wellness

from thatsfit.com

You wake up early to get ready for your morning run and discover that you've got a sore throat and your head is throbbing. Should you exercise when you're sick? It depends, says CBS news, on where and how sick you are.

from newscientist.com

Researchers have treated obesity-related diabetes in mice using drugs that exploit the body’s insulin signalling system.

The researchers hope the drugs could provide effective treatment for Type-2 diabetes in humans, and possibly even Type-1. Both drugs are already prescribed for patients with conditions unrelated to diabetes, and so have a proven safety record in people.

From Prevention

Andrew Weil, MD

Inflammation can be a good thing--it's your body's response to injury and illness. The increased circulation, swelling, heat, and even pain it causes actually help your body to heal. Take fever: It's how your body combats infection-causing bacteria and viruses, which can thrive at 98.6°F. A few degrees higher, and they start dying off. A fever also triggers the immune system to manufacture more white blood cells, antibodies, and other infection fighters.

But prolonged inflammation can stimulate the disease process. If you've injured your knee, for example, a flare-up can help heal it. But further injuries can lead to...

From Wired.com

Chubby nerds, rejoice! The battle of the bulge now has a high-tech weapon: the camera phone.

Sprint cell-phone subscribers can sign up for MyFoodPhone, a service that gives diet advice when users e-mail cell-phone photographs of their meals and post details of their dietary habits online.

Just as yoga can benefit breast cancer patients, exercise lifts the health of cancer patients in general.

From the LA Times

Among the growing list of people who can benefit from exercise, add another group: cancer patients in the midst of radiation treatment.

A new study has found that women and men undergoing radiation for breast and prostate cancer felt less fatigued, had improved quality of life and missed fewer treatment sessions when they engaged in a six-week routine of moderate exercise.

The Better Man '06: What's Your BQ?
By Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.

Esquire , May 2006, Volume 145, Issue 5

Review:

As the concept of "fitness" continues to be refined, we see it moving beyond the gym to the living room, the kitchen, the library, and, um, other parts of the house. That's because the "new fit" combines ideas about exercise, diet, wellness, environment, attitude, MUSIC (of course), and on and on. In this engaging Esquire article, Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D. lay out some new standards for what make a healthy male. Besides the timeliness of its tone, the article includes several revealing age and body compositioin quizzes, "miracle" foods for improving health, tips on powering up the immune system, and much more. Great reading in the inimitable Esquire style.

I must say, I kinda love the attitude over at BellaOnline , "The Voice of Women." They look fitness in the eye and ask, "Are we having fun yet?" This piece reminds me that, yes, we can have fun as we get fit. Especially when we add in a nice little pumping workout mix like the one to your immediate right...

By Monica Neave, BellaOnline Exercise Editor

Are you one of the many who can't stand spending 30 to 45 minutes on the treadmill, crosstrainer, or lifecycle? Yes, there are other ways to burn calories that don't involve emulating hamsters. Here's a few suggestions broken down into different categories to get you going.

ATLANTA (AP) — You can add Canadians to the list of foreigners who are healthier than Americans. Americans are 42% more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32% more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12% more likely to have arthritis, Harvard Medical School researchers found. That is according to a survey in which American and Canadian adults were asked over the telephone about their health.

Get the whole story

This story by Deborah Netburn about a cool new yoga website appeared recently in the Baltimore Sun.

My stiff neck, achy lower back and super-tight hips all indicated that a trip to the yoga studio was past due, but my in-laws were in town for the weekend and a class seemed out of the question. Between the traffic and the lack of parking, a 1 1/2 -hour yoga class takes 2 1/2 hours of my time. Could I really leave my in-laws from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. - prime brunch time - on a Saturday morning? I didn't think so.

Yoga was once considered exercise for the counterculture. It came to America much earlier than the 1960s of course, but its popularity increased greatly in the context of the Baby Boomer's fascination with all things Eastern. Now, it appears, yoga's going mainstream.