Soccer Improves Health, Fitness And Social Abilities
Soccer is a pleasurable team sport that provides an all-round fitness and can be used as treatment for lifestyle-related diseases. Men worry less when playing soccer than when running. Women’s soccer creates we-stories and helps women stay active.
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.
How Coconut Oil Could Help Reduce The Symptoms Of Type 2 Diabetes
A new study in animals demonstrates that a diet rich in coconut oil protects against ‘insulin resistance’ (an impaired ability of cells to respond to insulin) in muscle and fat. The diet also avoids the accumulation of body fat caused by other high fat diets of similar calorie content. Together these findings are important because obesity and insulin resistance are major factors leading to the development of Type 2 diabetes.
The study is also interesting because it helps explain human studies showing that people who incorporate medium chain ‘fatty acids’, such as those found in coconut oil, into their diets can lose body fat.
Dr Nigel Turner and Associate Professor Jiming Ye, from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, compared fat metabolism and insulin resistance in mice fed coconut oil and lard based diets. Their findings are now published online in the international journal Diabetes.
“The medium chain fatty acids, like those found in coconut oil, are interesting to us because they behave very differently to the fats normally found in our diets,” said study leader Nigel Turner. Read more