Posted by: Curt | Under: Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Finally some good news- It appears from some limited data that the overweight/obesity rate in children and youth has leveled off and is hovering at about 32% after increasing every year since 1980. This is still a huge problem since these kids have learned all the wrong things about eating and exercise. But at least the rate appears to be holding. The problem as health care professionals see it will really come as they enter their 30’s and get older. Then the real battles begin with ever increasing health problems unless they have a major lifestyle change. So if you know kids that are overweight, do what you can to encourage them to change their eating and exercise habits. You really will be helping to save their lives.
…
“That is a first encouraging finding in what has been unremittingly bad news,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of an obesity clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston. “But it’s too soon to know if this really means we’re beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.”In 2003-04 and 2005-06, roughly 32 percent of children were overweight but not obese, 16 percent were obese and 11 percent were extremely obese, according to a study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those levels held steady after rising without interruption since 1980.
…”Without a substantial decline in prevalence, the full impact of the childhood epidemic will continue to mount in coming years,” Ludwig said. That is because it can take many years for obesity-related complications to translate into life-threatening events, including heart attacks and kidney failure.
Social Networks Can Help With Obesity and Smoking
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
The power of other people in your life is probably not something you think about very often. At least not in the way new research has shown it to affect behavior. We have always known that if our kids run with the bad crowd, they will adopt the ways and thinking of that crowd. But we tend to think that we outgrow the influence of other people- at least to some extent, as we grow older. The idea being that as we mature we make better decisions that are not affected by those around us as much. But new research suggests that things like obesity and smoking are very much affected by those around you- especially those you have a close relationship with. In America, being overweight is now considered “normal” and when everyone around you is overweight, it has a powerful influence on how you view reality. This is only common sense but we are just now seeing how powerful an agent for change it could be with medical and social issues like smoking, sex and obesity.
…
The latest research comes from Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. The pair reported last summer that obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.
In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit — even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.
Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.
…
I see this at work in the gym all the time. The people who are connected to others in the gym are far more likely to keep coming and make progress than those who show up alone and sort of stay on the periphery. So if you want to help someone, invite them to the gym and get them connected to those already working out. Making friends is good!
Drink Your Daily Caloric Requirement in One Sitting
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Holy Dairy Cow… I saw this over at Yahoo Health and it is pretty stunning. Why would a company with any sense of social responsibility market something like this? Ummm… money. Shame on Baskin Robbins.
…
“Instead of giving Socrates hemlock, they should have just forced him to drink one of these,” he said. “Could this 2,300-calorie liquid monstrosity be the worst drink on the planet?” We’ve seen a few 1000-calorie shakes, but this is twice as bad as anything we’ve ever seen.
The menu description may sound simple enough: “A blend of HEATH Bar Crunch and Jamoca® ice creams, chopped HEATH Bar pieces and caramel, topped with whipped cream and chopped HEATH Bar pieces.” But the ingredient list reveals a much more complicated story. Methyl paraben, propylene glycol, polysorbate 80: You’d need a degree in chemical engineering just to have a shot at cracking this brain-freezing code. All told, the list of ingredients runs seven inches and 73 ingredients long. Whatever happened to the days when a milkshake was just ice cream and milk?
As unsavory as this list of indecipherable emulsifiers, preservatives, and artificial flavorings may be, the most concerning part comes when you consider the sheer nutritional impact of this weapon of mass construction.
To give you some perspective, slurping up one 32-ounce Heath Shake is the caloric equivalent of eating 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the saturated fat equivalent of scarfing 60 slices of bacon, and will give you the same sugar rush as working your way through 13 Haagen Dazs Vanilla and Almond ice cream bars.
…
The moral of this story is simple- you MUST look at the nutrition info on stuff you buy at restaurants. I really doubt that many people know how many calories they are eating when they buy something. I also doubt that most people care. That is the scary part.
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Well, sort of. It is not like you can just not crave certain foods by pure will power, but there are ways to control them. One way is to just give in! Actually, that is not a bad idea. You are better off eating (1) chocolate chip cookie when you have the urge than to wait and then eat 10 of them. The catch is, of course, to only eat one. A lot of people can’t do this. I don’t have a problem stopping after 1 cookie or a small scoop of ice cream, but a lot of people just can’t stop. The point is that eating a small piece of chocolate after lunch for dessert is far better than eating the whole bar later on when you are really craving it. The crazy thing, is that it is all in your head…
…
Ever notice that when you decide to give up a favorite food, it’s the only thing you can think about? You’re totally normal. When researchers at the University of Toronto deprived women of chocolate for a week, they found that the restrained eaters experienced more intense, chronic chocolate cravings and swallowed approximately double the amount of the forbidden food when it was finally allowed. “When you cut something out of your diet, you’re more likely to overeat it when you do encounter it,” says Janet Polivy, Ph.D., the study’s lead author. In other words, restricting your diet primes you to obsess. Instead of swearing off sweets, pare down your portions, says SELF contributing editor Janis Jibrin, R.D. At SelfDietClub.com, you can determine how many calories your cravings account for. “If you’ve been eating 500 calories of sweets, cut it in half. Then start to work your way down,” Jibrin says. If you’re trying to lose weight, your eventual goal is to be satisfied by 150 calories per day. Replace the foods you’re limiting with naturally sweet eats such as berries, pears and other fruit to help appease your sweet tooth, Gans suggests. From MSNBC
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Most people realize how important nutrition and training are to sports, bodybuilding and general fitness. But the most neglected element in most folks plan is sleep. There are a couple of obvious reasons why we need sleep- rest, growth and time for the body to repair itself, but new research points to another important factor- when we are sleep deprived, our brains don’t function normally. We all know the feeling of driving while we are sleepy and how scary it can be since you can literally shut down for a few seconds at a time, which is an eternity when you are driving at 70mph on the highway. That can be deadly. But lack of sleep has effects in the gym too. One is simply low motivation. It is hard to get excited about working out when you are tired. A good remedy is a short 15-20 minute nap. But the problem goes deeper since there are various hormonal changes that occur when you are tired as well. So make sure you get enough sleep or you will find that a lot of your training is not getting the results it could. We tend to think that sleep is sort of optional, but the reality is that you can’t fool your body.
…
Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure — brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness, researchers said on Tuesday.
“It’s as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly,” said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The findings suggest that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing.
Western Chronic Diseases Spread to the Rest of the World
Posted by: Curt | Under: General Fitness, Health, Travel/fit | Add Comment
The rest of the world- especially developing countries have inherited all the western style diseases that they escaped from in the past. Typically, infectious diseases were the big killers in the developing world. But the World Health Organization has seen a rise in all the typical US type killers such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer. As the rest of the world adopts a western lifestyle, they expect those numbers to rise. This is a classic case of prosperity killing us.
When I was in the Mayan region of Mexico a few years ago, I noticed that prepackaged junk food was very popular and that a lot of the people were overweight. These are people that still live in thatched roof huts but eat junk food in huge quantities. So we have exported our smoking and high calorie, high fat, high sugar lifestyle to the rest of the world and they are eating it up- and dying from it. Corporate America at its best:(
…
GENEVA – Chronic conditions such as heart disease and stroke, often associated with a Western lifestyle, have become the chief causes of death globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
The shift from infectious diseases including tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria — traditionally the biggest killers — to noncommunicable diseases is set to continue to 2030, the U.N. agency said in a report.
…”As populations age in middle- and low-income countries over the next 25 years, the proportion of deaths due to noncommunicable diseases will rise significantly,” it said.
By 2030, deaths due to cancer, cardiovascular diseases and traffic accidents will together account for about 30 percent of all deaths, it said.
“Diabetes and asthma are on the rise everywhere. Even low-income countries are seeing shocking increases in obesity, especially in urban areas and often starting in childhood,” Chan said. From MSNBC
Walk or Ride Your Bike to Work
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
I know that this isn’t feasible for a lot of people who just live too far from where they work, but if even 10% of the work force could do this, it would have 2 really big effects- lower demand for gas (and thus prices) and work off a few calories a the same time. As crazy as it sounds, the (human) weight gain problem in America has a real effect on the amount of oil we use. Plus a little exercise would do us all good!
…
…if you figured out how to get to work one day a week without your car (or worked from home) you could save much more. You’d also have a real impact on demand, and therefore, on prices. Assuming you drive 30 miles round-trip to work, in three months you would save 19.5 gallons (at 20 mpg). Based on the latest weekly average pump price of $3.72 a gallon, that adds up to more than $72. At $4 a gallon, you’d save $78.
Riding your bike to work would help in two ways: Your car would burn less gas, and you’d lose weight. Americans are now pumping an extra 938 million gallons a year because of the added weight gained by the average driver since 1960, according to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Virginia Commonwealth University.) From MSNBC
Eating At Romano’s Macaroni Grill
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
If you are like me and love Italian food, you really need to be careful in your menu selection. One of the worst things you can eat -sometimes- is a salad. Sounds crazy, but when you add croûtons and caesar or ranch dressing, you can easily be eating more than if you got pizza. The salad greens are fine, but be careful with the add-ons! Check this out from Eat this, Not That. It defies normal common “wisdom”, but the numbers don’t lie. 920 calories and 69 grams of fat for a salad is insane.
…
Chicken Caesar Salad
Calories 920
Fat 69 g
Saturated Fat 16 g
Sodium 1,669 mg
Sure, it has a respectable 18 grams of fiber and a ton of protein, but the 163 grams of carbohydrates will send your blood sugar skyrocketing.
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Sports, Youth/fit | Add Comment
OK, I saw this over at MPF and thought it needed a link here too! This comes from Cracked.com and is your Friday afternoon humor. Some of this stuff is so ridiculous- the guy in this video can’t even count… Hey, don’t waste you money, just find a good gym close to your home. But do go and check out the other goofy stuff
….
Any idiot can build a better mousetrap, but it takes a special kind of individual, a genius if you will, to look at the existing mousetrap and figure out semi-plausible ways in which it could be used as an all-purpose exercise system. These fitness products seem to be made mostly from random repurposed goods that you probably already have in your basement:
…
Scary Prescription Use Statisitcs
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Wow… over 50% of adult Americans are on prescription drugs for chronic conditions. That is an astounding number. And the bad part is that it is rising for children as well as young and middle aged adults too. So its not just the old folks although they are taking a ton of meds as well. That means that we can expect the next generation to be generally less healthy that this generation. Here is the pertinent data, but take the time to go and read the whole article. The stats are truly frightening since they show that Americans are suffering from chronic diseases that can be prevented in most cases by lifestyle changes. But since we live in a “give me a pill for it” culture, lifestyle change does not seem like an option to most people and doctors have no choice but to prescribe the drugs.
…
For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.
The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol — problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
The numbers were gathered last year by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans.
…Medication use for chronic problems was seen in all demographic groups:
- Almost two-thirds of women 20 and older.
- One in four children and teenagers.
- 52 percent of adult men.
- Three out of four people 65 or older.
Among seniors, 28 percent of women and nearly 22 percent of men take five or more medicines regularly.
…Dr. Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco, said he sees both bad news and good in the findings.
“Honestly, a lot of it is related to obesity,” he said. “We’ve become a couch potato culture (and) it’s a lot easier to pop a pill” than to exercise regularly or diet.
On the good side, he said, researchers have turned what used to be fatal diseases into chronic ones, including AIDS, some cancers, hemophilia and sickle-cell disease.
Yet Epstein noted the biggest jump in use of chronic medications was in the 20- to 44-year-old age group — adults in the prime of life — where it rose 20 percent over the six years. That was mainly due to more use of drugs for depression, diabetes, asthma, attention-deficit disorder and seizures.
…
This does not bode well for our children who are at risk of developing these diseases and conditions because their life-styles are shaped by their generally unhealthy parents.
