Lazy Person's Guide To Old Age

Stop eating all of that junk food.  Why?  So, you can live longer, of course.  Get off the La-Z-Boy and go run five miles.  Why?!  So, you can enjoy your old age.  No more drinking and smoking.  Why?!!  So, you can live to be 100 years old.

The rationale often given for converting to healthy habits has been to give you a longer life.  Who better to know about long lives than those that are closing in on the big 100.  The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there were nearly 425,000 people aged 95 and older living in the U.S. in 2010 − still only a small percentage of the 40 million U.S. adults 65 and over.

What’s their secret?  Are they non-smoking, teetotaling, vegan marathon runners?  Not exactly, according to researchers at the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
They interviewed 477 Ashkenazi Jews who were 95 and older (95-112, 75 percent of them women), and participating in Einstein's Longevity Genes Project.  The Ashkenazi descendents are more genetically alike, making it easier to control genetic differences.  The group was asked about their living habits back when they were 70 to get an idea of their daily lives that got them this far.  Questions about alcohol and tobacco use, their diet, and how much they exercised helped paint a picture of environmental factors that influenced their health.
Next, Dr. Nir Barzilai and his team compared the test group with 3,164 people with similar birth years who had provided similar data in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 1) back in the early 1970s.

Surprisingly, there was little evidence that living to a ripe old age required following all of the recommended rules.  Only 27 percent of the elderly women ate a low-calorie diet in their earlier years, matching an equal percentage of women in the larger population.  In the bigger group, 22 percent of the men drank alcohol daily, but so did 24 percent of the old guys.  It must be exercise, right?  Nope, only 43 percent of the centenarians reported regular moderate workouts compared with 57 percent of their comparison counterparts.

Dr. Barzilai did find one factor difference, obesity.  While the older population was just as likely to be overweight as the others, it was rare that they were obese.  Only 4.5 percent of the males and 9.6 percent of the females were severely overweight, compared to 12.1 percent and 16.2 percent of the large control group, respectively.

So, if its not all of that “nurture”, then it must be nature or genetic differences that account for the 100 birthday candles.

"In previous studies of our centenarians, we've identified gene variants that exert particular physiology effects, such as causing significantly elevated levels of HDL or 'good' cholesterol," said Dr. Barzilai, who is a professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein. "This study suggests that centenarians may possess additional longevity genes that help to buffer them against the harmful effects of an unhealthy lifestyle."

That’s it, then, we can all go out and party this weekend, since we have no control over which end of the gene pool we were thrown into, right?  As retired football coach and ESPN analyst Lee Corso likes to say, “Not so fast, my friend.”

"Although this study demonstrates that centenarians can be obese, smoke and avoid exercise, those lifestyle habits are not good choices for most of us who do not have a family history of longevity," said Dr. Barzilai. "We should watch our weight, avoid smoking and be sure to exercise, since these activities have been shown to have great health benefits for the general population, including a longer lifespan."

Then again, maybe life after 90 isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

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See also: Women Should Use New Formula For Maximum Heart Rate and Exercise Pumps Up Your Brain

Exercise Helps Older Brains - Now We Know Why

Research conducted at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital's Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine in Dallas suggests that it's never too late for women to reap the benefits of moderate aerobic exercise. In a 3-month study of 16 women age 60 and older, brisk walking for 30-50 minutes three or four times per week improved blood flow through to the brain as much as 15%.

Rong Zhang, the lead researcher in the study, discussed the team's findings in a presentation titled, "Aerobic exercise training increases brain perfusion in elderly women" at the Experimental Biology meeting (EB 2011), held April 9-13, 2011 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC.

At the beginning of the study, the researchers used Doppler ultrasonography to measure blood flow in the women's internal carotid arteries, which are located in the neck and supply the brain with necessary glucose and oxygen-rich blood. After assessing the women's physical health and maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max), which is the body's maximum capacity to transport and use oxygen during exercise, the team tailored training programs for each woman according to her fitness level.

Training started at a base pace of 50-60% of the participants' VO2 max for 30 minutes per session, three times per week. By the third month, the team had increased the sessions to 50 minutes each, four times per week, and added two more sessions at 70-80% of the women's VO2 max for 30 minutes.

At study's end, the team measured blood flow in the women's carotid arteries again and found that cerebral blood flow increased an average of 15% and 11% in the women's left and right internal carotid arteries, respectively. The women's VO2 max increased roughly 13%, their blood pressure dropped an average of 4%, and their heart rates decreased approximately 5%.

According to Dr. Zhang, the results provide insight into how vascular health affects brain health. "There are many studies that suggest that exercise improves brain function in older adults, but we don't know exactly why the brain improves. Our study indicates it might be tied to an improvement in the supply of blood flow to the brain."

A steady, healthy flow of blood to the brain achieves two things. First, the blood brings oxygen, glucose and other nutrients to the brain, which are vital for the brain's health. Second, the blood washes away brain metabolic wastes such as amyloid-beta protein released into the brain's blood vessels. Amyloid-beta protein has been implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Whether the increased blood flow to the brain improves learning and reasoning has yet to be determined, says Dr. Zhang. "I don't have the data to suggest a correlation between brain perfusion and cognitive function, but this is something we eventually will see after this study is completed," he says. "We do know there is strong evidence to suggest that cardiovascular risk is tied to the risk for Alzheimer's disease. We want to see how we can fight that."

Dr. Zhang stresses the importance of the finding that improvement in brain blood flow is possible in one's senior years. "We often start to see a decline in brain perfusion and cognitive function in the 60s and 70s. That's when the downward trajectory starts. We want to see how much we can do to reverse or delay that process."

Source:  American Physiological Society

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After The Game, Get Off The Couch

Spending too much leisure time in front of a TV or computer screen appears to dramatically increase the risk for heart disease and premature death from any cause, perhaps regardless of how much exercise one gets, according to a new study published in the January 18, 2011, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Data show that compared to people who spend less than two hours each day on screen-based entertainment like watching TV, using the computer or playing video games, those who devote more than four hours to these activities are more than twice as likely to have a major cardiac event that involves hospitalization, death or both.

The study -- the first to examine the association between screen time and non-fatal as well as fatal cardiovascular events -- also suggests metabolic factors and inflammation may partly explain the link between prolonged sitting and the risks to heart health.
The present study included 4,512 adults who were respondents of the 2003 Scottish Health Survey, a representative, household-based survey. A total of 325 all-cause deaths and 215 cardiac events occurred during an average of 4.3 years of follow up.

"People who spend excessive amounts of time in front of a screen -- primarily watching TV -- are more likely to die of any cause and suffer heart-related problems," said Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, MSc, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, United Kingdom. "Our analysis suggests that two or more hours of screen time each day may place someone at greater risk for a cardiac event."

In fact, compared with those spending less than two hours a day on screen-based entertainment, there was a 48% increased risk of all-cause mortality in those spending four or more hours a day and an approximately 125% increase in risk of cardiovascular events in those spending two or more hours a day. These associations were independent of traditional risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, BMI, social class, as well as exercise.

The findings have prompted authors to advocate for public health guidelines that expressly address recreational sitting (defined as during non-work hours), especially as a majority of working age adults spend long periods being inactive while commuting or being slouched over a desk or computer.

"It is all a matter of habit. Many of us have learned to go back home, turn the TV set on and sit down for several hours -- it's convenient and easy to do. But doing so is bad for the heart and our health in general," said Dr. Stamatakis. "And according to what we know so far, these health risks may not be mitigated by exercise, a finding that underscores the urgent need for public health recommendations to include guidelines for limiting recreational sitting and other sedentary behaviors, in addition to improving physical activity."

Biological mediators also appear to play a role. Data indicate that one fourth of the association between screen time and cardiovascular events was explained collectively by C-reactive protein (CRP), body mass index, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol suggesting that inflammation and deregulation of lipids may be one pathway through which prolonged sitting increases the risk for cardiovascular events. CRP, a well-established marker of low-grade inflammation, was approximately two times higher in people spending more than four hours of screen time per day compared to those spending less than two hours a day.

Dr. Stamatakis says the next step will be to try to uncover what prolonged sitting does to the human body in the short- and long-term, whether and how exercise can mitigate these consequences, and how to alter lifestyles to reduce sitting and increase movement and exercise.

Source:  American College of Cardiology and Emmanuel Stamatakis, Mark Hamer, and David W. Dunstan. Screen-Based Entertainment Time, All-Cause Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events: Population-Based Study With Ongoing Mortality and Hospital Events Follow-Up. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2011; 57: 292-299 DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2010.05.065

See also: Exercise - The Cure For The Common Cold and Training In The Heat Even Helps Competing In Cool Temps

Exercise - The Cure For The Common Cold

People who are physically fit and active have fewer and milder colds, indicates research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.  The US researchers base their findings on 1,000 adults up to the age of 85 whose respiratory health was tracked for 12 weeks during the autumn and winter of 2008. 

Six out of 10 participants were women, and four out of 10 were aged between 18 and 39; 40% were middle aged, and one in four were aged 60 and older.

All the participants reported back on how frequently they took aerobic exercise and rated their fitness levels using a validated 10 point scoring system. They were also asked about lifestyle, diet and recent stressful events, as these can all affect immune system response.  The number of days with cold symptoms varied considerably between winter and autumn, with an average of 13 days in the winter and 8 days in the autumn.

Being older, male, and married, seemed to reduce the frequency of colds, but after taking account of other influential factors, the most significant factors were perceived fitness and the amount of exercise taken.

The number of days with symptoms among those who said they were physically active on five or more days of the week and felt fit was almost half (43% to 46% less) that of those who exercised on only one or fewer days of the week.  The severity of symptoms fell by 41% among those who felt the fittest and by 31% among those who were the most active.

In the US, an average adult can expect to have a cold two to four times a year, while children can catch between half a dozen and 10 colds a year, on average, all of which costs the US economy around $40 billion dollars.

Bouts of exercise spark a temporary rise in immune system cells circulating around the body, say the authors. Although these levels fall back within a few hours, each bout is likely to enhance surveillance of harmful viruses and bacteria, so reducing the number and severity of infections, such as the common cold.

Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal and Upper respiratory tract infection is reduced in physically fit and active adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2010; DOI: 10.1136/bjsm.2010.077875

See also: Training In The Heat Even Helps Competing In Cool Temps and Is Exercise The Cure For Depression?

Training In The Heat Even Helps Competing In Cool Temps

(Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oregon)

Turning up the heat might be the best thing for athletes competing in cool weather, according to a new study by human physiology researchers at the University of Oregon.  Published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, the paper examined the impact of heat acclimation to improve athletic performance in hot and cool environments.

Researchers conducted exercise tests on 12 highly trained cyclists -- 10 males and two females -- before and after a 10-day heat acclimation program. Participants underwent physiological and performance tests under both hot and cool conditions. A separate control group of eight highly trained cyclists underwent testing and followed the same exercise regime in a cool environment.

The data concluded that heat acclimation exposure provided considerable ergogenic benefits in cool conditions, in addition to the expected performance benefits in the hot environment. The study is the first to evaluate impacts of heat acclimation on aerobic performance in cool conditions.

"Our findings could have significant impacts in the competitive sports world," said Santiago Lorenzo, a researcher who performed the work as part of his dissertation at the University of Oregon. He is now completing post-doctoral training in the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

The study found performance increases of approximately 7 percent after 10 heat acclimation exposures. "In terms of competitive cycling, 7 percent is a really big increase and could mean that cyclists could use this approach to improve their performance in cooler weather conditions," said Lorenzo. However, the heat exposures must be in addition to the athletes' normal training regimen.
Heat acclimation improves the body's ability to control body temperature, improves sweating and increases blood flow through the skin, and expands blood volume allowing the heart to pump to more blood to muscles, organs and the skin as needed.

Another approach using the environment to improve exercise performance is a "live high/train low" regimen, which means residing at a high altitude and training at a low altitude. Many athletes worldwide now use this approach. According to Lorenzo, "heat acclimation is more practical, easier to apply and may yield more robust physiological adaptations."

(Photo credit: SlowTwitch.com)

The study was conducted in the Evonuk Environmental Physiology Core lab at the UO department of human physiology. The climatic chamber was set at 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) for heat testing and 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit) for cool conditions with consistent humidity (30 percent relative humidity) for the cyclists' exercise tests.

According to Christopher Minson, co-director of the Evonuk lab, head of the UO human physiology department and study co-author, researchers also concluded that the heat may produce changes in the exercising muscle, including enzymatic changes that could improve the amount of work done by the muscle, but he says future research will have to examine it further.

"A next step is to determine whether heat acclimation improves performance in a competitive or real-world setting," said Minson.

He also notes possible implications for people with cardiac or other limitations such as paralysis that don't allow for the full cardiovascular benefits of exercise. If heat can be added, "it's conceivable that they would gain further cardiovascular benefits than exercise alone in a cool environment. These are exciting questions that deserve further study," said Minson.

Source: University of Oregon and S. Lorenzo, C. T. Minson. Heat Acclimation Improves Cutaneous Vascular Function and Sweating in Trained Cyclists. Journal of Applied Physiology, 2010; DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00725.2010

See also: Too Much Altitude Training Can Hurt Athletic Performance and High Intensity Workout Gets The Job Done

Exercise Grows Kids' Brains, Literally

Researchers have found an association between physical fitness and the brain in 9- and 10-year-old children: Those who are more fit tend to have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on a test of memory than their less-fit peers.  The new study, which used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the relative size of specific structures in the brains of 49 child subjects, appears in the journal Brain Research.

"This is the first study I know of that has used MRI measures to look at differences in brain between kids who are fit and kids who aren't fit," said University of Illinois psychology professor and Beckman Institute director Art Kramer, who led the study with doctoral student Laura Chaddock and kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman. "Beyond that, it relates those measures of brain structure to cognition."

The study focused on the hippocampus, a structure tucked deep in the brain, because it is known to be important in learning and memory. Previous studies in older adults and in animals have shown that exercise can increase the size of the hippocampus. A bigger hippocampus is associated with better performance on spatial reasoning and other cognitive tasks.

"In animal studies, exercise has been shown to specifically affect the hippocampus, significantly increasing the growth of new neurons and cell survival, enhancing memory and learning, and increasing molecules that are involved in the plasticity of the brain," Chaddock said.

Rather than relying on second-hand reports of children's physical activity level, the researchers measured how efficiently the subjects used oxygen while running on a treadmill.

"This is the gold standard measure of fitness," Chaddock said.

The physically fit children were "much more efficient than the less-fit children at utilizing oxygen," Kramer said.  When they analyzed the MRI data, the researchers found that the physically fit children tended to have bigger hippocampal volume -- about 12 percent bigger relative to total brain size -- than their out-of-shape peers.

The children who were in better physical condition also did better on tests of relational memory -- the ability to remember and integrate various types of information -- than their less-fit peers.

"Higher fit children had higher performance on the relational memory task, higher fit children had larger hippocampal volumes, and in general, children with larger hippocampal volumes had better relational memory," Chaddock said.

Further analyses indicated that a bigger hippocampus boosted performance on the relational memory task.

"If you remove hippocampal volume from the equation," Chaddock said, "the relationship between fitness and memory decreases."

The new findings suggest that interventions to increase childhood physical activity could have an important effect on brain development.  "We knew that experience and environmental factors and socioeconomic status all impact brain development," Kramer said. "If you get some lousy genes from your parents, you can't really fix that, and it's not easy to do something about your economic status. But here's something that we can do something about."

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and A neuroimaging investigation of the association between aerobic fitness, hippocampal volume and memory performance in preadolescent children. Brain Research, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2010.08.049

See also: Fit Kids Get Better Grades and For Kids' Health, Just Let Them Play

Exercise Pumps Up Your Brain

Regular exercise speeds learning and improves blood flow to the brain, according to a new study led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine that is the first to examine these relationships in a non-human primate model. The findings are available in the journal Neuroscience.

While there is ample evidence of the beneficial effects of exercise on cognition in other animal models, such as the rat, it has been unclear whether the same holds true for people, said senior author Judy L. Cameron, Ph.D., a psychiatry professor at Pitt School of Medicine and a senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health and Science University. Testing the hypothesis in monkeys can provide information that is more comparable to human physiology.

"We found that monkeys who exercised regularly at an intensity that would improve fitness in middle-aged people learned to do tests of cognitive function faster and had greater blood volume in the brain's motor cortex than their sedentary counterparts," Dr. Cameron said. "This suggests people who exercise are getting similar benefits."

For the study, the researchers trained adult female cynomolgus monkeys to run on a human-sized treadmill at 80 percent of their individual maximal aerobic capacity for one hour each day, five days per week, for five months. Another group of monkeys remained sedentary, meaning they sat on the immobile treadmill, for a comparable time. Half of the runners went through a three-month sedentary period after the exercise period. In all groups, half of the monkeys were middle aged (10 to 12 years old) and the others were more mature (15 to 17 years old). Initially, the middle-aged monkeys were in better shape than their older counterparts, but with exercise, all the runners became more fit.


During the fifth week of exercise training, standardized cognitive testing was initiated and then performed five days per week until week 24. In a preliminary task, the monkeys learned that by lifting a cover off a small well in the testing tray, they could have the food reward that lay within it. In a spatial delay task, a researcher placed a food reward in one of two wells and covered both wells in full view of the monkey. A screen was lowered to block the animal's view for a second, and then raised again. If the monkey displaced the correct cover, she got the treat. After reliably succeeding at this task, monkeys that correctly moved the designated one of two different objects placed over side-by-side wells got the food reward that lay within it.

"Monkeys that exercised learned to remove the well covers twice as quickly as control animals," Dr. Cameron said. "Also, they were more engaged in the tasks and made more attempts to get the rewards, but they also made more mistakes."

She noted that later in the testing period, learning rate and performance was similar among the groups, which could mean that practice at the task will eventually overshadow the impact of exercise on cognitive function.

When the researchers examined tissue samples from the brain's motor cortex, they found that mature monkeys that ran had greater vascular volume than middle-aged runners or sedentary animals. But those blood flow changes reversed in monkeys that were sedentary after exercising for five months.

"These findings indicate that aerobic exercise at the recommended levels can have meaningful, beneficial effects on the brain," Dr. Cameron said. "It supports the notion that working out is good for people in many, many ways."

Source: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences.

See also: Take Your Brain To The Gym and Boomer Brains Need Exercise

Cherry Juice At The Marathon Finish Line

Congratulations, you actually made it to the finish line after 26.2 miles of agony. You are exhausted and need some kind of recovery drink to pick you back up. Reach for the Gatorade? Chocolate milk? Water? No, your best bet is a big glass of tart cherry juice!

Dr Glyn Howatson, exercise physiologist and Laboratory Director in the School of Psychology and Sports Sciences at Northumbria University, examined the properties of Montmorency cherries in a study that found that athletes who drank the juice recovered faster after Marathon running than a placebo controlled group.

In the investigation, 20 marathon runners drank either a tart cherry blend juice or a placebo drink twice a day for five days before taking part in the London Marathon and for two days afterwards.

The findings indicated that the group who drank the cherry juice recovered their strength more rapidly than the control group over the 48-hour period following the marathon. Inflammation was also reduced in the cherry juice group, as was oxidative stress, a potentially damaging response that can be caused by strenuous physical activity, particularly long distance endurance exercise.

The study, which was run in collaboration with PhD student Jess Hill of St Mary's University College, concluded that cherry juice appears to aid recovery following strenuous exercise by increasing total antioxidative capacity, reducing inflammation and oxidative stress, hence aiding in the recovery of muscle function.

Dr Glyn Howatson(Credit: Image courtesy of Northumbria University)

Dr Howatson said: "Participating in long-distance endurance events, such as the London Marathon, causes a degree of muscle damage and inflammation for the runners. It takes several days to recover and during that period the runner's ability to conduct physical activity can be vastly inhibited.

"The phytochemicals, in particular, anthocyanins found in Montmorency cherries have anti-inflammatory and antioxidating properties, which the research has shown to be effective in helping exercisers to recover from strenuous physical activity."

Although it remains to be examined, Dr Howatson believes that the findings will not only benefit marathon runners but could also have serious implications in the treatment of people living with inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis.

He said: "If funding can be secured to embark on a further study, we can determine whether the use of tart cherry juice has implications for the management of some clinical pathologies that display high levels of inflammation and oxidative stress, such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia.

"People are increasingly looking at natural remedies, or neutraceuticals, to treat their conditions, and scientific studies, such as the research into tart cherries, examine the potentially untapped treatments held in natural resources, that can provide adjunct therapy for the management of disease, which can help reduce negative symptoms and improve quality of life."

See also: Barefoot Is Better and Running Addicts Need Their Fix

Source:  Northumbria University and Howatson et al. Influence of tart cherry juice on indices of recovery following marathon running. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 2009; DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01005.x

Bad Air Affects Women More Than Men In Marathons

Poor air quality apparently affects the running times of women in marathons, according to a study by Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineer Linsey Marr.  Her findings come from a comprehensive study that evaluated marathon race results, weather data, and air pollutant concentrations in seven marathons over a period of eight to 28 years.

The top three male and female finishing times were compared with the course record and contrasted with air pollutant levels, taking high temperatures that were detrimental to performance into consideration.

Higher levels of particles in the air were associated with slower running times for women, while men were not significantly affected, Marr said. The difference may be due to the smaller size of women's tracheas, which makes it easier for certain particles to deposit there and possibly to cause irritation
"Although pollution levels in these marathons rarely exceeded national standards for air quality, performance was still affected," Marr said.

Her work, done in collaboration with Matthew Ely, an exercise physiologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, appears in the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise.

Her studies were conducted where major U.S. marathons are located, such as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, where pollution tends to be highest. Although the person might not be significantly impacted by low-yet-still-acceptable air quality, marathoners are atypical because of their breathing patterns, she said.

"Previous research has shown that during a race, marathon runners inhale and exhale about the same volume of air as a sedentary person would over the course of two full days," Marr said. "Therefore, runners are exposed to much greater amounts of pollutants than under typical breathing conditions."
Particulate matter appeared to be the only performance-altering factor in air quality, with carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide levels not impacting race times.


Source: Virginia Tech and Marr, Linsey C.; Ely, Matthew R. Effect of Air Pollution on Marathon Running Performance :. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2010; 42 (3): 585 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181b84a85

See also: Barefoot Is Better and Running Addicts Need Their Fix

For Exercise, Kids Do As Parents Say Not As They Do

According to a new study, there is no direct link between parents' own level of physical activity, and how much their child may exercise. In fact, parents' perceptions of their children's athleticism are what have a direct impact on the children's activity.

The study by Oregon State University researchers Stewart Trost and Paul Loprinzi, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, studied 268 children ages 2 to 5 in early childhood education centers in Queensland, Australia. Of these children, 156 parents or caregivers were surveyed on their parental practices, behaviors related to physical activity and demographic information.

What they found is that parents' level of physical activity is not directly associated with their children, but instead that the direct link was between parental support and a child's level of physical activity.

"Active parents may be more likely to have active children because they encourage that behavior through the use of support systems and opportunities for physical activity, but there is no statistical evidence that a child is active simply because they see that their parents exercise," Trost said.

Trost, who is director of the Obesity Prevention Research Core at the new Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at OSU, is an international expert on the issue of childhood obesity.

His study found that parents who think their children have some sort of athletic ability were much more likely than other parents to provide instrumental and emotional support for young children to be physically active.

"I think this underscores the need for parents to provide emotional support, as well as opportunities for activity," Trost said. "Regardless of whether a child is athletic or is perceived to be physically gifted, all children need opportunities and encouragement of physical activity."

However, Trost said parental support of physical activity did not translate to a child's behavior once they were not in the home and were in a childcare setting. He said this adds to the body of research showing that both parents as well as childcare providers must provide support for physical activity.

Sources:  Oregon State University and Parental influences on physical activity behavior in preschool children, Preventive Medicine

Bodily Benefits Of A Big Butt

If you’re prone to worrying whether your ‘butt looks big in this’, particularly after the holidays, you can take comfort that there may be health benefits.

Oxford University scientists – who have looked at all the evidence on the health effects of storing more fat on the hips, thighs and bum, rather than around the waist – show that having a ‘pear shape’ is not just less bad for you than an ‘apple shape’, but actively protects against diabetes and heart disease.

The team from the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism (OCDEM) have published their summary of the latest research in the International Journal of Obesity today.

‘The idea that body fat distribution is important to health has been known for some time,’ says Dr Konstantinos Manolopoulos, one of the paper’s authors along with Dr Fredrik Karpe and Professor Keith Frayn.

‘However, it is only very recently that thigh fat and a larger hip circumference have been shown to promote health, that lower body fat is protective by itself.’

He adds: ‘This protective effect is independent of weight. However, if you put on weight, thigh circumference will increase but your waist circumference will also increase, which over-rides the protective effect.’

‘Control of body weight is still the best way to stay healthy, and the advice remains the same: it is important to eat less and exercise more.’

The Oxford researchers explain that the body uses its fat tissues to store energy in the form of fatty acids, which can be released when needed, for example after heavy exercise or a period of starvation. Both tummy and thigh fat handle this process, but fat around the waist is much more active in storing and releasing fatty acids in response to need throughout the day. Thigh fat is used for much longer term storage.

More waist or abdominal fat tends to lead to more fatty acids floating around the body where it can get deposited in other organs like the liver and muscle, and cause harm. This is associated with conditions like diabetes, insulin resistance and heart disease.

Thigh fat on the other hand, traps the fatty acids long term, so they can’t get deposited and cause harm.

'Thigh fat and a larger hip circumference have been shown to promote health, and lower body fat is protective by itself,' said Manolopoulos.

The scientists also review evidence that abdominal fat and thigh fat release different levels of hormones. Waist fat is known to release molecules called pro-inflammatory cytokines, and inflammation is a process linked to diabetes and heart disease.

Thigh fat might also secrete more beneficial hormones like leptin and adiponectin, Dr Manolopoulos says, although this is unclear at the moment.

Dr Manolopoulos says the typical difference in male and female body shapes, with men more likely to have fat around the waist and women have more fat on their thighs and hips, neatly illustrates the health effects of different body shapes.

‘If you looked at a man and woman of the same weight and aged around 40, they would have different weight distributions, and it would be the man that was at higher risk of diabetes and heart disease,’ he says.

‘However, when women go through menopause, as well as changes in their hormones they tend to see a change in body shape. They lose body fat and move to a more ‘male’ fat distribution. They then have the same risk of heart disease and diabetes as men.’

It may be possible to use these findings in the future to reduce people’s health risks but that is a long way off, cautions Dr Manolopoulos.

‘We don’t really know how the body decides where to store fat. At the moment we need to understand more about the mechanisms the body uses. Only then will we be able to take the next step and try to influence this.’

‘In principle, this should be possible. There is a class of anti-diabetic drugs that is known to redistribute fat in the body from internal organs to fat stored subcutaneously under the skin. This improves symptoms in diabetes,’ he says.

The team at OCDEM, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is working to understand the way the body stores and turns over fat. They recently pinpointed two genes that are associated with differences in people’s body fat distribution and may be important during embryo development.

‘They are weak effects, but this is just a beginning,’ says Dr Karpe, one of the research group heads. ‘Obesity is a big problem, but it may be that the characteristics of that obesity are more important.’

Source: University of Oxford   and "Gluteofemoral body fat as a determinant of metabolic health"

Ending The Myth Of The Dumb Jock

In the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, Nancy Pedersen of the University of Southern California and colleagues in Sweden find that better cardiovascular health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of intelligence tests – and more education and income later in life.

"During early adolescence and adulthood, the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity," said Pedersen, research professor of psychology at the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences. "Yet, the effect of exercise on cognition remains poorly understood."

Pedersen, lead author Maria Åberg of the University of Gothenburg and the research team looked at data for all 1.2 million Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976 who enlisted for mandatory military service at the age of 18.

In every measure of cognitive functioning they analyzed – from verbal ability to logical performance to geometric perception to mechanical skills – average test scores increased according to aerobic fitness.

However, scores on intelligence tests did not increase along with muscle strength, the researchers found.

"Positive associations with intelligence scores were restricted to cardiovascular fitness, not muscular strength," Pedersen explained, "supporting the notion that aerobic exercise improved cognition through the circulatory system influencing brain plasticity."

The results of the study – in the current issue of PNAS Early Edition – also show the importance of getting healthier between the ages of 15 and 18 while the brain is still changing.

Boys who improved their cardiovascular health between ages 15 to 18 exhibited significantly greater intelligence scores than those who became less healthy over the same time period. Over a longer term, boys who were most fit at the age of 18 were more likely to go to college than their less fit counterparts.

"Direct causality cannot be established. However, the fact that we demonstrated associations between cognition and cardiovascular fitness but not muscle strength . . . and the longitudinal prediction by cardiovascular fitness on subsequent academic achievement, speak in favor of a cardiovascular effect on brain function," Pedersen said.

In their sample, the researchers looked at 260,000 full-sibling pairs, 3,000 sets of twins, and more than 1,400 sets of identical twins. Having relatives enabled the research team to evaluate whether the results might reflect shared family environments or genetic influences.

Even among identical twin pairs, the link between cardiovascular health and intelligence remained strong, according to the study. Thus, the results are not a reflection of genetic influences on cardiovascular health and intelligence. Rather, the twin results give further support to the likelihood that there is indeed a causal relationship, Pedersen explained.

"The results provide scientific support for educational policies to maintain or increase physical education in school curricula," Pedersen said. "Physical exercise should be an important instrument for public health initiatives to optimize cognitive performance, as well as disease prevention at the society level."

Source: University of Southern California

Sports Science Gym Bag - 12-8-09

Wow, what are the odds that I lead off this week's Gym Bag with a Tiger Woods story?  Don't worry, this article has no mention of Escalades, golddiggers or mothers-in-law.  Plus, plenty of other great stuff from the sports science world.


The Tiger Woods Effect

 Success is intimidating. When we compete against someone who's supposed to be better than us, we start to get nervous, and then we start to worry, and then we start to make stupid mistakes. That, at least, is the lesson of a new working paper by Jennifer Brown, a professor at the Kellogg school.
Brown demonstrated this psychological flaw by analyzing data from every player in every PGA tournament from 1999 to 2006. The reason she chose golf is that Tiger Woods is an undisputed superstar, the most intimidating competitor in modern sports. (In 2007, Golf Digest noted that Woods finished with 19.62 points in the World Golf Ranking, more than twice as many as his closest rival. This meant that "he had enough points to be both No. 1 and No. 2.") Brown also notes that "golf is an excellent setting in which to examine tournament theory and superstars in rank-order events, since effort relates relatively directly to scores and performance measures are not confounded by team dynamics." In other words, every golfer golfs alone...

Vince Young
The underlying assumption of the Wonderlic test is that players who are better at math and logic problems will make better decisions in the pocket. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable conjecture. No other position in sports requires such extreme cognitive talents. A successful quarterback will need to memorize hundreds of offensive plays and dozens of different defensive formations. They'll need to spend hours studying game tape of their opponents so that, when they're on the field, they can put that knowledge to use. In many instances, quarterbacks are even responsible for changing the play at the line of scrimmage. They are like a coach with shoulder pads...

UN calls for football tax to fund education for poor children 
The United Nations today launches an appeal to FIFA football leagues, including the Premier League, to place a small levy on sponsorship revenues that would help get 2 million children in poor countries into school over the next five years...

Pushing Past the Pain of Exertion
LAST November, Kara Goucher ran the ING New York City Marathon, her first 26.2-mile race. Even though she was an Olympian who had placed 10th in the 10,000 meter race in 2008 in Beijing — running the equivalent of 6.2 miles — she felt fear.  “I was really scared I wouldn’t be able to handle the pain for that long,” said Ms. Goucher, 31, who had never run more than 18 miles at a time before training for the marathon. “Now I was asking myself to run eight miles farther, a lot faster. It was daunting.”

Coaching and science: What's the big deal and who cares for the science?
"As promised, today begins a series of posts on coaching and science, and how the science can be, should be, and sometimes is, and often is not, applied to athlete preparation. Obviously, it comes with an endurance focus, but there's no reason why sprint coaches and team sport coaches can also not glean some information from this.
This is a series that was inspired by my visit to the US Olympic Center in Colorado Springs. I was lucky enough to be invited there by Prof Randy Wilber of the USOC, who had organized a symposium on altitude training. The symposium brought together scientists, coaches, athletes and mangers from 22 different countries, and included 32 Olympic athletes, and numerous sporting codes, Summer and Winter Olympics among them..."

Belichick had the numbers on his side
Among the countless criticisms hurled at Patriots coach Bill Belichick for his decision to go for it on fourth down Sunday night, former Colts coach Tony Dungy summed up the most popular when, speaking on NBC, he said, “You have got to play the percentages and punt the ball.’’ What Dungy did not realize, though, is that “the percentages’’ dictated that Belichick do exactly what he did...

Short Heels and Long Toes: A Surprising Recipe for Speed
Track coaches have long claimed that the best sprinters are born, not made. Now, new research on the biomechanics of sprinting suggests that at least part of elite athletes’ impressive speed comes from the natural shape of their foot and ankle bones.
Using ultrasound imaging, researchers compared the feet of 12 top college sprinters with those of 12 mere mortals. Surprisingly, the athletes had particularly short heels and longer-than-average toes — features that actually put them at a mechanical disadvantage when running.
“What we found is that sprinters actually had less mechanical advantage than the non-sprinter subjects that we tested,” said biomechanics researcher Stephen Piazza of Penn State University, co-author of the study published Friday in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “This was surprising to us because we expected that sprinters needed all the help they could get.”

Sports Science Weekly Gym Bag - 10-7-09

Time for another edition of the Sports Science Weekly Gym Bag. (Yes, a Wisconsin Badger football gym bag this week...they're 5-0!) If you ever run across something that you would like to share, just add it to the comments below!

Marathon Runners Mull the ‘D Word’
This is the time of year, after marathoners have logged their longest miles, that any kind of pain, nagging or excruciating, can send runners into a panic about whether they will make it to the starting line. Or if they should even try...

Faster tunes make you bike faster, even if it hurts a bit more
Researchers have been studying how music and other “distractions” affect exercise performance for decades (see here, for instance), hoping to trick us into pushing a little harder without realizing it. One of the factors they’ve looked at extensively is the speed of the music — the idea that faster tempos make us pick up the pace. The problem is that the effects of tempo tend to be swamped by the effect of whether the subjects in the experiment like the particular tunes selected for them...

How Do Marathons Affect Your Heart?
Last year the European Heart Journal published a study that continues to prompt discussion among researchers who work with marathoner runners and those, many of them the same researchers, who run marathons. In the study, German scientists scanned the hearts of 108 experienced, male distance runners in their fifties, sixties and seventies.  By standard measures, the group’s risk for heart problems was low. But when the researchers studied the runners’ scan results, they found that more than a third of the men showed evidence of significant calcification or plaque build-up in their heart arteries. Several also had scarring of some of the tissue in their hearts...

The Eyes Have It - Is visual training the sports world's next big thing?
Seattle Mariners first baseman Russell Branyan began this season on a tear. In interviews, Branyan credited his newfound success in large part to a piece of software that runs on an ordinary laptop. "I think it's helped me really pinpoint and focus on the ball," Branyan said of the Vizual Edge program, which offers a variety of exercises to train and sharpen visual skills. "I see the ball exactly where it is. I don't want to say it's all because of this. … But, I mean, I was a .230 hitter."

Watch Out Gatorade, Powerade, Accelerade! Mother Nature's Entered the Game!
"I'm convinced more than ever that Mother Nature is a runner. I've recently hailed Mother Nature's "natural sports drink"—coconut water—and its health benefits, especially how its naturally high level of potassium helps keep my calf cramps at bay on long runs. Well, it appears that Mother Nature has expanded her line of sports drinks..."

Young Athletes and Women More Likely to Have Second ACL Surgery Within a Year
According to one of the largest studies ever conducted on the outcomes of ACL surgery, patients under 40 and women are both more likely to have second knee surgery within a year of an ACL repair.  Investigators looked at surgical outcomes in 70,000 patients who had ACL reconstruction surgery from 1997 to 2006 in New York state. The results, published in the October 2009 issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, found the following...

Despite Size, NFL Players Not More Likely To Develop Heart Disease, Even After Retirement
Former professional football players with large bodies don't appear to have the same risk factors for heart disease as their non-athletic counterparts, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found in studying a group of National Football League (NFL) alumni....

Sports Science Weekly Gym Bag - 9-28-09

Here's a new feature of Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: A weekly round-up of some of the best blog posts, articles and other interesting stuff that I've found on sports science and fitness research. If you find anything else, please just add it as a comment to this post! 

Aging Muscles: 'Hard To Build, Easy To Lose'
Have you ever noticed that people have thinner arms and legs as they get older? As we age it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy. They get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures. New research is showing how this happens — and what to do about it...

Back to Basics: Yes, Sergeant!
If Mark Roozen, a personal trainer in Colorado Springs, set his group conditioning classes to music, the playlist could start with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Mr. Roozen’s routines are as likely to incorporate logs, wheelbarrows and sandbags as circuit machines, Pilates equipment and other gym staples...
 
Often Overlooked but Key to Marathon Success: The Base
Doesn't sound glamorous, does it? Isn't snazzy sounding. Isn't flashy. But, man is it important. One of the biggest mistakes new marathoners make is overlooking the base mileage needed before beginning any kind of marathon training...

Real-Time Feedback System For Alpine Skiers Help Improve Performance
Researchers have developed an effective real-time performance management and feedback system for alpine ski racers that allow skiers to better understand their carved turning skills and improve their performance...

Caster Semenya - cover-ups, lies and confusion
For those who have not been following this astonishing story, Athletics South Africa boss Leonard Chuene admitted on the weekend that he lied about not having prior knowledge of the doubt around Caster Semenya, and has admitted that he authorized tests on Semenya in South Africa before the team left for the IAAF World Champs in Berlin...

Slushies: the new weapon for exercising in heat
Reading up on Australian sports research for an upcoming magazine story, I came across this little nugget about dealing with competition in hot conditions. The Aussies have been leaders in research on “pre-cooling” to lower body temperature before starting extended exercise in the heat. They introduced ice vests at the 1996 Olympics (which have since become widely used commercial products), and in 2004 brought big bathtubs full of ice-water to the Athens Olympic venues, actually immersing their endurance athletes shortly before their competitions...

Phys Ed: Can Vitamin D Improve Your Athletic Performance?
When scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport recently decided to check the Vitamin D status of some of that country’s elite female gymnasts, their findings were fairly alarming. Of the 18 gymnasts tested, 15 had levels that were “below current recommended guidelines for optimal bone health,” the study’s authors report. Six of these had Vitamin D levels that would qualify as medically deficient. Unlike other nutrients, Vitamin D can be obtained by exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, as well as through foods or supplements. Of course, female gymnasts are a unique and specialized bunch, not known for the quality or quantity of their diets, or for getting outside much...

What all youth baseball coaches should know
Read this.  It's the American Sports Medicine Institute's new "position statement" on youth baseball pitchers and injury prevention.  In July, ASMI's top researcher, Glenn Fleisig, shared findings from a study of youth pitchers for an article I wrote for the New York Times...