Scientists at Sheffield Hallam University have discovered that simple arm exercises could help beat a crippling leg condition that affects one in twenty people over 55 in the UK.
The team, along with staff at the University of Sheffield, has found that upper body aerobic exercise can help the battle against peripheral vascular disease (PVD), a blood circulation problem, which causes severe leg pain and leaves patients struggling to walk even short distances.
This is the first large-scale trial of its kind to show that a regular workout of the upper body can help ease the chronic leg pain associated with PVD. The British Heart Foundation-funded study found that exercising the upper body by 'arm-cranking', stationary cycling using the arms, improved cardiovascular fitness over a 24-week period and enabled patients to walk for longer without experiencing pain.
The findings are a boost for patients with PVD, who can find even moderate walking exercise difficult and may require surgery in severe cases.
More than a hundred patients with PVD aged between fifty and 85 were recruited from the Sheffield Vascular Institute at the Northern General Hospital.
Pain tolerance levels were measured in a series of walking tests at six-weekly intervals and the total improvements were calculated at the end of the 24 weeks. The average maximum walking distance increased by nearly a third (29 %), equal to an extra one hundred metres. Patients could also walk for fifty per cent longer before the onset of leg pain.
John Saxton, from Sheffield Hallam University's Centre for Sport and Exercise Science, which conducted the study with the University of Sheffield's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said: