Exercise & Fitness Archive

Research we're watching

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Decades of sedentary behavior (for example, sitting during most of your waking hours) can cause your heart muscle to shrink and stiffen. But for longtime couch potatoes, a mash-up of different types of aerobic exercise may help restore heart health, a new study suggests.

For the study, 53 healthy but sedentary middle-aged adults were divided into two groups. One (the exercise group) did high- and moderate-intensity aerobic training four or more days a week for two years. The other (the control group) engaged in regular yoga, balance training, and weight training three times a week for two years.

Alternating between high- and low-intensity exercise may spur faster fitness gains.

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Spend less time exercising and burn more calories: sounds too good to be true, right? But it may just be possible with interval training, a type of workout that uses short bursts of strenuous activity to ramp up your heart rate and boost your fitness.

Long popular with high-performance athletes, interval training — a workout that alternates between high-intensity and low-intensity activity — isn't just reserved for those seeking gold medals. "If done properly, it can be safe for the vast majority of people," says Dr. Meagan Wasfy, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Ask the doctors

Q. I often run on a treadmill rather than running outdoors, to avoid bad weather and save time. But am I getting a lower-quality workout?

A. Die-hard runners sometimes swear by outdoor runs, claiming that the treadmill can't come close to an outdoor workout featuring wind, hills, and uneven terrain, which they say makes outdoor runs more challenging. But that doesn't mean you can't get the same quality of workout on a treadmill indoors. If you run slower on the road and faster on the treadmill, or if you put the treadmill on an incline, you may be able to burn as many calories indoors as out. One study in the Journal of Sports Sciences found that putting the treadmill on a 1% incline could erase the differences in resistance between indoor and outdoor running. This put the two workouts on an equal footing — so to speak.

Understanding risk and modifying your activities can cushion your joints from damage.

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Joints are a little bit like couch cushions. Over time, the padding between your bones, called cartilage, gets worn out and flattens down — a condition known as osteoarthritis. Unfortunately, dealing with worn joints is not as simple as fixing or replacing a couch. And whether your joints wear out may not be entirely in your control.

"Unfortunately, a lot of your risk depends on your genes," says Dr. Scott Martin, an orthopedic surgeon and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. "If you have a history of arthritis in your family, you may get arthritis in your lifetime. That's one factor you can't control." Dr. Martin is the faculty editor for the Harvard Special Health Report Knees and Hips (www.health.harvard.edu/knees).

Research we're watching

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As many people have suspected, a new study confirms that standing more can help you burn more calories. But the number of calories it burns in the course of the day isn't even enough to work off a fun-size candy bar.

The results of a Mayo Clinic study, published online January 31 by the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, found that adults who weighed 143 pounds, the average weight in the study, burned 0.15 more calories per minute while they stood than when they sat. So, in a six-hour day of standing instead of sitting, they would burn some 54 extra calories.

Harvard fitness expert Michele Stanten takes you through a simple routine that will safely elevate your heart rate to keep your fitness goals on track.

All you need are light clothing, a good pair of shoes and a few minutes of your day and Harvard exercise expert Michele Stanten will have you on your way to meeting your fitness goals.

Decades of research show that yoga can reduce the emotional and physical fatigue brought on by cancer treatment. In 2017, scientists reported for the first time that this is also true specifically for men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. Men who took a yoga class twice a week during prostate cancer radiation treatment reported less fatigue, fewer sexual side effects, and better urinary functioning than men who did not.

The research team enrolled 50 men ages 53 to 85 who were diagnosed with early or advanced nonmetastatic prostate cancer. Of them, 22 were assigned to yoga classes and the rest did not participate in yoga. All the men received scheduled radiation treatments; 29 of them were also on hormonal therapy, and 19 had been treated previ-ously with surgery. The yoga and control groups were evenly balanced with respect to various cancer treatments as well as treatments for side effects.

If you're like most people, your posture could use some improvement. But how do you do that? The classic advice is to stand straight, with your head up, shoulders back, and belly in. While these are reasonable adjustments, tai chi takes a different approach that may be more effective. It aims to align the body in ways that afford safe, unstrained, and graceful postures—not the military-like, one-size-fits all, rigid stances many think of as good posture.

Instead, in tai chi, good posture centers around the principle of verticality. That means the head is centered over the torso, the torso rests over the hips, and the hips are centered over the legs and feet, your base of support. Here's how to do it.