Category Archives: Health

Health

Does Weight Lifting Make a Better Athlete?

It seems that not everyone thinks so, and it may not help so much in certain sports like the marathon.

Several pithy quotes from the article:

And don’t worry about becoming too muscular, Dr. Kraemer said. “The
fear of getting really big is not plausible for most people,” he said.
Competitive distance runners and cyclists, who are naturally slender
and light, “don’t have the muscle fiber number to get really big,” Dr.
Kraemer said. “I can train them until the cows come home and they are
not going to have big muscles.”

The main problem with weight lifting is that many people do it all
wrong, said Kent Adams, the director of the exercise physiology
laboratory at California State University
at Monterey Bay. They don’t have a program or a goal. Technique may be
sloppy. Or, Dr. Adams said, they use weights that are too light.
Muscles need to be stressed if they are to respond, he said. Dr.
Kraemer is on the same page. One study, he said, found that women tend
to lift half or less of what they could lift. And this happened even
when women were working with personal trainers, he said. “There
is so much misinformation,” Dr. Kraemer said. “It’s a quagmire out
there.” He recommends trainers certified by the National Strength and
Conditioning Association, which also supplies educational information.
Dr. Kraemer is a past president of the organization.

Technorati Tags: ,

Health, Politics

Health Spending to Double by 2017

from webmd.com comes this article.
The headline really bugs me, because it’s such a misnomer. “Healthcare” and “health spending” is so untrue, it’s illness, or medical care, and spending.
Health spending would be on stuff like good, clean foods, exercise equipment, gym memberships, etc–stuff that keeps you healthy in other words, not spending on things to help us when we become unhealthy/sick.
I just wish that otherwise great sites, like webmd, would realize this, and stop using these euphemisms, so that people might realize that except for checkups, going to a doctor isn’t about health, but rather about sickness.

Health, Tech

Steroids for your brain?

Drugs to build up that mental muscle – Los Angeles Times
From the article:
“If there were drugs that actually made you smarter, good Lord, I have no doubt that their use would become epidemic,” Yesalis said. “Just think what it would do to anybody’s career in about any area. There are not too many occupations where it’s really good to be dumb.”
Could be the start of Timothy Leary’s “SMI²LE” (a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).).

Art, Health, Politics, Tech

Algae Power

Algae Balloons
A different approach to powering your home, than my previous nuclear battery one, over at Geoff Manaugh’sBLDGBLOG. Growing algae in balloons, in a way that makes it produce mucho H2. Some beautiful renderings of the project (it’s an urban design project in Iceland), and some commentary from Geoff about how depressing it is that we go to these lengths to, basically, just keep on doing what we’re already doing, instead of trying to change the fundamentals of our society.
Growing algae to produce power is an interesting concept, but really it’s useless without designing communities that use less energy. People just don’t seem to believe in frugality any more, and that’s what we need to return to.
And, no I’m not a hippy, preaching back to the land, and such, because, damnit, I love my tech, and my Schtufff, but with 6 billion people (is that right) on this planet, we really need to figure something out, don’t we?

Health

Lobes of Steel

Exercise helps regenerate neurons in the brain
You wanna be “better, stronger, faster”, smarter? Forget bionics–exercise for an hour a day and all that will happen for you, according to new studies.
According to the article neurogenesis is also aided by moderate alcohol consumption, marijuana, socializing, a lot fat-low suger diet; and chocolate (as well as blueberries, grapes, and black tea) helps aid in improving spacial memory.
Stress (as well as high fat, and sugar diet) is a big factor in deterioration of the ability to produce new neurons.

Health

Exercise May Boost ‘Good’ Cholesterol

Exercise May Boost ‘Good’ Cholesterol
We all know the aerobic exercise is good for the heart, and losing weight, and reducing cholesterol levels, but a new study (see the link above for more details) has concluded that it’s how long yiou exercise, and not the intensity, that boosts the HDL (good) cholesterol. Exercising for 2 hours a week in sessions longer than 1/2 hour, get you the HDL benefits.
No word on whether it’s just aerobics, or if medium intensity strength training sessions of over 1/2 hour will help also.
More here and here:

Only exercise duration, and not frequency or intensity, was associated with a change in HDL-C levels in the analysis. When the participants exercised for 23 to 74 minutes per session, each 10-minute increase in exercise duration corresponded to a 1.4-milligram per deciliter increase in HDL-C level. “This suggests that in improving blood HDL-C values, increasing time per session is better than performing multiple brief exercise sessions when total time for exercise is limited, as is the case for many people,” the authors write.