strengthening our flexibility
helps be able to manage those so that we don't end up
injuring ourselves.
It also helps with tasks that involve
where you need to stretch.
Like maybe if you need to bend down to pick something up,
or you have to reach up somewhere.
Maybe in a high cabinet you have to reach for something,
then have having good flexibility allows
for you to be able to do that without straining or causing
injury.
So some exercises and some forms of activity
that help strengthen our flexibility and balance
are things like tai chi and yoga, even things
like chair exercises, which are good for strength training
as well.
But chair exercises that allow you
to progress from doing the activity, sitting in a chair,
to something where you're standing up
or incorporate bouts of sitting and standing also
help improve our flexibility and balance.
And just to continue with what Tim said,
is you want to make sure that you do speak to your doctor
or health care professional before you engage
in any sort of physical activity or exercise,
just to make sure that you are able to do
those types of activities.
So if there's anything that you would like to start doing,
and it's something that's new to you
or you haven't done in a while, please
talk to a health care provider or your doctor
and get some information from them
and make sure that you're ready to go.
So we wanted to thank you.
And please keep in touch with USU's HEART initiative.
We are available on all of the cool social media
as well as our new YouTube playlist, which
is available under USU HEART.
And then we also have a couple of brief references for you
to check out where we got our information from.
And that is it.
Thank you so much for joining us.
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