Rees Fitness Personal Training
Strength, Fitness & Behaviour Coaching
Blood Pressure testing
It seems that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is to change it’s guidelines on how high blood pressure is to be diagnosed. I mention this because I get quite a few people being refered to exercise due to high blood pressure, and it is one of the things included in the physical/fitness assessments (click here for more info) I conduct on people.
One of my favorite websites I keep going back to for reliable information, is a section on the NHS site they call “Behind the Headlines” (click here). Here they take a look at some of the major health stories in the papers, and give you the facts. Take a look at just a few of the ways the papers blow a health story out of all proportion, and you will understand why one of my favorite saying at the moment is:
I read this story in the Daily Mail (click here for story). It suggests that the reason 2 thirds of the UK population is overweight or obese, is because of central heating. The thinking goes, if we are in a warm cosy environment (like a centrally heated room) our bodies don’t have to burn so many calories to keep us warm. Now that is a very good theory, and it sounds totally plausible to me. It is true, the colder your body, the more calories it burns to maintain your body temperature…BUT GET REAL!
Taking lots of breaks from sitting at a desk is good for the waistline and heart health, research suggests. Click here to read the news story in full. Research showing that if you sit around all day, you will get unhealthy. But if you regularly get up on your feet (even for a minute or so) you can improve your health. Click here to download the actual study paper. Some practical tips from the story:
It is a well known, but well forgotten fact that our bodies don’t improve during exercise/training. Instead, they improve after exercise/training. Put simply, during training, our bodies are damaged/broken/busted up. And in the hours/days following, our bodies repair/improve/upgrade themselves, and make them just that little bit better than before.
I’ve talked before about increasing a persons “Background Activity” (click here, and here) to help improve their health and weight. And it looks like New York city has the same idea! Click here for a BBC documentary about how architects in New York are trying to make it harder for people to get about in order to give people more exercise.
Here is another news story suggesting that your waist/hip ratio is a better assessment of your health, than your total bodyweight or your BMI.
About 2 thirds of the UK population are overweight or obese. This is because we eat/drink too much and don’t exercise enough. We all know this, but we still continue overeating. Why? Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 major reasons why we eat/drink:
Some things are just more important than others. Some things just need to be nailed before others. Some things are just so fundamental that without them, other things are simply not going to work. Some examples include:
The World Health Organisation defines health as:
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
Two thirds of the adult UK population is now considered obese. According to figures from the National Audit Office, obesity can take up to nine years off your lifespan. You are also far more likely to get many other problems, including: