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Category: Exercise

Published on Leave a comment on Exercise Now to Protect Your Brain Decades From Now

Get out there and start getting active NOW - the earlier you start in life, the better for your brain decades later. All physical activity or exercise is good, including regular walks. From Medical Xpress:

Regular exercise protects against cognitive decline in later years

Regular exercise in middle age is the best lifestyle change a person can make to prevent cognitive decline in the later years, a landmark 20-year study has found.

University of Melbourne researchers followed 387 Australian women from the Women's Healthy Ageing Project for two decades. The women were aged 45 to 55-years-old when the study began in 1992. The research team made note of their lifestyle factors, including exercise and diet, education, marital and employment status, number of children, mood, physical activity and smoking....They were also asked to learn a list of 10 unrelated words and attempt to recall them half an hour later, known as an Episodic Verbal Memory test.

When measuring the amount of memory loss over 20 years, frequent physical activity, normal blood pressure and high good cholesterol were all strongly associated with better recall of the words. Study author Associate Professor Cassandra Szoeke, who leads the Women's Healthy Ageing Project, said once dementia occurs, it is irreversible. "In our study more weekly exercise was associated with better memory." 

"We now know that brain changes associated with dementia take 20 to 30 years to develop," Associate Professor Szoeke said. "The evolution of cognitive decline is slow and steady, so we needed to study people over a long time period. We used a verbal memory test because that's one of the first things to decline when you develop Alzheimer's Disease."
Regular exercise of any type, from walking the dog to mountain climbing, emerged as the number one protective factor against memory loss. Asoc Prof Szoeke said that the best effects came from cumulative exercise, that is, how much you do and how often over the course of your life.  (Original study)

Published on Leave a comment on Exercise As Anticancer Therapy?

We've all heard of immunotherapy as a possible future treatment for many cancers, but other possible treatments are also being tested. Two possibilities caught my eye.

The first study is looking at exercise for advanced prostate cancer - to extend life, and the other is testing a vaccine for those with prostate cancer who haven't yet treated it (they've just been doing "active surveillance" instead).  And since the studies are occurring now, and people are still joining, then the results are still unknown and won't be known for years.

But one can hope.... Exercise as anticancer therapy? A vaccine after cancer diagnosis?

From Medical Xpress: Exercise, future anticancer therapy?

At age 70, Alfred Roberts plays hockey twice a week. Nothing special, right? Except that for three years he has had advanced prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. "I've always been active. Hockey keeps me in shape and keeps my mind off things. I've got friends that have played until age 80, and my goal is to beat them!" said the veteran stick handler.

Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of exercise to improve the quality of life of people with cancer. But Dr. Fred Saad, urologist-oncologist and researcher at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM), goes further. He believes that physical exercise has a direct effect on cancer, as effective as drugs, for treating patients with prostate cancer, even in advanced stages of the disease.

"Typical patients with metastases often become sedentary. It is thought that this affects cancer progression," he said. Together with Robert Newton, professor at the Edith Cowan University Exercise Medicine Research Institute in Australia, Dr. Saad is leading the first international study which aims to demonstrate that exercise literally extends the life of patients with metastatic prostate cancer....In the coming weeks, some sixty hospitals across the world will begin recruiting patients. In total, nearly 900 men with advanced prostate cancer will participate.

"We will study exercise as if it were a drug added to standard treatments. All patients will be treated within the latest scientific knowledge for this type of cancer. They will continue to follow their therapies and take their medications. But half of the patients will receive psychosocial support with general recommendations on physical exercise. The other half will also follow a high intensity exercise program," he explained.

The exercise medicine expert Professor Robert Newton has designed a specific strength and cardiovascular training program for patients in the "exercise" group. "They will have an hour of aerobic and resistance training three times a week. An exercise specialist will supervise them for the first 12 months, and then they will continue without direct supervision. We will evaluate quality of life, appetite, and treatment tolerance in relation to their improved physical condition," said Professor Newton, who is co-director of the Edith Cowan University, Exercise Medicine Research Institute.

The hypothesis is that exercise has a direct impact on cancer progression in addition to helping patients better tolerate therapy. Ultimately, they will live longer. The results of this large study, which involves some one hundred researchers in Canada, the US, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK, will not be known for five years. Could the findings be extended to other types of cancer? It is too early to tell, but researchers are betting that exercise could well become the next anticancer therapy. Alfred Roberts is also convinced that exercise helps defy the odds: "As long as I can skate, I'll play hockey!"

From Medscape:  A Treatment Vaccine for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer

A Louisiana-based biopharmaceutical company is betting that its experimental immunotherapeutic vaccine can keep previously untreated prostate cancer in check. The company, OncBioMune Pharnaceuticals, Inc, in Baton Rouge, is planning to test the vaccine, dubbed ProscaVax, in a phase 2 trial for patients with previously untreated prostate cancer and in a second trial for patients with recurrent or hormone-refractory disease. The trial of a treatment vaccine in untreated, low-risk prostate cancer patients is novel.

Published on Leave a comment on Can A Healthy Lifestyle Prevent Cancer?

Another new study about lifestyle and the risk of cancer. Many earlier studies have established some lifestyle factors that increase cancer risk: smoking, alcohol use, obesity, and physical inactivity. In this study the researchers found that about 20% to 40% of cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths can be potentially prevented through lifestyle modification.

For some cancers the the effect is even larger - for example, approximately 80% to 90% of lung cancer deaths could be avoided if Americans adopted the lifestyle of the low-risk group, mainly by quitting smoking. For other cancers, from 10% to 70% of deaths could be prevented. Bottom line: making some lifestyle changes could change a person's cancer risk.

From Science Daily: Can a healthy lifestyle prevent cancer?

A large proportion of cancer cases and deaths among U.S. individuals who are white might be prevented if people quit smoking, avoided heavy drinking, maintained a BMI between 18.5 and 27.5, and got moderate weekly exercise for at least 150 minutes or vigorous exercise for at least 75 minutes, according to a new study published online by JAMA Oncology. Cancer is a leading cause of death in the United States.

Mingyang Song, M.D., Sc.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, and Edward Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, Boston, analyzed data from two study groups of white individuals to examine the associations between a "healthy lifestyle pattern" and cancer incidence and death.

A "healthy lifestyle pattern" was defined as never or past smoking; no or moderate drinking of alcohol (one or less drink a day for women, two or less drinks a day for men); BMI of at least 18.5 but lower than 27.5; and weekly aerobic physical activity of at least 150 minutes moderate intensity or 75 minutes vigorous intensity. Individuals who met all four criteria were considered low risk and everyone else was high risk. The study included 89,571 women and 46,399 men; 16,531 women and 11,731 had a healthy lifestyle pattern (low-risk group) and the remaining 73,040 women and 34,608 men were high risk.

The authors suggest about 20 percent to 40 percent of cancer cases and about half of cancer deaths could potentially be prevented through modifications to adopt the healthy lifestyle pattern of the low-risk group.The authors note that including only white individuals in their PAR estimates may not be generalizable to other ethnic groups but the factors they considered have been established as risk factors in diverse ethnic groups too.

Published on Leave a comment on Get Active and Lower Risk of Developing Cancer

A recent study pooled the data from over a million Europeans and Americans and found that higher levels of leisure-time physical activity was associated with a reduced risk of developing cancer in 13 of the 26 cancers looked at.

For that group of 13 cancers, the cancer risk reduction ranged from 10% to 42%. And most of these associations (leisure-time physical activity and lower risk of cancer) were evident regardless of body size or smoking history. Bottom line: getting active may lower your cancer risk.

From Science Daily: Physical activity associated with lower risk for many cancers

Higher levels of leisure-time physical activity were associated with lower risks for 13 types of cancers, according to a new study published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Physical inactivity is common, with an estimated 51 percent of people in the United States and 31 percent of people worldwide not meeting recommended physical activity levels. Any decrease in cancer risk associated with physical activity could be relevant to public health and cancer prevention efforts.

Steven C. Moore, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md., and coauthors pooled data from 12 U.S. and European cohorts (groups of study participants) with self-reported physical activity (1987-2004). They analyzed associations of physical activity with the incidence of 26 kinds of cancer.The study included 1.4 million participants and 186,932 cancers were identified during a median of 11 years of follow-up.

The authors report that higher levels of physical activity compared to lower levels were associated with lower risks of 13 of 26 cancers: esophageal adenocarcinoma (42 percent lower risk); liver (27 percent lower risk); lung (26 percent lower risk); kidney (23 percent lower risk); gastric cardia (22 percent lower risk); endometrial (21 percent lower risk); myeloid leukemia (20 percent lower risk); myeloma (17 percent lower risk); colon (16 percent lower risk); head and neck (15 percent lower risk), rectal (13 percent lower risk); bladder (13 percent lower risk); and breast (10 percent lower risk). Most of the associations remained regardless of body size or smoking history, according to the article. Overall, a higher level of physical activity was associated with a 7 percent lower risk of total cancer.

Physical activity was associated with a 5 percent higher risk of prostate cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of malignant melanoma, an association that was significant in regions of the U.S. with higher levels of solar UV radiation but not in regions with lower levels, the results showed.

The authors note the main limitation of their study is that they cannot fully exclude the possibility that diet, smoking and other factors may affect the results. Also, the study used self-reported physical activity, which can mean errors in recall."These findings support promoting physical activity as a key component of population-wide cancer prevention and control efforts," the authors conclude.

Published on Leave a comment on One Season of High School Football Results In Brain Changes

Study after study finds negative effects on the brain from playing football - here it is one season of high school football resulting in measurable brain changes. None of these players had a concussion during the season, and so the negative effects were from subconcussive head impacts or hits. Interestingly, those special helmets they wore to measure impacts showed no relationship with what the brain scans showed - so the helmets were basically useless in measuring subconcussive impacts. From Science Daily:

Head impacts from single season of high school football produce measurable change in brain cells

Repeated impacts to the heads of high school football players cause measurable changes in their brains, even when no concussion occurs, according to new research. Researchers gathered data from high school varsity players who donned specially outfitted helmets that recorded data on each head impact during practice and regular games. They then used experimental techniques to measure changes in cellular microstructure in the brains of the players before, during, and after the season.

"Our findings add to a growing body of literature demonstrating that a single season of contact sports can result in brain changes regardless of clinical findings or concussion diagnosis," said senior author Dr. Joseph Maldjian, Chief of the Neuroradiology Division and Director of the Advanced Neuroscience Imaging Research Lab, part of the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at UT Southwestern.

In the study, appearing in the Journal of Neurotrauma, a team of investigators at UT Southwestern, Wake Forest University Medical Center, and Children's National Medical Center evaluated about two dozen players over the course of a single football season.....During the pre-season each player had an MRI scan and participated in cognitive testing, which included memory and reaction time tests. During the season they wore sensors in their helmets that detected each impact they received. Post-season, each player had another MRI scan and another round of cognitive tests. 

Researchers then used diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI), which measures water diffusion in biological cells, to identify changes in neural tissues. ....DKI also allowed the researchers to measure white matter abnormalities. White matter consists of fibers that connect brain cells and can speed or slow signaling between nerve cells. In order for the brain to reorganize connections, white matter must be intact and the degree of white matter damage may be one factor that limits the ability of the brain to reorganize connections following TBI.

Football has the highest concussion rate of any competitive contact sport, and there is growing concern -- reflected in the recent decrease in participation in the Pop Warner youth football program -- among parents, coaches, and physicians of youth athletes about the effects of subconcussive head impacts, those not directly resulting in a concussion diagnosis, researchers noted. Previous research has focused primarily on college football players, but recent studies have shown impact distributions for youth and high school players to be similar to those seen at the college level, with differences primarily in the highest impact magnitudes and total number of impacts, the researchers noted.

Published on Leave a comment on A Benefit of Taking Mass Transit, Walking, or Bicycling to Work

Makes sense that not driving to work in a car, but using mass transit (public transport), cycling, or walking to work results in lower body mass index (BMI) and body fat. They're moving more! From Science Daily:

Public transport, walking and cycling to work are all associated with reductions in body fat for adults in mid-life

Adults who commute to work via cycling or walking have lower body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI) measures in mid-life compared to adults who commute via car, according to a new study incThe Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. Even people who commute via public transport also showed reductions in BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who commuted only by car. This suggests that even the incidental physical activity involved in public transport journeys may be important.

The study looked at data from over 150000 individuals from the UK Biobank data set, a large, observational study of 500000 individuals aged between 40 and 69 in the UK. The study is the largest to date to analyse the health benefits of active transport.

The strongest associations were seen for adults who commuted via bicycle, compared to those who commute via car. For the average man in the sample (age 53 years; height 176.7cm; weight 85.9kg), cycling to work rather than driving was associated with a weight difference of 5kg or 11lbs (BMI difference 1.71 kg/m2). For the average woman in the sample (age 52 years; height 163.6cm; weight 70.6kg), the weight difference was 4.4kg or 9.7lbs (BMI difference 1.65 kg/m2). After cycling, walking to work was associated with the greatest reduction in BMI and percentage body fat, compared to car-users (BMI difference 0.98 kg/m2 for men; 0.80 kg/m2 for women). For both cycling and walking, greater travelling distances were associated with greater reductions in BMI and percentage body fat.

Commuters who only used public transport also had lower BMI compared to car-users (BMI difference of 0.70kg/m2 for men), as did commuters who combined public transport with other active methods (BMI difference 1.00 kg/m2 for men; 0.67 kg/m2 for women). The effect of public transport on BMI was slightly greater than for commuters who combined car use with other active methods (BMI difference 0.56 kg/m2 for men). The link between active commuting and BMI was independent of other factors such as income, area deprivation, urban or rural residence, education, alcohol intake, smoking, general physical activity and overall health and disability.

Published on Leave a comment on Higher Activity Levels and the Aging Brain

Another study showing that higher physical activity (from a variety of activities) is "related to larger gray matter volume in the elderly, regardless of cognitive status", specifically in gray matter areas of the brain responsible for memory, learning, and cognition. In other words, higher levels of physical activity reduce brain atrophy that occurs with aging and improves cognitive function in elderly individuals.  There is also discussion of higher activity levels improving cerebral (brain) blood flow. Bottom line: get off your butt and move more for better brain health. From Medical Xpress:

Burning more calories linked with greater gray matter volume, reduced Alzheimer's risk

Whether they jog, swim, garden or dance, physically active older persons have larger gray matter volume in key brain areas responsible for memory and cognition, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UCLA.The findings, published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, showed also that people who had Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment experienced less gray matter volume reduction over time if their exercise-associated calorie burn was high.

A growing number of studies indicate physical activity can help protect the brain from cognitive decline, said investigator James T. Becker, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, Pitt School of Medicine..... "Our study is one of the largest to examine the relationship between physical activity and cognitive decline, and the results strongly support the notion that staying active maintains brain health."

Led by Cyrus Raji, M.D., Ph.D., formerly a student at Pitt School of Medicine and now a senior radiology resident at UCLA, the team examined data obtained over five years from nearly 876 people 65 or older participating in the multicenter Cardiovascular Health Study. All participants had brain scans and periodic cognitive assessments. They also were surveyed about how frequently they engaged in physical activities, such as walking, tennis, dancing and golfing, to assess their calorie expenditure or energy output per week.

Using mathematical modeling, the researchers found that the individuals who burned the most calories had larger gray matter volumes in the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes of the brain, areas that are associated with memory, learning and performing complex cognitive tasks. In a subset of more than 300 participants at the Pitt site, those with the highest energy expenditure had larger gray matter volumes in key areas on initial brain scans and were half as likely to have developed Alzheimer's disease five years later.

"Gray matter houses all of the neurons in your brain, so its volume can reflect neuronal health," Dr. Raji explained. "We also noted that these volumes increased if people became more active over five years leading up to their brain MRI."

Published on Leave a comment on Education and Climbing Stairs Keep the Brain Younger?

Brain aging can be viewed as having 2 parts: chronological age (normally  the brain grey matter volume slowly shrinks with advancing age) and a lifetime of exposures - which can be negative from unhealthy lifestyle and injuries, and positive from a healthy lifestyle and enriched environments. That's why after a lifetime there can be wide variation in the physiological age of our brains. These differences in the  brain (in the grey matter) can be measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs).

The researchers in this study used the concept of physiological age - the difference between the chronological age and predicted age, as a marker of brain health. They looked at adults of varying ages,and found that the more flights of stairs a person climbs daily, and the more years of school a person had completed, the "younger" their brain physically appears.  This study was a cross-sectional study and so shows an association rather than a definite cause, but interestingly other forms of exercise did not show this link (walking/hiking, jogging, running, bicycling, aerobic exercise, lap swimming, tennis.squash/racquetball, low intensity exercise). From Science Daily:

Want a younger brain? Stay in school -- and take the stairs

Taking the stairs is normally associated with keeping your body strong and healthy. But new research shows that it improves your brain's health too -- and that education also has a positive effect. In a study recently published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, researchers led by Jason Steffener, a scientist at Concordia University's Montreal-based PERFORM Centre, show that the more flights of stairs a person climbs, and the more years of school a person completes, the "younger" their brain physically appears.

The researchers found that brain age decreases by 0.95 years for each year of education, and by 0.58 years for every daily flight of stairs climbed -- i.e., the stairs between two consecutive floors in a building.

For the study, Steffener and his co-authors used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to non-invasively examine the brains of 331 healthy adults who ranged in age from 19 to 79. They measured the volume of grey matter found in participants' brains because its decline, caused by neural shrinkage and neuronal loss, is a very visible part of the chronological aging process. Then, they compared brain volume to the participants' reported number of flights of stairs climbed, and years of schooling completed. 

Results were clear: the more flights of stairs climbed, and the more years of schooling completed, the younger the brain. "This study shows that education and physical activity affect the difference between a physiological prediction of age and chronological age, and that people can actively do something to help their brains stay young," he says.

Published on Leave a comment on Can Exercise Slow Cancer Growth?

Some studies with humans suggest that cancer growth is slowed with exercise, better cancer prognosis with regular exercise, and lowered cancer recurrence (e.g., exercise after prostate cancer diagnosis), but a recent study looked at the issue more in depth.

Yes, it was done in mice, but this way mice could be randomly assigned to different treatments (including various cancers - both fast and slow growing ones) and conditions in ways you can't with humans.

Why does exercise have these beneficial effects? Various suggestions include exercise causing changes in body composition, or sex hormone levels, or systemic inflammation, and changes in immune cell function. The researchers point out that cells of the immune system play dual roles in cancer: the immune system has a powerful capacity to combat cancer, but chronic inflammation has also been linked to formation of tumors (cancer). Thus, "mobilization" of cancer killing "immune cells during exercise might represent an indirect defense mechanism against cancer growth."

Bottom line: research suggests that exercise or vigorous activity is beneficial in those with cancer diagnosis.

From Science Daily: Running helps mice slow cancer growth

Here's one more benefit of exercise: mice who spent their free time on a running wheel were better able to shrink tumors (a 50% reduction in tumor size) compared to their less active counterparts. Researchers found that the surge of adrenaline that comes with a high-intensity workout helped to move cancer-killing immune (NK) cells toward lung, liver, or skin tumors implanted into the mice. The study appears Feb. 16, 2016 in Cell Metabolism.

"It is known that infiltration of natural killer (NK) immune cells can control and regulate the size of tumors, but nobody had looked at how exercise regulates the system," says senior study author Pernille Hojman, at the University of Copenhagen. "In our experiments, we tried to inject our mice with adrenaline to mimic this increase you see during exercise, and when we do that we see that the NK cells are mobilized to the bloodstream, and if there's a tumor present then the NK cells will find the tumor and home to it."

Hojman and her colleagues next used mice depleted of NK cells to show that the increase in number of NK cells at the site of the tumor was directly contributing to the reduction in size. Even with exercise and a full suite of other immune cells, without the NK cells these mice experienced the normal rate of cancer growth. Blocking the function of adrenaline also blunted the cancer-killing benefits of the running wheel.

The research group also discovered that an immune signaling molecule called IL-6 was the link between adrenaline-dependent mobilization of NK cells and tumor infiltration. It's known that IL-6 is released from muscle tissue during exercise, but Hojman presents evidence that adrenaline specifically hails IL-6 sensitive NK cells and that the IL-6 molecules helped guide the immune cells to the tumors.

"As someone working in the field of exercise and oncology, one of the main questions that cancer patients always ask is: how should I exercise? Can we do anything?" she says. "While it has previously been difficult to advise people about the intensity at which they should exercise, our data suggest that it might be beneficial to exercise at a somewhat high intensity in order to provoke a good epinephrine surge and hence recruitment of NK cells." (http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(16)30003-1.pdf)

Published on Leave a comment on Physical Fitness Now and Brain Size Years Later

Another famous long-running study (Framingham Heart Study) finds more bad news for middle-aged coach-potatoes (that is, those who don't exercise or have poor physical fitness). It's an observational study (thus they found an association), but the finding is pretty damn convincing: that poor physical fitness (basically a sedentary life-style) may be linked to a smaller brain size (brain volume) 20 years later. The reason this is significant is because shrinking brain volume means that accelerated brain aging is occurring.

Researcher Nicole Spartano said: "Brain volume is one marker of brain aging. Our brains shrink as we age, and this atrophy is related to cognitive decline and increased risk for dementia. So, this study suggests that people with poor fitness have accelerated brain aging." Bottom line: if you don't get much exercise or lead a sedentary life-style, then increase your activity levels for hopefully better brain health decades later. Just getting out daily (or several times a week) and walking briskly would improve fitness. From Medical Xpress:

Couch potatoes may have smaller brains later in life

Poor physical fitness in middle age may be linked to a smaller brain size 20 years later, according to a study published in the February 10, 2016, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology."We found a direct correlation in our study between poor fitness and brain volume decades later, which indicates accelerated brain aging," said study author Nicole Spartano, PhD, with Boston University School of Medicine in Boston.

For the study, 1,583 people enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study, with an average age of 40 and without dementia or heart disease, took a treadmill test. They took another one two decades later, along with MRI brain scans. The researchers also analyzed the results when they excluded participants who developed heart disease or started taking beta blockers to control blood pressure or heart problems; this group had 1,094 people. 

The participants had an average estimated exercise capacity of 39 mL/kg/min, which is also known as peak VO2, or the maximum amount of oxygen the body is capable of using in one minute. Exercise capacity was estimated using the length of time participants were able to exercise on the treadmill before their heart rate reached a certain level. For every eight units lower a person performed on the treadmill test, their brain volume two decades later was smaller, equivalent to two years of accelerated brain aging. When the people with heart disease or those taking beta blockers were excluded, every eight units of lower physical performance was associated with reductions of brain volume equal to one year of accelerated brain aging.

The study also showed that people whose blood pressure and heart rate went up at a higher rate during exercise also were more likely to have smaller brain volumes two decades later. Spartano said that people with poor physical fitness often have higher blood pressure and heart rate responses to low levels of exercise compared to people with better fitness. Spartano noted that the study is observational. It does not prove that poor physical fitness causes a loss of brain volume; it shows the association. (Link to study in journal Neurology.)