Exercise snacks a tasty treat for body
The humorist/philosopher Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Smart guy. Unfortunately, 80 percent of Americans have sedentary jobs and between commuting, work and watching TV, many people just sit there for 10 to 15 hours a day — upping their risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, depression and dementia.
One solution I bet you didn’t expect to hear from me — “get snacking.”
Exercise snacking, that is. New research out of the University of Toronto shows taking just two minutes every 30 minutes to do moderate-intensity walking or stand-to-sit squats (at least 15 of them) using your own body weight helps your body filter sugar from your blood and promotes use of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, to preserve and build muscles. Those amino acids also make hormones and brain tissue, boost your immune
DR. ROIZEN
system and help maintain a healthy digestive tract.
Other great “exercise snacks” you can do include jumping jacks, taking a couple flights of stairs, and jumping rope. So, set an alarm on your phone for every 30 minutes and enjoy healthy snacking! I suggest you mix up your exercise snacks, so you get to enjoy all the tastiest ones.
Vindicating video games
If you think of video gamers as sedentary loners and worry that obsession with on-screen athletics and fantasy worlds may harm your child’s brain development, think again. A new study in JAMA Network Open reveals that kids who play video games for three or more hours a day actually improve their cognitive performance, have better impulse control and stronger memory than kids who don’t play video games at all.
Researchers analyzed data on around 2,000 kids ages 9 to 10 from the Adolescent Brain and Development Study. They found that playing video games 21 hours a week didn’t dim kids’ wits. And, to a small degree, it was associated with improvements in handling social problems and a reduction in rule-breaking and aggressive behavior, depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and stress. So, while first-person shooter games (violent and deadly) seem to blunt children’s emotional responsiveness, other video games that involve shooting basketballs or slaying dragons can be a healthy part of a child’s diverse learning processes.