Move more, lose weight, so goes the conventional wisdom, right?
Well … .
A curious finding comes out of a four-year study of 212 kids at 54 schools in the town of Plymouth, U.K. This latest finding from the 11-year-old EarlyBird Diabetes Study being conducted by the Peninsula Medical School finds that physical activity may not play much — or any — role in helping kids lose weight. The finding is based on a trial showing that when kids with weight issues were exposed to more physical activity, they only lost about 3 ounces each. The study did find that overweight kids tend to exercise less. Researchers were left to conclude that “early feeding errors” — hefty portions, calorie-dense snacks and sugary drinks — play a much more significant role in childhood obesity.read more
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.read more
We weren’t thrilled by this study from Indiana University that found that people with neat houses tend to be more physically active. Nearly 1,000 residents of St. Louis between the ages of 49 and 65 had their health evaluated as well as the tidiness of the interior and exterior of their homes. Finding: Those folks who kept up the inside of their homes tended to be in better shape. But was there a chicken-and-egg thing at work here? “If you spend your day dusting, cleaning, doing laundry, you’re active,” said NiCole Keith, one of the researchers. Some people may not be inclined to “take 30 minutes to go for a walk, but they’ll take 30 minutes to clean.”read more
Assorted news from the research world to get your week kick started:
Green exercise? Really pressed for time? Is carving out 60 minutes a day to work out, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health, beyond the pale of your schedule? Even 30 minutes broken into bite-size 10-minute segments isn’t doable? According to a study in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s “Environmental Science & Technology” journal, just five minutes of “green” exercise a day can improve your health — your mental health, at least. Study authors Jules Pretty and Jo Barton say 10 studies involving 1,252 people in the United Kingdom found that just five minutes of gardening, hiking or other pursuits in a green setting decreases your risk of mental illness and improves your sense of well-being. Read more here.read more
Don’t have a stroke. And if you’re a woman, you’ll be less likely to have one if you walk two hours or more a week at a “brisk” pace. This according to a study published in “Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association,” which found that women exercising at this level were 37 percent less likely to have a stroke of any kind than sedentary types. Further, these brisk-paced walkers had a 68 percent lower risk of suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and a 25 percent lower risk of suffering an ischemic stroke. The exact relationship between walking and reduced stroke risk is unclear. The study was conducted as part of the long-term Women’s Health Study, a long-term study of 39,315 female health professionals who are predominantly white and whose average age is 54. Read more here.
Diet alone isn’t enough (again). More research, this time from the Oregon Health & Science University, shows that cutting back on calories alone isn’t enough to lose a significant amount of weight — you’ve got to exercise, too. In this latest affirmation of the need for diet and sweat, the school studied 18 female rhesus macaque monkeys. The monkeys were put on a high-fat diet for several years, then put back on a low-fat diet with a 30 percent reduction in calories. After a month, they exhibited no significant weight loss. During that time as well, the reduction in calories caused the monkeys to become less active. Another reduction in calories a month later saw the monkeys slack off even more. By comparison, a group of monkeys fed a normal monkey diet and trained to exercise for an hour a day on a treadmill did lose weight. The study offers further support to the belief that when the body receives fewer calories it tends to conserve what it’s getting. Read more here.
Pregnant women don’t exercise enough. A study at UNC-Chapel Hill finds that fewer than one in four pregnant women get enough exercise — “enough” being at least 30 minutes a day, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or 150 minutes a week, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Physical activity during pregnancy … may help prevent gestational diabetes, support healthy gestational weight gain and improve mental health,” according to Kelly Everson, research associate professor of epidemiology in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and author of the study. The most common form of exercise for the moms-to-be who did exercise: walking. Read more here.
Don’t let being critically ill keep you from exercising. Exercise even benefits the critically ill, according to a study done in the medical intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins. 57 critically ill patients were put through 30- to 45-minute exercise sessions, which “included any combination of either leg or arm movements while lying flat in bed, sitting up or standing, or walking slowly in the ICU corridors.” The exercise both sped up recovery times and cut in half the amount of prescription sedatives required per patient. Read more here.