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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Stand up for your waist and stretch for your joints: health tips for today
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Stand up for your waist and stretch for your joints: health tips for today

For every inch you put on, the journey back, is equally arduous. How it helps to stand at work and other ways to make yourself healthier, starting today

Stretching is more than a temporary break or a prep-up before exercise. and also helps in the movement of your joints. Photo: ThinkstockPremium
Stretching is more than a temporary break or a prep-up before exercise. and also helps in the movement of your joints. Photo: Thinkstock

Get up, stand up: stand up for your waist!

Now you should stand up not just for your rights, but for your health. Being healthier may be found in something as simple as standing more and sitting less at work, said a study. Replacing sitting time with standing time appeared to improve sugar, fat and cholesterol levels in the blood, researchers wrote in the European Heart Journal. The findings suggest that making small changes to a sedentary lifestyle can have a big impact on health—and that you don’t need to go as far as taking up marathon running. Replacing two hours of sitting time with actual activity in the form of “stepping" was even better—with lower blood fat and sugar scores as well as an 11% lower average Body Mass Index (BMI—a ratio of height to weight) and a 7.5cm (three-inch) smaller average waist circumference.

—AFP

Easy to put on that fat, difficult to lose it

For every inch you put on, the journey back, is equally arduous. A new UK study suggests the odds are against obese men and women trying to get to a healthy weight, particularly if they are severely obese. Researchers followed 76,704 obese men and 99,791 obese women for up to nine years. In any given year during the study, the probability that a patient might achieve a normal body weight was 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women. For those who were severely obese, the annual odds stretched to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women.

Read more here

How stretching keeps your joints moving

Stretching is more than a temporary break or a prep-up before exercise. It also helps in the movement of your joints. According to a report published by Harvard Medical School on their website, your range of motion — how far you can move a joint in various directions — is determined by many things, starting with the inner workings of the joints involved. Also important is the amount of tension in the muscles surrounding the joint, which can be affected by scarring or your habitual posture (passive factors), or by involuntary muscle spasms or purposeful muscle contractions (active factors). When you stretch, you’re working muscles and tendons rather than ligaments. Ligaments are not supposed to be elastic. An overly stretchy ligament wouldn’t provide the stability and support needed for a safe range of movement.

Read more here

Medication is good for children with ADHD

Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are less likely to have accidents that land them in the emergency room than those who are not on medication, according to a new study. “In addition to reducing accidental injuries, the medication often is helpful in helping the child do better in school," said Dr James Leckman, a professor and child psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. ADHD medications can have unwanted side effects like trouble sleeping, anorexia, weight loss, reduced growth rates and headaches, and the decision to treat with medication needs to be a joint decision by the family and clinician, Leckman said.

Read more here

A new treatment for diabetes from China

In his quest to create the first original, billion-dollar drug from a Chinese laboratory, Chen Li is zeroing in on one of the world’s fastest-growing patient groups: diabetes sufferers in China. There were 114 million of them at last count, more than double a 2010 estimate. Once the top scientist in China with Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG, Chen is developing a new treatment for diabetes, which he says afflicts Chinese when they’re younger and thinner than Caucasians. The unique features of China’s epidemic mean new weapons are needed to fight it, according to Chen.

—Bloomberg

Compiled by Pooja Chaturvedi

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Published: 31 Jul 2015, 12:21 PM IST
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