Articles
The Surprising Shortcut to Better Health (NY Times)
Ms. Reynolds has distilled the knowledge gained from years of fitness reporting into a new book, “The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer,’’ published last month.
Ms. Reynolds makes a clear distinction between the amount of exercise we do to improve sports performance and the amount of exercise that leads to better health. To achieve the latter, she explains, we don’t need to run marathons, sweat it out on exercise bikes or measure our peak oxygen uptake. We just need to do something.
Two-thirds of Americans get no exercise at all. If one of those people gets up and moves around for 20 minutes, they are going to get a huge number of health benefits, and everything beyond that 20 minutes is, to some degree, gravy. If people want to be healthier and prolong their life span, all they really need to do is go for a walk. It’s the single easiest thing anyone can do. There are some people who honestly can’t walk, so I would say to those people to try to go to the local Y.M.C.A. and swim.
Don’t Just Sit There (NY Times)
While writing about the benefits of , my muscles slackened. Fat seeped insidiously into my blood, liver and ventricles.
To see the results of such inactivity, scientists with the National Cancer Institute spent eight years following almost 250,000 American adults. The participants answered detailed questions about how much time they spent commuting, watching TV, sitting before a computer and exercising, as well as about their general health. At the start of the study, none suffered from heart disease, or diabetes.
But after eight years, many were ill and quite a few had died. The sick and deceased were also in most cases sedentary. Those who watched TV for seven or more hours a day proved to have a much higher risk of premature death than those who sat in front of the television less often. (Television viewing is a widely used measure of sedentary time.)
Erik says: I've recently started using a standing desk addition for my laptop and hardly ever sit while working/email/etc. It helped me recover from a back injury in 3 weeks instead of 3 months. It's not easy, but my body feels better because of it.
The Brain On Love (NY Times)
All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.
During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.
Erik says: Dance is great way to meet new people and even find love. See my article about the Top 5 Things That Everyone Wants.
Fitness Trackers Use Psychology to Motivate Couch Potatoes (Wired)
Gadgets like the Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit Ultra and BodyMedia Fit Link use accelerometers, altimeters and algorithms to track everything from how many steps you took to how many calories you burned. By providing this data instantaneously, and in some cases allowing you to share it via social media, they do more than inform. They reinforce, motivate and reward by turning exercise into a game.
Erik says: I now owns a FitBit and I'm activily monitoring my steps while teaching and dancing. I highly recommend this product since it allows you to see your activity level and make adjustments to improve your life.
Cancer survivors urged to eat better, exercise (USA Today)
The cancer society on Thursday released new guidelines, saying there's now enough evidence to strongly recommend physical activity and better nutrition for survivors. The message: For many cancers, maintaining a healthy weight, exercising and eating a healthy diet can reduce the risk that cancer will return.
Meet the Active Couch Potato (NYTimes)
They [Australian researchers] found that the more hours the men and women sat every day, the greater their chance of dying prematurely. Those people who sat more than eight hours a day — which other studies have found is about the amount that a typical American sits — had a 15 percent greater risk of dying during the study’s three-year follow-up period than people who sat for fewer than four hours a day.
Tap dance syncopates fitness for any age (Reuters)
For fitness outside the box-step of the gym, why not try hoofing it? Experts say whether you've got rhythm, or just crave it, an extended foray into the purely American art form of tap dance can boost your balance, cardio and core.
Washington Ballet will perform without orchestra this season
The Washington Ballet (as in DC) will dance before an empty orchestra pit this season, citing financial constraints in its decision to use recorded music for its upcoming production of "Romeo and Juliet" at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater and, most likely, for "The Nutcracker" at the Warner Theatre.
Ballet’s Costumes Take Center Stage (NYTimes)
An important part of history intertwining dance and fashion: “It was all very scattered,” said Jane Pritchard, a curator of “Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929,” which opens on Saturday at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The museum has reassembled about 60 outfits, many of them purchased decades ago at Sotheby’s auctions. The curators had to decide which ones would be strong enough to exhibit, and conservators have repaired rips and sweat damage, straightened bent flaps and reinforced shoulders for draping on mannequins.
Ballet Fans Truly Know How to Feel the Moves
Scientists report that the ballet/dance spectators showed muscle-specific responses in their brain as if they were expert dancers — even though “they were clearly not capable of doing the actual movements,”
