By: Erin Brodwin

Want an all-natural way to lift your mood, improve your memory, and protect your brain against the decline that comes with aging?

Get moving.

Exercises that get your heart pumping and sweat flowing — known as aerobic exercise, or “cardio”— have significant andbeneficial effects on the brain and body, according to a wealth of recent research, including two new studies published this month.

“Aerobic exercise is key for your head, just as it is for your heart,” according to an article in a Harvard Medical School blog.

Here are some of the ways cardio is such a boon for our bodies.

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A study published this week in the journal Neurology suggested that women who were physically fit in middle age were roughly 88% less likely to develop dementia (defined as a decline in memory severe enough to interfere with daily life) than their peers who were only moderately fit.

Neuroscientists from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden studied 191 women whose average age was 50 for 44 years. First, they assessed their cardiovascular health using a cycling test and grouped them into three categories: fit, moderately fit, or unfit.

Over the next four decades, the researchers regularly screened the women for dementia. In that time, 32% of the unfit women were diagnosed with the condition; a quarter of the moderately fit women did. But only 5% of the fit women developed dementia.

Despite that strikingly positive finding, the research only showed a link between fitness and decreased dementia risk; it did not prove that one caused the other. Still, the work builds on several other studies that suggest a powerful tie between exercise and brain health.

Workouts may protect your immune system from some age-related decline as well.

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For a small study published at the beginning of March in the journal Aging Cell, researchers looked at 125 amateur male and female cyclists aged 55 to 79. They compared those individuals with 75 people of a similar age who rarely or never exercised.

The cyclists were found to have more muscle mass and strength, and lower levels of body fat and cholesterol than the sedentary adults. The athletic adults also appeared to have healthier and younger-looking immune systems, at least when it came to a key organ called the thymus.

The thymus is responsible forgenerating key immune cells called T cells. In healthy people, it begins to shrink starting around age 20, and T cell production also starts to drop off around that time.

The study found that the thymus glands of the older cyclists looked like they belonged to younger people — their bodies were producing just as many T cells as would be expected from the thymus of a young person.

“We now have strong evidence that encouraging people to commit to regular exercise throughout their lives is a viable solution to the problem that we are living longer but not healthier,” Janet Lord, the director of the Institute of Inflammation and Aging at the UK’s University of Birmingham, said in a statement.

Cardio tones your muscles.

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It was initially believed that when it comes to building muscle, cardio paled in comparison to exercises like resistance training, which are designed to help you gain strength. But a recent review of 14 studies published in the journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews found that on average, men who did 45 minutes of moderate to intense cardio 4 days a week saw a 5%-6% increase in leg muscle size.

“Aerobic exercise, if done properly, can lead to as much muscle growth as you’d expect with resistance exercise,” Ball State University exercise scientist Matthew Harber, who authored the study, told Men’s Fitness.

It raises your heart rate, improving heart and lung health.

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Aerobic workouts, especially swimming, train your body to use oxygen more efficiently, a practice that gradually reduces your resting heart rate and your breathing rate — two important indicators of cardiovascular health.

A 2008 study compared blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other heart health metrics across close to 46,000 walkers, runners, swimmers, and sedentary people. The researchers found that the regular swimmers and runners had the best metrics, followed closely by the walkers.

Cardio exercise may even help reverse some heart damage from normal aging.

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Many of us become less active as we get older. Over time, this can lead some muscles in the heart to stiffen. One of those at-risk muscles is in the left chamber of the heart, a section that plays a key role in supplying the body with freshly-oxygenated blood.

A recent study split 53 adults into two groups, one of which did two years of supervised exercise four to five days per week while the other simply did yoga and balance exercises. At the end of the study, published in January in the journal Circulation, the higher-intensity exercisers saw significant improvements in their heart’s performance. Those results suggest that some stiffening in the heart can be prevented or even reversed with regular cardio.

“Based on a series of studies performed by our team over the past 5 years, this ‘dose’ of exercise has become my prescription for life,” Benjamin Levine, the author of the study and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern, said in a statement.

Aerobic exercise benefits your mind, too — it can lift your mood, for example.

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Aerobic exercise “has a unique capacity to exhilarate and relax, to provide stimulation and calm, to counter depression and dissipate stress,” according to an article in the Harvard Medical School blog “Mind and Mood.”

The reason aerobic workouts lift our spirits seems related to their ability to reduce levels of natural stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, according to a recent study in the Journal of Physical Therapy Science. Activities like running and swimming also increase overall blood flow and provide our minds fresh energy and oxygen — another factor that could help us feel better

Heart-pumping workouts appear to have a positive impact on your gut.

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A small study published in Novembersuggests that cardio exercise changes the makeup of the microbes in our gut.

Those microbes play a role in inflammation levels, which can be an early warning sign of illness.

The researchers had study participants exercise three to five times per week for six weeks, and observed increases in their concentrations of butyrate, a type of fatty acid that helps keep our guts happy by tamping down on inflammation and producing energy.

“These are the first studies to show that exercise can have an effect on your gut independent of diet or other factors,” Jeffrey Woods, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois who led the research, said in a statement.

Cardio may improve cholesterol levels, too.

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A large recent review of research on how cardio affects cholesterol levels looked at 13 studies on the topic. It found that aerobic exercise was tied with reductions in LDL, which is also known as “bad” cholesterol because it can build up on the walls of your arteries and raise your risk of heart disease.

Cardio exercise was also linked with increases in HDL, also known as “good” cholesterol because it mobilizes the cholesterol in your blood.

“Prolonged moderate-intensity aerobic exercise should be recommended as a starting point for those who have previously been sedentary or are new to exercise,” the authors wrote.

Aerobic exercise helps prevent and manage diabetes by improving the way the body uses blood sugar.

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Several studies have found that cardio exercise helps people both prevent Type 2 diabetes and manage its symptoms — mostly by improving the way the body uses blood sugar.

A large Chinese study found that even modest changes in aerobic exercise (20 minutes of mild or moderate activity, 10 minutes of strenuous activity, or just 5 minutes of very strenuous activity 1-2 times per day) cut participants’ diabetes risk by close to half.

A single session of cardio has been found to increase insulin action and glucose tolerance for more than 24 hours; one week of it can improve whole-body insulin sensitivity.

Cardio workouts may even improve the look and feel of your skin.

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A study from researchers at McMaster University found that people over age 40 who engaged in regular cardio activity tended to have healthier skinthan their sedentary peers. The overall composition of the regular exercisers’ skin was more comparable to that of 20- and 30-year-olds.

It’s not yet clear why our workouts appear to play a role in skin health, but the researchers found elevated levels of a substance critical to cell health called IL-15 in skin samples of participants after exercise. That finding that could shed light on why cardio seems to make our skin look better.

Workouts may reduce the symptoms of depression.

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In addition to boosting the moods of healthy people, aerobic exercise may have a uniquely powerful positive impact on people with depression.

In a pilot study, people with severe depression spent 30 minutes walking on treadmill for 10 consecutive days. The researchers found the activity was “sufficient to produce a clinically relevant and statistically significantreduction in depression.”

Cardio appears to guard against some age-related decline like reduced brain connectivity.

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As we age, the brain — like any other organ — begins to work less efficiently, so normal signs of decline begin to surface. Our memory might not be quite as sharp as it once was, for example.

But older people who develop Alzheimer’s disease often first enter a stage known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which involves more serious problems with memory, language, thinking, and judgment.

A study published in May looked at adults with MCI between the ages of 60-88, and had participants walk for 30 minutes four days a week for 12 weeks. The results showed strengthened connectivity in a region of the brain where weakened connections have been linked with memory loss. That development, the researchers noted, “may possibly increase cognitive reserve,” but more studies are needed.

Aerobic exercise may help protect against memory difficulties in people undergoing chemo as well.

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In a July study, researchers examined hundreds of breast cancer survivors to see if activities like walking and swimming have an effect on “chemo brain,” a commonly reported side effect of breast cancer treatment that involves memory loss and difficulties focusing.

They gave nearly 300 breast cancer survivors accelerometers to track their activity, and provided them with an iPad app that featured quizzes designed to measure their attention and memory. At the end of a week, people who’d done aerobic exercise every day were significantly less tired than those who did little to no exercise, and also performed better on the app’s quizzes.

“The message for cancer patients and survivors is, get active!” Diane Ehlers, the lead author on the study and a professor of exercise psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, said in a statement.

Cardio may also be tied to increases in the size of brain areas linked to memory, but more research is needed.

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A study of older women with MCI found that aerobic exercise was tied to an increase in the size of the hippocampus, a brain area involved in learning and memory.

For the study, 86 women with MCI between 70 and 80 years old were randomly assigned to do one of three types of exercise twice a week for six months. Some did aerobic training (like walking and swimming), others focused on resistance training (like weight-lifting), or balance training.

Afterwards, only the women in the aerobic group were found to have significant increases in hippocampal volume, but more studies are needed to determine what effect this has on cognitive performance.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/exercise-cardio-brain-body-health-benefits-2017-12#cardio-may-also-be-tied-to-increases-in-the-size-of-brain-areas-linked-to-memory-but-more-research-is-needed-14

When is the best time to exercise or do creative work? Research on the science of timing has answers

By: Daniel H. Pink

You’ve probably made a few New Year’s resolutions, solemn promises to yourself to behave better in 2018. You might have pondered how you’re going to accomplish those goals, who could help you and why you need to change.

But if you’re like most people—and social science suggests that you and I are like most people—you’ve neglected a question that could help you actually stick to those resolutions: “When?”

In fact, timing is really a science. For several decades, researchers in dozens of fields—from economics to anesthesiology to social psychology—have been unearthing the hidden science of timing. In randomized controlled experiments, field studies and the analysis of massive data sets, they are exploring questions that span the human experience. How do beginnings, midpoints and endings alter our actions and memories? How do groups synchronize in time? How do even the verb tenses we use affect our behavior? Time, they have discovered, shapes our productivity, health and well-being in powerful but often invisible ways.

Much of what we consider “natural” units of time—seconds, hours, weeks—are really fences that our ancestors constructed to corral time. But one unit remains beyond our control: We inhabit a planet that turns on its axis at a steady speed in a regular pattern, exposing us to consistent periods of light and dark. The day is perhaps the most important way that we divide, configure and evaluate our time. By understanding the science of the day—and by giving more attention to the question of “when”—we can improve the effectiveness and success of our resolutions.

So how can we harness time to be healthier, happier and more productive?

Resolution: Get a promotion, get a raise or otherwise do well at work. Each year, many of us vow to get more done at work and perhaps even make a few creative breakthroughs. Yet many of us don’t realize how much the time of day matters to our performance.

Scientists began measuring the effect of the time of day on human brain power more than a century ago, when the pioneering German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted experiments showing that people learned and remembered strings of nonsense syllables more effectively in the morning than at night. Since then, researchers have continued that investigation for a range of mental pursuits. They’ve drawn three big conclusions.

First, our cognitive abilities don’t remain static over the course of a day. During the 16 or so hours we’re awake, they change—often in a regular, foreseeable manner. We are smarter, faster and more creative in some parts of the day than others.

Second, these daily fluctuations can be extreme. “The performance change between the daily high point and the daily low point can be equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol,” write Russell Foster, a neuroscientist and chronobiologist at the University of Oxford, and Leon Kreitzman in their book “Rhythms of Life.” Other research has shown that time-of-day effects can explain 20% of the variance in human performance on cognitive undertakings.

Third, how we do depends on what we’re doing. We’re more effective at some tasks early in the day and at other tasks later in the day.

From big-data analyses of 500 million tweets to studies led by Nobel Prize-winning scientists, research has shown that we generally experience the day in three acts: a peak, a trough and a rebound. Most of us experience the pattern in that order. But the roughly one in five of us who have evening “chronotypes”—people who are night owls—tend to proceed in reverse order. (To determine whether you’re an owl, consider a day when you don’t have to awaken to an alarm clock. What is the midpoint between the time you go to sleep and the time you wake up? If it’s 5:30 a.m. or later, you’re probably an owl.)

During the peak, our ability to focus is at its best. When we wake up, our body temperature slowly rises. That rising temperature gradually boosts our energy level and alertness—and that, in turn, enhances our executive functioning, our ability to concentrate and our powers of deduction. For most of us, these sharp-minded analytic capacities crest in the late morning or around noon. This is when we are most vigilant, when we can keep distractions from penetrating our cerebral gates. That makes the peak the best time to tackle work that requires heads-down attention and analysis, such as writing a legal brief or auditing financial statements.

Vigilance, though, has its limits. Alertness and energy levels tend to plummet during the afternoons. And with that drop comes a corresponding fall in our ability to remain focused and constrain our inhibitions. This is the second stage: The trough, which usually occurs in the early to midafternoon.

The effects of the trough can be significant. In a 2016 study, Harvard University’s Francesca Gino and two Danish researchers examined four years of standardized test results for two million students in Denmark and matched scores to the time of day the students took the test. They found that students randomly assigned to take the tests in the afternoon scored considerably lower than those who took the test in the morning—an effect equivalent to missing two weeks of school.

The trough is an especially dangerous time for health-care professionals and their patients. In a study published in 2006 in Quality and Safety in Health Care, researchers at Duke Medical Center reviewed about 90,000 surgeries at the hospital and found that harmful anesthesia errors were three times more likely in procedures that began at 3 p.m. than at 8 a.m.

The afternoon trough is the Bermuda Triangle of our days—the place where effectiveness and good intentions disappear. This is the time to do your mindless administrative work, such as answering email, filing papers and filling out expense reports.

The third stage is the rebound, which for most of us occurs in the late afternoon and early evening. During this stage, we tend to excel at a different type of work. In 2011, two American psychologists, Mareike Weith and Rose Zacks, posed what are called “insight problems”—which require creative, rather than algorithmic, thinking and have nonobvious, surprising solutions—to 428 people, about half of whom were vigilant morning thinkers. These participants fared better on these problems not during their supposedly more optimal mornings but much later in the day—a phenomenon the researchers dubbed “the inspiration paradox.”

In the late afternoons and early evenings, most people are somewhat less vigilant than during the peak, but more alert and in a better mood than during the trough. That combination has advantages. A boosted mood leads to greater openness. A slight reduction in vigilance lets in a few distractions—but those distractions can help us spot connections that we might have missed when our filters were tighter. So we should move brainstorming sessions and other creative pursuits to the rebound stage. (Again, because night owls move through the day in the reverse order, their rebound period is the morning.)

The key is to seek what psychologists call the “synchrony effect”—to bring your own daily rhythms, your task (is it analytical, administrative or insight?) and your time (is it early, midday or later?) into alignment. Doing your analytic work during the rebound or your creative work during the trough is an ideal way to sabotage your resolutions.

Resolution: Get more exercise. It’s the most common New Year’s resolution. But when is the best time to hit the gym? Science has some answers, and most of them depend on the nature of our exercise goals.

Schedule exercise in the morning if you want to:

Lose weight. When we first wake up, having not eaten for at least eight hours, our blood sugar is low. Since we need blood sugar to fuel a run, morning exercise will use the fat stored in our tissues to supply the energy we need. (When we exercise after eating, we use the energy from the food we’ve just consumed.) In many cases, morning exercise may burn 20% more fat than later, post-food workouts.

Boost mood. Cardio workouts—swimming, running, even walking the dog—can elevate mood. When we exercise in the morning, we enjoy these effects all day. If you wait to exercise until the evening, you’ll end up sleeping through some of the good feelings.

Keep a routine. Some studies suggest that we’re more likely to adhere to our workout routine when we do it in the morning. So if you find yourself struggling to stick with a plan, morning exercise, especially if you enlist a regular partner, can help you form a habit.

Exercise in the late afternoon or evening if you want to:

Avoid injury. Studies have found that injuries are less common in workouts later in the day. Our body temperature reaches its high point in the late afternoon and early evening, and when our muscles are warm, they’re more elastic and less prone to injury.

Perform your best. In a 2015 study of 121 athletes, Elise Facer-Childs and Ronald Brandstaetter of the University of Birmingham found that individual performance can vary by as much as 26% based solely on time of day—and that performance typically peaks between 10 and 12 hours after awakening. So working out in the afternoons can help you sprint faster and lift more. Lung function is highest this time of the day, so your circulation system can distribute more oxygen and nutrients. This is also the time of day when strength peaks, reaction time quickens, hand-eye coordination sharpens, and heart rate and blood pressure drop. In fact, a disproportionate number of athletic records, especially in speed events, are set in the late afternoon and early evening.

Enjoy the workout a bit more. People typically perceive that they’re exerting themselves a little less in the afternoon even if they’re doing exactly the same exercise routine as in the morning, according to the American Council on Exercise.

Source site: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-be-healthier-happier-and-more-productive-its-all-in-the-timing-1514560647?emailToken=7ae069394137d491ed5412aaaf681213%2BRe7Y5zm8g33991Ds3vgBmCOdYLT3WVOfUqvMMpBdGPBL7wH%2B%2FZBrdmVLkIV4lcuYlvdmVouh4RFVqsk95vFR%2F5RihJtDP43Ftt2ViXmmDQA8VNqvr9NvLWH3ygDK2pcW5IVNUXXxwZukfDqJ3Op4Q%3D%3D

Having an anxiety disorder can make a major impact in the workplace. People may turn down a promotion or other opportunity because it involves travel or public speaking; make excuses to get out of office parties, staff lunches, and other events or meetings with coworkers; or be unable to meet deadlines.

In a national survey on anxiety in the workplace, people with anxiety disorders commonly cited these as difficult situations: dealing with problems; setting and meeting deadlines; maintaining personal relationships; managing staff; participating in meetings, and making presentations.

Tell Your Employer?

It’s your decision to tell your employer about your anxiety disorder. Some people do so because they need accommodations, others want to educate people about their condition, and some do not want to hide their illness.

If you have a physical or mental disability and are qualified to do a job, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) protects you from job discrimination. Being qualified means you must satisfy an employer’s requirements for the job and be able to perform essential functions on your own or with reasonable accommodation. An employer cannot refuse to hire you because your disability prevents you from performing duties that are not essential to the job. Find out more about employment rights.  

Tips to Manage Stress and Anxiety at Work

Getting stressed out at work happens to everyone, and it’s perfectly normal. But stress that is persistent, irrational, and overwhelming and impairs daily functioning may indicate an anxiety disorder. Keep these ideas in mind to keep your work life manageable:

• Work! In addition to financial reasons, working can be important for your self-esteem and it adds to your social identity.
• Tell a trusted coworker.Knowing that someone accepts your condition can be comforting and it may reduce any anticipatory anxiety about having a panic attack at work.
• Educate yourself.Learn to recognize the symptoms of your disorder and how to handle them if you experience any at work.
• Practice time management.Make to-do lists and prioritize your work. Schedule enough time to complete each task or project.
• Plan and prepare.Get started on major projects as early as possible. Set mini-deadlines for yourself. Anticipate problems and work to prevent them.
• Do it right the first time.Spend the extra time at the outset and save yourself a headache later when you have to redo your work.
• Be realistic.Don’t over commit or offer to take on projects if you don’t realistically have enough time.
• Ask for help.If you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask a coworker for help. Later you can return the favor.
• Speak up calmly and diplomatically if you have too much to handle. Your supervisor may not realize you’re overextended.
• Stay organized.Filing and clearing your desk and computer desktop may rank low on your priority list, but they can save you time in the long run and may prevent a crisis later.
• Avoid toxic coworkers.Try to ignore negativity and gossip in your workplace.
• Take breaks.A walk around the block or a few minutes of deep breathing can help clear your head.
• Set boundaries.Try not to bring work home with you. Don’t check your work e-mail or voice mail after hours.
• Savor success.Take a moment to celebrate your
• good work before moving on to the next project. Thank everyone who helped you.
• Plan a vacation.You’ll be rejuvenated and ready to work when you come back.
• Take advantage of employer resources and benefits. Your workplace may offer an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), discounts to gyms, or skill-building courses. Learn what’s available to you.
• Be healthy. Eat healthfully, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, and limit caffeine and alcohol. Try to keep your body and mind in shape to handle challenging situations.

Getting Help

It’s important to find help for anxiety, stress, and related disorders. Find a therapist near you.

With treatment, most people find significant improvement. Several standard approaches have proved effective. Your health care professional will use one or a combination of these treatments:

• Therapy
• Medication
• Complementary and alternative treatment

Source: https://adaa.org/managing-stress-anxiety-in-workplace/anxiety-disorders-in-workplace#

Psychiatric medications—especially stimulants and antidepressants—do not appear to be overprescribed to children and adolescents, according to a report published Monday in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.

“Among young people, the population level prescribing rates as well as age and sex distributions [of children who received stimulant and antidepressant prescriptions] are broadly consistent with known epidemiologic patterns of their established indications for ADHD, anxiety, and depression,” wrote lead author Ryan Sultan, M.D, of Columbia University and colleagues.

The researchers analyzed data contained in the 2008 IMS LifeLink LRx Longitudinal Prescription database on U.S. youth aged 3 to 24 years of age who had filled at least one prescription for stimulants, antidepressants, or antipsychotics during the study year. In total, the 2008 IMS LRx database included 131,291 younger children (aged 3 to 5), 2,140,289 older children (6 to 12), 2,163,202 adolescents (13 to 18), and 1,916,700 young adults (19 to 24) who filled at least one stimulant, antidepressant, or antipsychotic prescription.

The analysis revealed that 4.6% of older children and 3.8% of adolescents were prescribed stimulants; this is well below published national community ADHD prevalence estimates of 8.6%. Similarly, just 2.8% of adolescents, 1% of older children, and 0.1% of younger children received a prescription for an antidepressant; yet the prevalence rates for depression among adolescents alone range from 4% to 5%, while the prevalence rates for anxiety disorders in children and adolescents range from 15% to 20%.

Although annual antipsychotic prescription percentages were lower than antidepressant or stimulant percentages for all age groups, with a peak in adolescence (age 16 = 1.3%), it remains unclear whether antipsychotic prescribing is above or below prevalence rates of the disorders for which these medications are prescribed. “Patterns of antipsychotics are more complex and may reflect the heterogeneity of the approved and off-label conditions and disorders treated with this medication class,” the authors wrote.

“Overall, the findings provide some reassurance regarding population level prescribing patterns of psychotropic medications in youth in relation to the epidemiologic distribution of major child and adolescent mental disorders,” they wrote. “However, we should continue to monitor psychotropic medication prescriptions over time to assess whether U.S. prescribing practices remain broadly consistent with underlying disorder prevalence.”

For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Prescribing for Mentally Ill Children Generally in Line With Best Practices.”

© 2019 American Psychiatric Association

The Effects of Resistance Exercise Training on Anxiety_ A Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials _ SpringerLink (1)

Resistance Exercise Linked to Reduced Anxiety

By Lisa Rapaport

People who do resistance exercises like weight lifting may experience less anxiety than people who don’t work out, a research review suggests.

Researchers analyzed data from 16 previously published studies with a total of 922 participants who were randomly assigned to do resistance training or be inactive. The study was published in Sports Medicine, online August 17.

Resistance workouts were associated with a reduction in anxiety symptoms whether or not participants had a mental health disorder, though the effect was more pronounced in healthy people who didn’t report any physical or psychological problems.

“The positive effects of exercise training on mental health are well established; however, the majority of this knowledge is based on studies involving aerobic-based training,” said lead study author Brett Gordon, a physical education and sports researcher at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

“RET (resistance exercise training) significantly reduced anxiety in both healthy participants and those with a physical or mental illness, and the effect size of these reductions is comparable to that of frontline treatments such as medication and psychotherapy,” Gordon said by email. “RET is a low-cost behavior with minimal risk, and can be an effective tool to reduce anxiety for healthy and ill alike.”

Because the analysis only focused on resistance training, the results can’t show whether this type of activity might be better or worse than aerobic or other types of exercise for easing anxiety symptoms.

While the effects of resistance exercise on the brain are not as well understood as the impact of aerobic workouts, emerging research has also linked resistance training to less shrinkage of white matter in the brain, said Dianna Purvis Jaffin of the Brain Performance Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas.

White matter is composed of nerve fibers that connect neurons in different parts of the brain. Changes in white matter can occur with age, and are thought to be involved in cognitive and behavioral problems.

It’s possible that exercise might help ease anxiety simply by distracting people from how they’re feeling and giving them something else to focus on, Jaffin, who wasn’t involved in the current study, said by email.

“Exercise generally requires some level of concentration on the activity and may serve as a distraction, and at least acutely (meaning – during that bout of exercise and a bit after) interrupt rumination and obsessive worrying,” Jaffin said.

“Finally, since people with anxiety tend to have uncertainty about their future, they may obsessively worry and lack confidence,” Jaffin added. “Exercise can improve self-efficacy, the belief that one can succeed in particular situations, which may make someone feel more empowered.”

While the amount of exercise may influence the impact of workouts on mental health, there isn’t enough evidence available yet to prescribe a specific amount of activity, said Steven Petruzzello, a body mechanics researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who wasn’t involved in the study.

Absent this sort of prescription, choosing an enjoyable workout makes sense, Petruzzello said by email.

In the current analysis, people did resistance exercises on two to five days per week for an average of 11 weeks.

“The best advice at the present time is to ‘just do it’ – it being whatever the person finds enjoyable or at least tolerable,” Petruzzello said. “For some that might mean going for a walk, for others it might entail more vigorous forms of activity.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2yvBptq

Sports Med 2017.

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2017. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp

Probiotic May Ease Depression in IBS Patients

DISCLOSURES

The authors concluded that the probiotic Bifidobacterium longum reduces depression and increases quality of life in patients with IBS, and that this reduction is associated with reduced limbic reactivity in the brain.Donald Rauh

Association of Nut Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality

Ying Bao, M.D., Sc.D., Jiali Han, Ph.D., Frank B. Hu, M.D., Ph.D., Edward L. Giovannucci, M.D., Sc.D., Meir J. Stampfer, M.D., Dr.P.H., Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., and Charles S. Fuchs, M.D., M.P.H.

N Engl J Med 2013; 369:2001-2011November 21, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1307352