Over the past few years you may have experienced a notion of shock as you hear stories of people in recovery from major surgery and operations. Certainly in the area of joint reconstructions and articular surgeries, the stories of ‘walking out of the hospital’ are now much more common and there is a real reason for this seeming change in post operational procedure.
Our body responds to load and more importantly stress and so the usual procedures for us now coming out of major surgeries is to stress the body or joint to make it strong and get it moving straight away. Gone are the days of lying in bed and taking your time to relax and unwind with servants bringing you cups of tea and your bed being made for you as you move from bed to chair to bed again. There are many other very important reasons for this approach as well and for our well being and longevity of recovery, this new approach has many advantages for our health on a broader spectrum. So let’s take a look at why we should be more active off the surgery table.
Traditionally, post surgery or injury was to have bed rest and remain as dormant as possible to help the body to recover. However, what research has found is that putting people to bed for 3 weeks reduces 30% of heart size and general overall fitness. The medical community now believes getting up and getting moving is the best medicine for chronic disease owing to the systemic benefits that exercise gets the body primed to help
Pleomorphic (the shape and size of cells and nuclei) benefits of exercises are unrivalled by any medication that can be administered by doctors or the medical profession. It builds muscle, reshapes hearts/lungs and improves circulation. Exercise is best for these but it also improves liver, kidney and brain function. For most of the last century science was searching for the ‘exercise factor’ what was it about exercises that made people live better lives? The 1990’s genome project started the explosion of technology that has made discoveries of what makes exercise so potent for our bodies. OMICS technology and the research into genomes and what makes up our bodies at a cellular level (think genetics) has progressed at such a rapid rate that we are now making discoveries that relate to how our bodies communicate with each element as we exercise.
So what have they found? Muscular contractions release signalling chemicals into the blood stream which have far reaching biological roles across the body systems,. Metabolism, insulin, fat breakdown are all affected and have a common factor of cytokines and peptides. These myokines communicate with fat cells, organs and the brain. This fundamental fact of releasing these chemicals into our blood stream creates a highway of information and responsiveness of other body functions that it explains why exercise has such far reaching benefits to our system in terms of creating a state of health and co-ordinated function.
The latest protocols for recovery included heavy reliance on exercise and movement to help treat chronic conditions such as Cancer. The once quoted idea of staying at home and getting bed rest post treatment for cancer has now made way to an ‘active based recovery’ to promote better health and recovery from the exertional treatment protocols that a lot of cancer sufferers must endure. The basic premise of offsetting fatigue levels with exercise is something that science cannot produce medication for and so, more sufferers are being encouraged to undertake exercise regimes to offset these premises that may create a low quality of life post medical treatment.
Edith Cowan University in Western Australia has been investigating the role that certain exercises play in prostate cancer recovery. They are finding that jumping and resistance training, can prevent the bone density loss and muscle wastage that occurs after hormone suppressants are administered. This also is true for breast cancer hormone administration. 2013 a Swedish study found that blood from exercise groups that were poured over prostate cancer cells reduced their growth. Another study in 2016 in Denmark found that adrenalin and a protein called IL-6 that is spread through the blood mobilises killer cells in the body actually attack cancerous cells. up to 60% reduction of tumour growth was recorded across a range of different cancers.
Oddly, in the current western world, exercise has downgraded in our daily lives due to time constraints. High Intensity Training has been lauded as the new direction in making sure that people can gain the benefits of exercise. Whilst people say that they are too busy to fit exercise into the schedule, findings do say that smaller amounts of exercise could still give us all the health benefits that we need if we can train hard enough. Martin Gabala, Professor and Chair of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University along with Martin MacInnis, a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellow also at McMaster University changed the game of High Intensity Exercise as they found that doing just 3 sessions of 4-6 sprints per week with minimised recovery time produced the desired results of health maximisation.
This Wingate Test as it was coined, is rather extreme and is definetly the harder path rather than long consistent sessions of endurance training and changed the way that we look at exercise and how we can access its benefits. The cellular changes in the body from exercise sees hundreds to thousands of proteins in the mitochondria cells (the cells that are the energy cells of the body that power the a cells biochemical reactions), stimulates the function and quality of these powerhouses of the body that contributes to overall health. Since the 1980’s, science has discovered that the mitochondria now have large role to play in the formation of disease as changes in mitochondria CAN result in disease formation at a cellular level. So by addressing the health of these particular cells either via high intensity or low intensity exercise, means less formation of disease.
So we all know that exercise is good for us, but science is actually making lots of noise about HOW GOOD it is and how we should be approaching it in more ways than just to keep our beach bodies and our dress sizes relative. In this way, post recovery movement and exercise is becoming more prevalent and common place as a prescription for our ongoing health. So don’t expect to be getting a cup of tea and a lie down anymore after hospital stays - you’re possibly just as likely to get a PT and be taken into a gym for a workout.
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