Maintaining a high functional aerobic class appears to be associated with low mortality in all age groups. ...
Fudi Wang, M.D., Ph.D.
Qiushi Chair Professor
Nutrition Discovery Innovation Center
School of Public Health/School of Medicine
Zhejiang University
Hangzhou China
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Parkinson disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease affecting approximately 10 million people around the world. To date, the cause of PD remains poorly understood. It is reported that 90% PD cases have no identifiable genetic cause. What’s worse, few therapeutic advances for the treatment of PD have been made in the past decades. Nevertheless, growing prospective longitudinal studies shed lights on the potential beneficial effect of lifestyle factors on reducing the risk of developing Parkinson disease. In this study, we performed a a dose-response meta-analysis of more than half a million participants.
We found that physical activity, particularly moderate to vigorous physical activity, could significantly reduce PD risk.
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Matthieu Boisgontier PhD
Movement Control & Neuroplasticity Research Group
KU Leuven
Brain Behaviour Laboratory
University of British Columbia, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: For decades, society has encouraged people to be more physically active. Yet, despite gradually scaling up actions promoting physical activity across the years, we are actually becoming less active. From 2010 to 2016, the number of inactive adults has increased by 5% worldwide, now affecting more than 1 in 4 adults (1.4 billion people). This context raised the question: Why do we still fail to be more physically active?
Our hypothesis was that this failure is explained by an “exercise paradox” in which conscious and automatic processes in the brain come into conflict. To illustrate this paradox, you can think of people taking the elevator or escalator when they go to the gym, which does not make sense. This non-sense, this paradox, could be due to the fact that their intention to exercise come into conflict with an automatic attraction to resting in the elevator.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Craig Pulling. MSc, PGCE, BA (Hons), FHEA
Head of Physical Education
University of Chichester
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Successful perceptual-cognitive skill in team-sports such as football requires players to pick up task-relevant information during the control of action in complex and dynamic situations. It has been proposed that players could perform visual exploratory activity (VEA) to be able to recognise important cues in the playing environment. VEA is defined as:
“A body and/or head movement in which the player’s face is actively and temporarily directed away from the ball, seemingly with the intention of looking for teammates, opponents or other environmental objects or events, relevant to perform a subsequent action with the ball” (Jordet, 2005, p.143).
Research has suggested that VEA is an important facet of skilled performance in youth and adult football. However, it is currently unknown whether such evidence is commensurate with the views of coaches and whether coaching practices are utilised to develop VEA in training.
In order to further current understanding on VEA and coaching practices, the present study developed an online survey to examine:
(i) when VEA should be introduced in coaching;
(ii) how VEA is delivered by coaches and
(iii) how coaches evaluate VEA.
Further, this study aimed to explore whether distinct groups of football coaches existed who differed in their approach to the delivery of VEA training and, if so, whether there were differences in the demographics of the coaches across these differentiated groups.
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Mr. Brett R. Gordon, M.Sc.
Postgraduate researcher
Physical Education and Sport Sciences Department
University of Limerick, Ireland.
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Depression is prevalent, burdensome, and often comorbid mood disorder that is associated with other poor health outcomes. Exercise training interventions have demonstrated comparable efficacy for depressive symptoms to frontline treatments, such as antidepressant medications and behavioral therapies.
However, the evidence to date has primarily focused on findings from studies of aerobic exercise training like jogging, running, and cycling. Our work is the first quantitative summary of the effects of resistance exercise training (RET), or weight lifting and strength training, on depressive symptoms, and the influence of variables like participant characteristics, features of the RET, and the methods that were used in studies on the antidepressant effects of RET.
The main finding was that resistance exercise training significantly reduced depressive symptoms among adults regardless of their health status, the total prescribed volume of RET (e.g., how much the participants were supposed to exercise), or whether or not strength was significantly improved by the RET intervention. (more…)
Chenchen Wang MD, MSc
Professor of Medicine
Tufts University School of Medicine
Director, Center For Complementary And Integrative Medicine
Division of Rheumatology
Tufts Medical Center Boston, MA 02111
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Patients with chronic widespread pain often try many different types of pain medications, anti-depressants, physical therapy, and other approaches, and commonly find that none of these therapies work for them. Finding safe, effective approaches for pain management is an urgent priority. Previous evidence suggested that Tai Chi, a multi-dimensional mind-body practice that integrates physical, psychosocial, and behavioral elements, may be especially suited to address both chronic pain and associated psychological and somatic symptoms. In our most recent study published in the BMJ, we directly compared the effectiveness of Tai Chi versus aerobic exercise, which is a standard care non-drug treatment for fibromyalgia. (more…)
Jennifer L. Kuk, PhD
Associate Professor
York University
School of Kinesiology and Health Science
Sherman Health Science Research Centre
Toronto, Ontario
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
- The benefits of fitness are well know, but it was unclear whether the benefits applied to those with severe obesity. This is even more important give that the health risks associated with severe obesity are exponentially higher than in mild obesity. Fitness in this study was defined as the top 80% of a normal population.This means that unfit is the bottom 20%. In the past, research has shown that this threshold of fitness is associated with the biggest health benefits.
- We see that 40% of individuals with mild obesity are fit, while 11% of those with severe obesity are fit. Individuals with high fitness had no differences in health risk, despite the large differences in obesity (~50-100 pounds). Conversely, those within the unfit group did have significantly higher glucose, blood pressure and lipids with higher obesity levels.
In other words, fitness was able to protect individuals with severe obesity from many of the expected negative health consequences. (more…)MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Richard Stephens Senior Lecturer in Psychology BSc Psychology Programme Director Keele University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?...
Dr. Brett D Owens, MD
Dr. Owens is currently Team Physician for the US Lacrosse National Men’s Team, and
Team Physician for Brown University
Professor at Uniformed Services University and Professor at Brown University
Alpert School of Medicine
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This study is a review of the literature on ski and snowboarding injuries. We summarize findings by our group and others on the injuries seen with these snow sports and report an overall increase in injuries as participation continues to increase.
Snowboarders have a higher injury rate and there are different injury patterns with skiers experiencing more lower extremity injuries (knee) and snowboarders experiencing more upper extremity injuries (wrist, shoulder, etc.). (more…)
Dr Mayur Ranchordas, SFHEA
Senior Lecturer in Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism
Sport Nutrition Consultant
Chair of the Sport and Exercise Research Ethics Group
Sheffield Hallam University
Academy of Sport and Physical Activity
Faculty of Health and Wellbeing
Sheffield
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: People engaging in intense exercise often take antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin C and/or E or antioxidant-enriched foods, before and after exercise in the anticipation that these will help reduce muscle soreness. In a new review published in the Cochrane Library we looked at the evidence from 50 studies. These all compared high-dose antioxidant supplementation with a placebo and their participants all engaged in strenuous exercise that was sufficient to cause muscle soreness. Of the 1089 participants included in the review, nearly nine out of ten of these were male and most participants were recreationally active or moderately trained.
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