Every week Zelda Higgins the Recreation Coordinator at Zayed University joins me to talk about what is new and old in the world of fitness.
You can reach Zelda at zeldahiggins7@gmail.com
One of the latest things we have been doing is getting people into a healthy eating and workout plan.
We had a great chat about fitness for the real people like you and I.
THE PODCAST.
Here is what we set out to speak about.
The guy update
Exam suggestions?
A great dish!
Walking is a great way to stay fit! Agree? Also under rated!
Back fat? What?
3 quick moves for achie muscles!
A posture coach wearable!
Interesting study about exercise and the prevention of decline in physical function in older people!
What were the methods?
1635 Men and women aged 70 to 89 years, and who are at risk of disability (vulnerable folks), were randomly assigned to two groups. Subjects were recruited from 8 different centers in US.
- Exercise group: The exercise group of 818 subjects performed walking, strength training, balance, and flexibility training for 2.6 years. No special equipment’s were used for training.
- Control group: The control group of 817 subjects attended health education workshops .
The outcome measure is the failure to walk 400 meter in less than 15 minutes (also called walking disability or mobility disabilty).
What were the results?
In the exercise group, walking disability was seen 30%. Whereas in the control group, they observed a higher number of disabilities (296 or 35.5%).
In other words, there was a (5%) reduction in disability in high-risk older adults with exercise.
My Comments:
Physical function, Quality of Life & exercise: I have a Master’s in this field, worked as trainer for more than 10 years, ran a university fitness center for 4 years, and now doing my Ph.D. I have preached endlessly about the benefits of exercise when to comes to cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cognition to people. But I have never really given a thought about exercise to improve physical function in elderly until I saw my Mom’s struggle with cancer. She never really worried about dying, all she wanted was to do the basic things in her life without needing others help. And that affected her quality of the life the most.
In fact, research always focused on death as an endpoint since it is quantifiable and objective; quality of life on the other hand is qualitative and subjective and was less of a concern. Recently the concept of active life expectancy- the average number of years of life free from disability- has slowly come into picture. NY best-selling author Atul Gawande’s recent book “Being Mortal” talks about how in the mad race to make people live longer we forget how well they live those last years.
How do you deal with people who only care about the results and not the science? Are they right?
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