Alternative Health Blog

Let’s clear the air. Or, well, let’s try. A new study released by the American Lung Association shows that six of 10 Americans live in U.S. areas with dangerously high levels of air pollution.

That stinks.

What’s worse, air quality is getting worse in most American cities. The Clean Air Act of 1970 is apparently short on breath.

If you are wondering, yes, Los Angeles once again ranked highest in smog or ozone pollution, a dubious top spot it has held nine of the last 10 years (sorry about that, dear editors of the Alternative Health Blog).

Bakersfield, Calif., ranked as the worst populated area for year-round particle pollution while Pittsburgh was most unhealthy for acute or short-term particle pollution.

Perhaps most discouraging about this year’s report from the Lung Association is that many cities—after a number of improved years—have slipped in air quality. Towns like New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area fit this pattern.

To illustrate, the total number of affected Americans according to this year’s report is 186 million people. That’s up from 125 million or 4 of every 10 U.S. residents just one year ago.

Some definitions: Particle pollution is composed of tiny bits of soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols. These pollutants are measured both by the year-round levels in the air and by periodic spikes in their levels that can last for hours or days. Both kinds of particle pollution, if inhaled, can increase the risk or early death, heart attacks, strokes and emergency room visits for asthma and cardiovascular disease, the lung association reported.

Smog occurs when sunlight reacts with emission from motor vehicles and industrial plants. It is the most common form of urban pollution and can cause lung irritation, plus wheezing, coughing and asthma attacks. People at the highest risk are children, seniors and anyone with diseases such as asthma and diabetes.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency upgraded its standards for particle pollution last year, but Lung Association officials wrote in the report that “even tougher standards” will be necessary to protect both personal health and global warming.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The next time you choose to disregard walking as exercise, Dr. Gary Small has some research for you—and your brain.

Small is aging specialist at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. He says research undeniably shows that walking pumps more blood to not only the muscles by the brain. The brain needs that blood because it is packed with oxygen and nutrients, mostly the glucose that allows thoughts and cerebral directives to regular the body. One more benefit: The brain circulatory system grows as the blood feeds the connecting network of blood vessels. Your brain becomes a sort of stronger mesh.

All of this from walking, which might seem, well, monotonous and repetitious and just too much second nature to be so effective. But that is precisely one of the reasons why walking gets the job done for your brain. The action of doing the same movement over and over can strengthen the brain’s neurological circuitry, comparable to lifting weights three times a week to build muscles.

Small cited two recent studies. One Johns Hopkins University study reported that stroke patients who undergo a therapeutic walking program using safety treadmills improve because of the repetitive movements of putting one foot in fron of the other. Interestingly, the researchers expected most brain activity (measured by imaging techniques) to be isolated to the cortex, which is the hub for motor skills. But other areas were also activated, which surprised the scientists and has prompted to begin follow-up research.

Over six months, the patients increased walking speed by 50 percent  and aerobic lung capacity by 20 percent. Those are formidable improvements for any of us, yet particularly beneficial to stroke and heart patients, plus, say, a sedentary person looking to become more fit.

Small identifies a second study was conducted by Australian researchers who evaluated the brain power scores of adults who walked for exercise over six months. Those individuals in the walking group compared to non-exercisers scored better for memory and mental acuity. The improvement was about three to five percent better. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but the Aussie scientists pointed out that the individual walking programs were moderate, suggesting that more regular and/or more intense (not out of breath intensity but something beyond strolling).

That makes walking for exercise—and your brain—more than a footnote.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

It’s a small study about how eating a certain type of breakfast can help you burn more fat, but it could nonetheless have a huge impact on losing unwanted pounds or maintaining a healthy weight. British researchers have determined that high-fiber, low-glycemic foods are best for kick-starting your weight-loss program.

One proviso: You only get the accelerated fat-burning benefit if you exercise. There is something about adding fiber and low-glycemic foods (items that digest slower and more evenly).

The study was performed with physically inactive women who started an exercise program while also following one of two breakfast regimens: either a low-glycemic morning meal including muesli, milk, yogurt and canned peaches, or cornflakes and milk, white bread and jam and, a sweetened carbonated drink.

Interestingly, both meals have equal amounts of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The difference is the low-glycemic breakfast offers about 3.5 grams of fiber, which in turn leads to a more constant fuel source not only for your workout but, perhaps even more importantly, for your muscles to rebuild.

The study, published in The Journal of Nutrition, tested women in an hour walk three hours after breakfast (that sounds a bit like lunchtime). When measured for biological and metabolic changes, the young women in the study (all 24 years old) oxidated significantly more fat and calories after eating the fiber-rich breakfast.

Here’s an interesting thing that means this breakfast strategy can carry over to other parts of the day: After eating identical lunches, the women reported feeling more full on days when they also ate the low-glycemic breakfast. So you burn more fat and overeat less often at the next meal.

And you thought you could never be a breakfast eater.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

Flying on a round trip from the East Coast to Seattle for a seminar earlier this month, Lauren Muney logged 17 hours of flights, layovers and delays. She followed her own advice on how to stay healthy while traveling. She drank lots of fluids, stretched, explored new things and packed her own food.

One problem: “They took my yogurt [drink] away when I went through security,” said Muney, who is a certified fitness trainer and “health coach” based in Maryland. “It was more than three ounces. I pouted a bit, then adjusted.”

Muney counsels a number of clients using emails and phone calls, including the Seattle-based Frank Forencich, seminar leader and author of “Play As If Your Life Depends on It” (Go Animal Publishing). She “coached all of the details” for Forencich’s recent retreat that was attended by neuroscientists and movement therapy specialists.

“Play can have a positive health effect on the human body and physicality,” Muney explained. “Play can also be about investigating something new. It can fire up brain cells.”

To that end, Muney said she encourages frequent traveler clients to seek out new experiences, especially at airports, as a way to stay energetic while changing planes or watching the departures board push back your flight departure by, oh, an hour or more.

“If you normally read a book [or browse the Internet], take the opportunity to do something unusual,” she said. “Check out a different part of the airport. Read a magazine you have never looked at before. Find a place to do some stretching. It will make your day feel fresher.”

Muney said she isn’t afraid to perform floor stretches or dance moves that might draw a few looks from fellow passengers in the gate area. As little as three minutes of a mini-workout can be beneficial.

“I will regularly do squats or what used to be called deep-knee bends,” said Muney. “It doesn’t matter what people think. I figure my health is more important than drawing attention to myself.”

On the plane, Muney advises clients to wear shoes that can be easily removed to massage the feet and roll them a bit on the floor. She recommends walking the center aisle one or more times, particularly on longer flights. Research shows that some individuals are subject to the potentially harmful deep-vein thrombosis or reduced blood circulation in the legs (which might lead to a cardiac episode) can be prevented by the habit of getting up to move during mid-flight. You might find this strategy easier with an aisle seat but Muney urges everyone to not feel self-conscious about troubling seatmates for the chance to move around the airplane.

“People who sit long enough on planes, especially if they are taking multiple flights in the same day, feel what they consider tiredness,” said Muney. “But in a way what is really happening is their bodies temporarily forget how to move.”

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

As an avid skier, Dr. Mark Liponis remembers getting his first portable music player back in 1979.

“The days of Suzy Chapstick,” said Liponis, laughing over the phone from his Canyon Ranch Resorts office in Lenox, Mass., where he is medical director. “I probably have about five [iPod-type devices] by now.”

Liponis is less the tech junkie and more the exercise realist.

“I can last a lot longer on the elliptical machine with my own music in the iPod, something good like Government Mule,” said Liponis. “I don’t like the typical disco stuff you hear in most gyms and health clubs.”

Liponis said an iPod or other mp3 player provides “a big benefit because you don’t feel the pain. In his new book, “Ultra-Longevity: The Seven-Step Program for a Younger, Healthier You” (Little, Brown and Company, $26), Liponis cites Korean research showing music therapy sessions can reduce the pain of leg fractures and a study published in the Clinical Research in Cardiology professional journal demonstrated that listening to music during uncomfortable catheterization procedures reduced patient anxiety.

Seattle-based personal trainer P.J. Glassey said iPods tend to a positive.

“For most people, it does help,” said Glassey, who owns and operates the local X Gym chain. “People get in their own little world and the music blocks out the pain. You get in a rhythm and you keep going.”

Liponis said the rhythm of physical activity is underrated.

“I’ve been with Canyon Ranch for 15 years,” he said. “Our mantra has long been eat right and exercise. People are almost numb to that message. They are looking for something new. The idea of rhythmic exercise, such as swimming, dancing, even rowing, is motivating people.”

To make his case with Canyon Ranch visitors, Liponis talks about research findings that connect individuals pursuing rhythmic activities—swimming, cycling, “you can include using an iPod on the treadmill”—with lower levels of C-reactive protein in the blood than study participants who were regular soccer and basketball players. Lower C-reactive protein translates to a healthier immune system.

“There are lots of hospital cardio rehab programs sending their patients to dance class these days rather than the gym hooked up to heart monitors,” said Liponis. "Research makes a case for adding music and rhythmic exercise to your workouts."

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

We all know about the federal government’s recommendation to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day. As if anyone needed the reminder, since most any American childhood includes even more parental reminders to eat your vegetables than turn in your homework.

Well, a good many of us know that the government upped that number to nine servings per day a few years back. Five, nine, it all takes some planning to fit produce into your days. There are some convenient steps you can take to increase your intake without much trouble: Add diced baby carrots to your spaghetti sauce, which won’t affect taste. If you tend to skip breakfast, stop for two minutes total to blend milk, frozen fruit and ice (adding protein and flax meal makes it a power meal), drink it and wash the cup and blender.

Another idea is make a habit of slicing strawberries, kiwi or grapes into your salad; you can also use dried fruits such as raisins or cranberries. Don’t knock the fruit-in-salad idea until you try it.

Here’s the best shortcut for maximizing the nutritional power of your fruits and veggies, even if you slide somewhere between five and nine servings daily. Think deep pigment, as in blueberries, pomegranate, dark leafy greens, red grapes, beets, blackberries, kiwi and more.

Color and pigment in your fruits and veggies represent a greater concentration of substances that fight cancer and prevention artery-clogging cholesterol among other healthful duties. Deeper pigment indicates more flavonoids (purple, red and blue potatoes have a surprising amount), carotenoids (think yellow, orange, red and green) and anthocyanins (reds, most blues and purples). The more pigment, the better to protect against disease and aging.

Researchers are perhaps most excited about the potential to stay younger with pigment on your plate for meals and snacks. All of a sudden, strawberries or even the super-food blueberries in your salad don’t sound so bad, right?

“What strikes me about the substances associated with pigment in fruits and vegetables is its ability to change motor behavior for the better,” said James Joseph, chief of the neuroscience lab at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University in Boston. “There is virtually nothing else out there that can change motor behavior in aging.”

For instance, Joseph has conducted several studies about blueberries, showing the once mild-mannered fruit can protect against loss of balance, coordination and other motor skills more effectively than spinach. As a bonus, blueberries also stave off age-related memory loss. It is no accident that blueberry juice is a top-seller in Japan.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

While optimism might seem in short supply in today's economy, there is good reason to look on the bright side for both health and happiness.

A team of researchers from the University of Oregon, Stanford, University of Texas and University of Arizona published a 2006 research paper that a man’s optimism or pessimism predicts the satisfaction level of a relationship between dating couples. The more optimistic the guy, the happier the couple. Specifically, the couples with an optimistic male partner reported that their arguments were more constructive than destructive. Those couples also perceived high levels of support from partners, a valuable commodity in anyone’s romantic world.

Optimism as a personal health commodity is hard to dispute. Some of strongest evidence comes from life expectancy studies. For example, a University of North Carolina study followed nearly 7,000 students over four subsequent decades who took personality tests in the mid-1960s. The researchers found people who were categorized as pessimists to be 42 percent more likely to die before roughly age 65 than those students who tested out as optimists. 

Two Dutch studies using dispositional optimism or future expectations as the guide found similar results: Optimists were 55 percent less likely to die from heart disease and optimists between 65 to 85 are 45 percent less likely to die over the following nine year than pessimists in the same age group.

On a larger scale that arguably affects every American’s capacity for optimism, it won’t surprise you to discover that University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center researchers have documented that optimistic candidates have won U.S. presidential races 80 percent of the time, including Barack Obama who was judged “clearly becoming more positive” than John McCain by the end of the third debate on Oct. 15. The only exception from 1900 through the 1980s? Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his three reelection bids and Richard Nixon.

At the practical level, University of Kentucky psychologist and researcher Suzanne Segerstrom published a study of 90 law school students that showed by mid-semester of the first year of law school, optimists had a greater number of helper T-cells than pessimistic students. T-cells are deemed to be the immune system’s primary protectors against viruses and even some cancers. The more positive students also tested higher for natural killer T-cells that help the body to fight off cancer cells.

 Segerstrom is one of the “positive psychology” researchers willing to consider optimism’s downside. She offered the example of an optimistic law student who lives at home. That student keeps all of her “family relationships, friendships and social groups” and is left to juggle those with the rigors of law school.

“Sometimes social networks are understanding of schooling that requires some 40 hours of study per week beyond class time,” Segerstrom said in an interview with her alma mater Lewis & Clark College “Chronicle” magazine. “More often than not, so there are enormous pressures if you try to maintain your relationships. In this group, the optimists had lower immune parameters, because, we believe, of what’s called the persistence model. Meaning that these optimists simply kept trying harder, kept believing they could have it all.”

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

You don’t associate weight training to lowering cholesterol, but a new study makes it clear that men should in fact connect those dates. Researchers discovered that, while many men use whey protein powder to supplement their weight workouts, preferring it to soy-based protein powder despite soy’s capability to reduce cholesterol, it turns out neither whey nor soy is another more effective than simply lifting barbells and dumbbells alone.

Weights no doubt improve strength and newer research makes a case for building leaner muscle tissue and shedding fat.  But what Buffalo State College scientists discovered is strength training significantly dropped cholesterol readings among 28 male volunteers who were overweight, inactive and tested high for cholesterol.

The men were divided into three groups: All men followed a supervised weight training program three times a week for three months. The first group added a whey protein supplement, while the second group added soy protein power. The third group simply lifted and did not add any supplementation. None of the groups outperformed others in gaining muscle, losing inches around the waist or decreasing cholesterol.

Carol A, DeNysschen, lead researcher of study, which was published in the Journal of the International Soceity of Sports Nutrition, said that male weight lifters tend to dismiss or overlook soy powder for their protein shakes after workouts (when the muscles are most receptive to using protein to rebuild muscle tissue). Her study makes a case that soy protein is as effective building muscle as whey products, plus soy provides the decidedly heart-healthy benefit of knocking down cholesterol levels.

Seems like a power move to me.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

Some health habits might seem too easy to make a difference in quality of life. But small can be big. Here are three things you can do for yourself—in not much more than 10 minutes total spread throughout each day—to improve your health and energy without an overly ambitious exercise program or yet another diet plan:

Embrace an all-in-one stretch: Karen Voight is a Los Angeles-based fitness instructor who makes high-quality, practical exercise videos. She recommends a wide-legged squat as an all-purpose stretch. If you can only do one stretch daily, this is her suggestion:

“Stand with your feet slightly turned out and little wider than your hips. Bend your knees into a deep squat, bringing the hips toward the heels. If you can’t keep your heels on the floor, then placed a rolled yoga mat [or towel] under your heels. Bring your arms inside your knees and palms together. Hold 20 to 30 seconds.”

Once you master this squat without discomfort (many kids do it naturally, especially at younger ages), you can work on breathing even while holding the squat position.

Anger more fattening than doughnuts? No, this is not a supermarket tabloid headline. A 2009 study by French researchers about British adults published in the American Journal of Epidemiology showed that the more hostile a man’s personality, the more his body mass index increased over the subsequent two decades (BMI is a ratio of height to weight).

The volunteer subjects were 35 to 55 years old when the study began. The researchers found that all men and women with higher rating of hostility on standardized questionnaires also had higher BMI measurements. That hostility/BMI relationship stayed constant for women, but appeared to produce accelerated weight gain among the males in the study.

Brush and floss your teeth: You likely have read or heard that teeth and gum problems can lead to heart disease because it increases inflammatory markers in the blood. You might know there are a growing number of studies that suggest poor oral health could be the first indicators of diabetes, stroke, unsuccessful preganancies and even leukemia and AIDS. It’s all enough to renew a vigorous brushing and flossing routine.

Yet there’s more. After decades of medical schools and doctors ignoring oral health symptoms or at most categorizing oral health as superficial, the Association of American Medical Colleges or AAMC has established a recommedation that the nation’s medical schools include more oral health instruction in the curriculum to better equip future physicians with the clinical ability to connect teeth and gum problems with other diseases.

Equipping yourself with the best oral health routine, according to practitioners at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, means brushing your teeth for two minutes twice a day (gentle scrubbing motion, inside and outside of each tooth). The most important time to brush is before you go to sleep. Rinsing between meals is valuable, and flossing once daily is optimal.

And you thought you were merely brushing your teeth twice a day.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

How you take your morning tea or coffee might be hazardous to your health for one surpising reason: You are drinking the beverage while it is still too hot. A new study from Iranian researchers at Tehran University of Medical Sciences shows hat drinking hot tea may cause throat cancer.

Drinking very hot tea—more than 158 degrees Fahrenheit—is associated with eight times the risk for throat cancer compared to sipping your tea closer to warm (150 degrees) or lukewarm. For reference, boiling water hits 212 degrees and the typical tea drinker in Great Britain likes his or her tea between 132 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

The researchers studied a region in northern Iran known for its high rate of throat and esophagus cancers, despite an extremely low incidence of smoking or alcohol consumption (both are habits that can lead to throat and esophagus damage). Nearly all of the some 900 volunteers (roughly a third had esophageal cancer) drink black tea in amounts averaging more than a liter each day.

Practical info here: The study showed people who drank their tea less than two minutes after pouring it were at five times greater risk to develop cancer than individuals who poured their cups after at least a four-minute cool-off wait.

Scientists have not determined why hot tea or coffee might lead to cancer. One theory is there is a repeated themal assault to the throat lining without enough time for the skin and cells to recover.

Some health practitioners caution their patients to avoid using straws in their espresso and coffee drinks (a strategy that some people use to keep teeth whiter, especially after whitening them). The reason is because our lips serve as natural protectors of too-hot liquids, while a straw not only hits the throat by surprise it even reaches down to what might argued as the hottest part of the drink.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

No surprise here at the Alternative Health Blog, just happy recognition about a new survey released by Consumer Reports. It confirms that alternative therapies for back pain are both effective and preferred compared to treatment from primary care physicians.

The survey showed that 58 percent of back pain patients considered chiropractic and spinal manipulation as “helping a lot,” while massage (48 percent) and physical therapy (46 percent) gained similar positive ratings. What’s more, 59 percent of chiropractic practitioners earned “highly satisfied” marks from patients in contrast to 34 percent of MDs. There’s significant pain and loss of quality of life in that 25-percent gap. Fifty-five percent of physical therapists rated in the “highly satisfied” category, while acupuncturists scored 53 percent.

Interestingly, back specialist MDs ranked 10 points higher than their primary-care colleagues, but still well below the alternative practitioners.

To repeat, no surprise.

Consumers Reports conducted a year-long project, surveying more than 14,000 subscribers who had lower-back pain in last 12 months but have never submitted to back surgery. The readers were asked to rate a list of 23 possible treatment, plus the always important satisfaction level with practitioners. Most respondents had tried five to six different treatments, on average.

The readers also confirmed the unfortunate fact that Americans endure overwhelming back pain. Nine of every 10 respondents said their back pain recurred throughout the year, while more than half reported the pain limits daily sleep, work and sex for periods of a week or longer. Half said the back pain interfered with efforts to lose pounds and/or maintain a healthy weight.

There is knowledge in this group, but perhaps not the motivation. Forty-four percent of the respondents said they found exercise was helpful, ranking it first as a self-help therapy. And six of every 10 respondents said they wished they had done more exercises during the year to strengthen muscles and keep the back active.

For more information and even a free diagnostic tool for back pain, visit www.ConsumerReportsHealth.org. You can also check out the May 2009 issue of Consumer Reports for details.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

Oh, brother. A new study from British researchers makes a strong case for sisters as the siblings who most influence a family’s happiness. Nearly 600 young people between 17 to 25 were interviewed to help determine sisters lead a family to be more open about their emotions and feelings.

Plus, the female influence was particularly effective in families facing emotional upheaval, such as divorce or death of a parent.

On the flip side, lead researcher Tony Cassidy, a psychology professor at the University of Ulster, reports that brothers “seem to have an alternative effect.”

The study confirms previous work that shows boys tend to internalize their feelings more than girls. The Ulster research suggests that the more brothers/sons in the family, the greater the possibility for communication breakdowns and stress.

It’s not exactly an endorsement for boys or men, but it is important to remember that studies indicate statistical significance. It is fact that families with more sisters/daughters prosper on an emotional level in healthier ways than families with more brothers/sons. But that doesn’t mean every family trends that direction—or that all brothers bottle up their feelings.

Some interesting follow-up question emerge from this findings: Would a single mother with boys tend to create a family more open about feelings than a single-dad family with daughters? Is it possible that British brothers/sons are culturally less open about their feelings than say, American males or Greek males? Can researchers make a distinction between families where the parents have a more open relationship (maybe by determining if the wife is more aggressive in family matters) compared to inhibited relationship in which the husband controls emotional currency in the household?

A revealing factor is that the subjects interviewed about their positive attitude and happiness levels (using standardized measurement tools for such qualities) are all most decidedly new generation. There is no rationalizing that today’s soon-to-be adult males will be more open than the generations of men who came before them.

At least in Great Britain.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

There are certain things you remember in life. They stick in the mind and fortify your capacity to, well, be a good person.

Here’s an example: A female friend who by any account would be considered the perfect mother—never seems to raise her voice to the kids, keeps impeccable lists, doesn’t miss a birthday, rues commercialism by making her own Christmas presents, that sort of perfect mother—once said, “Ha! Getting out of the house in the morning is never easy. There’s always conflict. Some days are better t han others. What we do in our house is just try to get over.”

Her words were liberating. Here was the idyllic admitting to the chaotic. If she falls down and picks herself up, so can we. In fact, how we pick ourselves up might make all the difference.

That’s how we can all regard stress, whether our mornings include getting all of the homework in the backpack or not. Stress is part of how we live. It will knock us over. But we can get up, dust ourselves off and make a positive impact on personal health.

And for kids there appears to be more at stake than family harmony or emotional well-being. A new Swedish study published in the Journal of Pediatrics suggests that living in a stressful household may raise a child’s risk for becoming overweight by up to twice as much.

The childhood obesity epidemic in America doesn’t need that sort of piling on. Or does it help explain why U.S. children have consistently landed in the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention 98th percentile for weight (as high as the curve goes) and above?

The Swedish researchers, who evaluated 5- and 6-year-old children in more than 7,400 families, said kids can handle “some stress or stressors, but not several at the same time.” Four primary areas of family or household stress were identified: A serious life event such as a family illness, accident, death, divorce, unemployment or exposure to violence; spouse relationship issues; lack of social support among other family members or community or both; and concern about a child’s health and development.

If children were exposed to two or more of these four family stress areas, then it heightened risk for obesity. For this study’s categorization, a high-stress family faces challenges in at least two or more these four areas.

The researchers emphasized that family stress is not the sole reason why a child might gain unnecessary weight before even entering school years. Instead, they wrote “stress probably interacts with other factors to worsen the problem.”

This study is significant because most parents think diet and exercise when worrying about a child’s weight. They don’t connect how family stress might be disrupting a child’s ability to be active, eat healthfully or even get a good night’s sleep (which newer research shows helps any of us to more efficiently burn fat even while resting).

That’s not to discount the benefits of finding ways for children and their parents to be more physically active or eat more nutritiously. The idea is more that avoiding chronic stress in the household—a deeper psychic cut than what a researcher like University of Washington marriage guru John Gottman calls “run-of-the-mill family misery”—can be an important step toward healthier children and parents. 

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Oh, it’s going to be hard to convince coffee drinkers that the results of a new University of Illinois study is anything but cause for a refill. The research suggests that caffeine helps to reduce muscle pain during exercise, allowing a longer, more intense workout.

The U of I scientists evaluated 25 fit males and put them through various trials on stationary bikes, ranging from longer and slower to short, intense bursts of effort. All of the volunteer subjects abstained from coffee or other sources of caffeine 24 hours before the experiment. Then were either supplied with a caffeine tablet (equivalent of two to three cups of coffee) or placebo before the workouts. Roughtly half of the men recruited for the study were all cateogorized as heavy coffee drinkers, consuming three to four cups daily, equaling 400 milligrams. The other half were males who drank little to no coffee.

Lead author Robert Motl wrote that “we’ve shown that caffeine reduces pain reliably, consistently during cycling, across different intensities, across different people, different characteristics.” Oxygen consumption was monitored, along with heart rate and effort.

Another important measurement was the men were quizzed about their perceptions of pain in the thighs during the workouts. How we consider pain is the X factor in how we tolerate muscle “burn” during exercise. The study was published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

Motl says he was surprised by one result: Both the heavy coffee drinkers and non-drinkers showed the same pain-relief of caffeine. He expected the coffee drinkers to have a less dramatic or lessened effect. He explained the research shows habitual coffee drinkers often feel like they need more to get the same mental lift. Yet the physiological benefits show more is not necessarily more therapeutic.

On the biological side, the U of I researchers explained that caffeine is documented to interact with neural systems in the brain and spinal cord, which are also the nerve centers for pain processing in the body.

So as exercisers we might drink some coffee before a morning ride, run or class, thinking we are boosting our alertness and energy. Possible, but it appears the greatest value might well be cutting down on how fast and furious that pain comes on during a workout.