trying find

Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts

Monday, March 14, 2011

You Cannot Avoid Polluted Air

If you want healthy lungs don't take up running or vigorous exercise. Perhaps it is better to head for the country and stay away from smokers. Your body needs clean air in order to stay healthy.

Living in cities is a no, no. If you live in London you will already have lung damage. Spending just 48 minutes there is equivalent to smoking a cigarette. It is not only cigarette smoke that is troublesome. Fumes from cars and diesel buses is something you can't avoid.

Heading indoors is a waste of time. Pollution condenses down into corridors, tunnels and homes. Toxins are more than double that of the external environment. Plants help to clear the air. Don't use artificial air fresheners. Even the television pumps out volatile organic compounds (VOC).

Unfortunately there is not a lot we can do in the modern world to avoid toxins. It's everywhere. Doing exercise will make the body take in more pollutants. Taking a holiday in the country is no answer - ozone from cities ends up there.

http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/
http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/
http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia
http://www.technorati.com/blogs/http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com

~~~~~Health~~~~~

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monday, November 15, 2010

How Do We Reduce Obesity?

While I agree with Dr Jennifer O'Dea's view that a tax on take away food is useless in reducing obesity, I strongly disagree that obesity is exaggerated. Look around; there are overweight children and adults at every turn. She admits that children from low income families have twice the rate of obesity of those from middle and upper income families. The reason why this is so should be ascertained. It is hard to believe that small income families spend more on junk food in real and proportional terms.

Dr O'Dea says we should not become emotional about the issue because that is unscientific. Perhaps we do need to be more emotional. The scientific approach is not doing much good. It is true that the problem should be tackled from the top - down. It is parents who can impress upon their children to eat better. Today, high sugar food is so readily available. In the 1960s and before many families didn't have a refrigerator. When children wanted a sugar fix they had to go to the corner store and get an ice cream or soft drink. Overall consumption of these products was lower. These days children consume such things at breakfast. It is indeed the case that some households don't keep tea and coffee in the kitchen cupboard. Coke is drunk at exceedingly high rates.

To say obesity is not increasing is lying with statistics. Fat children become fat adults. In 1985 approximately 1 percent of girls and boys were obese. This increased to about 5.5 percent in 1996. To say everything is okay because it has levelled off at this rate since is very, very wrong. There is a serious problem. A near obese child is an obese child. If the near obese are included the rate rose from 11 per cent to 23 per cent from 1985 to 1996. In 1996 the saturation point was reached. It probably can't get much worse.

Dr O'Shea says Pacific Islanders are genetically overweight and they are developing more muscle. This is nonsense. They clearly are fatter. Evolving on Pacific Islands has made them "susceptible' when they take to eating high calorie food. The natural diet for them in the past was fish. Research has shown that heart disease rises far above the rate for non-Islanders when they move from Pacific islands to New Zealand, adopt the Western lifestyle and eat the "bad" foods. Saying that the body mass index cam be high when we are taller is another "mythical" statement. When the BMI is high we are fat.

Few scientists try to find out why the lower socioeconomic strata is fatter than the wealthy. Social pressure is the main factor in determining lifetime food preferences of people, what is learned, in other words socialization. It is not really a "what can we afford" issue. Giving the poor more money will not change anything. Giving children a good breakfast when they get to school has achieved nothing. Many children just ate two breakfasts, one at home another at school - they got fatter. The lack of exercise contributes to obesity. Today, doing exercise at school such as sport is an option for children. It should be compulsory as it was years ago. Making such school exercise non-competitive is ridiculous. This is just one group of people forcing their silly ideas on others. Calling for restrictions on behavior is out of kilter with societies moving toward more freedom.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monday, October 25, 2010

Americans Do Not Walk So Far

Americans do not take large strides in the world. I know what you are going to say here - How can this be true? Surely this is the country that leads the world. But wait! It just means that Americans take fewer strides. How can I put this? They walk less.

This only confirms what we all knew: Westerners, generally, do less exercise. A pedometer test was carried out comparing people from different countries. Australia is about average with 9,000 steps taken in a day. Americans do only 5,000. Australia could be the odd Western country out because of the size of this country and it is culturally accepted that long travel is normal. Maybe we apply this to walking as well as driving.

A mile is equivalent to 2,000 steps. As would be expected the health "experts" say we should walk 5 miles a day. The tests did show that American men walk more than women. This is a surprise considering all those claims about women doing all the housework. Single people walk more as well. With no one to fetch and carry this would be expected. But widowed people walk least of all. Perhaps they have given up.

What does all this means? Not much really. Findings indicate that countries rating high in the pedometer tests suffered less with obesity. A test wasn't really needed to figure that one out.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thursday, March 4, 2010

If You Sit Down You Die

Humans are built to stand up all the time. How ridiculous this sounds, but this is what scientists say. You will die younger, get diabetes, and fall victim to cancer if you sit down too much. Doing exercise wont stop it apparently. Even sitting down at any time is damaging. This is "silly science" because though people sit down longer than ever before they also live longer. Statistics prove this.

Scientists say the body only functions "normally" if we are standing. They cease if we sit down. If these body operations work when we are standing what proof is there that they are really necessary? There is no proof. This is just a whim and let's hope it soon passes before people bring cases to court against employers.

There is no more ardent a person against smoking than an ex-smoker. Guess What! The main researcher on all this stuff, Professor Levine, has taken to standing all the time. This bloke is a bit of a nutcase, an obsessive compulsive if there is one - he walks around the room like in the old movies with an almighty long telephone cord. He also invented machines where you can keep walking or cycle while still using a computer. Health and safety has deemed these device too dangerous to use.

Levine wants to change the world like all obsessives. "What you need to do is to create an overall environment of health." Yeah, like those people selling ordinary tea that supposedly makes you lose weight. Beware, the Professor has four large US companies on board to find out how much can be saved in dollars by walking around all the time. You could be next on the test list.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .