Nanny State In Action

I posted below that Britain faces a nation wide crisis over widening obesity rates. Now we see local councils advocating that the State take control of "dangerously" obese children and remove them from their families.
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This from the Sun:

Dangerously fat kids could be taken from their parents and put into care, council chiefs declared yesterday.

They warned that the worst cases of obesity will be increasingly seen as evidence of "parental neglect."

Social workers will have to step in to offer advice to protect the child's welfare.

In the most extreme cases, children could even be taken away from parents.

. . . The dramatic warning was delivered by the Local Government Association, which represents more than 400 councils in England and Wales.

Around one in four people in England are obese, so overweight that it threatens their health.

But experts fear HALF the population will be affected by 2032.

LGA public health spokesman David Rogers said some councils were already taking actions "where parents are putting children's health in real danger.

"Councils would step in to deal with an under-nourished and neglected child so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different?

. . . "There needs to be a national debate about the extent to which it is acceptable for local authorities to take action in cases where the welfare of children is in real jeopardy."

. . . But Mr Rogers said childhood obesity had now become an issue for every council.

Tough action was needed to protect the health of millions of children. . . .

Read the entire article.

Of all the ways that this problem can be addressed, taking a child from his family seems the absolute worst possible decision. Whether a child grows up fat or slim may be a concern of the state, but it is so patently obvious that there is so much more involved in the family unit that bears on what the child will grow into as to make this draconian policy proposal utterly insane. And even besides that, there are a thousand things the state can do to promote health and weight loss, not the least of which is mandating more physical activities for school age children. It is one thing to use the bully pulpit, another thing entirely to use the police powers of the state against a family.

But, sad to say, I am not surprised that this suggestion should arise in the U.K. As a general rule, the socialist left believes in the superiority of centralized power and that those in power - so long as they are reliably socialist - are in a better position to make decisions effecting individuals than individuals can make for themselves. Socialists also tend to have far less respect for the traditional family unit - as the U.K.'s welfare system among others makes clear. Modern Britain is a true laboratory experiement in socialism and multiculturalism transposed on top of a Western democracy.

Cross posted at Wolf Howling.

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Barbecue A Pig & Add To Intelligence, In Evolutionary Terms At Least

Live Science reports on a study that credits the significant jump in human intelligence some 150,000 years ago to the development of culinary skills. Specifically, learning to cook meat and other food with sparked a giant evolutionary jump in the cognitive ability of our species.
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This from Live Science:

. . . About 2 million years ago, the human brain rapidly increased its mass until it was double the size of other primate brains.

"This happened because we started to eat better food, like eating more meat," said researcher Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai.

But the increase in size, Khaitovich continued, "did not make humans as smart as they are today."

. . . For a long time, we were pretty dumb. Humans did little but make "the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years," he said. Then, only about 150,000 years ago, a different type of spurt happened — our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials, such as bone, and invented many new tools, including needles for beadwork. Responding to, presumably, our first abstract thoughts, we started creating art and maybe even religion.

To understand what caused the cognitive spurt, Khaitovich and colleagues examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years. Comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism.

The finding suggests that increased access to calories spurred our cognitive advances, said Khaitovich, carefully adding that definitive claims of causation are premature.

The research is detailed in the August 2008 issue of Genome Biology.

The extra calories may not have come from more food, but rather from the emergence of pre-historic "Iron Chefs;" the first hearths also arose about 200,000 years ago.

In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, Khaitovich explained, thereby freeing up calories for our brains.

Instead of growing even larger (which would have made birth even more problematic), the human brain most likely used the additional calories to grease the wheels of its internal functioning.

. . . Today, humans have relatively small digestive systems and burn 20-25 percent of their calories running their brains. For comparison, other vertebrate brains use as little as 2 percent of the animal's caloric intake.

Does this mean renewing our subscriptions to Bon Appetit will make our brains more efficient? No, but we probably should avoid diving into the raw food movement. Devoted followers end up, said Khaitovich, "with very severe health problems."

. . . While other theories for the brain's cognitive spurt have not been ruled out (one involves the introduction of fish to the human diet), the finding sheds light on what made us, as Khaitovich put it, "so strange compared to other animals."

Read the entire article.

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Obesity In Britain An Expanding Health Crisis

Cornish Pasties are a thing to be savored, but apparently our cousins across the pond are savoring them in a bit too great a quanity. According to a public health expert quoted on the front page of the Daily Times, given current trends, over half of all people in Britain will be obese in 25 years.
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This from the Daily Times:

Obesity poses as grave a threat to Britain and the NHS as terrorism, a Government adviser has warned.

Public health expert Professor David Hunter criticised ministers for failing to take 'bold action' to tackle the growing crisis.

Experts have already warned that if trends continue, half the population will be obese within 25 years, causing life expectancy to fall for the first time in two centuries.

Professor Hunter, of Durham University, said that since the 1970s governments have done little more than 'tinkered round the edges' of the emerging health crisis.

'They have been talking about it for four decades but that never seems to be enough,' he said.

'The Government was quick to move for things like ID cards or 42-day detention without trial - now it needs to show similar leadership in public health.

'The threat to our future health is just as significant as the current security threat.'

Although Government initiatives were having some impact, he added, these were on a 'piddling' scale.

'Lots of the initiatives are under a voluntary agreement - but it has just come to the point where things like these are simply not working,' Professor Hunter said.

Around 25 per cent of people in England are classified as obese - so overweight it threatens their health - compared to 8 per cent in 1980.

On current trends, half of the population will be clinically obese by 2032, and those with Type II diabetes - which is triggered almost exclusively by being overweight - will rise tenfold to 19million.

Overall, obesity is thought to knock nine years off lifespan. Various cancers, including breast, colon, kidney and stomach cancer, are known to be linked to weight.

The cost to the NHS of treating obesity - already £1billion a year - will also soar.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'We are tackling obesity through awareness campaigns and action in schools.' . . .

Read the entire article. I think that the government is making a tremendous mistake by focusing on what people eat rather than exercise and eating habits. A cursory glance at our activity levels and obesity rates over the past century suggests that exercise and activity levels are the fulcrum of weight loss.

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The Relationship Between Calories & Exercise - 12,000 Calories A Day Worth (Updated)

The NY Post has the story on the dietary side of Olympic Champ Michael Phelps's training regime. You will not find it in any diet books, but it does show the relationship between diet and exercise.
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This from the NY Sun:

Swimming sensation Michael Phelps has an Olympic recipe for success - and it involves eating a staggering 12,000 calories a day.

"Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do," Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. "Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can."

By comparison, the average man of the same age needs to ingest about 2,000 calories a day.

Phelps, 23, will swim 17 times over nine days of competition at the Beijing Games - meaning that he will need all the calories he can shovel in his mouth in order to keep his energy levels high.

Phelps' diet - which involves ingesting 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal - resembles that of a reckless overeater rather than an Olympian.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks. . . .

Read the entire article.

Update: Much more on the Michael Phelps diet from Guardian reporter Jon Henley.

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Weight Loss With A Painless Twist

My experience has been that I didn't start to lose weight until I started feeding myself regularly. My aim was to eat just enough every three to four hours that I did not feel any hunger before my next meal three to four hours later. I did not consciously deny myself any food. I did consciously limit how much I ate at any sitting and paid close attention to making sure that, if I ate things that I knew would leave me feeling hungy an hour later - i.e., fruit, grains, deserts - that I would also eat at those meals some protein and oil that would dampen the glycemic effects and not leave me with false hunger an hour later. It worked. Sachi of Big Lizards has adopted a somewhat similar approach - for which she was kicked off of a Japanese weight loss bulletin board.

This from Sachi:

People as a rule tend to think that in order to gain something, they need to give up something. This concept is ancient and universal: "No pain, no gain;" "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch;" "good medicine tastes bitter." Such proverbs exit in every culture, and they reflect a common belief: If a story sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

A healthy suspicion is a good thing. We don’t want to be gullible, do we? However, some stories really are as good as they sound.

Who says losing weight has to be an act of self-flagellation? Why can't there be a way to eat anything you want and still lose weight? Plenty of people do; we all know someone who eats anything he wants but never gains an ounce. What's his secret? (Trick question; there isn't one.)

But what if someone invented a magical diet pill that would solve all your weight problems; would you take it? I suspect that an awful lot of people would not, even if believed it would really work. In fact, some of them would become violently angry: The very concept of easy and craving-free weight loss offends them, just as some people are outraged by the idea that we might somebody be able to solve our energy needs without any conservation ("making do with less") at all, or cure smoking-related diseases without forcing the entire country to quit smoking.

There is no such magic diet pill (yet!) But there really is a weight-loss system that works remarkably well for most people who try it; and it doesn't require buying special food, attending support groups, embarassing yourself on national TV, or spending any money at all. I made the mistake of alluding to it in the Yahoo topic -- and the reaction of the other posters was exactly as I said above; they were irate.

Recently, Dafydd and I both lost a lot of weight using a system promoted by British motivational speaker and hypnotherapist Paul McKenna. We first saw his four lectures on the Learning Channel (for free); we were skeptical, but we tried it... and without depriving ourselves or having any "forbidden foods," we lost a lot of weight.

For serious food lovers like us, this was an incredible solution. But McKenna didn't invent the program; all he did was observe the eating habits of NTPs and generalize to four basic rules. His real talent is actually getting people enthusiastic enough to give it an honest try.

I'm not an agent of McKenna, paid or volunteer; forgive me if I don't go into the details. If you're interested, I recommend you go to his web site and investigate it yourself. If you want to buy the book or DVD set, buy it. If not, then don't. (We bought a copy of the latter just to lend to friends and family who noticed we were suddenly much thinner and wanted to know how.)

But let me at least explain the four basic rules of McKenna system:

-- When you are hungry, eat.

-- Eat what you want, not what you think you should eat.

-- Eat consciously, savoring every bite.

-- When you even think you might be full, stop eating.

That's it. Too simple to work, right?

There are reasons why each rule supports the others; you need to practice them all, but that shouldn't be too hard. Anyway, since we weren't risking anything, we gave it a shot; and for us, the results were both quick and dramatic.

All right, enough about the program. Here's the point that leads to the story of the diet topic: The most refreshing thing about McKenna's program is that you don't have to suffer. You never go hungry; in fact, if you let yourself get too hungry, you're violating rule number one.

Since you know you can eat when you feel hungry and you're not stuck eating nothing but celery sticks and seaweed, you're under no pressure. You can easily do this for rest of your life; and that's the key.

For the past ten or fifteen years, I'd been battling ever-increasing body weight. I tried the Atkins diet, the 1000-calorie-a-day diet, the Slim Fast diet; you name it, I tried it. I always lost some weight, a few pounds, while I was dieting; once I even lost 25 pounds. But as soon as I went off the diet, the weight came back and then some. That's typical of most people's experience, as anyone who has ever dieted can tell you.

Most of the time, a diet fails because you think of it as a diet, something you're going to do until you get down to your "target weight;" and then you'll stop. It's too hard to maintain a diet forever; you're depriving yourself of everything you like to eat. So your diet is always temporary; when you lose X pounds (or get tired of dieting), you start eating like a ravenous wolverine again... and it starts all over.

But the problem isn't what you eat, it's how much you eat. There are no foods that are inherently bad; there are only bad eating habits. In fact, we eat the same food we always used to eat -- Chinese, Italian, sushi, pork chops, steak, pasta, tiramisu -- but we eat a whole lot less of it... literally half to a third of what we used to eat. What McKenna's program does is teach you how to eat what you want without eating more of it than you really need.

It worked amazingly well (along with exercising, which was never our problem; we always exercised). As my weight loss progressed, as I lost ten, twenty, thirty, forty pounds, I naturally wanted to talk about it with other people. But I understood that nothing is more boring than listening to someone else's weight loss story, unless you're also trying to lose weight. So I figured the best place to talk to others would be a (Japanese language) weight loss bulletin board. There, I figured, I could discuss various weight loss experiences with like-minded people, without boring everybody else.

There are many such boards. I tried a couple and immediately ran into a problem: Nobody had any interest in hearing about my experience. As soon as I said, "You can eat anything you want...” they tuned out. If they said anything at all, it was, “There's no such thing” or “It never works.” The fact I lost over 40 pounds didn't seem to impress them; some even called me a liar.

After b-board hopping for a while, I finally settled in a topic run by a woman who lost over 100 lbs in one year. Her handle name translated to “Three Digit,” because she used to weigh over 100 kilograms (220 pounds).

3D runs a blog called "Stoic Diet;" her method is the polar opposite of McKenna's.

. . . The fit hit the shan a few days ago, when another poster complained about not being able to control her appetite; her post sounded like she was in tears when she wrote it. Although I'd been careful not to discuss the McKenna system in any detail, I couldn't let this woman just suffer: I made the mistake of giving her few possible solutions from McKenna's lectures; in particular, I told her to try close her eyes while she ate.

(Medical dietary researchers have found that if you eat while blindfolded, you feel full after eating significantly less food than if you can see your food while you eat. The visual stimulus of food makes you feel hungrier and overwhelms your stomach's signal that it's full. McKenna suggests trying it a few times if you're having trouble stopping, until you learn to detect your stomach's "full" signal.)

That advice set off one of the other posters -- not even the person I was talking to, but a different woman. She told me my "stupid advice" to the other woman was a distraction, like an annoying noise. Also, she told me that she had been really irritated by my food list. She was especially ticked off by my lox and bagel with cream cheese breakfast. "This is too much!" She said. "How can you eat such a high fat, high calorie, and high carbohydrate food combination when you're trying to lose weight? Your posts create a hostile environment, and you make me sick!"

Her violent reaction shocked me; but I was even more astonished when 3D, the moderator, sided with the complainer and handed me a "red card" for violating one of her topic rules: I had dared to mention a different weight-loss method than her “stoic diet.” I was never even aware of such a rule, which was not written down anywhere.

When I told Dafydd about this, he immediately said, "With that absolute passion for freedom of speech, she must a liberal."

I told 3D I was merely conveying a simple trick to supplement her method. She tells people to eat less; if there's a simple, easy way to control appetite, why shouldn't people discuss it? Our mutual goal is to lose weight and keep it off, so what difference does it make how we achieve that goal?

"No!" she wrote; "that's not my goal. That's not this topic's objective at all. I am not simply trying to lose weight and maintain it: The goal is to change one's lifestyle forever. Your goal and my goal are completely incompatible. Don't think even for a second that we're heading toward the same place." (I'm translating from Japanese, obviously.)

What does she mean by “changing one’s life style?” Obviously not simply maintaining ideal weight and staying healthy; she can only mean something simultaneously more spiritual and more ominous.

. . . She seems to have taken a single quotation from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus and turned it into a dieting program:

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one's desires, but by the removal of desire.”

Of course, she hasn't removed desire... she just denies herself any food she desires. I don't think she really understands the point of Stoicism. Instead, 3D is like a Buddhist monk who deprives himself of every earthly desire in order to achieve spiritual "nothingness" (what a goal!) For her, the hardship of dieting is more important than losing weight. . . .

Read the entire post. There is much more. I am not familiar with Mr. McKenna's program, but I am quite familiar with most of the techniques articulated by Sachi and can speak to their effectiveness when accompanied by exercise. The one that I did not know about was closing one's eyes while eating.

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Mayo Clinic Recommends Slow Speed of Weight Loss

As a general rule, I have heard that those wanting to lose weight should aim for 3 to 4 pounds per week - no more. The Mayo Clinic is recommending 1 to 2 pounds per week to preserve lean muscle tissue.

This from the Mayo Clinic:

When it comes to weight loss, slow and steady wins the race. Fast weight loss is usually followed shortly by rapid weight gain. Besides, 1 pound of fat contains 3,500 calories, so you need to burn 500 more calories than you eat each day to lose just 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days). If you're losing more than 1 to 2 pounds a week, it's either water weight or lean tissue you're losing, not fat. Weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds a week may seem like an agonizingly slow pace, but if improving your health is a long-term goal, the speed of your weight loss isn't important.

There is also countless other reasons to aim for a low speed of weight loss. Besides being the healthiest way to go about it, it also seems correlated with maintaining weightloss. At the extreme, there is also the concern with losing weight slow enough to allow your skin a chance to retract - a concern mostly associated with weight loss surgery.

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Sleep - Problems In Quantity & Quality

Lack of sleep is directly linked with obestisty as well as other major health maladies. Step one in weight control is getting control of sleep patterns. An article appears this week in Consumer Reports on the prevelance of sleep problems in the U.S., sleep myths and what we can do to get control over our sleep.
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This from Consumer Reports, reproduced at AOL:

Trouble falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, and awakening too early afflict a lot of Americans these days. Fifty percent of those we asked about their most recent night of sleep reported those problems, and for many, they occur repeatedly. When asked about the previous month, 44 percent said they had one or more of those issues on at least eight nights, making them "problem sleepers." Our survey was a nationally representative sample of 1,466 adults conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center in April 2008.

The 24/7 nature of today's world, along with continuous access to entertainment and activities, is one reason for the problem, according to the National Institutes of Health. It estimates that as many as 70 million Americans may be affected, with annual health-care expenses of $16 billion.

Another reason: health issues that interfere with sleep. For instance, 57 percent of survey respondents who said they suffered from conditions such as arthritis , back pain , or neck pain said that those ailments disrupted their sleep during the previous month.

People with sleep problems are turning heavily to medications, with some frightening results. Consider our main survey findings:

Almost one in five Americans took prescription or over-the-counter medicines at least once a week to help them sleep better. Although sleep medications are usually recommended for no more than two weeks or so, 14 percent of our respondents took some type of pill on at least eight of the past 30 nights, and 5 percent turned to prescription drugs every night of the month.

Drug side effects occurred in 63 percent of those who took sleep medications; 24 percent became dependent on the medication they used, and 21 percent indicated that repeated use reduced the drug's effectiveness. The most common side effect was daytime drowsiness, noted by more than a third of respondents.

In a parallel survey of 1,093 insomniacs, or those with chronic sleep loss, 7 percent of respondents who took a sleeping pill during the previous month reported bizarre and dangerous behavior such as sleepwalking, sleep driving, and sleep eating. Last year the Food and Drug Administration began requiring prescription sleeping-pill manufacturers to include strongly worded warnings about such possible side effects.

There are better ways to battle sleeplessness. Sound machines were a viable alternative to drugs when it came to treating some cases of sleeplessness, our respondents said. The machines, which emit soothing sounds such as water, wind, or chirping birds, were highly effective most of the time for many people, working almost as well as sleeping pills, minus the dangerous side effects.

What you can do

We all experience occasional restlessness, but the first step need not be a drug. If you have even a short-term sleep problem, examine your routines. Bad habits such as long or late-day naps, watching TV in bed, drinking alcohol or caffeinated beverages close to bedtime, eating large meals at night, allowing pets or children to share your bed, or varying bedtimes and wake-up times can cause problems.

Your bed is one source of sleep problems you might have overlooked. If you've slept on the same mattress for more than eight years, it could be time for replacement. Worn-out mattresses don’t supply the same comfort and support as newer ones. Also, if you're older than 40, your mattress needs might have changed since your previous purchase. As we grow older, our bodies become more sensitive to pressure points, so a cushiony mattress might provide a better night's sleep than a rock-hard bed. You might also try using a sound machine .

If sleeplessness persists several nights a week for at least three months, it's probably time to see a doctor.

One way to change your habits can be learned from a cognitive behavior therapist, who can set up a sleep schedule, help correct poor sleep habits, and teach you to use relaxation, breathing, and mental techniques to help with sleep. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown in trials to be effective in treating intermittent and chronic insomnia. About half of the respondents who practiced at least some aspects of the therapy found that it helped most nights.

If your doctor suggests prescription medication, new pills such as Ambien CR , Lunesta , and Sonata aren't necessarily better than the older, cheaper drugs such as estazolam or temazepam for many people who need a sleep aid for just a night or two.

Read the entire article. In a companion article, Consumer Reports looked at the self-reported causes of sleep disorders:

Overall, more than a quarter of our survey population said it took them 30 minutes or longer to fall asleep the previous night, and one quarter awakened in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep for at least a half-hour. Much of the time, respondents’ sleep was interrupted because they had to use the bathroom. Also, a third woke up much earlier than they had hoped. Such problems weren’t anomalies: Three-quarters of the respondents told us that was a typical night.

Among problem sleepers, 71 percent took at least 30 minutes to nod off; 59 percent woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep for a half-hour or longer; and 65 percent awoke much too early.

No single reason stood out as a cause of chronic sleeplessness. Our survey uncovered six characteristics that problem sleepers had in common, the most prevalent being high stress levels. Most of the time, respondents were anxious over family or money concerns, health issues, or work woes. Issues most often linked to sleep loss were worries about commuting, personal health, problems with children, and reactions to news events.

Besides stress, problem sleepers had other issues that exacerbated their insomnia. Almost 65 percent suffered from physical pain caused by arthritis or other conditions, 38 percent suffered from a respiratory condition such as asthma or a cold, and 50 percent suffered from mood disorders, including depression.

Other factors associated with sleeplessness are heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, hyperthyroidism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and menopause.

Insomnia can strike at any age, including in childhood. Those 55 and older are more likely to have other illnesses or aches and pains that can disrupt sleep; they’re also more likely to be taking medications that can keep them from falling and staying asleep. Also, as we age our bodies tend to secrete lower amounts of substances that promote deep sleep and regulate our internal body clocks, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Certain activities and behaviors, such as drinking alcohol or caffeinated drinks too close to bedtime, exercising late at night, following an irregular morning and nighttime schedule, shift work, and too much mental stimulation before settling in, can disrupt sleep, too. Traveling, especially shuttling across time zones, can affect sleep. And environmental such as a room that’s too hot, cold, noisy, or bright, can block a good night’s sleep.

Read the entire article. And then there are the nine sleep myths from the AOL site first linked above:

Nine myths about sleep

Think sleeping in will help you catch up on sleep? Are naps a waste of time? Click through this gallery to read findings from the Consumer Reports National Research Center about sleep myths.

Myth No. 1: Getting one hour less sleep per night than needed won't affect you.

Reality: Getting even slightly less sleep can leave you feeling less energetic, hinder your ability to think properly and respond quickly, affect cardiovascular health, and make it more difficult for your body to fight off infections, particularly if the lack of sleep continues.

Myth No. 2: Your body quickly adjusts to different sleep schedules.

Reality: Our biological clocks are programmed so we're more alert during the day and more drowsy at night. Most people can reset their internal clock by one or two hours a day, but it can take a week or longer to adjust to dramatically altered sleep/wake cycles, such as when traveling across time zones or switching from the day shift to working overnight.

Myth No. 3: You need less sleep as you age.

Reality: Older people need just as much sleep as other adults, but they often get less or find it less refreshing because they spend less time in deep, restful sleep and might be easily awakened. They also tend to suffer from aches, pains, and medical conditions that can disrupt sleep.

Myth No. 4: Extra sleep can prevent daytime fatigue.

Reality: It's not just how much you sleep but how well. Some people sleep eight or nine hours but don't feel well rested because of poor-quality sleep.

Myth No. 5: You can make up for sleep loss by sleeping more on weekends.

Reality: This pattern will help relieve part of the sleep deficit, but it won't completely make up for it. Nor will it make up for impaired weekday performance. Sleeping later on weekends can make it more difficult to fall asleep on Sunday night and get up early on Monday.

Myth No. 6: Naps are a waste of time.

Reality: Naps aren't a substitute for a good night's sleep, but they can be restorative. Napping after 3 p.m., though, can make it tougher to fall asleep at night. It can also be difficult to shake off the cobwebs if you nap for more than an hour.

Myth No. 7: Snoring is normal.

Reality: It's common, especially as we age. But snoring on a regular basis might make you sleepy during the day and more susceptible to heart disease and type 2 diabetes, according to growing evidence. Loud snoring could be a sign of sleep apnea, a serious condition in which breathing can stop during sleep for as long as a minute. Untreated, sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease, headaches, impotence, memory problems, and weight gain.

Myth No. 8: Children who don't get enough sleep will show signs of sleepiness during the day.

Reality: Unlike adults, children who are sleep-deprived typically become more active during the day, behaving improperly and having difficulty paying attention.

Myth No. 9: The main cause of insomnia is worry.

Reality: Although stress can cause short bouts of insomnia, a persistent inability to fall or stay asleep generally stems from a number of factors: a reaction to medication, depression or anxiety, or asthma, arthritis, or other medical conditions with symptoms that worsen at night.

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Scotland's NHS: 90 Minutes Of Vigirous Exercise A Day Needed For Weight Loss

Based on guidelines from the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, Scotland's National Health Service is calling for 90 minutes of vigirous exercise per day to lose weight and sustain the loss.
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This from the Scotsman:

IT has been revered as the perfect way to keep healthy and stay in shape.

But the traditional 30-minute-a-day exercise target is insufficient and overweight Scots will need a daily 90-minute workout to stand any chance of fighting the flab, according to new public health guidance.

The advice, which GPs and nurses are to pass on to NHS patients, also warns that light housework such as cleaning or dusting, or strolling round the supermarket, must not be counted in the daily exercise regime.

Instead, only "moderate" or "vigorous" activity such as brisk walking, running, swimming and heavy domestic chores like vacuuming, mowing the lawn or painting and decorating count.

And as part of their weekly regime all adults should perform two sessions of weight training exercises.

The updated guidance on exercise targets has been published by the Scottish Government's public health advisory body NHS Health Scotland. The recommended levels of physical activity have been renewed with ambitious new targets following a recent change in international guidelines.

The guidance is being sent out to GPs, practice nurses, health visitors and pharmacists so they can advise members of the public on how to incorporate exercise into their daily lives as part of the NHS drive to reduce the nation's soaring obesity problem.

. . . The guidance document, 'Energising Lives', states that NHS staff must make physical activity a "higher priority", with 60% of men and 70% of women not thought to be taking enough exercise.

It sets out a number of tips that staff can offer to patients. It adds: "You should do at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, above usual activity at work or home, on at least five days of the week. If you are already overweight or obese, then you should aim to do between 60 and 90 minutes on five days of the week."

Approved activities according to the guidance include brisk walking, running, badminton and cycling as well as heavier household and gardening chores such as mowing the lawn and vacuuming.

However, many ordinary activities of "light intensity" such as office work, shopping or cooking do not count towards the daily target. Nor does anything that takes less than 10 minutes, such as taking out the rubbish.

It adds that weight training or stair climbing should be included twice a week and that a range of activities should be aimed for to improve stamina, strength, flexibility and balance.

Last night a spokeswoman for NHS Health Scotland said the document was based on recently updated, internationally recognised guidelines produced by the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis.

She added: "NHS primary care staff felt there was a need for a guide that had appropriate advice for patients. This really spells out what type of exercise to do and making it relate to people's lives. People can interpret it in different ways so this gives examples of what staff can tell patients to do. This is about how to put it into practice.

"It's up to the discretion of the GP or nurse how they use this information. It's not about going to the gym but doing things like gardening to benefit health."

A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association said: "This has to operate in tandem with advice, support and education on healthy eating and making sensible lifestyle choices. In order to make a significant impact on the weight of individuals there has to be a commitment to do as much exercise as possible.

"If somebody is suffering from the medical consequences of being obese or overweight, they may be at risk of chronic heart disease, stroke or have high blood pressure but if they lose weight they are more likely to reduce their health risks. So it may be appropriate to raise the potential for exercise with the patient. That's a discussion that has to take place between the GP and the patient."

Margaret Watt, chairwoman of the Scotland Patients' Association, described the move as "a step in the right direction". However, she warned it would not work unless people were sufficiently motivated. She added: "It's a personal responsibility and people will not be helped unless they want to help themselves."

But Edinburgh-based personal trainer Tracy Griffen said most members of the public would find it far too difficult to meet the targets. She said: "Most people who have not exercised before would struggle even to walk for 90 minutes a day, let alone do weight training.

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