Surveys have been carried out throughout the world. It has been concluded that people who are in their 40’s or 50’s and do martial arts possess a very good physical health. They have at least 10% less body fat than non martial artists. Their bodies are more flexible, balanced and have strengthened legs. Martial arts have given them a stronger body’s self defense system.

Even the mildest form of martial arts has shown amazing results regarding a person’s health. One such example is of Tai Chi. Carrying out this art delays the aging process. It makes heart stronger as it is kind of an aerobic exercise. We all know aerobics are good for heart. Other benefits of Tai Chi are the same as any other form of martial art can have, i.e., improved balance, flexibility, coordination etc. Pilates and Tai Chi are considered to work well for health benefits.

Talking about the intense forms of martial arts, such as Kickboxing and Tai Kwon Do, they are good for conditioning of a body. But they are basically good if you want to learn the art for combating. If you are practicing the art for gaining health benefits, mild forms are first-rate. Dancing and gymnastics are also good.

Martial arts are not for better physical health only, but are also for better mental health. While in stress, doing martial art can help in managing it well. Stress is a ‘mental’ unhealthiness that affects whole body physically as well. Martial arts help a person in putting aside stress in a better way, providing an overall fitness package to a person.

Considering other sports, like football, hockey, basketball, badminton etc., for better health, they help in coordinating with others. Sports develop an ability to work as a team and to accomplish the goals. Success belongs to everyone in the team, thus, telling us how to share things with a big heart. Failure also puts the responsibility on every player, thereby making every team member not to put blames on others. This is a mental attitude that sports provide us along with a positive outlook. Besides, sports are aerobics and nourish the body for better health, improve decision making powers, build confidence and make your heart stronger.

You can take the Kenpo Karate Home Study Course right now using downloadable dvds to help yourself to keep fit and healthy.

You must use some drugs or creams prescribed by your dermatologist to cure your acne. And if you want to make the curing process fast, then you should also do the regular exercise or play some game. Exercise can help in acne cure, in 2 ways. First of all, the exercise will cause the sweating that will help you to open your skin pores fully. This will really help you as trapped sebum will be secreted out from the skin pores, more rapidly. It is recommended that you must drink the plenty of water so that there is no deficiency of water in the body. The proper amount of water will help to remove toxins from the skin tissue, properly. Due to exercise and games, the blood supply to all organs, including skin tissues, is increased. The increased blood supply will increase the toxin removal from your skin tissues and that will help to cure acne, fast.

Please note that just doing exercise will not cure your acne. It can only trigger the healing process, when you are already using your anti-acne products.

There are two ways to do that. First you can start eating fewer calories through your food and drinks. In other words if your daily calorie consumption is 2500 you need to adjust your daily diet so as to eat less calories. If for example you manage to reduce the daily calorie intake by 500, then in real terms this means that in 7 days you will be able to lose one pound (one pound is 3500 calories). This technique covers only one aspect of weight loss – consuming fewer calories.

The other aspect of weight loss is burning more calories. The only way to burn more calories is through exercise and physical activity. The problem with this is that it is difficult to calculate how much calories you burn through the various activities and this is where the sport watch comes into play. Read on to see how a sport watch can help you lose weight.

You might wonder how to lose weight fast, with a sports watch? Here’s how. Modern sports watches, besides the good looks have some very nice features which can help you keep track of a number of the factors that play an important role in weight loss. A pedometer sports watch can count the number of steps you perform. We said above that to burn more calories you need to increase the levels of physical activity. The simpler form of physical activity is walking. If you have a way to know how far you walk per day, you can adjust your schedule to walk more and thus burn more calories. By using the step count feature, you can estimate your normal activity and then decide by how many steps you need to take in order to burn more calories. Some more sophisticated sports watch can also provide you with the calories you burn while walking or running.

Another important factor you need to take into account when trying to lose weight by exercise is the overall condition of your health and especially your heart. There are many cases of people who try to exercise too intensively too quickly while attempting rapid weight-loss, who wind up with serious heart problems. The smartest approach is to get the approval of your doctor before undertaking any intensive exercise. You can also get into the habit of monitoring your level of exertion by use of the heart rate zone features found in watches that support a heart rate monitor. This very nice feature allows you to set the upper and lower limits of your heart rate and the watch will notify you when your heart rate goes above or beyond this level. This excellent feature can make you more aware of your heart, allowing you to exercise at a safe level while avoiding unexpected health problems.

To sum up, weight loss can take time and requires a lot of patience and hard work. Keeping track of your progress, not to mention your health is critically important. Fail to track your calories and you can easily slide back into old habits without even realizing it. Fail to build into a fitness regime at a sensible pace is a health risk. A sport watch armed with these features described above can assist you in losing weight in a faster, more controlled and healthy way.

Photo courtesy of ecmorgan.

If you have been around competitive sport for any length of time, whether as a serious athlete, a coach or just to keep fit, chances are you will have, at some stage, experienced the pain, frustration and debilitation of a physical sports injury.

Perhaps the worst thing about an injury is not the pain you suffer, but the frustration of being out of your sport in the weeks that follow. Injuries are not only painful, they are a big blow for performance. The time needed to heal and rehabilitate, could otherwise have been spent improving your performance and fitness or competing in your sport.

Some knowing athletes have compared a sports injury to losing money. When you lose money, not only do you lose all the wonderful things you might have spent that money on, but to make up that loss you have to work hard just to get back to where you started.

In a recent article on the management of sporting injuries, the author estimated a staggering 27,000 sportsmen in the US sprain their ankles every day.

In another startling report by Sports Medicine Australia, it is estimated that for each 17 sporting and exercise participants, one will suffer an injury playing their favorite sport.

Of course one could naturally expect this number to be a lot higher for contact sports like Gridiron and Rugby, but perhaps what is more startling is not so much that these numbers are so high, but that in over 50 percent of documented cases, an injury may have been avoided using proven preventative methods.

To vastly reduce the prevalence of sporting injury there are a number of well known basic measures that athletes can take. Unfortunately in practice these do not get used nearly often enough.

Of these methods, there is one practice that has been receiving increased attention from athletes and coaches alike. It seems fitness professionals are slowly catching onto the fact that the likelihood of sports injury can be drastically reduced by including it in their sporting routines.

Before getting into detail, let’s explore some other techniques that can also help you prevent sports injury.

Photo courtesy of Kelley Mari

Warm Up and Cool Down

Athletes and coaches are now starting to recognize the importance of a warm-up and cool-down before and after exerting physical effort. A good warm-up works because the body temperature is raised and the blood flow and oxygen supply to the muscles increased, preparing the muscles and joints for the physical effort ahead.

But the effect of preparing for exertion is not just physical, it is also helps prepare the mind for the mental challenges of the sport.

Warming up is perhaps the most vital part of preventing a sports injury, but the importance of a post-session cool-down can not be understated in it’s role to prevent sports injury either.

When you exercise, waste products like lactic acid build up in your body creating stiffness and soreness that. If it reaches a certain level, your body’s range of movement decreases, which in turn increases your chance of injury. A gentle cool-down will do wonders in loosening and relaxing stressed muscles. They will become less stiff and tight and most importantly less likely to contribute to an injury.

The “Magic Technique” that Can Cut Your Risk of Injury By More Than Half Revealed?

Doing nothing other than getting adequate warm-up, and cool-down, is enough to radically reduce your chance of injury by iteself, but you can do more. So what is this wonderful technique that can so dramatically reduce my chance of injury? What is this secret?

Well actually there is no magic technique or secret. What I am about to tell you is common knowledge and something, you most likely have heard before numerous times. Chances are you have probably used this technique at some stage or have seen others use it, but the real issue is whether you have made it a consistent part of your training routine.

The “secret”? IT’S STRETCHING!

Do not underestimate the role that regular stretching before hard physical effort can have in preventing sports injuries. It is unfortunately an area often neglected, even by those at the top level of their sport who should know better. So effective is stretching that is should be viewed as a vital part of any exercise routine and a consistent part of your athletic performance preparation training. The good news is that there is no magic involved and it is free.

Photo courtesy of Tom@HK

So how does stretching prevent injury? Stretching works because by stretching, you are in effect trying to lengthen your muscles as well as your tendons. This will result in a greater range of movement in your limbs and joints, which can be helpful not only in achieving greater performances (a runner with a longer stride length can move freer and ultimately faster), but in terms of injury prevention.

Restricted movement can lead to strain and tearing when a muscle is suddenly moved beyond it’s capable range.

As an example. If the muscles in your neck are tight and stiff, the ability to look behind you is vastly hindered. If you are playing a sport like football or rugby and your head is turned backwards past it’s normal range of movement, this could easily result in a muscle tear or strain. If you had done some stretching and flexibility work prior to this, the muscle tendons in your neck would have had a greater range and the injury may have been prevented.

Runners and especially sports that involve kicking can put the hamstring muscles under a huge amount of strain. This can spell disaster in many scenarios, whether it be due to repetitive running on shortened muscles (running) or a dynamic event that causes a muscle tear (kicking), by ensuring these muscles are kept loose and flexible through some simple, regular stretching exercises the risk of hamstring injury can be dramatically reduced.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that sporting injuries can occur at any time, yet it has been proven time and time again that muscles that are fatigued, tight and depleted of energy are at a much higher risk.

Regular stretching coupled with adequate warm up and recovery ensure that your muscles and tendons are maintained in good working order over the long run. A simple stretching program can help you maintain a prolonged period of injury free sport participation.

Top stressors are:

• Money (81%)
• The Economy (80%)
• Work (67%)
• Health Problems affecting the family (67%)

Most Americans think they are dealing with their stress well, but less than half are exercise to de-stress, most opting to listen to music to relax.

Others have resorted to unhealthy coping strategies such as eating unhealthy foods, alcohol and smokes. While music is a great release from stress, exercise is an excellent way to unwind – incredibly healthy too!

Psychologist Katherine Nordal, the APA’s executive director for professional practice offers the following tips for individuals dealing with personal stress:

• Monitor your own stress levels and seek support if you need it
• Pay attention to what’s going on around you and try not to get caught up in the doom and gloom portrayed in the media
• Take stock in your particular situation and what causes your stress
• Reach out to family, friends and trusted advisers
• If you continue to feel overwhelmed seek professional help

Read the full article here.

Have to grab a bite to eat while on the go? Experts have revealed the best and worst fast food choices and presented it in an illustrated slideshow.

It has been long known that regular exercise can reduce the chance of disease and promote health, now guidelines have been released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) , the verdict – you need 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week to stay healthy and ward off diseases.

The announcement was met with support by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the American Heart Association (AHA). These organizations, – who jointly published physical activity recommendations last year, said the guidelines effectively support each other and are based on the most relevant science that links physical activity to “improved health and wellness”.

ACSM guidelines focus on 30 minutes of moderate-intensity daily physical activity five days a week, whereas HHS guidelines call for a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week. Both sets of recommendations conclude that relatively modest amounts of physical activity will improve health and cardio-respiratory fitness of inactive persons, however it should be noted that health gains, beyond this such as weight-loss or weight maintenance, may require more than the guidelines state.

The guidelines published by ACSM and AHA can be found here, and offer some basic recommendations for healthy adults below and over 65. While 150 hours might seem like a lot for some, they offer some practical tips for fitting in regular exercise with busy work schedules, family obligations and packed weekends:

• Do it in short bouts. moderate-intensity physical activity can be accumulated throughout the day in 10-minute bouts, which can be just as effective as exercising for 30 minutes straight.
• Mix it up. Combinations of moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity can be used to meet the guidelines. For example, you can walk briskly for 30 minutes twice per week and jog at a higher intensity on two other days.
• Set your schedule. Maybe it’s easier for you to walk during your lunch hour, or perhaps hitting the pavement right after dinner is best for you. But setting aside specific days and times for exercise can be helpful.
• The gym isn’t a necessity. It doesn’t take an expensive gym membership to get the daily recommended amount of physical activity. A pair of athletic shoes and a little motivation are all you need to live a more active, healthier life.
• Make it a family affair. Take your spouse, your children, or a friend with you to add some fun exercise ideas to your routine. This is also a good way to encourage your kids to be physically active and get them committed early to a lifetime of health.

The press statement can be viewed here.

“I would definitely not want the message from this study to be that these supplements don’t work at all,” he says. “That would be a disservice because they might prove valuable in future studies.”

In another recent study it was shown that resistance training does actually prove an effective treatment against Osteoarthritis.

It seems once again, in terms of body ailments, that keeping active trumps all other sorts of medical supplements and drugs. The general message seems clear… Stay active people!

Follow the link for the full details of the osteoarthritis supplement research study.

Osteoarthritis is a clinical syndrome in which low-grade inflammation results in pain in the joints, caused by abnormal wearing of the cartilage that acts as a cushion inside joints and also the decrease of synovial fluid that provides lubrication.

The disease affects nearly 21 million people in the United States and it is estimated that 80% of the population will have radiographic evidence of OA by age 65 (though only 60% of those will be symptomatic).

Traditional treatment is with Non-Steroidal-Anti-Inflammatory-Drugs (NSAID’s), local injections of glucocorticoid or hyaluronan or in severe cases joint replacement surgery, however analysis of previously conducted trials has shown that resistance training – which included resistance machines, free weights, isometric exercise and other devices such as elastic bands – cause improvement of symptoms, physical function and strength.

More than half of the studies reported a decrease in pain and 79 percent found mobility improvement following the training.

Ironically a separate study has suggested recently that popular supplements Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate may be useless.

The study was published in the October issue of Arthritis Care & Research.

Read more about it here.

For a long time, Cereal has been regarded a quick and healthy eating choice. But a new report has suggested that this is not universally true according to a references from an article on the sugar content on Kid’s cereals. New studies conducted by ConsumerReports.org have even revealed that some choices are the nutritional equivalent of a doughnut in a bowl.

In the report, 27 of the most heavily marketed to children breakfast cereals were evaluated for sugar content, sodium, fiber, calories and nutrients in a recommended serving. The major offenders are Post’s Golden Crisps and Kellogg’s Honey Smacks than deliver 50% sugar and very little dietary fiber. The 15 grams of sugar contained in a 3/4 cup serving of Honey Smacks has 3 more grams than is found in a Dunkin Donuts glazed doughnut!

Overall 11 of the tested cereals had 12 or more grams of sugar per serving, or the equivalent of a glazed doughnut. This is alarming when you consider parents often buy cereal believing it a healthy choice for their children. In actual fact many popular cereal brands contribute more to weight gain and obesity than providing adequate nutrients.

Four of the tested cereals were judged “Very Good” because of relatively low sugar and sodium, some fiber, high in iron and calcium. Medical Advisor Orly Avitzur, MD, reports that any of these cereals served with milk and a piece of fruit represents a good breakfast choice.

They are:

• Cheerios (General Mills), with just 1 gram of sugar, 3 grams of fiber, and 190 milligrams of sodium
• Kix (General Mills), with 3 grams of sugar, 3 grams of fiber, and 210 milligrams of sodium 
• Life (Quaker Oats), with 6 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 160 milligrams of sodium
• Honey Nut Cheerios (General Mills), with 9 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, and 190 milligrams of sodium

And the Worst Rated Cereals…

• Post’s Golden Crisp, 14 grams of sugar, 25mg sodium, 1 gram of fibre
• Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, 15 grams of sugar, 50mg sodium, 1 gram fibre
• Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch (Quaker Oats), with 9 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fiber and 200 mg of sodium
• Cap’n Crunch (Quaker Oats), with 12 grams of sugar, 1 gram of fiber, and 200 milligrams of sodium
• Apple Jacks (Kellogg), with 12 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of fiber, and 135 milligrams of sodium
• Froot Loops (Kellogg), with 12 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of fiber, and 135 milligrams of sodium
• Corn Pops (Kellogg), with 12 grams of sugar, no fiber, and 110 milligrams of sodium in a 1 cup serving
• Kellogg’s Rice Krispies 4 grams of sugar per serving high in sodium and had no fiber 0, 170mg of sodium

A spokeswoman from Kellogg responded to the report, by noting that the company has recently reformulated five of its cereals included in the Consumer Reports investigation to make them healthier choices.

While these reformulated cereals began to appear on grocery store shelves in June, Honey Smacks was a notable omission and according to Consumer Reports, even with the reformulation, the five cereals – Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Rice Krispies, Cocoa Krispies, and Apple Jacks – would still score poorly in a nutrition rating compared to other choices.

Consumer Reports nutrition Ratings are based on scores for energy density (the calorie concentration for the amount of food) and nutrients, including fat, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, sugars, iron, calcium, and dietary fiber. High dietary fiber is 5 grams or more per serving. A level of 1 teaspoon of sugar per serving was assigned for low sugar. Low sodium is considered to be 140 milligrams or less. All cereals were lowfat. The nutrition score reflects a balance between the amount of beneficial nutrients, such as fiber and calcium, and those that should be limited, such as sugar, sodium, and fat.

Read the full article here.

For a “dummies” guide to healthy nutritional requirements and how to get started losing those pounds, be sure to check out fat loss 4 idiots.