May 11th 2010
Research finds that men eat twice as much processed meat per day than women. Processed meat increase risk of bowel cancer by 20% and only 63% of respondents know that a poor diet can increase cancer risk, while only 60% of overweight men know that it increase risk of cancer.
Guys if you don’t want to cut out processed meats all together at least be advised that reducing your consumption is a very good idea.
May 10th 2010
Strength training should be or become a regular part of daily activity as we age. We know that aging causes a loss of muscle which increase risk of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and therefore premature death. The more we contract our muscle via weight training we increase the removal of sugars from our blood stream.
There is only 1 way to strengthen or grow muscle is through a progressive weight training routine. You want to lift weights heavy enough to cause pain while you lift. You should recover from this muscle trauma within hours or days. However, repeating too heavy weight training will slow recover and could cause injury. When you continue to stress and recover your muscles, you’ll heal faster and faster from your workouts and your muscles will become stronger and larger.
Middle agers want to lift weights to gain the health benefits of being stronger and having larger muscles. As always its a good idea to visit your doctor before beginning a new weight training program.
May 10th 2010
A study from the University of Minnesota reveals that women with stress fractures do not have weak bones rather they may have small and weak calf muscles. Another study from Iowa State University in Ames, has demonstrated that runner with longer strides cause greater foot strike forces which increase stress fractures. Stress fractures of the lower leg (shin) is a common injury for runners.
We know that stronger muscles can protect bone fractures by absorbing some of force which runners incur during a run. Of course the biggest problem is not enough runners do weight training. Runners can limit their strike force trauma by limiting their fast pace runs to under 3 times per week. The Iowa study demonstrated by reducing stride length by 10% reduced ground strike forces and reduced injury.
I know runner like bikers strive to go faster, so don’t confuse stride length with speed. Shortening your stride won’t necessarily reduce your speed, it may actually increase your speed by allowing you to increase stride frequency. Remember speed includes both stride length and frequency. Besides, if you’re spending your time nursing an injury how does that increase your speed.
Stay healthy, be smart and keep training.
May 4th 2010
When vitamins and minerals are in short supply they are temporarily reserved for most essential organs; This is a physiological triage based on survival. While less essential functions can be neglected and cause little harm but any chronic short fall from a bad diets will lead to health problems. Vitamins are defined as substances that the body needs but can not make.
Vitamins and minerals play numerous roles; they’re antioxidants, stabilize proteins and act as enzyme co-factors. Therefore they’re involved in all types of physiology including DNA maintenance and repair. Inefficient DNA repair leads to genome instability a contributor to increased cancer risk, accelerate aging and neuro-degenerative disease.
The need for vitamin and minerals in our diets are extremely important for long term health. This become increasingly of concern in economic down turns when people’s choices of food directly affect the money they have to spend. It’s also important to pay attention to the mass production of genetically altered foods and how they’re playing with the vitamins and minerals they’re adding to what we eat.
May 3rd 2010
According to the American Journal of Public Health, Americans not only pay more for our medical treatment. We receive less outcome results when compared to our counterparts from across the pond. We have the highest prevalence of cardiovascular disease and cancer compared to people in England. The finding is more pronounce when compared to individuals at the bottom of the economic scales.
Keep in mind that medical treatment comes after we’ve become sick. Its going to take time if ever before our medical treatment industry is on par with respect to delivering care as those over the pond.
However, habits, behavior, diet and exercise are all something we can do individually to prevent the need for treatment. Only 3% of Americans routinely practice the 4 most essential health habits:
Here is what we’ve done thus far to fight disease and I’ll add it has done nothing to either improve our health or reduce the cost of treatment:
Basically, the best method for improving our health will come from things we do for ourselves.
May 3rd 2010
According to a long term study published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, found that women can reduce their risk of both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes by walking regularly. The relationship is unclear between walking and strokes but what is known is that there is definitely a relationship between walking and reduce risk.
This research found that women who were most physically active were 17% less likely to have any type of stroke when compared to those women who are less active. Women who reported their walking speed as brisk had a 68% lower risk and those who walked 2 or more hours per week had a 57% lower risk of strokes.