Posts Tagged ‘Exercise’

INCREASE YOUR VITALITY BY SPENDING 20 MINUTES A DAY IN NATURE INSTEAD OF DRINKING COFFEE OR COLA

Monday, June 7th, 2010

These days when lawyers need re-charging they reach for a coffee or a cola drink.  I would not recommend cola.  Although they are both sources of caffeine, regular cola and diet cola both prompt insulin release and when you drink enough of them you’re at risk of insulin resistance and Type II diabetes. Coffee tastes good and has been shown to reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The downside is that regular drinkers of coffee (and I’m one of them) become addicted to caffeine.

An article published on June 2, 2010 by Peter Rogers and colleagues at Bristol University in Neuropsychopharmacology showed that regular coffee drinkers will get anxiety, fatigue and headaches when they go too long without coffee. The study also showed that coffee reduces their withdrawal symptoms and brings them back to feeling normal, but it does not enhance their alertness.

The study involved 379 people who abstained from drinking coffee for 16 hours. Two groups (non/low caffeine drinkers and medium/high caffeine drinkers) were given either coffee or a placebo drink. The medium/high caffeine drinkers who got a placebo reported feeling tired and having increased headaches. The medium/high caffeine users who drank real coffee did not report these adverse symptoms, but they tested the same as the non/low caffeine drinkers on placebo with regard to measures of memory, attentiveness and vigilance on computer tasks. The researchers concluded that the stimulating effect of caffeine on alertness is an illusion, and that all coffee does for people addicted to caffeine is keep them from the anxiety, fatigue and headache associated with withdrawal.

The conclusion of this research will undoubtedly be rejected by many coffee drinkers who strongly perceive coffee to energize them and focus their attention. The Coffee Science Information Center on the Internet, a pro-coffee website at www.cosic.org, says that the caffeine in coffee does stimulate the central nervous system by blocking the receptors for the sleep promoting substance adenosine. I am a medium/high caffeine user and my experience is that the effects of coffee wear off so I have to keep drinking it until the afternoon when I stop so I don’t stay up late at night. The CoSIC website says that when you drink a cup of coffee the absorption of caffeine in the gastrointestinal tract is rapid and virtually complete about 45 minutes after ingestion. It also says that peak plasma caffeine concentration is reached 15-120 minutes after ingestion, and that the half-life of caffeine in the plasma is 2.5-4.5 hours. Thus whatever  energizing effects caffeine has are short term. Are there alternative forms of energizing oneself that do not involve ingestion of the drug caffeine or any other drug, and which do not involve addiction to a drug?

The answer is yes. Richard Ryan, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues, published an article on the energizing effects of walking nature in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology. His study involved 537 college students and carefully teased out the energizing effects of walking in nature (by itself) versus the positive spill over effect from physical exertion or from social mixing with a group of other walkers. To achieve this distillation of data he had the participants undergo five separate experiments.

In one they were led on a 15 minute walk through indoor hallways or a tree-lined river path. In a second they viewed photos of buildings or landscapes. In a third they imagined themselves being active or sedentary, inside and out, with or without others present. The last two experiments tracked their energy levels by means of diary entries. For either four days or two weeks students recorded their exercise, social interactions, time spent outside and exposure to natural environments. Across all methodologies, individuals felt consistently more energetic when they spent time in natural settings or imagined themselves in such settings. Ryan found that being in nature for just 20 minutes a day significantly boosted their vitality levels. He recommended that people in cities make regular use of parks and greenbelts and that they make every effort to incorporate plants and windows overlooking nature into their offices.

I am fortunate enough to live across the street from a community rose garden and to live a mile away from a community park that has tree lines slopes leading to a creek as well as a very large, hilly cemetery planted with oak trees, shrubs and flowers. Although dogs are banned in the rose garden (for obvious reasons) I take my dog Coffee for a 20 minute walk every day in either the park with the creek or the cemetery. It is refreshing and energizing for both of us. I’m not ready to give up coffee (the drink not the dog), but these two studies have made me wonder how much I really need it and if I could go without it.

Click here to purchase The Upward Spiral: Getting Lawyers From Daily Misery To Lifetime Wellbeing by Harvey Hyman

Click here to purchase  audio downloads of  MCLE lectures by Harvey Hyman

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Posted in Exercise, Nutrition | No Comments »

REGULAR EXERCISE REDUCES ANXIETY SYMPTOMS BY 20 PERCENT

Friday, May 28th, 2010
Not everyone afflicted with anxiety has insurance coverage for medication or cognitive behavioral therapy. There are also people with coverage who prefer not to use these treatment methods or who find them unhelpful. For these people, regular exercise
can be quite effective at reducing anxiety symptoms.
The February 22, 2010 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has a study demonstrating that regular exercise reduces anxiety symptoms by an average of 20% in people suffering a broad spectrum of ailments including heart disease, chronic pain, cancer and multiple sclerosis. The study was done at the University of Georgia by Matthew Herring, M.S. (a doctoral student in kinesiology), Professor of Kinesiology Rodney Dishman, Ph.D., and Professor of Exercise Psychology Patrick O’Connor, Ph.D.. The researchers analyzed the results of 40 randomized clinical trials involving nearly 3,000 patients done between 1995 and 2007. In 90% of the clinical trials the exercise group had fewer symptoms of worry, apprehension, and nervousness, than the non-exercising control group. The researchers concluded that exercise is useful in treating a variety of physical and mental health conditions with less risk of adverse events than medication.
Jaspar Smits, director of the Anxiety Research and Treatment Program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Michael Otto, psychology professor at Boston University, also collaborated on a meta-analysis of studies on the effects of regular exercise on mental health. They presented their findings to the Anxiety Disorder Association of America in Baltimore, MD, on March 6, 2010. According to Dr. Smits,  “Exercise appears to affect, like an anti-depressant, particular neurotransmitter systems in the brain, and it helps patients with depression re-establish positive behaviors. For patients with anxiety disorders, exercise reduces their fears of fear and related bodily sensations such as racing heart and rapid breathing.”
At some point in their lives 46% of Americans will have a mental illness. The mood disorders of depression and anxiety are by far the most common. Could this have something to do with 40% of Americans being sedentary while living in a society filled with stressors? Smits recommends that people engage in 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week. He urges doctors to prescribe exercise for their patients which will improve their mood, reduce their stress and increase their energy. Smits and Otto have a website at www.smuresearch.com and they have written a workbook called Exercise for Mood and Anxiety Disorders to be used by therapists and their patients.
The evidence is clear that regular exercise can improve anxiety symptoms. But remember it is not mutually exclusive with respect to psychotherapy or anti-anxiety medication. It can complement them. If you are already taking medication for anxiety, and you have no medical contra-indications for regular exercise, why not start exercising to gain added symptom relief? While depression can stop people from exercising due to apathy, lethargy and hopelessness, anxiety can prevent people from exercising because it paralyzes them with unrelenting doubts and fears. If you are in this situation you can obtain help by finding a psychologist or therapist who uses the approach advocated by Dr. Smits and Dr. Otto which incorporates sensitivity to subjective blocks to exercise.
Not everyone afflicted with anxiety has insurance coverage for medication or cognitive behavioral therapy. There are also people with coverage who prefer not to use these treatment methods or who find them unhelpful. For these people, regular exercise can be quite effective at reducing anxiety symptoms.
The February 22, 2010 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has a study demonstrating that regular exercise reduces anxiety symptoms by an average of 20% in people suffering a broad spectrum of ailments including heart disease, chronic pain, cancer and multiple sclerosis. The study was done at the University of Georgia by Matthew Herring, M.S. (a doctoral student in kinesiology), Professor of Kinesiology Rodney Dishman, Ph.D., and Professor of Exercise Psychology Patrick O’Connor, Ph.D.. The researchers analyzed the results of 40 randomized clinical trials involving nearly 3,000 patients done between 1995 and 2007. In 90% of the clinical trials the exercise group had fewer symptoms of worry, apprehension, and nervousness, than the non-exercising control group. The researchers concluded that exercise is useful in treating a variety of physical and mental health conditions with less risk of adverse events than medication.
Jaspar Smits, director of the Anxiety Research and Treatment Program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Michael Otto, psychology professor at Boston University, also collaborated on a meta-analysis of studies on the effects of regular exercise on mental health. They presented their findings to the Anxiety Disorder Association of America in Baltimore, MD, on March 6, 2010. According to Dr. Smits,  “Exercise appears to affect, like an anti-depressant, particular neurotransmitter systems in the brain, and it helps patients with depression re-establish positive behaviors. For patients with anxiety disorders, exercise reduces their fears of fear and related bodily sensations such as racing heart and rapid breathing.”
At some point in their lives 46% of Americans will have a mental illness. The mood disorders of depression and anxiety are by far the most common. Could this have something to do with 40% of Americans being sedentary while living in a society filled with stressors? Smits recommends that people engage in 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week. He urges doctors to prescribe exercise for their patients which will improve their mood, reduce their stress and increase their energy. Smits and Otto have a website at www.smuresearch.com and they have written a workbook called Exercise for Mood and Anxiety Disorders to be used by therapists and their patients.
The evidence is clear that regular exercise can improve anxiety symptoms. But remember it is not mutually exclusive with respect to psychotherapy or anti-anxiety medication. It can complement them. If you are already taking medication for anxiety, and you have no medical contra-indications for regular exercise, why not start exercising to gain added symptom relief? While depression can stop people from exercising due to apathy, lethargy and hopelessness, anxiety can prevent people from exercising because it paralyzes them with unrelenting doubts and fears. If you are in this situation you can obtain help by finding a psychologist or therapist who uses the approach advocated by Dr. Smits and Dr. Otto which incorporates sensitivity to subjective blocks to exercise.

Click here to purchase The Upward Spiral: Getting Lawyers From Daily Misery To Lifetime Wellbeing by Harvey Hyman

Click here to purchase  audio downloads of  MCLE lectures by Harvey Hyman

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Posted in Anxiety, Exercise | No Comments »

MAXIMIZE YOUR EXERCISE RESULTS IN A SHORTER TIME WITH HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
The CDC Physical Activity Guidelines for adults aged 18-64 recommends 60 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a day five days a week plus strength work twice a week. Yet approximately fifty percent of Americans are rated low activity to sedentary, and their most common excuse for not exercising is that “I don’t have the time.”
Why are people in the low activity to sedentary group at such high risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)? One important reason is that they don’t stress their muscles with aerobic exercise, so they have fewer mitochondria (energy producing organelles) in their muscle cells, their mitochondria are less efficient at burning oxygen and glucose to produce the energy that powers their muscles, they develop fewer blood vessels supplying their muscles and get less blood to their muscles during exertion, and their muscles are less efficient at clearing the waste products of cellular metabolism associated with exertion. Cardiovascular fitness depends on mitochondrial fitness.
The more healthy mitochondria you have in your muscles the more you can do without stressing your heart into the heart-attack danger zone from over-exertion. Sedentary people can suffer a heart attack from moving a desk at the office, playing a game of tennis doubles with their friends or running on a treadmill at their doctor’s office during a cardiac stress test. This is not how any of us want to end up. So what can you do if you’re a super-busy lawyer who can’t make the time to spend one hour at the gym five days a week?
The answer is high-intensity interval training or HIT. For the past five years Martin Gibala, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario,  has been researching and publishing articles about the physiologic effects of HIT. In the September 2006 issue of the Journal of Physiology he wrote up a study involving a group of young men some of whom did conventional workouts of 90 to 120 minutes a day five days a week and some of whom did 30-second bursts of all-out cycling on a stationary bike (with 30-second rest intervals in-between) for 20 minutes, three times a week. All out cycling means going at 100% of your peak heart rate.
In this study Dr. Gibala found that the conventional group and the HIT group achieved similar physiologic benefits with respect to increase in the number and metabolic efficiency of muscle tissue mitochondria. He also found that HIT sends out molecular signals which stimulate the same cellular pathways stimulated by long hours of conventional exercise, and that this translates into similar improvements in muscle tissue, i.e. well toned muscles with lots of extra circulation for better delivery of oxygen and glucose.
In March 2010 Dr. Gibala published a new study showing that ten one minute sprints on a stationary exercise bike (with one minute rest intervals between them) at 95% of peak heart rate produced the same physiologic improvements in muscle health and muscle capacity as 10 hours of endurance training doing continuous, moderate bicycling.
The bottom line is that twenty minutes on a exercise bike three days a week doing HIT can get you the same heart benefits as riding a bike at a moderate pace two hours a day five days a week. Amazing! Based on these results Dr. Gibala says that “no time to exercise” is no longer a valid excuse.
If you have been sedentary for a long time or if you have certain health conditions (like obesity, hypertension, CHD or a previous heart attack) it would behoove you to wait to try HIT. I would strongly suggest working with your doctor and a personal trainer to progress gradually and safely to the point where you can benefit from HIT without risking a heart attack. For adults who are healthy and fit, it would still be a good idea to work with a trainer to set up a HIT program to maximize your benefits. The good news is that using HIT you can maintain an impressive degree of fitness and heart health in minimal time without disrupting your law office activities.
Polar makes excellent heart rate monitors that you can use on a stationary bike. If you have difficulty figuring out how they work or how to use them, you can buy one through a personal trainer who will explain it to you or you can pay a personal trainer for a few minutes of his time to do the same thing.

The CDC Physical Activity Guidelines for adults aged 18-64 recommends 60 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise a day five days a week plus strength work twice a week. Yet approximately fifty percent of Americans are rated low activity to sedentary, and their most common excuse for not exercising is that “I don’t have the time.”

Why are people in the low activity to sedentary group at such high risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)? One important reason is that they don’t stress their muscles with aerobic exercise, so they have fewer mitochondria (energy producing organelles) in their muscle cells, their mitochondria are less efficient at burning oxygen and glucose to produce the energy that powers their muscles, they develop fewer blood vessels supplying their muscles and get less blood to their muscles during exertion, and their muscles are less efficient at clearing the waste products of cellular metabolism associated with exertion. Cardiovascular fitness depends on mitochondrial fitness.

The more healthy mitochondria you have in your muscles the more you can do without stressing your heart into the heart-attack danger zone from over-exertion. Sedentary people can suffer a heart attack from moving a desk at the office, playing a game of tennis doubles with their friends or running on a treadmill at their doctor’s office during a cardiac stress test. This is not how any of us want to end up. So what can you do if you’re a super-busy lawyer who can’t make the time to spend one hour at the gym five days a week?

The answer is high-intensity interval training or HIT. For the past five years Martin Gibala, Ph.D., Chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario,  has been researching and publishing articles about the physiologic effects of HIT. In the September 2006 issue of the Journal of Physiology he wrote up a study involving a group of young men some of whom did conventional workouts of 90 to 120 minutes a day five days a week and some of whom did 30-second bursts of all-out cycling on a stationary bike (with 30-second rest intervals in-between) for 20 minutes, three times a week. All out cycling means going at 100% of your peak heart rate.

In this study Dr. Gibala found that the conventional group and the HIT group achieved similar physiologic benefits with respect to increase in the number and metabolic efficiency of muscle tissue mitochondria. He also found that HIT sends out molecular signals which stimulate the same cellular pathways stimulated by long hours of conventional exercise, and that this translates into similar improvements in muscle tissue, i.e. well toned muscles with lots of extra circulation for better delivery of oxygen and glucose.

In March 2010 Dr. Gibala published a new study showing that ten one minute sprints on a stationary exercise bike (with one minute rest intervals between them) at 95% of peak heart rate produced the same physiologic improvements in muscle health and muscle capacity as 10 hours of endurance training doing continuous, moderate bicycling.

The bottom line is that twenty minutes on a exercise bike three days a week doing HIT can get you the same heart benefits as riding a bike at a moderate pace two hours a day five days a week. Amazing! Based on these results Dr. Gibala says that “no time to exercise” is no longer a valid excuse.

If you have been sedentary for a long time or if you have certain health conditions (like obesity, hypertension, CHD or a previous heart attack) it would behoove you to wait to try HIT. I would strongly suggest working with your doctor and a personal trainer to progress gradually and safely to the point where you can benefit from HIT without risking a heart attack. For adults who are healthy and fit, it would still be a good idea to work with a trainer to set up a HIT program to maximize your benefits. The good news is that using HIT you can maintain an impressive degree of fitness and heart health in minimal time without disrupting your law office activities.

Polar makes excellent heart rate monitors that you can use on a stationary bike. If you have difficulty figuring out how they work or how to use them, you can buy one through a personal trainer who will explain it to you or you can pay a personal trainer for a few minutes of his time to do the same thing.

Click here to purchase The Upward Spiral: Getting Lawyers From Daily Misery To Lifetime Wellbeing by Harvey Hyman

Click here to purchase  audio downloads of  MCLE lectures by Harvey Hyman

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Posted in Exercise, Stress Management | No Comments »

BRIEF PERIODS OF GREEN EXERCISE PACK A HUGE MOOD BOOST

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Scientists Jo Barton and Jules Pretty of the Centre for Environment and Society in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Essex, England, have been studying the benefits of green exercise for years. Green exercise is activity in the presence of nature, something which tends to boost self-esteem and mood. In cities green exercise would be walking or cycling in a park or on a tree lined street. Recently they looked at 10 different UK studies involving 1,252 people to chart the dose-response curve of green exercise. They set forth their findings online on March 25, 2010, in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. The strongest jump in self-esteem and mood came from walking for five minutes in a park (especially a park with a blue lake, pond or stream). After five minutes the mood boost gradually fell off. They observed that everyone benefitted from five minutes of walking in a park, but the mood boost was greatest for persons with mental health problems like depression

The research of Barton and Pretty explodes the popular myth that the only exercise worth doing must last at least 20 minutes. The accumulated stress of sitting in an office the whole day, day in and day out, can cause mental illness. Certainly going to an indoor gym for 20 or more minutes for intense exercise before or after work will help your health and your mood. However, given the pressure of getting kids to/from school and getting to/from work on time; the cost of health club memberships; the inconvenience of packing up clothes, getting to a gym, parking and changing clothes; and the drab character of so many city gyms; the number of people who diligently work out is not that high – and none of them get the mood boosting effects of exposure to nature.

Barton and Pretty have shown that all it takes is five minutes of walking in an urban park to sharply raise your mood. If you can walk longer you’ll benefit from extra sunshine, extra cardiovascular exercise and more toned muscles, even if the percentage of mood boost is less sharp. So don’t sit all day long because you can’t get to the gym and do at least twenty solid minutes of intense exercise. Get out and walk for five minutes. Every city I’ve worked in (New York, San Francisco and Oakland) had a nice park right near the office. The one in Oakland had Lake Merritt just a block away. Had I known in the old days what I’ve just learned from Barton and Pretty, I would have utilized those parks every day instead of just looking at them through my office window while accumulating tension and feeling bad. Please heed their advice. No more excuses. Get outside to a park and walk my friends!

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