How has the sport of running affected Europe recreationally and competitvely?
May 31, 2010
Filed under Running Answers
Im doing a project on a topic in contemporary European affairs and I have to make a presentation.
How has the sport of running recently impacted Europe. (current affairs)
For example: social and health benefits
running charities in europe
running clubs (recreational part)
I need to type up a research paper and do a powerpoint.
Click here to like this post. 
20 Most Surprising Health Benefits of Coffee
August 8, 2009
Filed under Diet And Nutrition
By Sarah Irani
Although coffee gets a bad rap, it’s actually a medicinal food. In fact, this stimulating bean isn’t nearly so bad as we’ve all been taught. Although I’m skeptical about grande latte supplementation in the long run (it’s a drug, after all), I found myself surprised by much of the science on coffee. Poor Ponce de Leon; all this time he should have been searching for the espresso machine.
Step aside, acai. Here are 20 surprising health benefits of coffee.
Apparently, coffee and alcohol really do go together. Believe it or not, alcohol drinkers who also drink coffee regularly have a lower chance of developing cirrhosis of the liver. That’s not to say it’s a healthy lifestyle – obviously, lowering your alcohol consumption is better. But…science says…
Caffeine reduces risk of skin cancer. Sorry, venti quaffers, this prevention method is topical. Lotions containing caffeine (both from coffee and green tea) have been shown to prevent the occurrence of cancerous tumors on the skin – in murine trials, anyway.
Have a smile with your morning brew! If you’re a caffephile, you don’t need this Johns Hopkins study to tell you that a cup or two a day increases your sense of well-being and happiness. You can thank dopamine for that, which also contributes to coffee’s addictive nature. But be aware, the study also noted that more than 2 cups daily increases the risk of anxiety and panic attacks. Some people respond more readily than others – if you find yourself feeling jittery or nervous, ease up on the joe.
Caffeine may reduce chance of Parkinson’s Disease. A 30-year study has shown that non-coffee drinkers have a higher chance of developing Parkinson’s Disease than their coffee-drinking counterparts.
Most Americans get their antioxidants from coffee. That doesn’t mean it’s the best source of antioxidants, just that it’s the most consumed. But, it’s true, coffee is very high in antioxidants. As for me, I’ll stick to fruit.
Black gold. After petroleum, coffee is the second most valuable economic product in the world. Imagine the financial potential of running our cars on coffee grounds.
Coffee may cut colon cancer in women. A 12-year study on Japanese women found that drinking 3 or more cups of coffee per day may actually halve the risk of developing colon cancer. They found no beneficial effect from green tea on the colon – in this case, it was strictly a coffee thing.
Coffee and diabetes, that’s a tricky one. Even though a Finnish study shows that drinking large amounts of coffee can reduce the risk of developing Type-2 Diabetes, coffee drinkers who already have diabetes have a harder time controlling their blood sugar levels.
Coffee reduces muscle pain. After a hard workout, a cup or two of coffee has been shown to reduce muscle soreness (in women, anyway) more effectively than naproxen, aspirin and ibuprofen. (But don’t replace your water thermos with coffee.)
Coffee will detox your liver in surprising ways. This remedy is not one for drinking: we’re talking about the coffee enema. Some people swear by it – using a tube to introduce coffee into the rectum and colon in order to stimulate the liver to remove toxins. Definitely not for the squeamish.
Coffee may reduce chance of death from heart disease. Studies show that drinking 4-5 cups of coffee a day can make you less likely to die from heart disease. The researchers think it may have something to do with coffee’s anti-inflammatory effects.
The devil is in the grounds. When coffee, which originated in Ethiopia and became popular in the Arab world, was first introduced to Western culture, Christian priests denounced it as the devil’s drink, given to the Muslims as a substitute for the wine (Christ’s blood) they weren’t allowed to consume. The belief at the time was that any coffee-drinking Christian risked burning in hell forever. Hooray, progress!
Coffee may help with short term memory. It’s probably because of caffeine’s stimulant effects, but an Austrian study showed that volunteers given caffeinated coffee had better reaction times and short-term memory function than those who were given the cup of decaf.
For women, caffeine may prevent long term memory loss. Because caffeine is a psychostimulant, older women who drink 3 or more
cups of coffee or tea a day have less memory loss and cognitive decline than their counterparts who drink less or none. Unfortunately, caffeine consumption doesn’t seem to have any preventative effect against dementia.
Caffeine won’t cause hypertension. Some of the studies can be contradictory and confusing. What we do know is that for non-habitual coffee drinkers, those first few cups will cause a temporary rise in blood pressure, but for regular drinkers, a tolerance develops and won’t cause any long term, permanent increase.
The injustice of cheap coffee. No, it’s not just an injustice to your connoisseur taste buds; conventional coffee farming exploits workers and destroys communities in third world countries. On average, 5% of the profits actually make it back to the farmers, who are hungry, underpaid and treated badly. Why do they work on coffee plantations at all? Because in many cases, the plantations own the most fertile land (which was most often acquired unscrupulously) and the local people won’t survive from subsistence farming alone. How can you avoid supporting the cycle of poverty, corruption and injustice? Only buy Fair Trade certified coffee.
Pesticides in your brew. Because almost all coffee is grown in third world countries with less stringent laws than Europe or the United States, your non-organic cuppa is probably laden with chemicals. That’s not just bad for you, it’s bad for the farmers and the tropical ecosystems in which the coffee is grown. Go organic, will ya?
Pick your poison – literally. Caffeine is an alkaloid, which is a type of poisonous, bitter substance found in plants. Other alkaloids include strychnine, nicotine, morphine, mescaline, and emetine (the deadly ingredient in hemlock). Fortunately, in small quantities the bean is harmless, but it’s worth thinking about if you choose to use other drugs (both pharmaceutical and recreational).
The FDA has approved caffeine for babies. This doesn’t mean you can wake up your sleepy infant with a bottle of latte. Caffeine injections have been used medicinally since 1999 in the United States to stimulate breathing in infants who are experiencing apnea. It’s still recommended that pregnant and breastfeeding women keep their caffeine intake to a minimum, but a modest amount is safe.
Coffee can fight cavities. Just avoid all the sugar and milk! Actually, roasted coffee has some antibacterial properties, particularly against Streptococcus mutans, one of the major causes of cavities. By the way, these properties have nothing to do with caffeine, so decaf drinkers will get the same protection.
Despite the positive health studies, it’s best not to intentionally pick up the caffeine habit if you’re not already a regular coffee drinker. Even though some of the studies suggest drinking 3 or more daily cups to get the benefits, everyone is different. If it makes you jittery and sick to your stomach, stick to a milder pick-me-up like green tea or yerba mate. But if that morning cup makes you feel awake, alive and eager to greet the day, you might as well indulge (in moderation) in the world’s most well-loved drink.
That Little Voice Inside Your Twinge
July 3, 2009
Filed under News
Turns out it’s not so obvious.
Deena Kastor, the American record holder for the marathon, interprets the advice selectively.
“Running isn’t always comfortable,” she said. “I remember running through a lot of discomfort and pain.”
And, Ms. Kastor added, she also runs when she does not feel like it.
“So many times the alarm goes off in the morning and you tell yourself you are too tired,” she said. “There are times when you are unmotivated, you don’t feel your best and most accomplished.”
But if you ignore those messages from your body and just go out and run or do your sport, she said, “those are the days when we have the most pride.”
“The trick in listening to your body is to know what you can run through,” she said. “If you have a sharp pain you should take care of it.”
So does listening to your body mean learning to understand the difference between a pain that signals a serious injury and one that can be ignored? And if it does, why do athletes like Ms. Kastor become seriously injured, anyway?
Last year she broke her foot three miles into the marathon at the Beijing Olympics. In that same race, Paula Radcliffe, who holds the world record in the women’s marathon, ran less than her best because her training was interrupted by a stress fracture that had set her back for months.
MAYBE the problem is that it is hard to understand what your body is saying.
“ ‘Listen to your body’ is always a tough one,” said Keith Hanson, a coach who directs the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project, which recruits talented distance runners and supports them while they train full time.
One of his runners, Brian Sell, was in the Beijing Olympics, and others are internationally competitive.
“There are several aches and pains that you can run through,” Mr. Hanson said, “and others that need some down time. I always try to follow one key rule: If you are gimping — altering your gait— after 10 minutes of running, then it is an injury and not just an ache or pain. You should never run through injuries. If you do, they almost always turn into compensation injuries. What started as an ankle pain becomes knee and hip problems.”
But sometimes even when you have a bad feeling about sudden pain, it can be hard to stop, especially during a race.
That happened to my friend Rafael Escandon, a researcher at a small biotech company in San Francisco. It was 2002, and he had decided to run the Twin Cities Marathon. He had run a few dozen marathons before, so he was hardly a beginner. He knew that the trick was to keep going during those stretches when you feel bad.
The race started well. Mr. Escandon had been training by running eight-minute miles but now, he said, he was going much faster, and it all seemed effortless. “It was all I could do to maintain a 7:40 pace, which felt like I was crawling,” he said.
Then, just after he passed the 17-mile point in the 26.2 mile race, he felt something awful just below his left calf. “It honestly felt like someone had taken a knife and cut my skin,” he said. “I hobbled over to a tree and attempted to stretch my calf for 10 minutes or so.
The pain got worse as he stretched, and even though it diminished when he wasn’t stretching, he still felt as if he had been cut. But dropping out of the race was not an option: he had never quit a marathon.
So, he said, he limped along for nine miles and finally crossed the finish line. Then he showered, took some ibuprofen and rushed to the airport to fly to Europe for a business trip.
When the plane landed, Mr. Escandon got out of his seat and, he said, was immediately “blinded by pain in my left leg.” It hurt so much he could not stand.
He eventually set off, slowly, “whimpering audibly,” he said, as he hobbled to his connecting gate.
Sweating, jet-lagged and still whimpering, he pulled up the leg of his jeans to take a look at his injury. “I was shocked at what I saw,” he said. “The medial side of my leg was grotesquely streaked in purple-black from the bottom of my calf to my ankle, including the top of my foot.”
It turned out that he had torn the muscle under his calf. For weeks afterward, the pain woke him at night. He could not run for three months, and even when he started again the best he could do for six months was a few miles on a treadmill.
“I should have listened to my body,” Mr. Escandon said. “It wasn’t just talking to me; it was screaming at me.”
On the other hand, there is also a different interpretation of “listen to your body.” It’s one favored by Asker Jeukendrup, the director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Birmingham, in England, and an ironman triathlete.
Listening, he said, means that you are supposed to listen for “valuable information” and learn to disregard “other negative information that may come into your thoughts that is actually irrelevant.”
Dismiss, for example, “some niggles, some feelings of fatigue,” he said.
The goal is to push your body to its limits, but not beyond. Easier said than done, he admitted. And, he added, not everyone can do it.
ACTUALLY, said Tom Fleming, my coach, it is unlikely that anyone can do it. Mr. Fleming won the New York City Marathon twice and has coached athletes ranging from adolescents to college and nationally ranked runners. He knows from his days as a competitive distance runner how hard it is to decide when to slow down, when to rest, when to push hard through discomfort or pain.
“I never listened to my body,” he said. “Maybe I should have. So let’s get that clear right off: I think it’s an impossible task.”
When he was training, Mr. Fleming said, he couldn’t train less or make himself go more slowly. And, he added, if you really listen to your body, you will not achieve what you are capable of.
Athletes need someone else, a coach if possible, he said, to tell them when to rest, when to take an easy day and when to work hard.
Another of my colleagues at The Times, Charlie Competello, said he tries to figure out his body’s signals for himself. But he struggles, arguing with himself about what his body is telling him. He thinks of his internal arguments as a debate between “Charlie” and “Charles.” They argue in the mornings, when he plans to go out for runs.
“ ‘Charlie’ says, ‘I’m tired and I’m not going to go out,’ ” he said. “ ‘Charles’ says: ‘No, no, no, you can make it. Go out and do it.’ ”
Usually, he said, Charles wins. He runs and is glad he did.
But the personas also argue in the evening about tempting food, like cake.
Charles says, “Don’t do it.” Charlie says, “Go ahead.”
And, in the evening, Charlie can be the winner. “For some reason, I’m a better person in the morning,” he said.
Loading ...
