Three things make you healthy and younger looking

 According to a UK study:

The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily.

These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group, said lead researcher Elisabeth Kvaavik of the University of Oslo.

The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

The healthiest group included never-smokers and those who had quit; teetotalers, women who had fewer than two drinks daily and men who had fewer than three; those who got at least two hours of physical activity weekly; and those who ate fruits and vegetables at least three times daily.

"You don't need to be extreme" to be in the healthy category, Kvaavik said. "These behaviors add up, so together it's quite good. It should be possible for most people to manage to do it."

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How to run without shoes

Recent research suggests that shoes, and the running form they encourage, may be the prime source of so many knee and other running injuries. The solution may be to throw away your running shoes altogether.

This video provides some interesting advice on barefoot running:

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Are treadmills just as good as running outdoors?

NY Times:

The most obvious difference with indoor exercise is a lack of wind resistance, Dr. Cavanagh said.

“The important variable here is speed relative to the air,” he said. For example, if you are running at 8 miles per hour into a 10-m.p.h. headwind, your speed relative to the air is 18 m.p.h. Dr. Cavanagh explained in an e-mail message: “Work done against air resistance can be extremely costly because the ‘drag force’ (force caused by air resistance) is proportional to the square of speed and the power required to overcome drag force is proportional to the cube of speed.”

One recent study, in fact, found that people can run 11.5 percent faster on treadmills than outdoors.

Many runners, including Dr. Thompson, set their treadmills at a 1 percent incline to make up for the lack of wind resistance. But that is not a complete solution because there are other aspects of outdoor running that a treadmill can’t mimic. For instance, the treadmill surface is just too smooth.

“If you run all the time on a smooth surface you are not training all muscles in your legs and feet that you need to run on the road,” Dr. Cavanagh said. “If you are going to race under certain conditions, you might as well train there.”

Safety may be the single best reason to opt for more treadmill training, particularly in the winter

Mr. Sell, an elite marathoner who ran in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, trains in Rochester, Mich. He bought a treadmill four years ago, after he had fallen a few times on icy roads, injuring himself so badly he could not train at all while he healed.

“I probably fall at least once a year here in Michigan,” he said. “My injuries ranged from a bruised hip to a pulled groin. That time it took three weeks to get back. I said, ‘If I was doing this on the treadmill, I wouldn’t have missed three weeks of training.’ ”

Mr. Sell continued, “If it’s really icy out or if it’s negative 10 degrees and you are doing an easy six-miler, it probably makes a lot more sense to do it on a treadmill than to risk hurting anything.”

Often I have worked out on treadmills when staying in neighborhoods characterized by pollution and traffic-congested streets.

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Barefoot running and the fore-foot strike

J. Fallows, runner and journalist, blogs that according to a report in Nature, "fore-foot running, which also turns out to be the way people naturally run if they're barefoot, is fundamentally much easier on your joints and bones and therefore easier to bear over the years."

Good to know scientists are finally studying the question. I'm not a regular bare-foot runner yet -- though I have been won over to wearing lightweight running shoes.  

More on the question of the best footwear for running in a future post.

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Exercise quote

Dr. Robert Sallis, co-director of sports medicine at Fontana Medical Center in California:

"Exercise can be used like a vaccine to prevent disease and a medication to treat disease. If there were a drug with the same benefits as exercise, it would instantly be the standard of care."

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Segway: symbol of everything that is wrong with the American economy?

As the tech bubble was bursting, one of the cleverest inventors in the land, backed by A-list Silicon Valley investors, set out to produce a top secret device that would "change the world as we know it."

The result -- we now know -- was a machine that serves as a substitute for foot or bicycle as means of transportation.

Story continues here.

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Effects of intense interval training

NY Times:

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

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Hazards of core training exposed

NY Times quotes Stuart McGill, a highly regarded professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada (McGill’s website is backfitpro.com.):

. . . .a core exercise program should emphasize all of the major muscles that girdle the spine, including but not concentrating on the abs. Side plank (lie on your side and raise your upper body) and the “bird dog” (in which, from all fours, you raise an alternate arm and leg) exercise the important muscles embedded along the back and sides of the core. As for the abdominals, no sit-ups, McGill said; they place devastating loads on the disks. An approved crunch begins with you lying down, one knee bent, and hands positioned beneath your lower back for support. “Do not hollow your stomach or press your back against the floor,” McGill says. Gently lift your head and shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down. These three exercises, done regularly, McGill said, can provide well-rounded, thorough core stability. And they avoid the pitfalls of the all-abs core routine. “I see too many people,” McGill told me with a sigh, “who have six-pack abs and a ruined back.”

You have to approach any exercise advice cautiously, and be prepared to abandon any routine if something starts "not to feel right."

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Even a little exercise does a lot of good

The NY Times reports:

. . . physical activity reduces the risk of cognitive decline, and studies have also found that diabetes increases the risk of dementia. Earlier studies had also found a link between Type 2 diabetes and dysfunction in the dentate gyrus.

Sheri Colberg-Ochs, an associate professor of exercise science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., said her research has found that regular exercise, even light physical activity, can offset the potentially negative effects of Type 2 diabetes on cognitive function. It is not clear what the mechanism is, she said, but may have something to do with the effect of insulin.

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Why?

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Stretching before exercise is harmful

I've always believed that stretching before exercise to be an annoyance -- basically a waste of time. I feel vindicated to discover that some studies show that stretching is not merely a boring ritual, but something that can actually harm you. The New York Times reports:

Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them.

Rather than doing so-called "static stretching," the article recommends something called "dynamic stretching." This kind of a warm-up, of course, is not what most of us were taught to call "stretching" in gym class. It's not what people think of as stretching.

Although some studies suggest that dynamic stretches might reduce injury:

Controversy remains about the extent to which dynamic warm-ups prevent injury. But studies have been increasingly clear that static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help.

The article lists some types of dynamic stretches. Basically these amount to exaggerated movements similar to those experienced during the sport. For example, the article suggests that if you play tennis:

“Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall.

To me it is interesting that so many activities related to fitness that experts have long insisted are "good for you" -- like drinking eight glasses of water -- turn out not to be so important. Expertise is over-rated.

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Exercise intensity and breast cancer risk

WaPo reports:

Vigorous activity can reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 30 percent in normal-weight women, according to an 11-year U.S. study of 32,269 postmenopausal women.

For the study, vigorous activity was defined as heavy housework (scrubbing floors, washing windows, demanding yard work, digging, chopping wood) and strenuous sports or exercise, such as running, fast jogging, competitive tennis, aerobics, bicycling on hills, and fast dancing.

While vigorous activity reduced breast cancer risk in normal-weight women, it had no effect in women who were overweight or obese, according to study leader Michael F. Leitzmann and colleagues.

They also found that non-vigorous activity, such as light housework (vacuuming, doing laundry, painting, general gardening) and light sports or exercise (walking, hiking, light jogging, recreational tennis, bowling) offered no protection against breast cancer.

For a long time, the medical establishment has backed the view that modest exercise is sufficient to realize the protective effects against a variety chronic illnesses. In fact, study after study is showing exercise to be far more effective in reducing the incidence of many chronic diseases than almost any dietary change -- except maybe frequent fasting or a calorie restricted diet.

This study is interesting because it suggests that only intense regular exercise is protective against breast cancer.

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As US economy slows, gym memberships decline

The Vancouver Sun reports:

In the U.S., the flagging economy has triggered the first nationwide decrease in gym memberships in more than a decade, according to a report by the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.

Not only are gym memberships likely to decline, Americans will try to save money by eating more fast food. In the US, processed junk food tends to be both affordable and most widely available in poor neighborhoods. Thus, a bad economy will likely lead to increased obesity, more chronic illness, and ultimately -- down the road -- to higher health care costs.

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Exercise overrides genes

CNN reports:

The researchers found that Amish people with the genetic variant [ for obesity] were no more likely to be overweight than those who had the regular version of the gene -- as long as they got three to four hours of moderate activity every day. That included things like brisk walking, housecleaning and gardening.

And while physical activity is recommended for just about everyone, the study suggests that people with the gene variation need to be especially vigilant about getting exercise.

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Just 20 minutes of exercise improves memory

The Seatle PI reports:

Adding even a small amount of exercise to a person's daily routine can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study, by Australian researchers, showed that six months of physical activity -- averaging about 20 minutes a day -- in volunteers 50 and older modestly improved memory and cognition.

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How much exercise do you need each day?

Thirty minutes won't cut it. The LA Times reports:

A recent study found that overweight and obese women needed to exercise about an hour a day, five days a week to sustain weight loss. The findings bolster what some health experts — and those who have lost weight and kept it off — have been saying for years: copious amounts of exercise and adherence to a strict diet are necessary to take off the pounds and keep them at bay.

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Photo: I took this photo in Indonesia at Obama's so-called "Madrasah." Read about my visit to the school here.

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What foods do your muscles need you to eat after exercise?

During exercise, muscles stop the biochemical reactions used to maintain themselves such as replacing and resynthesizing the proteins needed for day to day activities. It’s not that exercise is damaging your muscles; it’s that they halt the maintenance process until exercise is over.

To do this maintenance, muscles must make protein, and to do so they need to absorb amino acids, the constituent parts of proteins, from the blood. Just after exercise, perhaps for a period no longer than a couple of hours, the protein-building processes of muscle cells are especially receptive to amino acids. That means that if you consume protein, your muscles will use it to quickly replenish proteins that were not made during exercise.

But muscles don’t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man’s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.

Dr. Rennie said that 10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult. And you don’t need a special drink or energy bar to get it. One egg has 6 grams of protein. Two ounces of chicken has more than 12 grams.

Muscles also need to replenish glycogen, their fuel supply, after a long exercise session — two hours of running, for example. For that they need carbohydrates. Muscle cells are especially efficient in absorbing carbohydrates from the blood just after exercise.

Once again, muscles don’t need much; about one gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight is plenty, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. He weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, which means he would need 70 grams of carbohydrates, or say, 27 ounces of fruit juice, he said.

New York Times

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It's confirmed: The runner's high is for real

Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner's body pumps out, the greater the effect.

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NY Times

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Does stretching prevent injuries?

The NY Times reports that stretching has "been oversold as a way to prevent injury or improve performance."  The studies are inconclusive, and those that report benefits combined stretching with warm-ups. 

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Doing push-ups prevents injuries

. . . push-ups can provide the strength and muscle memory to reach out and break a fall. When people fall forward, they typically reach out to catch themselves, ending in a move that mimics the push-up. The hands hit the ground, the wrists and arms absorb much of the impact, and the elbows bend slightly to reduce the force.

The article continues:

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one's entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.

While I agree with the first point, there are various ways to do push-ups. For example, I don't do push-ups with my "palms on the floor."  I only do knuckle push-ups.   That's because if I bend my writs it exacerbates a longstanding carpal-tunnel-type weakness there.  Variations of the standard stance can help you to train different muscle group: try doing push-ups with your hands by your waist, or hands close together under your chest.
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NY Times

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