The race against age
2010-12-04
(Press-News.org) Impairments to health and physical performance are not primarily a result of aging but of unfavorable lifestyle habits and lack of exercise. This is the position taken by Dieter Leyk and his coauthors in the new issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[46]: 809).
Sporty elderly people have a life expectancy that is almost 4 years higher and are often faster than younger athletes.
In their study, the sports scientists analyzed the stamina of more than 600 000 marathon and half marathon runners and asked participants about their lifestyle habits and their health. Marathon running is particularly suitable for studying because participants have to put in sufficient training hours for the competition, and the athletes accommodate this into their day accordingly.
Unfavorable characteristics such as obesity, smoking, and lack of physical activity are rarer in runners, and reductions in physical performance are more likely to be the result of biological aging processes. These reductions make their presence felt only after the 54th year of life and are but slight. More than 25% of 50- to 69-year-olds had taken up running only in the preceding 5 years and participated in a marathon nonetheless. Of note: older participants do not have to train any harder to maintain their fitness than their younger rivals.
INFORMATION:
Contact:
Leyk@dshs-koeln.de
http://www.aerzteblatt.de/v4/archiv/pdf.asp?id=79256
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-12-04
Scientists from The University of Manchester say a naturally occurring chemical found in soy could prove to be an effective new treatment for a fatal genetic disease that affects children.
Dr Brian Bigger, from the University's MPS Stem Cell Research Laboratory, found that genistein – derived from soya beans and licensed in the US as an osteoporosis drug – had a dramatic effect on mice suffering from the human childhood disease Sanfilippo.
"Sanfilippo is an untreatable mucopolysaccharide (MPS) disease affecting one in 89,000 children in the United Kingdom," said Dr ...
2010-12-04
Philadelphia, PA, 2 December 2010 - Many brain imaging studies have reported that tobacco smoking is associated with large-scale and wide-spread structural brain abnormalities.
The cerebral cortex is a specific area of the brain responsible for many important higher-order functions, including language, information processing, and memory. Reduced cortical thickness has been associated with normal aging, reduced intelligence, and impaired cognition.
However, prior research had not described the impact of smoking upon cortical thickness.
A new study, published in ...
2010-12-04
People who are deemed social misfits or "losers" aren't effective leaders, even if they are crusading for a cause that would benefit a larger group, according to new research from Rice University, the University of Texas and Universitat de Valencia.
The study's authors observed the contributions of 80 participants in a repeated public-goods game and found that players were more likely to mimic the actions of a leader they perceived as a high-status individual; they ignored leaders perceived as low-status and, when they had a chance, punished them for trying to lead. ...
2010-12-04
Tel Aviv ― Could the bacteria that we carry in our bodies decide who we marry? According to a new study from Tel Aviv University, the answer lies in the gut of a small fruit fly.
Prof. Eugene Rosenberg, Prof. Daniel Segel and doctoral student Gil Sharon of Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology recently demonstrated that the symbiotic bacteria inside a fruit fly greatly influence its choice of mates.
The research was done in cooperation with Prof. John Ringo of the University of Maine, and was recently published in the Proceedings ...
2010-12-04
A widely-used arthritis drug reduces the incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers – the most common cancers in humans – according to a study published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib (brand name Celebrex), which is currently approved for the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and acute pain in adults led to a 62 percent reduction in non-melanoma skin cancers, which includes basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas.
Celecoxib, a prescription-strength nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), ...
2010-12-04
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Quitting smoking is certainly healthy for the body, but doctors and scientists haven't been sure whether quitting makes people happier, especially since conventional wisdom says many smokers use cigarettes to ease anxiety and depression. In a new study, researchers tracked the symptoms of depression in people who were trying to quit and found that they were never happier than when they were being successful, for however long that was.
Based on their results, the authors of the article published online Nov. 24 in the journal Nicotine ...
2010-12-04
A prescribed set of hospital-wide patient-safety programs can lead to rapid improvements in the "culture of safety" even in a large, complex, academic medical center, according to a new study by safety experts at Johns Hopkins.
"It doesn't take decades or tons of money to get from a culture that says 'mistakes are inevitable' to a belief that harm is entirely preventable," says Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published online in the journal ...
2010-12-04
Expectant parents who completed a brief relationship-strengthening class around the time their child was born showed lasting effects on each family member's well being and on the family's overall relationships, according to a recent Penn State study.
The team, led by Mark Feinberg, senior research associate in Penn State's Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development, analyzed the effects of the Family Foundations program for three years after a child was born.
The Family Foundations program, offered in several Pennsylvania locations as part of ...
2010-12-04
Atopic dermatitis (also known as atopic eczema) is a chronic and extremely painful inflammation of the skin that frequently occurs in early childhood, generally already in infancy. Up to 20 percent of all children in industrialized countries are affected, making it one of the most common childhood skin diseases.
The need to better understand this disease is all the greater considering the intense suffering it causes in small children. Atopic dermatitis is, however, an allergic condition and all allergic reactions result from complex interactions of genetic and environmental ...
2010-12-04
Using a widely heralded Johns Hopkins checklist and other patient-safety tools, intensive care units across the state of Michigan reduced the rate of potentially lethal bloodstream infections to near zero.
Now, led by the same Johns Hopkins patient-safety expert who spearheaded the Michigan program, researchers in Rhode Island have shown the Michigan results weren't just a fluke.
The new study, published in the December issue of the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care, found that the rate of central-line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) fell by 74 ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] The race against age
