Doctors are now prescribing gym instead of chronic medication

Scrap the medication, gym is what you need to get healed from your chronic disease, doctors in Boston believe.

Doctors treating chronic health problems in Boston are increasingly prescribing exercise instead of medicines for their patients.

In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, one of the doctors said she prescribed gym for patients who suffer from multiple chronic diseases.

"So primarily diabetes, hypertension, obesity itself, but we also give it for depression or mood disorders," Dr Anna Groskin said.

"Now that doctors are writing the prescription, the next piece that we are getting so much better at is providing a solution and providing a place where the prescription is being filled," Dr Edward Phillips of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital said in the video.

In one area of Boston, patients get free gym memberships for three months and then pay according to ability.

Monisha Long, one of the patients who received the gym prescription, was suffering from high blood pressure and obesity.

Since heading to the gym, she has lost over one hundred and fifty pounds.

"I feel I'm stronger, I feel like I am less tired, I feel I can do almost anything now," Long said.

According to NHS, exercise reduces the risk of major illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancer by up to fifty per cent and lowers the risk of early death by up to thirty per cent.