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Fitness First Aims For Asia Flotation

June 28, 2010 by ·

The private equity owners of health chain Fitness First are eyeing up a stock market flotation, which would likely value the business at up to £2bn, but is turning its back on London for an Asian exchange.

BC Partners is considering whether to press ahead with a Fitness First flotation despite the stock market volatility that has forced other private equity companies to abandon similar initial public offerings (IPOs). If BC does decide to float part of the company, it is likely to seek a listing in either Hong Kong or Shanghai.

BC favours an Asian float as the region is seen as a more lucrative source of future growth. “The company is looking at different options… Given the growth in Asia, it is quite sensible for BC to consider floating there,” said a source close to the deal.

It is understood that any flotation, which could value Fitness First at between £1bn and £2bn, would take place next year. [Read more...]

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Aerobic Exercise Safe And Effective For Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

June 24, 2010 by ·

Researchers from the University of Grenoble Medical School in France determined that cardio-respiratory aerobic exercise is safe for patients with stable rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The team found that RA patients who exercised regularly had improved function, less joint pain, and greater quality of life. Full findings of the study are now available online and will publish in the July print issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.

RA, a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by swollen joints, pain, stiffness, fatigue, and general malaise affects up to 1% of the global population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) citing health-related quality of life (HRQL) studies found that RA patients were 40% more likely to report fair or poor general health and twice as likely to have a health-related activity limitation compared with those without arthritis. [Read more...]

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Veg Diet Can Help Keep Toxins Away

June 20, 2010 by ·

Sticking to vegetables for five days a week can significantly reduce the body’s amount of antibiotics and phthalates – a common chemical added to plastics – says a new research.

To come up with the conclusion, researchers in Korea quizzed participants to stay at a Buddhist temple for five days, during which time they ate a vegetarian diet.

The researchers analyzed urine samples before and after the stay, and found that levels of the chemicals dropped dramatically by the end of the experiment, reports Discovery News.

The boffins also measured the participants’ diets before the study and found that what they ate 48 hours prior to the study was related to the amount of the chemicals found in their urine.

“A significant correlation was found between food consumption and the urinary levels of several antibiotics and phthalates,” they said. “Although the exposure to target compounds might be influenced by other behavioral patterns, these results suggest that even short-term changes in dietary behavior may significantly decrease inadvertent exposure to antibiotics and phthalates and hence may reduce oxidative stress levels.” The Times of India

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Shed Away Those Stubborn Pounds

June 19, 2010 by ·

People of today, healthy eating are like swimming upstream. It’s not that you can’t do it, but it’s just because it’s so hard. Well, it seems that despite most people’s best efforts that stubborn weight just doesn’t want to leave. Sad to say, diet and exercise just aren’t enough for many people which is why obesity is the single greatest threat to public health in this century. However, you can lose weight fast with a good quality weight loss pill that has the right ingredients. It can certainly give you that extra kick you need to shed away those stubborn pounds quickly. Though there are people who don’t truly believe that they can change their own body within the next couple of weeks, but your body will not change by itself because you won’t wake up one morning and be thinner until you make that first step.

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Why We Crave For Specific Foods

June 13, 2010 by ·

All of us must have felt that uncontrollable craving to have chocolates, potato chips, or any other specific food item. Now, researchers have delved deep to find out why do we get intense desires to eat certain foods.

Psychological scientists Eva Kemps and Marika Tiggemann of Flinders University, Australia, review the latest research on food cravings and how they may be controlled in a recent study.

What makes food cravings different from hunger is how specific they are. Many of us experience food cravings from time to time, but for certain individuals, these cravings can pose serious health risks.

For example, food cravings have been shown to elicit binge-eating episodes, which can lead to obesity and eating disorders. In addition, giving in to food cravings can trigger feelings of guilt and shame.

Many research studies suggest that mental imagery may be a key component of food cravings — when people crave a specific food, they have vivid images of that food.

Results of one study showed that the strength of participants” cravings was linked to how vividly they imagined the food.

Mental imagery (imagining food or anything else) takes up cognitive resources, or brainpower.

Studies have shown that when subjects are imagining something, they have a hard time completing various cognitive tasks.

In one experiment, volunteers who were craving chocolate recalled fewer words and took longer to solve math problems than volunteers who were not craving chocolate.

These links between food cravings and mental imagery, along with the findings that mental imagery takes up cognitive resources, may help to explain why food cravings can be so disruptive—As we are imagining a specific food, much of our brain power is focused on that food, and we have a hard time with other tasks.

New research findings suggest that that this relationship may work in the opposite direction as well: It may be possible to use cognitive tasks to reduce food cravings.

The results of one experiment revealed that volunteers who had been craving a food reported reduced food cravings after they formed images of common sights (for example, they were asked to imagine the appearance of a rainbow) or smells (they were asked to imagine the smell of eucalyptus).

In another experiment, volunteers who were craving a food watched a flickering pattern of black and white dots on a monitor (similar to an untuned television set).

After viewing the pattern, they reported a decrease in the vividness of their craved-food images as well as a reduction in their cravings.

According to the researchers, these findings indicate that “engaging in a simple visual task seems to hold real promise as a method for curbing food cravings.”

The authors suggest that “real-world implementations could incorporate the dynamic visual noise display into existing accessible technologies, such as the smart phone and other mobile, hand-held computing devices.”

They conclude that these experimental approaches may extend beyond food cravings and have implications for reducing cravings of other substances such as drugs and alcohol.

The study has been published in the current issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The Times of India

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Study: To Burn More Fat, Don’t Eat Before Working Out

June 5, 2010 by ·

Though many athletes eat before training, some scientists say that if you really want to get rid of more fat, skip the pre-workout snack.

Several studies suggest that exercising while your body is low on food may be a good way to trim excess fat. In a recent paper, European researchers found that cyclists who trained without eating burned significantly more fat than their counterparts who ate.

Muscles usually get their energy from carbohydrates, which is why athletes such as Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps scarf down enormous amounts of food before a race. But if you haven’t eaten before exercising, your body doesn’t have many carbohydrates in reserve. That forces it to burn fat instead, scientists say.

“When you exercise [after fasting], your adrenaline is high and your insulin is low,” said Peter Hespel, a professor of exercise physiology at Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. “That ratio is favorable for your muscles to oxidize [break down] more fatty acids.” He said that people who exercise without having eaten burn more fat than they would if they had grabbed a bite beforehand.

In a study published in April, researchers at the University of Birmingham and elsewhere assigned seven people to cycle three days a week, followed by an intense session an hour later without eating. Another seven people followed the same regimen, without the instruction to fast.

Though members of the group who didn’t eat performed worse on the intensive training, they burned a higher proportion of fat to carbohydrates than the group that ate. The results were published by Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

In a 2008 study, Hespel and colleagues tested the effects on men who did endurance training without eating versus those who ate. In the athletes who hadn’t eaten, the researchers found a spike in the amount of proteins needed to process fat, meaning their bodies had been primed through fasting to burn more fat.

Hespel recommends people do this kind of training before breakfast, since eating carbohydrates interrupts the process of metabolizing fat for about six hours afterward. [Read more...]

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Caring For Your Body

June 3, 2010 by ·

Giving your body a break is important, especially if you are training for a long-distance event. Your body works hard during your days of exercise, and, just like a car, it needs to refuel before/if it runs out of gas. Take a day to do some leisurely walking, and allow your body to undergo some much-needed rest & relax. And when it comes to caring for your body it is extremely important to use enzyte product and enhancing supplement that contains high quality ingredients with a proven track record which can also increase other aspects of sexual health as well, including libido, stamina and energy levels. During this time, your muscles are able to rebuild anything that may have torn, and they actually become stronger. Constantly charging a battery that is nearly dead won’t allow the charge to strengthen over time; ergo, a rested body will perform better than a tired body.

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