Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news
12 Mar, 09 | by julietwalker
There is some good news this week for men in their fifties who have not exercised much in the past. A BMJ study published last week shows that taking up exercise between 50 to 60 years old is just as effective as exercising frequently by middle age. This means that it is never to late to take up an exercise regime.
BMJ in the news:
- Middle age ‘key for exercising’ - BBC Online, UK
- Men in their 50s can add two years to their life with exercise regime - The Guardian, UK
- It’s never too late to start exercise – Reuters
- Exercise boost for over-50s - Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
- Study Highlights Teen Obesity Risks - New York Times, United States
- GPs are medicalising healthy elderly people, professor warns - Daily Telegraph, UK
- Millions of elderly patients prescribed unnecessary pills because of ‘tick-box culture’ - Daily Mail, UK
- UK black women have double the risk of pregnancy complications - Nursing in Practice, UK
- GPs’ target ‘could harm diabetics’ - Channel 4 News, UK
- Safety concerns over drugs for early labour – The Guardian, UK
BMJ in blogs:
- Exercise In Middle Age To Live Longer
- Middle age activeness boosts men’s longevity | Silver Scorpio …
- It`s Never Too Late To Start Exercise - Lifestyle - Javno
- Starting physical exercise after 50 beneficial: study | Health News US
- OnMedica - Blogs: Portfolio politics … Is breast cancer …
- Fertility Treatments Unlikely to Raise Ovarian Cancer Risk « Libby .
- Fertility Drugs Don’t Greatly Affect Ovaries | Denmark.net
- EverythingHealth: Fertility Drugs Do Not Cause Ovarian Cancer
Most read on bmj.com:
- Perils of criticising Israel
- Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t
- Total mortality after changes in leisure time physical activity in 50 year old men: 35 year follow-up of population based cohort
- Let’s not turn elderly people into patients
- Tight control of blood glucose in long standing type 2 diabetes
Most commented on bmj.com:
- Let’s not turn elderly people into patients
- Breast screening: the facts—or maybe not
- My surprise at fallout over dispatches from Israel
- What to do about orchestrated email campaigns
- Perils of criticising Israel
Juliet Walker is the Editorial Intern, BMJ
I fear that the majority of humans between 50 to 60 years old, and probably also some physicians, do not know one important action mechanism of physical excercise among a lot of others. Here it’s. Physical excercise brings about physiological stretching stress upon endothelial cells, causing their elongation, paralleling blood flow. As a consequence, basal endothelial adhesion points are spread on a larger surface, so that their stimulation may act more intensively on nuclear receptors, incresing useful substance synthesis, thus ameliorating precious endothels functions, as particularly NO-radical secretion through NO-radical- endothel-synthase, and other substrates, acting against blood clotting.
Sergio Stagnaro
March 12th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
An interesting but worrying aspect of the reports of the beneficial consequences of exercising in the middle aged is the failure to address the question of WHY is exercise of health value.
Because the effects of exercise have been compared with the benefits of quitting smoking, the common feature is that in both situations blood viscosity is reduced.
Unfortunately, blood viscosity is not a common topic - even though it is not new. In 1911, Allbutt published a paper titled, “The viscosity of the blood. A review.” In the 1970s Dintenfass published two books on the topic. More recently Ernst and his associates reported that low intensity exercise lowered blood viscosity.
The relevance of exercise in the aging has been explained by Ajmani and Rifkind, who in 1998 reported that the aging process was accompanied by an increase in blood viscosity and in fibrinogen levels, with a reduction in red cell deformability.
Yet despite the easy access to the relevant literature by using search engines such as PubMed, it is extremely unusual to find reference to blood viscosity in reports on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders and diabetes mellitus. One is left with the impression that the current approaches to illness do not include a role for changes in the blood. But blood is a thixotropic system, which means that in fast flowing arteries it behaves almost like a Newtonian fluid, but in the outer branches of the circulation, the reduced rate of flow is associated with an increase in blood viscosity.
The failure to recognise a role for blood viscosity means that agents which reduce blood viscosity are unutilised. For example in 1985 Kromhout et al reported that a daily intake of 35 grams of oily fish resulted in a 50% reduction in the incidence of heart disease in a 20-year-long study. In the following year Kamada et al reported that sardine oil increased the fluidity of the red cell membrane.
Might I suggest that those interested in circulatory problems and heart disease or diabetes mellitus, explore the information available about blood viscosity though the search engine PubMed. What is certain is that until the role of blood viscosity is recognised, many conditions will be treated inappropriately and managed poorly.
Les Simpson
March 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pm