Health benefits from exercise don’t have to come from long bouts of cardio at the gym or around your local high school track. A new study involving teens in Scotland has found that short bursts of high-intensity exercise is best for cardiovascular health.
In the study, researchers split kids into two groups: one doing high-intensity workouts, the other moderate intensity. The high-intensity group did a series of 20-meter sprints over 30 seconds, and the kids in the moderate-intensity group ran steadily for 20 minutes.
By the end of the allotted time of seven weeks, both groups showed real improvements in cardiovascular fitness. Their blood pressure, insulin resistance and body composition all improved. However, what set the high-intensity group apart was that they got the aforementioned health benefits by only doing 15 percent of the exercise time done by the kids in the moderate-intensity group. Read Full Post >
Gary Taubes, a professional writer and journalist is the author of the critically acclaimed Good Calories, Bad Calories. Now his newest release, Why We Get Fat takes the long-held idea that the reason we get fat is the calories in/calories out hypothesis and debunks it. In essence, Taubes, through scores of research-backed evidence, suggests that it is not the amount of calories per se, but rather the carbohydrates in our diet that are responsible for fat accumulation.
Taubes proposes that in order to lose weight, we need to consume a very low carbohydrate diet. Protein, naturally-occuring fat, like those found in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, avocados and oils as well as leafy green vegetables should comprise the mainstay of our diet. The typical American diet of starchy carbohydrates, grains, sugar, processed food and even high glycemic vegetables and fruit needs to be given the boot if we want to avoid being overweight or obese.
The American Diabetic Association states that diabetes “is a group of diseases characterized by high blood glucose levels that result from defects in the body’s ability to produce and/or use insulin.” It’s important to understand that there are certain risk factors for diabetes but just because someone has it, doesn’t mean it’s their own fault for being unhealthy or overweight. There are several forms of diabetes but the one that gets the most attention is Type 2. I’d like to take a moment and explain each type, including the less common ones. Logically, it makes sense to start with Type 1.
Type 1 Diabetes is also known as juvenile diabetes because it is often (but not always) diagnosed during childhood. A Type 1 diabetic does not produce insulin. The exact causes of Type 1 diabetes are unknown, although genetics are clearly a factor. Another theory is that certain viruses may cause or make the body more susceptible to Type 1 diabetes.
High intensity interval training (HIIT) or cardio interval training is a type of training that helps improve performance or current fitness level with the use of short training sessions. It is a form of cardiovascular training that is designed to burn body fat in a quick and extremely intense workout routine.
HIIT sessions can be modified to meet the needs of any exerciser or trainee, but most sessions range from ten to twenty minutes. Intervals are short bursts of activity that vary in intensity levels. A 2:1 ratio is often used in HIIT styles of training, which means the athlete would alternate sprints of thirty seconds and a fifteen second jog or walk, that would then be repeated until the workout session is over. (Don’t forget to warm up and cool down, too!)
According to the numbers from The American Diabetes Association, nearly 24 million Americans have diabetes. If that number isn’t alarming enough, expert are expecting a steep increase in those numbers in the coming decades.
While the current number of diabetics in the U.S. is close to 10 percent, it may reach 33 percent of the population in another generation (2050) if we don’t do something about it. Think about that for a second: one in three people may be diabetic in the not-so-distant future.
The irony is that this potentially fatal disease is on the rise, in part, because people are living longer. That’s because diabetes becomes more prevalent in older people. Also, people who are already diabetic can live longer due to the effectiveness of modern insulin delivery methods. Lastly, diabetes has always been more prevalent in minority populations, and those populations are on the rise in the U.S. Both Hispanic and African Americans are over the 10 percent mark for diabetes. Read Full Post >
Health benefits from exercise don’t have to come from long bouts of cardio at the gym or around your local high school track. A new study involving teens in Scotland has found that short bursts of high-intensity exercise is best for cardiovascular health.
