CrossFit improves your health. Duh.
Anyone who does CrossFit can tell you that, but now a new study agrees.
New research from the UK, published in OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, suggests that CrossFit participation could help people reduce their need for prescription drugs for various physical and mental health ailments and have fewer doctor visits in general.
The Details
The study included 1,211 people between the ages of 19 and 67 in the UK who actively engaged in CrossFit workouts.
- The majority of the participants, however, were between the ages of 30 and 39 (38%) or 40 and 49 (26%). In other words, 64% of the total participants were 30-49 years old.
Researchers then looked at what prescription drugs the participants took before starting CrossFit and whether they were still taking them.
- Out of the 1,211 participants, 280 of them took one prescription for a health condition. Common conditions were anxiety and depression, asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, and chronic pain.
- Since starting CrossFit, 54% of the 280 said they decreased their medication dose by more than half, while 69 people stopped taking their medication entirely.
- Further, 40% of all participants reported needing fewer visits to the doctor since starting CrossFit.
The lead researcher was Dr. Athalie Redwood-Mills, a professor at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, a CrossFit Level 3 Certified Trainer, and the co-founder of FiiT for Life, an organization that helps fight chronic diseases through CrossFit. She said the biggest takeaway here is that “CrossFit could reduce the huge burden on the medical services.”
- Dr. Redwood-Mills added: “And the biggest win would be reducing mental health meds. It’s an obvious swap and CrossFit is an obvious choice due to the psycho-social aspects [and] the community.”
Worth noting: During the study, decreasing or eliminating prescription medication usually happened within just six months of starting CrossFit.
- Jen Wilson, the study’s co-author and a CrossFit coach, said the most surprising finding was that these changes can happen in “such a short period of time.”
One More Thing
Those with chronic pain, namely back pain or arthritis, before CrossFit saw especially notable changes.
- Half of those who took painkillers before CrossFit reported reducing their medication.
Further, 71 participants said they either postponed or canceled a joint or muscle-related surgery after gaining strength through CrossFit, with 31 people reporting that they no longer required surgery.
A Note on the Study’s Limitations: The data used to conduct this study, provided by CrossFit UK, was comprised of a voluntary, self-reported 14-question online survey about training, medication use, and comments related to the impact of CrossFit training on respondents’ overall health.
- The researchers noted that their testing pool was small (n=1,211) and that “to establish causality, prospective studies and longitudinal designs are necessary.”
However, the researchers also noted that CrossFit UK had no role in the analysis of the data, only its collection, and the results point to positive outcomes regarding overall prescription medication use when CrossFit training is introduced to patients.
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The Big Picture
Anyone who does CrossFit can tell you about all the health benefits they are reaping. But while there’s a lot of research out there that considers exercise and health, there’s a lack of research that looks at CrossFit specifically.
So, this study has to be seen as important in terms of its focus specifically on CrossFit and the powerful results it can bring.
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