29 October 2009

Just Keep Swimming…

For anyone that hasn’t figured it out yet… I might be a little fitness obsessed…

We all know that exercise is good for us and it is important to our day to day health. Well a few years ago when I started looking at the differences between high impact and low impact exercise, I was a swimmer at the time and I was given a pamphlet by my swim coach (who also happened to be my physiology teacher in high school funnily enough) that was all about the health benefits of swimming in the short and long term. The benefit that always stuck in my mind is that swimming helps delay the onset of arthritis later in life. This is due to the perceived difference of gravity when submerged in water the supine position and the very low impact on the joints (big surprise right?)

As I was doing a little research on the disease this week I came across a few articles and reviews that also talk about the positive effects of swimming, in both preventing and treating arthritis. What I have found is that there is truth behind the conjecture that swimming helps delay the onset of arthritis, as well as, it can be used to treat arthritis to a certain extent. The exercise itself can be used to help reduce the inflammation and keep the joint from becoming too stiff. Aside from these benefits the arthritic patients also receive all the same benefits as one would from doing cardiovascular exercise.

Cool huh? So maybe a little lesson from the regal tang Dory would not go amiss, “just keep swimming” to delay the onset of arthritis.

If you are interested: Danneskiold-Samsoe, B., K. Lyngberg, T. Risum, and M. Telling. "The effect of water exercise therapy given to patients with rheumatoid arthritis." Scand J Rehabil Med. 19.1 (1987): 31-35.

6 comments:

  1. This is really cool. However, have you looked into how much more effective swimming is in delaying onset of arthritis than other exercises that work on strengthening muscles that support joints?

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  2. Dory was a regal tang? Wow! That's why immunology courses are so interesting, you learn all sorts of useful stuff. What was Nemo?

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  3. Is there any literature that suggests what joints swimming is better for? It seems to me that the overuse of the hips and shoulder joints would promote injury and further arthritis, as I know a few swimmers who have shoulder problems and are in their 20s. Or was this literature more directed towards casual swimming such as swimming a lap or two? So my last question is how much swimming will lead to benefits and/or to injury from overuse?

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  4. I'm thinking swimming must be better for you when it comes to arthritis then a sport such as gymnastics that consists of constant pounding. It does make you wonder why the swimming motion would help delay onset of arthritis vs no swimming. It would be interesting to see what other sports the swimmers (in the test group) had played or if it was their only sport.

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  5. To PriannkaN7360: Swimming should be used to supplement another fitness regiment not just by itself. I wasn’t able to find information that says how much better for you swimming is over load bearing exercise so I am not able to say that one is better than the other. By incorporating swimming and load bearing exercise to strengthen the those muscles that support the joints is probably the best bet to delay the onset of arthritis.

    To JJ Cohen: Yes Dory is a Regal Tang, and Nemo and Marlin are both considered to be Percula Clownfish.

    To TanyaC7630: There can always be too much of a good thing; I myself suffer from a rotator cuff injury courtesy of swimming in high school. My event in high school was the 200 butterfly and the 4x100 relay where I swam the butterfly leg. My thought is when you use swimming to supplement your fitness routine then it is the most beneficial and even then most people who are swimming just for the fitness aspect probably aren’t going to do a butterfly stroke.

    To HollyM763: I don’t think that it is just the position of swimming that is the most beneficial to the human body when it comes to the differences between swimming and gymnastics and the onset of arthritis. But swimming has a much lower impact and places lot less strain on the joints and muscles, gravity has a less perceivable effect on the body as well. The supine position however is said to be incredibly therapeutic for most people.

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  6. To provide a contrary point of view, I read an article in the NYT about running and the prevention of arthritis. This article cited a study in Skeletal Radiology which found that consistent running throughout middle-age actually decreased the development of severe arthritis as compared to a non-running control group. In this case, investigators thought that the consistent impact exercise conditioned the cartilage, whereas control subjects did not benefit from cartilage conditioning and developed more arthritis. While I don't think running would be a good treatment option for arthritis, perhaps beginning early and continuing impact exercise could play a significant role in the prevention of arthritis later in life. The same effect is not found in other load-bearing sports though. That said, I wonder if this information would change the amount of young people using elliptical and other low-impact exercise machines at the gym? In my opinion, the best policy is probably still balance in everything, types of exercise included. So we should "just keep running" in addition to swimming.

    For those interested, here's a link to the NYT article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/phys-ed-can-running-actually-help-your-knees/?scp=1&sq=running%20and%20arthritis&st=cse

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