SOME MORE RANDOM ITEMS
But important ones, nonetheless...

First, what happens to the health of volunteers when they are told to cut back on exercise?  It's not good:
"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."

So keep exercising!

And keep getting yourself some fish oil, if you don't already--it prevents brain aging:
"People with diets short on omega-3 fatty acids – the kind found in fish oil – were more likely to experience accelerated brain aging, a new study found.
“People with lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids had lower brain volumes that were equivalent to about two years of brain aging,” said Dr. Zaldy S. Tan, a member of the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research in the Department of Neurology.
The study was published Tuesday in the print edition of the journal Neurology.
Tan and his colleagues compared blood levels of two nutrients in omega-3 fatty acids with MRI brain scans and cognitive tests. They found people in the bottom 25% scored lower on such mental tests as problem solving, multi-tasking and abstract thinking.
Tan said the MRI images showed those with lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids were also more likely to have minute but significant structural changes in the brain. The MRIs showed higher white matter hyperintensity volume, tiny lesions in the brain, raising the risk for death, stroke and dementia for the low omega-3 fatty acids group.
Tan said the results were consistent with signs of damage to the intricate network of blood vessels in the brain. A third of the brain by volume is composed of blood vessels."

And did you know that today is Rare Disease Day?
Go here and see all that's going on today in celebration of it!

And once again, Moebius Syndrome is in the news--check out our latest young Moebius hero, Miss Mia Blackwell; and see especially what her doctor said:
"Dr Toni Wolff, a paediatrician at Nottingham City Hospital, helped diagnose Mia and said research was desperately needed.
"I had not seen [the condition] before and we were excited to meet Mia," she said.
"Because [Moebius Syndrome] is quite rare it hasn't been prioritised."
Dr Wolff said new genetics techniques might be able to help if a group of children with the condition could be brought together."

Amen.  Let's keep working on that.

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren't any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn't be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life's challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person. ”--R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983);