Exercise Makes You Less Anxious

Next time you slip into your track shoes and head out the gate for a run, you can take heart. You are not only burning off unwanted calories, you are also growing new brain cells that help you keep calm under stress.

New research is showing that the ‘positive stress’ of aerobic exercise remodels the brain, creating neurons in active animals that remain calm when more slothful creatures get anxious.

So far, the research has all been done on rats. But researchers are confident the human brain is likely to respond in a similar way.

New Brain Cells From Running

You may not feel a magical reduction of stress after your first jog, if you haven’t been exercising. But the molecular biochemical changes will happen if you keep exercising, says Dr. Benjamin Greenwood, a research associate in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado says.

In one Princeton University experiment reported in the New York Times scientists found rats had created, through running, a brain that seemed biochemically, molecularly, calm.

The scientists noted the “cells born from running,” appeared to have been “specifically buffered from exposure to a stressful experience.”

Anxiety in rodents and people has been linked with excessive oxidative stress, which can lead to cell death, including in the brain.

More Adventurous Attitude

In a University of Houston experiment rats who had exercised coped with unfamiliar surroundings much better than others, even when both groups were injected with chemicals that artificially raised stress levels.

When placed in the unfamiliar space, the exercised rats went out fearlessly exploring their new surroundings, while the unexercised rats ran into dark corners to hide.

“It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms,” says Michael Hopkins, a graduate student affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth, who has been studying how exercise differently affects thinking and emotion.

“It’s pretty amazing, really, that you can get this translation from the realm of purely physical stresses to the realm of psychological stressors.”

Won’t Happen Overnight

The stress-reducing changes wrought by exercise don’t happen overnight.

In the University of Colorado experiments, for instance, rats that ran for only three weeks did not show much reduction in stress-induced anxiety, but those that ran for at least six weeks did.

“Something happened between three and six weeks,” says Dr Greenwood, who helped conduct the experiments.

He says it is “not clear how that translates” into an exercise prescription for humans. We may require more weeks of working out, or maybe less. And no one has yet studied how intense the exercise needs to be. But the lesson, Dr. Greenwood says, is “don’t quit.”

Keep running or cycling or swimming. As Rachel Hunter says in the hair ad, “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.” Says Dr Greenwood: The molecular biochemical changes will begin, and eventually they become “profound.”

Big Fat Lies About Weight Loss

Even doctors are confused about the facts on getting fatter.

A “most read” report in the Sydney Morning Herald by Australian scientists Garry and Sam Egger has separated truth from fiction by surveying doctors and truck drivers on popular myths about weight loss – and they found the doctors were wrong almost as often as the truckies.

The Top 12 Weight Loss Lies

1) Fruit juice is about as fattening as beer – TRUE

Both have about the same kilojoule intake, but alcohol cannot be stored and turned into fat.

2) Humans need 8 glasses of water a day – FALSE

The 8 glasses a day rule is “arbitrary and meaningless.” The amount of fluid you need varies according to age, gender, activity level, state of health and the weather – and varies from 3 to 24 glasses a day.

3) Dairy products can help weight loss – TRUE

It’s controversial, but recent research suggests eating low-fat dairy is linked to weight loss.

Dairy ingredients like whey protein, and a combinations of ingredients, like protein and calcium, can increase feelings of fullness, and increase the calories expelled as waste  - both of which may assist weight loss.

4) Chocolate is healthy provided it is dark – FALSE

Genuine dark chocolate can have health benefits, but much “dark” chocolate has had the bitter-tasting flavinoids (the good antixodants)  removed and cocoa added, changes which do not have to be noted on the labels. Just because it’s labelled “dark” doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

5) Exercise is better than dieting for weight loss – FALSE

While exercise is likely to be important in maintaining weight loss, it’s easier to lose weight by dieting at the start. That’s because reducing intake by 1000 calories a day is the equivalent of walking an extra 15 kilometres daily – unrealistic for most people.

6) A low-protein diet is best for weight loss – FALSE

A reasonable intake of protein is likely to be better for weight loss than a low-protein diet, partly because protein gives a feeling of “fullness”.

The present protein intake of about 13 to 15 per cent of total energy is well below the estimated 25 to 30 per cent often proposed for weight loss and a healthy diet.

7) Fat people don’t get more hungry than lean people – TRUE

There is little reason to believe in a difference in genuine hunger – as distinct from psychologically conditioned ”appetite” – between slim and overweight people.

8) Swimming is better than walking for weight loss – FALSE

In general, the best exercises for weight loss are those that are weight-bearing, such as walking or jogging. Up to 30 per cent less energy is used in activities such as swimming or cycling, which support weight and can be carried out at a more leisurely pace.

9) Weight lifting is good for fat loss – TRUE

Resistance training is often underrated and considered only for the development of strength or size. Weight lifting can be effective for weight loss as well as muscle strengthening.

10) The best measure of body fat is body mass index -FALSE

Body mass index (BMI) – a ratio of weight to height – is less accurate in people with a more muscular body type, some ethnic groups such as Pacific Islanders, and the elderly, whose height shrinks with age. Waist circumference and some other body measures provide better estimates.

11) You lose more weight doing exercise you are good at – FALSE

Individuals become more efficient and expend less energy as they become experienced with a particular form of exercise. A fit, experienced runner, for example, requires less energy to cover a set distance than an unfit individual of the same weight, age and gender.

12) An obese person can be fit and healthy – TRUE

There is accumulating evidence that many obese people are fit and healthy, while a significant proportion of lean individuals suffer from health problems normally associated with obesity. This has led to new questions about the effects of obesity as a marker, rather than a cause, of disease.

Extend Sex Life By Ten Years

A daily brisk walk, run or gym workout is looking increasingly attractive as the evidence supporting the benefits of working up a regular sweat continue to roll in. For middle aged men the pay off includes a longer active sex life and reduced risk of prostate cancer.

Men who exercise 3-5 hours a week:

• have 30% less risk of having erectile dysfunction (impotence)
• have 70% less risk of developing prostate cancer – and of surviving it if they do develop it
• can look forward to an additional ten years  of undiminished sex life

Those are some of the conclusions from a tidal wave of surveys and studies conducted in the last five years.

One of the largest, The Harvard Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) of over 31,000 men aged 53 – 90 who did not have prostate cancer is significant. One third of the men reported having erectile dysfunction in the previous three months.

The risk goes up 5% a year after age 50. The study showed that regular exercise can mean ten more years free of erectile dysfunction for the average man.

Lower Risk of Prostate Cancer

The same study of 48,000 men over 14 years found that among those age 65 or older, those who exercised vigorously at least three hours a week had a 70 per cent lower risk of advanced or fatal prostate cancer.

The study’s lead author, Edward Giovannucci, MD, ScD, says the findings suggest that regular vigorous physical activity could slow the progression of prostate cancer and might be recommended to reduce mortality from prostate cancer.

Less Aggressive Disease

A second study shows moderate amounts of exercise most days of the week may contribute to a lower risk of prostate cancer, and lower grade tumours among those men who are diagnosed with the disease following biopsy.

Investigators found that men who regularly engaged in moderate activity — anything equivalent to walking at a moderate pace for several hours per week — were significantly less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and if they were, they were less likely to have aggressive disease, defined as a tumour with a Gleason score equal to or greater than 7.

They assessed participants’ level of exercise with a questionnaire prior to the biopsy.

Most Exercise Less Than an Hour a Week

Most of the men fell far short of the American Heart Association guidelines for the minimal amount of exercise needed per week. Researchers found that a majority of the men (58 percent) were sedentary, meaning they exercised less than the equivalent of one hour per week of easy walking. Forty-six percent were moderately active; only 33 percent were very active.

Investigators found that men who reported more hours per week of exercise were significantly less likely to have cancer on biopsy.

More Exercise, Less Cancer Any amount of exercise was associated with a trend toward a lower risk of prostate cancer and as the amount of exercise increased, the risk of cancer decreased, says Jodi Antonelli, MD, a urology resident at Duke University Medical Center and the lead author of the study.

Among men who were found to have cancer, even exercising as little as one hour per week of easy walking was associated with a lower risk of high-grade disease.

Herbal Support for Prostate Health

Herbs and supplements can offer real benefits for prostate health, including saw palmetto and lycopene, the tomato-based ingredient which has been found to be beneficial against prostate cancer. A nutritional supplement like Quup (pronounced Kew-up) with saw palmetto, lycopene, selenium and zinc is useful for mid life men experiencing urinary discomfort, or who simply want to give their prostate good support.

However use of a supplement does not replace seeing your health professional for a full check of your prostate health. For more information check out What is Herbal Quup?

Eating To Beat Prostate Cancer

Take a step away from the barbecue this season if you’re an over-50-year-old man who wants to be kind to his prostate. That’s the message from a review of diet recommended for preventing prostate cancer.

That’s not just because of potential carcinogens in the charred meat, but also because reducing intake of saturated fat and red meat , dairy and calcium, and increasing fruit and vegetables is most beneficial in preventing and treating prostate cancer.

Researchers Robert W.-L. Ma and K. Chapman recommend eating lots of tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, drinking green tea, and supplementing with vitamins including Vitamin E and selenium, which they say seemed to decrease risk of prostate cancer.

Japanese or Mediterranean Best

Two ethnic cuisines – traditional Japanese diet high in green tea, soy, vegetables, and fish, and the Mediterranean – high in fresh fruits and vegetables, garlic, tomatoes, red wine, olive oil, and fish – have long been credited with longevity and reduced risks of prostate cancer.

Combine those nutrition guidelines with exercise – research shows 30 minutes daily can slow prostate cell growth by 30 per cent – and you are making all the best choices for a long and healthy life.

Recommended Supplements

Vary diet as much as possible, and in addition:

• Take a multivitamin with B complex and folic acid daily.
• Avoid high-dose zinc supplements.
• Avoid flax seed oil. This can stimulate prostate cancer to grow. You can obtain the very healthy alpha omega-3 fatty acids you need through fresh fish and nuts.
• Use olive oil, which is very healthy and rich in vitamin E and antioxidants. Avocado oil is also good. Avoid oils high in polyunsaturated fats such as corn, canola, or soybean.
• Take vitamin E, 50 to 100 IU of gamma and d-alpha, only with the approval of your doctor. Some recent studies have raised concerns over serious risks with vitamin E intake. Natural sources include nuts, seeds, olive oil, avocado oil, wheat germ, peas, and nonfat milk.
• Selenium is a very powerful antioxidant and the backbone molecule of your body’s immune system. Most studies support a daily selenium supplement of 200 micrograms a day. The benefits appear to be only for those who have low selenium levels, which is difficult and expensive to measure. Since it only costs about 7 cents a day and is not toxic at these levels, it is reasonable for all men to take selenium. Natural sources include Brazil nuts, fresh fish, grains, mushrooms, wheat germ, bran, whole-wheat bread, oats, and brown rice.

Saw Palmetto and Lycopene

Prostate health can be enhanced with the herb saw palmetto and tomato extract lycopene found in herbal supplements like Quup. See What is Herbal Quup for more details and ordering options.

Exercise Won’t Make You Thin – Successful Losers

You’ve lost weight – more than once – but you always put it back on again. Experts agree that maintaining loss is the even harder than losing it in the first place. And according to people who should know – a group who lost big amounts and successfully remained slimmed down – regular physical activity is an important part of their success.

Secrets of the Successfully Slim

The National Weight Control Registry  - which maintains a registry of 5000 people, average age 45, who have lost big amounts of weight and kept it off for more than a year – looked at the lifestyle secrets of these people, with weight loss of 30 kg for an average of 5.5 years.*

Nine of ten of those who were successful modified both diet and exercise to lose weight and keep it off.

Successful strategies included:

• eating a diet low in fat
• frequent self-monitoring of body weight and food intake
• high levels of regular physical activity

Low Calorie, Not Low Carb Best

Specifically, these successful slim people (80% of them women) followed these guidelines:

• low calorie diet of on 1381 kcal/day on average
• 24% fat, 19% protein, and 56% carbohydrate calories
• < 1% of participants consumed a low carbohydrate diet
• the few who did eat < 24% carbohydrate calorie diets maintained their weight for less time and were less physically active
• consumed  5 meals per day, ate at fast food restaurants only 1x week, and 2.5 meals per week at other restaurants
• 3 in 4 participants weighed themselves either daily or weekly
• most participants monitored their dietary intake regularly, particularly if they noted more than a couple lbs of weight gain
• 91% of the registrants used exercise to assist them with weight maintenance
• women averaged 2545 kcals/wk and men 3293 kcals/wk in physical activity; this is equivalent to walking 20-30 miles per week
• most increased both lifestyle activity and regular structured exercise
• 77% of registrants used walking as their main form of exercise
• 1 in 5 engaged in weight training
• among those who regained weight, they increased fat intake, decreased physical activity by an average of 800 kcals/wk, and reduced the amount of self-monitoring activities

The Registry study offers hope for those who stick with it. It found the longer you do it, the easier it gets.  “Once these successful maintainers have maintained a weight loss for 2–5 years, the chances of longer-term success greatly increase,” the NWCR study says.

• Rena R Wing and James O Hill, http://www.nwcr.ws/

Exercise Won’t Make You Thin? Yeah Right.

Time magazine and writer John Cloud bought themselves a fight with the Aug 9 cover story Exercise Won’t Make You Thin. Howls from medical professionals, personal trainers, and their nemesis – the people who moan they “exercised for four hours a week and never lost a pound” – are still ringing.

Time argued:

• Exercising just makes us hungrier, which means we eat more, AND
• Because we’ve exercised we “reward” ourselves with the chocolate pastry or muffin we would not have otherwise had, immediately undoing the calorie loss we’ve earned with our workout session (women are apparently the worst “overcompensators”.)
• We’re being “tricked” into unpleasant and useless exercise and while we are just getting hungrier and fatter. (Look at national obesity figures.)

The resulting pros-and-cons discussion has thrown up some great research clarifying whether exercise gets you thin, keeps you thin or both.

The short conclusion is it depends on what sort of exercise (aerobic, weights etc) you are doing. And while it may not help you lose weight,  it certainly will help you stay that way.

Diet to Lose, Exercise to Maintain

 

Two studies in particular show clearly that while diet may play a bigger part than exercise in losing weight, exercise plays an essential part in maintaining that loss.

One 12 week study by Kramer, Volek et al,* which included aerobic, strength training, and diet controls, showed fat mass losses from the three approaches as follows:

• Diet only: 6.7kg,
• Diet/aerobics/cardio: 7kg,
• Diet/aerobics plus weights/resistance: 10kg.
  

 

Most noteworthy – the group that combined diet, cardio and resistance training lost almost no lean tissue whereas the diet only group lost almost 3kg worth of lean tissue.

Training was 3 times a week starting at 30 mins and progressing to 3 x 50 minutes over the 12 weeks. So the weight training group lost 3.3 kg, (21.1lbs,) – 44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively –  in the same time frame.

We’ll deal with study number two – which examined the lifestyles of people who had taken off large amounts of weight and then successfully kept it off – in Instalment 2 of Exercise Won’t Make You Thin - Successful Losers.

*Kramer, Volek et al., Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, 1999.

Average 50 year-old Fitter Than 25-year-old

The average 50-year-old is now healthier and fitter than someone half their age, a study has revealed.

It found the average 25-year-old in Britain consumes more than 2,300 calories a day, exercises only three times a week and scoffs 12 types of junk food a month.

But the typical 50-year-old has only 1990 calories each day, does at least four forms of exercise and treats themselves to just one piece of junk food each week.

And while those in their mid-20s have three takeaways a month, the older generation have only one.

Madonna the Role Model

Pop star Madonna is a perfect example of someone who is fighting fit at the age of 50.

Around 4,000 people aged 16 to 80 were quizzed as part of the diet and lifestyle study, which was commissioned by global nutrition and direct selling firm Herbalife.

Neil Spiers, of Herbalife, said: “The results are surprising as it’s natural to think the younger you are, the fitter you are.

“It seems many young people are making the mistake of underestimating the benefit of a more balanced, holistic approach to diet and lifestyle.

“It’s great to think the older generation are showing the youngsters the way when it comes to healthier living.”

More Likely to Walk Dog

The survey found over-50s were more likely to walk during the day — to the shops or with the dog — while those in their 20s tend to drive everywhere. But when it comes to excuses for not exercising, more than a third of 25-year-olds blame lack of time, compared to 22 percent of over-50s.

Seventy percent see themselves as healthy — exercising for 27 minutes a day, at least three times a week, opting to go for a walk, run, cycle or go to the gym.

But the average person still believes they are overweight by 9 lbs and over a quarter of the population are on a diet.

Fibbing About Flab

The study also highlighted the lengths people will go to in order to hide their flab.

Almost a quarter have lied about the amount they eat and one in five have fibbed about their weight. And 12 percent have cut labels out of clothing which revealed their real size.

A sneaky 16 percent have turned to slimming aids without telling anyone and 7 percent have uploaded misleading pictures on Facebook. About a third admitted “binge dieting” to fit into a dress or to look good in a bikini in time for a holiday.