The UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence has issued new guidelines for health professionals on how to encourage older people to engage in more physical activity as a way to boost their mental health; one suggestion is for GPs to encourage their older patients to join local walking schemes and tell them how walking benefits mental wellbeing.
Archive for category Physical Activity
The purpose of this paper is to (1) provide a rationale for physical activity interventions and programs for cancer survivors, and (2) discuss successful approaches to adopting and maintaining physical activity to meet evidence-based recommendations and ultimately improve cancer survival and overall survival.
A population-based case-control study in Sweden to be published in Eur J Epidemiology studied 1,449 incident prostate cancer cases and 1,118 unaffected population controls. Overall there was no association between lifetime total physical activity and prostate cancer risk. These findings do not support the hypothesis that physical activity uniformly protects against prostate cancer development.
Data from 130 schools and 16 471 students in Norway were obtained in 2004 through self-administered questionnaires to principals and students. Multilevel logistic regression models revealed that boys at secondary level with a larger number of outdoor facilities at school had 2.7 times and girls 2.9 times higher odds of being physically active compared with students at schools with fewer facilities.
America is facing a health crisis. Even though America spends more than $2 trillion annually on health care—more than any other nation in the world—tens of millions of Americans suffer every day from preventable diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer that rob them of their health and quality of life.
Trust for America’s Health undertook a year-long consensus-building process, consulting more than 150 leading health experts and organizations to assemble recommendations for effective ways to modernize the federal public health system to meet the range of health challenges we face.
This new Blueprint for a Healthier America published in October 2008 is a federal policy guide for the next president, administration and congress, with expert recommendations to revitalize the nation’s ability to protect the health of all Americans.
The 133 page report Blueprint for a Healthier America contains a vision statement signed by more than 140 leading health organizations that outlines principles to make disease and injury prevention a cornerstone of America’s health policies. 4 Guiding Principles for Prevention forms the basis of which the 2 first are:
1. Prevention must drive our nation’s health strategy.
2. Americans deserve healthy and safe places to live, work, and play.
The blueprint report also contains an agenda for modernizing public health paper that defines the need and scope for a policy agenda to modernize public health. This paper is the result of a series of consensus meetings with more than 35 experts and national organizations.
Lars-Henrik Krarup from Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen headed an international study showing that people who were physically active before having a stroke had less severe symptoms and better long-term outcomes when compared to previously inactive people who had strokes. The findings are published in the Oct. 21 edition of the journal Neurology.
Based on the Social Cognitive Theory model for health behavior change 43 college students completed a series of quantitative measurements and a structured qualitative interview. Participants reported that regularly engaging in exercise was difficult. This may be due to poor planning/time management, satisfaction with body image, lack of accountability, and feelings of laziness. Dietary patterns generally met recommendations but were low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Social support for exercise and healthful dietary habits are important factors.
According to research published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, brain power decline can be prevented and possibly even reversed by engaging in regular aerobic exercise.
In overweight or obese women, physical activity, even at light or moderate intensities, lowers the risk of cancer of the lining of the uterus (endometrial cancer), according to findings from the American Cancer Society’s prospective Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort study.
We Need Better Research
Oct 17
If public health research does not progress beyond descriptive research to testing the effectiveness of interventions that can provide causal data, its contribution to evidence-based practice will not be realized. This paper examined the number and percentage of public health research publications over three time periods (1987–1988, 1997–1998, 2005–2006) for three preventive health issues: tobacco use, alcohol use, and inadequate physical activity.