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“Why You Really Need to Join the Gym” plus 6 more Health – TIME

“Why You Really Need to Join the Gym” plus 6 more Health – TIME


Why You Really Need to Join the Gym

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 08:27 AM PST

Everyone knows that joining a gym is a quote-unquote good idea. Now, a new study looks at exactly how much of a benefit fitness club­-goers have over the rest of us when it comes to getting regular exercise—and its results may convince you to restart that stalled membership.

To put some research behind this commonly held belief, Iowa State University scientists recruited 405 relatively healthy adults, half of whom had belonged to a gym for at least 30 days, and half who had not been members for at least least three months. All participants had their resting blood pressure, heart rate, and body mass index measured, and completed questionnaires about their time spent exercising, sitting, and doing various lifestyle activities each week.

The researchers then analyzed those responses to determine which participants met the national recommended guidelines for physical activity: 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity each week, including at least two days of weight lifting or other muscle-strengthening activities.

The difference between groups was “pretty dramatic and surprising,” says corresponding author Duck-chul Lee, an assistant professor of kinesiology. While non-members only exercised an average of 137 minutes a week, those who belonged to a gym logged an average of 484 minutes a week. Only 18% of non-members met the guidelines for both physical activity and strength training, compared to 75% of members.

Overall, the researchers calculated, a gym membership was related to 14 times higher odds of meeting weekly physical activity guidelines. The results were similar in both men and women, and were adjusted for health issues like high cholesterol, arthritis, and asthma.

Not only did gym members exercise more; they also had better cardiovascular measures and were less likely to be obese. Gym-goers—especially those who had kept a membership for a year or more—tended to have lower resting heart rates, higher cardiorespiratory fitness, and smaller waist circumferences than their non-member peers.

Before their analysis, Lee and his co-authors suspected that gym members may be more sedentary in their time outside the gym than non-members. “We thought maybe they’d be more tired, or be satisfied they’d done enough for the day,” he says.

But they didn’t find that to be the case, either. “Physical activity outside of the gym was the same for both groups,” he says, “For non-members, joining a gym really may increase overall activity levels.”

Because of the study’s cross-sectional design, Lee says, it’s also possible that people who are more active are simply more likely to join a gym. And while the study took place in a city with lots of health-club options, he notes, people living in more rural areas may find it more difficult to attend a gym regularly.

And, of course, you do have to show up. “It’s true that some people with a gym membership do not go regularly, just as some people who don’t have memberships still go out and run or bike and still meet the guidelines,” Lee says. For this study, some measurements were taken at the gyms themselves, assuring that memberships were in use.

But Lee says the study supports the idea that joining a gym can help people who aren’t getting enough exercise on their own. Only half of Americans get the recommended amount of aerobic activity, the study reports, and only about 20% meet the guidelines for strength training.

“At the gym you can use the weights or the resistance machines,” Lee says. “In real-life, there aren’t a lot of day-to-day activities that improve muscle.” (The researchers did not ask participants if they had weights or other fitness equipment at home.)

The researchers report no conflicts of interest, and no financial stake in any fitness clubs. The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Lead author Elizabeth Schroeder, a former Iowa State graduate student, says that health club memberships can have more benefits than just weight loss, and she hopes these findings encourage more people to find a gym or fitness studio that works for them.

“Some people may enjoy being at a gym and doing their own workout routine, while others may desire group classes that potentially foster a social aspect, fun environment, consistent schedule, and a workout designed for you,” she says. “Either way, they both involve accumulating physical activity, and that’s the goal.”

Eating Less Makes Monkeys Live Longer

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 07:54 AM PST

Calorie restriction—in which people give up food for a whole day or drastically slash their caloric intake for a spell—is an unpleasant-sounding eating pattern. Yet a growing body of science suggests that it may improve health, fight disease and possibly even add years to a person’s life. Weighing these potential benefits against the diet’s difficult aspect of deprivation has proven tricky, and scientists don’t agree on whether people should incorporate fasting into their routine.

A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications is the latest to look favorably on calorie restriction. The study is by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), who have been studying calorie restriction for years. In the past, the Wisconsin team found that calorie restriction extended the lives of rhesus monkeys, but the NIA group did not. In the new study, the teams joined forces to understand why their studies found different results, and they ultimately determined that factors such as age and feeding regimens likely played a role.

The two groups concluded that calorie restriction does benefit rhesus monkeys, and both studies found that these monkeys have fewer health problems. Aging, it appears, can be targeted by fasting, which might be good news for humans, too, the researchers write. Rhesus monkeys and humans age similarly: Their hair grays and thins, and they can develop diseases like diabetes and cognitive decline.

More research is needed to determine if calorie restriction works the same way in humans. “The main take-home is what you eat, and how much you eat, absolutely influences how you age,” says Rozalyn Anderson, one of the study authors from University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Several researchers are already testing calorie restriction in humans, with notable results. A 2016 study of 218 people who either cut 25% of their overall calories for two years or ate as usual, showed people who fasted lost an average of 10% of their body weight and had improvements in mood and sleep. Other recent research suggests that a low-calorie diet may expose cancer cells to the immune system so they are more vulnerable to attack and more responsive to chemotherapy. Yet another study last year of mice and humans found a calorie-restricted diet may slow the progression of multiple sclerosis.

While many researchers who study calorie restriction practice fasting themselves, not everyone agrees that people should fast for better health. People who want to try calorie restriction should first talk to their doctor first to make sure it’s safe for them. “I certainly wouldn’t do it,” says Anderson. “Life is too short, even if [calorie restriction] extends it.”

Anderson says that these sorts of studies will help researchers identify the cellular pathways that are involved in aging and that are activated by calorie restriction. The hope is that findings like these could ultimately lead to the development of a drug that could activate those same pathways. “It’s having our cake and eating it, too,” says Anderson. “This is very active research.”

Why You Might Want to Try Ghee Instead of Butter

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 07:37 AM PST

It’s a mainstay in traditional Indian cooking and has become a staple in the Paleo diet. People are even adding it to their morning coffee. So what about ghee—a variation of clarified butter that originated in India—is so different from butter?

Clarified butter is unsalted butter that is heated gently, causing the milk solids to separate from the golden liquid and drift to the bottom of the pan after the butter has melted. Any foam that is present is skimmed off of the surface, leaving just the liquid. Removing the milk solids gives the butter (now clarified) a higher smoke point, making it ideal for high cooking temperatures. It also prevents the butter from spoiling as quickly, though it doesn’t offer quite as rich of a taste compared to regular butter.

Ghee is like clarified butter taken a step further. Once the milk solids have separated, the butter is simmered until all of the moisture evaporates and the milk solids brown slightly. The result is the browned, nutty and caramel-like taste and aroma ghee is known for. Ghee has a longer shelf life than butter and higher smoke point at 375 degrees, making it ideal for sautéing and searing. You can easily make ghee at home, using just unsalted butter and a heavy saucepan. It can be refrigerated for 6 months or frozen for a year.

How do I use ghee?

Ghee is great for deep- or pan-frying. It can be used when toasting spices, as opposed to dry roasting, when making authentic Indian dishes. This technique results in a richer version of the spice’s original flavor. Ghee can be thought of simply as a more durable, more flavorful butter replacement, and it can be used as a condiment you spread on toast or toss with vegetables. A more traditional variation of ghee worth trying is flavored ghee, made by adding ginger, peppercorns, cumin, or other spices at the very beginning of the clarifying process.

What are the benefits of cooking with ghee?

Ghee is more convenient than butter, given its higher smoke point and longer shelf life, but that’s not the only reason people make the switch. Ghee is more tolerable for those who have sensitivities to lactose, because the milk solids have been removed. That said, it’s still made from dairy, so those with more serious dairy allergies should steer clear.

Buy grass-fed ghee, or make your own with grass-fed butter. The nutrition and composition of ghee depends on the milk that was used to originally make the butter which was, in turn, used to make the ghee. Ghee contains medium-chain fatty acids, which may be easier to digest and better for your heart compared to other saturated fatty acids. Ghee also has a higher concentration of butyric acid than butter—a type of acid known for its positive effects on immune function and anti-inflammatory activity. Some early evidence also suggests that butyric acid is linked to improvement in irritable bowl syndrome. Still, ghee is entirely fat, and though fats are necessary to a healthy life, eating ghee in an excessive manner, just like butter, could have negative health effects.

Try using ghee in vibrant dishes like Tofu Saag, Winter Greens Curry, Indian Baklava or Black Cardamon Beef Sliders.

This article originally appeared on MyRecipes.com

How Apple Cider Vinegar May Help With Weight Loss

Posted: 25 Jan 2017 06:37 AM PST

Apple cider vinegar—or “ACV,” as it’s called among enthusiasts—is having its superfood moment. Made from fermented apple sugars, ACV’s rumored perks range from helping with type-2 diabetes to whitening teeth.

But can it help you lose weight? “My hunch is that it can, but that its impact would be subtle,” says Carol Johnston, a professor in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion at Arizona State University.

Johnston has been studying vinegar and its health effects for more than a decade. While her own research efforts have not linked vinegar ingestion to significant weight loss, a 2009 study from Japan found that swallowing two tablespoons of diluted apple cider vinegar twice a day with meals helped people lose about four pounds after 12 weeks.

Johnston says she buys the Japanese team’s findings because there’s good animal and lab research to suggest that vinegar could lead to metabolic changes that support weight loss. “There’s some evidence that the acetic acid in vinegar may turn on fat metabolism,” she explains. “It just hasn’t been examined adequately in humans, so we don’t have good evidence that it’s effective.” (Another study linked vinegar with reduced appetite—but only because swallowing the stuff made people feel nauseated.)

There’s better data to show that diluted vinegar can promote healthier blood-sugar levels.

“For those in a pre-diabetic state, you see this surge of blood glucose after a meal,” Johnston says. Even among healthy people, eating starch-heavy foods like pasta or pizza leads to a spike in blood glucose that may promote cardiovascular disease, she says. But by blocking the gut’s absorption of starchy foods, the acetic acid in vinegar appears to calm this unhealthy swell of blood sugar, Johnston’s research shows.

All types of vinegar contain acetic acid, which is the key ingredient Johnston credits with these healthy digestion changes. So what’s so great about ACV? “Its marketing,” she says. As far as acetic acid goes, “it really doesn’t matter what type of vinegar you’re ingesting.” She points out that balsamic and red wine vinegars have long been a part of Mediterranean-style diets, which may be one more reason Med diets are linked with so many health benefits.

In fact, she recommends red wine vinegar as a mellower alternative to ACV for those looking to get more acetic acid in their diets. “If you put glasses of diluted red wine vinegar and diluted apple cider vinegar side by side, the red wine [vinegar] would be much smoother and easier to swallow,” she says.

She makes a point of saying “diluted” because, without water, vinegar can cause damage to your throat and esophagus. “You hear people talk about shooting it straight, almost like they’re proud of it, but that’s not good for you,” Johnston adds. (At least one case study has linked this kind of vinegar shot-taking to tooth erosion.)

Johnston says the best and safest way to consume it is to mix one to two tablespoons of ACV or red wine vinegar with 8 ounces of water. Swallow the mixture right at the start of a meal. “If you take it too far ahead of time, it’s gone before you get any benefit,” she explains. But because some food molecules and nutrients can mess with the way acetic acid works, “you want [the vinegar] to beat any starch to your gut,” she adds. Keep your total daily intake at or below 4 tablespoons.

It that’s too hardcore, eat a salad splashed with red wine or balsamic vinegar before you chow down on a starchy meal. “This is how we’ve been eating vinegar for a thousand years,” Johnston says.

How Meditation Helps You Handle Stress Better

Posted: 24 Jan 2017 12:51 PM PST

Stress is a modern mental bogeyman, keeping nearly half of Americans up at night, according to a recent survey from the American Psychological Association. Many say they don’t do anything to combat it, yet it takes a toll; stress is linked to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke.

Now, there’s fresh evidence in favor of mindfulness practices—not just sitting cross-legged in meditation—to help ease stress and anxiety. In a new study published in the journal Psychiatry Research, anxious people who took a mindfulness course where they learned several different strategies reacted to stress better and had a lower hormonal and inflammatory response than people who didn’t practice mindfulness.

“There’s been some real skepticism in the medical community about meditation and mindfulness meditation,” says lead author Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center. She and her team wanted to find out whether people merely felt better after meditating, or if doing so caused real, measurable changes in the body’s markers of stress.

They rounded up healthy adults with generalized anxiety disorder, marked by constant worry about the future. Half of the people in the study went through a mindfulness meditation training course called MBSR, short for mindfulness-based stress reduction. Half completed a stress management education course, with lectures on the importance of diet, exercise, sleep and time management. Both courses lasted eight weeks with an identical amount of class time and homework.

In the MBSR course, people were taught the elements of meditation that have the most scientific evidence behind them for helping stress. They learn to pay attention to the present moment without judgment through exercises like breath awareness, body scan meditations and gentle yoga. Though the practices have roots in Buddhism, MBSR is non-religious; “you don’t have to believe in anything or chant in another language,” Hoge says. The classes met weekly for 2.5 hours.

The real point of the course isn’t to help someone relax in a group environment, however; it’s to steel a person against the ravages of in-the-moment stress, and the researchers tested just that. Before the courses started and right after they concluded, the researchers put the participants through a task that reliably stokes stress a stress response: eight minutes of public speaking, followed by a round of videotaped mental math in front of an audience of people in white lab coats with clipboards.

“The holy grail is to show that patients can do better under stress,” Hoge says.

Not only did the people who learned to meditate report feeling less stressed than people in the other class, but their blood measurements of ACTH, a stress hormone released in the brain and then into the bloodstream, were lower too, as well as markers of inflammation called pro-inflammatory cytokines. But in the control group, people were actually more stressed the second time they did the test, possibly because they knew and anticipated how bad the it would be.

“We have objective measures in the blood that they did better in a provoked situation,” says Hoge. “It really is strong evidence that mindfulness meditation not only makes them feel better, but helps them be more resilient to stress.”

The study adds to growing evidence that MBSR—which is becoming more popular in hospitals and cities across the country—may be a treatment for people with anxiety who don’t want to take medication or go through psychotherapy, Hoge says. But insurance companies don’t typically cover the course, which can cost more than $500.

Hoge says she hopes insurance companies take note of the growing evidence that supports MBSR as a treatment option. “To me, it’s obvious that insurance companies would save money in the long run.”

Half of Women Have Serious Side Effects From Breast-Cancer Treatment

Posted: 24 Jan 2017 11:55 AM PST

Breast-cancer treatments may be effective at treating many tumors, but they come with a price.

In the latest study on the side effects of these treatments, published in the journal Cancer, researchers led by Christopher Friese at the University of Michigan say that 42% of women who were treated for breast cancer reported severe side effects. These included nausea or vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, pain, swelling in the arms, shortness of breath, and skin irritation around the breasts during the seven months after diagnosis and following treatment with surgery, chemotherapy or radiation.

“As a physician, I don’t see the whole of it in terms of how patients are suffering,” says Dr. Allison Kurian, one of the study’s co-authors and associate professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I probably see only a tiny bit of it in the clinic. For me, to see that a significant number of women reported toxicity that was severe or very severe, was remarkable. It was higher than I might have thought and an important reminder to me as a clinician that these therapies are quite toxic, and we need to listen carefully to what patients may be telling us about them.”

Such information could be helpful for women making decisions about their treatment. But there is little data on how extensive these side effects really are among a large group of women from different ethnic and economic backgrounds. Some experts also say that side effects may not be discussed in as much detail as treatments are — not having the full scope of information about side effects could affect women’s decisions about which treatments they choose. And there is growing appreciation that such side effects may adversely affect women’s physical health in other ways, which can affect their recovery as well as whether or not they finish their treatments. In the study, women reporting the most problems with their treatments also reported the lowest scores on overall physical functioning including fatigue, sleep problems, pain, breathing difficulty and more.

About 29% of women receiving chemotherapy reported severe side effects. Those opting for to have both breasts removed also reported the highest amount of severe pain — 37% — compared with 25% of women who removed one breast and 18% of women choosing lumpectomy.

This information could help women decide between mastectomy and lumpectomy, for example, since more data suggests that double mastectomies to prevent spread of the cancer to the unaffected breast may not be associated with better survival. “So for many to see that double mastectomy is associated with more severe pain, perhaps they may choose something different,” says Kurian. “Having this kind of information at the time of decisionmaking is important.”

A breast-cancer diagnosis is a stressful and emotional experience, however, and making sure that treatment and side effect information is presented and considered objectively is a challenge. Many women feel as if they have to act quickly, having been trained to think that treating cancer as soon and as aggressively as possible is ideal. But even invasive cancers, such as the type the women in the study had, don’t need to be treated within days of a diagnosis, says Kurian. Most doctors give their patients a few weeks to a month to decide on their treatment, which may still seem too soon for some.

Making sure that the information is communicated in the right way is also important, says Kurian. In the study, she found that Latina women were 30% more likely to report severe side effects than white women, which may reflect language barriers or cultural barriers to understanding some of the possible negative consequences of treatment. “It’s a sign that we really need to develop customized interventions for women to assess and manage toxicity as soon as they occur,” she says. “As well as find a way to communicate the information about side effects initially to help them make informed choices about their treatment.”

“We need to continue to think carefully about the balance between benefit and risk, and make sure these are conveyed clearly to the patient to help her make the best decision for her treatment,” says Kurian.

The GOP’s Plan for Pre-Existing Conditions Has a Huge Loophole

Posted: 24 Jan 2017 11:03 AM PST

As Republicans begin taking steps to repeal the Affordable Care Act, both GOP leaders and President Donald Trump have claimed that they will keep the law’s popular provision that states insurers cannot discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions — either by denying them coverage or charging them more.

But if the GOP’s yet-to-be-unveiled Obamacare replacement plan is anything like what Tom Price — Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services — has proposed in the past, tens of millions of people could in fact lose their insurance, or pay significantly more for it, because of pre-existing conditions.

Before the ACA took effect, about 30% of adults under the age of 65 were uninsurable due to conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Millions more had conditions that rendered their premiums unaffordable, and women were routinely charged more than men — based on their gender — for the same coverage. Obamacare prohibited all of this.

Price’s plan relies on a “continuous coverage” provision to create waivers for people with pre-existing conditions. An insurer offering coverage in the individual market would not be able to “impose any pre-existing condition exclusion” if the individual has at least 18 months of continuous coverage before enrolling in the new plan.

Translated, that means that if you have a pre-existing condition but haven’t had a recent gap in your health coverage, insurers could not discriminate against you.

That provision, however, leaves the door open to policy denials — or higher charges — if your coverage lapses. “If you get laid off or lose your job and do have a coverage gap, they would be able to deny you, they would be able to charge more and put limits on your insurance,” says Cynthia Cox, associate director of KFF. She notes that the policy does benefit those who can afford coverage, but “doesn’t really get at the affordability issue.”

KFF notes that most of the people that would be negatively impacted by this standard live in Republican-held states, mostly in the South, where there are higher rates of obesity and diabetes than the rest of the country.

It could also harm people who, for example, have been out of work for a while but want to start their own business or become independent contractors. “The Affordable Care Act has given a lot of people flexibility to work for a smaller company or be self-employed and purchase [insurance] on the individual market,” says Cox. “This is going to change that for a lot of people.”

Price’s plan isn’t the only one to promote the “continuous coverage” provision; it’s a mainstay in GOP-backed alternatives to Obamacare.

Other things Price’s plan would do, according to KFF:

  • Repeal ACA essential health benefit standards (which include things like surgery and overnight hospital stays, pediatric services, maternity services, emergency services, prescription drug coverage, and birth control)
  • Repeal ACA preventive health benefit standards (the services most used by young people, including routine physicals, various cancer screenings, and well woman visits)
  • Repeal mental health parity requirements for individual market and small-group market policies
  • Repeal ACA prohibition on lifetime and annual limits (which also harms those with pre-existing conditions and chronic illnesses/diseases)
  • Repeal ACA limits on annual out-of-pocket cost sharing
  • Repeal ACA provision that dependents can stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26
  • Repeal ACA right to independent external appeal of denied claims
  • Repeal ACA Medicaid expansion
  • Repeal individual and employer mandate
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