Walking on the treadmill three times a week can be beneficial to stroke survivors by rewiring parts of their brains, the findings of a new study showed.

To carry out the study, researchers followed more than 70 individuals, with an average age of 63, who had suffered a stroke an estimated four years earlier. Some of the participants showed improvement regarding their ability to walk, after in the beginning, about 50 percent of them couldn’t move without help, relying on a cane or a walker or using a wheelchair. Subsequent to following for six months a sort of physical therapy that uses a treadmill, the average enhancement in stroke victims’ walking speed was five times that of people given only stretching, common exercises.

The research, which was published in the August 29 issue of Stroke, the Journal of the American Heart Association, was conducted by physicians at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, and the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The findings showed that the patients’ brains, following the treadmill regime, changed to some extent, suggesting the fact that years after the stroke, the brain was still able to turn to unharmed areas in order to help perform tasks, The New York Times reported.

“It would suggest that we’ve underestimated how much people can improve,” asserted one of the authors, Dr. Daniel F. Hanley, a neurology professor at Johns Hopkins.

About 150,000 people in the United Kingdom have a stroke per year.