Good news for the desk bound…
We have all heard about the target of walking about 10,000 steps per day which roughly equates to walking 5 miles per day. Well many years ago when I worked long hours in IT some days, and lets be frank even some months, the possibility of me walking 10,000 steps per day was a pipe dream. I would say this was especially true in the winter when the dark skies, cold, wind and rain didn’t exactly entice me to go outside even though I love walking.
Researchers in Trondenheim University in Norway have discovered that in heart patients after just 12 weeks of walking 3000 steps every day, the hearts pumping function improved which in turn improved their ability to exercise.
They concluded that moderate continuous exercise, such as walking 3,000 steps or 1.5 miles in 30 minutes had as much benefit on the heart as more vigorous, intensive exercising. Moderate walking decreased the strain on the heart, improved heart muscle function, improved blood vessel dilatation, helped form new blood vessels and lowered blood pressure.
On average a sedentary person completes between 1,000 to 3,000 steps per day. Which is good news for the desk bound as you can now aim for 3,000 continuous steps which is much easier to achieve than 10,000!
Reference
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2017/01/19/CIRCULATIONAHA.116.022924
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According to the UK's Office for National Statistics the UK economy loses almost 31 million work days per year which costs the UK economy £14 billion to bad backs, neck & other muscle problems. A bad back is of the most common causes of absence and 80% of p will suffer with people will experience back pain at some point in their lives. At Vitality Therapy we find back pain is something we treat on a regular basis. I know a lot of my clients and potential clients are interested in what the latest scientific research is on how effective massage is for treating back pain, becuase they don't want to waste their time and money if massage isn't going to help them. Until now scientific studies of the effectiveness of massage were conducted in controlled research situations. However in a recent study, a physician sent patients to a massage therapist. The massage therapist designed and provided a series of 10 massage -- at no cost to the patient -- in a clinical treatment environment. This clinical treatment environment mimicks the experience of people who choose to seek massage in the real world. More than 50 percent of those who participated in the study experienced clinically meaningful improvements in their low back pain. The reasearches concluded that the study gives primary care providers (i.e. GPs) the confidence to tell patients with chronic low back pain to try massage, if the patients can afford to do so. References http://www.nhsemployers.org/news/2015/04/bad-backs-cost-the-uk-31-million-days-of-work Elder WG, Munk N, et al, 2017, Real Wold Massage Therapy Produces Meaningful Effectiveness Signal for Primary Care Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: Results of a Repeated Measures Cohort Study, Journal of Pain Medicine, 18(7):1394-1405
