SportsGeezer

12 Fuzzy Ways to Stay Warm and Look Cool

Geezer is still uncertain if it's better to look good than feel good, but he hopes that that is not the case, because while feeling good is still within reach, looking good is, well, not the kind of thing Geezer would put money on. Which brings us, not entirely smoothly, to this useful presentation of 12 very cool fleece jackets from the February issue of Outside magazine. Christopher Solomon tells us that fleece is back at the forefront of performance and style. To prove his point, he directs us to Polartec's new Hardface technology, which uses a surface polymer to create a fabric that combines the best aspects of soft shells (weather and abrasion resistance, trim look) with high warmth-to-weight ratio and good breathability. Other innovations, he writes, include body-mapping construction that puts more fleece where you need it and less where you don't, knitting techniques that mimic styles like corduroy and herringbone, and mix-and-match combinations that pair the fuzz with other fabrics. Check out the goods at Outside.

Study Shows Vacations Are Good For Your Health

File this under "almost but not quite too good to be true," along with earlier reports that sex is good for your health, and wine is good for your health. In this dispatch, we learn from the Harvard Men's Health Watch newsletter that vacations are good for your health. While a more comprehensive report lies behind the newsletter's  paid firewall, this paragraph tells us that in one study, men who took the most vacations were 29 percent less likely to be diagnosed with heart disease and 17 percent less likely to die over the nine-year study period than those who did not take regular vacations.

Fitness and Your Brain: What BDNF Can Do For You

Regular readers of the Geezer doubtless recall earlier reports (here and here) on research suggesting that exercise is as good for the brain as it is for the body. Now, in part one of a two-part series on lifestyle and brain fitness, Science News rounds up several studies and a small army of experts to lock up the issue, most persuasively with a discussion of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. BDNF, it turns out, is a good thing. It is one several neurotrophic factors released during exercise, and research has shown it to prompt brain benefits on its own and trigger a cascade of other neural health–promoting chemicals to spring into action. Bottom like: Fitness prompts nerve cells to multiply, strengthens their connections, and protects them from harm. Read more here.

Let Your Metabolism Do the Calorie Burning

Geezer knows how this sounds, but new research suggests that you really can burn calories while you sleep. And while you're awake. And while you're neither asleep nor awake, but at work. The Washington Post's food and health writer, Sally Squires, reports on a Dutch study that suggests that eating a lot of high protein food, such as lean meat, cranks up our metabolism, which turns up the heat on calorie burning. Wait, there's more: Squire reports that when the study's participants, who were all women of healthy weight, ate more protein, they said they felt fuller, more satisfied and less hungry than when they consumed a diet with the typical amount of protein, about 10 percent of calories. The study's lead author, Margriet Westerterp-Plantenga, of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, recommends that those who go the high protein route try to keep protein calories at 25 percent of total intake. To do that, says Squires, and if we have 1,500 calorie daily diet, we should aim for 94 grams of protein. Translation: a salmon fillet, three cups of skim milk and a skinless chicken breast. Read more at the Washington Post.

Compression Shorts and Performance

Compression shorts, those hip-hugging short pants made of Lycra or some other expanding fabric, are de rigueur for some sports, such as cycling, and a fashion faux-pas in others, such as tennis. Now, 20 years after they appeared in sportswear catalogues, their relative propriety in whatever sports is well established. What is not established is any physical benefit to the wearer. Some athletes say they improve performance (but make one look silly). Others say they have no effect on performance (and make one look great).  And while this piece in the L.A. Times is not going settle the dispute, it will provide some ammo for parties arguing either side, and likely prolong a debate that was too long before it started. One factoid of value in the Times piece is the agreement among kinesiologists that compression shorts (like knee sleeves) probably improve proprioceptive feedback.  Which is to say that the compression of the shorts on receptors in the skin and muscles gives the brain added information on the body's motion, which, in turn, enables improved mechanics of motion. Which, in turn, looks great, even if you don't.

Knee Pain: Glucosamine Doesn't Cut It

It's been said before, and now it's said again, and backed by a 24-week study, 1,583 patient study, whose results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine: glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate do very little to relieve the pain of arthritic knees. The New York Times reports that patients in the study were randomly assigned to one of five groups. Some patients took glucosamine, some took chondroitin and some took both. Others, serving as comparison subjects, took a placebo or celecoxib, sold as Celebrex, a prescription drug that is approved for osteoarthritis. The Times also reports that in 2004, Americans spent about $724 million on on glucosamine and chondroitin, and that many arthritis patients still swear by the supplements, which cost $30 to $50 a month. 

Two Things Your Brain Would Like You to Know

Geezer has long been a believer in the power of the unconscious mind. In fact, he will argue that many of his finest decisions were made after "sleeping on" on the dilemma at hand. At this point, sadly, Geezer's loved ones are apt to point out that those decisions must be compared to decisions made when Geezer was fully alert, and yes, it may be true that the bar has not been set impossibly high.
Whatev. This piece in the New York Times reports on research conducted at the University of Amsterdam, which suggests that sleeping on difficult decisions allows people to take the wealth of under-the-radar information,combine it with deliberately studied facts and impressions and then make astute judgments that they would not otherwise form. Researchers found that people who spent more time thinking about decisions to buying cars, apartments and computers were more satisfied with their purchases.
The other, and OK,  perhaps unrelated, thing your brain would like you to know is that a review of much scientific data found that physical activity and reducing your risk of heart disease -- by cutting cholesterol and blood pressure levels, for example, or losing weight -- are among the best ways to maintain a healthy brain. The study, reported in the Washington Post and funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that increased mental activity throughout life appears to preserve brainpower. The Post reports that one recent study that followed more than 1,700 seniors for six years found those who exercised the most -- at least three times a week-- were least likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. Read more about exercise and your brain in the Washington Post, and about the power of sleeping on decisions in the New York Times.

50s Said To Be Golden Years For Sex

Everyone knows that some things do get better as we get older, but who would have thought that sex is one of them? Geezer has no comment, but he does have a report from an Oslo-based study showing that men in their fifties said they were happier with their sex lives than men in their thirties. The BBC reports on the study, which asked 1,185 men between the ages of 29 and 70 to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of their sex life on a scale of zero to four, with four representing good sexual function and no problems. Researchers found that men in their twenties recorded an average overall satisfaction level of 2.79 with the second highest level was among fifty-somethings, who recorded an average of 2.77 . Men in their 30s only reached 2.55, and men in their forties averaged 2.72. The bad news is, it doesn't get better forever: overall satisfaction fell significantly to 2.46 for men in their sixties and to 2.14 for men in their seventies. Read more and be amazed.

Got Pain? Check Your Prognosis on the Sports Injury Index

How much does your sports injury hurt? Wanna know what kind of grief and suffering lies ahead? Now you can look it up on Men's Health's Sports Injury Index, compiled with help from the Sports Injury Clinic. Geezer happens to love this service magazine fare almost as much as the editors of Men's Health love it, or perhaps as much as the editors of Men's Health think their readers love it. And it's a safe bet that they do. Bottom line: this is a useful tool, and it's about as authoritative as you can get with a few hundred words to work with. Why, somebody Geezer's age could spend hours researching the injuries with which his body has become acquainted, while younger persons could spend equal hours fantasizing about injuries yet to come. Geezer says this one is definitely worth bookmarking.

Three Answers to the Low-Fat Futility Study

When it appeared two weeks ago, the $415 milliion federal study suggesting that a low-fat diet does virtually nothing to reduce cancer and heart disease was immediately acclaimed as definitive and authoritative. And why not? When you spend that kind of money, you want to believe you've got things right, right? Not.  Since we got the bad news about good food, many health and dietary experts have stepped up and taken shots at the findings. Here are three:
The LA Times points out, among other things, that women who ate the most fat when the study began, and therefore reduced their fat intake by a higher percentage, showed greater reductions in breast cancer risk — up to 20 percent.
BU Today reminds us that the women in the low-fat diet group were originally supposed to cut back to eating 20 percent of their calories from fat [from 38 percent], and they couldn’t do it. They ended up between 24 and 29 percent, which means a much smaller difference between them and the control. 
And the Washington Post reports that the study's findings do show that eating more fruit and vegetables as well as less saturated and trans fats cuts the risk of heart disease and cancer.
So there.