Another Exercise Benefit: You Won’t Fall as Much

Newswise — Remaining physically fit and sticking to a regular exercise routine could lower your risk of taking a tumble, finds a new research study.

About 19,000 people die each year in the United States from falls and about 8 million undergo treatment in emergency rooms. What’s more, although falls are the leading cause of injuries among people age 65 and older, young people fall down just as much as seniors, according to the study.

“We were not surprised that people 65 years and older were no more likely to report falling than younger people, given that younger people are more likely to engage in more risky activities, such as standing on ladders, running and playing sports,” said lead author Kristin Mertz, M.D., at the epidemiology department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mertz and her colleagues wanted to learn what people are doing when they fall and whether fitness has a part in the likelihood of falling. Their findings appear online and in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers used data from participants in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study from 1970 to 1989 and who responded to questions about falls during a follow-up survey in 1990.

The survey asked whether the participants had fallen in the past 12 months and, if so, what they were doing when they fell. Were they, for instance, walking, doing sports, exercising or getting out a tub? Participants answered questions about how many minutes each week they did aerobic exercise and they took a treadmill test as a measure of fitness.

Of the 10,615 participants between the ages of 20 and 87 years, 2,110 (or 20 percent) reported falling in the last year. Of those who fell, 15 percent fell while walking. Women were 2.8 times as likely as men to fall while walking, but fitness levels made a difference in men falling while it did not for women. The study found men with low fitness levels were 2.2 times more apt to fall while walking than were highly fit men.


“We were surprised to find that fitness and physical activity seem to have a stronger relationship with walking-related falls in men compared with women,” Mertz said.
The researchers concluded that individuals need about two hours of regular exercise a week to lower the risk of falling. Those who exercised less − or not at all − did not have the same protection.

Debbie Rose, co-director at the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence at California State University at Fullerton, agreed.

“Of all the fall prevention strategies that have been studied over the last two decades, well-designed exercise programs produce the best results, both in terms of lowering fall risk and fall incidence rates,” she said. “Physical activities designed to improve aerobic endurance should be included in any activity program aimed at reducing fall risk.”

Source: Health Behavior News Service, 

 American Journal of Preventive Medicine: Contact the editorial office at (858) 534-9340 or eAJPM@ucsd.edu.
Mertz KJ, et al. Falls among adults: the association of cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity with walking-related falls. Am J Prev Med 39(1), 2010.
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Is the Internet ruining our minds?

Books vs Internet 

Author Carr, shields our brains from distractions: books allows us to focus our mind on one topic at a time, unlike reading on Internet where we skim, browse and quickly scan through torrents of text, photos and video.

"Contemplation, introspection, reflection -- there is no space or time for those on the Internet."

 

We have developed sharper skills at making fast decisions, particularly visual ones, Carr says. Photograph by: Photos.com, canada.com

When author Nicholas Carr began researching his book on whether the Internet is ruining our minds, he restricted his online access and e-mail and turned off his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

His new book "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" argues the latest technology renders us less capable of deep thinking. Carr found himself so distracted that he couldn't work on the book while staying as connected, as is commonplace.

"I found my inability to concentrate a great disability," Carr told Reuters in an interview.

"So, I abandoned my Facebook and Twitter accounts and throttled back on e-mail so I was only checking a couple of times a day rather than every 45 seconds. I found those types of things really did make a difference," he said.

After initially feeling "befuddled" by his sudden lack of online connection, Carr said, within a couple of weeks he was able to stay focused on one task for a sustained period and, thankfully, able to do his work.

Carr wrote a 2008 Atlantic magazine piece that posed the controversial question "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and wanted to dig deeper into how the Internet alters our minds.

His book examines the history of reading and the science of how using different media changes our brains. Exploring how society shifted from an oral tradition to the printed word and to the Internet, he details how the brain rewires itself to adjust to new information sources.

Reading on the Internet has fundamentally changed how we use our brains, he writes.

Facing a torrent of text, photos, video, music and links to other web pages combined with incessant interruptions from text messages, e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, blogs and RSS feeds, our minds have become used to skimming, browsing and scanning information.

As a result, we have developed sharper skills at making fast decisions, particularly visual ones, Carr says.

But now most of us infrequently read books, long essays or articles that would help us focus, concentrate and be introspective and contemplative, Carr writes.

ARE WE LIBRARIANS?

He says we are becoming more like librarians -- able to find information quickly and discern the best nuggets -- than scholars who digest and interpret information.

That lack of focus hinders our long-term memory, leading many of us to feel distracted, he said.
"We never engage the deeper, interpretive functions of our brains," he said.

To illustrate, he likens short-term memory to a thimble and long-term memory to a large bathtub. Reading a book is like filling the tub with water from one steadily flowing faucet with each thimble of information building upon the last.

By contrast, the Internet is countless fast-flowing faucets, leaving us grasping for thimbles of disparate information to put in the tub and making it harder for our brains to draw connections and have cogent recall.
"What we are losing is a whole other set of mental skills, the ones that require not the shifting of our focus but the maintaining of our focus," Carr said.

"Contemplation, introspection, reflection -- there is no space or time for those on the Internet."

Carr says for centuries books shielded our brains from distraction, focusing our minds on one topic at a time.
But with devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad, which incorporate eReaders and web browsers, becoming commonplace, Carr predicts books too will change.

"New forms of reading always require new forms of writing," he said.

If writers cater to a society that is chronically distracted, they will inevitably eschew writing complex arguments that require sustained attention and instead write in pithy, bite-sized bits of information, Carr predicts.

Carr has a suggestion for those who feel web surfing has left them incapable of concentration -- slow down, turn off the Internet and practice the skills of contemplation, introspection and reflection.

"It is pretty clear from the brain science that if you don't exercise particular cognitive skills, you are going to lose them," he said. "If you are constantly distracted, you are not going to think in the same way that you would think if you paid attention."

By Mark Egan, Reuters

Hawking: Religion will be defeated by science

There were some techies Monday who believed they experienced a sighting of God somewhere in San Francisco.

Those people might care to hark at deeply relevant news. God will be defeated by science. No, not by faltering Wi-Fi systems at a conference. And, no, these are not my words. This is the considered opinion of someone sometimes referred to as the cleverest man in the world, Stephen Hawking.

In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, due to air Monday evening, Hawking expounded upon the largest questions, those that transcend iPhones and androids: Can science and God live happily ever after?

According to ABC News, Hawking first tried to define God in a way that he, as a scientist, might feel comfortable: "What could define God (is thinking of God) as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," he said.

Indeed, he expressed disappointment at how humans have thought of deity.

 
(Credit: CC Alex Lee2001/Flickr)

 

"They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible," he said.

Perhaps there will be some who might conceive that stranger things have happened. Others will nod sagely, while still secretly hoping there is another life after this one. However, couldn't one imagine a point at which science and religion somehow meet, shake hands and positions and agree on a concord?

Hawking, who has already recommended that we should steer clear of aliens, suggested to Sawyer that this was somewhat less likely than North Korea winning the World Cup: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, (and) science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

I wish I could live in and with such certainty. Somehow, the more we know, the further away we are from something that feels real.

I cannot help thinking of baseball players, filled to their hat peaks with science's latest creations: HGH, steroids, and all sorts of female hormones. They smite the ball into the nearest river.

Yet, as they stomp on to home plate, what do they do? They look up at the sky and cross themselves. Perhaps they get their HGH from aliens. Perhaps, though, there is still some way to go before we can be sure that science will prove absolutely everything about our weird and occasionally wonderful universe.
I mean, can science really explain the deity that is Justin Bieber?

  By Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 

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