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Nutrition
Performance Wellness Research: March
Movement
“No pill or nutritional supplement has the power of near-daily moderate activity in lowering the number of sick days people take,” says David Nieman, director of Appalachian State University’s Human Performance Lab in Kannapolis, N.C. Dr. Nieman has conducted several randomized controlled studies showing that people who walked briskly for 45 minutes, five days a week over 12 to 15 weeks had fewer and less severe upper respiratory tract infections, such as colds and flu. These subjects reduced their number of sick days 25% to 50% compared with sedentary control subjects, he says.
Medical experts say inactivity poses as great a health risk as smoking, contributing to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, depression, arthritis and osteoporosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 36% of U.S. adults didn’t engage in any leisure-time physical activity in 2008.
Dr. Nieman, of Appalachian State University, says that during exercise, two types of immune cells circulate more freely in the blood, neutralizing pathogens. Although the immune system returns to normal within three hours, the effect of the exercise is cumulative, adding up over time to reduce illness rates, he says. He compares the process to “a cleaner who comes in for an hour a day, so by the end of a month, your house looks much better.”
Source: Wall Street Journal, The Hidden Benefits of Exercise, January 5, 2010
Nutrition
Multigrain and whole grain are not interchangeable terms. Whole grain means that all parts of the grain kernel — the bran, germ… [ read more ]
Performance Wellness Research: December
Movement
The benefits of exercise appear to be significant even without reaching the recommended 150 minutes per week based on results of previous research. “Exercising at very light levels reduced deaths from any cause by 14 percent,” said study senior author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D. The study also found that a person’s risk of death from any cause decreased by 4 percent for every additional 15 minutes of exercise up to 100 minutes a day over the course of the study. Those exercising for 30 minutes daily added about four years to life expectancy.
(Source: Science Daily, August 16, 2011)
Nutrition
Increased protein intake is now linked to lower saturated fat and lower caloric intake, study suggests. In the study, 70% of the increased energy intake on the lower protein diet was attributed to snacking. When the protein content was further increased to 25%, however, the researchers observed no change in behavior relative to the 15% protein diet. The findings have considerable implications for bodyweight management in the current nutritional environment, where foods rich in fat and carbohydrate are cheap, palatable and available to an extent unprecedented in our history.
(Source: Science Daily, October 12, 2011)
Rest & Recovery
The investigation conducted by the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle involved 400 patients who had low back pain, the majority of which were middle aged, Caucasian and female. Researchers found those who were given a series of relaxation massage or structural massage were better able to work and be active… [ read more ]
What’s For Breakfast?
By: Andrew Pescovitz
It has become many people’s usual routine to get out of bed, get ready for work, and grab that cup of coffee calling that their “breakfast.” I mean let’s face it, fixing breakfast takes up time that we could be using to get more sleep, get dressed, take a shower, or extend the time for any necessary morning activity. Could this be one thing holding you back from reaching your weight loss goals? There is plenty of evidence to show that simply by eating breakfast alone, this has a very large impact on losing weight, and lots of it. Skipping breakfast not only sets the body into starvation mode which is not ideal for calorie burning, but it also causes people to do thoughtless snacking over the course of the day and possibly even bingeing at lunch or dinner. Definitely not the ideal environment for weight loss.
Two particular studies done by The Journal of the American Dietetic Association can back up this evidence. One of the studies followed 2000 girls from the age of 9 to 19 and clearly showed that the girls who ate cereal for breakfast everyday had a very low percentage of weight problems at an older age compared to the group of girls who did not eat breakfast. Another study was done on 4200 adults which showed that the people who ate breakfast were not only more likely to exercise, but generally ate fewer calories over the course of the day.
If… [ read more ]