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Hillside Family Medicine
& Occupational Medicine
Hillside Family Medicine
& Occupational Medicine
News/Information
How to Prevent Sports Injuries
~Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
You can help to prevent wear-and-tear injuries during any type of exercise by warming up, stopping exercise when you feel pain and by not exercising intensely when your muscles feel heavy or sore. Muscles are made of millions of individual fibers. When you first contract a muscle, you use only one percent of the fibers. As you continue to exercise, you contract more fibers to share the load, which places less force on each fiber and helps to prevent injuries. Always warm up. Go slow before you go fast. If you take a hard workout and feel sore the next day, go easy on every day that your muscles continue to feel sore after you have warmed up. It usually takes at least 48 hours for muscles to recover from hard exercise. When you feel pain in one muscle during exercise, that's a signal that it may be starting to tear and you should stop exercising for that day.
Depression or Tiredness: Low Thyroid
~Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
More than nine million North Americans suffer from low thyroid function, but many people are not diagnosed or treated because they have never been tested. One million people take thyroid replacement pills, but some are not being treated properly because they are taking only one thyroid hormone when they need two to really feel better.
Common symptoms of low thyroid function include:
* Depression
* Tiredness
* Weight gain
* Muscle weakness
* Feeling cold
* Dry skin and hair
* Hair loss
* Poor appetite
* Memory loss
* Numbness in hands and feet or feelings of pins and needles
* Constipation
* Irregular periods
* Irritability
* Enlarged thyroid gland
Who Gets High Blood Sugar After Meals
~Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
Some foods raise blood sugar far more than others, and a high rise in blood sugar after meals can increase risk for diabetes, heart attacks and premature death. A study from Israel shows that some people develop surprisingly high blood sugar levels after eating foods such as bread, pizza, potato, tomatoes or bananas, while others do not develop the expected rise in blood sugar even after drinking a sugared soft drink or eating a cookie (Cell, published online November 19, 2015;163(5):1079–1094). The authors believe that by knowing which foods cause a person's highest rises in blood sugar, they could personalize a diet to lower the rise in blood sugar that follows eating.
Exercise Preserves Brain Function
Published: November 29, 2015
~Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
People who exercise into later life are smarter than those who do not exercise. To prove that exercise preserves brain function, studies must show that the loss of brain function with aging is not just genetic. Identical twins have exactly the same genes, so a study on twins can yield stronger results to show which environmental factors help to prevent loss of brain function. A new study from King’s College in London showed that of 162 healthy pairs of twins, ages 43 to 73, the ones with the strongest legs were the smartest (Gerontology, Nov 10, 2015).
Your Blood Pressure Should Be Under 120
~Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
The SPRINT study shows that lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 rather than just below 140 reduces risk for heart attacks, heart failure and strokes by 33 percent and of death by 25 percent (NIH Press Releases, Sept. 11, 2015). The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) followed 9,300 men and women, ages 50 and over, who were at high risk for heart disease or already had kidney disease. The results were so dramatic that the study was stopped early. The report will be published soon.
More than half of people who are treated with medication for high blood pressure do not get their systolic blood pressure below 140. If doctors follow the findings of this study they should save lots of lives. However, they should do more than just prescribe more drugs. Lifestyle changes are even more effective than drugs to lower blood pressure, without the many side effects of the medications.