Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Can Raising NEAT Help Lose Weight?

Living in times of great convenience, most people can move from one place to another either by car or public transportation without too much walking and energy expenditure. Meanwhile, modern people are prone to sedentary lifestyle, spending too much time sitting down. An average of 10 to 15 hours a day are spent sitting in office, in transportation, watching television, browsing or surfing the internet at home. Such lifestyle, together with unhealthy diet, has created obesity epidemic. Obesity can lead to many complications including Type-2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and stroke.

If a person sits for too long, his or her body’s natural thermogenesis (calorie-burning capability) is suppressed, and he or she cannot incite the body’s full capacity to burn calories. In order to prevent from getting weight gain, people need to have more physical activities on a daily basis.

A study that was published 2012 in the online journal ‘BMJ Open’ reported that people who reduce excessive sitting to less than 3 hours a day live 2 years longer and the gain in life expectancy from reducing excessive television viewing to less than 2 hours a day is 1.38 years. Sitting for extended periods of time has been linked with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity, according to researchers.

Most experts encourage people to engage with vigorous exercise several times a week to keep fit and avoid gaining weight. But there is another way for one to burn more calories all day long: increasing NEAT time by moving more and sitting less. The theory behind this is simple: it takes energy (calories) to move even the smallest muscle.

Research published in journal ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’ (now known as JAMA Internal Medicine) found that the amount of everyday activity a person gets, beyond the 30 minutes of traditional exercise, might matter even more for his or her overall health than trips to the gym.

NEAT, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is the energy a person expends each day for everything that is not sleeping, eating, or sports-like activities. These are non-exercise activities that would normally be performed each day. According to researchers at the Mayo Clinic, NEAT could play a major role in whether or not a person loses or gains weight.

Depending on everyone’s activity level, calories burned from increasing NEAT time each day can range from 1,500 to 2,400 calories. According to the American Heart Association, obese individuals tend to be seated for 2.5 hours per day more than sedentary lean counterparts. Researchers estimated that if obese individuals could adopt the NEAT habits, they could burn an additional 350 calories per day.

There are many things that can raise the NEAT. For instance, one can use the stairs instead of escalator or elevator. This would probably help burn an extra 50 to 100 calories on average each day. Other things like walking, washing dishes, doing garden work, or playing with kids can all increase the NEAT.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Heart Disease Prevention - How Is Stroke Related To Heart Disease?

It is common for heart problems including heart attack, congestive heart failure, abnormal heart rhythms, and cardiac arrest to occur immediately after a stroke. These heart problems may be caused by the stroke itself, or by the same underlying process that induced the stroke, or the heart problem may occur first to cause the stroke. More details at:


Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Can Drinking Coffee Or Tea Lower Stroke Risk?

Coffee and tea are 2 of the popular beverages around the world. But coffee and most kinds of tea contains caffeine, of which its health effects have remained controversial.

Some studies reported that caffeine is bad for the health. For instance, studies indicated that consuming more than 500 to 600 mg of caffeine a day may lead to insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irritability, an upset stomach, a fast heartbeat and even muscle tremors. Yet there are favorable health reports on caffeine. A study showed that people who drank 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day were less likely to have a buildup of calcium in the vessels that bring blood to the heart muscle. That could mean a lower chance of heart disease. Research also indicated that coffee and green tea might help prevent breast and prostate cancers, while all kinds of tea may protect one against the kinds of cancer that affect the ovaries and stomach.

On March 14, 2013, a paper published in ‘American Heart Association's journal Stroke’ reported that a cup of coffee or 4 cups of green tea a day may reduce the risk of stroke by 20 percent.

Japanese researchers looked at the drinking habits of 82,369 Japanese adults aged between 45 and 74 over a 13-year period. These participants were free from cardiovascular disease or cancer in 1995 and 1998. Over the course of study, they kept track of hospital records, death certificates and data about deaths from heart disease and stroke. 

During an average of 13 years of follow-up, they found that those who had at least 1 cup of coffee a day lowered their risk for stroke about 20 percent. And, compared to those who rarely drank green tea, people who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 14 percent lower risk of stroke and people who drank at least 4 cups lowered their risk by 20 percent. 

Risk for a type of stroke called a hemorrhagic stroke was cut by 32 percent among those who drank a cup of coffee or 2 cups of green tea daily. Hemorrhagic stroke, which accounts for about 13 percent of stroke, is a condition in which a blood vessel in the brain bursts and blood floods part of the brain. 

The researchers claimed that both drinks helped protect from the risk of heart attacks. Their findings also suggested regularly drinking both coffee and green tea could provide the greatest benefit possibly due to an interaction effect for each other.

All the results were arrived after taking into account of factors like age, sex, smoking, alcohol, weight, diet and exercise. In the study, green tea drinkers were more likely to exercise than non-drinkers. 

While it is unclear how green tea affects stroke risk, researchers suspected that green tea contains catechins that may provide some protection to blood vessels. Several chemicals in coffee are believed to offer a boost to health, including caffeine and chlorogenic acid, which researchers suggest could help cut stroke risks by lowering the chances of developing Type-2 diabetes.

Sunday, September 03, 2017

Heart Disease Prevention - Can Natural Remedies Manage Hypertension?

According to a published paper, about 75 to 80 percent of the world population use herbal (alternative) medicines, mainly in developing countries, for primary health care because of their better acceptability with human body and lesser side effects. Can natural remedies really manage hypertension? Find out more at: