You heard that right. Your faithful Picture of Health bloggers will be running the 5K in tomorrow's Baltimore Running Festival.

Now, to all you seasoned runners, this may sound like a piece of cake, but for Stephanie and me, this is a true challenge.

We both started running -- well, slow jogging -- earlier this year. Stephanie described on the blog earlier how she got the running bug with the help of a cool fitness DVD.

I took a less structured approach by throwing on some sneakers, plugging in my iPod and just going for it. I tried to following a modified Couch to 5K plan, allowing my iPod to dictate my speed. At first, I'd run one song, walk the next song, eventually running more than I was walking. Then, about a few weeks ago, I realized I could run 2 miles without stopping. Who knew?

All summer, some of our colleagues at The Sun have been nagging us to run the 5K with them. Naturally, we were were terrified. But after months of hemming and hawing, we finally caved. 

And here we are, the day before race day, freaking out! 

Important note: neither Stephanie nor I have ever run an entire 3.1 miles in one shot. Clearly, we have no idea what we are doing. But we're hoping for a fun day out with friends and that the adrenaline of our first race will get us through. We'll update you on Monday about the experience. Until then, pray for us.

Anyone else running this weekend? See you there! 

Baltimore Sun photo

Continue reading "We're running a 5K!" »

Posted by Kelly Brewington at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

My barefoot running story and blog entry garnered lots of attention yesterday. You guys had lots to say about this fledgling movement of runners who are out there jogging on the streets, sidewalks and grass without their Nikes. Many told tales of being inspired to try it after reading the best-selling book, "Born to Run." A well-thumbed chapter in there suggests that maybe all of those nagging running injuries could be caused by our fancy, well-cushioned shoes.

"I've been running barefoot regularly for three years and I feel great from head to toe," commented someone calling himself Happier Feet. "I couldn't say that when I ran in shoes - it was always one thing or another, from blisters to shin pains to aching arches."

Wrote someone named Peter: "It's a very free practice, mind-opening, mentally challenging more than physically, the calluses needed and generated are really minimal in my experience and I'm barefoot outdoors every day of the year, even in the snow (central Ohio)."

Picture of Health readers aren't the only ones who noticed. A producer for MSNBC's "Dr. Nancy" show read the story and contacted Dr. A. Ben Pearl, the Arlington podiatrist quoted in my story. Unless big news intercedes, he is scheduled to talk about barefoot running on the show today. Look for him between 12:30 p.m. and 1 p.m.
 

Photo courtesy KRT

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

The shorthand these days for categorizing your healthy weight is BMI, or body mass index. This inexpensive and relatively simple calculation, which uses height and weight, hands everyone a number and puts us into broad categories of underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese.

But the numbers don't mean a lot to most people, says a University of Nevada, Reno professor, who has developed his own shorthand for calculating a healthy weight. His doesn't involve online calculators or charts. And it doesn't use weight ranges, which he thinks confuse more than help people.

Dr. George Fernandez, who teaches applied statistics, has devised the maximum weight limit, "one number that we know we can't go over, just like a speed limit," according to a press release from the University of Nevada, Reno. It's just a simpler way of knowing if we are in a danger zone, he said.

Continue reading "Re-thinking BMI" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

So, if you've ever been interested in barefoot running, then let me know because I'm looking to start a barefoot running club. I know it sounds crazy at first, but if you haven't tried it, then I suggest you liberate your feet and give it a chance.

I'm the only one who answered Engwall's ad. But I didn't want to run with him (my tootsies are too delicate for that). I wanted to hear about how he got into barefoot running.

It's building up something of a cult following in some circles. Barefoot runners swear that it's their fancy running shoes, with their arch support and thick cushioning and more, that are the root of jogging injuries. And a movement has sprung up in recent years of people who hit the asphalt, the sidewalk, the grass for long runs -- and leave their high-tech Nikes at home. Some use minimalist footwear. But others just go in the buff (their feet, that is).

Continue reading "Barefoot running: "Liberate your feet"" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 7:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

Apparently, Americans are in denial.

So suggets a new survey from the market research firm Mintel which finds that we think we're a whole lot healthier than we actually are. In our heads, we're a nation of skinny people who eat proper quantities of healthy food. In reality, we're a bunch of overweight folks who eat whatever we want and lots of it.

In the survey, 25 percent of respondents told Mintel they were obese or overweight. According to  the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 67 percent of Americans fall into one of these categories.

"Right now we say one thing, but then our actions contradict those perceptions and best intentions," senior analyst Krista Faron said in the press release.

Continue reading "Americans in denial about their health" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

And we wonder why two-thirds of Americans are overweight.

Add this one to the horrifying, artery-clogging trend of deep frying everything -- and clearly we mean everything: Deep-fried butter (you read that correctly). It is among the new offerings that will be available at the Texas State Fair this year, where fried food is as outsized as everything there.

Your cardiologist is cringing right now.

I don't think I need to tell you that a stick of butter is 810 calories and that is before anyone coats it and tosses it into the deep fryer.

Contributor Laura T. Coffey tells us how it's done on the website for NBC's Today Show.

“I mean, butter by itself does not taste good,” the dish's creator, 39-year-old Dallas resident Abel Gonzales Jr., told her. “Nobody just grabs a stick of butter and eats it. That would be gross.”

Yes, it would.

Continue reading "Deep fried butter: A new low?" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

Here's a new piece of research that we here at the Picture of Health share with you cautiously: The more alcohol people drink, the more likely they are to exercise. And the more heavily people drink, the study says, the harder they exercise -- though not, we're pretty sure, at the same time.

These tidbits come via the Sepetember/October issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion. The authors of the study, led by a health economist at the University of Miami, say their findings don't suggest that drinking actually causes people to work out more. It's just that when they analyzed data from an annual telephone survey of 230,000 Americans, they found the two were linked.

Continue reading "Heavy drinkers exercise more? A study says yes" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

This is how most of my conversations about exercise used to go. Someone would ask if I ran. I would reply, laughing at my own stupid joke, "only when chased."

When I was in high school, they made us jog around Delaware Park in Buffalo -- a 2 mile loop -- to get in shape for lacrosse season. I couldn't do it. After a week, I quit and joined the softball team. No running there.

I'm thin, have always been thin, but was feeling awfully tired last October when my doctor told me I had to exercise. I told her I couldn't, no time -- full-time job, two kids, blah blah blah. She told me which DVD to borrow from the library. Anything by best-selling fitness guru Leslie Sansone, she said.

Six months later I was running 2 miles around my neighborhood. Now, I do it as often as five days a week (am I sounding like a cheesy infomercial?).

But Sansone doesn't sell running. She has made her fortune advocating walking. The first time I watched one of her 130 (!) DVDs, my editor at the time, a marathoner, couldn't hide her disdain. "You walk in front of the television?" she asked. "This is exercise?"

But it is exercise and I hear Sansone's voice in my head urging me on when I take to the outdoors. "From this tree to that tree, I'm gonna jog," she says, explaining how to build endurance if jogging is your goal. Yesterday, I got to hear Sansone's voice for real, on the telephone, pitching a new program and telling me about her latest video, "Walk Your Belly Flat."

Continue reading "How I learned to walk -- and run" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

With summer football practice in full-swing, we thought we'd get on the bandwagon and bring a little sports to our health blog.

Maryland Terrapins football coach Ralph Friedgen -- a bear of a prescence on the sidelines -- is missing something as he heads into the season. It may not look like much from these photos, but Friedgen this week is 105 pounds lighter than he was in October, when he weighed 401 pounds (see photo, far left). Of course, the question always is, how did he do it?

The 62-year-old Friedgen decided against weight-loss surgery. He lost it the old-fashioned way, by eating less. But after years of losing and then gaining back weight, he had to find something he could stick to.

Continue reading "Terps coach Ralph Friedgen down 105 pounds and counting" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

What brings us to this post is not some strained back or neck or leg that we treated with a sports cream that didn't work. No, we are here today, discussing the effectiveness of those remedies -- you know, the smelly stuff that warms or cools some ache or pain when rubbed on -- because of the quote in the press release.

Andrew Moore, a biochemist at the University of Oxford who led a systematic review of studies about whether these so-called salicylate creams work, was asked if he would recommend using them.

Calling them an unproven waste of money, Moore said: "You might as well rub your skin with a bit of spit."

Now that we've gotten that highlight out of the way, just a bit about the study, which was done by the Cochrane Collaboration, a highly regarded international organization that evaluates research. The review found that these popular over-the-counter creams, heat gels and other remedies for sports injuries and arthritis aches don't work, despite the many millions of dollars spent on them each year.

Familiar brands containing salicylate creams include Ben Gay, Icy Hot and Aspercreme balms. They are thought to work by distracting users from the pain with their warmth and redness. While some older smaller studies showed a measure of improvement after using the treatments, the newer, large, more rigorous trials showed no effect, Moore said.

Continue reading "Do muscle pain remedies work?" »

Posted by Stephanie Desmon at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Diet and exercise
        

We've heard it all before: the keys to staying healthy are a good diet and plenty of exercise. But just when are we supposed to make time for  physical fitness in our busy lives?

Walk to work. Or bike. People who ride a bike or walk to work are more fit, less fat and have healthier triglyceride levels, blood pressure and insulin levels, according to a new study in this week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied about 2,300 men and women between 2005 and 2006 and recorded the length of their commute, how they got there and assessed their fitness levels with a treadmill test. 

Both men and women who biked or walked performed better on fitness tests but men tended to have even healthier body mass index numbers, and better blood pressure and insulin levels. Researchers weren't sure why women didn't reap all the same benefits as men, but said perhaps women did not exercise as intensely or commuted shorter distances.

Even people with the most hectic of schedules can benefit from just 60 minutes of brisk walking a day, researchers concluded.

Still, for all its supposed benefits, few Americans bother to bike or walk to work -- just 17 percent, the study found. With many cities lacking proper bike lanes and so many people living in far flung suburbs, it's no wonder. The researchers hope the study leads to policies that make neighborhoods safer for biking.

Continue reading "Biking, walking to work may keep you healthy" »

Posted by Kelly Brewington at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Diet and exercise