Your house, the best place for therapy!

A program to walk at home benefits people with a bad blood circulation in the legs, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the magazine Journal of the American Heart Association , has patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD), a narrowing of the arteries It can cause leg pain and makes walking difficult.

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Your house, the best place for therapy!

Previous research has found that supervised exercise programs can improve walking ability and reduce PAD symptoms, but this study is the first to examine the effects of the exercise regimen to perform at home.

In the study, 81 patients participated in a program that trained and encouraged them to walk at home, and a control group of 87 patients who only received general health information.

Participants in the walk-at-home program were asked to try to walk at least five days a week, up to 50 minutes a day. If they felt pain in the legs , they had to rest until they felt that their legs were good again and then continue walking.

After one year, the patients who followed the program of walking at home improved the distance they walked walking for six minutes in approximately 27 meters (from about 355 to about 382 meters), while the distance traveled by the patients in the control group it was reduced a little, from about 353 meters to a little less than 346 meters.

"The problem is that supervised exercise requires many visits to a cardiac rehabilitation center or other exercise facilities, and Medicare does not cover it," says the study's author, Dr. Mary McGrae McDermott, a professor of medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago.

"Our results should encourage doctors to recommend walking even if patients do not have access to a supervised exercise program," he adds.

"The results emphasize the importance of recognizing and treating PAD, a common condition that often remains undiagnosed and can threaten the person's life, insofar as it restricts circulation through the legs, arms, feet and kidneys. Patients who have PAD also have a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, "says McDermott.

"Do not think that walking problems are normal for aging If you feel pain, weakness, tingling in your legs or other difficulties when walking, talk to your doctor and ask if you may have PAD," he advises.