Type 2 Diabetes

is a condition where the body’s cells do not properly respond to insulin. Mostly this leads to high blood glucose levels. Studies have shown that exercise can help improve blood glucose control as well as reducing body fat and decreasing the risk of heart disease. Increasing your level of physical activity can reduce the symptoms related to Type 2 Diabetes by about 12%.

Poorly controlled blood glucose levels can lead to some serious side effects of Type 2 Diabetes such as heart, kidney and eye disease.

Metabolic Syndrome

is a group of related metabolic abnormalities and risk factors that increase the risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease. The main factors of the syndrome are some or all the following – excess belly fat, poor insulin usage in the body, high blood glucose, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Happily, this syndrome can usually be reversed through lifestyle changes – namely weight loss and healthy eating habits and increased physical activity.

Lung Disease

COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, is a common diagnosis in the clients that we see. The term COPD is an umbrella term for conditions including chronic asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema, all of which can cause shortness of breath on activity. There are many more lung diseases or conditions which also create barriers for many of life’s normal activities by producing breathlessness and whilst less common than COPD, the ones we see most often are bronchiectasis, pulmonary arterial hypertension and lung cancer.

The Lung Foundation Australia’s motto is “when you can’t breathe… nothing else matters”, and we know that the clients we work with all agree with this. Whilst exercise seems the last thing that someone who can’t catch their breath should do, the opposite is true. Exercise can be used to improve physical activity tolerance, to teach breath recovery techniques and to increase the confidence of the client so that they can reclaim some of the life they have given up.

Marlene is a trained Lungs In Action Instructor and also a Better Breathing Exercise Physiologist. Contact us to find out how we can help you reclaim your life.

Heart Disease

more correctly called cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the term for a number of conditions/diseases that concern the heart and/or the blood vessels. The most common of these is coronary artery disease, which involves the arteries that supply the heart itself with much needed blood so that it can continue to pump blood to the rest of the body. If the pump goes down, the rest of the body goes with it – this is better known as a heart attack.

But there are other more chronic forms of heart disease such as cardiomyopathy (enlargement of the heart) and heart failure, heart valve deterioration and narrowing or blockage of the arteries to name a few. Heart disease can be caused by other health conditions, particularly some of the autoimmune diseases such as long term SLE Lupus. And finally, there are some people born with congenital heart disease.

Making healthy lifestyle choices such as eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, losing excess weight, quitting smoking and sleeping well, can all be used to help manage and control heart disease.

The heart is a muscle like any other in your body and needs to be kept strong so that it can do its vital work. The heart is helped in this job if the arteries it must pump the blood through are smooth and clear.

Regular exercise, both cardiovascular (huffy puffy) and strength training, not only help your heart to stay strong, but they also help the rest of you stay strong and functional and help you to feel fit and healthy. Marlene has done lots of extra training in cardiovascular health. Contact us and find out how we can help you.

Obesity

there comes a point where body weight has increased to such a degree that the normal activities of daily living become difficult to achieve, let alone exercising. People who are very overweight often struggle with aching joints, particularly knees, ankles, feet and hips and many of these same people find that they become very breathless when they try to move around.

We all know the theory about how exercising can help speed along weight loss and improve health, but aches and pains and struggling to breathe do not help with self-motivation.

You don’t need to do it alone. We can help to keep you accountable and motivated and we have lots of different techniques to help you change your lifestyle including exercise and healthy eating.

Arthritis and Osteoporosis

both these conditions can be responsible for a considerable amount of pain and disability.

Arthritis develops when the cartilage that covers the ends of the bones that form a joint, breaks down. This affects mobility of the joint and causes stiffness and pain. There is a lot of research that indicates that exercise that increases the strength and stability of painful joints can help with easing both the pain and the stiffness.

Osteoporosis is the result of thinning of the bony scaffold within our bones. This scaffold provides strength to the bones so when it thins, they becomes weakened more easily damaged or broken. People with osteoporosis break bones more easily than the average person and often it is a break that prompts investigation and diagnosis. Exercise can be used to encourage the laying down of more bone in this scaffolding. The jarring and pulling of muscle on bone created through exercise can help to encourage the body to lay down more bone to improve the strength of our skeleton.