Saturday 22 May 2021

Get on Your Bike!

A recent news report (April 2021) claims that cycling during dialysis could dramatically improve the heart health of patients with kindey failure, and lead to significant savings for the UK's NHS.

Yes, cycling DURING dialysis. Okay, on a specially adapted bicycle during regular dialysis sessions. Not going out on the road with a dialysis machine strapped to your back!

The research was carried out by the University of Leicester, supported by the charity Kideny Research UK and the Natioanl institute for Health Research Leicester.

The heart suffers long-term effects when you are on dialysis, and the hope was that regular exercise would reduce the problem. And after six months of using the bicycle for 30 minutes during their dialysis sessions, investigations revealed  several improvments in the patients. This sounds like a cheap way to improve a patient's health and thus reduce the need for treatment for heart problems assiciated with dialysis. It's based on the well-known fact that regular exercise will improve your health, so why not do some excerise while hooked up to your dialysis machine.? After all the time spent travelling to a centre, sitting around doing nothing but reading a book while connected to your machine, then travelling home means you have spent a very inactive day. cycling like this makes you healthier, reduces problems and saves money. What more could you want?

You can read the whole article here.