Somatic Mechanic

Parkinson's Patients improve with "forced" exercise

The NYTimes has an interesting article discussing the findings of a Parkinson's Disease researcher.  

"Scientific discoveries can be serendipitous, and so it was when Jay L. Alberts, then a Parkinson’s disease researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, mounted a tandem bike with Cathy Frazier, a Parkinson’s patient. The two were riding the 2003 RAGBRAI bicycle tour across Iowa, hoping to raise awareness of the neurodegenerative disease and “show people with Parkinson’s that you don’t have to sit back and let the disease take over your life,” Dr. Alberts said.

But something unexpected happened after the first day’s riding. One of Ms. Frazier’s symptoms was micrographia, a condition in which her handwriting, legible at first, would quickly become smaller, more spidery and unreadable as she continued to write. After a day of pedaling, though, she signed a birthday card with no difficulty, her signature “beautifully written,” Dr. Alberts said. She also told him that she felt as if she didn’t have Parkinson’s."

The article goes on to propose "forced" exercise, that is exercise that is performed at an intensity higher than the patient would normally have chosen, may have significant beneficial effects on Parkinson's Disease characteristics.  I think it is important to recognize that this probably has nothing to do with the patient's internal motivation and whether or not the patient is willing or unwilling to do the exercise. This isn't an unethical use of force by any means! But this *is* a wonderfully intelligent and elegant study design that examines the benefits of the least expensive and yet most effective therapies available to us:  exercise.

Study Suggests Why Acupuncture Might Work | LiveScience Etc.

Study Suggests Why Acupuncture Might Work | LiveScience Etc.

An interesting study published in Nature Neuroscience has discovered one of acupuncture's mechanisms: adenosine. Naturally occurring in the body, adenosine inhibits pain signals after an injury, regulates sleep, and is an anti-inflammatory. Turns out that acupuncture triggers the release of adenosine by stimulating the nerves in the skin. The scientists also administered a cancer drug (deoxycoformycin) that makes it more difficult for the body to remove adenosine, and found that it tripled the amount of adenosine in the tissues and tripled the length of time of the acupuncture's benefits.
Since adenosine is naturally released in response to an injury, I suppose acupuncture is imitating an injury. This must be why my acupuncturist comes in and wiggles those needles. Yowch!

Really? - Throat Exercises Can Relieve Sleep Apnea - Question - NYTimes.com

The NYTimes points out that throat exercises such as

 "swallowing and chewing motions, placing the tip of the tongue against the front of the palate and sliding it back, and pronouncing certain vowels quickly and continuously."

have been found to decrease sleep apnea as well as throat circumference, which is a known risk factor for sleep apnea.  I recommend that, if you can't find a therapist to teach you these special exercises, get yourself a voice coach and study singing, especially singing in English which is one of the most difficult languages to sing nicely. Italian is so much prettier.

Exercise Is Good For the Brain | LiveScience

 

While there is ample evidence of the beneficial effects of exercise on cognition in other animal models, such as the rat, it has been unclear whether the same holds true for people, said study researcher Judy Cameron, a psychiatry professor at Pitt School of Medicine. Testing the hypothesis in monkeys can provide information that is more comparable to human physiology.

via www.livescience.com

Researchers found that monkeys that exercised on treadmills for an hour a day, 5 days per week, for five months had a greater volume of blood vessels in their brains and performed better on cognitive tasks when compared with non-exercising monkeys . The study proposes that "exercisers learn faster, remember more, think clearer and bounce back more easily from brain injuries."  Article here.

Basics - Bringing New Understanding to the Director’s Cut - NYTimes.com

And now, just in time for Oscar junkies, comes a new statistical mincing of the movies that may someday yield an award category of its own: best fit between a movie’s tempo and the natural rhythms of the brain.

via www.nytimes.com

 

I've been described as a "sparkle-brain" in the past; it's not a compliment nor an insult insofar as I can tell. It just means that my thought processes are like fireworks or sparkles, with each burst of thought related to the previous burst (though sometimes only I can see the relationship - I drive my husband crazy.)

  This article in the NYTimes describes these natural rhythms of the brain in terms of movie structure, and if you are a teacher it's something that deserves attention. Your students thoughts and attentional behavior will wax and wane naturally and if you decide to stick with one exercise or one idea for an entire class you're still going to have to vary your lesson somehow or you will bore them to death. Teaching a great class is a lot like directing a great movie, and this article explains why that is so.

Observatory - Converting Body Movements Into Electricity - NYTimes.com

It may not seem like it, but even the laziest of couch potatoes is a human dynamo. The act of breathing — of moving the ribs to draw air into the lungs and expel it — can generate about a watt of power. And if the potato actually gets up off the couch and walks briskly across the room, each heel strike can produce even more power, about 70 watts’ worth.

via www.nytimes.com

This article shows us the solution for the article last week about sitting and its detrimental effects on health! In order to power up your computer or television, you have to provide the current by wearing an item of clothing (pants? a vest? a sweater?) embedded with the piezoelectric crystals described in this article. Then you have to MOVE your body to power up your devices.
Even better, wouldn't it be great if you could store the electricity for later use? For instance, you know Mad Men is on tonight, you know you want to watch it, so you have to be active enough during the day to (*gasp*) earn the 60-minutes of downtime later on... Cool ideas...

Sitting leads to health problems....

The NYTimes has a great article today that summarizes the health impact of sitting.  It's not pretty folks. 

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

 

The author repeats the oft-suggested recommendation to turn your desk into a treadmill+desk area.  The idea being:  run or walk on the treadmill while you do your desk work.  I am reminded of how it felt to go for a run while pushing my infant son in a stroller.  All I can say is:  DON'T DO IT.  It completely disrupts the normal biomechanics of running or jogging or frankly, even walking.  You can check this out by going out for a run and holding your arms out in front of you.  Very quickly you realize how much momentum is created by your arms swinging at your sides.  If you are running or walking on a treadmill and you can't swing your arms (because they are on the keyboard in front of you) you are losing the wind-up phase of every step.  Ick. 

However, it may be that the health benefits of walking on a treadmill while working is worth the biomechanical ick factor.  I just know that I couldn't do it.  Instead I fidget.  I bounce my leg up and down... I type a few words then spin in my chair,  I look out the window, etc.  I never knew that being a fidgeter would turn out to be in my favor!

Vital Signs - Study Ties TV Viewing Habits to Life Expectancy - NYTimes.com

The study followed 8,800 adults ages 25 and older for six and a half years and found that each daily hour of television viewing was associated with an 18 percent increase in deaths from heart disease and an 11 percent increase in overall mortality.

via www.nytimes.com

 

Our physiology is best adapted to activity, not sitting! We are more like monkeys in trees than like sea sponges. Richard Dawkins' book The Ancestor's Tale does a wonderful job of taking us backward through evolution, all the way back to ctenophores like this

Fascinating stuff.  

Recall the earlier article about arterial flexibility being related to trunk flexibility?  Well this is where the rubber meets the road folks.  You gotta move it, shake it, stretch it, and challenge your body.  If you are only challenging your mind through PBS programs and science tomes your life expectancy will reflect that.

The NYTimes article about sitting and life expectancy is here.

Spirituality is blocked, or not blocked, by regions in the brain

 

LiveScience reports:

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.

The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain.  

Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys generate self-transcendence scores.

Selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions of the brain induced a specific increase in self-transcendence, or ST, the surveys showed.

Are meditation experts just really good at activating and deactivating certain areas of their brains?  In a concrete sense, is that what meditation is?  I'm thinking of those PET scans of the brains of experienced meditating Tibetan monks and how they showed specific patterns of neural activation (more information here, and here.)

Dog Walking Increases Exercise Adherence and Enjoyment

The NYTimes has an article today about a study that compared the consistency of older adults who walked with dogs or with other humans.  Cute article.  The researchers found the dog walkers enjoyed their walk more, made less excuses, and increased their balance and walking speed.  Why would this be?  The walking distance was the same, the weather was the same... the difference lies in the motivation and the enjoyment had in walking a doggie companion.  This brings up all kinds of issues interesting to exercise psychology and health:  

-why would someone feel more responsibility to a dog's health than to their own?

-why are dogs more enjoyable companions than humans?

-should a national health care policy allow people to deduct the care of their dogs because they contribute to the owner's health?

I wonder if Pilates clients would also be more consistent if we had trained dogs to work out with.  Like circus dogs or agility dogs or something like that.  That brings up some great ideas for choreography!

It appears that dog walking is always taken seriously, certainly by the dog, if not by the human.  But it's not something you can excuse yourself by saying, "Ooo it's too hot today/too cold today/I'm tired/I'm too busy".  It's serious business.  I've often wondered about the dog shows occasionally broadcast on television, where dog trainers trot with their dogs around the ring while the judges watch. The trainers wear sensible shoes and very serious skirts or suits.  See?  Dog walking is movement married to serious business!

  

 So, another reason to love a dog.