Stressing Fitness

Casually flipping through a 2006 copy of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, I learned that exercise is the key to combating the stress of modern life.The authors, from the University of Ioannina in Greece, first explain (in regards to the fight-or-flight response) that "stress responses can be elicited by emotional stimuli or professional and social stress."

It takes just one negatively worded memo handed down from on high to get the glucocorticoids and catecholamines flowing, but these adrenal hormones go unused and are stored in visceral fat deposits, and this does bad things to you.

these stored adrenal hormones disturb gonadal function (no wonder Viagra is such a big seller), as well as growth hormone and thyroid function. They explain how these "metabolic disturbances" lead to "comorbidities including central obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and endothelial dysfunction." In other words, unrelieved stress turns you into an artery-clogged hippopotamus with Limbaugh-like blood pressure and a lousy immune system. Oh, and it's also hard on your brain.

Rhythms in the brain that are associated with learning become stronger as the body moves faster, UCLA neurophysicists report in a new study.

electrical signal known as the gamma rhythm in the brains of mice. This signal is typically produced in a brain region called the hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory, during periods of concentration and learning.

The hippocampus is thought to rapidly and temporarily record facts and events as they are experienced,

“Slowing down in the heat could be a subconscious regulation to protect us from damage, such as heat stroke,”

In other words, you don’t slow down because your body has reached some critical temperature. Instead, your brain slows you down to prevent you from ever reaching that critical temperature. It’s a subtle difference – but as the cyclists in the study discovered, it means that our physical “limits” are more negotiable than previously thought.

“To obtain a substantial heat adaptation, core temperature must be elevated and high sweat rates need to occur,” Dr. Jay explains. “The best way to do this is to combine exercise with heat exposure.”The study volunteers had averaged just 18 minutes a day of “moderate” or “intense” physical activity outdoors. In contrast, researchers have found that proper acclimatization takes 45 to 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise in the heat, either for seven to 10 consecutive days, or four to five times a week for two to three weeks.

Getting fit the P90X way means working out 6-7 days per week, with each workout lasting about 1-1½ hours. And the workouts are so rigorous that you're asked to take a fitness test before ordering the P90X system, to see whether you're up to the challenge.

Each workout is presented in a circuit format, in which you move from exercise to exercise with little rest in between, thus keeping your heart rate up. The strengthening DVDs target certain parts of the body each day: chest and back; then shoulders and arms; legs and back; chest, shoulders, and triceps; and back and biceps. Other DVDs focus on plyometrics (explosive "power" movements), Kenpo kickboxing, cardio fitness, abs/core, yoga, and stretching. 

The P90X system is based on the concept of "muscle confusion," which means varying the workout schedule and introducing new moves so the body never fully adapts. This is similar to the periodization techniques athletes use to get their bodies in top condition.  It also has a basis in science; research suggests that workout programs that offer variation bring greater benefits than those that do not.    

45% of the decisions we make are actually habits. They’re not really decisions and from that, we know that every habit happens at a kind of border: It’s a decision we made at some point but then stopped making and continued acting on.

the best way to develop an exercise habit is during the first week or two, give yourself a piece of chocolate or some other treat that you really enjoy right afterwards because you have to teach your brain to enjoy exercise for exercise’s sake.

In less than two weeks, Jazzy will run into New York City, completing her run across the US that began in Los Angeles in September 2009.

Even more impressive than her record-setting effort--she will be the youngest ever to run across America--is that she's doing this to raise awareness and funds for the St. Christopher Fund for trucker relief.

Lifestyle choices are associated with cardiovascular disease and mortality. The purpose of this study was to compare adherence to healthy lifestyle habits in adults between 1988 and 2006.

Analysis of adherence to 5 healthy lifestyle trends (≥5 fruits and vegetables/day, regular exercise >12 times/month, maintaining healthy weight [body mass index 18.5-29.9 kg/m2], moderate alcohol consumption [up to 1 drink/day for women, 2/day for men] and not smoking) in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988-1994 were compared with results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2006 among adults aged 40-74 years.

Generally, adherence to a healthy lifestyle pattern has decreased during the last 18 years, with decreases documented in 3 of 5 healthy lifestyle habits. These findings have broad implications for the future risk of cardiovascular disease in adults.

Obese children in America are much less physically active, consume larger quantities of food during school meals, and watch much more TV than their normal-weight schoolmates, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School revealed in The American Heart Journal. Lifestyle is by far the major driving force behind childhood obesity in the USA, and not heredity, the authors stressed after examining data on check-ups of 1,003 Michigan sixth-graders in a school-based health program.

The obese children in this study tended to eat a school lunch rather than a packed one made at home, and spent a considerable amount of time either playing video games or watching television.

58% of the obese children in the study had watched at least two hours of TV the day before, the authors reported, compared to 41% among the other kids. 34% of non-obese children ate school lunches regularly, compared to 45% of the obese ones. Regular exercise, being a member of a school sports team, and rates of physical activity were considerably lower among the obese pupils.

Running for exercise is a popular way to motivate children to be physically active. Running-related injuries are well studied in adults but little information exists for children and adolescents. Through use of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System database, cases of running-related injuries were selected by using activity codes for exercise (which included running and jogging). Sample weights were used to calculate national estimates. An estimated 225 344 children and adolescents 6 to 18 years old were treated in US emergency departments for running-related injuries. The annual number of cases increased by 34.0% over the study period. One third of the injuries involved a running-related fall and more than one half of the injuries occurred at school. The majority of injuries occurred to the lower extremities and resulted in a sprain or strain. These findings emphasize the need for scientific evidence-based guidelines for pediatric running. The high proportion of running-related falls warrants further research.

Dyllan Duperron, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student from Valleyview, is to embark on his cross-Alberta run this morning at the Jack Ady Cancer Centre in Chinook Regional Hospital. It will take him northward the next two months, through his hometown, before wrapping up in Grande Prairie. Cancer has struck several of Duperron's loved ones, and he's launching his Today's Hope, Tomorrow's Cure campaign because he wants to do something that will help other families facing similar battles with the disease.

Although Duperron is a track-and-field athlete, distance running isn't his specialty. A sprinter, he's more accustomed to running 100-metre and 200m races. For this campaign, he plans to run 30-50 km each day he's on the road. He admitted he's a little nervous about such an undertaking. "It's a very, very long way. It's over 1,000 kilometres. It's exciting, but I'm still nervous," he told The Herald Sunday.

David Nieman, DrPH (photo above), and colleagues have shown that you DO burn a lot of calories after exercising, at least if you exercise at an intensity roughly equal to 70 percent of your vo2 max. That's a little slower than your marathon pace, but a little faster than your everyday EZ run pace.

In Nieman's study, a group of 10 healthy young-adult males (including three clinically obese subjects) burned 519 calories while exercising for 45 minutes on an exercise bike. Then, over the next 14 hours, they burned an additional 190 calories (above their normal calorie burn) while just sitting around.That's a 37 percent boost beyond the calories burned on the bikes. Another way of looking at it: If you burn 500 calories by running about 5 miles, you can gain almost another 2 miles of running through your after-burn calories. Thus, 5 miles becomes 7 miles, at least in terms of calorie-burning. That's great news for runners and other vigorous exercisers.

Feeling stressed? Then try savoring the scent of lemon, mango, lavender, or other fragrant plants. Scientists in Japan are reporting the first scientific evidence that inhaling certain fragrances alter gene activity and blood chemistry in ways that can reduce stress levels. 

people have inhaled the scent of certain plants since ancient times to help reduce stress, fight inflammation and depression, and induce sleep. Aromatherapy, the use of fragrant plant oils to improve mood and health, has become a popular form of alternative medicine today. And linalool is one of the most widely used substances to soothe away emotional stress.

Linalool returned stress-elevated levels of neutrophils and lymphocytes — key parts of the immune system — to near-normal levels. Inhaling linalool also reduced the activity of more than 100 genes that go into overdrive in stressful situations.

"Moderate intensity aerobic exercise improves mood immediately and those improvements can last up to 12 hours," concludes study

The mood of the exercisers was better than that of the sedentary group immediately after the workout and for up to 12 hours later. "This goes a long way to show that even moderate aerobic exercise has the potential to mitigate the daily stress that results in your mood being disturbed," he says. Men and women seemed to benefit equally, and the fitness level of the participant did not seem to matter

A study of German college students suggests that urbanite brains are more susceptible to stress, particularly social stress, than those of country dwellers.

Meyer-Lindenberg’s findings, published June 23 in Nature, are a neurological investigation into the underpinnings of a disturbing social trend: As a rule, city life seems to generate mental illness. Compared to their rural counterparts, city dwellers have higher levels of anxiety and mood disorders. The schizophrenia risk of people raised in cities is almost double. Literature on the effect is so thorough that researchers say it’s not just correlation, as might be expected if anxious people preferred to live in cities. Neither is it a result of heredity. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship between environment and mind.

cities are hyper-social places, in which residents must be constantly on guard, and have mathematically more opportunity to experience stressful interaction. Too much stress may ultimately alter the brain, leaving it ill-equipped to handle further stress and prone to mental illness.

Running has continued to increase in popularity in the United States over the past decade. The number of finishers of United States marathons cracked the half-million mark for the first time in 2010, according to Running USA.

according to the American Academy of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, about 70 percent of all runners will be injured at one time during their running career.

The four most common running injuries that occur are iliotibial band syndrome, patellofemoral syndrome, Achilles tendinitis and plantar fasciitis.

Seeing is believing. To be the best runner you can be, it's crucial to begin with a positive vision. While thinking about running won't get you in shape, creative visualizations will motivate you to stick with a training plan, achieve your running goals and persevere in challenging race conditions.

Studies are finding that more lean muscle mass may allow kidney dialysis patients to live longer, give older people better cognitive function, reduce depression, boost good cholesterol, lessen the swelling and discomfort of lymphedema after breast cancer and help lower the risk of diabetes.

During a strength workout, the heart's muscle tissue contracts forcefully to push the blood out. Like all muscles, stress causes small tears in the muscle fibers. When the body repairs those tears, muscles grow. The result is a stronger heart, not just one that's more efficient at pumping. Another big advantage of working out with weights is improving glucose metabolism, which can reduce the risk of diabetes. Strength training boosts the number of proteins that take glucose out of the blood and transport it into the skeletal muscle, giving the muscles more energy and lowering overall blood-glucose levels.

A 2010 study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology suggested that people on dialysis can benefit from building muscle. Researchers found that kidney dialysis patients who had the most lean muscle mass — a measurement derived from the circumference of the mid-arm muscle — were 37% less likely to die than the patients who had the least.

Bisphenol A, a widely used chemical that Canada is banning from baby bottles, is present in the bodies of 91 percent of Canadians, according to a report that shows just how prevalent the controversial chemical is in daily life.

Studies suggesting that low exposure levels early in life can affect neural development and behavior prompted Canada to announce plans to ban its use in baby bottles. Some consumer groups, citing research linking it to cancer, obesity, diabetes and heart disease, want restrictions to be wider than that.

Statscan's Bushnik said the Canadian data on BPA is similar to that from countries like the United States and Germany.

The average person today consumes almost three times as much information as what the typical person consumed in 1960, according to research at the University of California, San Diego. And The New York Times reports that the average computer user checks 40 websites a day and can switch programs 36 times an hour.

"Just as food nourishes us and we need it for life, so too — in the 21st century and the modern age — we need technology. You cannot survive without the communication tools; the productivity tools are essential," he says. "And yet, food has pros and cons to it. We know that some food is Twinkies and some food is Brussels sprouts. And we know that if we overeat, it causes problems. Similarly, after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all computers were good and all use of it was good, science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts."