Aerobic exercise is known to benefit the heart, but researchers say that an aerobic workout may also build brain.

Aerobic exercise is known to benefit the heart, but researchers say that an aerobic workout may also build brain.

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http://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/news/walking-helps-brain-and-heart.aspx

Monday, Jan. 31, 2011 - Regular aerobic exercisesuch as walking may protect the memory center in the brain, while stretching exercise may cause the center — called the hippocampus — to shrink, researchers reported. 

In a randomized study involving men and women in their mid-60s, walking three times a week for a year led to increases in the volume of the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory, according to Dr. Arthur Kramer, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Ill., and colleagues.

On the other hand, control participants who took stretching classes saw drops in the volume of the hippocampus, Kramer and colleagues reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The findings suggest that it’s possible to overcome the age-related decline in hippocampal volume with only moderate exercise, Kramer told MedPage Today, leading to better fitness and perhaps to better spatial memory. “I don’t see a down side to it,” he said. 

The volume of the hippocampus is known to fall with age by between 1 percent and 2 percent a year, the researchers noted, leading to impaired memory and increased risk for dementia.

But animal research suggests that exercise reduces the loss of volume and preserves memory, they added. 

To test the effect on humans, they enrolled 120 men and women in their mid-sixties and randomly assigned 60 of them to a program of aerobic walking three times a week for a year. The remaining 60 were given stretch classes three times a week and served as a control group. 

Their fitness and memory were tested before the intervention, again after six months, and for a last time after a year. Magnetic resonance images of their brains were taken at the same times in order to measure the effect on the hippocampal volume. 

The study showed that overall the walkers had a 2 percent increase in the volume of the hippocampus, compared with an average loss of about 1.4% in the control participants. 

The researchers also found, improvements in fitness, measured by exercise testing on a treadmill, were significantly associated with increases in the volume of the hippocampus. 

On the other hand, the study fell short of demonstrating a group effect on memory - both groups showed significant improvements both in accuracy and speed on a standard test. The apparent lack of effect, Kramer told MedPage Today, is probably a statistical artifact that results from large individual differences within the groups. 

Analyses showed that that higher aerobic fitness levels at baseline and after the one-year intervention were associated with better spatial memory performance, the researchers reported. 

But change in aerobic fitness was not related to improvements in memory for either the entire sample or either group separately, they found. 

On the other hand, larger hippocampi at baseline and after the intervention were associated with better memory performance, they reported. 

The results “clearly indicate that aerobic exercise is neuroprotective and that starting an exercise regimen later in life is not futile for either enhancing cognition or augmenting brain volume,” the researchers argued. 

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, the Pittsburgh Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The authors said they had no conflicts.

A new study finds hospital cafeterias to be among the lowest-ranking providers of nutritional food.

A new study finds hospital cafeterias to be among the lowest-ranking providers of nutritional food. 

Thank you http://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/1202/healthy-options-not-plentiful-in-hospital-cafeterias.aspx

THURSDAY, Dec. 2, 2011 (MedPage Today) —Hospital cafeterias have long been an object of jokes about unappetizing food, and results from a recent survey of children's hospitals in California may add "unhealthy" to the stereotype.

A large majority of the 16 hospital eating places surveyed (81%) had high-calorie impulse buying options such as ice cream, cookies, or candy at or near the checkout lines, Lenard Lesser, MD, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found.

Half of the venues offered combinations that added a side and a drink for a lesser price, giving a discount for more items. And 38% of the venues priced their healthy entrees at a premium to the unhealthy ones, they reported in the October issue of Academic Pediatrics. 

On the other hand, a majority of eating venues in children's hospitals did have low-fat or skimmed milk, diet sodas, baked chips, salad bars, fruits without sugars, and non-fried vegetables outside of the salad bar. 

In addition, about half made nutrition informationavailable on the menu or had designated some items as being healthy. Less than half had signage that encouraged healthy eating choices.

THURSDAY, Dec. 2, 2011 (MedPage Today) —Hospital cafeterias have long been an object of jokes about unappetizing food, and results from a recent survey of children's hospitals in California may add "unhealthy" to the stereotype.

A large majority of the 16 hospital eating places surveyed (81%) had high-calorie impulse buying options such as ice cream, cookies, or candy at or near the checkout lines, Lenard Lesser, MD, from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found. 

Half of the venues offered combinations that added a side and a drink for a lesser price, giving a discount for more items. And 38% of the venues priced their healthy entrees at a premium to the unhealthy ones, they reported in the October issue of Academic Pediatrics. 

On the other hand, a majority of eating venues in children's hospitals did have low-fat or skimmed milk, diet sodas, baked chips, salad bars, fruits without sugars, and non-fried vegetables outside of the salad bar. 

In addition, about half made nutrition informationavailable on the menu or had designated some items as being healthy. Less than half had signage that encouraged healthy eating choices. 

"The provision of food in a hospital setting is itself an implied message to patrons and employees because it models acceptable meals and other food service behaviors," wrote the authors. "Children's hospitalsrepresent locations with great potential for influencing what people eat ... Furthermore, hospital food venues can serve as exemplars of healthy food environments and function as a place where nutrition education can be directed at children and their families." 

Previous studies have found poor food environments at hospitals, with one larger study showing that 42% of 234 hospitals were serving brand-name "fast food" such as Krispy Kreme and McDonald's, they noted. 

Other researchers have graded pediatric hospital cafeterias by scoring and ranking their performance based upon interviews with food service directors, but those results may have suffered from misrepresenting their habits, the researchers suggested. 

In order to obtain more objective data, Lesser and colleagues used a modified version of the Nutritional Environment Measures Survey for Cafeterias and directly observed the food-service areas — including cafeterias and fast-food eateries — at all 14 tertiary children's hospitals in the state. 

The survey summarized the number of items offered at each place, whether calorie labeling was available, whether any signage promoted healthy or unhealthy eating, how the pricing structure worked, and if there were unhealthy combination meals. 

Across all 16 venues surveyed, only 7% of sandwiches or entrees were healthy, according to the criteria of the survey. Exactly half of the venues were found to have no entrees that were considered healthy.