Hot MedFax

Can you tell I'm not a fan?  My exercise consists of running and swimming, neither of which does anything for my core (which I could certainly use). But Gretchen Reynolds writes at nytimes.com that it depends on which area of the body you want to strengthen . "If your aim is to strengthen your midsection, then Pilates is a fine choice," she reports.  She notes that, in a   small but well-designed study   last year, "Nine sedentary women who completed 36 weeks of supervised Pilates training bulked up their abdominal muscles by as much as 20 percent, while also lessening any existing muscular imbalances there." Now, if you're looking to strengthen larger parts of the body, yoga may be your cup of tea. Reynolds says y oga, however, especially hatha yoga, with its flowing poses, will do just this. She notes that a 2011 study   found that after six months of almost-daily sun salutations (a multipart yoga pose) and no other resistance training, "You...

Want to double your chances of a heart attack?  Just make sure you feel stressed all the time. Now, really, who doesn't feel that way?  Between work, family, home, activities -- who can possibly do it all and not feel a smidgin of pressure? But a new study has found that people who feel they are stressed are far more likely to suffer heart disease than those who simply don't.  (I'd like to know who these people are.) The findings, by French researchers, showed that "people who believe that they are stressed—and that the stress is affecting their health—have more than twice the risk of heart attack as those who don’t feel that way," according to Beth Greenfield at yahoo.com. “This indicates that individuals' perception and reality seem to be connected pretty well,” lead author Herman Nabi , of the  French National Institute of Health and Medical Research , told   Yahoo! Shine   in an email. “In other words, people seem to be aware when stress is af...