Answer To Your Fitness Questions" />Running Slows The Aging Clock, Stanford Researchers Find
August 12, 2008
James Fries, MD, an emeritus professor of medicine at the medical school said, “If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise.”
Fries hypothesis was regular exercise would extend high-quality, disability-free life. He speculated while keeping the body moving wouldn’t necessarily extend ongevity, but it would compress the period at the end of life when people wouldn’t be able to carry out daily tasks on their own. This became known as the “compression of morbidity theory.” This is opposite to when has traditionally been thought. Some feared the long-term effect of the then-new jogging craze would create orthopedic injuries, increasing the numbers older runners permanently hobbled by their exercise addictions.
Through his study he found incredible health benefits for the runners. Runners initial disability was 16 yeasrs later than nonrunners and realized “health” for longer periods of time. “When we first began, there was skepticism about our ideas,” Fries said. “Now, many other findings go in the same direction.”
The Effects Of Anorexia
April 26, 2008
The most common way for diagnosing anorexia is by a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist. The diagnosis is based upon the behavior, physical appearance of the person and the reported beliefs. The most commonly used criteria for diagnosing anorexia are from the Amerian Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statiscal Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) and the World Health Organization’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD). To be diagnosed a person must display:
- Refusal to maintain body weight at their minimal normal weight for age and height or failure to gain weight during a certain amount of time.
- Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming obese.
- Distrubance in the way in which their body’s weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of their low body weight.
- In post-menarcheal, pre-menopausal females (women who have had their first menstrual period but have not yet gone through menopause), amenorrhea (the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles).
- Or other eating related disorders, such as bulimia.
There are two different subtypes of anorexia, Restricing type and Binge-eating type. Restricting type is the person who doesn’t regularly engage in binge-eating or purging behavior, on the other hand, Binge-eating type or purging type is the person that does refularly engage in binge-eating or purging behavior. These people might induce weight-loss or maintain a low body weight by avoiding fatty foods, self-induced vomiting, self-induced purging, excessive exercise, or excessive use of appetite suppressants.
Anorexia can put a serious strain on many of the body’s organs, specifically on the structure and function of the heart and the cardiovascular system. Anorexia can cause heart failure, and linked to osteoporosis which effects people by 38-50% of cases. This leads to poor nutrition which leads to the distortion of essential bone structure and low bone mineral density. Anorexia doesn’t always affect everyone in the same way, for instance, evidence shows that the results from anorexia differ from adolescents and adults. In some cases it may cause a stunt in growth if you are diagnosed as an adolescent. Also, changes in the brain structure and the function are early symptoms of the disease. Enlagement of the brain is often associated with starvation and is partially reversed when the patient returns to a healthy weight. The disease can also cause a reduction of blood flow in the temporal lobes.
So, if you or anyone else you know is fighting with anorexia, contact someone who can help you get over the disease and get back to a healthy state.
