MetaFilter posts tagged with health and exercise

291 diseases and injuries + 67 risk factors + 1,160 non-fatal complications = 650 million estimates of how we age, sicken, and die

hat — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:08:08 -0800

As humans live longer, what ails us isn't necessarily what kills us: five data visualizations of how we age, sicken, and die. Causes of death by age, sex, region, and year. Heat map of leading causes and risks by region. Changes in leading causes and risks between 1990 and 2010. Healthy years lost to disability vs. life expectancy in 1990 and 2010. Uncertainties of causes and risks. From the team for the massive Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010. The data visualizations page also includes a large number of static figures from the GBD 2010 study. The GBD 2010 team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, "spent almost 5 years building [the database of causes of death]; we have included almost 800 million deaths from 1950 to 2010, and the data come from different sources," resulting in "the biggest database for cause of death analysis in the world," according to Rafael Lozano at the University of Washington. The GBD 2010 includes:

291 diseases and injuries
67 risk factors
1,160 sequelae (nonfatal health consequences)
Estimates for 21 regions
Estimates for 20 age groups

Takeaway points from the press release (emphasis mine):

Child mortality has dropped by more than 60%, falling "so quickly that it has beaten every published prediction," though diarrhea and other infectious diseases still kill well over a million children under the age of 5 every year.
Deaths among adults aged 15 to 49 increased by 44% between 1970 and 2010, "in part because of increases in violence and the ongoing challenge of HIV/AIDS."
Undernutrition has "successfully been cut by two-thirds," and now physical inactivity and macronutrient overnutrition contribute to a 10%-and-rising fraction of the disease burden.

However,

The trends identified in GBD 2010 occur across regions with one notable exception: sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses, and maternal causes of death account for as much as 70% of the burden of disease. By comparison, these conditions account for only one-third of the burden in south Asia and Oceania, and less than 20% in all other regions.

Research findings from the main publication summary (emphasis mine):

In 2010, the three leading risk factors for global disease burden were high blood pressure [...]; followed by tobacco smoking, including secondhand smoke [...]; and alcohol use [...] This reflects a substantial change from 1990 when the leading risk factors were childhood underweight [...]; followed by household air pollution from use of solid fuels [...]; and tobacco smoking, including secondhand smoke [...].
Regional differences are significant. While much of the world is burdened by obesity and high body mass index, underweight is still the leading risk factor in sub‐Saharan Africa. Other prevalent risk factors in the region include household air pollution and nonexclusive and discontinued breastfeeding.
Although child undernutrition has fallen significantly as a risk factor for all ages, it remained the leading risk factor worldwide in 2010 for children under 5, accounting for 12.4% of global DALYs [disability‐adjusted life years], followed by nonexclusive or discontinued breastfeeding at 7.6%.
A number of risks that primarily affect childhood communicable diseases, including unsafe water and sanitation and micronutrient deficiencies, declined in significance in the past 20 years, with unsafe water and sanitation accounting for only 0.9% of global DALYs in 2010.
At the same time, GBD 2010 findings show the importance of household air pollution from solid fuels and ambient particulate matter pollution as major risk factors. One or both rank in the top 10 as causes of disease burden in 13 of the 21 regions. In south Asia, they are the leading cause of burden.

From the Guardian's reporting (more: 1, 2, 3):

Since 1970 the largest gains in life expectancy have taken place in the Maldives (27.3 years for men and 29.4 years for women) and improvements in life expectancy at birth in excess of 20 years were recorded in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru. But life expectancy fell by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, where populations were severely affected by HIV/Aids, and for men in Ukraine and Belarus, where an alcohol crisis took hold.

If you'd like to read the papers themselves, the full text is currently available for free (but registration required) at The Lancet. In addition to the data visualizations, the IHME provides GBD 2010 publication summaries: Global and regional mortality from 235 causes of death for 20 age groups in 1990 and 2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Healthy life expectancy for 187 countries, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Age‐specific and sex‐specific mortality in 187 countries, 1970–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Years lived with disability (YLDs) for 1,160 sequelae of 289 diseases and injuries, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs) for 291 diseases and injuries in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Common values in assessing health outcomes from disease and injury: disability weights measurement study for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010
Each of the data visualizations again:

Causes of death by age, sex, region, and year
Heat map of leading causes and risks by region
Changes in leading causes and risks between 1990 and 2010
Healthy years lost to disability vs. life expectancy in 1990 and 2010
Uncertainties of causes and risks

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation adds,

The findings are being announced at the Royal Society in London on Dec. 14 and published in The Lancet, the first time the journal has dedicated an entire triple issue to one study.

The Lancet includes The story of GBD 2010: a “super-human” effort:

“Running the programs to map the data to our cause list of 291 causes and correcting the bias can take days, even using a powerful cluster of more than 100 computers. The data that we have to store after the modelling process can take 3 terabytes.” [Rafael] Lozano estimates that the storage needed for the causes of death data was 400 times bigger than that for GBD 1990 [...] Majid Ezzati, chair in global and environmental health at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK, told The Lancet, As researchers, we tend to believe that more ‘data’ are better than less. I still believe so. But more data, but not all the perfect data we could wish for, means that we need to fundamentally think differently about when to stop searching for more and how to use it [...] The study brought out the well-known but far too frequently overlooked issue that people of different scientific traditions—clinicians, basic scientists, epidemiologists, and quantitative scientists—think and speak differently about the same problem. This can of course be a very powerful resource for bringing together different ways of looking at a problem and solving in the most comprehensive and interesting way—a true systems approach. It can also be a challenge, and at times a source of tension.

(Previously on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation: Is there a market for years?)

The Long, Balanced Haul

Chinese Jet Pilot — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:01:12 -0800

Cargo bikes, long a mainstay in the Netherlands and emerging as an automotive alternative in the U.S. (via bike-friendly Portland), come in many flavors: Longtails, longjohns, cycle trucks, porteurs, trikes and the traditional Dutch bakfiet. Will a cargo bike transform your life?

from the mightiest pharaohs to the lowliest peasants

roger ackroyd — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 10:25:15 -0800

Sitting is hazardous to your health. "The research, published in separate medical journals this month, adds to a growing scientific consensus that the more time someone spends sitting, especially in front of the television, the shorter and less robust his or her life may be." "Using complex actuarial tables and adjusting for smoking, waist circumference, dietary quality, exercise habits and other variables, the scientists were next able to isolate the specific effect that the hours of sitting seemed to be having on people’s life spans. And the findings were sobering: Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes."

The Automatic Diet Planner

netbros — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:40:04 -0800

Swole.me is a completely free automated diet planner that creates meals according to your goal calorie intake and how many meals you’d like to eat per day. Before embarking on any kind of eating and exercise plan, always consult your physician. 1. Figure out what your goals are. Do you want to lose weight or gain weight? This will probably be obvious to you. 2. Use the calorie calculator to estimate how much you should eat. 3. Craft a diet to follow (this is where Swole.me comes in!). Customize the food choices to your liking and then fine tune your plan in the sandbox mode. 4. Either follow the diet exactly or use it as more of a guide. Err in the direction of your goals. Your results will likely reflect your effort. 5. Exercise is important in controlling your weight and health in general. 6. Stick with these programs until you can manage your diet and exercise without them. Given some time, controlling your physical health will become second nature.

Keep that New Year's resolution

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:40:08 -0800

This is why you don't go to the gym.

The continuing gamification of life

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:03:38 -0800

Fitocracy is a social game that harnesses the power of feedback loops to promote fitness. Founded by two RPG-loving gamers, Brian Wang and Richard Talens, as a way to track their own progress. Slate's Farhad Manjoo does a video review, and Daniel Spelzmann at Ppen Salon has a profile as well. The tracking site has also appeared in XKCD and Penny Arcade Previously, on MeTa

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

Anatoly Pisarenko — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:54:29 -0800

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

"The Incredible Flying Nonagenarian"

dubitable — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:01:35 -0800

Olga Kotelko is 91, and she has probably set more athletic world records—and will continue to set more—than most of us will in our lives. We all age, but she is aging differently. Scientists are trying to figure out why...but she is just trying to find someone who can keep up.

The Art of Beautiful Strength

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:02:00 -0800

The Bar-Barians. The Calisthenics Kingz (and their Kiwi First Lady). Hannibal & Barilla. Calisthenics (a.k.a. bodyweight exercise) comes from the Greek kalos sthenos, "beautiful strength". It is a method of exercise, movement, and strength training that involves moving the human body rather than outside objects, and is one of the oldest strength-training methods known to humans, particularly favored by military trainers. According to Herodotus, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans did calisthenics before facing the Persians at Thermopylae. And if our modern Navy had to be propelled by tiers of free citizens pulling the oars, we'd have a hard time finding enough people fit enough to fill the crews (although grandpa's generation probably would have fared better). In fact, in Convict Conditioning, Paul "Coach" Wade teaches that progressive bodyweight exercises are superior to barbell-based exercises; barbells (while easy to add weight to) put the joints of the body into unnatural positions (notice the elbows flared out to the sides) under stress. Plate-loaded barbells also allow for muscular development faster than the joints, tendons, etc., can keep up with. These factors (and others) all but guarantee injuries for their users.

"Pain is not something we have to learn to live with as a result of our training. In fact, I'm a strong believer in the notion that if your training isn't gradually lessening the pain in your life, you're doing something wrong." -Paul "Coach" Wade, Convict Conditioning

Progressive bodyweight exercise, however, allows for incredible strength and mobility while developing the body in a manner Mother Nature intended (no junk-shrinking steroids needed). Modern humans still carry the ancient genetics that allowed our hunter-gatherer ancestors to survive and thrive in a world without plastic-wrapped food sold in supermarkets, automobiles to carry us around, or chairs, desks, or any of the other artifacts of the modern, sedentary lifestyle. Our ancestors had to move and be strong, agile, and smart in order to survive. All they had was the environment around them and bodies (and brains) evolved to grow strong in response to physical demands.) (Yes, they generally died younger than us moderns, but the environment they were trying to get dinner from was also actively trying to kill and eat them back. This was also why they needed great strength and mobility.) In a similar vein is La Methode Naturelle, the forerunner of Parkour. Founder Georges Hébert's motto combined personal development with social altruism: Être fort pour être utile; "Be strong in order to be of use." Previously

Being healthy, choose-your-own-adventure style!

Phire — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:03:15 -0800

Health Month is a game, currently in beta, that takes a "choose-your-own-adventure" approach to motivating you to improve your health. The gameplay, in a nutshell, goes like this: You design your own rules and goals for staying healthy. The rules can be anything you want, from exercising to eating to positive thinking. You log your results every day. If you haven't followed your rules, you lose life points. If you do really well, however, you're rewarded with fruits which you can then use to either heal yourself or friends who might not be doing so hot. Your rules are reset every month, and you can choose to roll over your performance, or create new rules. As an added bonus, you'll get lots of geektastic stats on your behaviour throughout the month. It's the pet project of a guy named Buster Benson, who is also behind the company Enjoymentland, source of other MeFi favourites like 750 Words. via.

Too much of a good thing?

greatgefilte — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:28:57 -0800

Pellagra is an awful disease. Its symptoms are the four D's -- diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death, unpleasant by anyone's standards. Caused by a deficiency in niacin, pellagra is uncommon in developed nations thanks to the fortification of bread products with niacin. But could excess niacin be causing the rapid rise in type II diabetes? While type II diabetes (T2DM) is a multi-factorial disease, a likely combination of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors,, much emphasis has been placed on the concept of oxidative stress as a proximal cause for the insulin resistance seen in T2DM. Building on prior work, a new study from China suggests that (a) niacin causes oxidative stress and insulin resistance, (b) people with T2DM can't get rid of niacin as easily as healthy people without a family history of T2DM, (c) medications that are known to cause insulin resistance also impair the body's ability to excrete niacin, (d) niacin can be excreted in sweat, and not sweating enough causes a niacin buildup and insulin resistance, and (e) lots more. A smoking gun? Probably not, but for now it may affect the way niacin is used to treat high cholesterol, which so often comes along with T2DM.

Use it or lose it - run for knee health

caddis — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:03:21 -0800

Running is actually good for your knees, if you haven't suffered knee injuries in the past. [D]espite entrenched mythology to the contrary, runners don’t seem prone to degenerating knees. An important 2008 study, this one from Stanford University, followed middle-aged, longtime distance runners (not necessarily marathoners) for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1984, when most were in their 50s or 60s. At that time, 6.7 percent of the runners had creaky, mildly arthritic knees, while none of an age-matched control group did. After 20 years, however, the runners’ knees were healthier; only 20 percent showed arthritic changes, versus 32 percent of the control group’s knees. Barely 2 percent of the runners’ knees were severely arthritic, while almost 10 percent of the control group’s were.

Stumptuous: From Dork to Diva to YouTube

maudlin — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:36:53 -0800

Mistress Krista says: Only YOU can stop gym dorkery! Stumptuous, one of AskMe's favourite fitness sites, has both a spiffy new design and a bunch of new content (Why your excuses are crap; Lies in the gym; Things you should not lift if you want to look like Madonna). Beginners will find plenty of smart and blunt information about eating, starting and refining a training program, avoiding and recovering from injuries, and developing a home gym one way or another. But Stumptuous has also extended its domain to YouTube. Part of the original Dork to Diva web series on correct technique is now up at YT (deadlifts; biceps curl) thanks to the support of The Prevention of Gym Idiocy Society (Ladies' Auxiliary), but you can also find some more unorthodox exercise ideas.

Just don't do it!

rongorongo — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:44:06 -0800

"At Stanford University two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred. Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing" - from Christopher McDougall's forthcoming book "Born to Run" which looks at the story the growth of the $20 billion running shoe industry. Starting form Bill Bowerman's Cortez in 1972 onwards runners have seen a steady flow of innovations to improve performance and reduce injury rates. Only it would appear they may not work. By way of contrast the book includes coverage of the Mexican Tarahumara tribe who run ultramarathons with shoes made from car tyres on their feet.

Exercise and the Placebo Effect

rongorongo — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:48:27 -0800

Cleaning hotel rooms is a strenuous business. However, when Alia Crum and Ellen Langer talked to 84 maids, most were under the impression that they did not get enough exercise. Furthermore, when they were measured for tests such as BMI and blood pressure, their results were typical of couch potatoes. The researchers let half the group in on the knowledge that they were getting more than enough of a daily workout and kept the rest in the dark. After a month results showed the former group were healthier on every single one of the objective health measurements tested - despite claiming to have been doing no more exercise or to have changed their diet. The study raises the possibility that mindset alone can influence our metabolism. Christopher Shea in the New York Times and Ben Goldacre in The Guardian have articles discussing the original paper.

"Nothing like a meeting you have to carb up for"

nthdegx — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:45:01 -0800

A runner's primer

Oh, damn.

miss lynnster — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:11:23 -0800

Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner—and why we're wrong.

What is Fitness?

jason's_planet — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:46:58 -0800

“What is fitness?”(large PDF) is an essay by the leaders of the CrossFit movement. The ideal they propose is an athlete who is “equal parts gymnast, Olympic weightlifter, and multi-modal sprinter or ‘sprintathlete.’ Develop the capacity of a novice 800-meter track athlete, gymnast, and weightlifter and you’ll be fitter than any world-class runner, gymnast, or weightlifter.”

It's the 'Showgirls' home game

feelinglistless — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 08:11:29 -0800

Pole dancing? It's the new Yoga. Just ask the people behind PoleTricks 101: "Women all around the country are finding out that pole dancing is a sexy way to entertain your man (or men!) Not only that, it's good exercise and just plain fun. PoleTricks 101 is dedicated to bring you the training, the equipment, and the satisfaction of dancing with the sexiest of all props... the pole!" Just $549.00... [via linkdump]

Couch potato lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking

Coop — Wed, 04 Sep 2002 18:38:04 -0800

Couch potato lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking Poor diet and lack of exercise cause more illness than smoking, new figures show. The lifestyle of couch potatoes has overtaken smoking as the major cause of ill-health in EU countries for the first time, the World Health Organisation says. Great, now reading Metafilter is bad for me.

Uncle Sam Sez: Sheesh! Get Some Exercise!!

raysmj — Sun, 07 Apr 2002 12:27:59 -0800

Uncle Sam Sez: Sheesh! Get Some Exercise!! A new National Center for Health Statistics survey shows that only seven out of 10 Americans get enough exercise every week. About four in 10 get practically no exercise whatsoever. How much do you exercise, and if so, are you one the three in 10 who do so enough? Is the report full of it? Should I go swimming now, or in an hour? Ride the bike there or take the car? Isn't driving a car to a nearby gym kinda stupid? But I digress. (Pauses, gets his bearings.) Isn't this pathetic?