Clipmarks | dmegivern's 'exercise' clips

Social Workers' Stress

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:53:08 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Report Explores Social Worker Stress

Lack of Time and High Caseloads Top the List of Job Stressors

A new report from the NASW Center for Workforce Studies shows that social work professionals often face challenges or obstacles that may cause them to feel overwhelmed and stressed. The report, "Stress at Work: How Do Social Workers Cope?" is based on data from a recent NASW membership survey.

"Considering their experiences of insufficient time to complete day-to-day work tasks, heavy workloads, poor compensation, challenging and/or difficult clients, few resources, long work hours and unclear job expectations, it is not surprising that social workers experience work-related stress," the report states. "Under these less-than-optimal work conditions, social workers are often 'pushed to the limit' when trying to complete their job requirements."

Among all the social workers responding, exercise was the leading method for alleviating stress, followed by meditation and therapy.

Tags: stress, social_work

Hmm, Pothead Ph.D.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:49:53 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Pothead Ph.D.

I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana.

I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities.

I'm an insomniac who averages four to five hours of sleep a night. The best way to deal with a sleeping problem is with regular exercise. But it's nice to have a secret weapon to knock me out on days when I can't make it to the gym. I'm certainly better off than peers who have flirted with Xanax addictions, or who waste their stipends on genuinely worthless stuff like Ambien or Lunesta.

Of course I've often felt troubled, politically, by my marijuana use: Here I am in the comfort of my apartment while unfortunate people are incarcerated for selling it to me.

Tags: academia, marijuana

Making Your Workouts Work

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:31:28 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: sportsmedicine.about.com

Why Your Workouts Don't Work

How to Change Your Workout to Get the Results You Want

Did you know the average health club exerciser quits after just six months for one of the following reasons:

Not Enough Time
Not Seeing Results

Overestimating Your Exercise
Most exercisers are far too generous with estimates of exercise intensity and time, weight lifted and the frequency of their workouts. To avoid overestimating it's helpful to keep an exercise log and track these items. Additionally, many people mistakingly believe that if they exercise at a moderate pace for 30 minutes they have burned lots and lots of calories and fat. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. While exercise does burn calories over time and consistent exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off, it's hard to lose body fat through exercise alone. Which brings us to the next mistake. . .
Also See:
Why Short, High-Intensity Exercise Burns More Calories
How Much Exercise Does It Take?

Chocolate and Bone Density

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:16:11 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I think there is a hidden variable, like exercise, missing, but who knows?

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Eating chocolate could give you weaker bones

Eating lots of chocolate could lead to weaker bones and a greater chance of suffering a fracture, according to a study.

Women who ate chocolate every day were found to have less dense bones than women who ate it less than once a week, Australian scientists said.

The study comes less than a month after The Lancet journal warned against viewing chocolate as a health food because the antioxidants called flavanols are taken out because they taste bitter.

According to the new study, women who ate chocolate daily had an overall bone density 3.1 per cent lower than those who consumed it less than once a week.

Critics said the difference was extremely small, and it was likely healthy women ate a generally better diet and exercised more.

Exercise Keeps Cells Young

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:15:18 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Physical Activity Keeps Cells Young

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

A new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests individuals who are physically active during their leisure time appear to be biologically younger than those with sedentary lifestyles. Researchers discovered chromosomes in white blood cells were more robust among active individuals, a finding that helps explain the anti-aging effect of regular exercise.

Telomere length decreased with age, with an average loss of 21 nucleotides (structural units) per year. Men and women who were less physically active in their leisure time had shorter leukocyte telomeres than those who were more active.

Oxidative stress—damage caused to cells by exposure to oxygen—and inflammation are likely mechanisms by which sedentary lifestyles shorten telomeres, the authors suggest. In addition, perceived stress levels have been linked to telomere length. Physical activity may reduce psychological stress, thus mitigating its effect on telomeres and the aging process.

Tags: exercise

Start Getting Your Heart Pumping

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:02:59 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Exercise may boost brain's natural antidepressant

Studies have found that exercise can help ease depression symptoms, but the reasons for the benefit have not been clear. For the new study, scientists used a tool called a microarray to examine how exercise changed gene activity in the brains of mice.

The researchers found that mice that had a week's worth of workouts on a running wheel showed altered activity in a total of 33 genes, the majority of which had never been identified before.

In particular, exercise enhanced activity in the gene for a nerve growth factor known as VGF. Nerve growth factors are small proteins important in the development and maintenance of nerve cells.

Moreover, when the researchers infused a synthetic version of VGF into the brains of the mice, it produced a "robust antidepressant effect" in standardized tests of animals placed in stressful situations.

Tags: exercise

Exercise for Brain Waves Prevents Migraines

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:43:03 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Too bad about the cost. Gotta love the American health care system

Clip Source: www.nbc5.com

Brain Video Games Replaces Woman's Migraine Meds

Patient Exercises Mind To Stave Off Migraines

Sensors are attached to the scalp and read the brain waves in order to convert those into a video game on the screen. Then, people are able to play the video game using the brain waves.

Patients try to use a brain wave to move objects on the monitor, like a space ship. If a brain wave has an irregular pattern, so will the space ship. Patients then try to even out the brain wave while using their mind to move the ship back in place.

"It seems to give them some sort of stability so they don't have migraines or meltdowns or whatever it is they're having problems with," said Stokes.

Scientists don't know why it works, but Stokes said of the 30 patients she's treated, 70 percent have reduced or eliminated their medications.

Tags: migraine

Sleep, Food, Exercise, and Weight

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:23:06 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: There are more and more articles linking poor quality sleep with weight gain and vice versa.

Clip Source: www.healthday.com

High-Fat Diet Can Disrupt Body's Clock

Like a midnight raid on the fridge for junk food -- sleep often suffers, study says

TUESDAY, Nov. 6 (HealthDay News) -- There's more bad news about a high-fat diet -- it disrupts the body's 24-hour internal (circadian) clock, which regulates sleeping, waking, eating, as well as the daily rhythms of many metabolic functions, U.S. researchers say.

The team also found that a high-fat diet caused changes in genes that encode the circadian clock in the brain and in peripheral tissues (such as fat), resulting in reduced expression of these genes.

"The answer is, yes; alterations in feeding affect timing. We found that as an animal on a high-fat diet gains weight, it eats at the inappropriate time for its sleep/wake cycle -- all of the excess calories are consumed when the animal should be resting. For a human, that would be like raiding the refrigerator in the middle of the night and binging on junk food," Bass said.

Tags: sleep, weight, food, diet, exercise, health

Sleep Apnea and Metabolic Syndrome

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:10:10 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

the beneficial effect of a cytokine antagonist on EDS in obese, male apneics and that of exercise on SDB in a general random sample, supports the hypothesis that cytokines and insulin resistance are mediators of EDS and sleep apnea in humans. In conclusion, accumulating evidence provides support to our model of the bi-directional, feed forward, pernicious association between sleep apnea, sleepiness, inflammation, and insulin resistance, all promoting atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFalpha) were elevated in patients with disorders of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS)

a positive correlation between IL-6 or TNFalpha plasma levels and the body-mass-index (BMI). In subsequent studies, we showed that IL-6, TNFalpha, and insulin levels were elevated in sleep apnea independently of obesity and that visceral fat, was the primary parameter linked with sleep apnea.

Tags: sleep apnea, metabolic syndrome, pcos

Good Grief, Our American Diet is Deadly

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:52:33 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I've heard a lot of conservatives claim that poor people in the U.S. are obviously well-fed, because they are more likely to be overweight. This flies in the face of science suggesting that unhealthy and fattening foods are cheap and readily available, while healthy foods are hard to find in poor communities and they are expensive.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Immigrant children struggle with America's junk food

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Adrian McHargh grew up active and skinny in Kingston, Jamaica. An enthusiastic swimmer, he had the pristine waters of the Caribbean for a playground until two years ago, when he and his family moved to America.

In suburban Atlanta, things changed fast. The new foods were cheap, unhealthy and hard to resist: toaster waffles, corn dogs and the chocolate syrup Adrian liked so much he guzzled it straight from the bottle.

Within months, Adrian was in trouble. He'd packed on 30 pounds. Doctors said he had hypertension, high cholesterol and was at high risk for type 2 diabetes.

"We really would like to encourage immigrant families to continue the kinds of eating that they ate in their country of origin because our studies show that the longer they've been in this country the more likely that their children are going to get fat," Crawford says.

Tags: immigration, obesity, nutrition, diet, exercise, culture, u.s.

For Poor People, the Right to your Bloodline is All you Have

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:38:17 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Amnesty International explains its highly reasonable position on women's right to choose.

Clip Source: web.amnesty.org

Amnesty International defends access to abortion for women at risk

Amnesty International today firmly stood by the rights of women and girls to be free from threat, force or coercion as they exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.

"Amnesty International’s position is not for abortion as a right but for women’s human rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations," clarified Kate Gilmore.

Amnesty International encouraged the Catholic Church not to turn away from the suffering that women face because of sexual violence and urged the Catholic leadership to advocate tolerance and respect to freedom of expression for all human rights defenders, including Amnesty International, just as Amnesty International will continue to defend the freedom of religion.

Tags: abortion, rights, women, rape, amnesty