Blood Sugar Levels Affected by Activity

How foods affect blood-sugar levels varies from person to person and from one time to another in a single individual. For example, if you eat a jelly donut in the evening, your blood sugar may rise well over 200 (it should never be higher than 160). If you eat the jelly donut when you have been riding your bike for an hour, your blood sugar level may not rise at all.Researchers at University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands showed that eating sugar and flour markedly increases risk for heart attacks in middle-aged women. Being overweight increased the risk even more. More than 15,000 healthy Dutch women, ages 49-70, were followed for nine years. They suffered 556 cases of coronary heart disease and 243 strokes. The ones most likely...

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Longer Lower Legs Benefit Runners and Walkers

People who have longer lower leg lengths (the distance from knee to ankle) will usually have greater endurance during running or walking than those with shorter lower leg lengths. In a study reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, researchers at the University of Wisconsin showed that people with longer lower legs use less energy when they run.In a previous paper in the same journal, these authors showed that people with longer lower legs are better able to prevent heat build-up, which slows you down and makes you tired. When you exercise, almost 80 percent of the energy that you use to power your muscles is lost as heat. So the harder you exercise, the more heat you produce and the harder your heart has to work to get rid of the extra...

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Protein: How Much Do You Need?

The Recommended Allowance for protein for most people is about 70 grams per day. Many types of foods contain protein, and it is easy to meet your protein requirements with a typical varied diet. For example, you would meet your daily requirement for protein if you ate two of cups each of beans and whole grains such as barley, brown rice or oatmeal, three ounces of tuna, and two glasses of milk or a vegetarian milk substitute. If you are not sure whether you eat enough protein, keep track by checking the labels of the foods you eat for a few days. You will probably find that you get plenty of protein without any special effort. Protein is made up of protein building blocks called amino acids. Your stomach acids and enzymes in the stomach and...

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Restaurant Meals Can Be Healthful

Everyone can enjoy an occasional meal in a restaurant without worrying about the consequences. But if you have to eat in restaurants several times a week, you need to devise ways to make healthful choices and avoid the temptation to over-eat. If you are trying to control weight, diabetes, cholesterol or high blood pressure, you must find ways to meet your special requirements.First, choose restaurants that gives you a fighting chance. Find a restaurant with a good salad bar and load up on fresh vegetables. Order broiled fish for your entree. Ask to have it prepared with lemon juice instead of butter. Have steamed vegetables as an accompaniment, without added butter, and fresh fruit or fruit ice for dessert.Asian restaurants often have a wide...

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Walking to Lose Weight: Miles Less Important than Intensity

For exercise to help you control weight, you must exercise fairly intensely or else you need to exercise for many hours, and most people do not have the time to exercise for three or four hours or more every day. A study from the University of Massachusetts in Boston shows that middle-aged women who exercise at very low intensity are fatter and gain weight far more easily than women who exercise more intensely. Journal referenceThis is what you would expect. When you exercise intensely enough to raise a sweat, you can increase your metabolism and continue to burn extra calories for several hours after you stop exercising. When you exercise at very low intensity, you do not increase your metabolism and you have to exercise for a very long time...

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Sugar Helps You Exercise Longer

Bicycle racers in long events such as the Tour de France take sugar supplements while they ride to increase their endurance. If you plan to exercise for more than two hours, you can help yourself last longer by taking a source of sugar after 30 minutes and several times more throughout your event.When you exercise, you convert food to energy for your muscles by stripping off electrons and hydrogen from the foodstuffs. This process manufactures a chemical called ATP that provides energy that does not require oxygen. A study from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada shows that taking sugar during prolonged exercise raises levels of ATP. At exhaustion, ATP levels were at the same low levels in both the group taking sugar and those taking...

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Build Aerobic Capacity by Strengthening Leg Muscles

Aerobic capacity is a measure of your ability to use oxygen to do work. If your body can process more oxygen than that of another person, usually you will be able to run faster, walk or work longer, and have more energy than that person.The loss of aerobic capacity with aging explains why older people cannot compete effectively against younger ones in endurance events. The good news is that a regular exercise program can help you compensate for this loss by strengthening skeletal muscles and increasing your maximum heart rate. Tasks that you did without effort when you were younger can become major ordeals that leave you exhausted when you are older. It takes more effort and time to walk up stairs, mow the lawn, fix a faucet or wash the dishes....

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How Vitamin D Helps to Prevent Cancer

Many recent reports show that vitamin D is far more than just a hormone that strengthens bones. It is necessary for maintaining a healthy immune system. Every day, your body produces millions of cancer cells, and your immunity is supposed to search out and destroy these cells. However, when you lack vitamin D, your immunity is less able to destroy cancer cells. A study from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, showed that women had a 77 percent lower rate of cancer in the second through fourth years of taking calcium and vitamin D pills than women taking placebos. Journal referenceThe only really rich food source of vitamin D is fatty fish. Very few people are able to meet their needs for vitamin D from the foods that they eat and have...

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High Resting Heart Rate: Common Causes

If your resting heart rate is greater than 70, check with your doctor to see if your thyroid is overactive, you are anemic, or you have an infection, hidden tumor, a weak heart or other cause of a rapid heart rate. Having a resting heart rate greater than 70 increases your chances of suffering a heart attack. Journal referenceAt this time, there is not enough solid data to show that taking drugs to slow heart rate, by itself, will help to prevent heart disease when no cause is found. However, those with chest pain during exercise or blocked blood flow to the heart do benefit from drugs to slow heart rate. Several ongoing studies are trying to determine if all people with heart rates over 80 should take drugs to slow heart rate. Drugs that can...

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Interval Training to Improve Performance in Sports

The faster an athlete moves in training, the faster he or she will be able to move during competition. So athletes use a training technique called interval training in which they run, cycle, skate, ski or swim very fast for a short time. When they become severely short of breath, they slow down until they recover, and then move very fast again. Researchers at Ithaca College showed that athletes can gain as much by doing this type of intense interval training on consecutive days as on alternate days (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, September 2007).Interval training causes considerable muscle damage, so it usually leaves athletes sore the next day. Most trainers recommend exercising at a slower pace until the soreness disappears....

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Bicycling Tips for Blog Action Day

For Blog Action Day, here are some tips for better bicycling. You'll feel virtuous every time you ride your bicycle instead of driving your car! All cyclists should learn to pedal at a fast cadence, whether you are an experienced racer or a novice recreational rider. Muscle fatigue and damage are caused by excess pressure on the pedals, not by how fast you pedal. Pedaling at a faster cadence with less pressure allows you to pedal longer and harder. However, several researchers have expressed concern that pedaling very fast could decrease blood flow to muscles and thus decrease athletic performance. A study from Kansas State University shows that pedaling fast does not decrease a muscle's flow of blood or ability to extract oxygen from the...

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Ski Better By Preparing Now

If you love to ski, it's time to think about getting ready. The best way to train for skiing is to ski, but snow isn't always available. To prepare for a ski trip, you need to strengthen both your heart muscles and your skeletal muscles. You can strengthen your heart for skiing with any exercise that will raise your heart rate for at least 10 minutes, three times a week. However, to prepare your muscles for skiing, you have to use activities that use your upper legs, such as skating or riding a bicycle. The average bicycle rider is far better prepared for skiing than the average runner. Many joggers who can easily run ten miles find that they can't ski very long because their upper leg muscles tire and hurt after just a few minutes of skiing.You...

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Sorbitol: Poison in Your Body, OK in Foods

When blood sugar levels rise too high, sugar sticks to the surface membranes of cells. The sugar, glucose, is converted into another sugar, fructose, and eventually to sorbitol, which destroys the cells. This cell damage leads to heart attacks, strokes, blindness, deafness, kidney damage and the other harmful effects of diabetes.The same chemical is harmless when it is used in foods because you do not absorb it. Sugar alcohols such as sorbitol, mannitol or xylitol have almost the same chemical structures as carbohydrates, but they have an alcohol end on one side. This prevents them from being absorbed from your intestines, so they can be used to sweeten food without contributing any calories. The sugar alcohols pass undigested to your colon...

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Muscles Can Be Strengthened at Any Age

You are never too old to enlarge and strengthen your muscles. A study from Copenhagen, Denmark shows that just 12 weeks of lifting weights significantly strengthened the muscles of men 85 to 97 years of age (Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, August 2007). After 12 weeks of training, the cross sectional circumference of their quad muscles in the front of their upper legs increased by 10 percent, and muscle strength increased by 35 to 50 percent. Furthermore, the muscle fibers that are used for strength and speed increased significantly.Frailty in old age is caused by lack of exercise, not just by growing old. With aging, you lose nerves. Each nerve is attached to a single muscle fiber, so as you lose muscle fibers you...

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Caffeine, Exercise Help to Prevent Skin Cancer

High doses of ultraviolet light damage the DNA in skin cells. Normally, damaged cells commit suicide by a process called apoptosis, so that they do not become cancerous. However, damaged cells that do not undergo apoptosis live to become cancerous. A report from Rutgers University showed that exercise and caffeine help to prevent skin cancer. Researchers divided mice into four groups: 1) inactivity, 2) exercise, 3) caffeine and 4) exercise and caffeine. Then all of the mice were exposed to high doses of ultraviolet B light that damaged their skin cells. Caffeine caused a 95 percent increase in apoptosis, exercise caused a 120 percent increase, and those who both exercised and took caffeine had a 400 percent increase in apoptosis.Cells in your...

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Tapering for Athletes and Ordinary Exercisers

Tapering refers to the period just before a major race or game, when an athlete reduces workload to be in peak shape on the day of the competition. Ordinary exercisers can apply this training principle when they plan to enter a local race or charity event.Top athletes must spend a tremendous amount of time training to be able to compete successfully. Their huge volume of work leaves them near exhaustion and before major competitions, they have to find the best way to reduce fatigue while retaining fitness. Many studies have been done to help athletes and coaches decide on the best strategy. Researchers at the University of Montreal compiled the results of 27 scientifically acceptable studies. They concluded that the best duration of tapering...

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