jenk

Item in the NY Times:

December 9, 2007
Mindful Exercise
By Christopher Shea

Simply by telling 44 hotel maids that what they did each day involved some serious exercise, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and Alia J. Crum, a student, were apparently able to lower the women’s blood pressure, shave pounds off their bodies and improve their body-fat and “waist to hip” ratios. Self-awareness, it seems, was the women’s elliptical trainer.

At the start of the study, Langer and Crum quizzed 84 maids at seven carefully matched hotels about how much exercise they got. Fully a third of the women said they got no exercise at all, while two-thirds said they did not work out regularly. Langer and Crum took several measures of the women’s basic fitness levels, which indicated that they, indeed, had the poor health of basically sedentary people. Then just over half the women were told an unfamiliar truth: cleaning 15 rooms daily — pushing recalcitrant vacuum cleaners, scrubbing tubs, pulling sheets — constitutes more than enough activity to meet the surgeon general’s recommendation of a half-hour of physical activity daily. The researchers even provided specifics: 15 minutes of scrubbing burns 60 calories, 15 minutes of vacuuming burns 50. The basic message and the details were then posted in the maids’ lounges in the hotels where the 44 women worked, to serve as reminders, while a control group was left in the dark.

A month later, Langer and Crum checked back with the women to find, as they reported in the February issue of Psychological Science, remarkable results. The average study-group maid had lost 2 pounds, while her systolic blood pressure had dropped by 10 points; by all measures the 44 women “were significantly healthier.” Yet there were no reported changes in behavior, only in mind-set, with the vast majority of the women now considering themselves regular exercisers. Langer sees the study as a lesson in the importance of mindfulness, long a subject of her research, and which need not involve Buddhism or meditation, she stresses. “It’s about noticing new things; it’s about engagement,” she says.

But for the study’s white-collar readers, a corollary to its results might be dispiriting: Made freshly aware — mindful — of just how sedentary their work lives are in contrast to a housekeeper’s, might they not suffer a corresponding decline in health?

Collection of graphs here.
Abstract here. "These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect."

For years I'd resolve to go for a walk each day, do it for a few days or weeks, then stop.

A few months ago I got some free bus tickets and started taking the bus, which drops me off a bit over a half-mile from work. This is working well because my good intentions really only have to last long enough to get me onto the bus -- after that, I'm kinda stuck :)

When I started I was badly enough out of shape that I would drive to work one morning, walk+bus home that night, and reverse it the next day. I did this all while recovering from a pulled muscle and found it really helped.

Now the walking is easy enough I occasionally get off a stop early :) Sometimes it's pleasant to be walking and alone with my thoughts - or jazzing to music. And sometimes I really don't like it. I'll be sore and cold and tired and don't wanna. But that doesn't usually hit until I'm off the bus, at which point I don't have much choice beyond walking. (Or calling someone and asking for a ride. I'm not willing to be that much of a wuss.) So I walk on anyway.

I will say that having walked usually does feel good. Even if I'm sore, I arrive at work feeling more awake and relaxed. And I'm much less stressed if I bus home than if I drive.

Does this add more time to my commute? Yes. The time spent on the actual buses is about the same as if drove, only I get to read :) The walk? Is additional, but less time than going to a gym. Waiting for the bus? That can get old, and is sometimes long. I'm fortunate that I can usually wait at a lighted shelter where I can read.

How about cost? I started with incentive Metro tickets from the city, free. I've since bought a 3-month 1-zone peak pass for $162 and my company reimbursed me half that cost ($81). I've also bought a more visible coat; a more comfortable, waterproof, & stylish backpack; and a light folding umbrella.

Bottom line: I'm feeling better, I have more endurance, and I've stuck with this longer than most gyms I've joined. So I think it's for the best.

Sky News reports that a British survey showed that 53% can't touch their toes and a quarter of the women can't do up their bra. The survey was carried out by the LA Fitness gym chain* and included questions about running, sit-ups, and other exercise as well.

But it's the choice of headline that made me wonder. Too fat to touch their toes? Or too inflexible? Perhaps too arthritic. Or too many past back or joint injuries. But I seriously doubt that it's the fat itself that is causing the problem.

See, I am very fat. I am the sort of fat most people simply can't become - they don't have the genes. I weigh damn close to 400lbs; my measurements are 59-57-68, and yes, that's inches.

And guess what?

• I can touch my toes. It's easy - sit cross-legged. :)
• I can also stand up, bend over, and touch my toes. I can also touch my toes while seated, or while one foot is on the back of the couch.
• I do 20-30 stomach crunches and cobra a few times a week.
• Yes, I do and undo my bra the traditional way - hands behind my back.

I do not claim to be in perfect health. Walking a mile is a good workout for me, which is why I do it every few days. My balance isn't what I want it to be, which is why I do yoga and squats. I also can't do the yoga pose in my icon. And yeah, it's a bit scary to reveal the things I can't do here.

But it's not that I'm too fat. It's that I'm not strong / balanced / flexible enough. So I'm working on it.

*Yes, I have no reason to believe these numbers are accurate.

An article on self-care - specifically focused on getting enough sleep - appeared in yesterday's local Times religion column. Apparently Rev Hunter practices a practical form of faith... :)

President Bush is coming to visit the Eastside tomorrow. Protesters will be busy at a rally at the Bradford Center in Bellevue from 12:30 on; Bush is flying into Sea-Tac in "midafternoon" and is due at the Bellevue Hyatt at 4:25. Fun!

Vashon's Rent-a-Ruminant is in the news again. This time the goats are clearing blackberries & English ivy between Burke-Gilman & Stevens Way at the UW. Their only drawback? They don't distinguish "weeds" - they just eat everything.

Dear Self:

You are sensitive to many trees and shrubs. Including cedar, and yes, that is a cedar tree in the backyard¹. And yes, touching or, say, carrying, the branches is enough to cause pretty red bumps and blotches on your arms and hands.

Even if it's just carrying a bundle for a minute or two to the yard waste bin.

Long sleeves. Garden gloves. Use them.

- Itchy


¹Which we did not plant.

I've read a variety of sources on this. Sometimes the conclusion is "no"; sometimes it's "we don't know". But rarely have I seen it stated as bluntly as in this excerpt from Gina Kolata’s new book, Rethinking Thin, printed in the NY Times.

It starts with recounting a 1959 study by Dr Jules Hirsch where people who had been fat since childhood or adolescence moved into Rockefeller University Hospital to go on a rigorous diet.

( Average loss: 100 lbs. [E]everyone, including Dr. Hirsch, assumed that the subjects would leave the hospital permanently thinner. That did not happen. )

But since this was a research study, the investigators were also measuring metabolic changes, psychiatric conditions, body temperature and pulse. And that led them to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

( metabolic and psychological changes were observed )

The Rockefeller researchers explained their observations in one of their papers: “It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals.”

Eventually, more than 50 people lived at the hospital and lost weight, and every one had physical and psychological signs of starvation. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation.

So does this mean once you get fat, your body permanently adjusts? Not so fast. Another researcher at the University of Vermont looked into what happened if people without weight problems deliberately gained weight.

With great difficulty, they succeeded, increasing their weight by 20 percent to 25 percent. [...] Once the men were fat, their metabolisms increased by 50 percent.[...] When the study ended, the prisoners had no trouble losing weight. Within months, they were back to normal and effortlessly stayed there.

Their conclusion?

[E]ach person has a comfortable weight range to which the body gravitates. [...] Going much above or much below the natural weight range is difficult, however; the body resists by increasing or decreasing the appetite and changing the metabolism to push the weight back to the range it seeks.

In other words, I think there's a reason why my (rather gradual) weight gains tended to stick with me, and my (rather dramatic) weight losses didn't.

(BTW, emphasis added by me.)

JunkFoodScience looked at risk factors recently. It starts with the following questions:

Why do studies continue to find that health risk factors don’t actually predict who will succumb to disease or die early? Why do people with a wide range of numbers (body mass index, blood lipids, blood sugars, blood pressures), diets and lifestyles end up dying around the same time and of the same things? Why don’t risk factors make a bigger, sure-fire difference?

The answer is in the definition of "risk factor". Quote: "All that the term "risk factor" means is that a researcher has found a correlation between two variables."

And what do we know about correlations?

Correlations are not causation. Correlations often contradict each other, and make for downright silly conclusions or advice. Remember this one? — “Women, rack up those frequent flyer miles to lower your risk for miscarriage!”

Seriously - women with lower frequent flyer miles have a higher rate of miscarriage.

Being Black is a risk factor for sickle cell anemia but skin whitening won’t do a thing to prevent or cure sickle cell anemia. And “being male is now the single largest demographic risk factor for early mortality in developed countries,” according to Daniel Kruger, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
[...]
Even the term “disease” increasingly doesn’t refer to actual clinical illness or disability anymore. Some want us to believe that certain risk factors themselves are diseases, too. [Although this is inconsistently applied, depending on whatever is popular to believe or is being sold. While, for instance, the most “morbidly obese” women (the upper 0.2% of the population, even) live longer than normal weight men, obesity is declared a disease, but maleness isn’t!]

As Sandy concludes:

Remember whenever you hear the term, risk factor, that it is just a correlation, not a disease, a measure of actual risk, or cause of death.

The biggest risk factor for the diseases that eventually kill all of us is aging. And there’s not much we can do about that one, no matter how much some may want us to believe otherwise. Everything else pales by comparison. In the meantime, less panic and fear, and a lot more balance and common sense, can help all of us get the most out of the lives we have.

It's a question that many have to wrestle with.

In Vailia Dennis' and Art Buchwald's cases, it was a conscious choice. That's probably better than skipping check-ups or ignoring a possibly cancerous lump because you don't want to know...but it's still a choice.

And I know quality and length are not always either-or. I'm told that treating my sleep apnea increases the chances that I will live longer; I know the better sleep I get improves my current quality of life.

Either way, choosing to put quality or length of life first is a valid choice to make for one's self. I doubt it's always easy ... but maybe it sometimes is.

From The NY Times Magazine:

Food poisoning has always been with us, but not until we started processing all our food in such a small number of “kitchens” did the potential for nationwide outbreaks exist.

[...] Today 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company. Keeping local food economies healthy — and at the moment they are thriving — is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

Yet perhaps the gravest threat now to local food economies — to the farmer selling me my spinach, to the rancher who sells me my grass-fed beef — is, of all things, the government’s own well-intentioned efforts to clean up the industrial food supply. Already, hundreds of regional meat-processing plants — the ones that local meat producers depend on — are closing because they can’t afford to comply with the regulatory requirements the U.S.D.A. rightly imposes on giant slaughterhouses that process 400 head of cattle an hour. ( ... )

From the U.S.D.A.’s perspective, it is much more efficient to put their inspectors in a plant where they can inspect 400 cows an hour rather than in a local plant where they can inspect maybe one.

So what happens to the spinach grower at my farmers’ market when the F.D.A. starts demanding a Haccp plan — daily testing of the irrigation water, say, or some newfangled veggie-irradiation technology? When we start requiring that all farms be federally inspected? Heavy burdens of regulation always fall heaviest on the smallest operations and invariably wind up benefiting the biggest players in an industry, the ones who can spread the costs over a larger output of goods. A result is that regulating food safety tends to accelerate the sort of industrialization that made food safety a problem in the first place.

I also found the assertion that "[t]he lethal strain of E. coli known as 0157:H7, responsible for this latest outbreak of food poisoning, ( ... can’t survive long in cattle living on grass. )" rather interesting.

I knew I preferred the taste of grass-fed beef and felt it was vaguely healthier, but it's rather interesting to note that no, beef grown in feedlots are not "the same" as those grown on a traditional farm - "where crops feed animals and animals’ waste feeds crops". The article goes into more detail on how moving animals to feedlots creates a pollution problem, but I'm not going into that here.

The Redmond Farmer's Market is shutting down for winter. At least there's fewer tourists at the Market this time of year...