Today, the number of patients who are having joint replacement surgery, whether the hips or knees which are probably the most common, is increasing. This is in part, due to the negative effects on the joints of obesity; however, a recent study has indicated that exercising prior to surgery will transition you through a joint replacement much more rapidly.
A study published in October of this year in the journal Arthritis Care and Research indicates that exercising before a hip or knee replacement can speed your recovery from surgery. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, New England Baptist Hospital, studied 108 patients scheduled to have hip or knee replacement. One half of the patients were assigned to exercise three times per week for six weeks before their operation. The other 54 patients were given education materials only. The individuals who exercised three times per week were 73% less likely than the others to require discharge to an outpatient rehab center. In other words, these individuals were discharged to go home. They were also more likely to be able to walk more than fifty feet before leaving the hospital. Only three weeks of rehabilitative exercising strength training – that’s nine sessions – were required by these pre-operative exercise patients. This is far less than is generally recommended for post operative rehab for joint replacement.
This brings me to another subject, that being exercise in general. As I noted in a previous article, 25% of Americans do not exercise at all on a daily basis. Now let’s look at the mortality statistics related to exercise. Exercise will decrease the death rate in the United States due to a variety of causes by 30%. A 30% decrease in the death rate in the United States, due to a variety of different conditions would be a dramatic change in our overall survival rate. This requires 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day – that’s it! Thirty minutes per day, and you’ll decrease your likelihood of dying by 30%.
Let’s look at some more the statistics. In the last 100 years, the average weight per person has increased by 22 pounds. We can decrease our healthcare costs in this country just by having every individual exercise on a daily basis.
A number of years ago I wrote an article regarding health care costs and how to deal with them by giving a single multivitamin to every Geriatric individual in the United States. The impact on our overall healthcare system would be dramatic just with this one change. Billions of dollars would be saved annually in health care costs. Simple things can make dramatic changes – exercise being one – everyone must consider an exercise program every day to help them live longer.
As I also noted in a previous article, our average lifespan today is 77 years; however, our average functional lifespan is 64 years, meaning that the last 13 years of our lives are spent in and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices dealing with chronic, degenerative, debilitating disease. This is no way to live, and you must change now!
Think about this, if you can make slight changes in your daily routine to allow for exercise and utilization of better nutrition, you will increase your lifespan – no question. No other drugs are needed to do this. Take these recommendations seriously and begin applying them, and you will live a longer, healthier life.
For more information on this and other studies, please take some time to visit our website, www.upchiropractic.com. If you would like to receive more information regarding alternative health care issues, please email us at upchiropractic@verizon.net and request to be added to our newsletter mailing list.