What do you do for exercise? Do you bike or walk? Why not do that on the way or at least part of the way to work.

Walking or biking to work, even part way, is linked with fitness, but very few Americans do it, according to a study of more than 2,000 middle-aged city dwellers.

In what may be the first large U.S. study of health and commuting, the researchers found only about 17 percent of workers walked or bicycled any portion of their commute.

The new study is based on tests and questionnaires from 2,364 workers who were part of a larger federally funded study on heart disease risk. The participants lived in Chicago, Minneapolis, Birmingham, Ala., and Oakland, Calif. They were asked in 2005-2006 about their commuting habits in the past 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: Alabama, Archives of Internal Medicine, Birmingham, California, Chapel Hill, Chicago, heart disease, James Sallis, Minneapolis, North Carolina, Oakland, obesity, Oregon, Penny Gordon-Larsen, Portland, San Diego State University, United States, University of North Carolina

I am not quite sure what to think about some new research that came out on Monday about the relationship of being fit but still fat. New research challenges the notion that you can be fat and fit, finding that being active can lower but not eliminate heart risks faced by heavy women.

Heart disease risk was 54 percent higher in overweight active women than for normal-weight active women.

“It doesn’t take away the risk entirely. Weight still matters,” said Dr. Martha Gulati, a heart specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

It is not definitive if this is the only view. Some people do in fact say taht fit and fat is fine and healthy.

University of South Carolina obesity expert Steven Blair, a leading proponent of the “fit and fat” theory, said the study is limited by relying on women’s self-reporting their activity levels. That method is not as reliable as a more objective fitness evaluation including exercise treadmill tests, Blair said. These tests include heart-rate measures to see how the heart responds to and tolerates exercise.

In Blair’s research, overweight people deemed “fit” by treadmill tests did not face increased risks of dying from heart disease. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Archives of Internal Medicine, Harvard, heart disease, heart specialist, Martha Gulati, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, obesity, South Carolina, Steven Blair, University of South Carolina

Sleep is a big problem for a lot of people. I just ran across a story from last week that points out that many people are having trouble sleeping and are using alternative medicine, herbs, in order to fall asleep. The big story is supposed to be the use of herbs but the real story here is that people are getting insomnia on a much more regular basis then they were 20 or 30 years ago.

The reasons for insomnia and most common sleep disorders can be narrowed down to a few causes. If you would like to sleep better then you should leave work stress at work, no sugar and caffeine after 3:00 in the afternoon and regular exercise. Sure there are a lot of problems that can cause sleeping problems but by just doing these three things most people will find that there length and quality of sleep will improve dramatically.

One in six Americans frequently have difficulty falling asleep, and 4.5 percent of them use some type of alternative medicine to treat their sleeping problems, a new study shows.

“Most respondents who used herbal therapies or relaxation techniques found these therapies helpful for managing their insomnia or trouble sleeping,” Dr. Nancy J. Pearson and colleagues from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Pearson and her team analyzed information from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey to find out how common sleeping difficulties were and how often people used alternative techniques to treat them.

Of those surveyed, 17.4 percent reported that, over the past 12 months, they regularly had difficulty falling asleep or suffered from insomnia.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alternative Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, Congestive heart failure, depression, hypertension, insomnia, obesity, Pearson, sleeping disorders