Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

Is Physical Exercise a "Treatment" for Cancer?

This is interesting stuff, so have a look at this free editorial and the article (access, $32) in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Here's an excerpt from the editorial by Edward Giovannucci, MD.

Given the promise of a role of physical activity in reducing cancer-specific mortality, future research involving observational studies, interventions, and mechanistic studies should be a high priority. Few other leads have shown as much promise as physical activity in extending the lives of cancer survivors. Many treatments may increase survival, but at a cost of quality of life; physical activity may not only extend life but may also enhance its quality. Even though direct effects of physical activity on cancer are not definitively proven, given that physical activity is generally safe, improves quality of life for cancer patients, and has numerous other health benefits, adequate physical activity should be a standard part of cancer care.

Decades Ahead of His Time: RIP Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne, often called a fitness "nut" when his career was at its peak, passed over the weekend at his California home. Way ahead of his time--and of Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, and others--LaLanne passed along what had worked for him as he transformed from a sickly, unhappy kid into a fit, slim, and seemingly happy adult. His formula? Daily exercise with weights, cardio work, lots of veggies and fish, and a cheerful attitude. He credited Paul Bragg, father of the Natural Health movement, for putting him on the right path. LaLanne was a contemporary of Bonnie Prudden, who apparently is still alive and who received the Lifetime Achievement Award from President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Obits today in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.  And check out this vintage video. It was good advice in the 50s, and it's good advice now. And what can I say? Jack died at 96, and Bonnie is still going at 97. (Yes, those are ballet slippers the big-gunned-one is wearing with his famous exercise suit.)

 

Fidget for Your Health

I'm a writer. To remain employed as a writer, I must sit and work. For hours. So this research about the negative cardiovascular effects of a sedentary workstyle--even in people who work out daily--worries me. A lot. Read about the newest study of this phenomenon at MedPage Today. The original study is in the current issue of the European Heart Journal (although it's American data). Among the problems identified in people who were more sedentary, as opposed to those who moved around more, were a larger waist circumference, lower levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol, more C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation that seems to predict higher heart risk), higher fasting triglyceride levels, and higher insulin levels and more insulin resistance. But here's some possible good news: Standing up and moving around periodically for as little as a minute at a time seems to mitigate the effects of sitting, at least on waist circumference and C-reactive protein levels. All of these findings need corroboration by other studies, but in the meantime, there's no reason not to make a point of getting off your butt at scheduled intervals, whether it's to go get more coffee or do a few yoga poses. That's my plan.

Cancer Survivor? You Should Be Getting More Exercise

Yes. According to the National Cancer Institute, the evidence that people who are having cancer treatment or recovering from it stand to benefit from more physical activity--within reason, of course. There's evidence that exercise diminishes fatigue and improves physical functioning in people who are recovering from cancer, and it may help diminish the weight gain linked to some types of therapy. There's even preliminary evidence in people with breast or colon cancer that exercise may keep recurrences at bay. This particular article, which is from the NCI Cancer Bulletin, has more information than many of the briefer news reports about this study. It's free. 

Can Exercise Beat Depression?

I like Laura Blue's article in Time this week on the antidepressant effects of exercise. Several recent studies have cast doubt on how well antidepressants actually work in people with mild/moderate depression, although they seem to be more effective for people with more serious forms of depression. One of the people she interviews makes the point that physical activity is probably a more natural state for humans than the sedentary state that most of us find ourselves in, and our brains are more happily hard-wired for exercise. Here's an excerpt: 

Molecular biologists and neurologists have begun to show that exercise may alter brain chemistry in much the same way that antidepressant drugs do — regulating the key neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine. At the University of Georgia, neuroscience professor Philip Holmes and his colleagues have shown that over the course of several weeks, exercise can switch on certain genes that increase the brain's level of galanin, a peptide neurotransmitter that appears to tone down the body's stress response by regulating another brain chemical, norepinephrine.

The result is that exercise primes the brain to show less stress in response to new stimuli. In the case of lab rats and mice, those stimuli include being plunged into very cold water or being suspended by the tail. And while those are not exactly problems most people face, the thinking is that the human neurochemical response may well react similarly, with exercise leaving our brain less susceptible to stress in the face of harmless but unexpected events, like missing an appointment or getting a parking ticket. A little bit of mental strain and excess stimulation from exercise, in other words, may help us to keep day-to-day problems in perspective.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1998021,00.html?xid=newsletter-weekly#ixzz0sAftqET6

If you'd like to read more about exercise and depression, try John Ratey's book, Spark, Web MD, PsychCentral, and have a look at this older, but still relevant YouTube video from the UK. The discuss the role of exercise, genetics, and the importance of recognizing that "one size does not fit all" when it comes to depression treatment.

 

 ,  

Dogs Make Better Walking Partners Than Your Neighbors

"New research from the University of Missouri has found that people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion. In a 12-week study of 54 older adults at an assisted living home, 35 people were assigned to a walking program for five days a week, while the remaining 19 served as a control group. Among the walkers, 23 selected a friend or spouse to serve as a regular walking partner along a trail laid out near the home. Another 12 participants took a bus daily to a local animal shelter where they were assigned a dog to walk."

Read more from Tara Parker-Pope's December article at the New York Times web site about why you may be healthier if you walk a dog rather than a neighbor. This seems to be because dogs never, ever  make excuses for cancelling today's walk (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa). Also, neighbors are more likely to resent the leash.

 No excuses
 

Want to Live Longer? Lengthen Your Telomeres

You totally understand what I'm saying, right? Probably not--this is fairly new science around the process of aging. Telomeres are chromosome-related structures, and in today's NY Times magazine, Gretchen Reynolds tells us how the length of telomeres in older adults may predict healthy aging. She writes: 

There are plenty of reasons to exercise...but the effect that regular activity may have on cellular aging could turn out to be the most profound. ‘‘It’s pretty exciting stuff,’’ says Thomas LaRocca, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who has just completed a new study echoing Werner’s findings. In Mr. LaRocca’s work, people were tested both for their V02max — or maximum aerobic capacity, a widely accepted measure of physical fitness — and their white blood cells’ telomere length. In subjects 55 to 72, a higher V02max correlated closely with longer telomeres. The fitter a person was in middle age or onward, the younger their cells.

Read more about telomeres in material from UC Berkely, Medicine.net,  

If you have an hour and you really want to learn more about this, watch this video of a lecture delivered by biophysicist Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor at UCSF. 

But the practical bottom line, and the one that Reynolds highlights in her article, is that physical exercise may be an essential way for adults to lengthen telomeres--and possibly their lives. It's early research, but sooo interesting. 

TV is Killing You

 Slate has the story, which originally appeared in the LA Times. Here's an excerpt from Slate: 

Australian researchers found that each hour spent watching TV translates into an 18 percent greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and an 11 percent greater risk of all causes of death, reports the Los Angeles Times. The first thing that comes to mind is that obviously those who watch more TV will have a greater risk of death since they're probably more likely to be overweight and less likely to get exercise. But researchers found the connection between TV-watching and death from cardiovascular disease even among those with a healthy weight who exercised. And we're not talking about small numbers. Those who watched more than four hours a day had an 80 percent greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who watched fewer than two hours a day. Bottom line? Even if you exercise, it's not good to be sitting inactive in front of a television (or computer!) for hours at a time.

What a drag this is, if the findings are corroborated by other research teams. You'd think that a healthy weight and good exercise habits would protect against the effects on cardiovascular disease, but no. And as far as computers go...geez--lots of us are screwed. Why? The LA Times quotes lead investigator Dr. David Dunstan, professor and head of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia:

To him, the results weren't unexpected. "When we're in that sitting posture, we're not using our muscles, and we know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are important for the body's regulatory processes, such as the ability to break down glucose and use it as energy." That can cause insulin resistance, which can trigger a spike in blood sugar levels, possibly leading to type 2 diabetes.

Ron Winslow also covers this story in the Wall Street Journal. Never before has a bar graph freaked me out like the one that accompanies his story. The original research appears in the journal Circulation. This could be a life-changer.

We're All Doing Our Core Exercises Wrong! We're Killing Our Spines!

Seriously--that's according to an alarming article in today's magazine section of the New York Times. Here's an excerpt:

The “core” remains a somewhat nebulous concept; but most researchers consider it the corset of muscles and connective tissue that encircle and hold the spine in place. If your core is stable, your spine remains upright while your body swivels around it. But, McGill says, the muscles forming the core must be balanced to allow the spine to bear large loads. If you concentrate on strengthening only one set of muscles within the core, you can destabilize your spine by pulling it out of alignment. Think of the spine as a fishing rod supported by muscular guy wires. If all of the wires are tensed equally, the rod stays straight. “If you pull the wires closer to the spine,” McGill says, as you do when you pull in your stomach while trying to isolate the transversus abdominis, “what happens?” The rod buckles. So, too, he said, can your spine if you overly focus on the deep abdominal muscles. “In research at our lab,” he went on to say, “the amount of load that the spine can bear without injury was greatly reduced when subjects pulled in their belly buttons” during crunches and other exercises.

Based on this, I'm modifying my regimen as follows, again from the Times:

Instead, he suggests, a core exercise program should emphasize all of the major muscles that girdle the spine, including but not concentrating on the abs. Side plank (lie on your side and raise your upper body) and the “bird dog” (in which, from all fours, you raise an alternate arm and leg) exercise the important muscles embedded along the back and sides of the core. As for the abdominals, no sit-ups, McGill said; they place devastating loads on the disks. An approved crunch begins with you lying down, one knee bent, and hands positioned beneath your lower back for support. “Do not hollow your stomach or press your back against the floor,” McGill says. Gently lift your head and shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down. These three exercises, done regularly, McGill said, can provide well-rounded, thorough core stability. And they avoid the pitfalls of the all-abs core routine. “I see too many people,” McGill told me with a sigh, “who have six-pack abs and a ruined back.”