Exercise much?

One of the books I'm reading as part of my coursework is The Energy Balance Diet, by Joshua Rosenthal. Rosenthal is the founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, so my assumption is that this is a fairly important text in the coursework.

Reading chapter five this afternoon - I haven't read the whole thing in once piece - our warm up call homework has usually asked us to read a particular chapter at a time, but not necessarily in order. The point which was made about that is that sometimes you only "get" what is being said when you read a solitary chapter at a time. Thus, last month it was chapter five, this month, chapters nine and ten. Anyway, today - chapter five - I stopped dead in my sitting-in-an-armchair-tracks when I read the following:

"Moderate exercise has been shown again and again to produce remarkable health benefits. The Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec. 18, 1991) reported a study that showed that a leisurely walk at three miles per hour can significantly reduce a women's risk of heart attack. One of the ways it does this, scientists have found, is by increasing HDL levels, the cholesterol that protects you from heart attack and stroke.

But even less than 30 minutes, four to five times a week, can produce a benefit. Women who walked for just an hour a week had half the risk of suffering a heart attack as women who did not walk at all, according to Harvard University's Women's Health Study. "

Rosenthal goes on to describe a study of 13,000 people which takes place over an eight year time frame, in which the subjects are divided into five groups, depending on their rate of exercise. The greatest difference between the groups is the one between the first group, who are sedentary, and the second group, who walk for 30 minutes three to four times a week. The difference between these two groups is larger than the differences between the second group and the third, fourth and fifth groups - who range from people who exercise four to five times a week on up to athletes and marathon runners. The difference between the first and second groups is illustrated with the point that the people walking 30 minutes, three to four times a week cut their chances of suffering a heart attack or cancer in half, over the couch potatoes in group one.

He also reports that the study, also published in the Journal of the American Health Association, states "that cancer rates differed dramatically among the five groups. The men who didn't exercise had 4 times more incidences of cancer than those who were physically fit. Women who were sedentary had 16 times the cancer rate than those who were physically fit."

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Makes me glad I walked a mile on my treadmill this morning.

Isn't it amazing that people can tell you stuff all your life and you don't hear it until you're ready?