Health Items from Pages

Stress and (more) overweight

One Harvard study shows that stress can cause people who are already overweight to put on more pounds. In the Midlife in the United States Study, subjects were followed for nine years. Those with a higher body mass index (BMI) and those who reported greater psychosocial stress gained more weight during the study.

Men gained when facing financial problems. Stress at work had a greater impact if caused by a lack of decision-making authority and by a lack of opportunity to learn new skills.

Women’s BMI tended to increase in response to job demands, family strains, difficulty paying bills and “perceived constraints in life.”

Recommendations for treating
prediabetes

About one in four American adults has prediabetes. Now, there are guidelines for keeping the condition from progressing to full-blown diabetes. They include:

Lowering LDL cholesterol levels and increasing HDL, the good kind.
Lowering triglyceride levels.
Keeping blood pressure under 130/80 and taking a daily low-dose aspirin.

Exercise is important. Results of the Diabetes Prevention Program study showed that people who exercised for 30 to 60 minutes five days a week were 71 percent more likely to prevent or delay diabetes than those who didn’t.

Exercise also helped people lose the recommended 10 percent of their body weight.

How to save your back and your heart but still shovel the snow

The white stuff drifting down is beautiful. But you have to get rid of it, and start getting rid of it very soon.

Shoveling snow is a physically demanding job. Check with your doctor to see if you should be doing it at all. If not, or if shoveling is not your thing, prepare ahead by setting up a snow removal service or contracting with a strong neighbor.

Before you go out, warm up your muscles and stretch as you would before any exercise. Dress in layers so you can remove one if you get heated up. Extra heat makes the heart beat faster, and you want it to stay at a normal pace.
The best time to work on the snow is when it’s still falling. It won’t be as deep, and it will be loose, powdery or a lot easier to move. At this point, your leaf blower could do the job.
If it’s already deep, use a smaller, lighter shovel. Start with small loads.
Push the snow rather than lifting it whenever you can, even if it’s for a small area. Every push avoids a lift.
When you do lift, use your legs instead of your back. Face the direction you want the snow to go and throw it without twisting.
Do larger areas in segments. The National Safety Council recommends shoveling a while, then resting.

Check your pulse

Do you know your resting heart rate? It’s one of the easiest ways to calculate the health of your heart.

A study at Georgetown University found that people with the highest resting heart rates, over 76, were more likely to have a heart attack than those with the lowest rate, 62 or under.

Take your pulse after resting, not talking much and not smoking for 20 minutes. It could be higher on stressful days, when you are very tired or when you are coming down with a cold.

Check your pulse by placing a finger under your wrist. Count the number of beats for 15 seconds and multiply by four. Or count the beats for a full minute. Drugstore blood pressure machines calculate your pulse rate and blood pressure at the same time.

Regular exercise can lower a heart rate and relaxation strategies can help too. Breathing exercises, meditation and peaceful music can lower it.

Optimism and better health

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have found that people who have an optimistic attitude are less likely to develop heart disease and cancer.

To test their attitudes, 100,000 women who were free of any disease were given personality tests to assess their optimism and their "cynical hostility."