We’ll avoid the obvious suggestion of workers powering office equipment when we report a study at East Carolina University that found sedentary office workers like the idea of having a portable pedaling machine under their desk. Like it, and will use it, in the case of 18 workers who had such a device placed under their desks for a four-week period.
Category Archives: Study
Eat chocolate, play outside
The latest from the research world as it applies to our world …
Chocolate: the new super fruit
You’d expect scientific news about chocolate coming out of the Hershey Center for Heath & Nutrition to be favorable toward the brown elixir. And you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Chocolate, which recently has been embraced as the ultimate recovery drink by recovering athletes, has been deemed by the Hershey center as a rich source of antioxidants, those naturally occurring elements that helps us fight disease. Further, chocolate contains more polyphenols and flavanols than fruit juice. The testing found this property for antioxidants in dark chocolate and cocoa. (Hot chocolate was also tested, but proved not as rich in antioxidants because of the processing involved.
Walking seniors, sleeping juniors
Senior citizens in the Triad have helped in a key discovery about how they and their peers can retain their mobility: walk and lose weight.
A five-year study of 288 seniors (ages 60-79) in Davidson, Forsyth and Guilford counties found that those who walked regularly and lose weight improved their mobility by as much as 20 percent. The Wake Forest University study divided the seniors into three groups: a control group that was lectured about healthy living but not directed to do so proactively, a group whose physical activity levels were upped and a group that walked and was put on a weight-loss program. The walkers/dieters should significant improvement in their mobility, increasing from 5 percent to 20 percent based on how long it took them to walk 400 meters. (The 400-meter walk is considered a gold standard in senior mobility: Those who can’t walk that far are significantly more likely to lose their independence.)
Take a break: Your heart deserves it
Back when I was chained to a desk and confined to a cube, I perfected a nifty technique for eluding supervisory detection during frequent absences from my work space. I’d get a hot cup of coffee from the company canteen, place it next to an open folder on my desk, drape a sports coat over the back of my chair and slip away. People would walk by, see the steaming coffee, the active folder, the jacket and assume I was elsewhere in the building, soon to return from a vital work-related mission. Meanwhile, I’d be walking around the building, seeing what was in bloom, catching some fresh air.
Your kid’s health: A report in three acts
Today, a look at a trio of studies on kids’ health, presented in three acts.
Act I: Leave it to poor cholesterol
The scene: Lunchtime at Grant Avenue Grammar School as Larry and Gilbert sit down to eat. Let’s listen.
Gilbert: Lunchables?
Larry: Yeah, why?
Gilbert: Ya knucklehead! Don’t you realize that the lifestyle choices you make today can have a profound effect on your cholesterol levels as an adult? Hey, there’s Judy! Load up a spitwad in your straw, would ya?