Two more reasons to exercise — and one to get off your buzzing butt.
Researchers at York University in Toronto have found that exercise may help people with asthma. At least those adults whose asthma isn’t fully controlled by meds.
In a study published online June 7 in the European Respiratory Journal, researchers took 36 sedentary adults with asthma symptoms that were only partially controlled. Half were put on three months of supervised exercise — jogging, walking on a treadmill, pedaling a stationary bike three times a week, strength training once a week — the other half went about their sedentary lives. At the end of the three months of supervised exercise, that half of the control group continued to workout on their own. At the end of both the three month and six month periods, the exercisers reported improvement in their overall quality of life, especially the parts of it that, during their more leisurely days, had been affected by their asthma.
The researchers were quick to caution that exercise can also trigger asthma attacks, though that didn’t happen during the study, though one exerciser in the study did suffer an asthma attack during the study which resulted in hospitalization, though the attack did not occur while the person was exercising and did not appear to be exercise related.
Read more here.
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Fallen and can’t get up? Odds are if you exercised you wouldn’t have fallen in the first place.
That according to a report conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and published in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which came to this conclusion after analyzing data from folks taking part in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study from 1970 to 1989, with a follow-up survey in 1990.
Of the 10,615 participants in the study, aged 20 to 87, 20 percent said they had fallen in the previous year. Twenty percent of the 10,615 participants, aged 20 to 87, said they had taken a spill in the previous year. Of those, 15 percent said they fell while walking. (Women were 2.8 times more likely than men to fall while walking.) In analyzing the statistics, researchers found that people who exercised about two hours a week reduced the risk of falling.
Falling results in an estimated 8 million emergency room visits and 19,000 deaths annually in the United States. They are the leading cause of injury among people aged 65 and older in the U.S.
Read more here.
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Finally, the American Council on Exercise’s Workout Watchdog investigates whether electronic muscle stimulation technology pioneered by the Soviets in the 1960s can really lead to a firmer bottom while you watch TV.
Click on Getting To The Bottom of EMS.