A year ago on this blog, I wrote about my desire to purchase a new home exercise machine. In Tuesday’s Science Times column, I wrote about the fact that it mostly gathers dust in my house.

Last year, Consumer Reports found that nearly 40 percent of people surveyed said they used their home exercise machines far less than they had planned. The phenomenon is a source of fascination for behavioral scientists. The hope is that by better understanding the behavior, they can help people make better buying decisions — and help them start exercising and stick with it. To read more about the issue, check out With the Right Motivation, That Home Gym Makes Sense.

In hindsight, I realize my gym-quality elliptical machine is far too big and bulky for my space — sometimes I even hit my head on the sloping ceiling when I use it. I’ve also realized that despite my best intentions to work out at home, I hate indoor exercise, at least in my house. I’d much rather jog on my local trails, take a yoga class or work out with a live personal trainer than spend solitary time on an elliptical machine. Even on the day of my purchase, I didn’t sound confident that I would use it.

“I made my purchase today,” I told readers last Jan. 12. “It is big and ugly. Now I have a great machine, but will I use it? That’s always the big question.”

What about you? Is your home exercise machine gathering dust? Why do you think you haven’t used it as much as you had hoped? If you do use your machine regularly, what’s your secret?

People with more lean muscle mass may have an advantage when it comes to fighting cancer, new research suggests.

The study, published in the medical journal Lancet Oncology, is the latest to suggest a patient’s body composition may play a role in cancer survival rates. Researchers from the University of Alberta used body scan imaging to study 250 obese cancer patients. The scans showed that 15 percent of the cancer patients had very low muscle mass relative to their weight.

The obese patients with the lower levels of lean muscle mass lived an average of 10 months less than patients with more muscle mass, even after controlling for other variables like cancer stage and severity.

Other studies have shown that people who exercise have lower rates of some types of cancer. Although the study suggests that higher levels of lean muscle mass help the body better cope with cancer, it’s not clear whether lifting weights prior to or after a diagnosis would improve a patient’s odds for surviving the disease. “That would be the next experiment,” said Dr. Vickie Baracos, a professor of oncology and adjunct professor of human nutrition at the University of Alberta, and lead author on the study. “This intervention has not been tested.”

The data also raise questions about whether body composition should be considered as doctors make treatment decisions and assess a patient’s prognosis. A patient with very low lean body mass, for instance, may be given a more tailored dose of chemotherapy, Dr. Baracos said.

Patients who have been treated for cancer should talk to their doctor before embarking on any exercise routine. For instance, patients who have undergone lymph node removal are at risk for a severe swelling disorder called lymphedema and may be advised against lifting weights.

Harvard’s Dr. Harvey Simon has long espoused the benefits of moderate exercise. But in reading The Wall Street Journal yesterday, I learned that Dr. Simon holds himself to a higher standard. His daughter, Journal reporter Stephanie Simon, writes that her dad is in the midst of a 30-year running streak. The last day her dad didn’t run was Oct. 30, 1978.

When he travels overseas, my dad, who is 66, plans layovers so he can get in a couple miles around the concourse, lest he miss a day to the time-zone shift. During blizzards, he wraps his feet in plastic bags, pulls galoshes over his sneakers and screws in cleats for traction. Then he waits for a snowplow to pass his front door, so he can follow in the freshly cleared path.

Read more…

For years cardiologists and mental health experts have known that depression raises risk for heart attack by 50 percent or more.

But what hasn’t been clear is why depressed people have more heart problems. Does depression cause some biological change that increases risk? Does the inflammatory process that leads to heart disease also trigger depression?

The answer may be far simpler. A new study suggests that people who are depressed are simply less likely to exercise, a finding that explains their dramatically higher risk for heart problems.

Researchers, led by doctors from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, recruited 1,017 participants with heart disease to track their health and lifestyle habits. As they expected, those patients who had symptoms of depression fared worse. About 10 percent of depressed heart patients had additional heart problems, during the study, compared with 6.7 percent of the other patients. After controlling for other illnesses and the severity of heart disease, the finding translates to a 31 percent higher risk of heart problems among the depressed people, according to the study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But once the researchers factored in the effect of exercise, the difference in risk among depressed people disappeared. In the same study, patients who didn’t exercise, whether or not they were depressed, had a 44 percent higher risk of heart problems, after controlling for a variety of factors including medication adherence, smoking and other illnesses.

The findings are important because some earlier studies have suggested a link between antidepressant use and lower heart risk. The explanation may be that patients who take antidepressants start to feel better and take care of themselves, adopting healthy behaviors including exercise. In a study of nearly 2,500 heart-attack patients, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June 2003, behavioral therapy to treat depression didn’t change survival rates compared with patients who received regular care. But among about 20 percent of patients in the study who ended up on antidepressants, the risk of dying or suffering a second nonfatal heart attack was 42 percent lower. Another study, called Sadheart (which stands for Sertraline Antidepressant Heart Attack Randomized Trial) showed the death rate from heart-related problems was 20 percent lower among patients taking the drug, although the data weren’t statistically significant.

The research suggests that doctors treating patients for depression should also talk to them about their lifestyle habits, and encourage them to exercise. The findings, say the researchers, suggest that the heart problems associated with depression “could potentially be preventable.”

The evidence that health behaviors fully explain the link between depression and heart disease in this study is convincing, says Dr. Mary A. Whooley, professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. However, she notes the study is limited to older men with stable coronary disease, and as a result, more study is needed of women and other patients with heart disease.

It remains an open question whether the study findings will change the way doctors counsel their patients. “The clinical practice question is a challenging one,” says Dr. Whooley. “It’s easy for us to tell patients to exercise, take their medicines, and refrain from smoking, but actually changing health behaviors is very difficult.”

How accurate are your exercise estimates? (Eric Thayer for The New York Times)

When people with weight problems talk about their exercise and eating habits, many doctors and nutritionists don’t believe them. That’s because studies show that overweight people commonly underestimate the amount of food they’re eating.

But exercise habits appear to be a different story. New research shows that people with weight problems are far more tuned into how much they exercise than they are often given credit for.

In a study presented at the Obesity Society’s annual meeting, researchers from Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education in Philadelphia found that obese women were more accurate in reporting their activity levels than overweight or normal weight women. Read more…

What activities do your kids spend time doing? (Owen Franken for The New York Times)

How much time does your child spend watching television? Doing chores? Listening to music? Hanging out with you?

To compare your child’s exercise and leisure time to national averages, take the Well Child Activity Quiz.

And to learn more ways to keep kids active, read “Help for Budding Couch Potatoes.”

Older and better? (Kate Glicksberg for The New York Times)

Many people opt for newer homes because they are cleaner, bigger and often have more amenities. But new research shows old houses in old neighborhoods may be better for your health.

University of Utah researchers found that people who live in older, more walkable neighborhoods are at lower risk for overweight and obesity. Read more…

Children playing in New York City. (Credit: Christian Hansen for The New York Times)

Anyone who has been around young children knows they often are bundles of energy. But new research shows that all the energy starts to disappear as kids age. Even the most active children experience dramatic declines in physical activity as they hit the teen years.

The data are from a fascinating new study published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Kids in the study wore accelerometers, devices that monitor movement. Nine-year-olds moved a lot — the devices recorded about three hours a day of moderate to vigorous activity. But things changed dramatically when kids hit the teen years. By age 15, teens were only moving an average of 49 minutes daily and 35 minutes on weekends.

To learn more, click here to read my story on the recent findings.

And what about your kids? Have you noticed big changes in your child’s activity levels? Post your comments below.

Mosquitoes like to feed on some people more than others. (Credit: CDC/ Prof. Frank Hadley Collins, Dir., Cntr. for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Univ. of Notre Dame)

To a mosquito, exercise makes you far more appealing than a couch potato.

According to Susan Paskewitz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison entomology professor, mosquitoes bite the people who are easiest to find. While it may seem like some people taste better to mosquitoes than others, chances are they are simply emitting signals that attract mosquitoes. “The main things are how you smell and how hot you are,” Dr. Paskewitz said.

According to the university’s Web site, which features a mosquito discussion today, cues like body temperature, carbon dioxide in the breath and certain skin chemicals like lactic acid all help mosquitoes orient and find their next meal. Exercise boosts the levels of all three signals, making people more vulnerable to mosquito bites during or after exercise. Read more…

High temperatures can pose health risks that may go unrecognized. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Years ago as a high school student, I attended a summer running camp in Pennsylvania. During a routine six-mile run, I stumbled, and a coach stopped me and asked me if I was okay. “I’m fine,” I assured him, and kept running.

But I wasn’t fine. By the end of the run I had collapsed with heatstroke and had fallen unconscious. The athletic trainers quickly submerged me in a tub of ice to lower my body temperature, and I spent the next week in a hospital, lucky to be alive. Later my coach visited me, angry at himself for letting me continue my run. But I had no memory of our earlier exchange. “You were so convincing,” he told me.

Athletic researchers say one of the most frustrating aspects of heat illness is that the sufferer is often completely unaware of his or her own symptoms. Read more…

Intense bursts of exercise may be as good for the heart as longer, moderate-intensity training. (Lynn L. Walters for The New York Times)

Short bursts of exercise can benefit heart health just as much as tedious endurance training, a new study suggests.

The research, published in the American Journal of Physiology — Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, is good news for time-strapped exercisers. It supports the notion that people who engage in brief, high-intensity forms of exercise reap the same cardiovascular health benefits as those who exercise at moderate intensity for a longer period of time. Read more…

Adults prepare to test their flexibility as part of the launch of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports new national adult fitness test. (Brendan Hoffman/Associated Press)

The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which routinely recognizes the physical fitness efforts of elementary school students, now offers a new fitness assessment for adults.

The test, for people 18 and older, was created because the council received so many requests for an assessment of adult fitness. Using an online form, exercisers can log their scores to find out how they rank among other Americans. For instance, a 40-year-old woman who can run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes (a 10-minute-per-mile pace) ranks in the 65th percentile — meaning she’s above average, but 35 percent of similarly aged women are in better shape. Read more…

What’s keeping your child inside? (Sara Cedar Miller/Central Park Conservancy)

Outdoor play at day care centers is often stifled because a child arrives wearing flip-flops or without a coat or because teachers don’t feel like going outside.

Those were some of the surprising findings from a new study of children’s physical activity in day care settings. More than half of American children between the ages of 3 and 6 are in child care centers or preschools. Read more…

Several studies have shown a link between exercise and lower cancer risk. However, the message often isn’t well received by patients who think it blames the victim by suggesting they wouldn’t have cancer had they just been more active.

That’s what I learned this week when I blogged about a new study suggesting cancer patients don’t exercise any more than the rest of us. The finding is troubling because some studies suggest exercise improves cancer survival, signaling that cancer patients have much to gain from exercising after a diagnosis.

But more than 100 readers responded to the article, and many of them complained that it was judgmental and blamed cancer patients for their plight. They added that exercise and calorie-counting are not priorities to a cancer survivor. I invited Leslie Bernstein, a noted cancer and exercise researcher from the City of Hope cancer center in Duarte, Calif., to talk about it.

To listen to our conversation, click below.

Listen to the Podcast (mp3)

Most cancer survivors are just as overweight and inactive as everyone else, a new study shows.

An analysis of data collected from more than 114,000 adults in Canada shows that overall, a cancer diagnosis doesn’t appear to prompt significant changes in eating habits or increase physical activity, according to a report in Cancer, the medical journal of the American Cancer Society. The big exception is men who survive prostate cancer, who appear to be far more active than similar men without cancer.

But the overall findings are troubling because studies have suggested that cancer patients have much to gain from a healthful lifestyle. Obesity and physical inactivity are linked with a lower quality of life among cancer survivors and may increase the risk of the cancer coming back or death from the disease.

“These findings tell us that we need to look at ways to better support cancer survivors to become more active and to maintain a healthy body weight,” said Kerry Courneya, professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, in a press release. “We know that physical inactivity and obesity are risk factors for developing cancer. These are also risk factors for the recurrence of cancer. Lifestyle is just as important after diagnosis.”

The researchers compared data on activity and weight to national averages among the Canadian population. There were surprisingly few differences, suggesting that a cancer diagnosis doesn’t necessarily encourage more healthful living. The main exception was among prostate cancer survivors, who were 27 percent more likely to be active and about 30 percent less likely to be obese than the general population. The study authors didn’t have an explanation for the difference except that men may have been influenced by recent studies suggesting a link between exercise and better quality of life for prostate cancer survivors.

However, it’s not clear if the lower body mass index among prostate cancer survivors is a good thing because some data suggest prostate cancer treatments can lead to loss of lean body mass.

Other findings of the study showed:

• About 21 percent of cancer survivors are physically active, compared to about 25 percent of Canadians in general.
• Among cancer survivors, about 18 percent are obese and 34 percent are overweight. By comparison, about 15 percent of Canadians overall are obese and 37 percent are overweight.
• Male cancer survivors were more likely to be overweight or obese than female cancer survivors (62 percent versus 47 percent).
• The lowest levels of physical activity were among colorectal cancer survivors, breast cancer survivors and female melanoma survivors.
• Male skin cancer survivors were more active than the rest of the population, but that difference may simply reflect the fact that active people who spend a lot of time outdoors are more likely to develop skin cancer.