Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation. Sobering news and good advice for a chain-sitter.
Mandatory screening for athletes saves lives
A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association today came to the “surprising” conclusion that requiring young athletes to be screened for heart conditions before competing reduces the occurrence of sudden death caused by those heart conditions.
The chart above shows the rate of sudden cardiovascular death for screened athletes (downward moving line) and nonscreened nonathletes (horizontal line). Over the term of the study, the athlete incident rate dropped from three to four times that of the nonathletes’ to approximately half of the nonathletes’.
Although the results of the study are not groundbreaking, it still good information to know.
Humor me for a moment. Unplug your mouse…
Humor me for a moment. Unplug your mouse, stand up and wrap the cable around your hips. Now wrap it around your waist. Did it take more of the cord to go around your waist than your hips? If so, you have an increased risk for disease. Okay, you can plug your mouse back in.
According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK):
Men with waist-to-hip ratios greater than 1.0 are generally considered to have “excess fat” and be at higher risk for disease. For women, the number is 0.8.
If you’re concerned about heart disease, the waist-to-hip-ratio (WTHR) is a better measure of risk than body mass index (BMI).
“BMI is a very weak predictor of the risk of a heart attack,” said Salim Yusuf, lead author and director of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “Measuring the girth of the waist and (the) girth of the hip is far more powerful.”(ibid)
Interestingly, having a lot of fat near your central organs is not good for you and the WTHR is a good measure of that fat. Read the
So go get some exercise — and throw out that scale.
Hat tip: JJS Diabetes blog