Health News

“Live healthy...Live well”

Dedicated to providing pertinent information on health, fitness, and nutrition to foster a culture of wellness among Southwest Airlines flight crews and their families.

by Larry Kline

email: livehealthy-livewell@cox.net

Exercise For The Brain - Aerobic exercise and strength training plays a vital role in maintaining brain and cognitive health throughout life. A review of 111 recent articles suggests aerobic exercise is important for getting a head start during childhood on cognitive abilities. Physical inactivity is associated with poorer academic performance and results on standard neuropsychological tests, while exercise programs appear to improve memory, attention, and decision-making. These effects also extend to young and elderly adults, with solid evidence for aerobic training benefiting executive functions, including multi-tasking, planning, inhibition, and increasing the volume of brain structures important for memory. Journal of Applied Physiology, 07/11.

INTENSE WORKOUTS CONTINUE TO BURN – people who exercise vigorously continue to burn extra calories long after they are finished working out.

            Researchers found that test subjects, who biked intensely on a stationary bike for 45 minutes burned an extra 190 calories over the 14 hours after their workout.  This is in addition to the calories they used while exercising.

            The scientists studied the caloric expenditures of test subjects ages 22 to 33, using a scientific device called a metabolic chamber.  Researchers are able to measure the participants’ oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production in the room and determine the calorie expenditure of that person.  Each participant had a rest day in the room, doing very little activity for 24 hours except for sitting and sleeping.  The next day, the participants did the same routine, except that they cycled vigorously for 45 minutes.

            The researchers found that the participants burned an average of 190 calories more during the 14 hours after exercising compared to their rest day in the chamber.  The exercisers burned an average of 519 calories during the biking sessions and burned a total of 709 more calories on workout days than rest days, meaning that the intense workouts yielded an additional 190 calories burned long after the workout session.

            That means a person would lose one pound after five intense exercise bouts if they resisted the temptation to eat more.       

            These findings also apply to other high-intensity, sweat-producing activities such as running, jogging, and playing intense games of basketball, tennis, or soccer.  To get the extra calorie-burning benefits, the workout needs to be intense enough that you are sweating, with your body temperature up and a significant increase to the resting heart rate – even getting into an anaerobic range.  Other research has evaluated moderate-intensity workouts, such as walking, and found no post-activity impact on calories burned.  To get walking into the post-exercise “after-burner” mode, walkers would have to have a sustained hike up hill with a backpack, stair climbing, or race-walking to be able to elevate the heart rate sufficiently to achieve the greater post-exercise calorie burn.  Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 09/11.

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE PAYS DIVIDENDS – sudden cardiac death, which occurs when the heart stops beating, accounts for half of all heart disease deaths. (The other half-myocardial infarctions – occurs when blood flow to the heart muscle gets blocked.)

            Doctors can lower the risk of cardiac arrest by implanting defibrillators in patients who have irregular heartbeats.  But only 25 to 30 percent of sudden deaths occur in those people.  A study suggests that a healthy lifestyle can also cut the risk.

            Researchers tracked more than 81,000 women for 26 years to see who had a “low-risk” lifestyle, which was defined as:

                        -not smoking

                        -being neither overweight nor obese

                        -getting at least 30 minutes of exercise a day

                        -eating a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, whole grains, and fish, with a low intake of red and processed meat, considerably more monounsaturated fat (canola and olive oils) than saturated fat (the kind in red meat and high-fat dairy), and a moderate intake of alcohol.

            Compared to women who had none of these low-risk factors, the risk of sudden death was 46 percent lower in women with one low-risk factor, 59 percent lower for two, 67 percent for three, and 92 percent lower for those with all four low-risk factors.

            A healthy lifestyle could prevent 81 percent of the 250,000+ sudden cardiac deaths in the United States each year.  Journal of the American Medical Association 306:62, 2011.

D FOR DIABETES? – vitamin D may protect the pancreas from diabetes in people who are at high risk for the disease because their blood sugar levels are above normal. 

            Researchers assigned adults with pre-diabetes to take either vitamin D (2,000 IU a day), calcium (400 mg twice a day), both, or a placebo.  Then they measured how well beta cells in the pancreas secreted insulin.

            After four months, beta-cell function improved by 26 percent in the vitamin D takers and worsened by 14 percent in those who got no vitamin D.  The worse your beta cells perform, the greater the odds of diabetes.  Calcium had no impact on beta-cell function.

            A follow-up, long-term study is now underway to see if vitamin D lowers the risk of diabetes.  Until the results are in, researchers suggest supplementing 600 IU/day until age 70 and 800 IU/day after that.  Nutrition Action Healthletter, 09/11.

THE HAZARDS OF EATING OUT – restaurant meals have about 60 percent more calories than meals made at home, according to a survey of 300 chefs at restaurants ranging from elegant to fast food.  (If dining out with your spouse, consider sharing an entrée – LK) University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter, 02/07.

“AMers” vs “PMers” DINING – is eating earlier in the day better than eating late?  Weight Watchers, Atkins, and South Beach diets have all told dieters to limit the food they eat at night.  For generations, people have believed that food eaten when they are less physically active is more likely to be stored as fat than burned for energy.  However, recent research disputes this belief.  Researchers tracked the eating habits and body weights of more than 7,500 men and women for 10 years and found that the percentage of their daily calories they ate after 5 p.m. had no bearing on changes in their weight.

            There is no credible evidence that the time of day has any impact on the storage of fat.  Eating extra calories because you are tired, bored, or stressed will eventually show up as stored fat.  Nutrition Action Healthletter, 06/11.

SMOKING INCREASES THE RISK OF CERVICAL CANCER – women almost always have to be infected by certain strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) to develop this cancer.  A Swedish study found that smokers infected with these strains were 14 times more likely to develop cervical cancer than infected nonsmokers and the longer they smoked, the higher the risk.  University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter 02/07.

Exercise: Good Reasons - Exercise helps the body resist upper respiratory tract infections, increases your anaerobic threshold (allowing you to work or exercise longer at a higher level before a significant amount of lactic acid builds up), helps to preserve lean body tissue, and improves ability to recover from physical exertion.  Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, 1996