French Study Finds Bilberries Prevents Hardening of Arteries

The bilberry, a lesser-known berry to the Western world, makes heart health headlines.

A berry that’s rarely heard from is making headlines in America today, as a recent study suggests that the sibling to the blueberry can help prevent arteries from hardening, potentially protecting people from the most common health problem in the world today.

If you’re at all familiar with the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, then you know all about the new and interesting places, thingamabobs and taste sensations Charlie Bucket and company learn about while there.  Places like Oompa Loompa Land, thingamabobs like Egg-de-cators and taste sensations like snozberries (Said one Veruca Salt, “Snozberry?  What on earth is a snozberry!”).  Well, bilberries are a lot like snozberries—lesser-known, but unlike the snozberry, they actually exist.

As aforementioned, bilberries are related to blueberries in taste, texture and class (both come from the same genus class of species called Vaccinium).  And again, similar to blueberries, they’re chock-full of antioxidants called anthocyanins, which are widely praised for their disease-fighting prowess.

While unfamiliar to most people in the Western world, bilberries aren’t hard to come by in Europe; they’re as plentiful to European fields as corn is to American fields.  Norway, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom region produce copious amounts of bilberries on publicly accessible land, which is to say that anyone and everyone can “come and get ‘em” as they please.  And after this most recent finding, it’s not unreasonable to think there’ll be even more people coming out of the woodwork to scoop up these berry beauties.

French scientists fed three groups of mice the same control diet for 16 weeks, but two of the groups received varying amounts of bilberry extract in addition.  After four months of observation and testing, markers associated with atherosclerosis were significantly less in the two groups fed bilberry extract (i.e. markers=plaque buildup in the arteries).  For example, in comparison to the group not fed the bilberry extract, one group saw a 25 percent reduction in plague buildup, while another saw a 36 percent reduction.

The study is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

As per usual, the researchers downplayed the results, saying more research needs to be done before the findings can be extrapolated.  But lest we forget, this isn’t the bilberry’s first road show; others studies have found them to be effective in treating degenerative diseases relating to arthritis and macular degeneration.

Bilberries are hard to come by in the states.  There’s a select few places that sell bilberries in the Western half of the country where they’re often used in jams and jellies.  That’s not to say they’re not available.  They are, but in supplement form.

Health food stores like GNC and The Vitamin Shoppe should carry plenty of bilberry supplements, where bilberry is the primary ingredient, or where it is an added ingredient.  The amount of bilberry used will depend on the product, but if possible, opt for one that’s at least 25 percent anthocyanocides.

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
wisegeek.com
naturalhealthontheweb.com
en.wikipedia.org

Could Taking a Multi at a Young Age Prevent Food Allergies?

Karolinska researchers find children taking multivitamins at an early age were less likely to have developed food allergies.

Taking a multivitamin may be kids’ best defense from forming a food allergy.

According to recently released findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, when researchers looked at kids who had taken a multivitamin before their fourth birthday, they found that they were about 40 percent less likely to have a food allergy compared to their fellow sub-4-year-olds that did not take one.

One caveat, though:  The findings were only applicable to kids that took a multivitamin before the age of four.  For the rest of the 2,400+ kids observed, there was no difference in food allergy incidence and multivitamin use.

The study is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and performed by researchers from the Karolinska Institute.

The prevalence of food allergies among kids today is a confounding issue for many health professionals.  Twenty years ago, food allergies were few and far between.  That’s not the case today, as an estimated 20 percent of all kids—and 5 percent of all Americans—have at least one food allergy.    In fact, since 1989, there’s been a 400 percent rise in food allergies, mostly from things like wheat, eggs, shellfish, milk, and the mother of all food allergens, peanuts.

The question, of course, is why?  Some suggest it’s due to the prevalence of genetically-modified soy; others, referring specifically to the prevalence of peanut allergies, think it’s due to the way in which peanuts are prepared and processed, dry roasting them instead of boiling them (In China, where food allergies are far less prevalent, peanuts are predominantly eaten boiled).

To me—and to just about every one else in the natural health world, for that matter—it’s clear as day why there’s been an upswing in food allergies:  food ingredients.

The best illustration of this is with soy.  In 1996, in an attempt to make the soy crop more profitable and last longer, soy was genetically-engineered; in other words, its DNA was tampered with to extend its shelf life.  And it just so happens that in this same year, there was a 50 percent rise in soy allergies, cracking into the Top 10 list of food allergies for the first time.  It’s remained there ever since.

The prevalence of food allergies is one of the main reasons why I’m so passionate about natural health.  Because I firmly believe that if food wasn’t so packed with additives and preservatives, there would be no such thing as the “Big 8.”  In case you didn’t already know, the “Big 8” represents the eight most common food allergies.

Reform in the food industry is likely years, if not decades, away.  In the meantime, take some preventative action by getting your kids onto a multivitamin as early as possible.

There are LOADS of multivitamins to choose from.  But in my personal opinion, there’s no multi that’s better than Ola Loa.  Only this is not a multi you take, this is a multi you drink.

The nutrients in multivitamins are absorbed by the body more efficiently when they can be dissolved in liquid.  And while there are other multivitamins on the market you can drink, Ola Loa stands above the rest because their multivitamin is more than just vitamin C and sugar.  Theirs contains all the active ingredients that every multivitamin ought to have, including amino acids!

And unlike a pill, where only 10-20 percent of its contents are absorbed by the body, the absorption rate is 78 to 88 percent higher with Ola Loa, according to Physician’s Desk Reference.

Try it for yourself, and feel the difference!

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
abcnews.go.com
allergykids.com
en.wikipedia.org

Consequences of Antibiotic Overuse Affecting Pregnant Women

Study finds a possible association between birth defects and certain antibiotics.

Just weeks away from ringing in the holiday season, it’s that time of year for cold and flu season as well.  And just as people procrastinate on their Christmas purchases, a number of people procrastinate on arming themselves with the natural herbs they need to ward off illness.  “I’ll just get an antibiotic if I get sick,” they dismissively say.  But a new study written in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine explains why this dismissive mentality is a really bad idea, particularly if you’re pregnant.

Researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention collected health data from over 13,000 pregnant women and their babies in 10 states, with a particular focus on whether the frequency of their antibiotic use during pregnancy correlated with birth defects.  To find out, they compared the use of antibiotics among women that had babies with birth defects with women who didn’t have babies with birth defects.  Both groupings took antibiotics at various points throughout their pregnancy.

While the researchers didn’t find a higher incidence of birth defects among women and babies that used antibiotics like penicillin, there was some evidence to suggest that birth defects result from lesser-known antibiotics.  The culprits? Sulfonamides and nitrofurantoins.

Women that took sulfonamides, an antibiotic most commonly used for treating urinary tract infections, were three times more likely to have babies with malformed skulls and brains; while women that took nitrofurantoions were twice as likely to have babies with eye and heart defects.  Nitrofurantoins are another kind of antibiotic prescribed for urinary tract infections.

The researchers are hesitant to pinpoint these antibiotics as the cause for the birth defects (as I often say, correlation does not imply causation), but their results indicate doctors shouldn’t be so cavalier about prescribing them, particularly to pregnant women.

Again the study is published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The use of antibiotics has skyrocketed in this country.  While there’s no question that hundreds if not thousands of diseases have become treatable through antibiotics, there’s also no question that their overuse has made diseases less treatable.  Appealing to patients’ “Give me something to feel better” mentality, doctors have handed out prescriptions like candy, and nature (i.e., microbes) has taken advantage.  Because just as the body’s immune system adapts to its environment, microbes adapt to their environment.  So when antibiotics are overused or improperly used—like when farmers add them to healthy animals’ feed to spur growth, or when doctors prescribe them to people who have non-bacterial infections—that’s more opportunity for bacteria to adapt to their environment and become more resistant to treatment in the process (forming the so-called “superbug”).

To say nothing of the side-effects that result from antibiotic use, the consequences of their overuse is the primary reason why natural antibiotics should be your primary option for treating infections.  What you choose depends on the nature of your disease.  For example, if your infection is bacterial (e.g., urinary tract infections, strep throat, etc.) choose herbs like garlic* and pau d’arco.  For fungal infections (e.g., yeast infections, athlete’s foot, etc.) look for supplements with myrrh, thyme, pumpkin or barberry bark in them.  And for viral infections (e.g., chicken pox, common cold, etc.), your best defense is with St. John’s wort, aloe vera and elderberry.

(Note*:  While garlic is great for bacterial infections, it’s also effective for viral and fungal infections).

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
health.usnews.com
cdcfoundation.org
keepantibioticsworking.com
home-remedies-that-work.com

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Bogus Health Claim

Kellogg's misleads consumers with a hokum health headline.

Have you seen the latest labeling lie?  Once again, it’s in the cereal aisle, this time touting the whopper that by eating a bowl of “snap, crackle, pop,” you’ll boost your immunity!  That’s right—who needs a multivitamin when you can arm your immune system with a tasty bowl of Rice Krispies?

Good grief!

Kellogg’s, the company that makes Rice Krispies, must think we’re real idiots.  Why else would they put a giant yellow label on their familiar blue box with the headline:  “Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY”?

Kellogg’s has issued a rebuttal to their wildly misleading claim.  In a statement released to the press, Kellogg’s said that the added nutrients in boxes of Rice Krispies have been “identified by the Institute of Medicine and other studies as playing a role in the body’s immune system. Therefore, we believe the claim
is supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence.”

The nutrients of which they speak are vitamins A, C and E.  Since May, boxes of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies have a higher amount of these vitamins, going from 10 percent to 25 percent of your recommended daily amount per serving.

While it’s true, vitamins like C and E are antioxidants and are vital to a healthy immune system, but it takes a ginormous leap of faith to believe that a 15 percent increase of vitamins in cereal will improve immunity.  Heck, why don’t they have boxes saying “Now helps support your child’s EYESIGHT,” since vitamin A is good for eyesight?  Or how about “Now helps support your child’s SKIN,” since vitamin E is a great nutrient for healthy skin?

I’ll tell you why:  Because healthy skin and good eyesight is not in the news cycle.   What is?  How to maintain a healthy immune system.

With all the hoopla and hullabaloo around the swine flu, Kellogg’s is trying to capitalize on consumers’ fears by saying that their toasted rice cereal can protect kids’ immune system (capitalizing on swine flu fears is a charge that Kellogg’s flatly denies).  But if they were really concerned about a child’s immunity and health, why did they only increase the vitamin content of Rice Krispies to 15 percent?  Why not 50 percent?  Or 100 percent?  Because they know that their claims are bogus, that’s why.

If Kellogg’s was really concerned about kids’ health, they’d stop using high fructose corn syrup, and they wouldn’t be using so much sugar, the second most used ingredient in Rice Krispies (remember, food companies must list their ingredients in descending order, from most to least).

If you really want to boost your child’s immune function, forget the cereal.  Cereal can be a fine food, but let’s not kid ourselves into believing that it will buoy immune function.  Do it with breakfast foods that are naturally high in immune-defending nutrients, like freshly squeezed orange juice, natural grains like quinoa (which is one of the few grains that’s a complete protein) and vegetables like carrots (you probably don’t think of carrots as a breakfast food, but they’re a great addition to freshly baked bran muffins).

Wildly misleading claims like these are likely to change anytime soon.  Thus, when it comes to health claims, follow the rule that’s so often used it’s become a clichĂ©:  If it sounds too good to be true, more often than not, it probably is.

Sources:
cbsnews.com
whfoods.com
msnbc.msn.com

Moderate Bouts of Exercise Reduces Cigarette Cravings, Study Finds

University of Exeter researchers produce second study showing how smoking can help someone quit by reducing its appeal.

From patches to hypnosis, gum to acupuncture, people have tried anything and everything to quit smoking. But the best help yet may be found at your local gym, your local park or in your backyard.

According to researchers from the University of Exeter, getting out and exercising can be an extremely effective tool in reducing someone’s desire to smoke as it seems to minimize smoking’s attractiveness and appeal.

To study exercise’s impact, researchers recruited 20 men and women who smoked regularly.  Before they broke off into groups, they were all shown visual displays of people smoking, similar to the ones we were used to seeing on the backs of magazine covers and on billboards.  They were shown neutral pictures as well where the pictures were not meant to titillate their desire to smoke.

They then had each of the participants do one of two things: sit for 15 minutes or exercise at a moderate intensity for 15 minutes on a stationary bike.  Once the 15 minutes were up, they were shown the same pictures as before.  Both groups exercised or sat at least once.

Thanks to the use of eye-tracking technology, which analyzed each of the participants’ eyes to see how long or how short they were trained on the pictures, they found an 11 percent difference in the average amount of time spent looking at the smoking pictures compared to the neutral pictures.  In other words, people who exercised spent more time looking at the neutral images than they did the smoking images.  Or to put it in yet another way, the smoking images were able to grab and keep the attention of the sitters more than it did the exercisers.

The study is published in the journal Addiction and piggybacks on a separate study the University of Exeter performed this past February.  In that study, researchers found that exercise significantly reduced participants’ desire to smoke, as they reported diminished cravings post-exercise.

To me, this study is significant but not altogether surprising.  It’s well known that exercise stimulates a greater production of endorphins, which help us to feel happy and content.  Similarly, especially during intense bouts of exercise, images of juicy hamburgers on the tube are not as appealing on the treadmill as they are when we’re plopped on the sofa.  That’s partly because exercise serves as a distraction, but it’s also because exercise chemically alters the brain.  Any old distraction isn’t going to reduce your desire to smoke or eat, as anyone who’s read a book or a magazine in front of the TV will tell you.

What it is about exercise that chemically alters the brain is anyone’s guess.  That’s a matter future studies will consider.

In the meantime, as difficult as exercise may be, as little as 10 to 15 minutes of it at a moderate intensity can really help reduce cravings (the participants in this study had gone without a cigarette for nearly a day prior to the start of the study).  Try it for yourself and see if it works for you.  Who knows, you may love to exercise so much that it becomes a new habit.

Source:
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com

Study Says Pumpkin Proteins Have Antibiotic-Like Properties

Study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry suggests that pumpkin extract can help treat yeast infections.

Whether it’s stowed within a cornucopia for your Thanksgiving centerpiece, out on the front stoop as a Jack-o’-lantern, or stashed as seeds in your glove compartment, pumpkins are found in lots of unusual places this time of year.  And in the not-too-distant future, it could take up residence in another unusual locale:  your medicine cabinet.

A new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry says that pumpkin—the skin of it, particularly—can help fight infections associated with microbes that lead to yeast infections.

Treatment for yeast infections are typically medicinal and often involve antibiotics.  But because antibiotics have been handed out like candy at a Thanksgiving parade—never mind that they often lead to yeast infections—doctors are becoming increasingly loath to be so liberal in offering them.  Why?  Because the widespread use of antibiotics has enabled microbes to adapt and become resistant to them, forming what are known as “superbugs.”  That pumpkin extract could further reduce the use of antibiotics is really what makes this finding so exciting.

According to the study’s head honcho, Kyung-Soo Hahm, when he and fellow researchers extracted proteins from pumpkin rinds and mixed them with Candida albicans, they inhibited its growth.  And its growth is what leads to the development of yeast infections.  Candida albicans is the microbe that leads to yeast infections, but they can also lead to other diseases and infections, like diaper rash in infants and leaky gut syndrome in adults.  The presence of Candida albicans is determined by a simple blood test.

Yeast infections are extremely common in women, as three out of four women will get at least one in their lifetime, and two out of four will get more than one.  Yeast infections form when too much yeast grows within the vaginal walls.  The production of yeast is normal, but when there’s excessive wetness in the vaginal area over prolonged periods, yeast infections will often result.  Other common causes for excessive yeast growth include having diabetes, being overweight or being immunodeficient.  Common symptoms associated with yeast infections include excessive itching and burning, experiencing pain during intercourse and/or producing a thick, pasty-white discharge.

Up to now, the pumpkin pretty much had one of two functions:  For decoration or for nutrition.  Who’d have thought it could wind up being used for infections as well?

Sources:
women.webmd.com
sciencedaily.com
familydoctor.org

British Study Suggests Violent Adults Were “Sweet” Children

British study suggests that people who ate lots of candy in childhood may turn violent in adulthood.

Like peanut butter and jelly, candy and Halloween just go together.  Survey data shows that nearly 75 percent of Americans celebrating Halloween do it by handing out candy to trick-or-treaters; the average home spends $65 on candy for Halloween; the majority of the candy eaten in the country is eaten on or immediately following Halloween; and the average person eats 24 pounds of candy in a given year—most of it on Halloween!

Frightening numbers, no?

Besides the obvious nutrition and cavity problems candies cause for the average kid, it may also affect their social health in adulthood.

It sounds crazy, but get a load of this:  Candy-crazed kids are more likely to turn violent come adulthood, according to a study published in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Now, as you might imagine, knowing how much candy kids are eating throughout their young life requires a lot of in-depth, detailed information, and researchers from Cardiff University were able to get this information thanks to 17,000 men and women that participated in what was called the British Cohort Study in 1970.  All of the subjects were born in the same week of April 1970.

The detailed Cohort Study tracked their health and lifestyle habits up to and including their 30^th year, including whether or not they had been arrested.

This is where researchers found the link:  According to their findings, just under 70 percent of the people that were arrested and convicted for a violent crime ate candy nearly every day when they were 10 years old.  Among those never arrested for a violent crime, 40 percent ate candy regularly at age 10.

Now, does a finding like this guarantee that your candy-crazed child will lash out violently when they reach their thirties?  Obviously, the answer to that is no.

As I’ve said in the past—and as the researchers themselves say—correlation does not imply causation.  No one can prove that candy causes violence, certainly not a study that didn’t take into account whether the 17,000 kids grew up in a violent home (as this study failed to do).  The link may be more due to a child not learning how to cope with internal or external struggles at a young age, and their candy cravings was just a symptom of that.

At the very least, though, this study gives further credence to the inverse of what this study found:  Better nutrition leads to better behavior.  And that’s really the main thing to take away from all of this.  Not that candy’s necessarily the enemy, but that quality nutrition is our friend.  That really needs to be emphasized in children’s lives, especially in the aftermath of a candy binge.

Should your child go on such a binge, it’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t preordain them to joining a fight club in their twenties.  But you should consider a “candy detox,” of sorts.

This is where their diets are a bit “cleaner” than usual, where there’s a greater emphasis on exercise, a greater emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, and a greater emphasis on avoiding refined sugars.

You basically want to make it crystal clear that candy is a once-in-a-while thing, and not something that should be eaten every day.  Habits are easy to form, especially at young ages.  The younger they are when they form, the harder they are to break as they grow older.

Sources:
msnbc.msn.com
sixwise.com
food.aol.com
health.usnews.com

National Cancer Institute Says Coffee Helps Hepatitis C Sufferers

Coffee consumption may benefit Hepatitis C sufferers.

Thought your brain was the only thing perked up after your morning cup of joe?  Well according to a new study published in the journal Hepatology, your liver likes it a whole lot, too.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute recruited over 760 volunteers with Hepatitis C, assessing their overall health, diet and the state of their liver (if not caught early, hepatitis C causes serious damage to the liver, including scarring, liver cancer, even liver failure).  Biopsies of their livers were taken twice during the four-year long study to see how, or if, there were signs of progressive liver damage.

Seeing as how some of the patients with hepatitis C had it for longer than others, the degree of liver damage varied among the 700+ participants.  But it also varied based on how much or how little coffee they drank.

When the researchers assessed the damage of all the participants’ livers and how much coffee they usually drank, they found that those who drank as much as 3.5 cups of coffee per day (eight oz. cups) had the “healthiest” livers, that is to say the progression of liver damage wasn’t as significant as those who drank less than three cups.

The degree of progression was particularly stark when compared to those who didn’t drink coffee at all, finding that the three-a-day coffee crew were 53 percent less likely to have their liver disease advance over those four years.

“Although we can not rule out other factors that go along with drinking coffee,” said the study’s lead author in a press release, “results from our study suggest that patients with high coffee intake had a lower risk of disease progression.”

The study’s authors point out that their findings only apply to people who are living with hepatitis C, not otherwise healthy people.

Becoming infected with hepatitis C can only be done by coming into contact with infected blood.  This puts people that work with potentially-infected needles (e.g., phlebotomists, medical technologists, tattoo artists), people given blood transfusions before 1992, and people that use or have used illicit drugs at the highest risk.

Approximately three million people in the U.S. have hepatitis C, a disease that kills an estimated 10,000 people every year in the U.S. alone due to liver complications.  Hepatitis C usually has mild, flu-like symptoms, but because the symptoms are so mild, hepatitis C often goes undiagnosed.

If you have any combination of symptoms that include fever, nausea, muscle soreness, or pain in your right side (where the liver is located), see your doctor immediately.  He or she will perform a blood test, and perhaps a liver biopsy to rule out whether or not more invasive treatment is necessary.

Sources:
mayoclinic.com
health.msn.com

Exercise Improves Brain Function in Rats Treated with Radiation, Say Duke Researchers

Study says exercise may improve brain function after being treated with radiation.

Ladies and gentlemen, as much as I’ve discussed exercise and its healing power, there’s yet another aspect to it that can’t go unmentioned:  It may reverse the damage that results from radiation treatments.

As has been documented here, I’m not crazy about traditional cancer treatments.  Whether its radiation or chemotherapy, they’re both used to kill as many cancerous cells as possible.  If I were forced to choose one over another, I’d choose radiation, because it’s a more localized treatment (i.e., It’s effective for only certain cancers, and it doesn’t attack as many healthy cells as chemotherapy does).

Nevertheless, radiation does adversely affect healthy cells, particularly brain cells when used for brain cancer.

But researchers from Duke University found that may be a thing of the past after the brains of rats treated with radiation were every bit as good as those rats that weren’t irradiated.

To test their mental mettle, the researchers irradiated one group of mice and provided them with food, water, and a wheel that they could run on and off as they pleased.  The other group of mice was also irradiated, but they had no access to a wheel, only access to their food, water, and other furry friends.

They then tested the rats’ mental ability and agility, letting them loose in a maze that assessed their spatial memory and recognition.  This was used as a sort of guideline for the researchers, helping them to know how quickly they could get through the maze after irradiation treatment.

Throughout the next several weeks, they had the same groups of rats go through the same maze they had at the start of the study, but this time the researchers discovered something most unexpected.  They found that the rats that were irradiated and had opportunity to exercise performed just as well as rats that were never irradiated in the maze.  In other words, their brain function was normal.  They were expecting to find a decline in the irradiated rats’ mental function, but the only rats that showed a progressive decline in brain function were the irradiated rats that didn’t have access to the rat wheel.

The findings led one of the researchers to conclude how “powerful” exercise is and that it can “provide and even restore” mental function after radiation therapy.

More research needs to be done before researchers can say with any definitiveness that exercise provides a similar benefit to humans given whole brain radiation treatment, but the results sure seem promising.  They believe the benefit of exercise on brain function is likely due to the increased flow of blood to the part of the brain responsible for cognitive function (i.e. hippocampus).

Again, these findings may not translate to humans, but this study piggybacks on a separate study performed last year in Germany, which found that exercise improves stem cell growth in the brains of rats affected by radiation.  In that study, the researchers were more inclined to suggest that the findings would translate to humans, saying “irradiation-induced damage in children with brain damage could be reduced if the child under guidance is given stimulating and fun exercise.”

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com

The Impact of Music on Exercise Performance

Listening to music while exercising can increase performance, study shows.

There are necessities to every workout.  Willpower?  Check.  Quality sneakers?  Absolutely.  Shirt and shorts?  Most definitely.

There’s one more thing, though, that I’m convinced is a necessity:  Music.

Now, this may sound absurd, the notion that you need music to exercise.  But when I say “need,” I mean it in the sense that if you want to get the most out of your workout, you need music as much as you need sneakers.

The science behind music’s motivating effect is well-established.  I wrote about some of those studies in the past, but a fairly recent one found that people who listened to upbeat music and cycled to its beat used almost 10 percent less oxygen than the controls that cycled without music. In an even more recent study, published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, people who listened to upbeat music had a 15 percent higher endurance level than the controls that were music-less.

Normally, it’d be right about now that I’d tell you to choose any music that motivates you, from Beck to Bach, Elton John to John Denver, Rise Against to Against Me.

But according to a 20 year study by Costas Karageorghis, selecting music for exercise should be based on four criteria:  rhythm response, musicality, cultural impact and association.

Choosing a song based on rhythm response is another way of saying a song with a rhythm you respond best to, or the song that best matches the cadence with which you run, walk or pedal a bicycle.

Musicality is any song you consider to be musical, something with a mellifluous chorus line or a righteous bass line.

The final two criteria—cultural impact and association—is what we bring to music based on past experiences.  Perhaps there’s a song that reminds you of a pleasant past experience, or a band you saw that you really enjoyed.  Find a genre of music that best matches that band, or a genre of music that stimulates an emotional, motivated response.

Now, using these criteria doesn’t necessarily preclude your selecting slow songs, if slow songs are the ones that motivate you most.  But there’s something to be said for choosing an upbeat brand of music even if it’s not necessarily the kind of music that gets you motivated.  And by “upbeat,” I mean music that’s between 90 and 150 beats per minute (i.e., if you were to match a song’s beat with the beating of your heart when you’re exercising).

I say this because when some British researchers asked cyclists to listen to the same song three separate times while they exercised, the participants increased or decreased their distance in conjunction with how fast or slow the song was being played.  For example, when the researchers increased the tempo by 10 percent—which was so small an increase that none of the participants noticed the uptick in tempo—they increased their distance traveled by two percent and pedal cadence by nearly four percent.  The change in performance was even more pronounced when the tempo was slowed (10 percent below the normal speed), cutting back on their traveling distance by about four percent, their cadence dropping by nearly 10 percent.

The study was conducted by researchers from Liverpool John Moores University and published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.

These may not sound like huge swings in performance, but Olympic athletes devote hours of training time to trimming back their timed races by tenths and hundredths of a second.  Hundredths of a second can be the difference between silver and gold.

The same standard applies to your exercise, as every tenth of a mile and hundredth of a second is an improvement.   And there are few more effective ways of expediting improvement than with music.  Now that’s music to my ears.

Source:
msnbc.msn.com