If you have post-polio syndrome, it’s vital to exercise moderately every second day to keep the muscles we have and avoid obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart disease.

Exercise also helps us accomplish more of those activities of daily living and can improve how we feel.

Question: Dr. DeMayo – My right leg has always been very thin. It’s now terribly swollen from the knee down, and feels extremely heavy (I’m having trouble transferring into the shower). The doctor did an ultra sound to rule out blood clots. It was negative. I’ve been using a power chair for 18 years. What should I do?

A passage in Philip Roth’s novel Nemesis describes the horror of catching polio in the US town of Newark in 1944, when outbreaks of the disease were common and each summer was spent in fear of infection.

“Finally the cataclysm began – the monstrous headache, the enfeebling exhaustion, the severe nausea, the raging fever, the unbearable muscle ache, followed in another forty-eight hours by the paralysis”, it says.