SportsGeezer

Fructose May Help Bodies Make Fat

Man does not get thin by counting calories alone. Neither, sadly, does woman. Energy metabolism also plays a major role in how many calories end up in the fat drawer. That's why the results of  a new study of fructose and other sweeteners conducted at the University of Cincinatti are particularly interesting. The study, which is published in the July issue of Obesity Research, allowed mice to drink either water, fructose sweetened water, or soft drinks. It found that those mice drinking fructose sweetened water of soft drinks gained more body fat than other, even thought they decreased they amount of calories consumed in other food. Mice that drank fructose-sweetened water gained 90 percent more fat than those that drank water, and significantly more than those that drank soda.
The Cincinatti Business Courier reports on that study and another,  conducted at the University of California at Davis, that found that hormones involved in the regulation of body weight respond differently to fructose from the way they respond to other carbohydrates. Researchers now suspect that fructose does not trigger the hormonal systems involved in long-term control of food intake and energy metabolism. Read more about the bad news about fructose.
 

Hardrock 100: The Toughest Trail Race on Earth

The race manual warns runners about the possibility of losing consciousness, search-and-rescue operations and well, death. Of course, when you're talking about a 100-mile foot race that includes more than 33,000 feet of climbing (to altitudes over 14,000 feet), running on scree, the possibility of unscheduled meetings with bears, and terrifying descents down 1000-foot cliffs, death isn't such an unpleasant option. TrailRunner magazine gives us the lowdown on what may be the highest trail race in the country, the Hardrock 100, which takes runners over 12 peaks and mountain passes in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Clearly, a race for the young and crazy, right? Half right. The Hardrock 100 was started 13 years ago by a 52-year-old engineer who wanted to do something to help the economy. To read more, find this story under "Features" in the left nav bar of the TrailRunner site. 

The Exhausting Thrills of Water Polo

The easy part of water polo, Merrill Balassone writes in the Los Angeles Times, is about wear and tear on the joints.  Everything else is murder. Balassone, a masters athlete who came from a family of competitive swimmers and polo players and recenly played her first water polo game, reports that the game is fast, competitive, exhaustive, and terrific fun. "The next day," she writes,  "there wasn't a single muscle group that didn't ache from the workout. My quadriceps and hamstrings were sore from treading water and sprinting up and down the length of the pool. My back and sides hurt from reaching to catch the ball and passing. My biceps were tired from the swimming, and even my hands were giving me trouble."
Mike Lewis, director of sport development for USA Water Polo, told Balassone that the masters level (for players 20 and older) is one of the fastest-growing segments of the organization, attracting former college players and swimmers who want to take up the sport. And he told her why.
"I think water polo offers the benefits of swimming with the social aspect of, say basketball or soccer," Lewis said. "So you have the cardiovascular benefits of swimming but then you get the technical, tactical and social aspects of a team sport, which makes it extremely unique." Read more.

Fitness, Measure by Measure

You've got your pedometer. Your GPS monitor. Your power meter. And your heart rate monitor. Good. Looks like your ready to do some exercise, but the real exercise, it turns out, is making sense of all the data generated by the many wearable devices that cost you a couple o' thousand dollars. Is it silly? Does it work? Gina Kolata, our favorite New York Times science writer, admits that she loves this stuff, but wonders if the sum of all data isn't more confusing than no data at all. Kolata talks to consumers, trainers, and researchers, and comes away with the understanding that yeah, sometimes this stuff really does help people get in shape. And sometimes it justs costs them lot of money. Still, she's buying. Read more.

Coming Late to the Swim Better than Coming Never

"The truth is, the majority of people are not great swimmers--they're just comfortable swimming badly." So says Steve Cutt, swim instructor and truthteller to the appropriately named Jan Masters, who wrote this comforting piece in the London Times about her revelation, at the age of 40, that proper swimming was not some mystical gift granted only to dedicated athletes. Masters' second revelation is even more useful: the relatively small effort required to learn to swim well pays off in major health benefits and yes, thrills. Her word--not ours.
"Once I had cracked it," writes Masters, "cutting through the water was thrilling. As was simply plunging down, flippering my feet and enjoying the wonderful mermaidy lightness of being underwater."
Just one more quote from Masters and we'll turn you loose in the deep end: “Once adult learners get over their fear, they often make the best swimmers, because they haven’t established bad patterns. One woman I taught used to scream when she first entered the pool. Yet, after a few weeks, someone watching her thought she was a former competitor.”
Read more in the London Times. 

Muscle Does Not Turn to Fat

Here's another great locker room myth that you can now forget: If you stop working out, your muscles will turn to fat. Anahad O'Connor, writing in the Times handy Really column, says it just isn't so. What is so, on the other hand, is if you stop working out your muscles will slowly shrink, and if you keep eating the same amount of calories that you ate when you did work out, there's a good chance that where there once were muscles there will eventually be adipose tissue, otherwise known as "fat." There are, the paper reports, two things you can do to avoid the fat fate. One: cut back on caloric intake, and two; keep active. Even if you quit your daily exercise routine, moderate activity is often enough to persuade your muscles to stick around. Read more.

Exercise Can Knock Ten Years Off Aging

The good news, revealed by a new study that measured the  decline in maximum exercise capacity over seven decades of aging, is that exercise can raise one's aerobic capacity 15 percent to 25 percent, or the equivalent to being 10 to 20 years younger.  The bad news is that no amount of exercise can prevent some of the natural decline. WebMD reports that the study, conducted by researchers at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., looked at the change in aerobic capacity in more than 800 men and women aged 21 to 87 over a period of nearly eight years. Results show that aerobic capacity declined 3% to 6% each decade in the 20s and 30s, but after age 70 the rate of decline accelerated to more than 20% per decade. WebMD reports that the study also showed that after age 40, men's fitness levels declined at a faster rate than women, regardless of their level of physical activity. Read more.

Deconstructing Lance Armstrong

What is it, exactly, that boosts Lance Armstrong to the lead position in a pack made up of the best athletes in the world?  Is it his blood lactic acid levels? (6) Or his power output per kilogram of body weight? (6.8 watts) Or his VO2 max? (85) The New York Times puts the question to three exercise physiologists, among them Edward F. Coyle, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas who studies Mr. Armstrong in his human performance lab. The consenus iis "all of the above and none of the above."  The paper gives Dr. Coyle the last word, which is his suggestion that the difference between Mr. Armstrong and many of his competitors may be focus and training techniques. "If they followed Lance's preparation and rode on his Discovery team with the same great teamwork that Discovery has given him," says Coyle ."And if they can muster the right mindset to believe they can really do it when it counts, they could be equally impressive." Read more.

Dark Chocolate May Reduce Blood Pressure

For years, researchers have suspected that flavonoids, found in such foods as fruits, vegetables, tea, red wine and chocolate, were good for our cardiovascular systems. Now the first clinical study to look at the relationship of dark chocolate and blood pressure has found persuasive evidence that eating a small amount of dark chocolate every day could lower blood pressure and improve insulin resistence.  The study, written by Jeffrey Blumberg of Tufts University in Boston, looked at two groups of 10 men and 10 women with slightly elevated blood pressure. For 15 days, half ate a daily 3.5-ounce bar of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate, while the other half ate the same amount of white chocolate, which has similar ingredients but no flavonoids.   The researchers found a 12 mm Hg decrease in systolic blood pressure and a 9 mm Hg decrease in diastolic blood pressure in the dark chocolate group, while blood pressure did not decrease in the white chocolate group. Read more on San Diego.com.

Tetanus Is More Dangerous Than You Think

If you don't think tetanus is a serious threat, you're in good company. Most Americans under the age of 60 are similarly unconcerned. That's because most the those people were immunized to the deadly bacteria when they were kids, and haven't given the sneaky bacteria much thought. Unfortunately, that immunization wears off, and doctors are now recommending that everyone get a tetanus vaccine booster at least every ten years. As Jane Brody warns in this piece in the New York Times, most doctors practicing in the United States have never seen tetanus, and their unfamiliarity can cause a fatal delay in diagnosis when these bacteria enter the body and cause potentially fatal muscle spasms and paralysis. Brody points out that puncture wounds are not the only way to contract tetanus. Even a scratch from a thorn or an animal, a splinter, bug bite, burn or a stab from an unsterile sewing needle can lead to an invasion of tetanus bacteria. The source of infection can be indoors or out - in a home, yard, garden, farm or elsewhere. Scary stuff. Read more here.