Moving Forward

There's a lot of information circulating about exercise. Why is it important? Numerous observational studies have found that exercising has tremendous health benefits. It is associated with reducing the risk of Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Stroke, and certain Mood Disorders and Cancers. Further, some illnesses can be improved with exercise, such as high blood pressure.

The ACSM and the AHA have created some very simple guidelines on exercising for health benefit:

Moderately intense cardio for 30 minutes 5 days per week

OR

Intense cardio 20 minutes for 3 days per week + strength training 2 times per week

This is pulled directly from their recommendations. You can also find a more comprehensive report with citations of studies supporting this here.

Sugar

Carbohydrates (in food terms) are long chains of sugar that are one of nature's most abundant forms of stored energy. Perhaps this is why all major civilizations emerged under the provision of their farming (wheat, rice, corn). Sugar is in almost all foods even if they don't taste sweet. White foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and pasta (and of course fries, chips, crackers, and cookies) are considered "bad" because they are refined and take little energy to digest. Eating these foods in moderation is recommended, especially if you spend most of your day in a chair. Also, whole forms of these foods such as brown rice, whole wheat bread, and whole wheat pasta will release their sugars slowly and keep you full, longer.

Click here to learn more!

Do an experiment! Place a piece of white bread in one cup of water and a piece of whole wheat bread in another and see what happens after a couple of hours... This will give you a visual understanding of what happens in your stomach.

Preventive Medicine

Just as with car maintenance, health maintenance is always cheaper and less painful than treatment. To know what to expect and what to change before anything bad happens is the aim of preventive medicine. When you visit a mechanic and they tell you that you have to change the oil or rotate the tires, it's because they know from experience that without doing those things, there is a chance your car may stop. In medicine, there are similar recommendations and the easiest ones to change are diet and lifestyle. We know that changes in what we eat and how we exercise can prevent health problems in the future because of major studies that have been done. One of the first such studies that has been conducted and still continues is the Framingham Heart Study. This study was started around the 1940s and has helped us to understand the effects of a number of poor habits on future health. You can learn more about the study from their website: http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/about/index.html. Other such studies have been done here and in other parts of the world.

To Healthiness

Welcome. The purpose of this blog is for me to share ways to live a healthier lifestyle. There is a lot of information out there and my hope is to highlight the information that is most supported with evidence. I hope this will motivate me to do more reading on the published studies on the topic and to share day-to-day changes that can be made to live a longer less morbid lifestyle.