Spring 2025 Exercise Certainty in Uncertain Times To understand a scientific article, you need to appreciate the distinction between correlation and causation. Correlation means that two events tend to occur together. As a co-relationship, something could explain part of the answer – larger muscles are stronger muscles – but not explain all of it. StrongerRead More
Newsletters
REAL News – March 2025
March 2025 Walking Economy & Preferred Gait Speed in the Aged Studies of gait have determined that even older runners use less of their plantar flexors – calf muscles – as they age compared to younger runners. To substitute, they use more of their hip flexors to swing their leg forward and their hip extensors/glutealsRead More
REAL News – February 2025
February 2025 The Gut-Brain Axis Concept and Frailty The concept of the gut microbiome has taken the healthcare and fitness world by storm. The biome is affected by lifestyle, including medications, diseases, diet, and exercise. It is thought to affect not just the body but the brain, and cognition in the elderly. Sarcopenia – theRead More
FIT Happens – Winter 2025
Winter 2025 Cardio Fitness for Body and Brain What’s a new year’s Winter Fit Happens without news about what’s happening in fitness news? And so it is that a timely article in the Washington Post (Jan. 8) intersects with some snow-weather reading I’ve been up to. A study from the British Journal of Sports MedicineRead More
REAL News – January 2025
January 2025 Composite Score of 3 Heart Disease Biomarkers Excels High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the bad cholesterol), and lipoprotein (a) levels (LPa) are valuable, and treatable, predictors of 5- and 10-year risk for cardiovascular events. However, the ability to predict risk over longer periods of time could yield earlier treatments and reducedRead More
REAL News – December 2024
December 2024 Reverse Walking Reverses Disease Correlates Heart disease has many correlates such as excess weight as gauged by a high BMI, blood pressure (BP), and C-reactive protein (CRP, a marker of systemic inflammation). Diet and exercise are two things you can do to reduce your risk of disease and early death. Walking is theRead More
REAL News – November 2024
November 2024 Where Goes Muscle Mass With Cardio Exercise? Did you ever notice that cardio athletes tend to be lean but not mean? It’s been an accepted scientific conclusion that our bodies respond to the stimuli they are provided such that aerobic exercise builds the heart muscle but not the muscles that do the exercise.Read More
REAL News – October 2024
October 2024 To Speed or Not to Speed – Lift, That is? Read any layperson’s magazine or news article about resistance training (RT) and you’ll be cautioned frequently about doing the lifts slowly, with good form and proper breathing patterns. In other words, don’t fling the weights and don’t hold your breath. All is goodRead More