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A new study further supports the benefits of maintaining cardiovascular fitness during middle-age and beyond. In a study presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s EuroEcho 2019 meeting in Vienna, high cardiovascular fitness was linked with significantly lower death risks from heart disease, cancer and other causes for middle-aged and older women.
Women do not respond to weight training the same way men do. University of New South Wales researchers in Sydney conducted a comprehensive search of the literature on resistance training and found only 24 randomized controlled studies that focused exclusively on women. Lead study author Amanda “Mandy” D. Hagstrom, PhD, lecturer in exercise science at UNSW Medicine, said, “I was surprised. I knew there wouldn’t be many [studies], but I thought there’d be more than that.” The selected studies included almost 1,000 women.
Personal trainers often have female clients over the age of 40 who have similar complaints about losing muscle mass and gaining body fat. Although these changes aren’t unexpected and can be a normal part of the aging process, they are not inevitable. In fact, the right resistance-training program can positively affect body composition by reducing fat, maintaining and building muscle, and increasing strength in this population.
Hip fractures have serious consequences, including an increased risk of death within the first year following the accident. Findings from a recent study offer good news on the benefits of physical activity for postmenopausal women.
Good news for pregnant exercise enthusiasts: Vigorous exercise, even in the third trimester, is safe for healthy pregnant women, according to a study reported in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth (2019; 19 [1], 281).
For the most part, sports nutrition science is bro-science. That’s because the vast majority of studies to date have focused on men, leaving active women to assume the same results apply to them. But that is slowly changing.
Are some of your clients obsessed with achieving their step counts every day? While 10,000 steps is a popular marker, it turns out that taking as few as 4,400 steps per day is associated with a lower risk of death for women with a mean age of 72 years.
“Clearly, even a modest number of steps was related to lower mortality rate among these older women,” said principal investigator I-Min Lee, MBBS ScD, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Encourage your pregnant clients (if cleared by their doctors) to keep working out with you. A new study shows that maintaining a healthy weight before and during pregnancy is a key factor in avoiding pregnancy complications.
Caffeine is known to increase performance when taken before endurance activities, but more than 80% of studies have focused on men. A recent randomized, double-blind, crossover study out of Queensland, Australia, aimed to determine whether or not gender affects ergogenic responses to caffeine.
A new study on meat consumption among women suggests that eating red meat raises the risk of breast cancer, whereas eating poultry is linked to a lower risk of the disease. The findings were published online August 6 in the International Journal of Cancer.
Investigators analyzed information on meat consumption and cooking practices among 42,012 women, who were followed for an average of 7.6 years.
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IDEA Fitness Journal
Current Issue:
December 2019
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