Exercise And Fitness Relieves Leg Pains

Many people who suffer from peripheral arterial disease are also cursed with leg pains. These pains are often treated by the use of various drugs and even surgery.

Now new clinical trials performed by Sandra Spronk, Ph.D suggest that such treatments could be avoided by the use of exercise supervised by trained hospital staff.

She believes that a new fitness regime can have substantial effects assisting many patients that are affected by peripheral arterial disease to lead fuller lives simply by exercising and getting fit.

She conducted clinical trials and discovered that over a period of a year patients suffering from this problem had far better results either working with exercise regime alone or in conjunction with other treatments such as drugs or a procedure called endovascular revascularization.

She says that although the traditional treatments can be effective they are enhanced greatly if the patient simply exercises and makes an attempt to get fit.

She believes that added fitness improves blood flow to the legs and thus alleviates a large amount or even all of the pain.

She studied over 150 patients and randomly selected some to make use of a special hospital exercise regime for just 30 minutes twice per week. These simple exercises included basic treadmill walking.

She found that those that undertook exercise and also became generally fitter suffered considerably less pain than those who only took drugs or other procedures to help with the pain.