Exercise is good for people with the lung-destroying condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a Spanish study finds.

COPD patients who did the equivalent of one hour's walking every day had about half the risk of being hospitalised than physically inactive patients, says a report in the February issue of Thorax. The research was done by Judith Garcia-Aymerich and her colleagues at the Municipal Unit of Medical Investigation in Barcelona.

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"Of course, we were surprised for such a finding," Garcia-Aymerich says. "In fact, we would have expected the inverse association."

COPD explained
COPD is a combination of lung diseases, mainly emphysema and chronic bronchitis, often caused by smoking, which obstructs airflow into the lungs. It gets progressively worse, with periodic flare-ups that require hospitalisation.

Physical activity a critical factor
In the study, the researchers monitored 304 men with COPD for just over one year - a year in which 63 percent of them were hospitalised at least once and 29 percent of them died.

Checking out the various factors in medical treatment and lifestyle, the researchers found that the most important factor that reduced the chance of hospitalisation was physical activity. One third of the patients reported daily physical activity that burned the calories exerted in at least one hour of walking, and their rate of hospitalisation was 46 percent that of the more inactive patients.

Exercise not emphasized
"This is the first study to show a strong association between physical activity and risk of readmission to hospital with COPD, which is potentially relevant for rehabilitation and other therapeutic strategies," the journal report says.

COPD patients are routinely told to exercise but many of them don't because of the breathing problems and fatigue caused by the condition, Garcia-Aymerich says. The need to exercise "can be easily forgotten in the middle of the enormous need of health attention that COPD patients have," she says. – (HealthScout News)

Read more:
A-Z of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
COPD and exercise
 

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