Healthsifter by mary desmond pinkowish, since 2003

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.)

 

To Prevent Alzheimer's, Chop that Wood, Run That Ultramarathon, Pull that Crab Pot

I'm in a rush on my way out to start pulling tree stumps, but I wanted to post this article from MedPage Today  about a study that was presented this week in Honolulu at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease. It was a smallish (1200 people) study showing that physical activity may protect against Alzheimer's disease. Trouble is, that while a walk around the block may help prevent heart disease or stroke (and that's important--no argument there), it apparently takes more strenuous physical activity to prevent (or maybe delay?) Alzheimer's. It's not definitive, but I'm taking it seriously. 

Hey guys...I need some exercise, you need a break...can we trade places for a few hours?

 

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
 

More on Exercise and Aging

Time.com also has an article today on how exercise may forestall or prevent detrimental changes in the aging brain. Here's something: Weight training may be particularly beneficial to brain function. This article is actually a summary of a group of articles on healthy aging that appear in today's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Does Sleep Lower Cancer Risk?

Here's a report given this week at the meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research that suggests that getting at least 7 hours of sleep each night reduces cancer risk. The study, conducted in nearly 6,000 women, was conducted under the direction of scientists at the National Cancer Institute. An interesting piece of the puzzle is that while exercise was also shown to reduce cancer risk, that apparently is true only if a person is also getting enough sleep! Here's an excerpt from the press release:

...regular physical activity can lower a woman's overall risk of cancer - but only if she gets a good night's sleep. Otherwise, lack of sleep can undermine exercise's cancer prevention benefits.

"Greater participation in physical activity has consistently been associated with reduced risk of cancer incidence at several sites, including breast and colon cancers," said James McClain, Ph.D., cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute and lead author of the study. "Short duration sleep appears to have opposing effects of physical activity on several key hormonal and metabolic parameters, which is why we looked at how it affected the exercise/cancer risk relationship."

Even though the exact mechanism of how exercise reduces cancer risk isn't known, researchers believe that physical activity's effects on factors including hormone levels, immune function, and body weight may play an important role. The study examined the link between exercise and cancer risk, paying special attention to whether or not getting adequate sleep further affected a women's cancer risk.

Researchers assessed the association between physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE), sleep duration and incidence of overall, breast, and colon cancer in 5,968 women at least 18 years old with no previous cancer diagnoses. The women completed an initial survey in 1998 and were then tracked through the Washington County Cancer Registry and Maryland State Cancer Registry for nearly 10 years.

The results pointed to a sleep-exercise link. "Current findings suggest that sleep duration modifies the relationship between physical activity and all-site cancer risk among young and middle-aged women," he said.

Yahoo has reported on the story, too.

More on Exercise and Cancer Risk

We have another study this week about the beneficial effect of exercise on cancer risk. This one is notable because it involved a really big group of people--more than 80,000--which tends to increase the validity of the results. The researchers, based in Japan, found that men and women who were physically active had lower risks of stomach, colon, pancreas, and liver cancer than people who were less active. The effects of exercise were most pronounced in people with normal body weight. The story is reported at Reuters, and here's a paragraph from that report:

"Overall, according to the researchers, the risk of developing any cancer dipped slightly as participants' activity levels climbed. On average, the most-active men were 13 percent less likely than the least active men to develop cancer; the most-active women had a 16 percent lower cancer risk than their sedentary counterparts.

The link held true when the researchers accounted for a range of other factors, including participants' age, weight, smoking habits, daily calorie intake."

The original research appears in the August 15th issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Everything You Could Possible Need to Know About Fitness Balls

MayoClinic.com has compiled a group of videos on how to select and use fitness balls. It's so much easier to learn this stuff from a video, or better yet, a live person, than from static photographs.

Runner's World Runners' Tools & Resources

Cool site--everything from how to buy running shoes to training logs to nutrition and weight loss advice.

More on Running and Longevity and Health

Time takes on last week's study showing that joggers/runners live longer and better than other people. But there's more you need to know about these findings, and it's all good news, especially for those of us with Funky Left Knee Syndrome. Here's a snippet from that article (the Eliza Chakravarty they quote here is one of the investigators):

Although the study focused on runners, Chakravarty says, the benefits appear to accrue from any vigorous aerobic exercise. In fact, the data suggested that even a little bit of exercise was better than none. A few of the volunteers from the non-running group did break a sweat sometimes, if not in a prolonged, consistent way — they reported having run for more than one month at a time — and even that short period of regular aerobic exercise appeared to have created positive health benefits, Chakravarty says. For avid runners, more good news: the study found no significant difference between the condition of joints in pavement pounders and their more sedentary peers. Looking at X-rays and arthritis rates, Chakravarty says, "there was clearly no difference."

Run, and Live Longer and Better

Here's how MedPage Today summarized the new study showing that people who run live longer and with less disability than people who don't. The participants, members of a running club and were aged 50 and older when the study started, were compared to a similar-sized group of non-runners. After 21 years of follow-up, the runners were 40% less likely to have died or developed a moderate disability than the non-runners. Compared to the non-runners, runners were significantly less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurologic disorders, infections, and other causes. ScienceDaily also covered this, interviewing one of the authors, who notes that the wellness gap between the runners and non-runners widened the older they got. The original article appeared in the August 11/25 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. 

My question: Is there anything magic about running? What about swimmers, walkers (not strollers, walkers), hikers, etc. I'd like to know.