Revealing German Study on Runners and Lifestyle
A German study recently published in the latest issue of Deutsches Arzteblatt International reveals a link between lifestyle and exercise.
Sports scientists have revealed that impairments to health and physical performance are not primarily a result of aging but of bad lifestyle habits and lack of exercise.
Dieter Leyk and his team analyzed the stamina of more than 600, 000 marathon and half marathon runners and asked them about their lifestyle habits and their health.
Marathon running is particularly suitable for studying because participants have to put in sufficient training hours for the competition, and the athletes accommodate this into their day accordingly.
The scientists found that unfavorable characteristics such as obesity, smoking, and lack of physical activity were rare in runners, and reductions in physical performance were more likely to be the result of biological aging processes.
These reductions make their presence felt only after the 54th year of life and are but slight. More than 25 per cent of 50- to 69-year-olds had taken up running only in the preceding 5 years and participated in a marathon nonetheless. You can see this connection highlighted in the short video on oomphtv.com about the 94 year old runner Jack Kirk-The Dipsea Demon.
Something to think about when making your New Year’s resolution.
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Exercise Can Offset Obesity Linked Genes
Over the years I have engaged in conversations with friends, neighbors and relatives about the issue of how your family genes plays a role in your own weight. The general assumption has been that we are basically a slave to one’s own genetic make up. Over the past few years more and more studies have come out underscore a different point of view.
According to many recent studies, we can influence our weight and personal health by taking an active role in our own lifestyle. Even people with a strong genetic predisposition to obesity can offset their risk of being over weight by being physically active, according to a study published Tuesday August 31st in the Journal PLoS Medicine.
British researchers examined the effects of 12 genetic variants associated with a higher risk of obesity among 20,430 people in Britain. Researchers calculated a genetic predisposition score for each volunteer that ranged from 0 to 24, representing the number of obesity-related variants they had inherited. (Most of the scores were between 10 and 13.) The volunteers also reported their levels of physical activity.
Armed with that information, the researchers determined that each DNA variant carried a 16% increased risk of obesity among those who were sedentary. But for people who got at least one hour of physical activity per day, the increased risk per variant was only 10% — a reduction of 40%.
In terms of weight gain, each obesity-related gene variant in inactive volunteers was associated with an additional 1.3 pounds in body mass for someone about 5 1/2 feet tall. In people who exercised, the extra body mass was 0.8 pounds, according to the report.
Previous studies have shown that physical activity can offset the effect of genetics, but most have focused on a single gene known as FTO, also known as fat mass and obesity. But many more DNA variants have been linked to obesity in the last three years, said Ruth Loos, program leader at Cambridge University’s Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and the study’s senior author.
“The more variants you carry, the more likely you are to be obese,” she said. Gil Atzmon, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., said the findings underscore that DNA doesn’t necessarily mean destiny.
“The message from this is, if you have a genetic predisposition for some things, you can change your lifestyle and contribute to better health,” he said. Loos said she didn’t advocate genetic testing for obesity at this point because not enough is known about how these and other variants affect weight.
“Knowing if your parents were obese is a better predictor than knowing your genome, since you not only share genes with your family, but lifestyle as well,” she said. But in the future, being aware of one’s genetic makeup may help tailor obesity treatments, she added.
Life Expectancy Decreases in US
The researchers were among two dozen USC faculty who spoke at the April 20 conference, “What’s Hot in Aging Research at USC: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” hosted by the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research Advancement.
Demographer Eileen Crimmins warned that the U.S. is falling behind other developed countries.
“Life expectancy is low in the U.S. and has been getting worse, relative to other countries like us. For a country that is the richest in the world and spends the most on health care, you might think that we’d do a little better,” Crimmins said.
World leaders in life expectancy include Japan, France, Switzerland, Spain and Italy.
Health care reform will help slightly, Crimmins said. Smoking, obesity, economic disparity and other deep cultural problems have a greater impact on life span. More than health care reform, the nation needs health reform, Crimmins told the nearly full auditorium at the Andrus Gerontology Center.
According to Crimmins, one of the biggest influences on life span is the inequality in health and mortality between the top and bottom of society, which is greater than in other countries.“People who are poor and have low education live different lives,” she said, regardless of their race.
Crimmins’ frequent collaborator, University Professor and neurobiologist Caleb Finch, described a future in which most people will lead less healthy lives than the wealthy few, due to rising health care costs and uneven environmental conditions. His current research studies possible links between air quality and brain development.
“There are very powerful counter longevity forces that are building. Future benefits of longevity may be limited to a very small privileged group of people,” he said.
However, you can make a difference in your own life, no matter who you are. 50% of the factors that influence your own life span, is your own behavior, according to Walter Bortz, MD, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford University. Please read “Tips on how to be 100” These are very simple tips we all can learn from.
We need to examine the current data coming out of the Universities and learn from what they are telling us.
Obesity and Cancer
There has been a great deal of press written in the last few months on how obesity affects our health as individuals and as a nation. Just yesterday, in the LA Times, I found more on a link between obesity and cancer.
An increasing number of studies are finding that overweight and obese people are more likely to develop cancer of various kinds. At least half a dozen types of cancer are believed to be directly affected by weight.
”As time goes on, we’re realizing that obesity is related to more cancers than we originally suspected,” said Dr. Donald Hensrud, an associate professor of preventive medicine and nutrition at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.
Researchers are unable to prove that obesity actually causes cancer because requiring people to either gain weight or keep their weight down in clinical trials would be impossible.
Still, the evidence is “convincing” for a cause-and-effect relationship between obesity and postmenopausal breast, colon, endometrial, esophageal, kidney and pancreas cancer, according to a 2007 report from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research. The report also cited obesity as a “probable” cause of gallbladder cancer.
Scientists aren’t sure how obesity might affect cancer risk, but “there are some plausible biological mechanisms by which this may occur,” said Dr. Patricia Ganz, director of cancer prevention and control research at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
One popular explanation is that extra weight boosts the body’s production of hormones such as estrogen, insulin and insulin-like growth factor. All of these have the potential to promote the growth of certain tumors.
Another possibility is that fatness contributes to cancer growth by causing cells to divide more rapidly. The suspected higher risk of gallbladder cancer might be explained by the increased tendency of obese people to develop gallstones. These stones cause inflammation that could promote cancer.
No matter what researchers ultimately reveal about the role of weight in cancer, weight control remains an essential part of staying healthy.
”If body fatness were totally unrelated to cancer, the message would still be the same, because of the importance of weight control for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, joint pain and other conditions,” said Dr. Tim Byers, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.
One thing is clear, we need to get a better handle on our weight as individuals and as a nation. The better we handle our own weight, the more oomph we can experience in our own lives. If you have more interest, you can read the entire article at:LA Times
Watching TV Could Take Oomph Out of You
An article I read last month by Jeannie Stein of the Los Angeles Times, describes some negative effects of watching TV. I have noticed myself that the more I find time for some form of exercise, the less time I have for watching television and it looks like that is a good thing.
Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn’t the best way to spend leisure time. Inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing’s effect on risk of death.
Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.
As the article stated, researchers found a statistical relationship between long hours of TV viewing and a shortened life span, but the study did not go so far as to find a direct cause.
A journal of the American Heart Assn., looked at health data among 8,800 men and women older than 25 who were part of the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study. Participants recorded their television viewing hours for a week, and researchers separated the results by amount of viewing: those who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched two to four hours a day, and those who watched more than four hours a day.
Researchers found a strong connection between TV hours and death from cardiovascular disease, not just among the overweight and obese, but among people who had a healthy weight and exercised.
“What we showed was that irrespective of a person’s exercise level, sitting for four or more hours watching television was linked to a significant increase in risk of death compared to watching lower amounts of TV,” said Dr. David Dunstan, lead author of the study and professor and head of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia. “The message here is that in addition to promoting regular exercise, we also need to promote avoiding long periods of sitting, such as spending long hours in front of the computer screen.”
To him, the results weren’t unexpected. “When we’re in that sitting posture, we’re not using our muscles, and we know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are important for the body’s regulatory processes, such as the ability to break down glucose and use it as energy.”
Dr. Prediman K. Shah, director of the cardiology division of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, agreed. He pointed out that muscles become deconditioned when not used, triggering harmful physiological changes. “If your activity is slowing down, you metabolize cholesterol less and synthesize it more,” he said.
Even sporadic exercisers who sit for long periods need to increase their daily activity.
“The physical activity we do over a 24-hour period is important,” says Dr. Gerald F. Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and a spokesman for the American Heart Assn.
That means taking the stairs instead of the elevator, gardening, walking the dog . . .
“For couch potatoes, sitting on your duff is hazardous to your health,” Shah said. “The bottom line is keep moving.”
