Has being a member of Xcite helped your heart health? If you have a story to share of your success, we’d love to hear it! Email media@westlothianleisure.com and we’ll contact you to find out more.
In the first half of this month, we’ve covered coming into Xcite gyms and speaking to our team to design an exercise routine tailored towards improving or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We’ve also discussed how various exercise methods can ensure that you reduce your risk of heart disease, reduce cholesterol and help you to better manage your blood pressure and body weight.
These can be preventative actions, but what if you already suffer with a diagnosed heart condition? Exercising can seem like a overwhelming prospect if you are recovering from, or learning to live with, a lifestyle-impacting heart condition, such as Arterial Fibrilation (AF) or Heart Failure. Medical professionals, however, suggest that keeping your body moving has real benefits, including reducing the risk of being hospitalised - especially with heart failure.
Even gentle exercise helps your lungs and muscles to work better and people find that with this, their everyday life becomes much more manageable.
At West Lothian Leisure, we have a brilliant Health & Wellbeing team. They are funded through West Lothian Health & Social Care Partnership to support people with long term conditions to become more active, manage their condition through exercise and live better in their community.
The Health & Wellbeing team work with GPs, nurses, physios, mental health teams, link workers and a whole host of health & social care professionals to provide information on how to encourage patients to become active. The team also work in partnership with NHS colleagues within Cardiac and Pulmonary rehab to provide an exit pathway for people to continue to be active following their cardiac event or progression of their conditions.
Our programmes support people who may not have been active in a long time, who are nervous about becoming active or have been newly diagnosed with a health condition. Our aim is for people to live better with their long-term condition, feel better about themselves and have an improved quality of life. The programme builds confidence and motivation in a safe and structured environment.
There is no one size fits all approach when getting starting on your physical activity journey, everyone is different. Therefore, there are a range of options to suit all levels of ability, physical fitness and most important to provide an option that works for you. These options include Wellbeing easy line classes, wellbeing exercise classes, 1:1 gym, weight management and more.
If you have a health condition, are concerned that you are not currently active and would like to get started, speak to your health or social care professional to make a referral. For more on our Health & Wellbeing team and links to learn more, click here.
