Month: March 2012

Exercise

Why It Is Important to Stay Moving – Blood Sugar Levels

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Finishing the Disneyland Half Marathon last summer

Here is a good piece on why exercise is important, particularly why you should stay moving throughout the day.

Hoping to learn more about how inactivity affects disease risk, researchers at the University of Missouri recently persuaded a group of healthy, active young adults to stop moving around so much. Scientists have known for some time that sedentary people are at increased risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. But they haven’t fully understood why, in part because studying the effects of sedentary behavior isn’t easy. People who are inactive may also be obese, eat poorly or face other lifestyle or metabolic issues that make it impossible to tease out the specific role that inactivity, on its own, plays in ill health.

So, to combat the problem, researchers lately have embraced a novel approach to studying the effects of inactivity. They’ve imposed the condition on people who otherwise would be out happily exercising and moving about, in some cases by sentencing them to bed rest.

But in the current study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientists created a more realistic version of inactivity by having their volunteers cut the number of steps they took each day by at least half.

Read all of the piece.

And, keep moving……

A 7 mile easy run tomorrow in tapering mode for the Los Angeles Marathon on March 18th.

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Health

Video: Why Run the Los Angeles Marathon?

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Because it is there? Nope….

The 2012 Los Angeles Marathon will be another celebration of a healthy lifestyle for me.

And, I thank God every day for the ability to participate in this event.

The LA Marathon course is pretty cool as well – Dodger Stadium to the Sea in Santa Monica.

March 18th is fast approaching and I am really getting excited.

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Diet

Food and Drug Administration Says Soda is Safe – Not Cancer Causing

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I am relieved and I am sure most consumers that love caramel colored soda are too.

U.S. regulators said soft drinks from PepsiCo Inc and Coca-Cola Co posed no health risk, contrary to a U.S. watchdog group that reported several popular brands contain high levels of a chemical linked to cancer in animals.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said it found unsafe levels of a chemical used to make caramel color in cans of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc’s Dr. Pepper, and Whole Foods’ 365 Cola.

The group asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban caramel coloring agents that contain the chemical known as 4-methylimidazole, or 4-MI. This follows a similar plea last year.

“Coke and Pepsi, with the acquiescence of the FDA, are needlessly exposing millions of Americans to a chemical that causes cancer,” said CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson. “If companies can make brown food coloring that is carcinogen-free, the industry should use that.”

The FDA said it is reviewing the group’s petition, but that the drinks were still safe.

“A consumer would have to consume well over a thousand cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered in the studies that have shown links to cancer in rodents,” said Doug Karas, an FDA spokesman, in a statement.

Now, as far as the sugar is concerned with regards to obesity and diabetes, that is another story.

Moderation with soda whether it be regular or not is the best course of action anyway.

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