I Run, Therefore I Drink?

Here’s a question for your buddies at the next golf outing or bowling league night: Are we more active because we drink more or do we drink more because we’re more active? Recent research showed that there is a correlation between the two, but could not offer a solid reason.

Either way, another study claims the combination of moderate alcohol use and exercise will help our hearts more than just choosing one over the other.

Michael French, a health economics professor at the University of Miami, and his colleagues dug into data from the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a yearly telephone survey of roughly 230,000 Americans, and found a surprisingly strong positive correlation between the levels of alcohol intake and exercise.  For both men and women, those who drank at least some alcohol exercised 7.2 minutes more per week than non-drinkers.

While that may not seem like much, the study showed that the more booze, the more minutes spent sweating. Light, moderate, and heavy drinkers worked out 5.7, 10.1 and 19.9 minutes more per week, respectively. Also, drinking resulted in a 10.1 percent increase in the probability of vigorous physical activity.

Now, that doesn’t mean that these folks were drinking while exercising, nor that it was necessarily good for them to engange in more than light drinking. Instead, French and his team, who have studied many facets of alcohol abuse and its triggers, are trying to make sense of this correlation that seems too strong to ignore. It seems counterintuitive to traditional views that if people engage in one unhealthy behavior, like excessive drinking, that they will most likely engage in other unhealthy behaviors, like physical inactivity.

French suggests that heavy alcohol use may be masked by the appearance of a healthy lifestyle and cautions physicians not to jump to conclusions.

“For example, taking into account only the patients’ levels of physical activity and perhaps diet would overlook potential alcohol use problems that could be detected and treated,” French writes. “Physically active individuals who engage in problematic drinking are often ‘‘healthy looking,’’ because alcohol use consequences are sometimes delayed.”

The study appears in the September/October issue of American Journal of Health Promotion.

Maybe we exercise more because we know how many calories those beers and mixers are adding to our waistlines. Even so, Danish researchers found that we’re still better off combining moderate alcohol consumption with exercise.

Morten Gronbaek, epidemiologist with Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health, and his team surveyed 12,000 people over a 20-year period to determine the cardiovascular effects of alcohol use and exercise. They divided the population into four groups: those who did not drink or exercise; those who had both moderate levels of alcohol use and exercise; and those who either just drank or just exercised at moderate levels.

The group with the highest risk of fatal ischaemic heart disease, a form of heart disease characterized by a reduced blood supply to the heart, were the non-drinking, non-exercisers. Choosing either moderate drinking or moderate exercise provided a 30 percent decrease in risk factors. However, drinking and exercising, (not necessarily at the same time), showed a 50 percent lower risk.

Their findings were detailed in the European Heart Journal.

“Being both physically active and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is important for lowering the risk of both fatal IHD and death from all causes,” Gronbaek concluded.  Of course, the key is moderation, defined in the study as one drink per day for women and two per day for men. Also, Gronbaek warns that there is no heart benefit until a certain age.

“You wouldn’t advise everyone to drink,” he said. “You shouldn’t even think about doing it until age 45 or 50. There’s absolutely no proof of a preventative and protective effect before age 45.”

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...

Running Addicts Need Their Fix

Just as there is the endorphin rush of a "runner's high," there can also be the valley of despair when something prevents avid runners from getting their daily fix of miles.

Now, researchers at Tufts University may have confirmed this addiction by showing that an intense running regimen in rats can release brain chemicals that mimic the same sense of euphoria as opiate use. They propose that moderate exercise could be a "substitute drug" for human heroin and morphine addicts.

Given all of the benefits of exercise, many people commit to an active running routine. Somewhere during a longer, more intense run when stored glycogen is depleted, the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus release endorphins that can provide that "second wind" that keeps a runner going.

This sense of being able to run all day is similar to the pain-relieving state that opiates provide, scientists have known. So a team led by Robin Kanarek, professor of psychology at Tufts University, wondered whether they could also produce similar withdrawal symptoms, which would indicate that intense running and opiate abuse have a similar biochemical effect.

Running rodents
The team divided 44 male rats and 40 female rats into four groups. One group was housed inside an exercise wheel, and another group had none. Each group was divided again, either allowing access to food for only one hour per day or for 24 hours per day. Though tests on humans would be needed to confirm this research, rodents are typically good analogues to illuminate how the human body works.
The rodents existed in these environments for several weeks. Finally, all groups were given Naloxone, a drug used to counteract an opiate overdose and produce immediate withdrawal symptoms.

The active rats displayed a significantly higher level of withdrawal symptoms than the inactive rats. Also, the active rats that were only allowed food for one hour per day exercised the most and showed the most intense reaction to Naloxone. This scenario mimics the actions of humans suffering from anorexia athletica, also known as hypergymnasia, that causes an obsession not only with weight but also with continuous exercise to lose weight.

"Exercise, like drugs of abuse, leads to the release of neurotransmitters such as endorphins and dopamine, which are involved with a sense of reward," Kanarek said. "As with food intake and other parts of life, moderation seems to be the key. Exercise, as long as it doesn't interfere with other aspects of one's life, is a good thing with respect to both physical and mental health."

The study appears in the August issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, published by the American Psychological Association.

Treatment ideas
Kanarek hopes to use these results to design treatment programs for heroin and morphine addicts that substitute the all-natural high of exercise in place of the drugs.  "These findings, in conjunction with results of studies demonstrating that intake of drugs of abuse and running activates the endogenous opioid and dopamine reward systems, suggest that it might be possible to substitute drug-taking behavior with naturally rewarding behavior," she writes.

She also wants to do further research on understanding the neurophysiology of extreme eating and exercise disorders. "The high comorbidity of drug abuse and eating disorders provides further evidence of a common neurobiological basis for these disorders," Kanarek concludes.

Exercise Wins Again

It just seems too good to be true. Study after research study consistently promoting the endless benefits of exercise. Couch potatoes everywhere are waiting for the other shoe to drop, telling us that all of those scientists were wrong and we should remain as sedentary as possible.
Yet four additional studies released recently each give the same prescription for improving some aspect of your health: exercise.

They add to recent evidence that regular workouts can improve old brains, raise kids' academic performance and give a brain boost to everyone in between.

Better bones
One study illustrates the effect of exercise on preventing or limiting osteoporosis, which affects more than 200 million people worldwide. Researchers at the University of Missouri found that while both resistance training (lifting weights) and high impact exercise (running) both help build needed bone mineral density (BMD), running is the better choice.

"Exercise programs to increase bone strength should be designed using what is known about how bones respond to exercise," said Pam Hinton, associate professor and lead author. "Only the skeletal sites that experience increased stress from exercise will become stronger. High-impact, dynamic, multi-directional activities result in greater gains in bone strength."  The study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Strength Conditioning.

Less pain
In a related study, exercise seemed to be one of the few successful remedies for those that suffer from low-back pain. In the February issue of the Spine Journal, University of Washington physicians summarized 20 different clinical trials that promoted different solutions to alleviating pain.

"Strong and consistent evidence finds many popular prevention methods to fail while exercise has a significant impact, both in terms of preventing symptoms and reducing back pain-related work loss," said Dr. Stanley J. Bigos, professor emeritus of orthopaedic surgery and environmental health. "Passive interventions such as lumbar belts and shoe inserts do not appear to work."

Better eye health
Also, vigorous exercise has now been linked with significantly reduced onset of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration. In the study, detailed in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, researchers reviewed the eye health of 41,000 runners over seven years and found that both men and women had significantly lower rates of these two diseases than the general public.

Men who logged more than 5.7 miles per day had a 35 percent lower risk than those that ran less than 1.4 miles per day. While the correlation is strong, the reason is not clear.

"We know some of the physiological benefits of exercise, and we know about the physiological background of these diseases, so we need to better understand where there's an overlap," said Paul Williams, an epidemiologist in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Life Sciences Division.

Cancer prevention
Each year in the U.S., more 100,000 people are diagnosed with colon cancer. To see what effect exercise has on lowering this rate, researchers at Washington University and Harvard University combined to review 52 studies over the last 25 years which linked exercise and the incidence of cancer. Overall, they found that those that exercised the most (5-6 hours of brisk walking per week) were 24 percent less likely to develop the disease than those that exercised the least (less than 30 minutes per week).

"The beneficial effect of exercise holds across all sorts of activities," said lead study author Kathleen Y. Wolin, Sc.D. of Washington University. "And it holds for both men and women. There is an ever-growing body of evidence that the behavior choices we make affect our cancer risk. Physical activity is at the top of the list of ways that you can reduce your risk of colon cancer."

So, are there any studies out there that link exercise with a negative outcome?

In a recent study published in the journal Obesity, Dolores Albarracín, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, did find that people who are shown posters with messages like "join a gym" or "take a walk" actually ate more after viewing these messages than those that saw messages like "make friends."

"Viewers of the exercise messages ate significantly more (than their peers, who viewed other types of messages)," Albarracín said. "They ate one-third more when exposed to the exercise ads."



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