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By Meghan Jessiman, Postmedia News February 13, 2012In many ways, the world of fitness is a lot like the world of fashion. Less time is dedicated to hair and makeup but, ultimately, vanity reigns. And those working in both of these industries are willing to starve -often quite literally -to get what they want. Pick up a cur-rent issue of any fitness magazine and you’ll find that, just like its glossy fashion counterparts, it’s filled with page after page of the latest and greatest ways to shed pounds, tone up and improve your life – fast! The ThighMaster and Billy Blanks’ Tae Bo ads are long gone, replaced with this season’s “must try” classes and products. At the end of the day, it’s the cyclical nature of trends that allows both fashion and fitness to continue to thrive.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Controversial+truth+about+stretching/6143691/story.html#ixzz1mI7QlJbU
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Controversial+truth+about+stretching/6143691/story.html#ixzz1mI7ExLFL

BY HELEN VANDERBURG, POSTMEDIA NEWS

For many of us, the darker days of winter affect our energy levels and may leave us feeling lethargic or sad.

If this sounds like you, it’s important to know this is common and you are not alone: It’s not just in your head.

Fewer hours of daylight and decreased sun exposure directly relate to feeling sluggish and lacking energy. This typically leads to a decreased interest in exercise, which in turn leads to decreased energy and enthusiasm. It’s a vicious cycle of inactivity and lack of interest.

One of the best methods for staying energetic and optimistic at this time of year is exercise.

A growing body of research over the past 10 years has looked at how physical activity and exercise improve psychological well-being. People who exercise on a regular basis can experience the benefits of feeling stronger, not only physically, but mentally as well.

Overall, research shows people with higher levels of fitness are capable of managing stress more effectively than those who are less fit.

It appears that cardiovascular exercise at a moderate to high intensity has the most benefits in stress reduction. The recommendation is a minimum of three 20-minute sessions per week for 12 weeks.

Other kinds of activities – such as yoga, tai chi and meditation – also result in a decrease in blood pressure, heart rate and anxiety. These practices assist in lowering the body’s stress response and stimulating the calming hormones, leaving you feeling rested and relaxed. Calming the mind and body also decreases the biochemical reaction that occurs when we’re stressed, which can negatively affect memory and mood.

Numerous studies have looked at the best activity recommendation for reducing anxiety. However, the jury is still out as to the optimum amount, intensity and types of exercise. All activities seem to have a positive effect on anxiety. The research indicates that consistency in an exercise program for a period of 10 to 15 weeks offers the greatest beneficial effect.

One of the most commonly accepted psychological benefits of exercise is in the treatment of depression. Patients with depression have credited exercise as an important element in comprehensive treatment programs. Cardiovascular and resistance exercise can be as effective as antidepressant medication in some cases, and as little as one exercise session can help

Getting outdoors during daylight hours is vital, especially during the winter. Sunlight is especially important if you suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which leaves you feeling sapped of energy and low in enthusiasm. Even though you may feel tired, remember that as little as 15 minutes of walking in the sunlight can change your mood, increase your energy and keep you healthy

The best advice is to push yourself to move and you will feel the benefits.

It appears that all activity has a positive effect on mood, tension, fatigue, anger and stress. Even a single exercise bout will leave you feeling better, both mentally and physically. It’s not just in your head.

CHEO researcher, Travis Saunders, who researches children’s sedentary behaviour, uses a pedalling device, which is normally used to rehab patients with hip and knee surgeries, to exercise while sitting at his desk. He is currently developing a research project that will study how useful this type of activity would be for sedentary children.

Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — Travis Saunders used to sit all day reading studies about how sitting all day was killing him.

“I went kind of crazy worrying about how unbelievably sedentary I was for 10 to 12 hours at a time,” said the researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa.

So he stacked his desk on textbooks and now stands, instead of sits, while reading. At work, he put a pedal machine under his desk so he clocks kilometres while clicking his mouse.

He tries not to sit while talking on the phone. And he arranges “walking meetings” so he and colleagues confer while doing laps around the CHEO campus.

He’s slashed his sedentary time in half because he thinks these types of actions will prolong his life. Now, he’s focused on figuring out how to prolong the lives of Canadian children, who spend as much as eight hours a day sitting in front of a screen and are among the world’s most sedentary young people.

Saunders is seeking children, aged 10 to 14 — obese or normal weight — for a study that will examine the impact of a full day of sitting on markers of health, food intake, and physical activity.

These video-game playing children will actually be wheeled to the washroom and the kitchen for lunch, so they don’t activate their leg muscles while having their metabolic system monitored.

Saunders wants to see what happens to the children’s blood fats, blood glucose and insulin during a full day of doing nothing but twitching their mouse finger or clicking a remote.

These same children, on a subsequent day, will have their TV watching and video-game playing interrupted every 20 minutes for two minutes of slow walking on a treadmill. On another day, they will also run on the treadmill twice for 20 minutes.

A buffet awaits the youngsters at each day’s end, to see which type of activity leaves them feeling full — or famished.

Saunders wants to see if these interruptions make a difference to the children’s health.

Researchers like Saunders have recently come to a disturbing conclusion: sitting is sending us to an early grave. We all just might be buried in our computer chairs, rigid fingers glued to a mouse.

People who sit for six or more hours per day — the vast majority of us — are 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years compared to someone who sits less than three hours a day. A 12-year study of 17,000 Canadian adults found that those who spent most of their time sitting were 50 per cent more likely to die during the follow-up study than those that sit the least. Recent research also shows that exercising, even vigorously, several times a week won’t postpone early death if we are sedentary the rest of the day.

Emerging research shows our couch-potato kids fare no better.

School-aged Canadian children spend 62 per cent of their waking hours sedentary, with an average of six to eight hours per day of screen time, according to Mark Tremblay, the director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the CHEO Research Institute.

His team last year led the world’s first systematic review on the relationship between sedentary behaviour and health in school-aged children.

After reviewing 232 studies, which included almost one million participants between five and 17, the researchers found that more than two hours of sedentary behaviour a day — mostly TV watching — was associated with increased weight, decreased fitness, lowered scores for self-esteem and decreased academic achievement.

This doesn’t begin to describe what happens in the body just from sitting down, when levels of enzymes that break down fat immediately drop by 90 per cent.

While seated, many of the body’s chemical processes slow or shut down. Most muscle activity ceases, hobbling cardiovascular function and bone formation and reducing insulin sensitivity. Being sedentary increases risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, Type II diabetes and other diseases.

The study of sedentary behaviour might seem obvious, but it’s actually a relatively new area of research.

For the past two decades most researchers have conducted thousands of studies on physical activity — something we don’t do very much of.

“Instead of studying what we do three per cent of the day, which is exercise, why not study the 60 to 80 per cent of the day that is sedentary and see if we manipulate those behaviours what happens?” Tremblay says.

In September, Tremblay’s team at CHEO helped launch the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network (www.sedentarybehaviour.org) that has so far connected more than 100 researchers around the world.

Last week, he was finalizing a letter calling on scientific journals to use precise definitions in this burgeoning area of research.

Until recently, sedentary behaviour was just a “default term for the absence of physical activity,” Tremblay said.

One literature review found that definitions varied from less than 20 minutes a week of physical activity, to as much as 150 minutes. Few studies on sedentary behaviour reported the type (work, household, or leisure) or intensity of activity that was used to determine if someone was sedentary.

It makes a significant difference to our health.

“Two people could be training partners for a marathon and we run 45 minutes every day and in any survey we would be considered “active,” Tremblay said. “But what if one of us lies there for the other 23 hours and 15 minutes and the other is a cashier who is on her feet all day?”

Both are technically meeting the requirements of Canada’s physical activity guidelines, which recommend adults be active for at least 2? hours a week, he said. But the cashier is highly active while the other runner may have poor metabolic health.

The researchers signing Tremblay’s letter want “waking” sedentary behaviour defined as “an energy expenditure of less than or equal to 1.5 metabolic equivalents (METs) while in a sitting or reclining posture.” One METs is resting, while 1.5 METs might mean clicking a computer mouse while sitting, driving in a car, reading or doing homework.

They also want to stress that sedentary behaviour isn’t sleeping. “We’re not sure why, but sleep is good for you. People who sleep the most are more healthy in every way,” said Saunders. “If you’re lying on the couch, it’s better to be sleeping than watching TV.”

He stresses that breaking up the time spent sedentary matters.

Genevieve Healy, with Australia’s Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, has highlighted the importance of breaking up sitting time. People who interrupt their sitting by standing and moving around have healthier blood fat and blood glucose levels than those whose sitting — for the same amount of time — is not broken up.

She also noted the “active couch potato effect” among active adults — those who participate in 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity most days — who still have poor metabolic health if they watch many hours of television.

Saunders and Tremblay wonder if the same is true for children. And how do we counter the dominance of computers and TVs in their lives that keep them seated for so many hours?

Of the current study of children, Saunders said “we want to see whether or not the exercise provokes significant change or if it’s the interruption of sedentary behaviour that makes a difference. Or if there is a gradient there?”

And at the end, not only will they be offered a buffet, they will also wear accelerometers to see if there is an impact on physical activity. “Do the kids who sit all day go home and compensate by being super active the next night and day, or do they just go home and sleep because they are exhausted from all the sitting?” asked Saunders.

Saunders believes there are many interventions that can improve our health.

Last February, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology launched its sedentary behaviour guidelines for children and youth, the first systematic evidence-based sedentary behaviour guidelines in the world. (www.csep.ca/english/view.asp?x899)

They called for school-aged children to limit their screen time to two hours a day, walk more, play more and help with household chores.

“There is no reason you need to be sitting down for a lot of the things that we do,” Saunders said. “You can structure your office and our classrooms in a way that would allow you to do your quality work sitting or standing.”

Hannah Kearney (left) of the United States and other finalists bow their heads in a moment of silence and wear SB stickers on their helmets in tribute to fallen skier Sarah Burke before mogul finals at the Canada Post Grand Prix Freestyle Ski World Cup in Calgary, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012.

Photograph by: Mike Ridewood, Canadian Freestyle Association

skirkey@postmedia.com

Many ski and snowboard helmets sold in Canada provide about as much protection from brain injuries as toques, Canada’s top medical journal is warning.

“Helmets are a no-brainer. Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death and catastrophic injury among those who ski and snowboard,” according to an editorial published in this week’s edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Head injuries — primarily concussions — make up nine to 19 per cent of all ski- or snowboard-related injuries, the CMAJ says.

Last year in Canada, skiers and snowboarders suffered 135 serious head injuries, the journal says.

But, unlike hockey helmets sold in Canada, helmets for skiers and snowboarders don’t have to meet rigorous standards as set out by the Canadian Standards Association.

“So, what are Canadian buying? Helmets that meet European or U.S. standards or poor quality knock offs,” writes CMAJ deputy editor Barbara Sibbald.

The CSA standards — which exceed American or European requirements — would ensure helmets for skiers and snowboarders could withstand multiple impacts and have foam fitting different head sizes and weights, “thus providing optimal protection for a range of impacts,” Sibbald writes.

Last week, the country’s pediatricians called for mandatory helmet legislation for skiers and snowboarders. Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that, in 2010-11, there were 2,329 hospitalizations for skiing or snowboarding injuries, versus 1,114 hockey-related emergency room visits.

In December, Nova Scotia passed legislation requiring all boarders and skiers, children and adults, to wear a helmet, a move that comes with fines of up to $250 and “likely constitutes the world’s toughest such rules and is laudable from a public health perspective, but there’s just one problem,” Sibbald writes.

“The fact is that, to protect their noggins, Canadian skiers and snowboarders might as well be using a toque as some of the helmets being sold.”

The uniquely Canadian standards, released in 2008, “have yet to be met by any manufacturer.”

The CSA, through its lab-accredited facility in Montreal, can certify and test helmets to the standard. But no manufacturer has submitted its helmets for testing and certification, spokesman Anthony Toderian said.

He said many ski and snowboard helmets now on the market are “self-certified” by manufactures to U.S. or European standards; others have no certification whatsoever.

“Anybody can make a helmet and put it on the market and you really don’t know if it gives you any kind of protection at all,” Toderian said.

Health Canada has mandated, through the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act, that all hockey helmets sold in Canada meet CSA standards.

Sibbald says the government should enforce the same rule for ski and snowboard helmets.

“Why the double standard when we shoot the double diamond?”

“We have these standards for Canada, they’re very high standards, and we should be respecting them,” Sibbald said in an interview.

According to the Canadian Ski Council, in 2007, 4.3 million Canadians aged 12 and older participated in skiing (downhill or cross-country), snowboarding, or a combination of both.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/rosie/Rosie-and-Dr-Oz-Get-Cerebral-Video#ixzz1lclO61nR