Headaches?, Get on to Your Bicycle

We're always being told that regular exercise is the best way to improve our health and stave off obesity. But did you know that specific types of exercise can help to reduce the symptoms of many common ailments?

Here we review the latest evidence to find out how you can ease health problems ranging from IBS to osteoporosis through the right choice of exercise.

IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME

The cure: Yoga

How often: Four hours a week

How it works: IBS is thought to affect around eight million Britons, although with no confirmed cause, diagnosis is tricky and treatment of the debilitating symptoms - which include abdominal bloating and cramping, diarrhoea and constipation - is even more difficult.

However, researchers are beginning to discover that therapies focusing on the mind as well as the body are helpful to sufferers. Gastroenterologists at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver found the ancient practice of yoga to be particularly effective.

Subjects who were given a yoga lesson and then asked to do four hours of yoga moves a week at home, guided by an instructional DVD, had significantly fewer abdominal symptoms and less anxiety compared to a control group who stuck to their normal daily routine.

Another study conducted at the University of Birmingham found 30 minutes of activity (including yoga) five days a week helped IBS.

So why should yoga be beneficial for IBS? It's thought to help treat the mind as well as the body - the same reason cognitive behavioural therapy (or CBT) has proven to help IBS sufferers.

Also try: Swimming or aqua-aerobics. Both are the kind of low-impact forms of aerobic exercise that have shown to be helpful when performed in moderation (3-5 times a week).

BACK PAIN

The cure: Alexander Technique

How often: A course of 24 lessons, then daily

How it works: Regular activity has long been known to ease chronic back pain, but a study published in the British Medical Journal last year suggested the popular postural awareness therapy Alexander Technique could provide the greatest benefit. Devised by Frederick Matthias Alexander, an Australian actor who suffered stress-induced breathing problems, this method re-educates the body to achieve postural harmony.

A teacher will assess your posture and how you move about. Then he or she will teach you how to sit up straight, walk without hunching over and other techniques to improve balance and co-ordination and relieve pressure on the spine.

Professor Paul Little, a primary care specialist who specialises in back problems, found that one year after the trial started, the average number of activities limited by back pain had fallen by 42 percent in the Alexander group, and the number of days in pain were only three a month, compared with 21 days in the control group. The Alexander group said their quality of life increased enormously as they were pain-free.

Also try: Pilates. This aims to strengthen the core muscles that support the spine; several studies have shown it significantly reduces chronic back pain.

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE

The cure: Hiking

How often: 30-60 minutes at least three times a week

How it works: Hiking on rocky or uneven ground has profound benefits for health. If you can find some cobblestones to walk over, even better. Physiologists at the Oregon Research Institute found cobblestone-walking, an activity rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, led to significant reductions in blood pressure and improvements in balance.

It is thought that the uneven surfaces might stimulate acupressure points on the soles of the feet, thereby regulating blood pressure. According to the theories of Chinese medicine, applying pressure to acupressure points around the body helps to clear blocked channels that can lead to illness and problems such as high blood pressure. Because it is challenging, it will burn more calories than walking on even ground.

In the Oregon study, which was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Dr Fuzhong Li asked subjects either to take part in a 60-minute group session of walking on cobblestone mats or to take a walk three times a week for 16 weeks.

At the end of the study, mat-walkers had better scores on measures of balance, physical function and blood pressure than those in the conventional walking group.

Also try: Tai chi, the ancient martial art, has been shown to have benefits for several aspects of heart disease, including high blood pressure. A study presented to the American Heart Association showed that Tai Chi lowered blood pressure in older adults nearly as much as moderate-intensity aerobic exercise such as running.

GUM DISEASE

The cure: Aerobics

How often: Three classes a week of 45 minutes to one hour duration

How it works: Until recently, good oral hygiene habits of brushing and flossing regularly were the only health behaviours identified as helping to prevent gum disease.

But a study of more than 12 000 people published in the Journal of Periodontology revealed that regular gym-goers who did a range of aerobic classes were 40 percent less likely to develop periodontitis, a gum infection that can result in loss of teeth and lead to an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers from the Case Western Reserve University in the US found that five or more moderate physical activity sessions or three intensive activity sessions a week combined with a healthy diet and oral health regimen reduced the risk of gum disease.

Exercise reduces the C-reactive protein in the blood associated with inflammation in the heart and periodontal disease, while healthy eating habits also reduce the production of plaque biofilm, the main factor linked to gum disease.

Also try: Spinning, the high-intensity group indoor cycling class, could also help because the high effort it requires is similar to aerobics.

DEPRESSION

The cure: Walking.

How often: 30 minutes a day.

How it works: Feeling blue? Then "ecotherapy" - walking in a park or the countryside - could be the key to boosting your mood. Several researchers have found walking to be the best way to banish mild to moderate depression and Mental health charity Mind says the best places to walk are parks or the countryside.

According to studies at the University of Essex commissioned by Mind, a walk surrounded by nature reduces depression whereas a walk in a shopping centre or city increases mood problems. A study found that three brisk 30-minute walks a week had greater effects on reducing depression than antidepressant drugs.

Six months after 150 subjects had completed the 16-week walking programme, only 8 percent saw their depression return. Ecotherapy works by boosting the feel-good hormones endorphins by walking and tapping into our instinctive enjoyment of nature.

Kite-flying or gardening have also been shown to help.

OSTEOPOROSIS

The cure: Running

How often: 30 minutes, three to five days a week

How it works: Activities that are "high impact" (which involve pounding on the ground) boost bone density and help to prevent the brittle bone disease osteoporosis, but running tops the lot, according to experts.

In a study published earlier this year, Pam Hinton, professor of nutrition and physiology at the University of Missouri, compared the long-term effects of running, cycling and weight-training on bone density, and found that regular runners had the strongest spines.

"Both weight-training and high-impact endurance activities will increase bone mineral density," Hinton says. "But a high-impact sport such as running appears to have a greater beneficial effect."

She adds that those who do only non-weight-bearing exercise, such as cycling, swimming or rowing, should try to incorporate some runs into their fitness programme.

Also try: Tennis, basketball and skipping, because they each involve some of the pounding that is required for weight-bearing exercise.

DIABETES

The cure: Weight-training

How often: Twice a week

How it works: People with Type 2 diabetes are usually advised to do more aerobic exercise (running, swimming and cycling, for example) to lower body fat and improve glucose control. But a recent study showed that adding weight-training to the mix could have positive results.

Professor Robin Marcus, of the American Physical Therapy Association, asked Type 2 diabetics to take part in a 16-week supervised workout programme.

Half of the subjects did only aerobic exercise for 30 minutes a day, five days a week; the rest did a combination of aerobic activity and twice-weekly weights performed using a leg-strengthening machine at the gym.

After three months, both groups had less body fat and improved glucose control. But those using the weights also had a decreased Body Mass Index, used as a benchmark for ideal height-to-weight ratio and stronger leg muscles.

"Aerobic exercise should not be used in isolation," says Marcus. Adding resistance training to the mix increases the amount of lean muscle issue, which boosts metabolism and helps to control glucose levels, Marcus says.

Also try: Body Pump classes - a mix of weight training and aerobics - are an easy way to get the mix of exercise. Try two classes a week.

HEADACHES

The cure: Cycling

How often: 30 minutes, three to four times a week

How it works: For some people who suffer regular headaches, exercise can act as a trigger although no experts understand exactly why. Several researchers have suggested that endurance activities such as cycling and indoor rowing can be helpful, possibly because they raise the levels of feel-good hormones like endorphins that also act as natural painkillers.

A recent study published in the Journal of Head and Face Pain showed that indoor or outdoor cycling had reduced the frequency of attacks by 90 percent.

Dr Emma Varkey of the Cephalea Headache Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden, based her findings on a survey of 68 000 adults and showed that inactive subjects were 14 percent more likely to develop headaches over an 11-year period.

Cycling seems to help, Varkey says, because the continuous aerobic activity increases oxygen distribution. With cycling, there is also none of the pounding that comes with running, aerobics and power-walking that can sometimes lead to headaches.

Activities that place excessive strain on the body (such as weight lifting) should obviously be avoided.

It is worth noting that headaches that occur during a workout can be caused by dehydration or low blood-sugar (from eating too little carbohydrate prior to a gym session).

Also try: At the University of California's Davis Medical Centre, a study showed that 75 percent of all headaches arise from muscle tension in the back of the neck, specifically the semispinalis capitis muscles, due to problems in posture. Regular yoga was found to correct this, reducing the frequency of headaches.

Source: Sunday Independent

Sri Lanka and a Consistent Philosophy of Goodness

Plato, in The Republic, wrote the ideal society can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, until philosophers become kings and kings truly become philosophers. At this important juncture in time, the major powers of the world and their political leaders and citizens should consider and pursue a consistent philosophy of goodness. Specifically, towards nations committing horrendous atrocities and acts of genocide.

With this in mind, numerous human rights organization are reporting that in Sri Lanka

1,400 people, mainly Tamil refugees who were forcibly bombed and driven from their homes, are dying each week at the Nanik Farm internment camp. While the Sri Lankan Government continues to claim victory for its recent defeat of the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), other concentration camps, called "welfare villages," are being constructed to house hundreds of thousands of people.

Opposition leader Mangala Samaraweera said the Sri Lankan Government is trying to change the ethnic balance of the area. There are reasons to support his allegation, since not only the Tamil Tigers but other groups have complained of human rights violations. At the same time, Sri Lanka's globalization efforts through the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and transnational corporations have failed to provide adequate employment for everyone. Political and economic violence towards minorities have risen dramatcially.

Democratic principles too have been reversed. The concept of regional representation is being diminished, along with Amendment Thirteen to the Sri Lankan Constitution. Both political initiatives tried to decentralize power and increase provincial representation by giving regional councils more control over education, the power to tax, make laws, and resolve land settlement claims. With the defeat of the LTTE and relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, fair and proportional government will more than likely suffer.

As most of the world remains silent and inactive, maybe Aristotle was right when he wrote that men are good in one way, but bad in many. And perhaps St. Augustine understood the goodness and evil in human nature, believing that no one was free to do good who has not been freed from sin and begins to be the servant of justice. Hannah Arendt, who wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem, referred to institutional violence and genocide as the banality of evil. Don Helder Camara, a Liberation Theologian, said it was the duty of all human beings to help people escape from the inhuman situation in which they find themselves.

As the twentieth century ended and at the start of this century, there still remains explosions of racism, hatred, and violence. Hundreds of thousands were killed in Central America, Rwanda, Congo, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. Many more are being murdered in Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Some nations recognized this banality of evil, pursued a philosophy of goodness, and intervened saving hundreds of thousands of lives. At other times, nations missed the opportunity to help people escape from the inhuman situation allowing hundreds of thousands to be killed. Inconsistent philosophies of goodness usually create holocaust-like events.

And still, a few major powers redefined the philosophy of goodness and initiated needless wars and brutal occupation campaigns. Perchance this is where the problem lies: in how we rationalize good and evil, or how we mistakenly believe ours is an age of technical and enlightened superiority. Such ways of thinking make us falsely assume that there is no right or wrong, redemption or murder, and the betterment of life or the destruction of life. Instead, modern and futuristic goodness is happiness, beauty, the greatest good for the most, and if something is useful. If not always, it is those in power impose their happiness, beauty, and concept of usefulness onto the powerless, or define what the greatest good is.

In other words, when morality is removed from goodness, it becomes diluted, elusive, subjective, another concept to be used like an object, and tragically irrelevant. Thus, genocides become good, wars become good, invasions and occupations become good, concentration camps become good, massacres become good, bombs become good, tanks become good, warships become good, and the people that are killed are bad.

There is also good oil, good diamonds, good forests, and good land. And the people resisting exploitation or fight for their traditional way of life are labeled evil and are murdered. There are even good military bases, like Diego Garcia located in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka. It depopulated the island and currently practices good torture against prisoners in good CIA black sites. It is also serves good missions that bomb targets in Iraq and Afghanistan 4,000 miles away, namely for oil and imperial ambitions in Central Asia.

But moral goodness, on the other hand, would require the forces of Diego Garcia to intervene in Sri Lanka's killing fields. And by all means, let's first sit around the corporate offices and U.N. tables and argue about the deontological and teleological nature of moral goodness. (I am being facetious.) In the meantime, we miss the greatest definition of moral goodness: the saving and protection of human lives.

If there is ever to be a more peaceful and life-giving order, versus a life-destroying order, a consistent philosophy of moral goodness needs to be established. Meanwhile, groups in Sri Lankan continue to suffer from extrajudicial killings, abductions by paramilitary groups, and the International Red Cross and other organizations have been forced to close their offices. Tamil refugees continue to die too. Doesn't this answer the question to what is a consistent philosophy of moral goodness and when should a nation intervene?

If so, it is time to confront the banality of evil and transform it into the originality of moral goodness and action. Jeff McMahan writes in the preface of his new book, Killing in War, that "political leaders are utterly powerless to kill large numbers of people without the acquiescence and complicity of all those who rationalize, pay for, and perpetrate those killings." The greatest tragedy is not when bad nations do bad things, for that is expected, but when good nations do nothing. Will Sri Lanka's systematic elimination of a people go undocumented, like so many others have throughout history?

source: World News

Google's Operating System

“A real rival to Windows.” “Google drops a nuclear bomb on Microsoft.” It all sounds so dramatic and exciting, the kind of story we journalists love. But I can’t help feeling most of the coverage of Google’s announcement of its Chrome operating system missed the real point.

Most people seem to assume that the Chrome operating system is intended to replace Windows on personal computers, and that it will be a failure if it doesn’t. Many people also believe that Google is either off its rocker in jumping into operating systems or doing it out ofspite for Microsoft. Although Google may well be overreaching here, and it faces many challenges in creating and getting support for a new operating system, I think those assumptions are largely flawed.

It’s an easy story to pit Google against Microsoft, partly because there’s some truth to the increasing tension between the two tech titans. But they’re each representative of a bigger battle going on, one that would happen regardless: the inexorable migration of computing (except for the interface to the computer you need to put your fingers on, of course) from the desktop and laptop to the Internet.

Essentially, Google is attempting to create an operating system tuned to the needs of the Post-PC Age, as my former colleague Richard Brandt, author of the book Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain, puts it. That age has not arrived yet, and it may not arrive completely for a long time, but the trend is apparent: People increasingly are doing more and more of their work online, for which they don’t need or want the cost and performance overhead of a traditional PC operating system. That goes double for the vast majority of people around the world who have no PC at all—and something cheap beyond a cell phone that gives them the full experience of the Web would open up a vast new population of Web users.

And the bottom line is that anything that makes it easier for all those people to use Google services and view its advertising helps Google.

First of all, let's put to rest the notion that Google expects to replace Windows, at least anytime soon. "It's not a direct assault on Windows at all," says Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett. "Chrome OS will be streamlined and tuned for interacting with online services and thepersonal cloud."

In other words, it's intended at least at first to provide an additional option for the increasing number of people who do most of their work online to do so quickly and cheaply. What would a personal computer outfitted with Chrome OS look like? Michael J. Miller at PCMag.com has an idea:

It wouldn't be what we think of as a PC; instead it would be much more purpose-built for surfing the web than even today's netbooks. It wouldn't run any local applications: no Microsoft Office, of course; but also no Open Office, iTunes, or even a local mail client, although a webmail client could be cached by Google Gears. But it could boot much faster, be more secure, and could be less expensive. ...

These would really be "companions" to full PCs, not replacements. To a great extent, this is also what Qualcomm is talking about with its "smartbook" concept, and the other ARM-based vendors as well. So Google isn't really trying to create a new device; but rather be the software for it.

In fact, I'm not sure why Chrome OS couldn't be a second operating system on the same machine. After all, it's free, and both disk and flash-memory storage is pretty cheap, so I'm not sure I see much downside in installing both on a machine. And people are already doing this sort of thing on the Apple Mac, in some cases running Windows when they need to run a Windows-only application.

So if all you want to do is get online to browse the Web, check email, view video, tweet or update your Facebook page, edit some online documents, buy a book from Amazon.com--and think about it, that's a lot of what we do on a PC today--you get online in a few seconds and just go. If you work on a plane or use a Windows application like Word, go ahead and boot that up just like you can do on a Mac outfitted with Parallels. "I just want my s--t to run," says Dan Florio, developer of the iPhone app RunPee. "Chrome OS is sounding like the right idea."

Viewed in this light, Google's decision to create an operating system seems like a pretty obvious thing to do. In fact, you'd almost have to say they'd be kind of stupid not to do it, given the direction of user behavior and the advance of technologies that enable more and more online-only work. "The world is hungry for innovation on the operating system," says Sebastien de Halleux, cofounder and COO of the social gaming developer Playfish. "This is coming at the right time."

This is all assuming Google can pull it off. This clearly won't be easy, or Google wouldn't have announced it a year in advance and called for the help of outside developers. But it may be somewhat simpler than it looks. For one thing, it's building the OS atop a Linux "kernel," or foundation. So it doesn't have to reinvent everything, just leverage what already has been created.

Google also doesn't even need to attract developers to the OS, at least not in the usual way. Software programmers need only create a Web application using common platforms such as Adobe Flash, and they should run on the Chrome OS. Indeed, for that reason, one might make the case, as some have, that Chrome OS isn't even that big a deal.

Finally, Google doesn't need to knock it out of the park. As Rich Brandt puts it:

The Chrome OS is a catalyst. It will show others the way, and act as the seed that moves many industries, from telecommunications to computers, and perhaps someday to television and books, into the Post-PC era and into the true Internet Age.

Remember when Google made noises about bidding for new wireless spectrum in late 2007, only to bow out? That resulted in competition in the wireless business revving up, arguably to Google's advantage, and on Verizon's dime. Likewise, although Google's Chrome browser has minuscule market share, you can be sure the enthusiasm of some Web influentials for its speed hasn't escaped Microsoft or Mozilla, which will keep improving their browsers to avoid losing any more share.

I'm not saying that Google is above throwing a few marbles in Microsoft's way. It may not work, but if anything, Google executives have a fiduciary duty to do so, because that's business. You don't need to assume Eric Schmidt is desperately obsessed with Microsoft to find logical reasons for what Google's doing. (In fact, there's probably a greater case to be made that Microsoft has been obsessed with Google for a long time. Schmidt himself was wary of Google doing an operating system, he said last Thursday.)

All that said, there's a real danger that a Google operating system further stirs up Microsoft's wrath, and if it does, the software giant could inflict some damage on Google. Even more worrisome, Anil Dash makes a compelling case that in announcing plans for an operating system--whatever kind it turns out to be--Google has reached its own "Microsoft moment":

The era of Google as a trusted, "non-evil" startup whose actions are automatically assumed to be benevolent is over. ... Google is entering the moment where it has to be over-careful not to offend, and extremely attentive to whether they are treading lightly.

Is Google evil? It doesn't matter. They've reached the point of corporate ambition and changing corporate culture that means they're going to be perceived as if they are. Whether they're able to truly internalize that lesson, accept it, and act accordingly will determine if they're able to extend their dominance in the years to come.

Such existential concerns are real, as one prominent Googler, Matt Cutts, acknowledged. But the fact remains that Google continues to face an aggressive Microsoft that requires it to think outside the search box. Microsoft's new search engine Bing, let's not forget, is the default search engine for its industry-leading Internet Explorer browser.

And if Microsoft responds by fighting back and making sure Windows works better for online applications (thus preventing Chrome OS from getting a foothold), that can only help Google as the key economic beneficiary of anything that makes the Web more useful.

Sure, this is a risky bet for Google. But it might be even riskier not to make it.

source: business week