Thursday, June 30, 2011

How Health Care Costs Lower With Healthy Diet & Exercise


Overview  

With proper diet and regular exercise you can reduce the costs of health insurance premiums, the amount you spend on medicines and the number of co-pays for doctor visits. Doctors regularly prescribe specific exercise and diet regimens to combat diseases and conditions such as osteoporosis, high cholesterol and blood pressure, diabetes and stroke. You can work with your physician or a dietitian to find ways to lower your out-of-pocket medical costs and improve your long-term health.

Considerations

Health care costs include insurance premiums paid by individuals and employers, payments for medicines and co-pays for physician and hospital visits, including checkups, tests, surgeries and other treatments. Fewer insurance claims may lower your premiums. Fewer bouts of cold and flu, better blood cholesterol levels and lower blood pressure require you to buy less medicine. Less long-term abuse of your body, such as eating a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol and living a sedentary lifestyle, will result in fewer medical treatments and expenses.

Diet

A poor diet and lack of exercise can lead to metabolic syndrome, which is a combination of high blood pressure, blood fats and blood sugar. Approximately half of adults age 40 to 60 have metabolic syndrome, according to the website of the UCLA Health System. It leads to coronary heart disease and stroke, cancer and type 2 diabetes. You'll have higher out-of-pocket costs to treat these conditions, your health insurance premiums may rise if you get diabetes, and you may have to pay for a portion of surgeries, such as a coronary artery bypass.

Reducing your risk for disease by adding certain foods to your diet and eliminating excess saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium can reduce your need for doctor visits and medicines. Eating more dietary fiber and less cholesterol can reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke. Dietary fiber may also combat the onset of cancer. Adding more calcium to your diet can improve bone density and reduce the effects of osteoporosis. Eating fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as tuna and salmon, can improve cholesterol numbers. You can reduce hypertension by decreasing sodium in your diet. Adding iron-rich foods, such as black beans, spinach or red meat, decreases your risk of anemia.

Exercise

Exercise helps prevent and treat a number of health problems. For example, performing weight-bearing exercise improves bone density and reduces your risk for fractures. Regular aerobic exercise can increase your "good" cholesterol numbers, helping you reduce your risk for heart disease and decrease your need to purchase medicines like statins. 

American workers miss more than 100 million workdays each year because of lower back pain, according to the Wellness Council of America. Lower back pain often results from excess weight and the stress it places on the spine and back muscles. Exercising can decrease your weight and strengthen your lower back muscles and abdominal muscles, which help stabilize your back. 
Treatments for osteoporosis, high cholesterol and lower back pain increase your health care costs if you must pay some or all of the costs of doctor visits and medicines.

Diabetes Prevention

More than half of the diabetes cases caused by obesity are preventable with proper nutrition, according to Dr. David Heber, professor of medicine and director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. Just a 5 percent reduction in your weight can help you reduce your risk for diabetes, the treatment of which requires you to spend money on on insulin, testing equipment and doctor visits.

Wellness Programs

Many companies provide employee wellness programs to help workers stay healthy and decrease health care costs. This results in lower insurance premiums for employers, and less spending on drugs and treatments for employees. Wellness programs include adding a fitness center on company property, giving employees rebates for exercise equipment or gym memberships they purchase, offering nutrition lectures and serving healthy foods in the cafeteria.
References
Sam Ellyn

About this Author

Sam Ellyn has been writing since 1983 for national and regional sports, fitness, business and parenting magazines. He writes and lectures on fitness, nutrition, sports, business, cooking, beauty and home and garden, and works in magazine consulting and association management. He worked in commercial kitchens for more than 20 years, and holds two journalism degrees.


Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/302080-how-health-care-costs-lower-with-healthy-diet-exercise/#ixzz1QlMJ1hDL

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What's the Single Best Exercise?

What’s the Single Best Exercise?

Jonathan De Villiers for The New York Time
ENERGY WELL SPENT In METs (metabolic equivalent to task), a measure of energy exerted for a given activity.
So is the butterfly the best singleexercise that there is? Well, no. The butterfly “would probably get my vote for the worst” exercise, said Greg Whyte, a professor of sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University in England and a past Olympian in the modern pentathlon, known for his swimming. The butterfly, he said, is “miserable, isolating, painful.” It requires a coach, a pool and ideally supplemental weight and flexibility training to reduce the high risk of injury.
Ask a dozen physiologists which exercise is best, and you’ll get a dozen wildly divergent replies. “Trying to choose” a single best exercise is “like trying to condense the entire field” of exercise science, said Martin Gibala, the chairman of the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
But when pressed, he suggested one of the foundations of old-fashioned calisthenics: the burpee, in which you drop to the ground, kick your feet out behind you, pull your feet back in and leap up as high as you can. “It builds muscles. It builds endurance.” He paused. “But it’s hard to imagine most people enjoying” an all-burpees program, “or sticking with it for long.”
And sticking with an exercise is key, even if you don’t spend a lot of time working out. The health benefits of activity follow a breathtakingly steep curve. “The majority of the mortality-related benefits” from exercising are due to the first 30 minutes of exercise, said Timothy Church, M.D., who holds the John S. McIlhenny endowed chair in health wisdom at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. A recent meta-analysis of studies about exercise and mortality showed that, in general, a sedentary person’s risk of dying prematurely from any cause plummeted by nearly 20 percent if he or she began brisk walking (or the equivalent) for 30 minutes five times a week. If he or she tripled that amount, for instance, to 90 minutes of exercise four or five times a week, his or her risk of premature death dropped by only another 4 percent. So the one indisputable aspect of the single best exercise is that it be sustainable. From there, though, the debate grows heated.
“I personally think that brisk walking is far and away the single best exercise,” said Michael Joyner, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a leading researcher in the field of endurance exercise.
As proof, he points to the work of Hiroshi Nose, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of sports medical sciences at Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan, who has enrolled thousands of older Japanese citizens in an innovative, five-month-long program of brisk, interval-style walking (three minutes of fast walking, followed by three minutes of slower walking, repeated 10 times). The results have been striking. “Physical fitness — maximal aerobic power and thigh muscle strength — increased by about 20 percent,” Dr. Nose wrote in an e-mail, “which is sure to make you feel about 10 years younger than before training.” The walkers’ “symptoms of lifestyle-related diseases (hypertension, hyperglycemia and obesity) decreased by about 20 percent,” he added, while their depression scores dropped by half.
Walking has also been shown by other researchers to aid materially in weight control. A 15-year study found that middle-aged women who walked for at least an hour a day maintained their weight over the decades. Those who didn’t gained weight. In addition, a recent seminal study found that when older people started a regular program of brisk walking, the volume of their hippocampus, a portion of the brain involved in memory, increased significantly.
But let’s face it, walking holds little appeal — or physiological benefit — for anyone who already exercises. “I nominate the squat,” said Stuart Phillips, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and an expert on the effects of resistance training on the human body. The squat “activates the body’s biggest muscles, those in the buttocks, back and legs.” It’s simple. “Just fold your arms across your chest,” he said, “bend your knees and lower your trunk until your thighs are about parallel with the floor. Do that 25 times. It’s a very potent exercise.” Use a barbell once the body-weight squats grow easy.
The squat, and weight training in general, are particularly good at combating sarcopenia, he said, or the inevitable and debilitating loss of muscle mass that accompanies advancing age. “Each of us is experiencing sarcopenia right this minute,” he said. “We just don’t realize it.” Endurance exercise, he added, unlike resistance training, does little to slow the condition.
Page 2 continued next week!

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity

You know exercise is good for you — but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to improving your sex life, find out how exercise can improve your life.

By Mayo Clinic staff
The merits of regular physical activity — from preventing chronic health conditions to promoting weight loss and better sleep — are hard to ignore. And the benefits are yours for the taking, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. Need more convincing? Check out seven specific ways exercise can improve your life.

1. Exercise improves your mood.

Need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A workout at the gym or a brisk 30-minute walk can help you calm down.
Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. You'll also look better and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Regular physical activity can even help prevent depression.

2. Exercise combats chronic diseases.

Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent osteoporosis? Physical activity might be the ticket.
Regular physical activity can help you prevent — or manage — high blood pressure. Your cholesterol will benefit, too. Regular physical activity boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol while decreasing triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly by lowering the buildup of plaques in your arteries.
And there's more. Regular physical activity can help you prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer.

3. Exercise helps you manage your weight.

Want to drop those excess pounds? Trade some couch time for walking or other physical activities.
This one's a no-brainer. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn — and the easier it is to keep your weight under control. You don't even need to set aside major chunks of time for working out. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk during your lunch break. Do jumping jacks during commercials. Better yet, turn off the TV and take a brisk walk. Dedicated workouts are great, but physical activity you accumulate throughout the day helps you burn calories, too.

4. Exercise boosts your energy level.

Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Don't throw in the towel. Regular physical activity can leave you breathing easier.
Physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular physical activity helps your entire cardiovascular system — the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently. Big deal? You bet! When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you'll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep.

Struggling to fall asleep? Or stay asleep? It might help to boost your physical activity during the day.
A good night's sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. And you guessed it — physical activity is sometimes the key to better sleep. Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. There's a caveat, however. If you exercise too close to bedtime, you may be too energized to fall asleep. If you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to exercise earlier in the day.

6. Exercise can put the spark back into your sex life.

Are you too tired to have sex? Or feeling too out of shape to enjoy physical intimacy? Physical activity to the rescue.
Regular physical activity can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which may have a positive effect on your sex life. But there's more to it than that. Regular physical activity can lead to enhanced arousal for women, and men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don't exercise — especially as they get older.

7. Exercise can be — gasp — fun!

Wondering what to do on a Saturday afternoon? Looking for an activity that suits the entire family? Get physical!
Physical activity doesn't have to be drudgery. Take a ballroom dancing class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Push your kids on the swings or climb with them on the jungle gym. Plan a neighborhood kickball or touch football game. Find a physical activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you're moving, it counts!
Are you convinced? Good. Start reaping the benefits of regular physical activity today!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Critters for the Cure! Until we Lick Cancer!

I'll be doing the race tomorrow morning! Wish me luck! It's been really hot but hopefully it will cool off for tomorrow race! This is for Susan and Liz! Let's Lick Cancer!