Link Between Red Meat and Diabetes?

Eating red meat, and in particular processed red meat like bacon and hot dogs, raises the risk of Type 2 diabetes. But replacing just one serving a day with nuts or low-fat dairy can lower the risk, according to a study by Harvard researchers.

1,037 Miles for Cancer

Steve Cannon loves to run. And he loves to help people who are fighting cancer or who have survived cancer.So it was natural for Cannon, 46, of Clive, Iowa, to combine the two.

On Sunday morning, on Chicago's Navy Pier, Cannon began what amounts to running 40 marathons - 26.2 miles per day - in 40 days around Lake Michigan.

Exercise the Fountain of Youth?

IN a series of new studies prompted by the geriatric population explosion, researchers are finding that moderate exercise can not only retard the effects of aging but can actually reverse them.

Another Running Streak

Dave Brewer likes to run. He ran yesterday. If he’s alive and not in traction, he ran today. He ran every day last month, and every day last year, too, and on April 16, 2011, he will celebrate one quarter of a century without missing a single day of covering at least two miles. In the running world, people like him are called streakers, but Brewer, a 56-year-old financial manager from Herndon, Va., says “the technical term is ‘idiot.’ ” Brewer is also modest. I learned about the streak only because I was bragging to him—he’s an old friend—about jogging six days a week for a year, and he casually mentioned it.

How Many Miles Do You Log Each Year?

Erick Larson runs close to a thousand miles a year.

"I do four miles a day, four days a week," said the 60-year-old businessman.

It's something he's been doing since March 2000. He figures if he ran in one direction he'd be close to halfway around the world.

Does Drinking Tea Lower Colesterol?

Green tea is thought to be an herbal panacea of sorts, believed by many to have a wide range of health benefits. But whether it can actually produce measurable effects on cholesterol is a question that has drawn much debate.

Runner's High?

Richard Friedman, a psychopharmacologist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, had a runner's high -- once.

"When I was young and foolish, I ran a marathon in the Smoky Mountains," he said. "I have never before or since had that kind of high, and maybe it was just the result of a near-death experience."

Bill Fox, a recreational bicyclist and an IBM research lab technician, says his exercise highs do not come easily.

The Microbiome Never Ceases to Amaze

For a long time, the medical establishment treated viruses and bacteria as the enemy — alien invaders to be exterminated with antibiotics or attacked by the immune system as soon as they breached the body’s walls.

Alcohol, Diet, and Running

What do a glass of Merlot, the produce department of your grocery store and a daily six-mile run have in common?

They all may work together to benefit your health, according to a new study of the exercise habits and other actions of a group of about 9,000 runners.

Another Running Myth Debunked

Need another reason to dust off those running shoes in the back of the closet? It turns out that running longer distances actually decreases a person's risk of osteoarthritis and hip replacements, according to new research conducted by Paul Williams of Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division.

Meat, Fruit, and our BMI

At a public debate in May on the relative importance of exercise and diet in battling obesity, Yoni Freedhoff began his opening arguments with some basic physics.

Exercise and Vision

Vigorous exercise can help prevent both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, according to a new research.

The pair of studies that tracked approximately 41,000 runners for more than seven years found that running reduced the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

Caffeine before you Workout?

INSTANT GAINS

CAFFEINE Very little in life offers instant results, but caffeine is one of the miracle substances that does.This shouldn't surprise you. Think about how you feel within minutes drinking some coffee or pounding a Red Bull. You can feel that near-instant jolt of energy and alertness that shows that caffeine is working on the AMP receptors inyour cells. But caffeine does more than just perk up your brain; it also perks up your muscles. In a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2006, subjects who took a caffeine supplement an hour before working out increased their one-rep maximum on the bench press by about five pounds--without any extra training.

Stress and your Telomeres

In 2004 a University of California, San Francisco research team reported that chronic stress may play a role in shortening telomeres, the tiny protein complexes at the ends of chromosomes that help protect genetic information as cells divide. As telomeres shorten, cells lose the ability to divide; they can also get confused about their mission and start to manifest serious ailments, from Parkinson’s to heart disease. (Other studies have linked shortened telomeres with the onset of dementia.) While cell loss is an integral part of the aging process, chronic stress accelerates it by munching away at these protective proteins so they diminish faster than they would naturally.

See also How Old are your Telomeres?

10,000 Miles in the Rear-View Mirror

Erick Larson runs close to a thousand miles a year.

"I do four miles a day, four days a week," said the 60-year-old businessman.

It's something he's been doing since March 2000. He figures if he ran in one direction he'd be close to halfway around the world.

"At about 10,000 miles, I will be coming back home," he said.

Running v. Walking

Brisk walking is as good as running for reducing blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes risk - three key players in the development of heart disease, a new study finds.

Exercise and Avoiding Colds

If you do happen to catch a bug, how do you decide whether it’s best to get some activity or get some rest? I usually determine this based on my symptoms. If it’s a common cold with symptoms like runny nose, sore throat and minor aches and pains with no fever, it is probably safe to engage in some moderate exercise and it may even make you feel better. If you have a fever, aches and pains, swollen lymph nodes, chest congestion, and stomach or intestinal issues, it’s probably best to get some bed rest and gradually ease back into your normal workout routine.

Even Walking Boosts Our Immune Systems

Does exercise really boost the immune system? To test this scientifically, the American College of Sports Medicine conducted two studies with young and elderly women to determine whether those who exercise get fewer colds than those who don't. In both studies, women in the exercise groups walked briskly 35 to 45 minutes, 5 days a week, for 12 to 15 weeks, while the control groups remained physically inactive. The walkers experienced about half the days with cold symptoms as the sedentary group.

Other research has shown that during moderate exercise, several positive changes occur in the immune system. Although the immune system returns to pre-exercise levels very quickly after the exercise session, each session represents a boost that appears to reduce the risk of infection over the long term.

Me, Myself, and Us

Looking at human beings as ecosystems that contain many collaborating and competing species could change the practice of medicine

WHAT'S a man? Or, indeed, a woman? Biologically, the answer might seem obvious. A human being is an individual who has grown from a fertilised egg which contained genes from both father and mother. A growing band of biologists, however, think this definition incomplete. They see people not just as individuals, but also as ecosystems. In their view, the descendant of the fertilised egg is merely one component of the system. The others are trillions of bacteria, each equally an individual, which are found in a person's gut, his mouth, his scalp, his skin and all of the crevices and orifices that subtend from his body's surface.

A healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents. These bugs, moreover, are diverse. Egg and sperm provide about 23,000 different genes. The microbiome, as the body's commensal bacteria are collectively known, is reckoned to have around 3m. Admittedly, many of those millions are variations on common themes, but equally many are not, and even the number of those that are adds something to the body's genetic mix.

Exercise and Middle-Age Spread

Men's weight goes up and their waistlines grow as they reach middle age, even if they're dedicated runners, according to a study of male joggers.

At any given age between 18 and 49, men who ran more miles per week did tend to be leaner than those who ran fewer. But even among the most active group -- men who ran more than 40 miles a week -- weight and waist circumference tended to increase steadily throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s.

Achilles injury is one athletes all tend to fear

It is often said that injuries are part and parcel of sport – but are all types of injury accepted by our elite sportsmen and women, or are there some types of affliction they fear above all else on the field of play?

While head and neck injuries can be life-threatening and complicated fractures career-threatening, it is actually injuries to the soft tissues of the musculo-skeletal system which often cause athletes the greatest concern.

The Chairman

Exercise and the Immune System

Should you avoid working up a sweat when you have the sniffles? Or is sweating it out in the gym the secret to curing the common cold?

Despite advice that a cold should be coddled, moderate exercise isn't a bad idea when you've got a runny nose. And unlike lots of other suggestions on how to treat a cold, this one has some science behind it.

Exercise and the Brain

Moderate exercise increased the size of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that makes memories, in 120 volunteers,BBC health reported.

The year-long trial, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed performance on memory tests also improved.

What Can We Learn from Mice?

Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., used mice genetically engineered to age quickly to compare the effects of a lifetime of activity versus a sedentary life. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

What made the difference was endurance exercise. The active mice jogged briskly on treadmills three days a week for 45 minutes. After five months, premature aging was halted in practically every organ of the mice that exercised. The mice that slacked off were graying, balding, less fertile and socially isolated.

Their muscle tissue exhibited signs indicating damage, while the muscles of the mice that exercised were perfectly normal.