The fun and fitness that is Wii fitness has no comparison, after a year or so I am still having fun with this thing. After running around the living room for half an hour, impersonating a tree, punching the air and whacking invisible tennis balls, any casual observer could be forgiven for thinking you might be a little off-the-wall.

But the Wii has revolutionized gaming. The main difference is that you experience it, you don’t just sit there and play! It is not like the old style of gaming where the only body part that moves was your thumbs. Oh no. The Wii is the perfect solution for those with sloth-like tendencies because it blends socializing with doing exercise that is actually fun! Playing the Wii involves stretching, balancing, an increased heart rate and getting very hot! Cast aside stereotypes of gaming being mainly a male (usually young male) pastime. Using the Wii can involve the whole family with friends thrown into the mix too. Put simply, it’s for everyone.

Currently, the Nintendo Wii games console has reached worldwide sales of 50 million units. The president Satoru Iwata expressed recently that it was “more than they could have possibly hoped for.” 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: casual observer, coach, Liverpool John Moores University, Nintendo, president, Satoru Iwata, Tennis, the British Medical Journal, United Kingdom

As a parent of two small children I always try to make sure that the kids get a lot of exercise to stay healthy but it is my wife that makes sure that they eat well as well. A new report from the British Medical Journal tells us that diet is very important too. Another thing of note is watching how much the kids exercise, it seems many are more inactive than we would think.

Physically active preschoolers are on to a good thing, but exercise alone won’t keep obesity at bay as they get older, British researchers report. Instead, a combination of exercise and other lifestyle changes — especially improved diets — may be the only solution to the childhood obesity epidemic, experts say.

“Promotion of physically active play per se may not be sufficient to have an impact on the weight status of young children,” said lead researcher Dr. John J. Reilly, a professor of pediatric energy metabolism at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

His team published its finding in the Oct. 5 online issue of the British Medical Journal.

The researchers had already shown in earlier work that Scottish preschoolers have surprisingly inactive lifestyles. They typically get less than 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day, in contrast to the recommended 60 minutes a day. In their study, Reilly’s team looked at whether exercise could reduce the weight of 545 preschool children. Some of the children took part in an active play program, which consisted of three 30 minute sessions each week. In addition, parents received guidance on how to increase physical play at home.

The researchers measured the children’s weight at six months and then again at one year. They also assessed the youngsters’ movement skills, and tracked whether or not the increase in activity reduced sedentary behaviors.

They found that exercise had some health benefits, but weight loss was not among them.

Exercise had little effect on weight, or on the activity behaviors of the children, compared with the children who did not take part in the program. However, for children in the program, additional exercise did help improve their motor and movement skills.
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Tags: Britain, David L. Katz, director, food, John J. Reilly, junk food, lead researcher, obesity, pediatric energy metabolism, Prevention Research Center, Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, professor of pediatric energy metabolism, Scotland, the British Medical Journal, United States, University of Glasgow, Yale University School of Medicine

Perhaps Vioxx and Celebrex and the Cox-2 inhibitors are not the culprit. There is an important report from England that is saying that using Ibuprofen as an arthritis pain killer will raise your heart attack risk as much as Vioxx or Celebrex.

High doses of older painkiller drugs may pose the same cardiac risk as newer medications such as
Vioxx and other cox-2 inhibitor drugs, according to a British study that looked at what is regarded as the best evidence from randomized, controlled trials.

Data from 138 such trials with 140,000 participants showed a 42 percent increased risk of serious blood vessel problems such as heart attack and stroke in those taking selective cox-2 inhibitors, the chemical class that includes Vioxx ,
Bextra and Celebrex. Cox-2 inhibitors belong to a broader class of pain relievers called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which also include non-cox-2 medications such as ibuprofen, diclofenac, naproxen and aspirin.

And the study — which was funded by various U.K. public-sector medical groups — also found a similar increase in cardiac risk for other NSAIDs, said Dr. Colin Baigent, a reader in clinical epidemiology at the University of Oxford and an author of the report in the June 3 issue of the British Medical Journal.

Specifically, long-term use of high-dose (800 milligrams three times per day) ibuprofen was associated with a 51 percent higher risk for “vascular events” compared to placebo, while long-term use of high-dose (75 milligrams two times a day) diclofenac boosted the risk by 63 percent, the U.K. team reported. No such risk was seen with long-term use of naproxen (sold under the brand name Aleve).
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Tags: Aleve, arthritis, Author, Cataflam, chemical class, Cleveland Clinic, Colin Baigent, Cox, heart attack, heart disease, ibuprofen, interim chairman, Massage, Merck, Merck & Co., Motrin, pain, pain killing products, Steven Nissen, the British Medical Journal, United Kingdom, University of Oxford, vioxx