Archive for December 2015

If the research headline was a birth announcement, it might have read “Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter and Umami welcome their newest brother ‘Oleogustus’ into the human taste spectrum.”

In a recent study appearing in Chemical Senses (2015; doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjvo36), scientists at Purdue University reported evidence that, like our other five basic tastes, fat interacts with our taste buds in a way that can make our perception of food change.

What if a daily dose of a certain supplement had greater impact on delayed-onset muscle soreness than an anti-inflammatory drug and actually increased muscle strength? What if it also happened to be derived from among the most expensive spices in the world? Still worth it?

Bring on the daily dose of wasabi, ghost peppers or hot chilies. Spicy foods can not only add life to your years; they can add years to your life, says a new study.

Fitness professionals may want to expand their skill set, particularly by including mind-body techniques, in order to work with adults who are in pain.

For people with cancer, mind-body exercise like yoga or Pilates can offer both mental and physical benefits.

“The main things with cancer patients are energy and mood,” said Jen Price, certified breast cancer exercise specialist, and an exercise physiologist at Penn State Hershey University Fitness Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in a Penn State University news release.

Here’s more proof that we all tolerate exercise differently. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have discovered that individuals at risk for type 2 diabetes must exercise more intensely than nonrisk individuals to achieve similar benefits.

The study featured 50 “unfit,” slightly overweight men around 40 years of age. Half of the participants were placed in a “risk” group—meaning they were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, because an immediate relative had it. Control group participants had no such relative with the disease.

Sedentary behaviors recently came under fire after several studies linked more time spent sitting with a higher mortality risk, even for people who exercise. Researchers from the University of Exeter, in England, believe that those studies were flawed and that active individuals who also
sit a lot may not face a greater risk of early death after all.

Over the past several years a barrage of “daily deal” sites (like Groupon and LivingSocial) and fitness mem- bership companies (like ClassPass) have attracted the attention of consumers and fitness facility managers alike. The idea is that by using these services, consumers get to test out new studios and programs for a mod- est fee, while studios hope to convert the visitors into members or clients. But do these services result
in a better bottom line for fitness studios?

Parents are in a prime position to ensure the future health of their children, and part of that means knowing when a child’s health
is at risk. Unfortunately, researchers from the University of Limerick in Ireland have determined that some mothers assess their children’s weight status incorrectly.

Do you struggle with asthma, or know someone who does? Thirty minutes of exercise daily may help to relieve the symptoms, according to a new study.

Researchers from the department of exercise science at Concordia University in Montreal facilitated phone interviews with 643 asthma patients. Participants discussed their quality of life, assessed their ability to control symptoms and estimated their leisure-time physical activity over the previous year. The researchers asked specifically about activity levels during various seasons.

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When conversations turn to health, it doesn’t take long for the topic of genetics to surface. Comments like “It’s in my genes” or “Well, my parents had heart disease” seem to flow off the lips when we describe our current health status.

But what exactly is the influence of genetics on our health? A new branch of study called epigenetics is starting to provide intriguing answers.