Pacing (activity management)


Pacing is an activity management technique for managing a long-term health condition or disability which aims to maximize what a person can do while reducing or at least controlling any symptoms that restrict activity.Pacing is commonly used to help manage conditions that cause chronic pain or chronic fatigue.

Aims

Pacing aims to manage symptoms by avoiding the common "boom and bust" cycle of the person exceeding their current limited ability, being forced to stop as a result of pain, fatigue or other symptoms, and then needing a large amount of rest before being able to do any activity.

Elements of pacing

There is no consensus about what elements are part of pacing.Pacing typically involves:
Pacing has been used to help manage a wide variety of different illnesses and disabilities, including neuromuscular diseases like Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, rheumatoid or immune-mediated diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis and fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes.

Outcomes

In many health conditions there are no clinical trials to establish the effectiveness of pacing.