WesWELL

Diversity Film Series: Search for Angela Shelton (2004)

From Her Active Life…

When you want to get fit, stay healthy, or train for an athletic event, consistency and determination are both important. Being sure to eat well and work out is a must for everyone - but too much of a good thing can be harmful. Working out too much, too often, can lead to more than injuries. Even if you don’t hurt yourself, taking on too much can lead to psychological burnout, which is a major reason that people stop their exercise routines entirely or get tired of the same ole’ thing.

No matter how motivated you may be, that enthusiasm can quickly sour if you forget about moderation - this will keep your exercise program fun, interesting, and exciting. What qualifies as “moderate” varies by person, fitness level, and goals. Start slow, and build from there. An effective plan will increase your frequency and intensity slowly and appropriately for your lifestyle.

A few more quick and easy tips to avoid burning out:

-Don’t overdo it at the outset. If you’re just starting to exercise, take it slow. Two 20-minute sessions a week are fine, and build up from there, week after week, until you reach a suitable level for your goals, fitness level and priorities. Don’t go further than what you enjoy and benefit from.

-Watch for overtraining symptoms: when you overdo it, your body lets you know, by means of a sluggish appetite, insomnia at night but fatigue during the day, recurrent injuries or muscle soreness, and a lack of progress or improvement in performance.

-Mix it up! Add a new class, try a new machine at the gym, or incorporate an entirely new sport, and do it at least every few months. Hopping on the treadmill might be fun, but even the most enjoyable workout can get blah if you do it for months on end. If you have a particular routine you enjoy, you can keep that varied as well - for example, change the incline, do sprinting intervals or tempo training, and so on.

-Take a break. Not all the time, no. But take a full rest day each week, and take a full week off every 3 months or so. Your body will benefit from the relaxation, use the time to repair and rejuvenate, and your workouts will be better with fresh muscles.

-Set goals, but make them realistic. Having something to strive for (a race, a level of weights to lift, a certain running pace) is a terrific way to stay motivated. However, aiming too high can be detrimental, because you’ll work too hard and be let down if you don’t get the results you were hoping for. Instead, set specific and reachable goals, and make a precise plan to reach them.

Remember that fitness should always, no matter your level of intensity or your goals, be fun. If it isn’t, you need to rethink your program and readjust it to better suit your needs.

From WebMD…

Fear may heighten people’s sense of smell, changing the way people respond to scent, a new study shows.

The findings may hold clues for new anxiety disorder treatments, according to the researchers.

For the study, 12 healthy young adults took smell tests while getting their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

First, participants sniffed scents from two bottles. The scents were almost identical, with one subtle chemical variation. Participants couldn’t tell the two scents apart.

But when they smelled one of the scents while getting an uncomfortable, but bearable, electric shock to their leg, they quickly learned to distinguish that scent from its virtual twin.

The brain scans showed different patterns in brain activity when the “danger” scent wafted through the air than brain activity when the “no danger” scent was used.

“It’s evolutionary,” researcher Wen Li, PhD, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says in a news release. “This helps us to have a very sensitive ability to detect something that is important to our survival from an ocean of environmental information. It warns us that it’s dangerous and we have to pay attention to it.”

Li’s team suggests that a breakdown in the ability to distinguish between important and unimportant cues “may underlie the emergence of anxiety disorders characterized by exaggerated sensory sensitivity and hypervigilance.”

If so, that could lead to a new approach to anxiety disorder therapies, the researchers note in Science.

From the New England Journal of Medicine…

Perspective by Tadataka Yamada, M.D.

The recent failure of another potential vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) underscores the enormous challenges of tackling diseases whose heaviest burden falls on the developing world. A quarter of a century after the first report of AIDS, our knowledge about how an HIV vaccine might work is still distressingly limited. It seems clear that neither current dogma nor traditional thinking is likely to get us to the next step. Truly creative ideas will be required. I must confess to having learned the hard way that embracing new thinking, as difficult as it may be, is crucial for the advancement of science and medicine.

As a gastroenterologist, I was one of the many who believed as gospel truth that peptic ulcers were caused by gastric acid. When two scientists from Australia came along and argued that it was actually a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, that produced ulcers, those of us in the “Acid Mafia” rejected their claims out of hand. But Robin Warren and Barry Marshall persisted. Marshall even drank a solution of H. pylori, became ill, took antibiotics, recovered, and wrote a paper about it, just to get others in the field to pay attention. You know the ending to this story — these scientists were proved right and went on to win a Nobel Prize in 2005.

New ideas should not have to battle so hard for oxygen. Unfortunately, they must often do so. Even if we recognize the need to embrace new thinking — because one never knows when a totally radical idea can help us tackle a problem from a completely different angle — it takes humility to let go of old concepts and familiar methods. We have seemed to lack such humility in the field of global health, where the projects related to diseases, such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, that get the most funding tend to reflect consensus views, avoid controversy, and have a high probability of success, if “success” is defined as the production of a meaningful but limited increase in knowledge. As a result, we gamble that a relatively small number of ideas will solve the world’s greatest global health challenges. That’s not a bet we can afford to continue making for much longer.

^{read full article…}

From Scientific American…

Like athletes or musicians, people who practice meditation can enhance their ability to concentrate—or even lower their blood pressure. They can also cultivate compassion, according to a new study. Specifically, concentrating on the loving kindness one feels toward one’s family (and expanding that to include strangers) physically affects brain regions that play a role in empathy.“There is such a thing as expertise when it comes to complex emotions or emotional skills, such as the one of cultivating benevolence,” says Antoine Lutz, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who led the study. “That raises the possibility that you can train someone to cultivate this positive emotion.”

read full article…

WesWELL offers meditation classes each semester for Wesleyan students and other campus community members.  Look for the new schedule in late August 2008.

From ScienceDaily…

 About 40 million Americans suffer from “hay fever,” a disease that allergists prefer to call “allergic rhinitis,” because HAY is not to blame and FEVER is rarely a symptom.

So what is causing the stuffy runny nose, the watery itchy eyes, the sneezing, wheezing and cough, and why are heavy rains and melting snow making symptoms worse?

“There are dozens of substances that potentially can cause trouble in those of us who are susceptible to allergies, but trees are usually the first on the scene during spring allergy season,” said Jay M. Portnoy, M.D., president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) and chief, section of allergy, asthma & immunology at Children’s Mercy Hospitals & Clinics in Kansas City, Mo. “Rain can provide some initial relief by reducing tree pollen counts, but it also can spur the growth of grass and weeds later in the spring and in early summer, producing more pollen.”

read full article…

Health Services offers an allergy clinic for Wesleyan students who require allergy shots. Call 860.685.2470 for your appointment.

From MayoClinic.com…

Q: Can men get HPV? If so, what are the health risks associated with HPV in men?

A: Yes, men can become infected with human papillomavirus (HPV). In fact, most sexually active adults — both men and women — will acquire HPV at some time in their lives.

Men with healthy immune systems rarely develop HPV-related health problems. However, genital HPV infection is one cause of penis (penile) cancer. It’s also associated with cancer of the anus and other genital cancers. These cancers are most common in males with HIV infection. In addition, HPV has been linked to oropharyngeal cancer. The oropharynx is the part of the throat just behind the mouth.

Genital HPV spreads through sexual contact. Both men and women can pass it to their partners. Certain types of HPV cause genital warts, but the virus usually causes no signs or symptoms. One way to prevent HPV infection is to avoid direct contact with the virus. Using a condom every time you have sex can significantly reduce your risk of contracting HPV.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a vaccine (Gardasil) that offers protection from the most dangerous types of HPV, but it’s currently available only to girls and women. Studies are under way to test if the HPV vaccine is also safe for men, and whether it is effective at protecting against genital warts and certain penile and anal cancers.

Health Services offers Gardasil to female Wesleyan students. Call 860.685.2470 to schedule your appointment and to inquire about cost.

“Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.”
~ Euripides

From Zen Habits…

Achieving goals is not a matter of having “discipline”. It’s a matter of motivating yourself, and keeping your focus on your goal. Follow these hacks, or any combination of them that works for you, and you should have the motivation and focus you need.

Here they are, in reverse order:

#20: Chart Your Progress. Recently I posted about how I created a chart to track my progress with each of my goals. This chart is not just for information purposes, for me to look back and see how I’m doing. It’s to motivate me to keep up with my goals. If I’m diligent about checking my chart every day, and marking dots or “x”s, then I will want to make sure I fill it with dots. I will think to myself, “I better do this today if I want to mark a dot.” Well, that’s a small motivation, but it helps, trust me. Some people prefer to use gold stars. Others have a training log, which works just as well. Or try Joe’s Goals. However you do it, track your progress, and allow yourself a bit of pride each time you give yourself a good mark.

Now, you will have some bad marks on your chart. That’s OK. Don’t let a few bad marks stop you from continuing. Strive instead to get the good marks next time.

read full article…

From the Mayo Clinic… 

Coffee’s about as helpful as a cold shower or a brisk walk in sobering you up. That is, it’s not helpful at all! Your blood alcohol level starts to rise with just one alcoholic drink. The only way to lower your blood alcohol level is to stop drinking and wait. It’ll simply take time for your body to metabolize the alcohol. Sipping coffee may help you pass the time, but it won’t help you sober up any faster.

Click here for more information on alcohol and low risk consumption from WesWELL