If you haven’t yet heard, recent studies have shown that women can reduce their risk of developing breast cancer by adopting a healthy lifestyle. Breast cancer is one of the cancers that has a strong genetic link, so for those who might be at a greater risk of developing it later in life, this is big news, as anything you can do to reduce your risk is obviously important.
According to Xanth Kleinig from The Daily Telegraph, “A major review of research by the World Cancer Research Fund blamed alcohol, lack …

In this study the investigators tried to assess which characteristics are related to the risk of being hospitalised in “older adults”. It has been established that as people get older they lose strength, but it is unclear whether having less muscle tissue necessarily means you are weaker per se, and it has also previously been unclear whether there are better ways to assess whether someone is at risk of being hospitalised. This study has answered those questions.
The goal of this study was to look at the link between “strength, function, …

We’ve previously looked at the effects of exercise on reducing the risk of falls in the elderly (HYPERLINK), following on from that I’d like to look at a couple of studies that examine the role of weight/resistance training on improving the physical function of “older adults” and then a study which has shown that having good physical function will reduce the risk of an “older adult” being hospitalised (HYPERLINK).
First up, the article on the benefits of resistance training. This was a Cochrane Review (http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002759.html), and for those who don’t know …

Hate to say I  told you so, but really, we’re starting to get some pretty compelling evidence on the benefits of exercise. Check this out: A new study, published online July 28, 2009 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, has found that “men who exercised for at least 30 minutes a day at moderate to high intensity halved their risk of dying prematurely from cancer, mainly gastrointestinal and lung cancer.”
In the study, 2560 men were followed for a year to see what sort of exercise they did, and they were …

A lot of times when people develop a new pain they are unsure about what to do and are worried they might make it worse. It’s common for people to either use ice or heat on an injury to try to obtain some pain relief, but aren’t necessarily sure which one suits their condition best. Here are the guidelines I usually follow:
If it’s a new (acute) injury (first 48-72 hours), you would be more likely to use ice. Ice will help decrease pain and inflammation whereas heat can increase it. …

Regular moderate physical activity positively influences many aspects of health. For example, a physically active lifestyle is associated with decreased risks of coronary heart disease and high blood pressure.
It has been believed for some time that a physically active lifestyle may also decrease the risk of bacterial or viral illness.
Previous studies had shown that people who were sedentary and under high levels of stress had elevated disease incidence.
Researchers hypothesised that voluntary physical activity may prevent stress-induced suppression of the immune system, thereby reducing the increased susceptibility and severity of infectious …

Now, this wasn’t the best designed study ever, for starters they only had 20 subjects, so it is hard for us to read too much into it. But the results do show a trend that is worth acknowledging. And the idea that we can minimise the risk of knee injury when running is worth investigating.
In this study they did a variety of tests, such as weights, height, strength, flexibility, and joint angle measurements, as well as questionnaires on running habits on runners to see which, if any, of these was …

Falling is a very common cause of severe injury and even death in older people. A 2010 study estimated that 30% of adults older than 65 will experience a fall each year and even minor falls can have serious consequences; “elderly patients are 3 times as likely to die following a ground-level fall”. This can be something as simple as slipping on a wet tile floor. From 1993-2005 the rate of fatal falls increased by 55% so the risk of falling is certainly something that should be addressed.
A 2008 study reviewed …

Now, if you know me, you would know that I would have jumped at the chance to review an article like this, particularly when the findings were so positive. I must sound like a broken record at work giving out advice to do some warming up prior to exercising, and this kind of validation is so sweet.
A warm-up program was developed and taught to 1055 teenage soccer playing girls. The warm-up consisted of 8 minutes of slow jogging, stretching, and some strength and balance exercises, then 2 minutes of faster …

In my last post I wrote about how much better off you are getting treatment for low back pain rather than just waiting for it to get better, and in this post I’m going to follow on from that by discussing the results of a study which has found that you are better off staying active than resting.
Now, it may not seem terribly important, I mean, how bad could a couple of days on the couch be? Well, here are the stats: “more than three quarters of individuals will have …