Exercise Video for Multiple Sclerosis Patients and others

Stuart SchlossmanAlternative therapies and devices for Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

However MS affects you, there are exercises that can be helpful to stay as healthy and fit as possible and to improve some of your symptoms and their effects.
People taking part in an exercise class
This page covers:
For more information, download our MS Essentials publication on exercise and physiotherapy.

Benefits of exercise

Exercising regularly will keep your body working to its full potential. To make it easier, it is important to find exercise that suits you – something you enjoy and find worthwhile.
Exercise can:
  • improve the overall health of people with milder MS
  • help people with more severe MS to stay as mobile and active as possible
  • help some people manage MS symptoms and decrease the risk of heart disease
  • improve muscle strength and fitness, helping with mobility or weakness problems
  • help manage weight control, especially when combined with a healthy, well-balanced diet
By finding the right exercises, perhaps with the help of a physiotherapist, you can stop problems becoming worse than they need to be.
Getting fit and keeping fit helps the body and mind to stay as healthy as possible. 

Relapses and exercising

There is no evidence that exercise makes MS worse in the long-term, or that exercising causes relapses.
However, if you’re having a relapse you shouldn’t try to carry on exercising until after symptoms have ‘levelled out’ and you have completed any steroid treatment. A physiotherapist can help with getting you back into a routine as you recover from the relapse, through rehabilitation.

Types of exercise 

There is no single exercise that could be called an ‘MS exercise’. MS affects people in different ways, so what’s suitable will vary from person to person.
Exercises might include:
  • Strengthening exercises
  • Aerobic exercises (such as cycling, running or rowing)
  • Stretching (helps keep muscles supple and relaxed)
  • Range-of-motion (moving the arms, legs, wrists and ankles in wide reaching circular patterns.)
  • Passive stretching (involves a physiotherapist or carer helping to move your arms or legs to create a stretch and move the joints).
  • Posture exercises help keep your feet, knees, pelvis, shoulders and head properly aligned, to reduce strain on the muscles and bones in the body.

Continue Reading this article on Exercise

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