THIS week I watched Bradley Wiggins and his colleagues smash the world record in Beijing to take gold in the team pursuit – a welcome distraction that provided a ray of sunshine on an otherwise unseasonably gloomy Monday morning.
The sterling performance by the British athletes over the past week is a useful reminder that, contrary to what we are so often told, we are not all binge-drinking overweight couch potatoes. And to those of you who are, the Olympians’ commitment and
dogged resolve will hopefully prove a powerful stimulus to do something about it.
Exercise, or rather lack of it, is at the root of the lion’s share of the ailments that afflict 21st-century Britain. The amount of exercise an individual does influences everything from how they deal with stress, depression and anxiety, to their risk of developing diabetes and facing an early death from cancer, stroke or heart attack.
Regular workouts release mood-enhancing chemicals in the brain, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, shift middle-aged spread, strengthen muscles, tendons and bones and reduce the likelihood of developing cancer and diabetes. And slim, fit people tend to carry themselves better and look younger. One reason why fitness-obsessed Madonna, right, looks closer to 40 than 50.
You don’t need to emulate Madonna (or an Olympian athlete) and live in the gym to reap the benefits, but you will need to do far more than you think. Current guidelines advising that we should all be doing 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week are now widely regarded as outdated and there is growing evidence that shorter daily workouts of higher intensity may be more beneficial – and easier to cram into our increasingly busy lives.
The following tips will help you to get the most out of your exercise programme and to develop a regime that will improve your mental and physical health as much as it will your waistline, posture, tone, strength and stamina.
Many of the health benefits of exercise – such as lowering cholesterol levels and boosting the metabolism – are short-lived and wane within 24-48 hours, so try to do something most days. The ideal workout should last at least 45 minutes, but shorter, more intense, 15-20 minute sessions (see below) can work just as well if you are prepared to go for it. The harder the better. A gentle cycle or walk to work is better than nothing but, on its own, won’t do much for your long-term health, even if you cover large distances. So pep it up by walking or cycling faster and adding in bursts of higher intensity, such as accelerating off at the lights and walking up the office stairs rather than using the lift.
Your best bet for getting the maximum return for the minimum effort if you are doing formal exercise – such as jogging or gym work – is to buy a heart-rate monitor. Keeping your pulse rate in the upper part of your ideal training range (based on age – see the instructions that come with the monitor) will mean every second of your workout counts and will prevent you overdoing it.
If you are pushed for time, try adding bursts of high-intensity exercise. Rather than jogging for 30 minutes at 10kph on a treadmill, try cutting the session down to 15 minutes and adding in five 60-second stints at 15kph, with a couple of minutes of jogging in between. This type of interval training is much harder work, but quicker and probably better for you.
The key basic ingredients are exercises to improve your aerobic fitness (jogging, cycling, stepping), exercises to improve your core stability (stomach, back and pelvic floor) and exercises to improve or maintain your strength (squats, lunges and weights).
You don’t have to work on all three areas each time or even set foot in a gym.
Try a 20-minute jog or cycle with intervals on Monday, Wednesday and Friday when you get home and before you reach for the wine bottle. On Tuesday and Thursday, lift some dumbbells at home and do your core stability exercises, while on Saturday you can play tennis/squash or go for a brisk walk. On Sunday you should rest – you have earned it.
AT LEAST one in ten children in the UK develops some degree of asthma at some stage during their childhood but most – particularly boys – will eventually grow out of it, according to new research from the US.
The study, conducted by a team for Harvard Medical School, is the first to show that boys tend to fare better than girls, but adds to existing evidence that the outcome is pretty good whatever the sex. One large British study has shown that two-thirds of five-year-olds with asthma stop wheezing by the time they reach their tenth birthday. But the prognosis does seem to depend on how severely the child is affected. Researchers in Australia following a large group of seven-year-olds into adulthood found that three-quarters of those who had mild asthma in their mid-teens could expect to be symptom-free by their late twenties. But most of those with more troublesome symptoms still needed regular inhalers as adults.
Dangers of overprescribingONE in five patients attending American casualty departments because of a side-effect of a prescribed medicine are there because of antibiotics, according to new research by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. And as many as three-quarters of them are taking the drugs for a self-limiting viral infection that doesn’t even respond to antibiotics.
The finding is likely to be welcomed by authorities in the UK, who are urging doctors to cut back on their use of antibiotics for a range of common infections. In new guidance for GPs, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) suggests that antibiotics should not be offered to most children and adults with tonsillitis, sinusitis, ear infections and coughs. You won’t get them for sore throats or laryngitis (hoarseness) either.
Nice has produced a leaflet outlining exceptions, and explaining what the changes will mean. You can download a copy via
snipurl.com/3hrzv Balancing bone and heartburnINDIGESTION and heartburn medicines taken by millions of Britons significantly increase the risk of the bone-thinning condition osteoporosis, according to a study published in the latest edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The concern centres on a family of drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), the two most commonly prescribed examples in the UK being omeprazole and lansoprazole. It’s unclear how the drugs affect the density and strength of the skeleton but it’s thought that by blocking acid production in the stomach, they interfere with calcium absorption.
More research needs to be done into the link before doctors can give firm recommendations on how to minimise the risk. In the meantime, heartburn and indigestion sufferers should use as low a dose of PPI as possible (for example, 10mg of omeprazole or 15mg of lansoprazole) and take them as infrequently as their symptoms allow.
I would also recommend a daily calcium and vitamin D supplement, taken at least 12 hours after the PPI to aid absorption. Ask your pharmacist to point you in the right direction.
