Olympic athletes aren’t like the rest of the population — but this time it’s in a far less positive way. Two new studies show that athletes who performed at the top of their sport have a higher risk of developing arthritis and joint pain in later life. The linked studies found that 1 in 4 former Olympians dealt with these issues. Those who’d been injured during their sporting career had a higher chance of knee and hip osteoarthritis when compared with the general population. These athletes also had an increased risk of lower back pain overall. “High performance sport is associated with an increased risk of sport-related injury and there is emerging evidence suggesting retired elite athletes have high rates of post-traumatic osteoarthritis,” said lead author Debbie Palmer, from the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education and Sport in Scotland. “This study provides new evidence for specific factors associated with pain and osteoarthritis in retired elite athletes across the knee, hip, ankle, lumbar and cervical spine, and shoulder, and identifies differences in their occurrence that are specific to Olympians,” Palmer said in a university news release. The international research included almost 3,400 retired Olympians, averaging about 45 years of age, who’d participated in a total of 57 different sports. Researchers asked about the health of their bones, joints, muscles and spine, as well…  read on >  read on >

Regular exercise has long been hailed as a great way to preserve heart health, but could a morning workout deliver more benefits than an evening visit to the gym? New research suggests that for women in their 40s and up, the answer appears to be yes. “First of all, I would like to stress that being physically active or doing some sort of exercise is beneficial at any time of day,” noted study author Gali Albalak, a doctoral candidate in the department of internal medicine at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. Indeed, most public health guidelines ignore the role of timing altogether, Albalak said, choosing to focus mostly on “exactly how often, for how long and at what intensity we should be active” to gain the most heart health benefits. But Albalak’s research focused on the ins and outs of the 24-hour wake-sleep cycle — what scientists refer to as circadian rhythm. She wanted to know whether there might be “a possible additional health benefit to physical activity” based on when people choose to exercise. To find out, she and her colleagues turned to data previously collected by the UK Biobank that tracked physical activity patterns and heart health status among nearly 87,000 men and women. Participants ranged in age from 42 to 78, and nearly 60% were women. All were healthy when…  read on >  read on >

Breast cancer survivors may be able to extend their lives, just by taking a brisk walk every day, a new study suggests. The value of regular exercise — including the oft-cited daily walk — is well known. One of the potential health benefits is a lower risk of developing breast cancer. But it has not been clear whether regular physical activity can help people who’ve already had breast cancer live longer. The new findings, published Nov. 17 in JAMA Network Open, suggest it can. Researchers found that among more than 300 women who survived early-stage breast cancer, those who were moderately active were 60% less likely to die during the study period than those who were more sedentary. In fact, those moderate exercisers had the same survival advantage as breast cancer survivors who exercised more vigorously. That’s “good news,” said senior researcher Reina Haque, since it suggests that intense workouts are not necessary. Moderate exercise has a host of health benefits, including helping control blood pressure, blood sugar and body weight, said Haque, a senior cancer epidemiologist with Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena. And the new findings, she said, suggest that women can reap those benefits after breast cancer, too. Breast cancer is highly treatable, especially when caught early. Among women diagnosed when the cancer is confined to the breast, 99% are still alive…  read on >  read on >

Something — or rather, someone — may be standing between moms and a regular exercise routine: their children. New research from the universities of Cambridge and Southampton in the United Kingdom suggests that fewer than half of mothers met recommended activity levels, a number that was even lower when the children were younger or there was more than one. “It is perhaps not unexpected that mothers who have young children or several children engage in less intense physical activity, but this is the first study that has quantified the significance of this reduction,” said study author Keith Godfrey. He is a professor of epidemiology and human development at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre at Southampton. “More needs to be done by local government planners and leisure facility providers to support mothers in engaging in physical activity,” Godfrey said in a university news release. For the study, the team analyzed data from 848 women who participated in the U.K. Southampton Women’s Survey. The women were aged 20 to 34, and were recruited between 1998 and 2002. The researchers followed up with them over the years. The study found that women with school-aged children did an average of about 26 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily. For mothers with children aged 4 and younger, that was an average of 18 minutes per day. Having…  read on >  read on >

Extracurricular activities may have many benefits for young children, but researchers have discovered racial gaps in who takes part. Among a group of 401 kindergarten students in Ohio, white children were 2.6 times more likely to participate in the most common extracurricular sports than children of other races and ethnicities. The study found similar results for other after-school activities in this age group. “If racial-ethnic minority students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t have access to extracurricular activities at a young age, they may miss opportunities that could help them succeed in school,” researcher Elise Allen said in an Ohio State University news release. She’s a graduate student in educational studies at the university. Other determining factors were family income and mothers’ education. The researchers found that 47% of children whose mothers had a high school equivalent or less education participated in athletics, while 96% of those whose mothers had a graduate or professional degree did. The study was part of a larger project examining children’s learning, achievement and social development in students in pre-k classrooms through third grade. The project is called Early Learning Ohio. While existing research on the benefits of extracurricular activities tends to focus on adolescents, “given the documented benefits for adolescents, we thought it was crucial to examine who is participating at earlier ages and what benefits they might receive,”…  read on >  read on >