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Recent quotes:
Your circle of friends is more predictive of your health, study finds -- ScienceDaily
Handing someone a means to track their steps and monitor their health in the hopes that their health improves simply may not be enough to see meaningful or significant results. Those employers, Chawla said, would benefit from encouraging employees to build a platform to post and share their experiences with each other. Social network structure helps complete the picture of health and well-being. […]"When we hear that health and wellness programs driven by wearables at places of employment aren't working, we should be asking, is it because we're just taking a single dimensional view where we just give the employees the wearables and forget about it without taking the step to understand the role social networks play in health?"
Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong - The Huffington Post
Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. Habits, no matter your size, are what really matter. Dozens of indicators, from vegetable consumption to regular exercise to grip strength, provide a better snapshot of someone’s health than looking at her from across a room.
Unnecessarily difficult: Physical activity resources for adults are loaded with jargon -- ScienceDaily
They found that more than 50 percent of the materials, which included a range of topics such as physical activity and exercise ideas, technical instruction and management of specific health conditions, were written above an eighth-grade reading level, the maximum recommended for accessibility. Only 2.5 percent were written for optimal reading levels, which is fifth-grade or lower.
In the second paper, Thomas, Flay and Cardinal examined 14 studies published between 1992 and the present, which when combined, had reviewed more than 800 written health educational resources on topics such as physical activity, physical fitness or sports medicine.
The average reading level across the studies was greater than 10th-grade, more than two full levels above the maximum recommended eighth-grade reading level. There was no difference in the reading level of resources produced by the government and those by non-government agencies.
Fitness apps found to make almost no difference to users' health | Australia news | The Guardian
“The evidence for many apps is low but I still believe apps have potential to change health-related behaviours and help people with chronic conditions,” Byambasuren said. “But evidence is a must. And the truth is it’s just really hard to change human behaviour and health-related behaviours. No matter how many apps you download, they only work if you change your behaviour.”
Hogwarts Running Club launches world's biggest virtual race
“Games are not just a source of entertainment,” writes Jane McGonigal, who analyzed the power of game-power and virtual communities in her book Super Better. “They are a model for how to become the best version of ourselves.”
Association of Leisure Time Physical Activity With Risk for Mortality | Cardiology | JAMA Internal Medicine | The JAMA Network
All-cause mortality risk was approximately 30% lower in active vs inactive adults, including “weekend warrior” respondents who performed the recommended amount of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity from 1 or 2 sessions per week, insufficiently active respondents who performed less than the recommended amount from 1 or 2 sessions per week, and regularly active respondents who performed the recommended amount from 3 or more sessions per week.
Impact of parent physical activity, sedentary behavior on their preschool children -- ScienceDaily
Young children do follow in their parents' footsteps. Literally. That's the conclusion of researchers who found that in underserved populations, parents' physical activity -- and their sedentary behavior -- directly correlates with the activity level of their preschoolers. Researchers say these findings could lead to interventions that focus more on helping parents model -- not just encourage -- an active lifestyle for their children.
Health Hacks for the Holidays
Make your exercise commitment small enough so that there is no way you can’t fit it in.
Holiday Challenge Participant - Motivated to Walk! - Eat Smart, Move More, Weigh Less
I now use every opportunity to walk more and increase my steps, sometimes thinking outside the box. For example, at the airport. Yesterday, my flight landed at ATL and I had 1 hr 10 mins to catch my next flight.
I landed at Concourse A and instead of taking the train to Concourse B for my flight – I decided to get a fast paced walk in. I walked from my gate on Concourse A to Concourse E and then back to Concourse B for my next flight. I did not use walking escalator nor the train and I walked 1.28 miles.
I still had some time at our gate and so decided to walk the B Concourse from gate to end and back to gate and added another ½ mile.
So instead of sitting around wasting time with iPhone or eating Bon Bons, I walked almost 2 miles and feel great, a little sweaty but great!
Hiking for a month transforms dude's metabolism
The question I had before my thru-hike was this: Would walking all day, every day, for a month improve my metabolic efficiency when I run at a high intensity? In other words, could I become a better athlete by simply walking?
Before the trip, I was burning 66 percent fat and 34 percent carbs during low-intensity exercise or any activity during which I had a heart rate of 112 bpm. At a slow long-run pace, with a heart rate of 145 bpm, I was burning 52 percent fat and 48 percent carbohydrates. My crossover point—the heart rate at which I was burning carbs and fat equally—was 153 bpm, or a moderate-to-slow running pace.
After the trip, I was, as my test administrator at Real Rehab in Seattle put it, “a fat-burning machine.” At 110 bpm, I was burning 91 percent fat and 9 percent carbohydrates. At 145 bpm, I was burning 70 percent fat and 30 percent carbohydrates. My crossover point had moved to 168 bpm, which I reached at a fairly fast running pace. And even at my maximum heart rate (184 bpm), I was still getting a quarter of my energy from fat.
What does this mean? I can now go on long runs without consuming gels and other foods, or at least a significantly reduced amount. Also, the next time I go backpacking, I will be able to carry less weight in my pack because each gram of fat has nine calories, while a gram of carbohydrate or protein provides less than half that energy—around four calories. This means I can carry more high-fat foods like nuts and cheese, while cutting way back on sugary high-carb snacks like energy bars and candy. Plus, if I run low on food near the end of a trip (something that happened several times between resupplies during our thru-hike), my body will be able to run just fine on body fat until I make it to the next rest stop.
Want a new body? Get a new 'buddy'! | News | The University of Aberdeen
Dr Rackow added: “Once we found that having a new exercise companion increases exercise frequency we wanted to find out why this is beneficial and what quality of support they offer that has this effect. Our results showed that the emotional social support from the new sports companion was the most effective. Thus, it is more important to encourage each other than doing the actual activity together. “
Thou Shalt Work Out | Outside Online
health-minded Christian pundits have hailed First Baptist as a shining example of what’s possible when religion and fitness unite. In late 2009, the church invested a quarter of a million dollars to renovate its existing 25,000-square-foot rec center, making it a viable alternative to the city’s upscale health clubs. Besides the Group X room—a full-size basketball court where 14 instructors teach pilates, TRX, high-intensity interval training, “Godspeed Spin,” and other classes throughout the week—the facility has two weight rooms with HFB-branded Cybex machines, a cardio room, an indoor track, sprawling locker rooms, a hydromassage bed, and, for good measure, six bowling lanes.
To better reach goals, record progress physically and share it publicly.
A systematic literature search identified 138 studies (N = 19,951) that randomly allocated participants to an intervention designed to promote monitoring of goal progress versus a control condition. All studies reported the effects of the treatment on (a) the frequency of progress monitoring and (b) subsequent goal attainment. A random effects model revealed that, on average, interventions were successful at increasing the frequency of monitoring goal progress (d+ = 1.98, 95% CI [1.71, 2.24]) and promoted goal attainment (d+ = 0.40, 95% CI [0.32, 0.48]). Furthermore, changes in the frequency of progress monitoring mediated the effect of the interventions on goal attainment. Moderation tests revealed that progress monitoring had larger effects on goal attainment when the outcomes were reported or made public, and when the information was physically recorded.
Still a champion runner at 80: Do elite athletes have an anti-aging secret in their muscles? -- ScienceDaily
This study suggests that aging is associated with decreased muscle quality regardless of physical activity status, according to Power. However, other studies have shown that muscle fibers can be arranged in a variety of ways to optimize strength, speed and power of the whole muscle, Power says, so there are many structural ways to compensate for the reduced performance at the fiber level to maintain performance at the whole muscle level.
Incredible new research. Stronger legs = stronger mind.
They found that of the 324 twins, those who had had the sturdiest legs a decade ago showed the least fall-off in thinking skills, even when the scientists controlled for such factors as fatty diets, high blood pressure and shaky blood-sugar control.
The differences in thinking skills were particularly striking within twin pairs. If one twin had been more powerful than the other 10 years before, she tended to be a much better thinker now.
In fact, on average, a muscularly powerful twin now performed about 18 percent better on memory and other cognitive tests than her weaker sister.
Similarly, in the brain imaging of the identical twins, if one genetically identical twin had had sturdier legs than the other at the start of the study, she now displayed significantly more brain volume and fewer “empty spaces in the brain” than her weaker sister, Dr. Steves said.
Over all, among both the identical and fraternal twins, fitter legs were strongly linked, 10 years later, to fitter brains.
Fitness tracking drop-outs
In a survey of 6,223 individuals, Endeavor Partners, a research firm, found that more than half who bought a fitness tracker had stopped using it, with one-third abandoning the tracker within six months.
