Aaron Thompson has loved sports since he was in high school. Then, he was a keen basketball player. As a young adult, he continued to enjoy an athletic lifestyle, working out daily even after being diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), a disease of the central nervous system, when he was 23.
RRMS is characterized by clearly defined attacks followed by periods of partial or complete recovery.
“I was an energetic guy who happened to have multiple sclerosis,” Thompson says.
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Tips for safe exercise with multiple sclerosis
- Always warm up before beginning the exercise routine and cool down at the end.
- If you plan to work out for 30 minutes, start with 10-minute work out sessions and work your way up.
- Work out in a safe environment; avoid slippery floors, poor lighting, throw rugs and other potential tripping hazards.
- If you have difficulty balancing, exercise within reach of a grab bar or rail.
- If you feel sick or are in pain, stop.
- Select an activity that you enjoy, e.g. water aerobics, swimming, tai chi and yoga.
- MS symptoms may worsen when body heat rises, so don’t exercise during the hot time of the day and drink plenty of cool fluids.
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“We recommend that our patients should be as active as possible, keeping in mind that they need to be safe, whatever the activity,” says Trudy Campbell, one of only three nurse practitioners in Canada specializing in working with multiple sclerosis patients.
“Exercise, learning strategies to cope with stress, adequate nutrition, maintaining an ideal body weight and family support all play a role in living with MS,” she says. “Most important of all are being informed about the disease, having the appropriate health care team to assist with its management and learning to prioritize tasks and budget one’s energy to cope most effectively with whatever has to be done in a day.”
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Nintendo Wii (pronounced ‘we’) is potentially revolutionising the way we exercise and making it a more interesting option for keeping fit and active between treatment sessions, which can involve friends and family. “As a neuro-physio with 17 years’ experience, I know the difficulties which arise when clients do not regularly practice recommended exercises,” says Colin. “But here at Physio Matters, we’ve been successfully using Nintendo Wii for over 18 months to enhance clients’ enjoyment of exercise and the benefits they can gain as a result.”
More on Does Wii-hab work? | Physio Matters
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Six Thousand Metres a Day for 12 Years | British Rowing
72 year old Keith Atkinson, President of Nottingham Rowing Club, has just completed rowing 30 million metres on the rowing machine. It has taken him 12 years – the equivalent of rowing over 6 thousand metres every day! Here is his inspiring story:
When I began in December 1997″, explained Keith “I had two main objectives. One was to learn as much as possible about the machine as my wife and I were part of the newly-formed Concept 2 Education Team. The other was to maintain my aerobic fitness level. I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis which was making walking increasingly difficult, so sitting down and exercising was a good option. More by accident than design, I settled into 2 million metres a year pattern. In 1999 and 2000 I was fortunate to race at the World Indoor Rowing Championships in Boston #Massachusetts# where I won the bronze medals in the over-65 Lightweight category.
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Talking about Yoga a good activity for MS patients – chicagotribune.com
Yoga guru Baron Baptiste says that when he was approached about developing a yoga program for multiple sclerosis patients, he grabbed the opportunity.
“It was kind of exciting to me to take my skills of teaching yoga and making the benefits of yoga available to people with MS, sculpting it to fit people in their condition,” Baptiste said during a demonstration of the program, called MyMS Yoga.
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Talking about Multiple Sclerosis Walking Best Ways to Improve – Disaboom
Multiple Sclerosis Walking Experts
To address this issue, a panel of nurses and physical therapists met in 2009 to discuss how to help improve the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of walking impairment in people with multiple sclerosis. Their conclusions were published in the International Journal of MS Care in its Spring 2010 issue.
The panel members, led by June Halper, director of the International Organization of Multiple Sclerosis Nurses, and Amy Perrin Ross, neuroscience coordinator at Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois, noted that many patients and their care partners don’t even have a basic understanding of how multiple sclerosis progresses, relapses, and what impact it has on their walking. The panel emphasized that effective treatment of multiple sclerosis requires a multidisciplinary approach and effective communication between the patient and his or her healthcare team.
The reason people with multiple sclerosis and their care partners don’t speak to their physicians about their walking issues, says June Halper, is because rehabilitation specialists and physicians have minimal training in this area. “Even physicians,” she says, “have minimal experience or evidence upon which to base their practice on the value of walking, mobility and what to do to improve it. Education and information is vital to close that gap.”
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