health

It'll be interesting to see if this develops into anything useful...

"Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women.

"It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by exercise."

Interesting articles on the difficulties of weight loss, an effect of exercise, and how diet is necessary to lose weight, with consistent exercise required to keep it off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.htm...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/exercise-hormone-helps-keep-us-...

Dr. Stephen Bloom, an obesity researcher at Hammersmith Hospital in London, said the study needed to be repeated under more rigorous conditions, but added, “It is showing something I believe in deeply — it is very hard to lose weight.” And the reason, he said, is that “your hormones work against you.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weigh...

Interesting article on eating habits... they focus on movie theaters, but I'd imagine it probably applies to many other situations where eating habits are formed (e.g. late night/afternoon snacking)...

http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/09/02/stale-movie-popcorn/

Good advice, and what I've found to be true... for real long-term change, persistance, patience, and permanent modifications are necessary (but that's not a bad thing!)

"It’s all about making healthy eating part of your lifestyle—and yes, that means for life! But listen folks, eating right is so much more than steamed broccoli and flavorless chicken breasts. These days it’s all about flavor and variety, and includes foods like chocolate and pancetta, and yes (I’m talking to you, Nina!), even glasses of wine.

"One of the most significant scientific studies focused on the question came out of Scandinavia in 1993. Researchers divided 2,613 elite male Finnish athletes into three groups -- endurance athletes (long-distance runners and cross-country skiers, for example), and power athletes (boxers, wrestlers, weight lifters) and a mixed group of team athletes (like soccer, ice hockey or basketball players) and sprinters. The researchers then compared those male athletes to 1,712 Finnish men who were not competitive athletes.

Hooray for exercise!  :o)

"Half of the mice were allowed to run on a wheel for 45 minutes three times a week, beginning at 3 months. These rodent runners were required to maintain a fairly brisk pace, Dr. Tarnopolsky said: “It was about like a person running a 50- or 55-minute 10K.” (A 10K race is 6.2 miles.) The mice continued this regimen for five months.

Mmm....

http://www.mint.com/blog/saving/meals-under-10-dollars-07142010/

"In a study published in May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, [researchers] reported that, to no one’s surprise, the men who sat the most had the greatest risk of heart problems. Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised.

Scientists are even discovering ecosystems in our bodies where they weren’t supposed to exist. Lungs have traditionally been considered to be sterile because microbiologists have never been able to rear microbes from them. A team of scientists at Imperial College London recently went hunting for DNA instead. Analyzing lung samples from healthy volunteers, they discovered 128 species of bacteria. Every square centimeter of our lungs is home to 2,000 microbes.