Another Exercise Benefit: You Won’t Fall as Much

Newswise — Remaining physically fit and sticking to a regular exercise routine could lower your risk of taking a tumble, finds a new research study.

About 19,000 people die each year in the United States from falls and about 8 million undergo treatment in emergency rooms. What’s more, although falls are the leading cause of injuries among people age 65 and older, young people fall down just as much as seniors, according to the study.

“We were not surprised that people 65 years and older were no more likely to report falling than younger people, given that younger people are more likely to engage in more risky activities, such as standing on ladders, running and playing sports,” said lead author Kristin Mertz, M.D., at the epidemiology department at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mertz and her colleagues wanted to learn what people are doing when they fall and whether fitness has a part in the likelihood of falling. Their findings appear online and in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The researchers used data from participants in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study from 1970 to 1989 and who responded to questions about falls during a follow-up survey in 1990.

The survey asked whether the participants had fallen in the past 12 months and, if so, what they were doing when they fell. Were they, for instance, walking, doing sports, exercising or getting out a tub? Participants answered questions about how many minutes each week they did aerobic exercise and they took a treadmill test as a measure of fitness.

Of the 10,615 participants between the ages of 20 and 87 years, 2,110 (or 20 percent) reported falling in the last year. Of those who fell, 15 percent fell while walking. Women were 2.8 times as likely as men to fall while walking, but fitness levels made a difference in men falling while it did not for women. The study found men with low fitness levels were 2.2 times more apt to fall while walking than were highly fit men.


“We were surprised to find that fitness and physical activity seem to have a stronger relationship with walking-related falls in men compared with women,” Mertz said.
The researchers concluded that individuals need about two hours of regular exercise a week to lower the risk of falling. Those who exercised less − or not at all − did not have the same protection.

Debbie Rose, co-director at the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence at California State University at Fullerton, agreed.

“Of all the fall prevention strategies that have been studied over the last two decades, well-designed exercise programs produce the best results, both in terms of lowering fall risk and fall incidence rates,” she said. “Physical activities designed to improve aerobic endurance should be included in any activity program aimed at reducing fall risk.”

Source: Health Behavior News Service, 

 American Journal of Preventive Medicine: Contact the editorial office at (858) 534-9340 or eAJPM@ucsd.edu.
Mertz KJ, et al. Falls among adults: the association of cardiorespiratory fitness and physical activity with walking-related falls. Am J Prev Med 39(1), 2010.
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Is the Internet ruining our minds?

Books vs Internet 

Author Carr, shields our brains from distractions: books allows us to focus our mind on one topic at a time, unlike reading on Internet where we skim, browse and quickly scan through torrents of text, photos and video.

"Contemplation, introspection, reflection -- there is no space or time for those on the Internet."

 

We have developed sharper skills at making fast decisions, particularly visual ones, Carr says. Photograph by: Photos.com, canada.com

When author Nicholas Carr began researching his book on whether the Internet is ruining our minds, he restricted his online access and e-mail and turned off his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

His new book "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" argues the latest technology renders us less capable of deep thinking. Carr found himself so distracted that he couldn't work on the book while staying as connected, as is commonplace.

"I found my inability to concentrate a great disability," Carr told Reuters in an interview.

"So, I abandoned my Facebook and Twitter accounts and throttled back on e-mail so I was only checking a couple of times a day rather than every 45 seconds. I found those types of things really did make a difference," he said.

After initially feeling "befuddled" by his sudden lack of online connection, Carr said, within a couple of weeks he was able to stay focused on one task for a sustained period and, thankfully, able to do his work.

Carr wrote a 2008 Atlantic magazine piece that posed the controversial question "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and wanted to dig deeper into how the Internet alters our minds.

His book examines the history of reading and the science of how using different media changes our brains. Exploring how society shifted from an oral tradition to the printed word and to the Internet, he details how the brain rewires itself to adjust to new information sources.

Reading on the Internet has fundamentally changed how we use our brains, he writes.

Facing a torrent of text, photos, video, music and links to other web pages combined with incessant interruptions from text messages, e-mails, Facebook updates, Tweets, blogs and RSS feeds, our minds have become used to skimming, browsing and scanning information.

As a result, we have developed sharper skills at making fast decisions, particularly visual ones, Carr says.

But now most of us infrequently read books, long essays or articles that would help us focus, concentrate and be introspective and contemplative, Carr writes.

ARE WE LIBRARIANS?

He says we are becoming more like librarians -- able to find information quickly and discern the best nuggets -- than scholars who digest and interpret information.

That lack of focus hinders our long-term memory, leading many of us to feel distracted, he said.
"We never engage the deeper, interpretive functions of our brains," he said.

To illustrate, he likens short-term memory to a thimble and long-term memory to a large bathtub. Reading a book is like filling the tub with water from one steadily flowing faucet with each thimble of information building upon the last.

By contrast, the Internet is countless fast-flowing faucets, leaving us grasping for thimbles of disparate information to put in the tub and making it harder for our brains to draw connections and have cogent recall.
"What we are losing is a whole other set of mental skills, the ones that require not the shifting of our focus but the maintaining of our focus," Carr said.

"Contemplation, introspection, reflection -- there is no space or time for those on the Internet."

Carr says for centuries books shielded our brains from distraction, focusing our minds on one topic at a time.
But with devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad, which incorporate eReaders and web browsers, becoming commonplace, Carr predicts books too will change.

"New forms of reading always require new forms of writing," he said.

If writers cater to a society that is chronically distracted, they will inevitably eschew writing complex arguments that require sustained attention and instead write in pithy, bite-sized bits of information, Carr predicts.

Carr has a suggestion for those who feel web surfing has left them incapable of concentration -- slow down, turn off the Internet and practice the skills of contemplation, introspection and reflection.

"It is pretty clear from the brain science that if you don't exercise particular cognitive skills, you are going to lose them," he said. "If you are constantly distracted, you are not going to think in the same way that you would think if you paid attention."

By Mark Egan, Reuters

Hawking: Religion will be defeated by science

There were some techies Monday who believed they experienced a sighting of God somewhere in San Francisco.

Those people might care to hark at deeply relevant news. God will be defeated by science. No, not by faltering Wi-Fi systems at a conference. And, no, these are not my words. This is the considered opinion of someone sometimes referred to as the cleverest man in the world, Stephen Hawking.

In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, due to air Monday evening, Hawking expounded upon the largest questions, those that transcend iPhones and androids: Can science and God live happily ever after?

According to ABC News, Hawking first tried to define God in a way that he, as a scientist, might feel comfortable: "What could define God (is thinking of God) as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," he said.

Indeed, he expressed disappointment at how humans have thought of deity.

 
(Credit: CC Alex Lee2001/Flickr)

 

"They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible," he said.

Perhaps there will be some who might conceive that stranger things have happened. Others will nod sagely, while still secretly hoping there is another life after this one. However, couldn't one imagine a point at which science and religion somehow meet, shake hands and positions and agree on a concord?

Hawking, who has already recommended that we should steer clear of aliens, suggested to Sawyer that this was somewhat less likely than North Korea winning the World Cup: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, (and) science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

I wish I could live in and with such certainty. Somehow, the more we know, the further away we are from something that feels real.

I cannot help thinking of baseball players, filled to their hat peaks with science's latest creations: HGH, steroids, and all sorts of female hormones. They smite the ball into the nearest river.

Yet, as they stomp on to home plate, what do they do? They look up at the sky and cross themselves. Perhaps they get their HGH from aliens. Perhaps, though, there is still some way to go before we can be sure that science will prove absolutely everything about our weird and occasionally wonderful universe.
I mean, can science really explain the deity that is Justin Bieber?

  By Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 

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Advice For New Graduates

Congratulations New Graduates

Well, it’s that time of year again, but this time nobody asked me to give a commencement address. Wonder why?

I’m full of good advice for those just starting out in the world of work. I’m full of it because neither of my boys took any of it in their time. I can see the married one now, passing some wisdom along to his kiddos, but I don’t think he realizes where it came from. It’s a good thing he married well. I know he did because both his kiddos are smarter than anyone on my side of the family. We’re from the shallow end of the gene pool.

I often tell new graduates the secret to choosing a spouse—particularly a wife. What you do is watch them ride up an escalator, especially a real tall elevator like some they have in the D.C. subway system. What you hope for is for her to take at least a few steps toward the top—a small sign that she isn’t satisfied just moving along with the crowd. If she passes the escalator test, check to see if she checks luggage on a short plane ride. My wife flunks both those tests, but what is it they say? The exception that proves the rule?

Escalators and moving sidewalks are great metaphors for economic progress. You can make pretty good progress just standing still. A rising tide lifts all boats. The good prospects, however, add a little additional effort of their own.

When we think of our entitlement programs, like Social Security and Medicare, the metaphor is how many people we have pulling the wagon versus how many are riding in the wagon. We have more and more riders relative to pullers, and we need to do something about it. We need to get smarter about our immigration policies, for one thing, and invite more good pullers into our great melting pot. I’d welcome really good pullers from just about anywhere, but I’d start looking in Asia. All the Asians I come into contact with seem to be hard workers and are very smart.

The favorable brain drain our country has enjoyed for decades is diminishing, maybe even reversing. We need to reverse the reversal. For starters, get rid of those crazy limits on H1B visas.

It’s standard advice to tell graduates they will need to work smarter as well as harder. That’s not always easy. Our natural inclination is just to pedal faster if we start slipping behind.

I touched on this theme recently when I suggested that standing over BP—boot to neck—demanding that they try harder or else may not be all that helpful. It’s like the SOB behind you honking his horn while you’re trying desperately to start your stalled car. Offer to honk his horn for him if he will start your car for you. (See "Beating On BP Won't Get The Gulf Cleaned Up")

I pointed out that this self-defeating tendency we have to just try harder is common among sports fans who assume their team would win if they only cared enough and tried hard enough.

Tennis is where you find the answer to smarter not harder, and not just by losing yourself contemplating the spin of the ball. Most of us who learned to play tennis as adults never learned to use topspin, which put a low ceiling on how good we can ever be. Top spin pulls a hard hit ball down into the court. Without top spin, it floats, and you have to ease up to keep the ball in the court. After mastering top spin, you can hit it hard and still keep it within the lines. Unfortunately, top spin can’t be taught to adults. I have personal knowledge of this.

New graduates should start planning for your first-born’s first tennis lessons in about three to four years. Start saving your money.

Let me close with a lesson I learned many years ago, but was reminded of again last week. The lesson is that the smartest, most successful people you will come into contact with speak very simply and clearly. It’s the novice on the make who tries to impress you with his newly acquired jargon and fancy talk. They are the ones that form the tight circles at receptions and allow only the few they consider worthy to break in. Actually, by self-selecting, they are doing you a great favor. Keep on circling; you can do better.

I did better this week, benefiting from the generosity of a kind hostess. At a dinner, I had the honor of sitting next to one of my heroes. It was Burton Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, the classic on efficient financial markets. That he was the smartest man in the room went without saying. That he could endure the likes of me through a long dinner without looking over my shoulder and without trying to impress me with his smarts was . . . well, impressive.

You know, graduates, that efficient financial markets are sort of a special case of what some economists call rational expectations. They both say, in effect, that new information is useless, largely because it has already been used.

It’s like “Nobody goes to that restaurant any more; it’s too crowded.”

Congratulations graduates, wherever you are.

By Robert McTeer 

Bob McTeer is a fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. He was also President of the Dallas Fed for 14 years. 
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The Economics Of Why American Soccer Lags Behind The World

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The U.S. Men's National soccer team opens its play in the 2010 World Cup against England in a much anticipated matchup Saturday, June 12 in Rustenburg, South Africa.  A rematch of 2 countries that met 60 years ago in group play at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, and the site of perhaps the most glorious U.S. soccer victory of all time.

And though a victory over England in 2010 would not be the monumental upset it was in 1950, and though the American side during the summer of 2009 at the Confederations Cup beat 2008 European Cup champions Spain and led Brazil 2-0 before succumbing in the finals, U.S. soccer is still viewed as a second-class citizen by most soccer experts.


Brazil, Italy, Holland, Germany, Spain, Argentina, France and England are traditionally considered top tier soccer nations.  Most experts would rank the U.S. somewhere among the 10th to 20th best soccer playing nation in the world.

U.S. soccer has made tremendous strides since 1950.  Popular enough to sustain the North American Soccer League from 1968-1984.  Resilient enough to renew pro soccer with MLS starting in 1996, and the league has grown from 10 teams to 18 teams by the start of the 2011 season.  Internationally, we've qualified for 6 straight World Cup trips starting in 1990 after a 40 year hiatus.  And the U.S. will likely be awarded another World Cup in either 2018 or 2022 after successfully hosting the 1994 World Cup.

Despite all these positives, there are various economic explanations why the U.S. continues to languish behind the world soccer powers.  Namely, a lack of TV and corporate money in the U.S., 'first-mover advantages' and socioeconomic differences between the U.S. and many superior soccer playing nations.



TV and Corporate Money

Spaniard Pau Gasol of the LA Lakers plays in the NBA rather than Spain's top basketball league because there's more wealth and prestige in the NBA than he can find in any other basketball league in the world.  Similarly, Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard of the U.S. soccer team play their professional soccer in England because it has far more wealth and prestige than the MLS.

This difference in wealth and prestige stems from international differences in the way TV and corporate money is expended on soccer.  There is a domino effect that continues to hurt the visibility of American soccer leagues like MLS because lower revenue streams from media and corporate sponsorship deals hamstrings the league's ability to offer salaries that will attract the world's best players to America.

If fans aren't watching on TV, then ratings are lower.  If ratings are lower, then MLS can't garner the type of TV contracts that you see in the English Premiere League or the National Football League.  If ratings are lower, then MLS can't charge premium sponsorship and advertising rates.

With a paucity of TV and sponsor/ad revenue compared to other world soccer leagues and other American sports leagues, the league cannot afford to pay top world players in their prime the kind of dollars they can command in the top leagues in Germany, England, Italy, or Spain.

In American sports, the most lucrative playing careers in team sports have been and continue to be found in professional basketball, baseball, hockey, and football.  Since these sports yield a higher rate of return to the professional athlete in terms of a greater likelihood to make more money and not have to travel abroad to do so, these inherent realities - which owe themselves to the popularity of these sports and their subsequent ability to secure significant TV and corporate revenue - further depletes the potential talent base for American soccer since some top-flight amateur athletes may choose more lucrative sporting careers.

'First Mover' Advantages and Socioeconomic Factors

Soccer is England's game, much like hockey is Canada's game and pigskin football is America's game.  Going back to the Cambridge Rules drawn up at Trinity College in 1848 to help standardize the organized rules of 'football' across various English public schools, this highlights the significance and long-run power associated with the  'first mover advantage'.  It was England's sport first, and as such to this day, their nation lives and breathes soccer...and this is reflective in the broadcast rights fees and the corporate dollars the EPL can command.

The historical popularity of soccer in South America and other nations with lower per-capita income levels may owe itself to economic logistics.  Soccer is not an expensive game to play.  You need a ball.  You need space.  And sometimes not even that to grow a passion and skill for the sport.  Pele, often regarded as the best player ever and who came from humble beginnings, juggled oranges in the streets of Brazil as a boy.
For many lower income nations, most other sports are cost prohibitive either in terms of the simple logistics of playing the sport at the youth level (e.g. hockey, American football) or the infrastructural and organizational costs of player development, equipment and facilities and league administration.  As such, soccer is THE sport of many nations where the socioeconomics dictate that soccer is the most financially accessible option to a nation's residents.

Conversely, the U.S. has the wealth and infrastructure to sustain and support leagues in plenty of sports more historically native to North America.  And with more money to throw at players in these sports, there is arguably a financial incentive that may steer the best amateur athletes away from soccer.  In other nations, the main draw both financially and in terms of prestige is soccer.  Subsequently, other nations are more likely to attract their best athletes to the sport of soccer.

As a soccer enthusiast, I'm ever hopefully that the popularity and interest in soccer on a professional level in the U.S. will continue to grow, which is why the U.S. performance in the 2010 World Cup, and in particular their first match against England, is so important for promoting soccer to the casual American sports fan.
Because without higher TV rights fees and greater outlays from the corporate sector, it's hard to overcome first mover and socioeconomic factors which partially explain America's current 2nd to 3rd tier place in the world of soccer.

By Dr. Rishe is the Director of Sportsimpacts and an Associate Professor of Economics at Webster University in St. Louis, MO. 

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