Healthy Bits: May 2014

Researchers at The Lancet published a report in late March that compiled the results of 11 different studies spanning 38 years regarding the effects of smoking bans on children and asthma, premature births, and hospital visits. The compiled results included study of some 250,000 hospital visits and more than 2.5 million births in areas of the U.S., Canada, and Europe that had put smoking bans into place. The report found that these studies showed workplace smoking bans saw results, such as a 5 percent reduction in babies born small for their gestational age and a 15 percent reduction in adult cardiovascular events, within as little as one year of enactment.

Study: www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60082-9/fulltext

Moderate aerobic exercise is shown to preserve retinal health and vision, according to a study recently conducted by researchers at the Atlanta VA Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation and Emory University. 

Scientists trained mice to run on a treadmill for one hour per day, five days per week, for two weeks. After the animals were exposed to toxic bright light, they exercised for two more weeks. The exercised animals lost only half the number of photoreceptor cells as animals that spent the same amount of time on a stationary treadmill. Additionally, the retinal cells of exercised mice were more responsive to light and had higher levels of a growth- and health-promoting protein.

Study: www.jneurosci.org/content/34/7/2406.short?sid=44a0a249-61f8-46c6-94b4-73bc98f15b83

Is high intensity interval training better than longer exercise at a lower intensity level? A team of researchers at McMaster University in Canada wanted to find an answer. In a study published in The Journal of Physiology, the researchers found that training programs with bouts of high intensity intervals, done three times a week for six weeks, increased peak oxygen uptake in subject participants. So don’t be afraid to go hard in your interval training.

Study: http://ep.physoc.org/content/early/2014/02/10/expphysiol.2013.077453.abstract