Post by KenNiemann on Aug 7, 2009 0:11:40 GMT -5
Regular sprints boost metabolism
January 28th, 2009 in Medicine & Health / Diseases
A regular high-intensity, three-minute workout has a significant effect on the body’s ability to process sugars. Research published in the open access journal BMC Endocrine Disorders shows that a brief but intense exercise session every couple of days may be the best way to cut the risk of diabetes.
Professor James Timmons worked with a team of researchers from Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, Scotland, to investigate the effect of ‘high-intensity interval training’ (HIT) on the metabolic prowess of sixteen sedentary male volunteers. He said, “The risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes is substantially reduced through regular physical activity. Unfortunately, many people feel they simply don’t have the time to follow current exercise guidelines. What we have found is that doing a few intense muscle exercises, each lasting only about 30 seconds, dramatically improves your metabolism in just two weeks."
Current exercise guidelines suggest that people should perform moderate to vigorous aerobic and resistance exercise for several hours per week. While these guidelines are very worthwhile in principle, Timmons suggests that a lack of compliance indicates the need for an alternative, “Current guidelines, with regards to designing exercise regimes to yield the best health outcomes, may not be optimal and certainly require further discussion. The low volume, high intensity training utilized in our study substantially improved both insulin action and glucose clearance in otherwise sedentary young males and this indicates that we do not yet fully appreciate the traditional connection between exercise and diabetes”.
The subjects in this trial used exercise bikes to perform a quick sprint at their highest possible intensity. In principle, however, any highly vigorous activity carried out a few days per week should achieve the same protective metabolic improvements. Timmons added, “This novel approach may help people to lead a healthier life, improve the future health of the population and save the health service millions of pounds simply by making it easier for people to find the time to exercise”.
Reference: Extremely short duration high intensity training substantially improves insulin action in young healthy males, John A Babraj, Niels BJ Vollaard, Cameron Keast, Fergus M Guppy, Greg Cottrell and James A Timmons, BMC Endocrine Disorders (in press) www.biomedcentral.com/bmcendocrdisord/
Shedding Fat in Record Time; Learn the Facts
Most people think that the longer they work out, the more weight they will lose. They walk or bike for 45 to 60 minutes, mile after sweaty mile, assuming that they are melting off unwanted fat with every step.
In fact, these dedicated but misinformed exercisers are undermining their own efforts!
So, endless hours walking on your treadmill for an extended period of time not only makes you tired, hungry, and grouchy, it actually makes it much, much more difficult to lose body fat.
A study published in the April 2000 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise looked at what happens to people who try to do long duration low intensity aerobic in combination with caloric restriction as part of a weight loss program.
Guess what happens when you get on the treadmill and at the same go on a low calorie diet?
BAD NEWS!!
Your body takes your next meal and stores as much of it as it possibly can as fat.
So it is important to understand that endurance exercise is not the best way to lose body fat. Long-term exercise calls on the body to store more fat!
One of the primary reasons people choose the wrong form of exercise is that they assume that their body changes during an exercise session.
It never does.
All the important changes begin AFTER you stop working out. They are consequences of your body adapting to prepare for the next time you ask your body to perform that same activity.
Your body is always adapting to the demands put on it.
Would you believe that endurance (long duration aerobic exercise) exercise actually encourages fat production?
Here are some important medical references:
Researchers at Colorado State University measured how long our bodies continue to burn fat after brief periods of exercise. Study participants exercised for 20 minutes in sets of two-minute intervals of exercise, and one-minute rest periods.
The researchers found that participants still burned fat 16 hours after the interval exercising!
At rest, their fat oxidation was up by 62 percent, and their resting metabolic rate rose 4 percent.
In other words, interval exercise continues to trigger fat burning long after the session is over.
Another study conducted at Laval University in Quebec compared long, moderate-intensity, aerobic exercise with high-intensity short interval exercise (Grizzly Bear Intervals).
The first group performed long-duration aerobics by cycling for 45 minutes without stopping, and the second group performed short-interval aerobics by cycling in numerous short bouts (lasting from 15 to 90 seconds), with rests between intervals.
The Results?
The long-duration group burned twice as many calories as the interval group, but the short-interval group LOST MORE FAT.
In fact, for every calorie burned, the interval group LOST NINE TIMES MORE FAT.
Interval Training Can Help the Overweight Burn 600% More Fat
03 Jan 2006
As the obesity rate in the United States continues to climb, select personal trainers and fitness facilities are rising to the challenge by helping their clients achieve their weight loss goals and devour their body fat stores through interval training. The results are promising for beginners and advanced fitness enthusiasts alike.
“Interval training removes many of the mental and physical barriers to weight loss” says personal trainer and fitness instructor Leah Arnold, creator of Isis Fitness LeanZone interval program. “In as little as six weeks, interval training can exponentially increase your fat burning capacity without the deprivation of dieting or spending hours in the gym.”
Intervals take an individual back and forth through moderate to increasingly more difficult levels of exercise intensity over a period of weeks, reprogramming their bodies to utilize ever larger stores of body fat as fuel, as opposed to dietary calories alone. In fact, interval training can increase per minute caloric fat burn from as little as .06 fat calories per minute to as high as 4.8 calories per minute in just six weeks; an increase of almost 700%.
No Time To Exercise
by Terry Grossman, M.D.
A recent study out of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh , Scotland showed that young men who exercised just four minutes a week had significantly lower levels of insulin.
These researchers took a group of 16 young men who were out of shape from not exercising, but otherwise healthy and had them ride an exercise bike vigorously for 30 seconds four times a day two days a week. Total time spent exercising -- four minutes.
After two weeks of this minimal amount of exercise, the researchers found a 23 percent improvement in how effectively their study subjects’ insulin cleared glucose (sugar) from their bloodstream. The positive benefits were found to last for 10 days after their last exercise session.
Unfortunately, this study was limited to insulin only, but there were suggestions that other benefits might include lower blood pressure and weight control.
Stanford did a study years ago, 12 min of high intensity interval trainig was all it took to change metabolisim for 24hrs.
The United States currently spends over $2.5 trillion or more than $8000 per person each year on healthcare. Previous studies have found that poor eating habits and physical inactivity account for a significant portion of these expenses.
Fully one in four people get no exercise at all, while public health authorities recommend 150 minutes of exercise each week. Yet, this is more time than many people have to spare. This study suggests that just a few minutes a week may still produce significant benefits. Perhaps many people feel that since they don’t have the time or energy to exercise hours each week, doing less is useless. Hopefully, word of this study will spread and everyone will try to get some exercise each week – even four minutes can be worth a lot.
In this study, subjects used exercise bikes to perform six sessions of intervals over two weeks. Each session consisted of between four and six 30-second sprints, plus a few minutes of rest in between. After two weeks of training, their body's ability to control blood sugar levels improved by 23 percent, says James Timmons, the study's coauthor and an exercise biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh , Scotland . The study appears in BioMed Central's BMC Endocrine Disorders
