FRIDAY, Oct. 25, 2024 (HealthDay News) — A heart-pounding workout suppresses a person’s hunger levels better than less strenuous exercises like a brisk walk or active yoga, a new study shows.
Running, swimming laps or taking a fast-paced spin class is more effective in suppressing the hunger hormone ghrelin than less intense exercise, researchers report.
What’s more, women might respond better than men to this sort of exercise, results show.
“We found that high-intensity exercise suppressed ghrelin levels more than moderate intensity exercise,” said lead researcher Kara Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Virginia School of Medicine. “In addition, we found that individuals felt ‘less hungry’ after high-intensity exercise compared to moderate-intensity exercise.”
For the study, researchers examined eight men and six women. All fasted overnight and then completed exercises of varying intensity levels.
The intensity of their exercise was measured by levels of lactic acid in their bloodstream. Lactic acid is produced in the body during intense physical activity.
The researchers then tested participants’ blood levels of ghrelin, and asked them to self-report their appetite levels.
Ghrelin has been shown to have wide-ranging effects in the body, influencing energy balance, appetite, blood sugar levels, immune function, sleep and memory, researchers noted.
Women had higher levels of ghrelin prior to exercise, compared to men.
But only women had significantly reduced levels of acylated ghrelin — one form of the hormone — following intense exercise, researchers said.
“We found that moderate intensity either did not change ghrelin levels or led to a net increase,” researchers wrote in their paper.
The findings, published Oct. 24 in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, suggest that exercise above the lactate threshold “may be necessary to elicit a suppression in ghrelin,” researchers noted.
“Exercise should be thought of as a ‘drug,’ where the ‘dose’ should be customized based on an individual’s personal goals,” Anderson said in a journal news release. “Our research suggests that high-intensity exercise may be important for appetite suppression, which can be particularly useful as part of a weight-loss program.”
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about physical activity intensity.
SOURCE: The Endocrine Society, news release, Oct. 24, 2024
As you age, you might think low-impact exercise is the safest route for long-term health. But according to leading physiologist Dr Stacy Sims, this mindset could be holding women back. In fact, incorporating impact-based training – specifically, jump training – could be the key to building strength, resilience, and longevity well into later life.
‘If you’re looking at what you want to do when you’re 80 or 90, you want to be independently living, you want to have good proprioception, balance, you want to have good bones, and you want to be strong,’ says Dr Sims. ‘This is where you should look at ten minutes, three times a week of jump training. We have to turn our brains away from everything that’s been predicated before to this point.’
Her advice comes on neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s podcast, Huberman Lab, in which he says: ‘One of the most common questions I get is what is the most efficient way for a woman older than 50 to train for the maximum healthspan and lifespan benefits.’
On Instagram, Dr Sims writes: ‘Jump training and plyometric exercises involve explosive movements, such as jumping, hopping, and bounding, that help to improve muscle power, speed, and agility. Women often look aghast when they see that I put plyometric training front and centre in my “Menopause for Athletes” programming. We’ve been taught that we should be taking it down a notch when we get older, not turning it up. But that is just not true. Women of all ages benefit from including plyometrics in their training.’
It makes sense that the older you get, the more apprehensive you feel about impact training like plyometrics (another name for jump training), but Dr Sims is adamant you’re missing out on some big benefits. Here’s how to do it.
Dr Sims explains: ‘[Jump training] isn’t your landing softly on your knees, this is like impact in the skeletal system. A colleague and a friend of mine Tracy Kissel did a PHD and post research on this, and is developing an app on it to show women how to jump to improve bone mineral density. Over the course of four months of this, women have gone from being osteopenic to normal bone density, so it’s a different type of stress. It’s ideal if your concern is decreasing bone density – which a lot of women do have as a concern because they lose about one third of their bone mass at the onset of menopause.
‘If you don’t do something as an intervention – so we see a lot of women are like, “Oh I’m going to go on menopause hormone therapy to stop bone loss.” Yeah, this can be a treatment, but I always look at an external stress that we can put on the body that is going to invoke change without pharmaceuticals – so, jump training.
‘And just to drive home that point about all ages: a systematic research review of the recent literature on plyometrics and older adults aged 58 to 79 reported that plyometrics often improved muscular strength, bone health, body composition, posture, and physical performance. None of the studies reported increased injuries or other adverse events from plyometric exercises among participants. The researchers concluded, “Plyometric training is a feasible and safe training option with potential for improving various performance, functional, and health-related outcomes in older persons.”‘
‘Plyometric exercises involve explosive, high-intensity movements, so it’s important to do them correctly to do them safely.
‘Let me also be clear that, unless you’ve already been engaged in some form of plyometric training, I’m not going to recommend that you start doing lots of bounding or jumping right out of the gate. You need to build up to it and establish good form. And always warm up beforehand so your muscles and connective tissues are ready to go.
‘To get the form down and condition your connective tissues to start jumping, you can start by simply bouncing up onto your toes and dropping into a squat. Start by standing with your legs hip to shoulder-width apart, feet flat on the floor. Bend your knees slightly and immediately straighten them again, bouncing up onto your tiptoes. Pause, then lower back down, dropping into a full squat, making sure that your knees track over your feet and don’t cave in. That will be your landing position when you start jumping.
Bounding is an effective form of jump training
‘Once you’re comfortable there you can do a depth drop, or reverse plyo drop. This is where, instead of jumping up onto a box or step, you start on a raised platform and step off to land on the ground. To do it, start on a step or box about 12 inches off the floor. Step off and land softly, immediately dropping into a squat position, again, keeping your knees straight ahead and not caving in toward each other. You can do 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 drops.
‘As you get comfortable absorbing the force of landing, you can start on the floor and do squat jumps. Stand with your feet wider than shoulder-width, feet turned out a little. Extend your arms straight in front of you. Squat down until your butt drops below knee level. Quickly extend your legs and jump into the air. Land softly, immediately dropping into another squat. Repeat 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 jumps, working your way up to one to two sets of 8 to 10 jumps. (Burpees are also a good way to sneak in squat jumps!)’
Once you’ve built up a solid and safe foundation, Dr Sims advises including the following exercises:
‘Jump training, heavy resistance training and sprint interval training are the three key things from a training standpoint,’ Dr Sims says.
Heavy weight lifting should be reserved for compound lifts (using multiple muscle groups at once) to avoid injury, says Dr Sims
On Instagram, Dr Sims explains how to do heavy resistance training:
Sprint interval training (SIT) can enhance the benefits of jump training by boosting your metabolism
‘From a nutrition standpoint, protein is so important. When you start telling women they need to look at around 1-1.1g per lb which is around 2-2.3g per kg per day, they’re like, “Whoa, that’s a lot of protein!” It is, because you haven’t been conditioned to eat it. It doesn’t all have to be animal products; you can also look at all the different beans.
‘In order to build the muscle and to keep the body composition in a state that we want it to keep going for longevity, those are the big rocks: sprint interval training, heavy resistance training, jump training and protein.’
As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director (and a qualified yoga teacher), Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism. She secured her first role at Look Magazine, where her obsession with fitness began and she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!. Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red.
Now, she oversees all fitness content across womenshealthmag.com.uk and the print magazine, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, where we showcase the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise. She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how.
Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.
Students across East Asia are typically seen as diligent, smart and high-achieving, as Pisa scores show, but they also face overwhelming pressure to perform from parents, educational systems and society at large, and this can have impacts on their health.
A recent study in Hong Kong found that more than 90 per cent of students were getting less than the 60 minutes of exercise per day recommended by the World Health Organization. “This is due, in part, to the heavy emphasis parents place on their children’s academic results,” says Patrick Ip Pak-keung, a clinical professor at the University of Hong Kong’s paediatrics and adolescent medicine department who led the study.
In fact, the emphasis on academic performance is so deeply ingrained in Asian culture as an indicator of future success that students often swap adequate sleep and exercise for extended study hours – sacrificing their mental and physical health in the process.
Recognising that schools play a part in that equation, the Hong Kong Education Bureau recently issued a revised grading mechanism governing the assignment of secondary school places. A score for physical education (PE) is now a small part of the assessment, giving students more incentive to get and stay active alongside pursuing their academic goals.
According to Sam Wong Wing-sum, executive director of the Physical Fitness Association of Hong Kong, China, schools need to become more sports-friendly to develop children’s interest in physical activities from a young age. Besides having adequate facilities, the school environment also needs to encourage students to be active.
“Many institutions lack adequate facilities like playgrounds or sports equipment, leaving teachers to creatively adapt programmes within tight constraints,” says Carla Dos Santos, head of health at French International School (FIS). “Through partnerships with government facilities, our students enjoy access to a football pitch and track-and-field areas. The school also boasts two on-campus swimming pools and three gymnasiums, ensuring ample opportunities for physical engagement.”
Making enough time for physical activity is key. “School sports are an essential part of our educational mission” says Dr Arnold Leitner, deputy principal and head of the German international stream at GSIS. “With two or three hours of sports per week, we aim to awaken the joy of movement in all children and adolescents, and to convey that sports have a positive effect on their physical, social, emotional and mental development.”
We aim to awaken the joy of movement in all children and adolescents, and to convey that sports have a positive effect on their physical, social, emotional and mental development
I asked Caitlin Donato, a personal trainer and director of fitness for Pritiktin Longevity Center, why adulthood seems to mean poor hip mobility and increased imbalance in the hip joints for many people.
“Hip imbalances are common and lead to a restricted range of motion, which can cause poor posture, pain, or injuries,” says Donato.
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