Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Keep moving!


Why It’s So Important to Keep Moving

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
Coneyl Jay/Getty ImagesScientists are coming to learn how staying active helps stave off illness.
Hoping to learn more about how inactivity affects disease risk, researchers at the University of Missouri recently persuaded a group of healthy, active young adults to stop moving around so much. Scientists have known for some time that sedentary people are at increased risk of developing heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. But they haven’t fully understood why, in part because studying the effects of sedentary behavior isn’t easy. People who are inactive may also be obese, eat poorly or face other lifestyle or metabolic issues that make it impossible to tease out the specific role that inactivity, on its own, plays in ill health.
So, to combat the problem, researchers lately have embraced a novel approach to studying the effects of inactivity. They’ve imposed the condition on people who otherwise would be out happily exercising and moving about, in some cases by sentencing them to bed rest.
But in the current study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientists created a more realistic version of inactivity by having their volunteers cut the number of steps they took each day by at least half.
They wanted to determine whether this physical languor would affect the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels. “It’s increasingly clear that blood sugar spikes, especially after a meal, are bad for you,” says John P. Thyfault, an associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri, who conducted the study with his graduate student Catherine R. Mikus and others. “Spikes and swings in blood sugar after meals have been linked to the development of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.”
So the scientists fitted their volunteers with sophisticated glucose monitoring devices, which checked their blood sugar levels continuously throughout the day. They also gave the subjects pedometers and activity-measuring armbands, to track how many steps they took. Finally, they asked the volunteers to keep detailed food diaries.
Then they told them to just live normally for three days, walking and exercising as usual.
Exercise guidelines from the American Heart Association and other groups recommend that, for health purposes, people accumulate 10,000 steps or more a day, the equivalent of about 30 minutes of walking or easy jogging. Few people do, however. Repeated studies of American adults have shown that a majority take fewer than 5,000 steps per day.
The Missouri volunteers were atypical in that regard. Each exercised 30 minutes or so most days and easily completed more than 10,000 daily steps during the first three days of the experiment. The average was almost 13,000 steps.
During these three days, according to data from their glucose monitors, the volunteers’ blood sugar did not spike after they ate.
But that estimable condition changed during the second portion of the experiment, when the volunteers were told to cut back on activity so that their step counts would fall below 5,000 a day for the next three days. Achieving such indolence was easy enough. The volunteers stopped exercising and, at every opportunity, took the elevator, not the stairs, or had lunch delivered, instead of strolling to a cafe. They became, essentially, typical American adults.
Their average step counts fell to barely 4,300 during the three days, and the volunteers reported that they now “exercised,” on average, about three minutes a day.
Meanwhile, they ate exactly the same meals and snacks as they had in the preceding three days, so that any changes in blood sugar levels would not be a result of eating fattier or sweeter meals than before.
And there were changes. During the three days of inactivity, volunteers’ blood sugar levels spiked significantly after meals, with the peaks increasing by about 26 percent compared with when the volunteers were exercising and moving more. What’s more, the peaks grew slightly with each successive day.
This change in blood sugar control after meals “occurred well before we could see any changes in fitness or adiposity,” or fat buildup, due to the reduced activity, Dr. Thyfault says. So the blood sugar swings would seem to be a result, directly, of the volunteers not moving much.
Which is both distressing and encouraging news. “People immediately think, ‘So what happens if I get hurt or really busy, or for some other reason just can’t work out for awhile?’” Dr. Thyfault says. “The answer seems to be that it shouldn’t be a big problem.” Studies in both humans and animals have found that blood sugar regulation quickly returns to normal once activity resumes.
The spikes during inactivity are natural, after all, even inevitable, given that unused muscles need less fuel and so draw less sugar from the blood.
The condition becomes a serious concern, Dr. Thyfault says, only when inactivity is lingering, when it becomes the body’s default condition. “We hypothesize that, over time, inactivity creates the physiological conditions that produce chronic disease,” like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, regardless of a person’s weight or diet.
To avoid that fate, he says, keep moving, even if in small doses. “When I’m really busy, I make sure to get up and walk around the office or jog in place every hour or so,” he says. Wear a pedometer if it will nudge you to move more. “You don’t have to run marathons,” he says. “But the evidence is clear that you do need to move.”

Thursday, February 16, 2012

KarNan


Sivaji Ganesan

புதுப் பொலிவுடன் நடிகர் திலகத்தின் கர்ணன்!


நடிகர் திலகம் சிவாஜி கணேசன் நடிப்பில், பி ஆர் பந்துலு இயக்கத்தில் 1964-ம் ஆண்டு வெளியான பிரமாண்டமான புராண - வரலாற்றுப் படம் கர்ணன்.

பார்த்தவர் அத்தனைப் பேரையும் கட்டிப் போட்ட காவியப் படம் இது. சிவாஜி கணேசன், சாவித்ரி, தேவிகா, அசோகன் என ஜாம்பவான்கள் நடிப்பில் வந்த படம்.

பெற்ற தாய்க்கு மட்டுமல்ல, படைத்த இறைவனுக்கே வரம் அளித்த பெருமைக்குரிய தர்மவான் கர்ணன். தர்மதேவனையும் நெகிழ்ச்சியில் கண்ணீர் விட வைத்த கர்ணன் என்ற மகாபாரதப் பாத்திரம் உயிருடன் இருந்திருந்தால் எப்படி இருந்திருப்பார் என்பதை கண்முன் நிறுத்தினார் நடிகர் திலகம் சிவாஜி கணேசன்.

அந்தப் படம் கிட்டத்தட்ட 50 ஆண்டுகள் கழித்து மீண்டும் புதுப் பொலிவுடன் வெளிவருகிறது.

இந்தப் படத்தை தயாரித்து இயக்கிய பி ஆர் பந்துலுவுக்கு இந்த நூறாவது ஆண்டு வருடம் என்பதால், அவரை கவுரவிக்கும் வகையில், படத்தை டிஜிட்டலுக்கு மாற்றியுள்ளனர், இதனை வெளியிடும் திவ்யா பிலிம்ஸ் நிறுவனத்தினர்.

தொழில்நுட்ப ரீதியில் இன்றைக்குள்ள அனைத்து வசதிகளையும் பயன்படுத்தி இந்தப் படத்தை 5.1 ஒலியமைப்புடனும், மேம்படத்தப்பட்ட தரத்துடனும் வெளியிடுகிறார்கள். அதே நேரம் ஒரிஜினல்தன்மை மாறாதவாறும் பார்த்துக் கொண்டுள்ளனர்.

படத்தின் ட்ரெயிலரை வரும் பிப்ரவரி 21-ம் தேதி சத்யம் திரையரங்கில் வெளியிடுகின்றனர். பின்னர் ஒரு புதிய படத்தை எப்படி ரிலீஸ் பண்ணுவார்களோ அதே மாதிரி கர்ணனையும் உலகெங்கும் வெளியிட திட்டமிட்டுள்ளனர்.