How to Make Exercise Fun

People have a million excuses why they slack off on exercise like, "I don't have time," "it's too much work," "it's boring," or "I'd rather be with my friends." But what if exercise was fun? What if you enjoyed it so much that you made the time, looked forward to putting in the effort, found it exciting, and could do it with your friends and family?

These tips will make exercise fun again:

Make it a game. Soccer, tennis, golf, dodge ball, track meets, bowling, racquetball, and basketball are part of an endless list of sporting events that turn plain-old-exercise into game time with friends. These sporting events provide excellent opportunities to bump up your heart rate and stretch those muscles while you go out to play.

You can burn about 280 calories with a half-hour pick-up game of basketball and about 240 playing racquetball. Don't worry if none of your friends are game to join you. Exercise provides plenty of opportunities to meet new people.

Call your local golf course and ask to be added to a foursome. Show up at the park with your ball or sign up for your gym's handball tournament. Once you've found your buddies, schedule regular workouts to keep your game on.

Make it a party. When you exercise with other people, doing something you enjoy, suddenly, is no longer tedious. Try out the Zumba® class at your local community center or sign up for Tango lessons. Dance, kickboxing, spinning, and other group fitness activities pack all the exercise you need into super-social, fun events. Gather a group of friends and host a Wii^TM fitness party in your living room or take turns in each other's homes doing a new workout DVD every week. Nobody says you can't follow your fitness with a glass of something sparkly if that's what it takes to keep the party going.

Make it creative. If you've been doing the same old fitness routine for too long, it's time to mix it up. Get off the treadmill and try something new. Challenge yourself to try things you've never done before like kayaking, Pilates, ballroom dancing, power-yoga, swimming, skiing, and even wrestling. The point is to make your fitness routine challenging, motivating, and rewarding. If you try something and discover it's not for you, cross it off your list and move on to something else. Before you know it, you'll be toned, fit, and inspired.

How Safe Are Food Preservatives?

Preservatives keep food products fresh long enough for them to get from the factory to the supermarket and eventually find a place on your dining table. They do this by slowing down the natural breakdown of fats, delaying the ripening process of fresh foods, and destroying or slowing down the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms that would otherwise grow on food.

Sometimes, preservatives are used strictly to keep foods safe, but they are also used to maintain the quality of a food. For instance, bacon and other processed meat products that contain preservatives stay fresh and safe to eat for longer periods of time than similar products that are preservative-free. Canned foods, however, stay safe to eat for years because of the temperatures and technology involved in the canning process. Any preservatives used in canned foods are most likely there to preserve the color, texture, or overall integrity of the product but have little or nothing to do with safety.

Salt and sugar are natural preservatives that help prevent spoilage if used in high enough amounts in certain foods, such as salt in dried meats and sugar in fruit jams. While you may want to limit the amounts of salt and sugar you consume in your overall diet, government leaders and consumer advocacy groups have few grounds for limiting their use by manufacturers in individual food products. When it comes to the level of chemical preservatives in some products, however, the food police step in.

Chemical food preservatives are included on the ingredient list required on all packaged foods. Some common preservatives you will see listed that are limited by government regulation include benzoates, sorbates, propionates, sulfites, sulfur dioxide, nitrites, nitrates, propyl gallate, BHA, BHT, erythorbic acid, and citric acid.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer watchdog organization, categorizes these preservatives as follows:

• Safe: citric acid, erythorbic acid, sorbic acid

• Cut back: salt, sugar

• Use with caution: BHT

• Certain people should avoid: sodium benzoate, sulfites, sulfur dioxide

• Avoid: BHA, propyl gallate, sodium nitrate, and sodium nitrite

In reviews of animal and human studies, CSPI found some associations between BHA, propyl gallate, sodium nitrate, and sodium nitrite and an increased risk of developing cancerous tumors.  But because there is not enough evidence showing a direct cause and effect between these preservatives and the onset of disease, they remain in use.

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Sources:

Center for Science in the Public Interest: Chemical Cuisine
http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

Oberg, C. "Food Preservation," Weber State University. Web. 11 Nov 2011
http://faculty.weber.edu/coberg/3853%20Food%20Preservation.htm

How to Decode Cancer Statistics

Trying to make sense of cancer statistics can be overwhelming. Adding to the confusion, many media reports lack context, and even reputable journals can promote misleading and overblown claims about cancer treatment. Understanding statistics, however, can help you evaluate treatment options and assess the reliability of the information you obtain.

Survival rates
When you learn you have cancer, you want to know what your chances are for a cure and how long you can expect to live. Survival rates give you a general idea about prognosis for people who have the same disease as you, but they don't tell you your chances for a cure or remission and they don't consider extenuating circumstances that may affect your outcomes.

Progression-free survival rate describes the length of time during and after treatment in which patients live with a disease that does not get worse. Disease-free survival rate is the percent of people who experience complete remission after finishing treatment.

The 5-year survival rate is probably the most common cancer statistic. It describes the percent of people in a study or treatment who are still alive five years after diagnosis or treatment for a disease, regardless if they still have the disease. For example, of 100 people who have bladder cancer, 80 were living five years after diagnosis. Scientists and oncologists often tout 5-year survival rates as evidence of success of treatment.

However, while 5-year survival rates are a valid measure for comparing cancer therapies in randomized trials, they can be misleading for describing how well cancer patients fare. Physicians are diagnosing cancers earlier and earlier, so they're finding more and more cases of cancer. They're also diagnosing benign cancers that never would have progressed (or progressed too slowly to cause problems). Both can make the 5-year survival rate look better than it actually is and does not consider patients' quality of life.

Mortality rates
The statistic cancer patients should be most interested in is mortality rate: the number of deaths with cancer as an underlying cause occurring in a specific population in a year.

We would expect mortality rates to decline with improvements in cancer control, but according to H. Gilbert Welch, MD, author of Should I Be Tested for Cancer?, screening has not reduced mortality and in fact, in some instances, mortality rates have increased.

"Mortality rates for thyroid, prostate, and breast cancers have hardly budged since 1973, yet 5-year statistics have skyrocketed," he said in an interview. "Since 1950, the 5-year survival rate for prostate cancer has risen from 40 to 98 percent, yet the death rate remained stable."

Sources:

Fischhoff, Baruch, Brewer, Noel T., and Downs, Julie S. "Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User's Guide." Food and Drug Administration. Web. August 2011.http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/ReportsManualsForms/Reports/UCM268069.pdf
http://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/tips-for-understanding-studies/

Evans, Imogen, Thornton, Hazel, Chalmers, Iain, and Glasziou, Paul. "Testing Treatments." Web.
http://www.testingtreatments.org/

National Cancer Institute. "Glossary of Statistical Terms." Web. 8 December 2009.
http://cancer.gov/statistics/glossary

Mayo Clinic. "Cancer survival rate: What it means for your prognosis." Web. 6 April 2011.http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer/CA00049

Welch, H. Gilbert, Schwartz, Lisa M., and Woloshin, Steven. "Are increasing 5-year survival rates evidence of success against cancer?" JAMA 283(22) 2000: 2975-2978. Web.
http://www.vaoutcomes.org/papers/JAMA2975.pdf

National Cancer Institute. "Cancer Mortality Rate." Web. 4 December 2009.
http://cancer.gov/statistics/glossary/mortality

Cancer.net. "Understanding Statistics Used to Guide Prognosis and Evaluate Treatment." Web. 27 July 2011.http://www.cancer.net/patient/All+About+Cancer/Newly+Diagnosed/Understanding+Survival+Statistics

Lowe, Rachel Myers. "Cancer Screening Questioned." Cancerpage.com. Web. 14 December 2005.
http://www.cancerpage.com/news/article.asp?id=9164