Keeping Active

Why is being active important for my health?

Being active can help your physical, emotional and social wellbeing. It can help reduce common symptoms and side-effects from treatment, such as fatigue and pain; help you feel less stressed and lift your spirits if you’re feeling low; and can also help you to feel more in control, because it feels like you are doing something positive for yourself.

Physical activity can reduce the risk of hip fractures by 68%, depression by 30%, cardiovascular disease by 35%, Type 2 diabetes by 40% and joint and back pain by 25%.

It is often safe to do exercise during or after treatment and is unlikely to do you any harm. If you are worried about how much to do, start slowly and build up gradually. Even a little physical activity is better than none at all.

Regular and adequate levels of physical activity can:

• improve muscular and cardiorespiratory fitness
• improve bone and functional health
• reduce the risk of hypertension
• reduce the risk of falls as well as hip or vertebral fractures.

How much should I aim for?

Check out the guidance on the NHS website.

Even 10 minutes of exercise can give worthwhile benefits to your health, so it’s important to start with whatever you feel able to do and build up the duration and intensity when you can.

Would you like to be more active but aren’t sure where to start?

The Active Health Partnership aims to support people to become more active as a way of improving health and wellbeing.

This person-centred project is for anyone registered with a GP practice in Inverness, Aviemore, Grantown or Kingussie who would benefit from being more physically active. You can self-refer or be referred by a member of staff at participating GP practices. At this time, we are working mainly by ‘Near Me’ video call or phone appointments.

Lisa and Jodi, our Active Health Link Workers, will meet with you to discuss motivation, interests, challenges and hopes. We know that changing habits is a really hard thing to do and we will support you to work out if this is the right time, and if so, then what sorts of activity would best fit with your lifestyle and be sustainable.

We help to set goals and form an activity plan, if you’d like one, so you can keep track of how you’re getting on with the aims you set yourself. We can talk about what activities you might enjoy, projects that are happening locally and ‘virtual’ opportunities.

We will invite you to come back for on-going support and check in with how you’re getting on. Usually we see people for approximately 3 appointments. The initial meeting is 1 hour with 2 x follow ups (30 minutes each). This can be adjusted to suit your needs.

For more information email: activehealth@velocitylove.co.uk

Or you can call Lisa on 07564 166897 or Jodi on 07514 786218

You can download and print out an Active Health Self Referral Form pdf  Active Health – Velocity Self Referral Form (pdf) or fill one out in MS Word format Active Health – Velocity Self Referral Form.

Where can I get some other suggestions for activities?

There are lots of ideas for activities and spending time outdoors in our local area on the Think Health Think Nature website.

Ideas and suggestions for exercise you can do either at home or outdoors, as well as suggestions for building activity into your normal daily routine can be found on the NHS website.