The All-Over Pain Reliever

In the late summer months of 2008, Michael Phelps accomplished what no other Olympian prior to him accomplished – winning eight gold medals in a single Olympic Games. In commenting on his Olympic-sized feat, Phelps said simply, “I’m lucky to have the talent I have, the drive I have, the excitement I have for the sport.”

When Phelps isn’t eating or sleeping, he’s swimming…seven to eight hours a day, in fact. While most of us would get waterlogged at that rate, swimming has remarkable healing powers. Perhaps this fact explains Phelps’ remarkable endurance and staying power, having competed in 17 races in nine days! It may also help explain why so many women report feeling more pain-free after swimming.

In the journal Arthritis Research and Therapy, researchers from the University of Extremadura and Evora – in Spain and Portugal, respectively – report that their sample of fibromyalgia-stricken women experienced less pain and an overall improvement in their quality of life after exercising for just an hour in the pool, three times a week!

Fibromyalgia is your every man’s (or woman’s) pain inflictor. You name it, fibromyalgia causes pain on a specific part of the body, including the neck, shoulders, back…pretty much anywhere there’s muscles, tendons or ligaments. While a portion of fibromyalgia’s victims are men, the overwhelming majority of them are women – approximately 90 percent, in fact. It’s further estimated that five to six million people in America have fibromyalgia, or one in every 50 Americans. In short, the all-over pain is an all-over problem.

To see what effect swimming exercises had on women’s pain, researchers had half of their 37 women take part in some light activity in tepid water. Such activity included stretching, a warm-up, water aerobics and a cool-down. The other half did exactly what you shouldn’t do if you have fibromyalgia – remained sedentary.

Not only did the swimming activity alleviate the fibromyalgia symptoms, but the women also reported improvements in other health-related aspects of life.

If these women’s improvement in quality of life can be applied to other women with fibromyalgia, this means that implementing aquatic exercise can serve as a replacement to other treatments for fibromyalgia, like anti-depressants. There are lots of natural ways to improve one’s mood, the best of them being exercise. And since these women saw an overall improvement in their quality of life, it’s safe to assume their mood was one such improvement.

The research here focused primarily on swimming activity; they did not look at other exercises to see how they might impact on fibromyalgia-related pain. I can’t think of a better exercise for people with fibromyalgia than swimming. As their research indicates, you don’t have to be a Michael Phelps in exercise intensity or in the amount of time spent in the pool to alleviate pain. Something as simple as water aerobics in a shallow pool will help ease pain considerably; water exercise is low impact, easy and soothing on the joints, muscles and tendons (this is why so many chiropractors recommend those with back pain to swim)

When it comes to exercise, there’s no excuse for not doing it. As the research shows, even fibromyalgia sufferers – a condition that makes the very act of exercising difficult because of the pain it often exacerbates – have an outlet for exercise. The idea is finding the exercise that best fits you, your age and your lifestyle. Whatever it is, stick to it and make it a regular part of your day!