Eat 'Real Food' and Walk

Experts Criticised for Saturated Fat Claim

The authors said 'the conceptual model of dietary saturated fat clogging a pipe is just plain wrong'

Heart experts have been criticised for claiming it is "plain wrong" to believe that saturated fat clogs up arteries.
Three specialists argued that eating "real food", taking exercise and reducing stress are better ways to stave off heart disease than cutting out dietary saturated fat.
Writing in a respected journal, they maintained that inflammation is the chief threat to arteries and there is little evidence linking saturated fat consumption with heart disease, diabetes and premature death.
But the editorial, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, attracted scathing criticism for being "simplistic", "muddled" and "misleading".
The authors, led by Dr Aseem Malhotra, from Lister Hospital, Stevenage, wrote: "Despite popular belief among doctors and the public, the conceptual model of dietary saturated fat clogging a pipe is just plain wrong."

Dr Malhotra and colleagues Professor Rita Redberg, from the University of California at San Francisco, and Pascal Meier from University Hospital Geneva in Switzerland and University College London, cited a "landmark" review of evidence that appeared to exonerate saturated fat.
They said relative levels of "good" cholesterol, or high density lipoprotein (HDL), were a better predictor of heart disease risk than levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as "bad" cholesterol.
High consumption of foods rich in saturated fat such as butter, cakes and fatty meat has been shown to increase blood levels of LDL.
The experts wrote: "It is time to shift the public health message in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery disease away from measuring serum lipids (blood fats) and reducing dietary saturated fat.
"Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory disease and it can be reduced effectively by walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food."
They pointed out that in clinical trials widening narrow arteries with stents, stainless steel mesh devices, failed to reduce the risk of heart attacks.
Dr Aseem spelled out a similar message in another opinion piece published in the British Medical Journal in 2013.
However the authors found an ally in Dr Mary Hannon-Fletcher, head of the school of health sciences at the University of Ulster, who described the editorial as "the best dietary and exercise advice I have read in recent years".
She added: "Walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food. This is an excellent public health message; the modern idea of a healthy diet where we eat low-fat and low-calorie foods is simply not a healthy option."

Children Require Daily Exercise!

Children should spend at least three hours a day performing physical activities, according to the Finnish government.  
Parents have been advised to actively encourage their children to pursue hobbies and interests that require physical exertion.Children aged eight and under have been targeted in the move. Finland is known for producing some of the most physically fit children in Europe.
It also produces some of the highest academic results among schoolchildren in the developed world. Finland's Minister for Education and Culture, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, believes this is no coincidence. Ms Grahn-Laasonen said physical activity contributed to a child's happiness and promoted learning by developing a young person's ability to interact socially. "When children exercise together they develop interaction skills and connect socially, and it's healthy, too," she told local media.  Anneli Rautiainen, head of basic education with the Finnish National Board of Education, told the BBC that schools would now be experimenting with new ways of teaching.





These include removing desks and chairs from some classrooms, so that children are not sitting as much while learning regular subjects. "The child has an active role. We will emphasise personalised learning. The learning environment should be modern and support different learners. In our new curriculum, we are looking at two to three hours a week of physical education and more outdoor activities. But we are also looking at non-traditional ways of teaching, some children learn very well sitting at a desk and listening, others would benefit greatly from moving around the room talking with their classmates," said Ms Rautiainen.
Finland is one of the first countries to put forward these recommendations, which will use classrooms to connect physical exercise with traditional learning





 

Sitting is the New Smoking!

Sitting is the New Smoking: How a Sedentary Lifestyle is Killing You!



Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity
Solutions Initiative and inventor of the treadmill desk has been studying the adverse effects of our increasingly sedentary lifestyles for years and has summed up his findings in two sentences:
"Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death."
Levine is credited with coining the mantra—“sitting is the new smoking”—but he’s not the only one who believes it. Researchers have found and continue to find evidence that prolonged sitting increases the risk of developing several serious illnesses like various types of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Another reason the smoking analogy is relevant is that studies have repeatedly shown the effects of long-term sitting are not reversible through exercise or other good habits. Sitting, like smoking, is very clearly bad for our health and the only way to minimize the risk is to limit the time we spend on our butts each day.

Preventive Medicine - Combined Approach!

A recent library addition to the list of Preventive Medicine titles, includes
Diet, Exercise, and Chronic Disease - The Biological Basis of Prevention by C. Murray Ardies - located at 616.044 DIE

  616.044 DIE

Exercise Influencing Health - Sports Statistics

Exercise has taken a central position regarding health, especially within the western-world in recent decades with multiple studies, illustrating the links between exercise and health.

A contribution to this research is contained within a publication which has an NUI Galway lecturer as a primary author - John Newell:

Statistics for Sports and Exercise Science, A Practical Approach
is located at 613.71 NEW

This publication points the reader towards:
- Asking appropriate questions
- Designing a suitable study to answer those questions
- Choosing an adequate number of subjects for the study
- Producing appropriate graphs to describe the study area
- Carrying out a comprehensive analysis of these data
- Presenting clear and justifiable conclusions based on the data

  613.71 NEW                    Image not available Photos not available for this variation

 

Obesity Update (1)

 

Poor diet and lack of exercise accelerate the onset of age-related conditions in mice

Could an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise be making you age faster? Researchers at Mayo Clinic believe there is a link between these modifiable lifestyle factors and the biological processes of aging. In a recent study, researchers demonstrated that a poor diet and lack of exercise accelerated the onset of cellular senescence and, in turn, age-related conditions in mice. Results appear today in Diabetes.

Senescent cells are cells that contribute to diseases and conditions associated with age. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging found that exercise prevents premature senescent cell accumulation and protects against the damaging effects of an unhealthy diet, including deficiencies in physical, heart, and metabolic function, equivalent to diabetes.
"We think at both a biological level and a clinical level, poor nutrition choices and inactive lifestyles do accelerate aging," says Nathan LeBrasseur, Ph.D., director of the Center on Aging's Healthy and Independent Living Program and senior author of the study. "So now we've shown this in very fine detail at a cellular level, and we can see it clinically. And people need to remember that even though you don't have the diagnosis of diabetes or the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease today when you're in midlife, the biology underlying those processes is hard at work."
In the study, researchers introduced mice to either a normal, healthy diet or a diet that they termed a "fast food diet" -- one that was high in saturated fat and cholesterol, along with a sugar-sweetened beverage. Mice on the fast food diet showed harmful changes in health parameters, including body weight and composition, increasing their fat mass by nearly 300 per cent over the course of about four months. The fat mass accumulated largely in the midsection surrounding internal organs, an area that is often linked to a number of diseases related to obesity.
While the harmful effects of the fast food diet were clear, researchers found significant health improvements after introducing exercise. Half the mice, including mice on both the healthy and unhealthy diets, were given exercise wheels. Mice that had been exposed to the fast food diet but exercised showed suppression in body weight gain and fat mass accumulation, and were protected against the accumulation of senescent cells. Mice on a normal diet benefited from exercise as well.
"Some of us believe that aging is just something that happens to all of us and it's just a predestined fate, and by the time I turn 65 or 70 or 80, I will have Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis," says Dr. LeBrasseur. "And this clearly shows the importance of modifiable factors so healthy diet, and even more so, just the importance of regular physical activity. So that doesn't mean that we need to be marathon runners, but we need to find ways to increase our habitual activity levels to stay healthy and prevent processes that drive aging and aging-related diseases."

ScienceDaily - March 2016

Is Too Much Exercise Bad For Your Heart?

 

Internationally acclaimed academic Professor Keith George examines the impact of extreme exercise on the heart at a free public talk at the Croi Heart and Stroke Centre in Galway

The overwhelming majority of scientific evidence shows that exercise is perhaps the most important route to ahealthier better life. It reduces high blood pressure, lowers cholesterol levels, reduces the impact of inflammation, improves vascular function, directly improves heart function and contributes to a longer healthier life. In fact, you could say it is the cheapest cardiovascular polydrug on the market!

Even with all of this compelling evidence about the benefits of exercise some studies claiming that too much exercise can be harmful have gained widespread media attention over the past number of years. The question is why? And if exercise is a drug then does it have any side effects? Is the dose-response a linear one? These are some of the many questions that will be examined by Professor Keith George, Professor of Exercise andCardiovascular Physiology and Head of the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, UK. He is giving a FREE Public Talk on this topic on Friday March 20^th at 7pm in the Croí Heart and Stroke Centre, Newcastle, Galway

Places at this event are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

To book online or for further information visit www.croi.ie Croí Heart and Stroke Centre on 091 544310

Exercise and Obesity - Study:

Lack of exercise is twice as likely to lead to an early grave than obesity, recent research has shown.

A brisk 20-minute walk each day is all it takes to avoid dying prematurely, the findings suggest.

Scientists looked at the effects of obesity and exercise on 334,161 European men and women whose progress was followed for 12 years.

They found that people who engaged in moderate levels of daily exercise - equivalent to taking an energetic 20-minute walk - were 16pc to 30pc less likely to die than those classified as inactive.
Although the impact of exercise was greatest among normal weight individuals, even those with high Body Mass Index (BMI) levels saw a benefit.

Overall, avoiding inactivity theoretically reduced the risk of death from any cause by 7.35pc said the scientists.

Having a BMI lower than obesity levels, defined as a score of 30 or more, was estimated to lower mortality by 3.66pc.

Keeping waists trim, irrespective of BMI, had a similar impact on death rates as exercise.
BMI is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by their height in metres squared and is a standard tool used to assess whether someone is overweight or obese.

At the population level, lack of exercise was thought to have caused almost 700,000 deaths across Europe in 2008.

Study leader Professor Ulf Ekelund, from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University, said: "This is a simple message: just a small amount of physical activity each day could have substantial health benefits for people who are physically inactive.

"Although we found that just 20 minutes would make a difference, we should really be looking to do more than this - physical activity has many proven health benefits and should be an important part of our daily life."

Participants in the research, who had an average age of around 50, were all recruited to the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (Epic) study conducted across 10 European countries.
All had their height, weight, and waist sizes measured and provided self-assessments of physical activity levels.

Just under a quarter (22.7pc) were categorised as inactive, working in sedentary jobs without engaging in any recreational exercise.

The greatest reductions in the risk of premature death were seen when comparing moderately active groups with those who were completely inactive.

Using the most recent available public data, the researchers calculated that 337,000 of the 9.2 million deaths that occurred in Europe in 2008 could be attributed to obesity.

But physical inactivity was thought to be responsible for almost double this number - 676,000 deaths.
The findings are published in the 'American Journal of Clinical Nutrition'.

View more information here

Exercise bike used to aid patient's recovery

Critically ill patients at Portsmouth's Queen Alexandra Hospital are being put on an exercise bike to help speed up their recovery.

In trials, some have cycled up to three miles a day while they are still in intensive care.

The bike can even be used by patients in a coma.

Consultant Dr Kayode Adeniji said early rehabilitation can help shorten the length of time patients spend in intensive care.

Sports and Exercise Science - Statistics

January being the month for new year resolutions, you may wish to browse through an exercise book provided by NUI Galway author, Dr. John Newell.

John's publication may be located at 613.71 NEW

'Late starters' still have much to gain by exercising

Taking up exercise in your 60s will still help stave off major ill health and dementia, research suggests.

The study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine followed 3,500 healthy people at or around retirement age.

Those who took up exercise were three times more likely to remain healthy over the next eight years than their sedentary peers.

Exercise cut the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and depression.

After eight years of follow-up, a fifth of the participants were defined as healthy - not suffering from any major chronic mental or physical illness.

In the study, those who had regularly indulged in moderate or vigorous physical activity at least once a week were three to four times more likely to be healthy agers than those who had remained inactive, even after taking into account factors such as smoking.

Dr Hamer says physical activity does not necessarily mean going to the gym or going for a run - gardening or walking to the shops also counts.

Click on the title below to access the full text of the article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine 25th November 2013

Taking up physical activity in later life and healthy ageing: the English longitudinal study of ageing.

Click here to view link to news article

Exercise 'boosts academic performance' of teenagers

Intensive exercise improves the academic performance of teenagers, according to new research.

The study, of about 5,000 children, found links between exercise and exam success in English, maths and science.

It found an increase in performance for every extra 17 minutes boys exercised, and 12 minutes for girls.

The study by the universities of Strathclyde and Dundee found physical activity particularly benefited girls' performance at science.

The authors said this could be a chance finding or reflect gender differences in the impact of physical activity on the brain.

Children who carried out regular exercise, not only did better academically at 11 but also at 13 and in their exams at 16, the study suggested.

The authors of the study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, said further research backing the findings could have implications for public health and education policy.

The study was funded by a grant from the BUPA Foundation to the University of Strathclyde.

Click here to view the full article

Walking 'cuts breast cancer risk'

Post-menopausal women who walk for an hour a day can cut their chance of breast cancer significantly, a study has suggested.

The report, Recreational Physical Activity and Leisure-Time Sitting in Relation to Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Risk published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, followed 73,000 women for 17 years and found walking for at least seven hours a week lowered the risk of the disease.

The American Cancer Society team said this was the first time reduced risk was specifically linked to walking.

click here to read the full article