Tag: health risks

The Health Benefits of Physical Activity


Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress

The Health Benefits of Physical Activity—Major Research Findings

  • Regular physical activity reduces the risk of many adverse health outcomes.
  • Some physical activity is better than none.
  • For most health outcomes, additional benefits occur as the amount of physical activity increases through higher intensity, greater frequency, and/or longer duration.
  • Most health benefits occur with at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity, such as brisk walking. Additional benefits occur with more physical activity.
  • Both aerobic (endurance) and muscle-strengthening (resistance) physical activity are beneficial.
  • Health benefits occur for children and adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, older adults, and those in every studied racial and ethnic group.
  • The health benefits of physical activity occur for people with disabilities.
  • The benefits of physical activity far outweigh the possibility of adverse outcomes.

The Beneficial Effects of Increasing Physical Activity: It’s About Overload, Progression,
and Specificity

Overload
is the physical stress placed on the body when physical activity is greater in amount or intensity than usual. The body’s structures and functions respond and
adapt to these stresses. For example, aerobic physical activity places a stress on the cardiorespiratory system and muscles, requiring the lungs to move more air and the heart to pump more blood and deliver it to the working muscles. This increase in demand increases the efficiency and capacity of the lungs, heart, circulatory system, and exercising muscles. In the same way, muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activities overload muscles and bones, making them stronger.
Progression
is closely tied to overload. Once a person reaches a certain fitness level, he or she progresses to higher levels of physical activity by continued overload and adaptation. Small, progressive changes in overload help the body adapt to the additional stresses while minimizing the risk of injury.

Specificity
means that the benefits of physical activity are specific to the body systems that are doing the work. For example, aerobic physical activity largely benefits the body’s cardiovascular system.

Global health risks

A response to the need for comprehensive, consistent and comparable information on health risks at global and regional level.

Global health risks is a comprehensive assessment of leading risks to global health. It provides detailed global and regional estimates of premature mortality, disability and loss of health attributable to 24 global risk factors.

obesity paradox

Fitness and fatness: not all obese people have the same prognosis 

Second study sheds light on the ‘obesity paradox’

Topics: Cardiovascular Disease Prevention – Risk Assessment and Management
Date: 05 Sep 2012

People can be obese but metabolically healthy and fit, with no greater risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer than normal weight people, according to the largest study ever to have investigated this, which is published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1].

The findings show there is a subset of obese people who are metabolically healthy – they don’t suffer from conditions such as insulin resistance, diabetes and high cholesterol or blood pressure – and who have a higher level of fitness, as measured by how well the heart and lungs perform, than other obese people. Being obese does not seem to have a detrimental effect on their health, and doctors should bear this in mind when considering what, if any, interventions are required, say the researchers.

cash register receipts

October 29, 2014 By

One thing you probably touch every day, over and over again, it’s cash register receipts.

Now researchers have found that those innocent-seeming pieces of paper contain high levels of bisphenol A, the same chemical recently banned from plastic water bottles because of the serious long-term health risks it poses.

According to a study published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, people’s blood levels ofBPA spiked after they touched cash receipts—particularly if they had lotion, sanitizer, or another skin care product on their hands.

“BPA has been proven to cause reproductive defects in fetuses, infants, children, and adults as well as cancer, metabolic, and immune problems in rodents,” said study author Frederick vom Saal, a professor of biology at the University of Missouri.

”Our research found BPA levels from receipts much higher than exposures from food packaging or plastic,” added vom Saal. “And BPA from thermal papers will be absorbed into your blood rapidly. At those levels, many diseases such as diabetes and disorders such as obesity increase as well.”