Posts Tagged ‘wellness’

How long are you willing to wait for an elevator?

According to a recent study by a team of doctors in Saskatchewan you could save up to 15 minutes a day by taking the stairs instead. The research was published in the “Holiday Readings” section of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, an annual segment reserved for “quirky research, humorous satires and witty musings.”

Four staffers at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon took a total of 56 walking trips and 336 elevator trips. The results? It took twice as long – 37.5 seconds – to get to the chosen floor by elevator versus the stairs.

While the study does have its limitations – only four participants; a 7-storey hospital is quite different than a 50-floor office building – it also makes a good point: sometimes it’s just easier to walk.

Here are 5 more reasons why you should hit the stairwell:

• It’s a free workout. With no special equipment required, it’s the cheapest way to burn off some calories. And it's an easy way to sneak some exercise into your day.

• It can be a full-body workout. Last year the Globe and Mail reported on a study from Italy that showed how to amp up your climb:

“Among the notable insights of the Italian study is that using the handrails to haul yourself up turns the activity into a full-body workout much like rowing, resulting in a “global, maximal effort.” About 80 per cent of the power you exert goes to raising your body against the force of gravity; 5 per cent goes to whipping your limbs back and forth, and the remaining 15 per cent goes toward running tiny semi-circles at each landing."

• It can prolong your life. According to a three-month-long British study published in 2008, volunteers who regularly used the stairs instead of the elevator showed improved lung capacity, blood pressure and cholesterol readings. Their weight, body fat and waist measurements also dropped. What does that all mean? Researchers suggested these improvements decrease a person's chances of dying young by 15 per cent.

• It’s good for your HDL Yep, active stair climbers can improve their amount of “good” cholesterol.

• It’s a calorie killer. Check this stat out: by walking up stairs you burn almost 700 per cent the number of calories you'd burn twiddling your thumbs in an elevator.

Do you make it a habit of choosing the stairs over the elevator? And what is your stairs threshold – how many flights are you willing to walk up or down instead of taking the elevator?

Are the latest weight-loss secrets snoring, breast feeding and drugs? Read all about it, plus a patriotic Christmas dinner to die for, in today's round-up of diet and weight-loss news.

Snore away the calories
A new study published in the Archives of Otolaryngology has found that the more you snore, the more calories you burn.

The study focused on 212 adults who all suffered from sleeping problems such as sleep apnea. While the average person was found to burn about 1,763 calories a night, snorers can burn up to 1,999 calories.

Snoring has been shown to burn calories. Just don't do it at work.

Nursing for weight loss
Kelly Rutherford, the 40-year-old "Gossip Girl" star and pregnant mother, told Us Weekly magazine "I was thinner after my pregnancy than before, and I think a lot of it was the nursing."

This may be why she continues to breast feed her 2-year-old son.

UK doctor thinks weight loss drugs should be prescribed more often
Dr. Nick Finer of the Wellcome Clinical Research Facility in Cambridge, England, says that weight loss medications can help about a third of all patients to lose ten per cent of their overall body weight and 50 per cent of patients to lose five per cent of their body weight.

He says that many doctors were “missing opportunities” to help their obese patients because they did not prescribe them weight loss medication.

Fat? You're not alone
A report from Statistics Canada released yesterday reveled that 53 per cent of women and 65 per cent of men in Canada were overweight.

The findings are based on an analysis of the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey, a national study that looked at demographics, nutrition, physical activity and other factors to help measure the population's health.

Looking back: the first Christmas dinner in Canada
Not crazy about dieting over the holidays? At least you'll be able to indulge more than Jacques Cartier and the colony of 110 who celebrated the first recorded Christmas in Canada in 1535 on the banks of the Ste. Croix River, not far from what is now Quebec City.

The Kingston Whig-Standard reports that their Christmas feast was made of their usual unappetizing diet — stale, deteriorating vegetables and salt meat from their rapidly diminishing food stores. (All but 10 of those who survived the winter were near death from scurvy come spring.)

Makes the much maligned fruit cake sound mouth-watering, doesn't it?