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I have often thought that exercise can help get rid of the symptoms and even the effects of Diabetes and today I see that there is yet another study that says that exercise can at the very least stop you from getting type 2 diabetes. It is one thing to say that exercise and good health stops you from getting sick but if you are not sick some will argue that you are just genetically predisposed to not getting sick.

Group-based diet and exercise lifestyle interventions over six years can prevent or delay diabetes for up to 14 years after the intervention period. But whether lifestyle interventions also lead to reduced cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality remains unclear. These are the conclusions of authors of an Article in this week’s Diabetes Special Issue of The Lancet.

While several major clinical trials around the world have shown the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions to reduce diabetes incidence in people with impaired glucose tolerance*, questions remain over how long post-intervention these strategies remain effective. Professor Guangwei Li, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China, and Dr Ping Zhang, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and colleagues did the China Da Qing Diabetes Prevention Outcome Study (CDQDPOS), which followed-up patients 20 years after enrollment. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a story that just supports the way that we live as a society and it is not just about quitting smoking but also about drinking, losing weight, doing drugs and buying new cars. The fact is that when people that we are around and share values with make a change in their lives then we do too.

You may have heard sometime in the past that if you want to make more money then hang around people that make more money. The same is true if you want to get in shape, hang out with people that are in shape. We all pick up on the habits of those around us and reading about the following study helps us to understand that changes do in fact come in a large part due to those around us.

A team of researchers who showed that obesity can spread person-to-person has found a similar pattern with smoking cessation: A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did.

What’s more, smokers tend to quit in groups, and those who don’t stop puffing increasingly find themselves pushed to the edge of their social circles, the researchers found. Read the rest of this entry »

As we go through the day our blood pressure just naturally raises and lowers depending on a lot of conditions. What most people are most interested in is a regular resting blood pressure as high blood pressure and hypertension are a very strong indicator toward present and future heart problems

The Effect Of Sleep on Blood Pressure

Sleep causes a fall in blood pressure. The maximum depth occurs about two hours after falling asleep. In sound, untroubled slumber a pressure of 130/80 might dip to 100/70. It once was thought that this drop in pressure was the cause of sleep, the reasoning being that a lower pressure delivers less blood to the brain resulting in mental sluggishness and hence sleep. Now it is known that this blood pressure decline is the result, not the cause, of sleep. As morning approaches, the blood pressure drifts slowly upward as the subject begins the awakening process. Any interference with sound sleep causes the blood pressure to rise. Read the rest of this entry »

Fitness, Health and Earth day seem like maybe they are not very well linked at all but I think that there is a case to be made that being greener is a lot healthier way to live.

Being the father of two your kids we have been bombarded this week with Earth day events and stories from school. I remember when I was growing up the whole recycling concept was just picking up steam and a few years later in Vancouver we had curb side recycling, something that my adopted city of Calgary does not yet have

Anyway being green, I believe, is a lot more global then it used to be. Sure we in North America are the greatest consumers of all kinds of products but  around the world our influences are being felt here are a few ways that I can think.

Nice bright fruits and veggies - I can get a banana or an apple any day of the year from the supermarket. One of the many ways that farmers in other countries make my food more appetizing is to use pesticides and fertilizers to make the fruit look better in the supermarket. Not good for the environment or even me personally. Read the rest of this entry »

I heard a little about this a couple of weeks ago. I have always had the idea that joint replacemtn was happening on people that were very physical, mostly runners that are really pushing their hip and knee joints but this is simply not true. The largest cause by far for knee and hip replacements is people being overweight. Obesity plays a big part in the wearing of joints

In 1997, about 60.2% of primary hip replacements and 69.1% of primary knee replacements were performed in patients ages 65 to 84, Sunny Kim, Ph.D., of Florida International University here, reported in the April 15 issue of Arthritis Care & Research.

But by 2004, the corresponding proportions were 52.1% and 58.4%, respectively.

In 1997, 45- to 64-year-olds accounted for 26.5% and 25.6% of primary total hip and knee replacements, respectively. These proportions grew to 36% and 36.4%, respectively, in 2004.

Dr. Kim noted that more joint replacements in a younger and heavier population will likely increase the need for revisions with lengthier operative times, longer hospital stays, and higher complication rates than primary replacements. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been compiling info on artificial sweetners for years and there are some that are OK and some that are really bad for you but here is a bit of an overview of he dangers of using different artificial sweeteners to try to drop your calorie intake.

Aspartame

Aspartame, a dipeptide of aspartic acid and a methyl ester of phenylalanine, is approved for use in pharmaceutical products and is being used increasingly in chewable tablet and sugar-free formulations. Labels for both prescription and nonprescription products must include the phenylalanine content. The major consideration in the use of aspartame in children is in patients with autosomal recessive phenylketonuria. Although heterozygotes do not appear to have clinically significant increases in phenylalanine after ingestion of even large amounts (equivalent to 24 12-oz cans of diet beverages), homozygotes with strict dietary restrictions should avoid aspartame. Children without dietary restrictions could safely ingest 10 mg/kg/day. Dietary consumption of aspartame is typically less than 5 mg/kg/day; young children, however, could ingest considerably more. For example, a 2-year-old child weighing 12 kg consumes 17 mg/kg from drinking one 12-oz can of diet soda and one serving of a sweetened product (eg, cereal, pudding, gelatin, or frozen dessert). Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Mail in England has this very interesting story that seems to give hope to the millions of people worldwide that suffer from Alzheimers disease.

Doctors are calling for a clinical trial of an experimental drug treatment that it is claimed can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease “in minutes”.

U.S. researchers say the treatment allowed an 82-year- old sufferer to recognize his wife for the first time in years.

In the UK, specialists believe the claims should be properly tested as only a few patients have been treated so far.
The treatment involves injecting a drug called Enbrel - which is normally used to treat arthritis - into the spine at the neck. Read the rest of this entry »

Fitness is individual. A person knows that he is or is not in shape. He also knows the various degrees of his own fitness. Or he can define his fitness in terms of others of similar age and state of health. He may be proud that he is the only fellow on the block who can go out bicycling for the afternoon, climb three flights of stairs without panting, and shovel his own driveway. And by this comparison he knows if he enjoys normal fitness, which is indeed rare, or only average fitness.

There is a tendency to be too scientifically sophisticated in appraisals of fitness for people after college years. Why make things overly difficult? Either you are in good shape-for you-or you are not. That is easy for you to decide.

Your own base line or yardstick is you at this moment. From now on you improve, you deteriorate, or you hold the line. This is where you start. And a medically sound beginning it is. Consciously or unconsciously each sportsman has devised his own fitness testing. It may be formal (one more push-up, lopping two seconds off his hundred-yard swimming time, or returning to normal pulse less than three minutes after exercise) or informal (”it sure was easier to climb Mount Yahoo this year!”)-but it is there. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Times had a story yesterday talking about how unhealthy bloggers lifestyles are. There is no more unhealthy lifestyle than working on a computer all day and for many bloggers this seems to be exaggerated by the crazy hours that people will put in.

I have written before about how Geeks can improve their health from their desk. Here is another contribution for those poor overworked bloggers.

Keep your body healthy so that you mind can work - You need to get some exercise. The 30 to 60 minutes that you spend a day trying to keep yourself in shape with cardio and weights will give you a lot more energy then the time you lost doing it. Read the rest of this entry »

MSNBC has an article today about a report in the journal aptly titled “Sleep”. According to the 6 week study those that slept too much or not enough gained weight.

Hours in the sack may have more to do with your weight than hours in the gym, finds a new study that shows too little - or too much - shuteye is a major factor in obesity.

Previous research has found that lack of sleep is associated with weight gain, but it was unclear whether the sleep problems drove the weight increase or vice versa.

To get a better handle on this chicken-or-egg issue, Canadian researchers tracked how people’s sleep patterns affected their weight over a six-year period. In the study, which appears in Tuesday’s issue of the journal Sleep, those getting six hours or less of shuteye nightly were more likely to become overweight or obese compared to those getting a solid eight hours of nightly slumber. And surprisingly, those getting nine or more hours of sleep were also more likely to become overweight or obese.

Read the rest of this entry »