FES Cycling: The Single Best Thing You Can Do For Your Health

FES Cycling Can Significantly Improve Your Health

What is the single best thing you can do for your health? The video below gives a great answer.

SPOILER ALERT: it’s 30 minutes of walking per day.

As Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, put it, “Walking is man’s best medicine.” More than 2,000 years later, he’s still right, as moderate exercise (like walking) prevents: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, depression, osteoporosis, and even death [1]. Yes, you can literally outrun the Grim Reaper (at least for a while).

How to Stay Active with Adaptive Exercise

So what should you do if you can’t walk because of a spinal cord injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, or some other neurological disorder? The answer depends on the disability, but there are many adaptive sports to choose from. For example, someone who is paraplegic could do handcycling to keep their upper body and cardiovascular system in shape.

One of the best ways to stay active despite a neurological disorder is to do cycling with functional electrical stimulation (FES), or FES cycling. Check out our earlier blog post to learn more about the benefits of FES cycling.

To sum it up, exercising is the single best thing you can do for your health, especially walking 30 minutes a day since it gives you the most bang for your buck. If you can’t walk because of a neurological disorder, try an adaptive sport or FES cycling, which are great ways to exercise despite paralysis.

Click here to find an adaptive sports program near you, or contact us to learn more about MYOCYCLE, the most affordable, easiest-to-use FES bike ever made.

REFERENCES

[1] Warburton DER, Nicol CW, Bredin SSD. Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal. 2006; 174(6):801-809. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.051351.