Pulmonary Rehabilitation Exercise Programme
This post is only educational,kindly refer to your physician and physio for personalised advice.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation
A Pulmonary Rehabilitation program is designed to help people with long term breathing problems to help cope with their breathlessness and feel stronger and fitter at the same time. It helps enable you to stay as active as possible, improve your quality of life and live as independently as possible. With the help of trained professionals this course will teach you how to increase your activity carefully, be able to manage your breathlessness and cope with periods of panic better.
Research shows us that by completing a Pulmonary Rehabilitation program people have a better fitness and they are able to walk further. As a result of this people find they are able to do more things before becoming short of breath (e.g. complete the shopping, climb the stairs, etc). Pulmonary Rehabilitation also helps you to control your symptoms and manage your condition in the long term.
Why Continue?
If you have just completed the Pulmonary Rehabilitation program, it is extremely important that you carry on exercising. Since your breathing problem is a long-term condition and not curable it is essential you maintain the progress you have made in Pulmonary Rehabilitation because the following may happen if you do not:
• Your exercise tolerance and fitness will decrease, leading to an inability to complete activities and an increase in your breathlessness.
• You will become breathless doing simple activities. • You may have more exacerbations (worsening of your symptoms) and hospital admissions.
• Your quality of life may deteriorate if you are unable to complete your daily activities/leave the house. 2 Benefits of Exercise
Two difficult messages to understand and convey:
1. “Breathlessness whilst exercising is NORMAL.”
2. “It is not harmful or dangerous to feel short of breath whilst exercising.”
Unfortunately, and commonly people with chronic lung conditions do feel breathless and this can be very frightening. They may feel that becoming short of breath is harmful. In trying to avoid this, people may try and stay away from activities in which they become breathless. However, by reducing your activities you become unfit, tired and even more short of breath when completing tasks. By gradually building on your exercise ability, it can make you breathe and feel better.
3-Depression
3
There are benefits from doing even a small amount of exercise, and different exercises effect you positively in different ways : Aerobic (cardio-respiratory) Benefits of Exercise: Lowers heart rate and lowers blood pressure too, as your body and heart become stronger and more efficient at moving oxygen and pumping blood. Lowers cholesterol (fat) which will in turn help a person breathe better too. Strengthening Benefits of Exercise : Increases the size of muscles and strength of them. Increasing the strength of thigh muscles (quadriceps) makes walking easier. Stronger bones and joints Improves coordination and balance. Decreases body fat % by increasing lean muscle. Upper body strength training may also improve expiatory force improving slightly lung function. Psychological (mental health) Benefits of Exercise: Improves your mood, Makes you feel relaxed. Reduces stress, anxiety, tension and depression. Improves self-esteem and confidence. Reduces feelings of social isolation. These effects are as exercise is known to release endorphins and dopamine a feel good hormone that stabilizes how one feels, thus 30minutes a day of exercise should be done for mental well being too.
Precautions to Exercise
We would advise you not to exercise or to stop your exercise if you experience any of the following symptoms:
• Nausea/feeling sick
• Dizziness
• Weakness
• Rapid or irregular heart beat
• Severe shortness of breath
• Tightness in chest
• Increase in sputum production/change in colour (i.e. if you have developed chestinfection) • Pain
If you do experience any of the above then please contact your GP.
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