Health and Fitness Tips

Research shows that women who want to lose weight should ditch their diets and learn to relax instead.

At the end of a two-year study, women who followed a programme of yoga and meditation had lost weight and kept it off, while those who focused purely on exercise and nutrition had not. The ‘relaxed’ women were also generally happier and healthier at the end of the study.

Experts believe that reducing stress stops cravings for fatty foods and sweets. The team at the University of Otago in New Zealand divided 225 overweight women into three groups, according to the paper in the journal Preventive Medicine. The first group took part in yoga, meditation, and positive visualisation. The second group focused on physical exercise and nutrition, while the third received nutrition information in the post.

Study co-author Dr Caroline Horwath said all three groups of women had successfully prevented any weight gain. But ‘the most striking results’ were in the first group –they had an average weight loss of five and a half pounds (2.5kg). Dr Horwath added: ‘At the two-year mark, these women were the only ones to maintain the psychological and medical symptom improvements. [Read more →]

How To Tips : helping people who got heart attack with chest compressions

You’re about to catch a train when a fellow passenger starts to complain of chest pain. You are worried he’s having a heart attack.

You call an ambulance, but next thing you know the man has collapsed – and he looks dead.

The only thing that will save him is an electric shock to his heart – and until help arrives, you need to keep the blood going to his brain and heart by doing the work of the heart for him using CPR.

Panic sets in – you did a first-aid course at school, but you can’t remember exactly what to do. And could you catch something when doing the ‘kiss of life’?

In fact, the advice on what you should do if you see an adult, not a child, suddenly collapse has changed. Yes, first call an ambulance.

But if you are not trained properly in CPR there’s no need to worry about the kiss of life or the bit about breathing into the patient’s mouth. All you need to do is the chest compressions. [Read more →]

Study find that interval training burns fat and improves fitness more quickly than constant but moderately intensive physical activity, according to research by a University of Guelph researcher.

The study by Jason Talanian, a PhD student in the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, was published recently in the Journal of Applied Physiology. It found that after interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 per cent and cardiovascular fitness increased by 13 per cent.

Fitness buffs and athletes have long used interval training — short bursts of intensive effort interspersed with more moderate stretches — to improve performance. But Talanian’s study shows that the practice also improves cardiovascular fitness and helps the body burn more fat, even during low-intensity or moderate workouts. [Read more →]

Exercising improves body image, even if it hasn’t shifted the pounds

The simple act of doing some exercise convinces people they look better – even if it has actually made no difference. Researchers discovered we believe we look healthier after working out despite the fact it may not have been enough to make us any fitter. And we don’t necessarily feel any better about ourselves when we do more exercise and do look fitter, say psychologists. Even doing a small amount of exercise has psychological benefits according to new research

Professor Heather Hausenblas, who carried out the research, reveals that ‘the simple act of exercise and not fitness itself can convince you that you look better’. She said: ‘You would think that if you become more fit you would experience greater improvements in terms of body image, but that’s not what we found. ‘It may be that the requirements to receive the psychological benefits of exercise, including those relating to body image, differ substantially from the physical benefits.’ [Read more →]