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Barefoot (or Barefoot-Like) Running May Guard Against Injury
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (4)Those $150 supercushioned running shoes you just bought? They may be predisposing you to lower leg and foot injuries like plantar fasciitis, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed the forces that occur when runners hit the ground heel-first (as is common when wearing modern, cushioned shoes), and mid- and fore-foot first (more common among barefoot runners). The heel-strikers came down harder. "Fore-foot- and mid-foot-strike gaits were probably more common when humans ran barefoot or in minimal shoes and may protect the feet and lower limbs from some of the impact-related injuries now experienced by a high percentage of runners," the authors wrote in a study published in Nature.
This study is but the latest voice in the heated debate over barefoot running. As I wrote last year, some manufacturers have rushed to capitalize on a grass-roots trend that's been around for years, offering stripped-down, barefoot-like shoes. (The new research was funded in part by one of those manufacturers, Vibram USA.) While there's a devoted cadre of truly or nearly barefoot runners, scientists told me when I wrote that story that even if less-cushioned shoes do turn out to be better for some people, someone used to running in the more familiar shoes shouldn't simply toss them in the trash and head out au naturel. If you want to try out some of the minimalist shoes or even no shoes at all, build up gradually and see if it works for you. It's also a good idea to start out on grass rather than a hard surface. Runner's World has a good article in the current issue that offers two different views of the subject.
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Omegas, Fiber, Gluten-Free, Probiotic: Some Health Claims Sell Big
Tweet Share on Facebook January 27, 2010 Comment (3)Despite the recession, spending on foods featuring health claims was up last year, according to data from Nielsen Wire. Many of these products are so-called functional foods, offering a specific health benefit beyond basic nutrition. That benefit can occur naturally—think of the antioxidants in fruit—or it can be added to otherwise nutritionally vacant foods by processing, as with VitaminWater.
[Read more about VitaminWater's health claims.]
But as I wrote last year, you should be cautious when faced with a label making a health or wellness claim. If a food isn't already healthful before extra nutrients are added, there's no reason to buy it. For example, an energy bar may claim to have a lot of fiber, but if it's otherwise a sugar and fat bomb, why bother? [Here's a guide to fiber sources—soluble, insoluble and beyond.] According to Nielsen, sales of foods making a fiber claim rose 13 percent last year.
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Seniors and Exercise: How Much Does It Promote Healthy Aging?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 26, 2010 Comment (6)More evidence supporting the value of exercise in preventing diseases of aging is out today: A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that a strength-training program reduced the risk of a certain kind of cognitive decline—executive function, associated with decision making and focusing on something without becoming distracted.
As the authors of an editorial accompanying the study write:
It is also now well established that higher quantities of physical activity have beneficial effects on numerous age-related conditions such as osteoarthritis, falls and hip fracture, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, cancer, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis,low fitness and obesity, and decreased functional capacity,all conditions that greatly increase the risk of reduced independence in late life.Regular physical activity has also been associated with greater longevity as well as reduced risk of physical disability and dependence, the most important health outcome, even morethan death, for most older people.
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Inspired by 'The Mayo Clinic Diet,' I'm Making Changes
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2010 Comment (1)I wrote last week about The Mayo Clinic Diet (which appeared yesterday in the top spot of the New York Times' hardcover advice bestseller list) and how it includes a two-week introductory period that promises 6 to 10 pounds of weight loss. Obviously, that comes from taking in fewer calories (and dropping some water weight). But instead of counting those calories, the book asks people to add five habits (including eating a healthful but not-too-large breakfast and consuming "good" fats such as olive oil), subtract five habits (such as watching TV while eating and snacking on anything other than fruit and veggies), and, if you can, add five bonus habits (including keeping a food diary and eating only whole or lightly processed foods).
When I asked Donald Hensrud, the book's medical editor-in-chief (and chair of the division of preventive, occupational, and aerospace medicine at Mayo Clinic) why people should adopt habits they probably couldn't make a permanent part of their lifestyle, he said they were intended as a stretch—to show people what they could do and motivate them to go forward. As he said:
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Weight Watchers v. Jenny Craig: Don’t Rely on the Marketing
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2010 Comment (2)Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, two of the most popular commercial diet programs, are wrestling over advertising claims. Weight Watchers yesterday sued its rival, saying ads featuring a lab-coat-clad Valerie Bertinelli falsely implied the two programs had been subject to head-to-head competition—and that Jenny Craig came out on top. The claim, filed in federal court, says the ads are actually based on separate studies that compared each diet plan with a control group and that the Weight Watchers study is a decade old.
But as SmartMoney writer (and my former U.S. News colleague) Angie Marek reported earlier this month, any scientific studies supporting one commercial program over another should be taken with a massive grain of low-sodium salt substitute. In "The Skinny on Big, Fat Diet Programs," she writes, "The science on most of these plans is hardly conclusive, since most of the research has been paid for by the diet companies themselves." Marek's great article details the budget crunch dieters can run into when following one of the big commercial diet programs:
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Exercise and Weight Loss: What’s the Connection?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2010 Comment (73)The role of exercise in weight loss is always a hot topic. Research on successful losers often cites exercise as a top maintenance strategy (one study found those who kept the pounds off averaged a whopping 275 minutes of working out a week), but without some attention to diet, you're not likely to lose significant weight. Exercise alone, while it has many benefits independent of weight control, doesn't always do the trick. But even for those who believe that exercise is key to weight loss, there's a big debate over what kind of workouts—steady aerobic sessions? interval training? strength training?—is ideal.
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Screening for Childhood Obesity, Without an Easy Solution
Tweet Share on Facebook January 18, 2010 Comment (8)There's been mixed news recently on childhood and adolescent obesity, the tricky issue that will be the subject of an initiative led by first lady Michelle Obama. According to statistics released last week, obesity rates for both kids and adults seem to be leveling off. The prevalence of high body mass index among kids and teens seemed to plateau between 1999 and 2006, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But that leaves almost 32 percent of kids weighing more than they should, with a full 17 percent classified as obese. And the heaviest boys between the ages of 6 and 19 actually seem to be getting heavier.
Childhood and adolescent obesity is a particularly tricky problem because, as my colleague Deborah Kotz reported in 2007, the emphasis on losing weight—even in kids who really need to do so—may do more harm than good. A solution has remained elusive, and, until the last few years, there hasn't been a lot of quality research published on what actually works. On Monday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—the same folks who brought you the controversial new breast cancer screening recommendations—said children 6 and up should now be screened for obesity.
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A Long-Ago Bad P.E. Experience? You Can Get Over It
Tweet Share on Facebook January 13, 2010 Comment (6)If the obesity epidemic is going to be reversed, a focus on physical activity will likely play at least some role. True, exercise alone isn't going to fix the problem—which is still a big one, despite all our efforts. (Statistics published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association show that 68 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, while about 32 percent of children have body mass indexes that qualify them as overweight or obese.) But most experts do agree that physical activity can be helpful for weight control. And it certainly brings a host of other health benefits.
[Read 10-Week Workout Routine: What About Diet?]
A new report by an associate professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, though, says the earliest exposure to organized physical activity—school physical education classes—can be the kind of experience that either gets kids on the road to a lifetime exercise habit or turns them off to sports. This will come as no surprise to anyone who still harbors horrific memories of gym class, whether of being bruised in dodge ball (check), humiliated in an attempt to do a pull-up (check), or picked last for pretty much every team (check—no wonder I now prefer individual sports). When psychologist Billy Strean talked to people about their physical education and sports experiences, he heard about an awful lot of bad experiences caused by bad teachers. What struck him, he says, "was the degree to which someone could be talking about something that happened 50 or 60 years ago but right on the spot could be having a clearly visceral, emotional reaction."
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‘Whole Food’ Vitamins Are a Cool Idea, But Proof of Benefit Is Lacking
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (12)When it comes to protecting health, vitamins and supplements have had a rough time of it in the past few years, with studies failing to find that many of them shield against cancer and heart disease or extend life. It appears that while isolating a specific nutrient and adding it to the diet in the form of a pill or capsule is great for dealing with diseases of deficiency, such as scurvy (caused by lack of vitamin C), the same approach isn't so helpful in addressing chronic diseases. So some manufacturers are trying to come closer to putting the likely source of fruits' and vegetables' power—the complex interplay of all their vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals—in a capsule, as "whole food" vitamins and minerals.
[6 Nutritional Supplements and Foods That Can Improve Your Health]
Everyone involved agrees that getting nutrients by eating whole foods is best and that it's probably going to be tough to consolidate all the benefits of a blueberry in a single pill. But manufacturers of whole-food vitamins say that unlike conventional supplements, their products serve up the nutrients in something closer to their food context, in the presence of other substances that make them more effective and in a form that's better absorbed by the body. This goes beyond the distinction between synthetic and natural vitamins, which hinges on the source of the individual nutrient. (The Center for Science in the Public Interest says that picking a vitamin purely because it's labeled "natural" is not generally worth it, with one exception: Vitamin E seems to be better absorbed by the body when its given in its natural form than in a synthetic.)
