fitness

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May 16, 2012 | 11:51 AM | By

The Nation’s Least Active High Schoolers: How To Get Mass. Kids Moving More

playground

(geograph.org.uk)

Massachusetts tends to do well compared to other states on measures of obesity and activity — but not that well. Particularly our high school students: They score worst in the nation on getting the recommended daily hour of physical activity.

Children’s exercise levels are the topic of discussion today at a Massachusetts Health Policy Forum hosted by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation and The Boston Foundation. It’s titled “Overweight and Obesity in Massachusetts: A Focus on Physical Activity,” and aims to address the need to coordinate state, local and school efforts to increase kids’ activity levels. From the briefing paper released today by the Mass. Health Policy Forum:

Overall, Massachusetts ranks 33rd for the percentage of children who are obese and ranks dead last with the lowest percentage of high school students who meet the recommendation for 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise daily.

Among Massachusetts high school students:

  • 67% of students were not regularly physically active and fare worse than the national average.
  • Only 17% of students were physically active daily.
  • 82% did not attend physical education classes daily and fare worse than the national average.
  • Over 23% of children reported not being physically active for 60 minutes on any day.
  • 30% of students reported watching television for 3 or more hours per day on school days.

What is to be done? Clearly that’s a topic worth many hours of discussion, but the brief also includes this useful chart of what other states have been doing: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, fitness, pediatrics
January 5, 2012 | 1:22 PM | By

The Backlash: NYT On Yoga As A Body-Wrecker

Yoga: Panacea or Saboteur?

The backlash was inevitable.

With yoga studios sprouting up on nearly every urban corner and with practically every adult practicing some form of yoga or another (I’m one of them), the scary, anti-yoga stories were bound to emerge.

Here’s the latest: a massive piece in The New York Times Magazine called: “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” by science reporter William Broad, who has written a book on the topic.

The article’s nut graph goes like this:

According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness, injuries, yoga
January 4, 2012 | 10:23 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Better Grades

Granted, this is a study about kids, but don’t we all want better grades in life, too?

Reuters reports here today:

“Children who get more exercise also tend to do better in school, whether the exercise comes as recess, physical education classes or getting exercise on the way to school, according to an international study. The findings, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, come as U.S. schools in general cut physical activity time in favor of more academic test preparation.”

Dr. John Ratey, a Cambridge-based psychiatrist and author of the excellent book “Spark,” is all over the topic of how exercise helps children learn, and I see on his Website that it even hosts a documentary called “Brain Gains” about the effects of pilot exercise programs in schools.

Reuters reports:

Three of the four studies involving an exercise intervention found that students given more exercise time scored higher on measures of academic performance. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, brain research, fitness, why to exercise today
January 3, 2012 | 9:29 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Because Very Smart People Do It

Eric Lander of the Broad Institute

Tucked into this excellent profile of genomics guru Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute — (a complimentary profile like this, with not a negative word, is known in the trade as a “big sloppy kiss”) — is a glimpse of his inspiring daily fitness regimen:

His days start and end in a gym on the second floor of his house, where he has an elliptical cross-trainer. He uses it for two 40-minute sessions, one in the morning and one at night, watching Netflix videos and burning — according to the machine — 1,000 calories a day. He reports that he lost 42 pounds last summer without changing his diet.

Surely if Lander can carve out enough time to work out — every morning and night — you can too.

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness, why to exercise today
January 2, 2012 | 3:36 PM | By

Why To Exercise Today: A Dozen Reasons To Do Weights This Year

Demo of "The pec pop of love" in the trailer for "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island"

As you consider your 2012 fitness plans, may I humbly suggest weights? I spurned them for years and years, persuading myself that it was enough to heft children and grocery bags. I was excellently addicted to cardio, but did basically no strength training at all. Then, last month, came my day of reckoning: a fitness assessment that found that all my cardio had paid off with a healthy pulse, but that I could do only three — count ‘em, three — full sit-ups. And my overall strength performance was decidedly mediocre for a woman who has been called “strapping.” (And by Russians, who know from strapping women.)

Those three lonely little sit-ups woke me up. Whatever I thought I was getting away with, I wasn’t. Shades of junior-high humiliation. But we are grown now, and we do not wallow in angst — we take action. I started using the weight machines at my gym, two times a week, two tough circuits each time. And to my own shock, I like it. A lot. I’m stretching on a few of these, but here are 12 reasons, from the scientific to the trivial, why you may want to join me:

1. Mood. I’m feeling oddly good lately. Could be hormones. But there’s some evidence that lifting weights lifts your mood (though nothing like the mountain of evidence on aerobic exercise.) Here’s a study about improving mood post-heart attack, covered on WebMD; and from Slate, here’s what positive psychologist Todd Kashdan told Gretchen Rubin of “The Happiness Project” fame when she asked him which activities most comforted him: “There are workout sessions where I lift weights, grunt, and temporarily shed the other layers of my existence. My equanimity hinges on my ability to be a warrior in the gym.”

2. Your heart and blood pressure: Recent research suggests that aerobic exercise has no monopoly on heart benefits. Example: A study last year from Appalachian State University in which subjects did 45 minutes of moderate weight training. The university reported that Dr. Scott Collier ‘found that the resistance training resulted in as much as a 20 percent decrease in a person’s blood pressure, which is as good as or better than the benefit of taking anti-hypertensive medication. ‘And exercise has no adverse side effects,” Collier said.”
Men’s Fitness translated the study into the headline, “Get heart healthy by lifting weights.”

3. A great many other health benefits. They range from bone-building to body mechanics to reduced risk of falling as you get older. You can read about some of them on everydayhealth.com here.

4. Music. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, cardiovascular, fitness, why to exercise today
December 23, 2011 | 11:36 AM | By

Dear Santa: We Need To Talk About Your Health

By Ken Farbstein
Guest Blogger

Dear Santa,

Your lab tests came back, and your cholesterol ratios are out of line, again. As I mentioned in your physical, I’m concerned about some of your habits. For almost the entire year, you’re very inactive. Living as you do in a very isolated neighborhood in a very cold region, you don’t get out and about very much. That isolation can be very dangerous for a man of your age (or, indeed, of any age). Then in late December, you rouse yourself for a short period of supremely intense activity, logging many miles over rough terrain, and then wrestling heavy awkward bundles out of the sleigh, then climbing up icy roofs while lugging these countless loads, then forcing yourself down through narrow spaces, then hauling yourself back up, and on to the next place. For a man of your girth and your age, it’s simply too much.

I’ve explained all this at your last physical, as I do every year. I’m writing this letter out of frustration, since you never do what I say. I never hear that you’re taking the niacin I’ve suggested, or the statin I’ve prescribed, for your high cholesterol. I never see any evidence that you’ve lost weight.

To be fair, I do want to applaud you for the healthy habits you do follow. You’re exceedingly generous, and selfless, as you love giving things to people. Your belly laugh is a real gift to others, and to yourself, as it discharges a lot of the tension that might otherwise lead to high blood pressure. The affectionate attention you give to the young children brought to you by their parents is good for them, and for you. You have a definite mission in life, and you serve it diligently, which also helps. You haven’t seem to age much over the years, so it must be that these healthy habits have been giving you these long years of healthy life in your old age, counteracting the factors I mentioned earlier.

I’ve long wondered about your ruddy cheeks and nose. In many people, that’s a sign of heavy drinking: after many years of drinking, the capillaries in a person’s face rupture. But when I’ve asked, you’ve consistently denied that alcohol has been a problem for you…

I’ve long wondered about your ruddy cheeks and nose. In many people, that’s a sign of heavy drinking: after many years of drinking, the capillaries in a person’s face rupture. But when I’ve asked, you’ve consistently denied that alcohol has been a problem for you, and I’m inclined to agree, as I’ve never heard, from you or anyone else, that your behavior has been inappropriate due to alcohol. Indeed, moderate drinking (one or two a day, for a large adult male) is a healthy behavior, so it seems that you’re OK there. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness
December 15, 2011 | 2:02 PM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Eye-Popping ‘People Are Awesome’ Video

This is my excuse for posting this eye-popping German video that has already gotten nearly 3 million views on YouTube: It could have the same effect on you as on the YouTube commenter who responded, “This video is amazing!!! After watching it I forced myself to get off my couch and do something. I actually went out for a jog. It’s amazing what we can do if we commit ourselves to something.”

Covering health care means writing a lot about when bodies go wrong. But in this video, almost everything goes exactly right — bikes land exactly on phone booths and balls land miraculously in baskets and gymnasts flip more times than seems possible and still land on their feet. It’s under five minutes long, with a majestic sound-track. This is a stressful time. Treat yourself.

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness, why to exercise today
December 9, 2011 | 10:19 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: It Even Helps Therapy

In junior high, my dear friend Stacey and I instituted a practice that we called the walk-and-talk. We would walk around the streets of our neighborhood discussing topics of burning importance — including which boys we considered “bush babies,” that is, attractive enough to want to meet with in the relative privacy of the bushes.

‘Many people skip the workout at the very time it has the greatest payoff.’

So “The Exercise Effect” in this month’s Monitor On Psychology from the American Psychological Association struck a major chord. It begins:

When Jennifer Carter, PhD, counsels patients, she often suggests they walk as they talk. “I work on a beautiful wooded campus,” says the counseling and sport psychologist at the Center for Balanced Living in Ohio.

Strolling through a therapy session often helps patients relax and open up, she finds. But that’s not the only benefit. As immediate past president of APA’s Div. 47 (Exercise and Sport Psychology), she’s well aware of the mental health benefits of moving your muscles. “I often recommend exercise for my psychotherapy clients, particularly for those who are anxious or depressed,” she says.

Unfortunately, graduate training programs rarely teach students how to help patients modify their exercise behavior, Carter says, and many psychologists aren’t taking the reins on their own. “I think clinical and counseling psychologists could do a better job of incorporating exercise into treatment,” she says. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness, psychology, therapy, why to exercise today
November 9, 2011 | 10:57 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: ‘Inexorable Decline’ May Really Stem From Inactivity

I gather that the Phys Ed column on nytimes.com is about fitness in general, but almost everything that columnist Gretchen Reynolds writes looks to me like one more reason to exercise.

Today brings the latest: That “inexorable decline” in muscle mass as we age may not be so inevitable after all. It may actually be the result of inactivity. Previous studies have found that people tend to lose about 8% of their muscle mass each decade from middle age on, but a new study looks at old athletes and finds a different story:

There was little evidence of deterioration in the older athletes’ musculature, however. The athletes in their 70s and 80s had almost as much thigh muscle mass as the athletes in their 40s, with minor if any fat infiltration. The athletes also remained strong. There was, as scientists noted, a drop-off in leg muscle strength around age 60 in both men and women. They weren’t as strong as the 50-year-olds, but the differential was not huge, and little additional decline followed. The 70- and 80-year-old athletes were about as strong as those in their 60s.

“We think these are very encouraging results,” said Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who oversaw the study. “They suggest strongly that people don’t have to lose muscle mass and function as they grow older. The changes that we’ve assumed were due to aging and therefore were unstoppable seem actually to be caused by inactivity. And that can be changed.”

Other recent studies have produced similar findings.

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, aging, fitness, why to exercise today
November 7, 2011 | 11:36 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Our Cosmetic Ad — Before & After Workout

“An egregious example of disease-mongering.” That’s what Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.org called this MSNBC report titled “Plastic surgeon wants to fix your runner’s face.” The fatuous piece passes along a press release warning that running can burn so much fat that faces get downright “skeletal.”

I must say, I, too, had received the press release that prompted that MSNBC report, and had simply snorted in disgust. “Runner’s face”? As a putative problem? Gary did a typically great job of nailing the report here, but I wanted to go one more skeletal step forward: Not only does exercise fail to create beauty problems but it is rightly touted as a beauty treatment in and of itself — an igniter of glow and a booster of visible wellbeing. Personally, the effects of exercise remind me of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the Oscar Wilde classic in which a man’s portrait ages while he remains eternally young-looking. When I miss a workout, I feel the years suddenly catching up with me — and I see them on my face.

So this weekend, after a couple of days of salty eating and no exercise, I decided to try an experiment: I took a photo of my prodigious under-eye baggage before a vigorous workout and afterward. True, I did use a teeny tiny bit of concealer in the “After” photo as well, but you have to figure plastic surgeons do the same. And if you ask me, the photos below rival any cosmetic surgery ad.

Readers, I’d so love it if you would try something similar: Click on the “Get in touch” button below and send in photos of yourself before and after your workout, even if all that dramatically changes is your facial expression. If we get a few photos, we can create a portrait gallery that is the ultimate answer to silly folderol like warnings of “runner’s face…”

Before the workout: Major bags and puffiness

After the workout: De-puffed and lightened

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, fitness, why to exercise today