They say variety is the spice of life, but it’s also pretty darn integral to exercise, both in terms of keeping your mind engaged in the activity at hand and ensuring that your dedication to exercise continues to pay off, be it in gains of physical strength, endurance, or simply just feeling good about your body.
On the mental front, variety in your exercise routine can be one of the most important predictors of adherence to exercise. To test this theory, researchers from the University of Florida assigned 114 people to one of three exercise programs; one where the type of exercise varied between workouts, a second where members were required to perform the same exercise at each workout, and a third where exercisers where left to their own devices in terms of schedule and exercise type. At the end of the eight week program, 53 participants had left the program, leaving 24 people in the first group, 22 in the second group and 15 in the third group. In addition, participants in the first group enjoyed their workout sessions 20 percent more than the members of the second group and 45 percent more than members of the third group.
Last week we brought you news that the costs of treating neck and back pain had gone through the roof in the last several years but patients were actually getting less relief. As many of you wrote, the constantly lingering pain is enough to encourage patients to give multiple therapies a try. And research out of Northwestern University supports this strong motivation.
Using functional MRI, researchers compared the brain activity of those suffering from chronic back pain with that of a control group.
Last week, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Surveillance (CDC) released a report suggesting that cases of flu had peaked in recent weeks.
But rather than go crazy and hole up in your house until the flu season passes, we suggest you follow these tried and true tips for avoiding – and recovering from – the flu.
According to a study in this month’s Cancer Causes & Control, men who hold desk jobs are more likely to develop prostate cancer than those with careers involving manual labor.
A collaborative meta-analysis of more than a quarter million cases of cancer around the globe finds clearer association between obesity and several types of cancer. The findings are reported in the latest issue of The Lancet.
Following on from findings reported by the World Cancer Research fund last year, the study reveals that risk is increased not only in common cancers such as breast, bowel and kidney, but also in less common cancers such as blood cancers (myeloma and leukaemia) and melanoma (a form of skin cancer). Dr. Andrew Renehan and colleagues from the University of Manchester and Christie Hospital, did a meta-analysis (a combined analysis of 221 previous studies), looking at over 250,000 cases of cancer, to determine the risk of cancer associated with a 5kg/m2 increase in body mass index (BMI). The researchers found in men, a 5kg/m2 increase in BMI raised the risk of oesophageal adenocarcinoma by 52%, thyroid cancer by 33%, and colon and kidney cancers each by 24%. In women, a BMI increase of 5kg/m2 increased the risk of endometrial (59%), gallbladder (59%), oesophageal adenocarcinoma (51%) and kidney (34%) cancers. They also noted weaker, but significant, positive associations between increased BMI and rectal cancer and malignant melanoma in men; postmenopausal breast, pancreatic, thyroid, and colon cancers in women; and leukaemia, multiple myeloma, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in both sexes.
via Science Daily
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