Oct
01
2008

Lifestyle Can Be A Killer For Middle Age Women

By | Cancer, Fitness, Heart Disease, Nutrition, Vitamins and supplements, Weight loss, Women’s Diseases

Generally it is assumed that persons in their thirties and forties should be in their prime, and health concerns are cropping up in the higher middle age or only in old age.
Also, women were thought to generally enjoy better health and life expectancy, but the large Nurses’ Health Study on 77,782 women in the age group of 34 to 59 years shows other aspects.
Even in females who had no heart problems and no cancer at the onset of the study, lifestyle choices can make it or break it. At the end of the study that spanned 24 years, it became obvious that a total of 28% of all the mortalities could be attributed to smoking. If risky lifestyle choices were combined in the form of smoking, being overweight, having a lack of physical activity and a qualitatively poor diet, this number jumped to 55%. Alcohol intake did not change this estimate significantly.

Lifestyle Can Be A Killer For Middle Age Women

Lifestyle Can Be A Killer For Middle Age Women

It is obvious that for the benefit of better health and less mortality in middle age women, diet, exercise, a healthy body weight and eradicating smoking are key factors.

Reference: BMJ 2008;337:a1440

Comment on Nov. 18, 2012: So how many years longer will a woman live, if she quits at age 30? The Million Women Study found out that she will live 10 years longer than the control group of smoking women (see link). Nothing has changed since 2008. Lifestyle issues remain at the forefront.

Last edited December 3, 2012

Jun
01
2008

You Are What You Sleep

By | Obesity, Stress management

Lack of sleep can lead to childhood obesity

Stressful lifestyles often contribute to physical disorders and psychological difficulties, but little has been known about the fact that unbalanced sleep patterns also dysbalance a healthy body weight. Jean-Philippe Chaput of Laval University, Quebec City presented some facts at the 16 th European Congress on Obesity in Geneva, that emphasizes the importance of a balanced sleep pattern. There can be not only too little sleep but also too much sleep, as Dr. Chaput found out by studying 276 adults. Those who had a pattern of short duration sleep (5 to 6 hours) and those individuals who slept 9 to 10 hours were 35% and 25% more likely, respectively to show weight gains of 5 kg compared to the group that slept for 7 to 8 hours. The most likely reason is an alteration of certain hormones: short sleepers had high leptin levels and low ghrelin levels. In a previous study on children it also became obvious that to little sleep increases the risk of overweight and obesity in children. It was also possible to establish the type of weight gain.

You Are What You Sleep

You Are What You Sleep

Short sleep duration in kids lead to abdominal fat rather than to overall body fat deposits. Too little sleep in children seems to have more health consequences than previously thought, as it is the most important risk factor for overweight in this group. The most important risk factor was sleep duration that is too short, followed by parental obesity, watching TV and lack of physical activity.

More information about sleep apnea: http://nethealthbook.com/ear-nose-and-throat-diseases-otolaryngology-ent/nose-problems/sleep-apnea/

Reference: From the 16th European Congress on Obesity, May 2008

Last edited November 3, 2014

Jul
01
2006

Exercise Can Reverse Risk Of Heart Disease

By | Fitness, Heart Disease, Prevention

A growing health concern is cardiovascular illness. As a rule the risk increases with unhealthy life style choices. The most common neglect is the lack of physical activity, and a couch-potato existence is a sure recipe for poor health. Often juvenile “couch potatoes” lay the groundwork for health problems in their middle age years.
Jennifer Robbins of Duke University in Durham, N.C. led a follow-up study on a group of participants. The objective was to examine, how much impact an exercise program would have on the overall condition of the participants. Fitness parameters included weight, waist circumference, visceral and subcutaneous fat, cholesterol levels and metabolic score.
In a control group 61 subjects were instructed not to change their dietary habits or exercise habits for 6 months. Researchers expected that the general health condition of these people would stay the same. What was observed, however, was a deterioration of all the fitness parameters. The sedentary group actually got worse! At the end of the study, all the 61 were offered to participate in one of the exercise programs offered to the other groups. 53 participants decided to take part, and they were enrolled in a low- intensity, medium-intensity and high- intensity exercise program. The two lower groups managed to reverse the detrimental effects of inactivity on cardio-vascular risk in a half-year exercise program. The researchers noted also that the ones who had deteriorated the most during the sedentary period achieved the most improvement from the exercise program.

Exercise Can Reverse Risk Of Heart Disease

Exercise Can Reverse Risk Of Heart Disease

Exercise Physiologist Jennifer Robbins and her team concluded, that the study result gives encouragement to those who don’t exercise and feel bad about it, as they will reap the most benefits. The results also give doctors more incentive to make physical exercise part of a prescription regimen. With a word of recommendation from the physician patients are more likely to enrol in an exercise program and stick with it.

More info about:

Heart disease: http://nethealthbook.com/cardiovascular-disease/heart-disease/

Fitness and exercise: http://nethealthbook.com/health-nutrition-and-fitness/fitness/ 

Reference: The Medical Post, June 20, 2006, page 47

Last edited Nov. 1, 2014