Study says running can help ward off joint and muscle pain in later life

Want another reason to love running? A new study has shown that doing vigorous exercise such as running at least once a week helped to lower the risk of bone, muscle and joint pain in later life.

The University of Portsmouth study gathered data from 5,802 Brits aged 50 and above. It found that the key to staving off joint pain in ageing was vigorous activity as opposed to moderate exercise.

The study, ‘Associations Between Pain and Physical Activity Among Older Adults’, published in the Plos One journal, tracked participants over a 10-year period, and at the end of the research period around half said that they suffered with bone, joint or muscle pain.

Dr Nils Niederstrasser, who led the study, said that chronic pain is one of the most widespread and complex problems in the medical community. ‘It leads, for many who suffer with it, to a lower quality of life and poor wellbeing.

‘It’s well known that pain tends to be more common as we age, so it’s vital we look at what might help prevent and reduce it.’

The results found that any type of activity helped lower the chances of suffering from pain when compared to remaining sedentary, but high levels of physical activity in particular were linked to lower cases of musculoskeletal pain. ‘Activity needs to not only be vigorous, it needs to be done at least once a week,’ added Dr Niederstrasaser.

‘Vigorous’ can be classed as running, swimming or playing tennis, whereas dancing or walking was categorized as a moderate exercise and did not have the same results in terms of reducing joint pain.

posted Thursday February 3rd
by Howard Calvert