Disabilities and Diseases Articles

How can Pilates help clients make critical transitions in their lives? For this issue, we talked to Pilates instructors and their clients about how Pilates training has helped them through times of change.newsletter_teaser: How can Pilates help clients make critical transitions in their lives? For this issue, we talked to Pilates instructors and their clients about how Pilates training has helped them through times of change.

Find out who is at risk for fracture and which exercises they should avoid.

Widespread media coverage on the dangers of salt, and recent public-health efforts to reduce it in foods, seem to make salt the bad guy of nutrition. Is salt harmful for people who have hypertension, and can they still consume it? What about those without high blood pressure? And can you get too little salt in your diet?

I’ve worked with many clients with type 2 diabetes, ranging in age from 30 to 85 years old. Even though age and ability are different in each case, the challenge remains the same: Develop a safe and effective program that will be vigorous enough to improve muscle strength and provide cardiovascular benefit without inducing complications from the diabetes.

Barbara Brehm-Curtis is a professor of exercise and sport studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses in stress management, nutrition and health. Aside from writing about health- and fitness-related topics for more than 25 years, she has worked as a fitness instructor, personal trainer, lifestyle coach and fitness program director. She has received the San Diego County Medical Society Media Award and was a Maggie Award finalist for regular columns in Fitness Management, where she served as a contributing editor.

Meditation People with fibromyalgia may want to try meditation to help them cope with challenging symptoms like pain and depression, suggests a study published in Current Pain and Headache Reports (2012; 16: 383–87; doi: 10.1007/s11916-012-0285-8).

Middle-aged and older women with osteopenia who practiced tai chi over a 9-month period experienced a reduction in bone density loss and an improvement in postural control that reduced the risk of falls, according to authors of a randomized pilot study conducted in the Boston area. Harvard Medical School researchers designed the study to assess the effectiveness of tai chi and usual care compared with usual care alone for slowing bone loss in postmenopausal osteopenic women.

Breast cancer survivors may effectively improve muscle endurance with Pilates chair training, which may have advantages over traditional resistance training since the chair requires less space, can be less expensive and may be more enjoyable for some people.

Mindful eating practices may help clients with a variety of health conditions to improve their nutrition habits. For people with type 2 diabetes, training in mindful eating was as effective in managing weight and blood sugar levels as conventional diabetes self-management education, reported a pilot study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (2012; 112 [11], 1835–42; doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2012.07.036).

More whole-grain good news, this time from Sweden. Over 5,500 Swedish residents tracked and measured their intake of whole and refined grains. Ten years later, those who ate more than 59 g (about 2 ounces) of whole grains per day were 27% less likely to becomeprediabetic than those who ate 30 g or less. \