why to exercise today

RECENT POSTS

May 18, 2012 | 6:34 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Better Pain Tolerance


From NPR’s “Shots” blog: The journal “Pain” has just published a study finding that athletes tend to have higher pain tolerance than non-athletes.

A fresh analysis of studies on pain perception by researchers at the University of Heidelberg in Germany finds that athletes can tolerate more pain than non-athletes. And, the researchers conclude, regular physical activity can change the way practically anyone perceives and tolerates pain.

Of course one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to pain relief, but the German researchers think that exercise could help people with chronic pain learn how to better deal with it. The findings appear today in the journal Pain.

The researchers looked at 15 studies that evaluated people’s pain threshold, comparing the jocks with the couch potatoes. The athletes — and especially endurance athletes — consistently seem better equipped to grin and bear pain than non-athletes. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, why to exercise today
May 7, 2012 | 1:48 PM | By

Shake It Up: Commit Today To Try Something New, Even If It’s ‘Insanity’

I would follow Dr. Damian Folch to hell and back, and that may be just what I’m about to do.

I met Dr. Folch, a 58-year-old Chelmsford primary care doctor, last year when I was  reporting on a growing movement called Lifestyle Medicine. It helps doctors actively tackle their patients’ unhealthy habits, in part by sharing their own fitness experiences. Dr. Folch was walking the walk, literally, on an office treadmill, and with his low-key but warmly enthusiastic coaching, I’m sure he could inspire even a lifelong laggard to get moving. Or a middling-fit person like me to push much harder.

Dr. Folch ran his first half-marathon this fall. When I checked in with him last month, he said his latest fitness exploration was “Insanity,” a super-intense DVD workout that requires no equipment. I’d repeatedly run across used Insanity DVDs for sale on Craigslist, and figured it was some sort of scam, one of those Bowflex-style deals that make irresistible promises that you’ll get impossibly ripped.

Not at all, Dr. Folch said. Not in his experience.

But before I get to his persuasive account of Insanity, let me remind you: CommonHealth has just launched its new spring fitness initiative, under the title “Shake It Up,” and to join is exceedingly simple: Just post in the comments below your plan to try something — anything — new in the realm of exercise. Yes, you need to stick with what works for you. But healthy fitness is a lifelong journey, and research suggests that it’s best to vary our workouts. Rachel has already begun by trying trampoline aerobics, and I’m about to descend into Insanity. So what’s your plan?

Back to Dr. Folch. I interrogated him about his Insanity experience. Its concept of long intervals of exertion interspersed with short rests sounded efficient if exhausting. But wasn’t it leaving masses of injured or discouraged people? He replied:

I decided to try Insanity after I saw a program with Dr. Oz. Up to that point I thought it was too dangerous and for a younger crowd. Shawn T. presented a 15-minute workout where Dr. Oz participated and I decided to do it. It was challenging but both Dr. Oz and myself were able to finish. I was sore for a few days. This was a program designed to be done daily for 15 mins. I did that for 3 or 4 days and decided to go for the real thing. Today is the end of my second week. These are my initial impressions.

1. The program is hard but not as hard or crazy as I thought – I ran 3 miles after one of the workouts and another time I wanted to move the rest day one more day, so I did weights an extra day. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, shake it up, why to exercise today
May 3, 2012 | 10:54 AM | By

Shake It Up: Trampoline Aerobics, And The Old-Fashioned Thrill Of Jumping High

I love routine. I eat the same breakfast everyday, and relish my trips every summer to the same cottage in Wellfleet I’ve been to for over 40 years.

Exercise is no different. Since I’ve had kids, it’s basically running and yoga, and for me, it’s the perfect regimen. (I’m going to my 30th high school reunion this month thinner than I was in high school. ‘Nuff said.) Still, I’m aware in some abstract sense that a little change, sometimes, is good.

Trampoline aerobics have been on my mind for over a year. I kept meaning to check out the classes at SkyZone, an indoor trampoline park in Boston but have conveniently found one excuse after another not to go (it’s a schlep, it’s not Zen, it’s risky, etc.)

Yesterday though, I did something different. Pushed by our new Shake It Up series, and the prevailing exercise wisdom that trying something outside your comfort zone forces your body and mind to stretch in healthy ways, I ventured to Hyde Park, to experience SkyRobics, which is basically an aerobics class on a trampoline.

Jumping, it turns out, is really, really fun.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, exercise, shake it up, trampoline aerobics, why to exercise today
May 2, 2012 | 12:29 PM | By

Why To Exercise Today And Onward: Time To Shake It Up

(whologwhy/flickr)

It’s that time again. The light lasts longer, the flowers are out, and your body is saying, “I can do more! Just try me!”

Last spring, we at CommonHealth launched a 3-month, get-healthier project called FreshStart, and quite a few people said it helped them set smart goals and work toward them. (Check it out here, reading oldest to newest.)

This year, we want to try something new: Trying something new. That is, in terms of exercise. One staple of fitness advice is to find what works for you and stick with it. But it’s not a contradiction to say that we also need to shake it up. So that’s the theme for this spring: Shake It Up. Try something new. Not necessarily brand new to the world, just new for you. And let us know how it goes.

‘All programs suffer from diminishing returns after a few years.’

As I write this, Rachel is off on a Shake It Up mission at an exotic exercise locale — she’ll report in tomorrow. Your own mission, should you choose to accept it, is to think about trying at least one new form of exercise — or more. Tomorrow, we’ll ask for your plan, and later on we’ll ask you how it went. We’ll report on fun new exercise innovations; share gory details of our own experiments; and hope you’ll share your own adventures back.

For inspiration, please consider this passage from the excellent recent book on exercise science by physicist Alex Hutchinson, “Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?” In its final chapter, it offers three conclusions: Do something rather than nothing Figure out your goals and monitor your progress. And last but not least:

• Try something new. Whenever researchers line up two or more exercise techniques against each other, the conclusion is almost never “A is better than B” or “A and B are the same.” Instead it’s “A has these strengths and weaknesses, and B has these other strengths and weaknesses.” Moreover, all programs suffer from diminishing returns after a few years — if you always bike at the same pace and do the same five strength exercises, your improvements will be measured in a fraction of a percent. Trying something new every now and then will force your body to adapt in new ways, and keep you mentally fresh.

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, shake it up, why to exercise today
April 11, 2012 | 11:06 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Fight The American ‘Walking Crisis’

 This is nothing short of a walking manifesto. So far, Slate’s Tom Vanderbilt has posted just two parts of his four-part series on why we don’t walk more — the first installment is headlined “The Crisis In American Walking” — and already it’s enough to make me jump from my chair, tie up my sneakers and hit the pavement.  I’ll share the health angle below, but the series focuses on so much more, from history to urban planning to what can be done.

America is a country that has forgotten how to walk. Witness, for example, the existence of “Everybody Walk!,” the “Campaign to Get America Walking” (one of a number of such initiatives). While its aims are entirely legitimate, its motives no doubt earnest, the idea that that we, this species that first hoisted itself into the world of bipedalism nearly 4 million years ago—for reasons that are still debated—should now need “walking tips,” have to make “walking plans” or use a “mobile app” to “discover” walking trails near us or build our “walking histories,” strikes me as a world-historical tragedy.

For walking is the ultimate “mobile app.” Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it bestows: Walking six miles a week was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and I’m not just talking about walking in the “Walk to End Alzheimers”); walking can help improve your child’s academic performance; make you smarter; reduce depression;lower blood pressure; even raise one’s self-esteem.” And, most important, though perhaps least appreciated in the modern age, walking is the only travel mode that gets you from Point A to Point B on your own steam, with no additional equipment or fuel required, from the wobbly threshold of toddlerhood to the wobbly cusp of senility. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, why to exercise today
March 7, 2012 | 6:51 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Study Finds Better Life With Asthma

runner with inhaler (Matthew Kenwrick/Flickr)

(Matthew Kenwrick/Flickr)

Here’s an eye-opener for many of the 34 million Americans diagnosed with asthma: You may naturally be concerned that exercise will worsen your wheeze, but a small study just out this week suggests quite the opposite. Rather, done carefully and with plenty of warm-up, working out may ultimately improve your breathing and even your mood.

Medpage Today reports here from the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology:

ORLANDO — Patients with persistent asthma reported significant improvements in quality of life after four months of structured exercise in a gym, researchers reported here.

Among adult patients participating in the three-times weekly sessions, 78% reported improvements on the asthma quality of life questionnaire compared with 39.5% of controls (P=0.05), according to Thomas A.E. Platts-Mills, MD, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“It’s very difficult to get patients with asthma to exercise, even though we know that stretching the smooth muscle in the lungs decreases airway resistance,” Platts-Mills said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.

“We face three major obstacles to increasing exercise among asthmatics. First, patients think their asthma will worsen if they exercise. Second, gyms are resistant because they’re afraid patients will have an asthma attack. And third is the insurance companies, who are just resistant against paying,” Platts-Mills said. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, asthma, why to exercise today
March 5, 2012 | 10:30 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: The Antidote To Muscle Loss

I feel a little preachy when I wear this to work out, but the phrase was echoing in my head so I took my Sharpie and made a T-shirt out of it.

Actually, I’m thinking I could make a whole series. (Or am I going a bit overboard on this “Why To Exercise” thing? It’s just that the evidence keeps mounting and mounting and mounting…) The next one would be “The antidote for anxiety is endorphins.” Then maybe, “The antidote for American life is the elliptical.” Readers, any others come to mind?

Meanwhile, my entropy shirt found a perfect echo today in this useful package on age-related muscle loss by the Boston Globe’s Deborah Kotz. She writes about research into muscle loss and its extreme form, known as sarcopenia, and notes:

For now, researchers acknowledge, the optimal treatment is prevention: By the time we hit middle age, we should start lifting weights at least twice a week to retain our muscle. And we need to provide our bodies with a steady intake of fuel throughout the day, in the form of protein, to manufacture the lean tissue.

Beginning at age 30, most of us lose about 1 percent – or a third of a pound – of muscle every year, as the body starts tearing down old muscle at a faster rate than it builds new tissue. (It’s why world weight-lifting records for the 60-year-old age bracket are 30 percent lower in men and 50 percent lower in women compared with records in the 30-year-old bracket.) The loss of muscle, which burns more calories than fat, slows the body’s resting metabolic rate, causing us to pack on fat pounds through the years. While we can’t completely halt this aging process, researchers believe we can do a lot to slow it down, mostly through resistance training, or weight training, that targets specific muscle groups.

Read her full story here and a sidebar on how much exercise you need to retain muscle here.

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, aging, muscle loss, why to exercise today
February 13, 2012 | 11:02 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Liver Transplants And Other Ordeals

Sure, the chances that you’ll need a liver transplant are tiny. Only about 4,000 a year are performed in the United States. So the prospect of improving your odds of surviving one probably won’t help you get on the treadmill today. But the message I take from this recent study on fitness and liver transplant patients is a broader one: If being more fit can improve your chances for surviving the ordeal of a liver transplant, doesn’t that suggest that exercising creates in us a kind of health reserve that can help us get through all kinds of medical ordeals?

The study came out in this month’s edition of the journal Liver Transplantation. It performed “cardiopulmonary exercise testing” — heart and lung testing — in patients facing liver transplants, and found that their fitness level was a significant predictor of whether they would survive. From the press release:

Findings report that 60 patients (33%) received a liver transplant and of those 6 (10%) died following transplantation. The mean anaerobic threshold was significantly higher in survivors compared to non-survivors, with multivariate analysis showing cardiopulmonary reserve to be a significant predictor of mortality. Dr. Prentis concludes, “CPET is a non-invasive, sensitive and specific predictor of survival following liver transplantation. However, further evaluation of its predictive value in larger cohorts is necessary.”

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, liver transplants, why to exercise today
February 8, 2012 | 6:58 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Be A Nicer Boss

On days when our boss, WBUR digital chief John Davidow, misses his morning work-out, he snarls and slavers at us, sending us running to the restroom to burst into tears or punch the walls.

Just kidding. In actuality, he is managerial Zen embodied. But I did ask him whether he thought he was a nicer boss on days he works out, and he allowed: “Well, I definitely feel better on days I work out.”

My question was prompted by a recent Scientific American podcast titled “Bosses Who Work Out Are Nicer.” It reported on a paper titled “Supervisor Workplace Stress and Abusive Supervision: The Buffering Effect of Exercise.” A chunk of the podcast transcript:

Researchers asked 98 MBA students who were also employed full-time to rate how their supervisors treated them, by responding to statements like “[my boss] puts me down in front of others.” The researchers also had supervisors fill out a different survey, about their stress levels and weekly exercise. And, as the authors expected, the more stressed-out supervisors were, the more their employees felt belittled by them. But the employees felt better about bosses who exercised, whether it was yoga, cardio or weight lifting. And just one or two days a week did the trick.

Exercise didn’t simply melt away the stress—bosses who worked out reported feeling just as much pressure as their sedentary counterparts. Active bosses just spared subordinates the verbal attacks.

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, why to exercise today
February 6, 2012 | 9:18 AM | By

Why To Exercise Today: Harvard Psychiatrist Finally Takes Own Advice

By Orit Avni-Barron, M.D.
Guest Blogger

It can make you look and feel great. It relieves stress, anxiety and depression, makes premenstrual symptoms more tolerable and reduces hot flashes if you’re unlucky enough to have them. It will improve your body image, help you attract potential partners, keep you healthy and lower your need for medication. It can help you sleep better, boost your cognitive function and give you a buzz that is totally legal. It’s the ultimate medication — but chances are you can’t find it in you to use it.

As a Harvard psychiatrist and the director of a women’s mental health service, I’ve sung the praises of physical activity for years. I’d tell my patients (male and female alike) to just get off the couch and do it. I’d tell them about the newest studies, dazzle them with facts and address any challenges they were facing to improve their chances of success. I’d be their greatest cheerleader, applauding any achievement, big or small…but not when it came to me.

For some reason, it had been very hard for me to take my own advice.

For some reason, it had been very hard for me to take my own advice.

It’s not that I didn’t try (and I have plenty of fitness equipment lying around my house to prove it): I’d do my hula hoops every morning or hop onto the trampoline each commercial break or work on my elliptical every other day for exactly two weeks. Or, sometimes, three. But something always got in the way: I was too tired or too busy, had more important things to do or simply didn’t feel like exercising. It became this thing I’d definitely do one day. That, and learning Mandarin Chinese. Definitely. But many mañanas later, nothing had changed.

Only one day it did happen. I started exercising and haven’t stopped since.

When I sat in my office with a new patient the other day, I think I realized what took me so long.  Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, psychiatry, why to exercise today