When I go to the gym and get my vitals checked, the first two things I look at — before my weight, before my percentage of body fat, before my BMI — are my blood pressure and pulse. I figure if my resting heart rate is low (typically in the low 50s, though I long for the day when I dip into the upper 40s and achieve “athlete” status) and my blood pressure is good (I shoot for 110/70). Not bad numbers for a 54-year-old guy.
Category Archives: Health
Are you bigger than you think you are?
Something to be aware of as we enter the holiday season: You may not be the person you think you are. Or more to the point, you may be more of a person than you think you are.
A study in the December issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology reports that of 2,224 women taking part in an assessment of “perceptions of body weight and weight-related behaviors,” just one in four considered themselves overweight. In fact, when the 2,224 women had their BMI calculated, 1,162 — that’s over half — surpassed the BMI’s overweight barrier of 25. (Curiously, of the 1,062 women who were normal weight, 16 percent perceived themselves as being overweight.)
Run from that cold!
Another reason to exercise: You’ll keep from catching cold.
You’ve likely heard that from your friendly, local robo-athlete, the guy or gal who works out with machine-like efficiency pert near every day. Well, he/she now has a study out of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State’s North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis — quick breath so we can finish this sentence — to back him/her up.
Walk, ride: They make a difference no matter who you are
Sunday, I returned from Colorado where I noticed more people riding bikes, more people hiking and walking than they do here in North Carolina. I also noticed that there was a whole let less of the people there than there is of the folks here. Hmm, I wondered. Is there a connection?
Smart living, healthy aging
From the research world comes more incentive to stay active — or become so — as you age.
From the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University comes “preliminary evidence” that keeping your brain sharp can help you physically. Einstein researchers took a group of 20 “frail” seniors (age 70 or older who walk less than a meter per second) and divided them into two groups. Ten went about their normal routines, 10 participated in the MindFit brain fitness program: For 45 to 60 minutes a day, three days a week for eight weeks, they carried out tasks that honed their cognitive abilities: focusing, planning, organizing, problem solving. After eight weeks, the MindFit folks walked slightly faster, but their ability to walk and talk at the same time improved significantly.