Researchers found that participants in both types of classes had better functioning and fewer symptoms after three months than back patients who were only given a book with advice on preventing and managing pain.

“We’ve known for a while… that exercise is good for back pain,” said Dr. Timothy Carey, from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who wrote a commentary published with the study.

Yoga, he told Reuters Health, “seems to be a perfectly good option for people with back pain, but it is not a preferred option.”

Finding that yoga and stretching had about equal effects means it was probably the stretching involved in yoga – and not the relaxation or breathing components of the practice that helped improve functioning and pain symptoms, researchers report today in Archives of Internal Medicine.

For the study, they divided 228 adults with long-lasting back pain into three groups. Patients in the first two groups went to either weekly yoga or stretching classes for 12 weeks and were asked to practice on their own between classes. Both types of classes focused on stretching and strengthening the lower back and legs.

Patients in the third group were given a book with back pain-related exercise and lifestyle advice and information on managing flare-ups.

After the 12-week program, people who had gone to the group classes reported significantly lower scores on a questionnaire measuring how much pain interferes with daily activities, compared to those given the book.

The questionnaire rated daily “disability” level on a scale of zero to 23, with 23 being the most severe. At the 12-week mark, the exercise groups had dropped from an initial average score of 10 in the yoga group or nine in the stretching group to between four and five in both groups. The people who received the book started with an average score of nine and at 12 weeks had dropped to about a seven.

More participants who did either yoga or stretching also said that their back pain had diminished or was gone. Sixty percent of people in the yoga group reported improvements in pain, compared to 46 percent in the stretching classes and just 16 percent of people who only got the books.

Three months after the end of classes, symptom improvements were similar in people who had done either stretching or yoga, and still better than in the third, non-exercise group.

And at both the end of class sessions and three months later, twice as many of the class participants reported cutting back on pain medications, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) about 40 percent versus 20 percent in the book group.

“Here is an option that is something worth trying,” said Karen Sherman from the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, who led the study.

With either stretching or yoga classes, she told Reuters Health, practice is a must for patients. “There is absolutely no treatment that works for everybody… (but) if they’re willing to practice, they should go ahead and give it a try.”

Carey said the findings suggest that the best type of exercise for people with back pain depends on their preferences and what’s convenient.

“It’s important that people do exercise they enjoy,” he said that way, they’re more likely to stick with it. And, “you don’t need to drive 50 miles to the nearest yoga class if there’s not one near you,” Carey added.

He highlighted group exercise in general as a way to stay motivated that’s also relatively inexpensive.

Sherman said attending a single yoga or stretching session costs about $20, but probably varies in different parts of the country. That would be cheaper than other options for managing lower back pain, such as acupuncture and massage or talk therapy.

And, she added, “Once a person learns how to do these in a way that’s safe for them, they can do them on their own.”

The study was funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. While it didn’t include people with severe back pain, so the findings don’t necessarily apply to them, Carey said that “almost anyone with back pain can benefit from stretching exercises.”

Source: Fox Health News

But if you’re not careful, you could end up eating more calories than you burned off at the gym, without actually nourishing yourself. Try this post-game plan:

After your workout, hydrate! Drink a glass of water before grabbing food. Because the symptoms of dehydration are similar to those of hunger (feeling tired, weak and shaky), we often think we’re hungry when we’re actually thirsty. Plus, drinking water after exercising replenishes fluids lost through sweating.

For best results, drink water before, during, and after your workouts.

Snack well. To refuel your body, eat a snack around 150 – 200 calories that’s a combination of protein and complex carbohydrates. Protein is essential for repairing and building muscles and the complex carbs will help replenish your energy stores. Pretzels, on the other hand, are loaded with empty calories — they contain no protein or complex carbs. Try an apple with string cheese, a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter, or a cup of fat-free Greek yogurt topped with a high-fiber cereal. These combos will help keep you from munching.

And here’s some good news: As your body adjusts to exercising, you should experience a decrease in appetite. In fact, research shows that exercise actually lowers appetite for up to several hours afterwards.

So keep up your workouts and say goodbye to post exercise binges.

Source: Fox News

So fitness trainers hate to see anyone frittering away precious workout periods or filling them with less-than-effective exercises. Actually, it makes them crazy.

We asked a few trainers to point out things they see in the workout world that they really wish they didn’t.

Perhaps a different exercise would be a better use of time. Or a certain exercise ultimately yields more injury and pain than progress. You might be surprised by their picks.

But first, let’s address the flagrant waste of workout time, and the chief culprit here is — you guessed it — the cellphone.

“It drives me bananas,” says John Benz, co-owner of CrossFit on 18th in Kansas City, Mo. “If you can talk on the phone or text, your workout isn’t intense enough.”

Unless you’re taking a call from a patient or a babysitter or some other emergency — “Somebody better be dying on the other end” — leave the cellphone alone, he says. And if you’re using your phone during a class or while working with a trainer, that’s just rude.

Bottom line: If you weren’t actually working out during your workout, you can’t claim a workout.

Instead of crunches, do planks

Corey Scott knows why people do crunches, those truncated sit-ups meant to target abdominal muscles. They want a “six-pack,” a washboard stomach, that shrink-wrapped look.

But the real way to get the shrink-wrapped look is to shrink the wrap. That requires improving nutrition and cutting calories.

“We all have the same musculature,” says Scott, owner of Corey Scott Personal Training Studios in Prairie Village, Kan. “It’s just that we have to reduce down to it. The six-pack starts in the kitchen. Or better yet, the grocery store.”

If your goal is to strengthen your “core,” which means the torso muscles, including stomach, back and hips, your impulse is right on, Scott says. But crunches aren’t good for that, either.

Few people keep perfect form during crunches, he says. And it gets worse as they try to increase repetitions. Most notably they will arch their backs, a strain that can lead to injury.

A simple and effective core exercise is the plank, Scott says. It involves a host of abdominal, back and stabilizer muscles.

Lie on the floor face down and raise your body, “balancing” on your forearms and toes. Hold for 20 seconds or more, lower your body to the floor and repeat several times. Be sure to keep your rear from poking up or sagging.

For a more advanced plank, place your forearms on an exercise or stability ball.

Instead of rote cardio routines, do interval training

Cynthia Kernodle gives certain people credit — at least they’re not sitting at home on the couch — but still it’s disturbing: “I see the same people on a piece of cardio equipment like an elliptical machine or stationary bike, doing the same thing every time, at the same level.

“It’s better than being sedentary, but they’re not going to change their bodies or increase their aerobic fitness.”

Several problems: The body gets accustomed to long stretches of routine exercise, and fitness doesn’t improve; you increase your risk for repetitive motion injuries; and workouts lack mental focus. They’re boring.

Two solutions, says Kernodle, owner of Choices Personal Training:

If you perform your cardio at the gym, spend shorter amounts of time on each of several machines: elliptical, treadmill, bike.

And switch to interval training, which means alternating periods of high-intensity and low-intensity exercise. The latter are also called rest intervals (but that doesn’t mean to stop).

Intensity is pushing yourself hard to maximum effort, which is a different level for different people. Think of sprinting, running as hard as you can, followed by jogging. Or increase the slope or resistance on a cardio machine for a time, then lower it.

“Even doing that for 30 seconds and then backing off for recovery is going to make changes,” Kernodle said. “Otherwise your muscles just become immune to your exercise, and they quit changing.”

Instead of bicep curls, do pull-ups or assisted pull-ups

No matter how toned or bulky you’d like your biceps to be, John Benz has a message for the bicep-curl fans among us: “Way too much time is dedicated to that tiny muscle.”

Benz realizes that the bicep curl, lifting a hand-held weight by bending the elbow, is a hallowed weight-training maneuver. But the time would be better spent doing pull-ups, he says.

Gripping a bar and lifting your body weight will give you great biceps plus recruit an array of muscles in the back and elsewhere. It’s also more aerobic and will improve your grip, forearms and shoulder stability.

Can’t do one? Ask a friend to grasp your ankles with both hands and provide just as much support as is needed for you to lift your body and get your head above the bar, Benz says. Or, at first, stand on a chair or stool and approximate a free-hanging pull-up.

And if you’re too old school to completely abandon bicep curls?

“Less than 3 minutes,” Benz says. Hit them fast, intensely, and move on.”

By now you’re picking up on a general theme here: For fitness and function, choose exercises that work large and multiple muscle groups rather than those that attempt to target specific muscles.

Instead of leg holds, do alternating leg exercises

Our legs contain the body’s biggest muscles. They’re heavy. That’s one reason leg-hold exercises can cause injury, Kernodle says.

For leg holds, people lie on their backs and with their legs straight, raise them to a right angle with the floor, then lower them to about 10 inches from the ground, hovering there as long as possible.

This is meant as an abdominal exercise, with the legs serving as dead weight. But remember the crunch? Similar issue.

“You see people’s backs arching away from the mat or the bench,” she says. “Really their lower back is taking the strain, and the abdominals aren’t working.”

Anyone with chronic lower back pain shouldn’t do leg holds, Kernodle says. Others risk injury unless they maintain perfect form, with the full spine against the floor.

Here are a couple of alternatives:

Lying on the floor face up, bend the right leg at the knee and keep the right foot on the floor. Extend the left leg and raise it off the floor, hold for several seconds, and return the left leg to the floor. Make sure you don’t push your right foot against the floor, which recruits the right hamstring rather than the abdominals. Then switch legs.

Now, lying face up, arms at your sides, position your legs as though sitting in a chair, thighs at a right angle to the ground and knees bent. Lower one leg to the ground and return to the starting position. Do the same with the other leg.

If you find yourself arching your back, place your hands, face down to the floor, under your rear.

Instead of overhead shoulder lifts, do scaptions

Scott was at a fitness convention when a physical therapist asked a group of trainers whether they instruct their clients to do shoulder presses and other overhead weight-lifting routines for shoulder strength. Most hands shot up.

“Stop it,” the therapist said. “I’m tired of trying to fix all these patients with messed up shoulders.”

Pushing heavy weights above the head is a staple of gym work, but be wary of injury, Scott says. Especially as people age, such weight training can damage shoulder joints and tendons. A common term is “shoulder impingement syndrome.”

Try scaptions as an alternative, he says.

With light to moderate weights in each hand, place your arms about even with your front pockets. Now raise the weights to just below shoulder height, then lower them. Your arms are angled rather than straight at your sides or straight in front.

Source: Bangor Daily News

A small study of obese children enrolled in after-school exercise programs showed 12 weeks of vigorous exercise resulted in stronger bones, improved insulin sensitivity (reduced diabetes risk) and less of the most-deadly belly, or visceral, fat, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report.

It also indicated that blood levels of the hormone osteocalcin, made by bone-producing osteoblasts, might be a good indicator of how things are going in all three areas, said Dr. Norman Pollock, bone biologist at GHSU’s Georgia Prevention Institute.

Pollock’s finding is some of the earliest human evidence of this crosstalk among the divergent cell types. Dr. Gerard Karsenty, Chairman of Genetics and Development at Columbia University Medical Center, provided the first evidence of their conversation in animals. In those studies, animals receiving osteocalcin experienced improved insulin sensitivity, less belly fat and denser bones. Osteocalcin levels have primarily been associated with bone growth.

The work earned Pollock a 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Young Investigator Award. He is presenting the finding during the society’s annual September meeting in San Diego.

There have been pieces of evidence of this communication in humans: people with diabetes get a lot of bone fractures; those with more visceral fat are at risk for diabetes; and bone cells have insulin receptors. Ask Pollock why a bone cell would have an insulin receptor and he says it’s a question that many are trying to answer with studies such as this one.

“The idea is that bones can possibly sense environmental stimuli such as being physically active or sedentary and dictate energy regulation accordingly,” he said. The reality is bones get bigger and stronger with exercise and they appear to be sharing the good news. “When osteocalcin is released in your blood, that hormone is talking back to the adipocytes, the cells that store fat, and the pancreatic cells that release insulin to improve energy metabolism.” Bone researchers like Pollock have previously believed bones were just listening.

His study looked at children who were inactive as well as those who exercised 20 or 40 minutes daily. Osteocalcin levels were measured at the start and finish of the 12-week period in addition to standard assessments such as a glucose tolerance test for insulin sensitivity. They found a consistent dose-response so that the children who exercised the most experienced the most bone formation, improved insulin sensitivity and reduced visceral and total body fat.

Pollock notes that bone and fat cells do have a common ancestry: they are both derived from mesenchymal stem cells. “It’s possible that children’s early lifestyle habits and experiences may induce alterations in body composition and predispose them to a lifetime of obesity,” he said. “As parents, we must ensure that our children balance out their screen time with enjoyable physical activity.”

Source: Toni Baker, Georgia Health Sciences University, via EurekAlert

Including a few regular yoga poses in your fitness routine will help you survive the season without falling ill.

Focus on chest-opening poses since they press against the immune gland or thymus, boosting immunity. Twists also are a powerful to naturally detox during this season. Having a simple pranayama practice is also a guarantee against sickness. Below a few poses and practices modified for those at work.

Marjariasana (Cat stretch): Stand up straight. (May also be done seated). Inhale. Curve your chest in, exhaling in a controlled manner. This is one round. Do three to five rounds.

Benefits: Works the spine. Expands the breath. Gives a nice tilt to the chest by working the pectorals. Works the thymus gland, which boosts immunity. Stimulates the mind, removing lethargy.

Ushtrasana (Camel stretch, simple version): Maybe done standing or seated. Keep body erect. Keep hands behind as shown, palms on hips, elbows pointed out and back. Inhale. Exhale. Inhaling push back elbows further so the chest opens up. Exhale, release the tension. This is one round. Do five to ten times.

Benefits: Pushes and massages the thymus gland, which is the immune gland. Protects you from infections.

Kati chakrasana (Abdominal twist): May be done seated or standing. Bending right arm at elbow, place your right thumb on the forehead. Inhale. Exhaling twist to right, maintaining the hand position and elbow extension. Inhaling return to center, then exhaling twist to left side. This is one round. Do five times.
Benefits: It helps remove the build-up of ama /ayurvedic term for toxins, which becomes more during cold or wet seasons. It also removes lethargy. The heart, lungs and the thymus at the chest enjoy a massaging pressure. Gives a gentle, but complete twist to the entire spine. This helps improve circulation all along it, plus to the organs stacked alongside it. It also helps release fat from the liver.

Kapalabhati (Skull-cleansing practice): Pranayama practices like kapalabhati or skull-cleansing kriya (covered in earlier columns) also perk you immediately.

Sit straight in any meditative pose. Inhale and exhale deeply, fast. Do the in-and-out routine five times for one round. Rest, breathing normally. Repeat two more rounds. Don’t exert nostrils or face. The breath must be deep, drawn from abdomen.The number of pumpings/hyperventilation may be increased with regular practice to any where to 30 up to 60.

Avoid: In heart, BP problems, epilepsy.

Benefits: Kapalabhati’s impacts breathing. Is therapeutic in depression, especially seasonal affective disorder common during wet or cold seasons. Boosts digestion and metabolism. Removes mental sluggishness.

Source: Times Of India