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Traveling? Staying home with the kids? Unable to afford a gym membership? No time to schlep across town? No problem: Fitness websites and apps are available wherever -- and whenever -- you are. For some users, they replace gyms and yoga studios altogether, and for others, they are a helpful complement.

Fitness instructor and personal trainer Yu Hannah Kim has always believed that fitness should be available to anyone. Now, with the launch of her new site, Yufit, she's making that dream a reality.

Yufit offers streaming videos for everything from cardio kickboxing and core burn workouts to yoga and stretching.

"I wanted to create something that people could use anywhere, anytime," Kim told TechNewsWorld. "I wanted to give people something that was inexpensive and easy to use."

Classes on the site run 30 or 60 minutes, and members can follow particular classes and interact with the instructor and fellow members through a news feed. Kim says that the site is particularly useful for people who aren't able to attend fitness classes at a gym.

"When they go on travel or on vacations, they find it difficult to keep up with their workouts," said Kim. "They can access Yufit anywhere they have an Internet connection. Some people use it instead of the gym, and others use it in addition to the gym."

Yoga for the Masses

For people who want all yoga, all the time, My Yoga Online gives access, for a monthly or yearly membership fee, to more than 1,000 videos in many different styles, including anusara, kundalini, power and vinyasa -- as well as pilates and meditation.

One key to the site's appeal, according to its CEO and cofounder Jason Jacobson, is the variety it offers.

"This replaces DVDs," Jacobson told TechNewsWorld. "Instead, it's many videos in one place -- and practice at home, while traveling, or at work."

For some users, it replaces yoga studios altogether, and for others it is a helpful complement to their studio practice.

"When we first launched, we thought we'd be competing with yoga studios," said Jacobson. "What we've found is that a lot of members look at this as a complement, a way to expand their horizons. This is a great way for people to expand into different styles of yoga, different teachers ... without leaving their home."

In addition to streaming videos, the company has an iOS/Android app called "My Yoga," which lets users access their favorite videos on the go. The site also features content such as articles about yoga and fitness, and it has a social component, allowing users to create profiles and interact with other users.

"It's making yoga available to more people and erasing the myth that yoga is a religious or isolated practice," explained Jacobson. "It's really making it open to the masses, especially people not in major cities who don't have access to quality yoga programs."

Getting Challenged

For those who want to set creative fitness goals for themselves, the recently launched Fleetly might be the way to go. The site and its companion iOS app allow users to participate in a variety of challenges, such as 100 workouts in 2012, 36,500 Push-ups in 2012, and a Winter 100 Miler. They track their progress, interact with friends, and use the service as motivation to achieve their fitness goals.

"Our mission is to make Fleetly the digital hub for fitness," explained Geoff Pitfield, Fleetly's founder, who was inspired to create Fleetly while training for his first triathalon. "By this I mean Fleetly is where people come to not only discover and track their progress, but also interact with others about their fitness through challenges, talk and content."

Fleetly works, in part, because of the fun factor, Pitfield said.

"We believe that providing a fun, immersive place where people can engage in a deep, meaningful way about their fitness -- and get encouragement and feedback on their progress -- provides great motivation," explained Pitfield. "[That's] essential to meeting their fitness goals -- whether that's training for an Ironman or just trying to get off the couch."

Fleetly's social component also keeps people motivated and engaged. When they're working out with their friends, they're more likely to want to keep doing it.

"We have a member from the Netherlands who wanted motivation to keep up his New Year's fitness resolution, so he created a challenge, and now over 6,000 people in the U.S. and abroad are participating," said Pitfield. "When you look at the chat stream, you see they are abuzz with all these people sharing their achievements, encouraging each other, giving and receiving advice, and having a good time with it. When people are this engaged with their fitness, they are motivated to stay on track."

Freelance writer Vivian Wagner has wide-ranging interests, from technology and business to music and motorcycles. She writes features regularly for ECT News Network, and her work has also appeared in American Profile, Bluegrass Unlimited, and many other publications. For more about her, visit her website.

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Fitness to Go: Anywhere, Anytime Exercise Classes

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No magic wand, secret formula or fad diet ever did the trick for Brian Steinwand.

Instead, the 49-year-old relied on his Kennewick chapter of Take Off Pounds Sensibly, and the proven combination of a healthy diet and exercise, to lose 67 pounds.

He was dubbed the TOPS Washington King for his achievement, and his reign as the state's male champion will end in May.

"I was a big carb addict," Steinwand said. "I began to lose weight right away when I cut out carbs."

His ultimate transformation didn't come quickly or easily.

Steinwand joined TOPS in 1998 when he weighed in a 325 pounds. After years of losses and gains, Steinwand began 2010 at 297 pounds with the resolve to reach his target weight of 230. His success has allowed him to represent Washington at TOPS meetings and conventions for a year.

Recently, after hitting his goal of 230, his doctor reset his goal weight to 245.

"I've been lifting weights at the gym and have put on so much muscle -- which weighs more than fat -- my doctor allowed me to add another 15 pounds to my goal weight," Steinwand said.

When he was young, Steinwand never worried about his weight.

"I was an active person," he said. "I ate healthy food."

However, poor eating habits crept in. He couldn't find time for the gym. And the pounds added up.

During the course of 15 years, he had packed an extra 100 pounds onto his 6-foot-5 frame.

"My cholesterol was high, 275, my blood pressure was 144 over 110, and I had sleep apnea. My doctor sent me to a sleep study and I was told I stopped breathing up to 86 times an hour. I had to wear a breathing machine at night to keep me alive," Steinwand said.

His doctor gave him a choice.

He could either lose weight -- lots of it -- or be on medications and the breathing machine for the rest of his life.

"I decided that was no way to live," he said. "All my health problems were caused by my weight."

The pounds didn't come off easily or quickly.

As a member of TOPS, Steinwand lost weight, then gained it back, lost some and put it back on.

"This went on for years," he said. "Finally, I got to the point I was tired of being a yo-yo dieter and decided to get it done."

Jyl Purington, coordinator of 60 TOPS chapters in southeastern Washington, witnessed Steinwand's transformation as the leader his chapter in Kennewick -- No. WA152.

The reasons he has been so successful, Purington said, came down to "mindset and determination."

Purington said TOPS always sees a spike in membership at the first of the year.

"It's those New Year's resolutions," she said.

Those who have reached their goal weight, like Steinwand and Purington, are called KOPS -- Keeping Pounds Off Sensibly.

"At that point it's all about maintenance," she said. "We still attend chapter meetings because we need that reinforcement for ourselves, and others need our help to get to their goal. We are the light that shows the way."

Steinwand said he feels better than he has in years.

His blood pressure and cholesterol have dropped to healthy levels. He no longer sleeps with a breathing machine.

"It's definitely been a lifestyle change," he said. "I work out at the gym three to four times a week, take long, brisk walks and have cleaned up my eating habits."

Steinwand credited the diet change with about 70 percent of his weight loss. The rest, he chalked up to exercise.

"You have to do both; you can't have one without the other," he said.

He cut processed foods out of his diet. He discovered he was allergic to wheat, so he embraced a gluten-free regimen.

He upped his intake of veggies, added three to five servings of fruits a day and discovered a fondness for oatmeal and quinoa.

His advice for others?

"Don't give up," Steinwand said. "Sure, some days are tough, but don't count every little bite. Pick one day a week to eat what you really like.

"If you have a dinner date, make that your splurge," he continued. "Don't beat yourself up over that, otherwise it's just existing, not living."

Purington said there are TOPS chapters in every city in the Mid-Columbia, meeting at all times of day.

"If one's not available, all you need is yourself and three others to open your own chapter," she said.

To find one, go to http://www.tops.org, or call Purington, 521-3526.

-- Loretto J. Hulse: 582-1513; lhulse@tricityherald.com

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Diet and Fitness Lies You Tell Yourself: Own up and stop rationalizing why you're not eating right and moving more

Ask any health expert to rattle off some of the bogus reasons they've heard as to why people can't lose weight, and you're likely to have enough excuses to fill a "S - - Dieters Say" YouTube video. But there's nothing funny - or pretty - about the little diet and fitness lies you persuade yourself to believe. Buying into incorrect information, such as the idea that skipping breakfast will save you calories in the long run or that your doctor will pull you aside if your weight is really a problem, will leave your scale stuck and could put your health at risk in the long-term.

Brain chemicals hit below the belt

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PULLMAN — If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to eat right and trim down, be forewarned that medical science shows your brain has it in for you and will actively promote your failure on two different fronts.

That’s not good news, of course, but you should know about it so you can strengthen your resolve as best you can.

Here’s the scoop. It’s relatively easy — particularly if you are significantly overweight — to lose a few pounds by reducing the number of calories you consume each day.

Brain chemicals hit below the belt

Brain chemicals hit below the belt

PULLMAN — If you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to eat right and trim down, be forewarned that medical science shows your brain has it in for you and will actively promote your failure on two different fronts.

That’s not good news, of course, but you should know about it so you can strengthen your resolve as best you can.

Here’s the scoop. It’s relatively easy — particularly if you are significantly overweight — to lose a few pounds by reducing the number of calories you consume each day.

Food Network, book take on weight in chef whites

Food Network, book take on weight in chef whites

Paula Deen's diabetes revelation pretty much sums it up: Kitchen pros at all levels struggle with obesity and its dangerous aftertaste in the high-pressure, high-calorie world of food.

KGH gives out food, information about healthy diets, exercise

KGH gives out food, information about healthy diets, exercise

Given the saying about an apple a day keeps the doctor away, it might seem logical for a hospital to shy away from handing out a nice ripe Braeburn to everyone who walks through its doors.

But Kennewick General Hospital is hoping Tri-Citians will take that old adage to heart, quite literally.

Hospital volunteers handed out more than 400 bags on Wednesday, each containing an apple, a granola bar and handouts with information about how to get started on a heart-healthy diet.

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Kennewick man TOPS Washington King after losing 67 pounds

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There’s no shortage of diet plans promising to melt away the pounds by calling for strict proportions of protein, carbohydrate and fat.

But, according to a new study, it doesn’t matter where the calories come from. What matters most for shedding body fat is simply eating fewer calories – and sticking to your plan, be it high protein, low carb or low fat.

More related to this story

Some, but not all, studies have demonstrated that high protein, low carbohydrate diets work better than others at losing fat and preserving muscle mass over the short term.

There’s also debate over which diets, if any, are most effective for reducing visceral fat, deep abdominal fat that’s closely related to the harmful metabolic effects of obesity. Visceral fat packs itself around the organs and secretes chemicals that increase the body’s resistance to the hormone insulin and cause inflammation throughout the body.

The current study – called the Pounds Lost trial – set out to determine whether the composition of a weight loss diet affected the loss of lean muscle, total body fat, abdominal fat, visceral fat or liver fat in 424 overweight or obese men and women. (Excess visceral fat is thought to release fat into the bloodstream causing a build-up of fat in the liver.)

Participants were assigned to one of four diets: 1) low fat (20 per cent daily calories), average protein (15 per cent); 2) low fat (20 per cent), high protein (25 per cent); 3) high fat (40 per cent), average protein (15 per cent); or 4) high fat (40 per cent), high protein (25 per cent).

Each diet was low in saturated fat and cholesterol and high in fibre, included low glycemic carbohydrates and was designed to cut 750 calories a day. All participants were offered group and individual counselling sessions over two years.

Body fat and muscle mass was measured using CT (computed tomography) scanning after six months and two years of follow up.

At the six-month mark, participants had lost, on average, more than nine pounds of total body fat along with five pounds of lean muscle, but had regained some of this after two years. Fat loss or muscle loss did not differ between the four diet groups.

As well, the proportion of protein, carbohydrate or fat in the diet did not affect the amount of abdominal fat, visceral fat or liver fat that was lost during the study. After six months, participants shed about 40 per cent of visceral fat and 60 per cent of liver fat.

At the two-year follow-up, people were able to maintain a weight loss of more nine pounds, including three pounds of abdominal fat.

The bottom line: The major factor for weight loss was adherence to a calorie-reduced diet, not the proportion of carbohydrate, protein or fat it contained. People who followed their diets better lost more weight and body fat than those who didn’t.

These findings strongly suggest you’re better off choosing a plan that’s easy to stick to over the long haul – provided, of course, it’s a healthy diet.

An earlier report from the Pounds Lost trial revealed that all four diets were heart-healthy regardless of their protein, carbohydrate and fat content. Each diet reduced levels of triglycerides (blood fats), LDL (bad) cholesterol, lowered blood pressure and increased HDL (good) cholesterol.

That said, most people in weight loss programs gradually revert to their previous diets over time even if they do manage to maintain some fat loss.

If you’re 2012 goal is to shed excess body fat, the following tips will help you adhere to a healthy diet plan and increase the likelihood of success.

Plan in advance

It’s the most common blunder that steers people off-track: not being organized. On the weekend, spend a few minutes thinking about the week ahead. Map out your meals, healthy snacks and even your workouts.

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Just cut calories - protein/carb/fat ratio doesn’t matter: study

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By Matt Fitzgerald Published 2 hours ago

Many diets will help you shed pounds. The crucial ingredients in all of them? Motivation and readiness. Finally: a scalable strategy for getting leaner in 2012.

In the summer of 2004, Jon Smith was as lean and fit as he’d ever been. Then he became a father and stopped training for marathons and triathlons. At the same time the New Orleans resident began dining out and eating mostly fatty foods due largely to his work in the wine business. Over the next two and a half years he gained 100 pounds. On New Year’s Day 2008, Smith got fed up with his condition and decided to make a comeback. He signed up for a triathlon and cleaned up his diet by removing the worst junk food from it, including fried foods and soft drinks. But by the time race day came around, Smith had lost only 15 pounds and he was not much fitter than when he started.

Smith knew he needed to raise his game. So the lifelong meat lover took the radical step of becoming a vegetarian. Within several months he was back down to his old racing weight of 180 pounds and finishing Ironman 70.3 events with ease.

The lesson is clear: To manage weight successfully, every triathlete has to become a vegetarian.
Wait a minute—that’s not the lesson at all. Because for every Jon Smith there’s a Christian Peterson, a runner and duathlete from Maple Grove, Minn., who struggled to lose weight on what he describes as a “typical runner’s diet” that was low in fat, high in carbs, and almost meatless before switching to the popular and meat-heavy Paleo Diet and quickly losing more than 20 pounds. And for every Christian Peterson there’s another endurance athlete who has lost weight on a high-protein diet, a gluten-free diet, a low-fat diet—you name it.

Triathletes are never more focused on losing weight than around the new year. If you’re looking to shed a few pounds ahead of the 2012 racing season, you’re probably looking for the best diet for weight loss. But as the examples of Smith and Peterson suggest, and as science affirms, there is no clear “best” diet for weight loss. There are many effective ways to lose weight.

In fact, real-world and scientific evidence indicate that the specific diet that a person uses to shed fat is not especially important to success in the effort to lose weight. What’s far more important, it seems, is the motivation level and attitude of the person seeking weight loss. Men and women who are truly ready to commit to a particular weight-loss strategy are almost certain to succeed, regardless of the diet they choose (provided it’s healthy and realistic). By the same token, those who are not prepared to fully embrace their diet are bound to fail, no matter which diet they’ve chosen.

Ever heard of the National Weight Control Registry? It’s basically a national database of men and women who have succeeded in losing at least 30 pounds and maintaining at least 30 pounds of weight loss for one year or more. Whatever these people do, it works. It’s not theory, but practice. So what do members of the NWCR do?

For starters, their diets are all over the place. Some are on low-fat diets; others are on low-carb diets; still others do Weight Watchers; some are vegetarians, and so forth. Another interesting characteristic of NWCR members is that the vast majority failed with weight-loss diets a few times before finally succeeding. The combination of these two characteristics—variety in successful diet approaches and failures preceding success—suggests that people succeed in losing weight when they are psychologically ready, and fail when they are not ready.

Other studies support this idea directly. For example, researchers at Italy’s University of Florence recently used a standardized scientific questionnaire to evaluate the “motivation and readiness” of 129 obese individuals starting a six-month outpatient weight-loss program. Weight-loss results at the end of six months were significantly greater for those subjects who earned the highest scores for motivation and readiness.

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Race Shape Ready?

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., Jan. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- PEERtrainer, a leader in healthy weight loss solutions, has found that many people who are looking to lose weight in a short amount of time often start to add a lot more meat to their diet, and cut down on certain carbohydrates.  This is in spite of a widely cited study by the Harvard School of Public Health published in 2010 that showed an increase in health risk from a diet rich in animal foods.

Other studies that have looked into low-carb and high-protein diets have shown that despite a good short term track record for weight loss, the long term track record for keeping this weight loss off is poor.

As a result of this continuing behavior pattern, PEERtrainer would like to propose some alternative ways to lose weight in a short amount of time that don't involve the health risks, and are ultimately more effective long term.

The first thing that PEERtrainer would like to point out is that low carb diets can work, especially when paired with a reduction in sugar and a dramatic increase in micronutrient rich foods like green vegetables. One does not need to dramatically increase the amount of meat in the diet.

PEERtrainer has observed that the more important factor is the reduction of overall sugar levels in the blood, which can result from eating sugar itself, or certain foods like bread and grains which can quickly increase the amount of glucose in the bloodstream.

A reduction in carbs is a feature of the new Weight Watchers Points Plus for 2012, so this is not an uncommon suggestion. However, very few weight loss approaches are also adding a very strong focus on increasing green vegetables and a reduction in sugar.

Reducing carbs and sugar in the diet can be a daunting task, especially at breakfast. The typical Western diet is rich in different sugars and grains. PEERtrainer has seen however, that when people focus on this particular meal, it helps to set the tone for the day.

A final tip that PEERtrainer has for people who are looking to lose weight quickly is to learn how to do a cleanse the right way. The best way to do a cleanse is in addition to the advice above, focus on testing the removal of foods that serve as common allergens. Foods such as bread, dairy and corn commonly create toxic reactions in people.

PEERtrainer has observed that members of its online weight loss community usually report fairly consistent weight loss in a two to three week period when they remove these specific foods! Everyone reacts to foods differently, and not everyone reacts to these foods. But for people who have had a hard time losing weight, in spite of very good efforts at exercise and diet, find that removing these foods from their diet entirely, combined with a low sugar and high green vegetable diet, can pay good dividends very quickly.

PEERtrainer is website dedicated to healthy weight loss. It was founded in 2005 and has helped tens of millions of people get the guidance and help to put them on the path to healthy and permanent weight loss.

Media Contact: Habib Wicks PEERtrainer, 917-843-4050, habib@peertrainer.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

 

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How to Lose Weight Quickly Without Adding More Meat to Your Diet

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I hope Hamilton is here forever. But if, for any reason (climate change, asteroid collision, the leachate from Adam Sandler movies), humankind must move to a new home in the stars, let there be at least one thing left of our city.

One thing remaining to greet the aliens when they happen upon our ghost planet, many eons hence, from which they can deduce what kind of creatures we were who once inhabited this particular niche of the Earth.

Our Cross of Lorraine.

You may not be aware of it. It doesn’t shine through the night sky from the escarpment anymore. But it did.

To a young Erica Read, who grew up on the Mountain, the lit cross was the beacon that pulled her safely home after car trips with the family. She’d see it from the 403 — “a little girl half asleep in the family station wagon, a woody, no less” — and feel the comforting, protective nearness of the familiar.

She didn’t know then what she knows now, what she shares with the Grade 5/6 class she teaches at Holbrook School. The Cross of Lorraine is a symbol of our once desperate fight against tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis may seem a distant cause. But Hamilton’s record of care, sacrifice and asylum for the very weakest, embodied in the vast Sanatorium lands on the Mountain brow, is one of the noblest chapters in this city’s history. And, perhaps, it prefigures our ongoing evolution from steel city to health care/social services city.

Thousands came to the Sanatorium. Many never left. Tubercular patients from the Far North, places such as Cape Dorset, were brought here for care and gave us their great Inuit tradition of soapstone carvings.

The Cross of Lorraine went up in 1953 at the end of Sanatorium Road. It’s at the edge of the now hotly debated brow condominium development lands.

“The land holds special meaning for my class, as we attend school at Holbrook,” says Erica. “The school is named after (Sanatorium head) Dr. J. Howard Holbrook, a wonderful doctor who ushered in many innovative practices to make the lives of patients more bearable. Two portraits of him grace our building, and the Grade 1 students are convinced his eyes follow them through the halls.”

I visited Erica’s class last week, and we met again at the cross. It’s beautiful in a melancholy way, rising high into the air, its sturdy heraldic double bars still equal to the symbolic weight they carry, but rusted, obscured by foliage and the neon dried in its veins. It’s like a great proud bell but with no tongue to sound its knell.

On this day, Erica’s students were the lights of the cross. They’ve been there several times, thanks to Erica, and it means things to them.

They long to see it shine again.

Several of the students — Kevin Macleod, Michael Ding and Mohan Kennedy — note how it overlooks McMaster Hospital, how patients there would see it through their windows if it were lit. They’re very perceptive.

“They’d look out and know something’s over them. It’s a beacon, from Hamilton to the world,” says Mohan.

“It’s a landmark, something special just to Hamilton,” says Miranda Dalgetty.

“If it was ever torn down, we’d lose part of our history,” says Kyle Mesaglia.

Our cross tells the world that once we cared enough to take in the oft-shunned, at the cost of putting ourselves at risk of infection. Is that a metaphor for what Hamilton is today? Are we still the kind of people who can light up the Cross of Lorraine?

Share your memories of the cross and the Sanatorium. If you know when the light went out, tell me. Should we urge city hall to light it up again? Be heard. Thanks, Holbrook Grade 5/6, for sharing your passion, and our history.

jmahoney@thespec.com

905-526-3306

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Our old, rugged cross

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30-01-2012 08:07 diet.com Have only one pair of dumbbells at home and want to maximize your workout? Try this tri set today! Visit Diet.com Today for healthy recipes! http://www.diet.com Be a Fan on Facebook - facebook.com Follow us on Twitter - Twitter.com Check out Diet.com's Sample Meal Plans and Exercise Plans: http://www.diet.com Sarah's YouTube channel - YouTube.com Visit Diet.com For More Videos!

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TUESDAY, Jan. 31 (HealthDay News) -- A pre-pregnancy diet high in animal fat increases the risk that moms-to-be will develop gestational diabetes, a new study says.

"Our findings indicate that women who reduce the proportion of animal fat and cholesterol in their diets before pregnancy may lower their risk for gestational diabetes during pregnancy," senior author Dr. Cuilin Zhang, of the epidemiology branch at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said in an NIH news release.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 13,000 women in the U.S. Nurses' Health Study II. The women were ages 22 to 45 when they enrolled in the study and provided information every few years about their health and lifestyle habits, such as the kinds of foods they ate.

About 6 percent said they had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, a form of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes increases the risk for certain pregnancy complications and health problems in newborns.

Women who consumed the most animal fat were nearly twice as likely to develop gestational diabetes as those who consumed the lowest amounts. Also, women who consumed the highest amounts of dietary cholesterol were 45 percent more likely to develop gestational diabetes than those who consumed the lowest amounts.

There was no increased risk of gestational diabetes among women whose diets were high in total fat or other kinds of fat, said the researchers at the NIH and Harvard University.

They also found that the increased risk for gestational diabetes associated with diets high in animal fat and cholesterol seemed to be independent of other dietary and non-dietary risk factors.

For example, exercise is known to reduce the risk of gestational diabetes. But among pregnant women who exercised, the risk of gestational diabetes was higher among those who consumed higher amounts of animal fat and cholesterol than those who consumed lower levels of those types of fat.

The researchers concluded that changing 5 percent of dietary calories from animal fat to plant-derived sources could reduce a woman's risk of gestational diabetes by 7 percent.

The study was published online Jan. 4 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"This is the largest study to date of the effects of a pre-pregnancy diet on gestational diabetes," first author Katherine Bowers of the NICHD said in the news release. "Additional research may lead to increased understanding of how a mother's diet before and during pregnancy influences her metabolism during pregnancy, which may have important implications for the baby's health at birth and later in life."

While the study found an association between a high fat diet and gestational diabetes, it did not prove that such a diet causes the condition.

More information

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has more about gestational diabetes.

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Fatty Diet Before Pregnancy Linked to Gestational Diabetes

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Published: Jan. 31, 2012 at 10:33 PM

MIAMI, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Drinking diet soft drinks on a daily basis might increase the risk stroke, heart attack and vascular death, U.S. researchers said.

Hannah Gardener and colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and at Columbia University Medical Center in New York also found regular soft drink consumption and a more moderate intake of diet soft drinks do not appear to be linked to a higher risk of vascular events.

Gardener and her research team analyzed data from 2,564 participants in the National Institute of Health funded Northern Manhattan Study, which was designed to determine stroke incidence, risk factors and prognosis in a multi-ethnic urban population.

The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found those who drank diet soft drinks daily were 43 percent more likely than those who drank none to have suffered a vascular event, after taking into account pre-existing vascular conditions such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes and high blood pressure.

However, light diet soft drink users -- those who drink between one a month and six a week -- and those who chose regular soft drinks were not more likely to suffer vascular events, the study found.

"Our results suggest a potential association between daily diet soft drink consumption and vascular outcomes," Gardener said in a statement. "However, the mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect vascular events are unclear. There is a need for further research before any conclusions can be drawn regarding the potential health consequences of diet soft drink consumption."

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When ticking off the benefits of physical activity, few of us would include intercellular housecleaning. But a new study suggests that the ability of exercise to speed the removal of garbage from inside our body’s cells may be one of its most valuable, if least visible, effects.

In the new research, which was published last month in Nature, scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas gathered two groups of mice. One set was normal, with a finely tuned cellular scrubbing system. The other had been bred to have a blunted cleaning system.

It’s long been known that cells accumulate flotsam from the wear and tear of everyday living. Broken or misshapen proteins, shreds of cellular membranes, invasive viruses or bacteria, and worn-out, broken-down cellular components, like aged mitochondria, the tiny organelles within cells that produce energy, form a kind of trash heap inside the cell.

In most instances, cells diligently sweep away this debris. They even recycle it for fuel. Through a process with the expressive name of autophagy, or “self-eating,” cells create specialized membranes that engulf junk in the cell’s cytoplasm and carry it to a part of the cell known as the lysosome, where the trash is broken apart and then burned by the cell for energy.

Without this efficient system, cells could become choked with trash and malfunction or die. In recent years, some scientists have begun to suspect that faulty autophagy mechanisms contribute to the development of a range of diseases, including diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s and cancer. The slowing of autophagy as we reach middle age is also believed to play a role in aging.

Most metabolism researchers think that the process evolved in response to the stress of starvation; cells would round up and consume superfluous bits of themselves to keep the rest of the cell alive. In petri dishes, the rate of autophagy increases when cells are starved or otherwise placed under physiological stress.

Exercise, of course, is physiological stress. But until recently, few researchers had thought to ask whether exercise might somehow affect the amount of autophagy within cells and, if so, whether that mattered to the body as a whole.

“Autophagy affects metabolism and has wide-ranging health-related benefits in the body, and so does exercise,” says Dr. Beth Levine, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at U.T. Southwestern. “There seemed to be considerable overlap, in fact, between the health-related benefits of exercise and those of autophagy,” but it wasn’t clear how the two interacted, she says.

So she and her colleagues had lab mice run. The animals first had been medically treated so that the membranes that engulf debris inside their cells would glow, revealing themselves to the researchers. After just 30 minutes of running, the mice had significantly more membranes in cells throughout their bodies, the researchers found, meaning they were undergoing accelerated autophagy.

That finding, however, didn’t explain what the augmented cellular cleaning meant for the well-being of the mice, so the researchers developed a new strain of mouse that showed normal autophagy levels in most instances, but could not increase its cellular self-eating in response to stress. Autophagy levels would stubbornly remain the same, even if the animals were starved or vigorously exercised.

Then the researchers had these mice run, alongside a control group of normal animals. The autophagy-resistant mice quickly grew fatigued. Their muscles seemed incapable of drawing sugar from the blood as the muscles of the normal mice did.

More striking, when Dr. Levine stuffed both groups of animals with high-fat kibble for several weeks until they developed a rodent version of diabetes, the normal mice subsequently reversed the condition by running, even as they continued on the fatty diet. The autophagy-resistant animals did not. After weeks of running, they remained diabetic. Their cells could not absorb blood sugar normally. They also had higher levels of cholesterol in their blood than the other mice. Exercise had not made them healthier.

In other words, Dr. Levine and her colleagues concluded, an increase in autophagy, prompted by exercise, seems to be a critical step in achieving the health benefits of exercise.

The finding is “extremely exciting,” says Zhen Yan, the director of the Center for Skeletal Muscle Research at the University of Virginia, who is also studying autophagy and exercise. The study, Dr. Yan says, “improves our understanding of how exercise has salutary impacts on health.”

The implications of Dr. Levine’s results are, in fact, broad. It’s possible that people who don’t respond as robustly to aerobic exercise as their training partners may have sputtering or inadequate autophagy systems, although that idea is speculative. “It’s very difficult to study autophagy in humans,” Dr. Levine says. Still, it’s possible that at some point, autophagy-prompting drugs or specialized exercise programs might help everyone to fully benefit from exercise.

In the meantime, the study underscores, again, the importance of staying active. Both the control mice and the genetically modified group had “normal background levels of autophagy” during everyday circumstances, Dr. Levine points out. But this baseline level of cellular housecleaning wasn’t enough to protect them from developing diabetes in the face of a poor diet. Only when the control animals ran and pumped up their intercellular trash collection did they regain their health.

“I never worked out consistently before,” Dr. Levine says. But now, having witnessed how exercise helped scour the cells of the running mice, she owns a treadmill.

Read more:
Well Blog: Phys Ed: Exercise as Housecleaning for the Body

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