The above statements are taken from some of the results from an extensive soccer research project involving more than 50 researchers from seven countries. The researchers studied physiological, psychological and sociological aspects of recreational soccer and compared it with running. Led by Professors Peter Krustrup and Jens Bangsbo from the Department of Exercise and Sports Sciences, University of Copenhagen, the 3-year project covered several intervention studies involving both men, women and children, who were divided into soccer, running and control groups. The results from the studies are so remarkable that the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports are publishing a special edition issue entitled Football for Health containing 14 scientific articles from the soccer project on Tuesday 6 April 2010.

Soccer for Health

The researchers studied the physical effects of soccer training for untrained subjects aged 9 to 77 years. The conclusion was clear. Soccer provides broad-spectred health and fitness effects that are at least as pronounced as for running, and in some cases even better.

Study leader Peter Krustrup concludes “Soccer is a very popular team sport that contains positive motivational and social factors that may facilitate compliance and contribute to the maintenance of a physically active lifestyle. The studies presented have demonstrated that soccer training for two-three hours per week causes significant cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal adaptations, independent on gender, age or lack of experience with soccer”.

Professor Jens Bangsbo continues: “The effects can be maintained for a long period even with a reduced frequency of training to one to two times one hour a week. Recreational soccer, therefore, appears to be an effective type of training leading to performance improvements and significant beneficial effects to health, including a reduction in the risk of cardiovascular diseases, falls and fractures. In a number of aspects, soccer training appears to be superior to running training. Soccer training can also be used to treat hypertension and it was clearly superior to a standard treatment strategy of physician-guided traditional recommendations”.

The two researchers foresee a great perspective in using soccer as a health promoting activity: “The studies have convincingly shown that soccer training is effective to enhance fitness and the health profile for the general population. Future studies are needed to understand what is causing the beneficial effects of football, how well football can be used to improve heart health in early childhood and how other patient groups such as those with type II diabetes or cancer can benefit from playing soccer”.

Soccer creates we-stories and helps women stay active

One of the many aspects of the study was to examine the level of social capital for women gained from running and soccer. Even though both the soccer players and the runners trained in groups, there were significant differences in the way they interacted and what they considered the most important aspects of the sport they were engaging in. The runners were more focused on themselves as individuals, whereas the soccer players developed “we”-stories as they began to see themselves as a team. From the beginning, most of the women, both soccer players and runners, thought running would be an easier form of exercise to stick to after the intervention programme was over. That turned out not to be the case:

“The most important finding was the difference in social interaction and creation of we-stories between the groups, which may impact the possibilities of long-term compliance. A year after the study, many of the soccer players continue to play soccer, some have even joined an organised soccer club. Not many from the running group have continued their training. This can very well be due to the fact that the runners focussed on their health and on getting in shape, whereas the soccer players were more committed to the activity itself, including the fun and not letting down team mates”, says Associate Professor Laila Ottesen. Men worry less when playing soccer than when running. Another study examined the exertion experienced during training for untrained adults and their experience of “worries” and “flow”. This study, based on 6 groups of untrained men and women, showed that all groups experienced an overall high level of flow during the intervention, which underlines that the participants felt motivated, happy and involved to the point where they forgot time and fatigue. There was no difference in the level of worry for the female soccer players and runners, but the running men seemed to worry quite a lot more than their soccer playing counterparts.

“The men that played soccer elicited lower levels of worry than during running, 2.8 vs 4.0 on a 0-6 scale, and although they are training at the same average heart rate they do not feel the exertion as strongly as during running” says Associate Professor Anne-Marie Elbe and adds: “Further research is needed to examine why men and women experience playing soccer differently but it could be that the men just have had more experience with football in earlier years than the women”.

Documentation for FIFA, Michelle Obama and others

F-MARC, the research unit of FIFA, is a central partner in the project and the research provides scientific documentation for initiatives such as FIFA’s newly launched “The 11 for Health” campaign that uses soccer as an educational health tool for children in order to raise awareness and improve health in African and South American communities. Also Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” project aiming at eliminating obesity in American children through diet and sports have recently promoted soccer as a favourable activity. The research results are also used in Europe, where the research group is directly involved in implementing the results through projects focusing on adults and children, such as “The Open Soccer Club project”, “The Soccer at Work project” and the “Intensity in Pupil School Sport project”. Sports Confederations, Football Associations, Ministries of Culture and Health and researchers from Universities, Hospitals and Centres for Working Environment are cooperating about the implementation and scientific evaluation of those projects.

About the project:

The project has received funding from, among others, FIFA – Medical Assessment and Research Centre (F-MARC), The Danish Ministry of Culture’s Sports Research Committee, United Federation of Danish Workers, TrygFonden, The Danish Football Association, Team Denmark and The Danish Sports Confederation.

Source:
Jes Andersen
University of Copenhagen

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast, funded by Northern Ireland Chest, Heart & Stroke and the NI Research and Development Office, are to study 110 people with high blood pressure for the opening stage of a three-year project starting in August.

The aim is to discover if a high fruit and vegetable diet incorporating dark chocolate and berries – which are all rich in important compounds called polyphenols – is better for the cardiovascular system than a diet low in fruit and vegetables.

Dr Pascal McKeown from Queen’s School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences who is leading the study, said: “The important thing to stress is that the chocolate we will be using will be very high in cocoa – at least 70 per cent. Standard milk chocolate has nothing like the polyphenol content of dark chocolate.

“One group of patients will be put on a low polyphenol diet – probably the average UK diet, since most people tend to eat only two portions of fruit and vegetables per day. Another group will be encouraged to eat six portions of fruit and vegetables, including one portion of berries, each day, together with the 50g of dark chocolate. We will examine people’s blood vessel health and the stickiness of their blood at the start and end of the study to discover whether a diet rich in polyphenols can reduce the risk of developing heart disease.”

Andrew Dougal, Chief Executive of NI Chest, Heart & Stroke (NICHS), said: “This is a great example of high quality research which has the potential to benefit first and foremost the people of Northern Ireland, but also has applications further afield. We hope it will provide a solid evidence base for fine-tuning the government’s advice on healthy eating.”

NICHS has provided funding of £32,000 for the project. One of the researchers, Dr Rebecca Noad, has also secured a Fellowship award from the Department of Health’s Research and Development Office.

Source:
Communications Office
Queen’s University Belfast

The study was the work of Dr Pia R Kamstrup, of Herlev Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital in Herlev, Denmark, and colleagues, and is published in the 10 June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA.

Despite the fact that statins are now routinely used to lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad” cholesterol), myocardial infarction (MI or heart attack) remains a leading cause of illness and death, wrote the authors.

There is a need to identify other risk factors as targets for treatment they said. Lipoprotein (a), a cholesterol that is not included in routine cholesterol screening, has been suggested as a potential candidate, but there is not enough evidence of how closely it is linked to heart attack risk.

Lipoprotein (a) levels vary from person to person, sometimes the level in one person can be thousands of times higher or lower than the level in another person, the range is so vast. This is partly determined by genetics, and the variations in one gene in particular, known as the “Lipoprotein (a) kringle IV type 2 (LPA KIV-2) size polymorphism genotype”. The authors wrote in their background information that the number of KIV-2 repeats is already known to correlate inversely with levels of lipoprotein(a).

For the study, Kamstrup and colleagues looked at whether genetically elevated levels of lipoprotein (a) were linked to increased risk of heart attack (MI) in three studies covering about 45,000 white individuals from Copenhagen who started giving samples in 1976 until 2007.

The researchers found that risk of MI increased with increasing levels of lipoprotein (a), and with “decreasing numbers of lipoprotein(a) KIV-2 repeats associated with elevated levels of lipoprotein(a)”.

They saw a consistent increase in MI risk linked to genetically elevated levels of lipoprotein (a) in all three studies, and noted that the KIV-2 genotype explained 21 per cent and 27 per cent of the total lipoprotein (a) concentrations in two of the three studies.

Kamstrup and colleagues wrote that:

“Instrumental variable analysis (in which the increase in lipoprotein (a) levels explained by the KIV-2 genotype was related to MI) directly demonstrated that genetically elevated lipoprotein (a) is associated with increased risk of MI, like elevations in plasma lipoprotein (a).”

They suggested that while the findings appear strong enough to show that the higher levels of lipoprotein (a) probably caused the increased risk of MI, final proof should still be sought using randomized clinical trials that show MI risk going down in response to therapies that lower lipoprotein (a).

In an accompanying editorial, Drs George Thanassoulis and Christopher J. O’Donnell of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Framingham Heart Study, commented that although Kamstrup and colleagues revealed some “interesting mechanistic insights” into the biological link between lipoprotein (a) and MI, and put forward evidence that there might be potential benefit in reducing lipoprotein (a) early in life, the “clinical implications are quite limited”.

“These results do not provide the necessary evidence that genetic testing of the LPA locus or measurements of plasma lipoprotein(a) have a role in cardiovascular risk stratification or decisions regarding lipid-lowering therapy,” they wrote, agreeing with the authors in that “ultimately, despite nature’s best efforts to provide causal evidence for lipoprotein(a), only a true randomized controlled trial demonstrating reductions in MI with targeted lipoprotein(a)-lowering therapy can provide the evidence for benefits and risks of an lipoprotein(a)-lowering strategy”.

“Genetically Elevated Lipoprotein(a) and Increased Risk of Myocardial Infarction.”
Pia R. Kamstrup; Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen; Rolf Steffensen; Borge G. Nordestgaard.
JAMA, 2009;301(22):2331-2339.
Vol. 301 No. 22, June 10, 2009

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today