2011 Winner Announced!

We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year's Bloomberg Manulife Prize is Dr. Steven Blair, a leading exercise scientist who has proven that all it takes to live longer and healthier is 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day.

Widely regarded as the creator of a new area of epidemiological research linking physical activity, decreased mortality, and health benefits, Dr. Blair is a professor of exercise science at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Seen as an academic leader in his field, he has advised governments and health organisations, has published over 500 scientific papers and book chapters, and is one of a handful of people outside the U.S. Public Health Service to be awarded the Surgeon General’s Medallion.

The work that won him the inaugural Bloomberg Manulife Prize is based partly on a 40-year study involving more than 80,000 individuals. His research has some fascinating conclusions, most notably, that overweight individuals who are nevertheless fit have a much lower mortality rate than slimmer individuals who are inactive.

Today, he devotes much of his time to public health issues, promoting the importance of physical activity to lay and scientific audiences around the world. He has also been influential in helping policy makers craft physical activity guidelines that promote the conclusions of his research.

To read more about Dr. Blair and the prize, check out our website: http://www.mcgill.ca/bloomberg-manulife/

Stand up for health and fitness

Just when you thought that if there was one place in this world you were safe it would be your favorite easy chair, a growing body of research has emerged suggesting that too much time spent sitting could be putting you at greater risk of developing cancer.

Findings presented  last month at the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C. say that simple routine exercise does not negate the risk of cancer in people who live otherwise sedentary lifestyles, to the tune of nearly 49,000 cases of breast cancer and 43,000 cases of colon cancer that could have been prevented by just spending less time sitting.

Dr. Neville Owen, with the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, attributes the risk to the physiological effects of inactivity on a sedentary body. According to Dr. Owen, long periods of muscle inactivity produce biological signals known as “biomarkers” that have been linked to cancer: “It's been surprisingly consistent with what strong relationships there are between physical inactivity and these biomarkers of cancer risk.”

Other research published in 2002 found that the levels of biologically available sex hormones, the excess of which could lead to hormone-related cancers such as those of the breast, ovaries or prostate, could be reduced through physical activity. The established advice from cancer researchers has long been that we should be getting a certain amount of exercise per week (the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week), and no one is trying to invalidate that advice. However, there may be much more to staying active to curtail cancer than regular exercise.

Alpa Patel, strategic director for the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study-3, says that “there’s benefit in just moving around.” This “moving around” can be anything from taking the stairs to your office to getting up for a cup of water every once in a while, and every effort you take throughout the day to make your body move and respond works to reduce the risk of cancer. While it may raise alarms in the many workers who spend up to an estimated fifteen and a half hours a day sitting, Joan Vernikos, former director of life sciences at NASA, says that just standing up every thirty minutes or so can be helpful.

And think about it: now instead of sending droll e-mail to colleagues around the office, why not amble on over to their desks and give them the benefit of your charm in person, while reducing your risk of cancer at the same time? Your body will thank you for it.

Read the AICR release on this research:http://www.aicr.org/press/press-releases/getting-up-from-your-desk.html

'Fat gene' is no excuse

The study of human genomics has, aside from providing comfortable careers for writers of dystopian science fiction, led to the isolation and identification of many genes that play a part in determining the physical characteristics of the bodies in which they reside.

Among these, around thirty-two have been discovered that predispose people to being obese, which  have unfortunately been blamed for the rapidly rising rates of obesity around the globe.

But a recent study by researchers in the UK aims to put these “fat gene” myths to rest, demonstrating that regardless of whether someone carries one or more of these genes, they are entirely capable of maintaining a healthy weight through a healthy diet and regular exercise.

By analyzing more than fifty studies of over 200,000 worldwide carriers of a particular obesity gene, the results of the study show that even those who carry the gene but live active and healthy lifestyles have a reduced risk of becoming obese compared to those who do not.

These findings are in line with a number of other recent studies which suggest that our genes are not necessarily the immutable and deterministic blueprints that the Orwells and Huxleys of this world would have us believe.

“Physical activity gives [carriers of the gene] the opportunity to lose weight,” says Cambridge University medical researcher Dr. Ruth Loos. “So it goes against the often held view that if it’s in your genes, it’s out of your control. We show that even though it’s in your genes, you still have control.”

The study strikes a blow against the usefulness of genetic screenings for genes identified as being related to obesity, which are currently commercially available and rising in popularity despite some scientists’ reservations regarding their validity and usefulness. Lennert Veerman with the University of Queensland has published a paper attacking the credibility of such screenings, citing their lack of predictive power, irrelevance to treatment options, and the way they encourage patients to focus on the genetic aspects of their condition when a focus on improving their actual lifestyle is both more tangible and more effective.

The new research demonstrates that whether you have the gene or not, the only way to effectively fight obesity is through proper diet and exercise. But the publication of the research will hopefully encourage more people to take more responsibility for their own bodies by focusing on increasing their activity levels rather than any extrinsic factors.

Is your morning commute making you sick?

A study conducted by Swedish researchers recently published in BMC Public Health suggests that those who commute to work by car or public transportation are more likely to have problems with both their physical and mental health than active commuters who walk or ride their bicycles to work.

The results are based on the findings of two public health surveys conducted in 2004 and 2008 by a team of Swedish researchers that culled data from around 21,000 people between the ages of 18 and 65 who work in Scania, Sweden. The study has found that those who commute to work by car or train are more likely to report stress, exhaustion, and generally poor health in addition to a greater number of missed work days compared to active commuters. The study also points out that the longer the commute, the worse the health complaints were reported, especially for those who rely on long commuter train rides to work every day. 

Dr. Redford Williams, professor of medicine and Director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University in North Carolina, says of the results, “We know that people who have a lot of demands and very little control over how they meet those demands are at a higher risk for negative health effects. And when you're relying on a train to get to work, it's totally out of your control most of the time."

An article by ABC News on the findings points out that while the research has not identified whether or not such a long commute to work is directly responsible for health problems, the present difficulties with finding work often do not allow job-seekers a lot of flexibility in choosing jobs that are far from where they live, suggesting that the problem is likely to persist for a while coming. 

Williams opines that, in light of these findings, those with a choice should probably choose a job requiring the shortest commute. Since the active commuters reported less stress and fewer health worries than those relying on cars or public transportation, the study’s findings seem to confirm that a good way to decrease stress and improve your overall health is to oil up that bicycle and counteract the stress of the workplace with a good blast of wind in the face on the way to work. 

The full text of the study’s findings can be found here.

Nature and the Outdoors Vital for Kids

Time spent outdoors is now being considered as one of the main markers for Canadian kids' health and activity levels. Exposure to fresh air and nature has been shown not only to raise overall health, but also to alleviate anxiety, and improve concentration and feelings of wellbeing. 

Since 2005, Active Healthy Kids Canada has been issuing “report cards” with the objective of assessing Canada’s commitment to active, healthy children at all levels: at  schools, in the community, and  as it is regulated at the municipal, provincial and national levels. The Active Kids Canada Report Card for 2011 has just been released, with a new twist:  the report card now includes an indicator for “Nature and the Outdoors.” 

The analysis of outdoor activity alongside other indicators such as playground equipment, community programming and educational policy, is based on the idea that even spending a little more time outside offers major potential benefits to kids for becoming active and healthy. And while a conclusive “Nature and the Outdoors” grade for the 2011 Report Card has not been decided (in light of the difficulty in achieving comprehensive data on the subject), the research has led to new findings which will hopefully lead to increased outdoor activity in Canadian children.

For instance, it’s been discovered that as they progress from elementary school to high school, kids spend much less time exercising outdoors, even though spending time outside can help alleviate anxiety and similar conditions in children while improving their concentration and mood. The trend away from outdoor exercise in children has been called “nature deficit disorder,” by American researcher Richard Louv – a trend this new addition to Active Healthy Kids Canada’s yearly Report Card hopes to counteract.

Stressing that “being out in nature” can be as simple as spending an afternoon sitting under a tree, researchers like Louv and Leanne Clare of the David Suzuki Foundation insist that the first step toward healthier children is getting them to spend more time in the outdoors. 

Those who have directed their efforts toward research on the relationship between nature and healthy children hope to use the knowledge they are gaining to encourage educators and communities to implement nature in their programming, a tactic they believe can be applied to anything from working with troubled children to practicing math. While this year’s results were inconclusive, researchers hope to draw attention to this relationship in the interest of advising schools, communities and policy makers on how to improve the health of Canadian children with nature.

Links to this and previous years’ Report Cards, as well as explanations of Healthy Active Kids Canada’s mission statement and methodology can be found here: www.activehealthykids.ca/ReportCard/2011ReportCardOverview.aspx

Working out when under the weather

With cold and flu season fast approaching, the active lifestyle many of us enjoyed during the summer may be waning. When the inevitable winter sniffles arrive, many of us naturally prefer to hide under the duvet than dedicate ourselves to exercise, but staying active can often help shorten the duration of common colds and in the long run, findings show that exercise helps your immune system fight simple infections.

How do you decide whether you should be getting physical when feeling under the weather? Here's what Dr. Edward R. Laskowski at the Mayo Clinic advises:

• Mild to moderate physical activity is usually ok if you have a garden-variety cold and no fever. Exercise may even help you feel better by opening your nasal passages and temporarily relieving nasal congestion.
• Exercise is usually OK if your signs and symptoms are all "above the neck" — symptoms you may have with a common cold, such as runny nose, nasal congestion, sneezing or minor sore throat. Consider reducing the intensity and length of your workout, though, or you may feel worse. Instead of going for a run, take a walk, for example.
• Don't exercise if your signs and symptoms are "below the neck" — such as chest congestion, hacking cough or upset stomach.
• Don't exercise if you have a fever, fatigue or widespread muscle aches.
• Let your body be your guide. If you have a cold and feel miserable, take a break. Scaling back or taking a few days off from exercise when you're sick shouldn't affect your performance. Remember if you do choose to exercise when you're sick, reduce the intensity and length of your workout. If you attempt to exercise at your normal intensity when you have more than a simple cold, you could risk more serious injury or illness.

And when you feel better? Keep exercising in the winter months to avoid illness. Some findings report that moderate intensity exercise - daily 20 to 30 minute walks, going to the gym every other day, or biking with kids a few times a week - may reduce the number of colds you get. In one study reported in the American Journal of Medicine, women who walked for a half-hour every day for one year had half the number of colds as women who did not exercise. In this study, researchers associated regular walking with increasing levels of infection-fighting white blood cells. In another study, researchers found that the number of T-cells - a specific type of white blood cell - in 65-year-olds who exercised regularly was as high as those of people in their 30s.

Walking and life expectancy

Walking is one of the simplest, least expensive, and most effective things you can do for your health. It strengthens bones, tunes up the cardiovascular system, and, psychologically, can clear a cluttered mind. Hundreds of studies have documented its benefits, and now, researchers say that later in life, walking becomes as much an indicator of health as a promoter of it.

As we get older, the stroll that was once a walk in the park may get difficult for any number of reasons: angina, arthritis, bad balance, failing vision. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have shown that after about age 65, how fast we walk may predict how long we have to live.

Walking, or gait, speed has long been recognized as a proxy for overall health and vitality and has been measured in many research projects. The University of Pittsburgh researchers didn't conduct a new study, but used some sophisticated statistical techniques to pool the results of nine that had already been done. They standardized the disparate ways gait speed had been measured in those studies — no small feat — and then did some further analysis to see how gait speed correlated with how long people lived.

What they found was a remarkably consistent association between faster gait speed and longer life that was true for both men and women ages 65 and older. More precisely, each increase of 0.1 meter per second in gait speed was associated with a 12% reduction in the risk of dying during a study's follow-up period. They also calculated that people with gait speeds of 1 meter per second or faster lived longer than would be expected given their age or gender. (One meter per second is equivalent to 2.2 miles per hour and just a bit slower than the speed needed to cross the street at most timed traffic lights.)

When the researchers factored in body mass index, blood pressure, prior hospitalization, and several other factors, the relationship between gait speed and longevity didn't change much. In other words, walking speed seemed to be independently associated with life expectancy, not just a marker for other conditions that would affect it.

More number crunching produced interesting correlations between gait speed and five- and 10-year survival rates that make some easy comparisons possible. For example, just 15% of the men ages 75 to 84 with a very slow gait speed of less than 0.4 meters per second (imagine someone shuffling) lived for another 10 years. In contrast, half of those with a speedier gait of 1.2 meters per second or faster lived at least 10 years. Women live longer than men, so the survival rates were longer at both slow and fast speeds for them, but the pattern was the same: faster walkers had much better five- and 10-year survival rates than slower ones.

So does this mean that if you're older and you work on improving your walking speed, you'll live longer? No, you can't draw that kind of a cause-and-effect conclusion from this study, which is based on statistical associations in observational studies. On the other hand, countless other studies have shown associations between physical activity and better health and longer life. For the vast majority of people at any age, regular walking improves health.

The University of Pittsburgh re searchers envision a day when standardized measures of gait speed, along with other information, might be a low-tech way for doctors and other clinicians to assess the overall health and life expectancy of their patients. In fact, you could do it yourself at home. All that's needed is a reliable watch that keeps track of seconds and some tape to mark off four meters in a hallway or large room. A slow gait could trigger action to improve modifiable risk factors or, in a very old person, to avoid certain interventions — say, certain types of surgery — because life expectancy is too short. Clinicians would also be a position to give their fast-walking patients the good news about their health and life expectancy prospects.