Sports « Weekly Gravy

There’s good news for folks who struggle to fit regular exercise into their busy workweek. “Weekend warrior” workouts are just as beneficial as daily exercise to a person’s overall health, a new study says. People who get all their weekly recommended exercise in one or two days are about as healthy as those who spread their workouts more evenly throughout the week, researchers reported Sept. 26 in the journal Circulation. Both groups had a similarly lower risk of developing more than 200 possible diseases across 16 categories, ranging from heart and digestive conditions to mental health and brain illnesses, researchers found. “Because there appears to be similar benefits for weekend warrior versus regular activity, it may be the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist with the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias. Guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week, researchers said in background notes. But how a person gets those minutes each week has remained an open question. Is it better to perform 20 to 30 minutes of exercise daily, or can a person pack all that physical activity into a couple of days and go longer between workouts? For this study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 90,000 participants in the UK Biobank, an ongoing health… read on > read on >

One in three former NFL players believe they have football-related brain damage that’s doing untold harm to their lives, a new study finds. Unfortunately, their fears might be harming their mental health on top of whatever risks they face from head injuries sustained during their careers, researchers report. About one-third of nearly 2,000 retired NFL players believe they have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain condition linked to repeated head trauma, researchers reported Sept. 23 in the journal JAMA Neurology. Players who suspect they have CTE reported significantly more problems with brain function, low testosterone, depression and chronic pain than those who don’t think they have the condition, researchers found. In addition, about 25% of players who believe they have CTE also reported suicidal thoughts or behaviors, compared with about 5% of those who don’t think they have CTE, results showed. NFL retirees who believe they have CTE are twice as likely to report frequent thoughts of suicide, even after accounting for symptoms of depression, researchers said. These symptoms are potentially related to the dread faced by NFL retirees who are certain they have CTE and expect a long and excruciating decline in their mental function, researchers said. Incurable brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease also have been associated with elevated suicide rates. “As complex human beings, our beliefs can exert a… read on > read on >

Heavy-duty endurance exercise can cause body fat levels to drop without any accompanying weight loss, a new small-scale study indicates. A group of eleven middle-aged men who cycled 710 miles in seven days lost only about 1% of their total weight, because they ate and drank enough to offset the calorie burn. But they lost over 9% of their overall body fat, including a nearly 15% reduction in levels of dangerous visceral fat crowding their vital organs. The cyclists also experienced a more than 20% reduction in total cholesterol and a nearly 40% reduction in triglyceride levels, as well as a substantial reductions in blood pressure. The results “support the importance of promoting a physically active lifestyle rather than caloric restriction in obesity prevention,” concluded the research team led by co-senior author Jean-Pierre Despres, a professor of kinesiology with University Laval in France. In other words, the study “provides evidence that humans were designed to be physically active rather than eat as little as possible,” researchers wrote. For the study, researchers recruited 11 recreational male cyclists ages 50 to 66 who could maintain an average pace of nearly 19 miles per hour over long distances. The men all hailed from the Quebec City metropolitan area in Canada. During seven consecutive days, the cyclists were sent once or twice on a 64-mile road loop on the… read on > read on >

Millions of women struggle with the discomfort and stress of urinary incontinence, and many turn to medications for help. Now, new research suggests that yoga and other exercise regimens might work just as well to control these bladder issues. Researchers at Stanford University report that 12 weeks of yoga practice cut incontinence episodes among participants by an average of 65% — about the equivalent of taking a drug. “I would say that I think it’s a great idea to try it if you’re interested,” said study senior author Dr. Leslee Subak, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford Medicine. “It’s very low risk, and there’s potential for benefit, not only for incontinence but also for your general well-being.” Her team published their findings recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine. According to the researchers, half of middle-aged women, and up to 80% of women aged 80, experience urinary incontinence. “It takes away independence,” Subak said in a university news release. “My patients will say, ‘I can’t stay with my kids or grandkids because I’m afraid I’ll wet the bed, and I can’t talk about it; it’s too embarrassing.’” It can even prove dangerous. “Incontinence and overactive bladder are among the biggest risk factors for falls and fractures among older women,” Subak noted. “You’re rushing to the bathroom at night — with the lights off —… read on > read on >

Exercise, whether moderate- or high-intensity, can help ease Parkinson’s symptoms, including fatigue, new research shows. As study lead author Dr. Philip Millar explained, Parkinson’s patients are too often overwhelmed by shame or depression, so they stop going to the gym or exercising. That’s too bad, Millar said, because “if you stop physical activity, your body adapts and you lose physical function.” Just how beneficial can exercise be for patients? To find out, Millar’s team at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, had three groups of 10 people in various stages of Parkinson’s disease. Each group exercised three times per week at the gym, for a period of 10 weeks. The male and female participants ranged in age from 45 to 79, and they engaged in one of two modes of exercise training, moderate intensity or high intensity. Millar’s team tracked various physiological metrics — the person’s “maximal oxygen consumption,” their level of fatigue or vulnerability to fatigue, gait, balance and motor symptoms. “Prior work found that high-intensity interval training may improve how far someone with Parkinson’s can walk, but this could be due to becoming more stable or confident in their gait,” said Millar, who is an associate professor of human health and nutritional science at Guelph. “It might have had nothing to do with cardiorespiratory fitness and the impact on motor symptoms was… read on > read on >

Hopping backward is a good test to see if someone’s ACL surgery has gone well, a new study says. That backward hop is an effective way of measuring the strength of a patient’s knee function, as well as the strength of their quadriceps, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Sport and Health Science. And all it takes is a tape measure. “The goal is to help practitioners have an easy way to measure where people are after an ACL injury and during recovery,” said lead researcher Yu Song, an assistant professor of health, sport & exercise sciences at the University of Kansas. About 120,000 anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries occur each year in the United States, researchers said in background notes. This ligament helps keep the knee stable, but it can be torn through heavy bending or twisting. About one-third of young, active people re-injure their ACL after returning to play following knee surgery, researchers noted. In fact, ACL re-injuries are 15 times more common than initial ACL tears. As a result, it’s crucial to make sure someone is fully recovered before clearing them for exercise and competition, researchers said. Hopping forward is currently a common means of measuring recovery from knee surgery, but “studies reported that the forward hopping distance masked the real knee recovery status,” Song said in a university news release.… read on > read on >

Newfangled designs intended to make football helmets more protective have overlooked one key component, a new study suggests. Nearly a third of concussions in pro football involve impacts to the facemask, a part of the helmet that has remained mostly unchanged during the past decade, researchers say. Facemask enhancements could help protect players and minimize injury risk, the study concluded. These findings “suggest that facemask redesign should be the focus of future innovation that can continue to improve the safety of football players at all skill levels,” said lead researcher Kristy Arbogast, scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention and co-director of the Minds Matter Concussion Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. For the study, researchers used mouthpieces fitted with motion sensors to track head impacts that NFL players sustained during games. Nearly 100 players wore the mouthpieces during NFL seasons running from 2019 through 2022, and data was captured on more than 5,100 blows to the head that occurred during play. Facemask impacts represented nearly 60% of the most severe head blows during play. Impacts to the facemask were most common among linemen (66%), followed by hybrid players (56%) and speed players (46%). “The sophisticated and specific data collection from sensor technologies like instrumented mouthguards are providing a deeper understanding about the nature of impacts players experience on the field,”… read on > read on >

Fear of a having a low blood sugar crash dissuades many people with type 1 diabetes from getting the exercise they need, a new study finds. However, people were more likely to engage in exercise if their doctor discussed how to manage their diabetes while working out, researchers reported Thursday at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting in Madrid. “In order to break down the barriers to physical activity and empower our patients to exercise safely and effectively, we need to improve the education we provide and our dialogue about exercise in clinics,” said lead researcher Catriona Farrell, a clinical senior lecturer in diabetes with the University of Dundee in Scotland. “In turn, this should help them to achieve the multitude of health benefits that exercise offers.” Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the pancreas, severely damaging or destroying its ability to make insulin. As a result, people must constantly monitor their blood sugar levels and take insulin daily. People with type 1 diabetes can receive a multitude of health benefits from regular exercise, Farrell said. “Regular exercise can help individuals with diabetes to achieve their blood glucose goals, improve their body composition and fitness, as well as reduce their risk of heart attacks and strokes, which is higher in people with type 1… read on > read on >

Annoyed that you still have a bit of tummy even though you work out all the time? Exercise actually is helping you develop healthier belly fat tissue, a new study says. That means that even if you don’t obtain six-pack abs, exercise is good for your long-term health, researchers said. “Our findings indicate that in addition to being a means to expend calories, exercising regularly for several months to years seems to modify your fat tissue in ways that allows you to store your body fat more healthfully if or when you do experience some weight gain — as nearly everyone does as we get older,” said researcher Jeffrey Horowitz, a professor of movement science at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. For the study, researchers compared two groups of people with obesity. One group of 16 people said they’d exercised at least four times a week for at least two years, while another group of 16 said they’d never regularly exercised. Samples were taken from belly fat tissue just under the skin, which is considered the healthiest place for the body to store fat. Fat stored under the skin is less likely to cause health problems compared to fat accumulating around or inside organs, researchers said. People who regularly exercised had distinct differences in their fat tissue that increased their capacity to store… read on > read on >

In exercise bike tests, twentysomethings who’d been vaping for at least two years had much lower exercise capacity than those who didn’t, and the losses were equal to those of folks who’d spent a similar amount of time smoking. The vaping young adults “found it harder to breath, their muscles became more fatigued, and they were less fit overall,” said study lead author Dr. Azmy Faisal of Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. “In this regard, our research indicated that vaping is no better than smoking,” said Faisal, who presented the findings Sunday in Madrid at the annual meeting of the European Respiratory Society (ERS). According to Faisal, it’s long been known that the use of e-cigarettes “is linked to lung inflammation and damage, and harmful changes to the blood vessels.” But for young smokers, could a switch to vaping still be healthier? In an ERS news release, he said the jury is still out on that. “We don’t yet know what longer-term vaping use does to our bodies,” he explained. To help find out, the Manchester team recruited 60 people in their 20s, all of whom appeared to have normal lung function based on standard tests. Twenty neither vaped nor smoked, 20 had vaped for at least two years and 20 had smoked for at least 2 years. Each participant was subjected to exercise… read on > read on >