Home of Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiology

Lebanon will face an epidemic of obesity-related illnesses, if adults, adolescents, and children continue to put on weight, according to two national obesity surveys carried out by AUB.

Through collaborative efforts between the Nutrition and Food Science Department at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences (FAFS) and the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), two studies, in 1997 and 2008, showed an alarming trend in the percentage of the population which is overweight.

Results showed that 53 percent of people over 20 were overweight in 1997, a figure that continues to grow. A two-fold increase was observed from 1997 to 2008 among the elderly population and the percentage of overweight youths (aged 6-19) grew from 20 percent in 1997 to 35 percent in 2008, with a doubling in obesity rates.

The studies found that the Lebanese population will face a spate of obesity-related illnesses if current trends continue. Although being overweight should be considered a disease on its own, it is also one of the key risk factors for other conditions including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and some forms of cancer.

AUB’s FAFS Agricultural Research and Education Center (AREC)

Obesity in Lebanon is mainly due to poor dietary practices, consisting of a high-fat diet and consumption of soda drinks, the studies found. Researchers revealed that adults who were the least educated and married were also more prone to being overweight. As for adolescents and children, the majority who were least physically active had the highest rates of being overweight.

According to Dean Nahla Hwalla at FAFS, there was a need to draw on the latest scientific evidence to recommend mobilization efforts to the government, international agencies, and local communities.

In addition, preventive action is needed to reduce the prevalence of overweight people through proper educational practices, public health campaigns, and intervention programs.

References:

1. Hwalla N. et al. Prevalence and trends of overweight and obesity in adults, children and adolescents in Lebanon, 2008-2009 (unpublished) 2. Hwalla N, Sibai AM, Adra N: Adolescent Obesity and Physical Activity. World Rev Nutr Diet 2005; 94: 42-50

3. Sibai AM, Hwalla N, Adra N, Rahal B: Prevalence and covariates of obesity in Lebanon: Findings from the first epidemiological study. Obes Res 2003; 11: 1353-1361

Tags: Health, lebanon, obesity

Many young people can spend hours each day in a activity—using the computer, playing electronic games, engaging in a sport, or practicing a musical instrument. All these activities are likely to involve repetitive motions of the hands and wrists. Therefore it is never too early to learn to protect against repetitive stress injury. Young bodies produce large amounts of growth hormones. These hormones help the body grow new tissue to replace damaged tissue. That means injuries heal quickly. It also means that injuries can occur without one’s realizing it. In adolescence the body makes less of these hormones. Therefore damage to tissue is more likely to cause pain and longer lasting injuries.

Tags: exercise, Health, hormones, injury, moement, repetative, tips, wrist, young

A Report of the Surgeon General of the United States:
The publication of the Surgeon General’s report titled “Physical Activity and Health”  is a landmark in the history of muscle and exercise physiology and disciplines related to sports medicine, not only because it summarizes results of research from diverse fields, but also because the document serves as an articulation of public policy. The main message of this report is that Americans can substantially improve their health and quality of life by including moderate amounts of physical activity in their daily lives.
In 1994 the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States authorized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to serve as the lead agency in preparing the first Surgeon General’s report on physical activity and health. The CDC was joined in the effort by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (PCPFS), the Office of Public Health and Science, the Office of Disease Prevention at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and several institutes from the NIH, including the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. In addition, the CDC’s efforts were buttressed by several nonfederal scholarly and professional organizations, including the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD); the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM); and the American Heart Association (AHA). Representatives of those organizations provided consultation throughout the development process.

The report is noteworthy in several respects. As previously stated, it recognized that physical activity is essential for the health and well-being of the general population, and it emphasized the importance of regular, moderate-intensity exercise as well as Vigorous activity to achieve and maintain cardiorespiratorv fitness. The report encourages people of all ages to include a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity of moderate intensity (such as brisk walking) on most days. Further, the report was definite in recommending physical activity as a means to manage chronic diseases other than cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes, colon cancer, osteoa Arthritis, and osteoporosis. The Surgeon General’s report noted also that in addition to promoting muscle strength and minimizing injury due to falls in the aged, regular exercise may be important in relieving symptoms of depression and anxiety, thereby improving mood and promoting a sense of well-being.
The interim between publication of the third and fourth editions of Exercise Physiology was marked by publication of the Institute of Medicine’s report on dietary macronutrient consumption titled “Dietary Reference Intakes: Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids” (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309085373/). Contents of this report, generally referred to as the Macron utrient Report, are detailed in Chapter 28, but impact of this momentous report is detailed here.
In 2000 the NIH and Health Canada commissioned the National Academies of Science (NAS) to:

(1 )review the scientific literature regarding macronutrients (proteins, amino acids, phospholipids, cholesterol, complex carbohydrates, simple sugars, dietary fiber, energy intake, and energy expenditure) to determine the roles, if any, they play in health;
(2) review selected components of food that may influence the bioavailability of these compounds;
(3) develop estimates of dietary intake of these compounds that are compatible with good nutrition throughout the life span and that may decrease the risk of chronic disease determine the tolerable upper intake levels for each compound.

Through its ancillary organizational units, specifically the Food arid Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine (TOM), a panel of experts were convened to meet and author a technical report to provide guidance to health care professionals when making dietary recommendations. Because the possibilities for conflicts of interest and industrial espionage were rife, the NAS was commissioned to produce the Report under a federal statute dating from the U.S. Civil War; the NAS and its entities are immune from subpoena by all entities, including the U.S. Congress. The 2002 Macronutrient Report

follows similar reports released in 1974, 1980, and 1989 in which distinguished panels of the Food and Nutrition Board labored to define Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) of dietary macronutrients. Fundamental to work of the most recent panel authoring the Macronutrient Report was the decision to base daily dietary energy intake recommendations on energy expenditure. This approach became possible because of new doubly labeled water (DLW) isotope tracer technology so that energy expenditures of large numbers of people could be estimated with certainty. Those analyses revealed a wide range of energy expenditures by healthy adults, but the mean physical activity level (PAL) of those with stable body weights in the healthy range was 1.6, or 60% over basal. In terms of an activity that most people can relate to as well as accomplish, healthy people with favorable body weights and compositions are active equivalent to walking briskly an hour or more a day. Hence, the equivalent of walking briskly for 60 mm/day became the physical activity recommendation by the IOM Macronutrient panel. The physical activity recommendation was only a small part of the overall list of recommendations in dietary macronutrient composition (Chapter 2), but for the first time dietary and physical activity recommendations were combined and presented in quantifiable terms. Hence, on a population basis, the recommendation for “a minimum of 30 minutes of physical activity of moderate intensity (such as brisk walking) on most, if not all, days of the week” in the 1996 Surgeon General’s report has been more precisely determined and the recommendation is for activity equivalent to 60 mm/day of brisk walking.
In short, like the 1996 Surgeon General’s report on the health benefits of physical activity, the 2002 IOM Macronutrient Report combining physical activity and dietary recommendations represents a major departure from previous practices. It is testament to the growing recognition that prudent dietary and physical activity habits are important in promoting physical and mental health throughout the life cycle.

Source: McGraw Hill, Brooks, Fahey, Baldwin – Exercise Physiology, Human Bioenergetics and Its applications – Fourth Ed(book)

Tags: activity, AMERICAN, Americans, CDC, Centers, Control, Disease, for, General, Health, lifestyle, physical, Prevention, States, Surgeon, United

If you are like any Frustrated dieters, you’d think that you tried them all; low calorie diets. low-fat diets, starvation diets. You might say:” I’d lose 20 pounds and gain them right back again, plus a few more, usually.” what you should do is  ditch the idea of dieting and join a fitness club, where you would workout 5 times a week, and lose more than 80 pounds in a couple of months. you might end up loving a new sport and excelling in it.

Or you could be a 24 hour athletic, walk to work, go biking on weekends, gym in the afternoons, but still don’t lose any weight, and sometimes even put on an extra pounds, knowing that your food diet is a mess. In this case you must turn to dieting, cutting back on fatty foods, sweets and total calories, and lose a 100 pounds just like THAT !

The truth is, researchers stress that we need diet and exercise to drop pounds. But you already know this, it’s obvious..However, experts also admit that it helps to concentrate on one more that the other. But how would you decide which one? well its in your hands. In other words, ask your self: “where do I want to start? what am I willing to focus on?”

The answer depends on everything from what you hope to achieve to how your life is organized, because some people feel overwhelmed at the thought of changing everything; diet, lifestyle, the whole package.

If you’re in a big hurry to drop pounds fast, dieting is the way to go. Decades of research have shown that it’s the surest and quickest method. In fact,  it’s much easier for most people to cut back on calories by controlling what they eat than by burning an equivalent number of calories through physical activities.

=> Here’s why lets say you want to lose a pound a week. you’ll need a daily deficit of roughly 500 calories. On a diet, you can reach that goal by cutting back your portion sizes at dinner by one third, and eating an apple instead of a slice of apple pie for desert. To burn that number of calories through an activity, you’ll need to jog for about an hour depending on your body’s metabolism rate.

If you’re more concerned with how you look that with your numbers on the scale, which is the more reasonable goal, exercise may be the way to go. By increasing physical activity, you’ll burn fat and build muscle tissue. Hear this, Dieters end up losing both fat and muscle tissue! In fact, Losing fat and not muscle is really the goal of healthy weight loss!

A Study by Robert Ross, and exercise Physiologist, compared the effects of diet versus exercise in 30 men. over 3 months, both groups lost more than 16 pounds. but the exercisers lost 2 pounds more body fat than dieters and replaced them with muscle tissue.

Exercise also may be your best bet if your committed to losing weight and keeping it off for good. Another study done in mid 1990′s where 127 individuals where split into 3 groups, one group ate low calorie diet, the other group exercised at least 3 times a week doing brisk walks, while the rest did both.

Results:

1. at the end of the 1st year, the dieters lost 15 pounds
2. the exercisers 6 pounds
3. and the combination group almost 20 pounds !

After the 2nd year however,

1. the dieters were heavier than their starting weight!
2. the combination group regained all but 5 pounds of their losses
3. only members of the exercise group held steady.

WHY?

Answer: simple. “No one Ever grows to like dieting, but some people begin to like being more physically active” as one of the scientists in the study concluded.

Conclusion:

Your best approach is one that suits your temperament and lifestyle.

Like to cook?

=> When you prepare your own meals, you control exactly what goes into them, which makes it much easier to cut back on saturated fat and add more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains to the menu.

If you hate the thought of counting calories, you’re a candidate for exercise. Be prepared to burn plenty of calories, though. Most people who lose weight through an activity have to expend about 2500 extra calories a week, the equivalent of taking a brisk Hour-long walk daily.

Finally, consider your past. If you’ve tried and failed at one approach, consider the other, because you might be so frustrated that you’ll begin to think you’ll never be able to lose weight! That’s when it’s time to try something NEW ! Even a small step forward can help people regain confidence and convince themselves they can make even bigger changes!

Source: readers digest magazine

Tags: activity, athletic performance, calories, cardiovascular fitness, combination, diet, dieters, energy, exercisers, Health, hour long walk, lifestyle, lose weight, lose wieght, metabolism, pounds, prepare meals, study, temperament, weight loss, workout

Physiology: Some Definitions

The scientific method involves the systematic solution of problems. The scientific approach to solving a problem involves the development and presentation of ideas, or hypotheses; the collection of information (data) relevant to those hypotheses; and the acceptance or rejection of the hypotheses based on evaluation of the data (conclusions). Although the scientific method appears to be straightforward, the process of deriving a right  hypotheses and systematically testing them can be complex. It is nevertheless evident that, in our increasingly technological society, those who systematically analyze their problems and take appropriate steps to solve them are most likely to acquire satisfactory answers to their questions. Individuals who make the best use of the scientific method are the most successful scientists, educators, coaches, and health professionals.
Physiology is a branch of biological science concerned with the function of organisms and their parts. The study of physiology depends on and is intertwined with other disciplines, such as anatomy, biochemistry, molecular biology, and biophysics. This interdependence is based on the fact that the human body follows the natural laws of structure and function, which fall within the domain of these other disciplines.
Exercise physiology is a branch of physiology that deals with the functioning of the body during exercise. As we shall see, definite physiological responses to exercise depend (in the intensity, duration , and frequency of the exercise and the environmental circumstances, diet, health, and physiological status of the individual.

Source: McGraw Hill, Brooks, Fahey, Baldwin – Exercise Physiology, Human Bioenergetics and Its applications – Fourth Ed(book)

Source: McGraw Hill, Brooks, Fahey, Baldwin – Exercise Physiology, Human Bioenergetics and Its applications – Fourth Ed(book)

Tags: anatomy, approach, Basis, biochemistry, biophysics, collection, conclusions, data, Development, diet, duration, environmental circumstances, evaluation, exercise, frequency, function, Health, hypotheses, ideas, information, intensity, method, molecular biology, organisms, physiological, Physiology, presentation, problem, Scientific, solution, status, systematic