Articles related to EXERCISE/WORKING OUT

An 18-year-old man comes to you for a sports physical. He is asymptomatic, with no limitation in his exercise capacity. He has a history of exercise-induced bronchospasm for which he takes a budesonide-formoterol inhaler. He does not smoke, drink alcohol, or use any drugs. There is no family history of cardiac disease or sudden death. What’s the next appropriate test?

In a study involving 212 adults with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, an unsupervised online yoga program delivered via prerecorded videos over 12 weeks netted improved physical function vs. the control group. At 12 weeks, knee stiffness, quality of life, and arthritis self-efficacy improved more with yoga than the control intervention. Benefits were not maintained at 24 weeks. Adverse events were minor.

The optimal dose of daily steps—the amount with the greatest dementia risk reduction—was 9,826 steps, with the minimum step dose, or the amount at which dementia risk was half of the maximal reduction, was 3,826 steps per day. See the original article on JAMA Neurology.

The founding editor of Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology teases out for us our physiologic response to salt, sugar, fat, and water that creates a recipe for obesity – a recipe being used daily by many Americans with obvious results. His recommendation? “Drinking more water and reducing salt intake offer cheap, easy and healthy strategies that may prevent or treat obesity.” Click to see the evidence behind the conclusion.

This review with case example explores pericarditis and myocarditis and implications on limiting exercise. The authors summarize relevant guidelines and provide their own conclusion and guidance. They offer a helpful algorithm combining the ESC, ACC, and AHA guidelines and suggest an additional element around limiting heart rate during an acute inflammatory episode.

Higher levels of physical activity were associated with greater processing speed reserve in older women but not in older men, according to a recent study. This is good news, as dementia may be slowed by cognitive reserve, the capacity to maintain cognition in the face of brain damage. A cognitively active lifestyle that includes reading and information processing may delay the onset of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease by up to 5 years in persons in their 80s, according to recent research. Other research has suggested that cognitive reserve may be one factor in some centenarians’ ability to resist cognitive decline in the face of brain dysfunction.