(RxWiki News) What does a little confidence do for a person? Well, a great deal. With confidence comes a willingness to display your stuff, do your thing, tackle your world, and shake your tail feathers.
Recent research shows that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are able to achieve short-term exercise goals more effectively when coupled with some confidence building sessions. A little swagger never hurt anyone.
"COPD patients should exercise on a regular basis."
Study author Janet Larson, PhD, chair of the University of Michigan School of Nursing’s Division of Acute, Critical, and Long-term Care reports that self-confidence-building programs are widely used to support exercise programs in people without serious health problems and have had positive results in the short term. Long-term behavior adjustments are still difficult even in a healthy population.
Larson's study wanted to find whether patients with COPD attending self -confidence building programs enhanced their ability to stay with a daily physical activity regime even after the self-confidence program ended.
Larson and her team worked with exercise psychologists to create the program, which is like a program successfully used in healthy older people. Previous research showed that the self-confidence-building program is a great way to promote movement increases.
The study found COPD patients while participating in the self-confidence-building program increased their daily light physical activity, such as standing and walking slowly, immediately after the end of four months of training by an average of 20 minutes a day, but the patients were unable to sustain this increase after one year.
The Study
- 49 people with COPD were divided into three groups: First group: upper-body weight training and self-confidence building program, second group: upper-body weight training plus health education, and third group used gentle armchair exercises plus health education
- Measured physical activity with an accelerometer
- During the study period, patients were monitored at least 10 hours a day
