Bone-Building Workout
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:21:12 -0500
Source: HealthDay – 
For older women, the same activities that strengthen muscles can also strengthen bones.
A new study from Scottish researchers provides compelling support that postmenopausal women should get the right kinds of exercise for their bone health.
From Kripalu Online: http://www.kripalu.org/article/890/
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Peggy Cappy, author of Yoga for All of Us, is known through her best-selling video series Yoga for the Rest of Us as seen on public television. Her DVDs include Back Care Basics and Heart Healthy Yoga. Peggy teaches yoga internationally and also teaches a gentle yoga class that has been ongoing for over 25 years, and includes many students in their 80s and 90s. www.peggycappy.com |
Kripalu Online Describe what you do in 15 words or less.
Peggy I create “yoga for the rest of us” programs for PBS, inspiring and empowering others.
KOL Tell us about a turning point in your life.
Peggy I made a top-quality, gentle-yoga video of my ongoing yoga class of 25 years, which led to a yoga program that became an unprecedented success, first through WBGH in the Boston area, then nationally and internationally through exposure on hundreds of other PBS stations.
KOL What do you love about teaching?
Peggy I love knowing that I have made a tremendous difference to many in relieving pain and restriction, helping them to feel better, move better, and enjoy life more. In each class I teach, I am devoted to creating sacred space that demands focus and one-pointedness of mind, while fostering greater health and freedom in the body.
KOL What are you passionate about right now?
Peggy Meditation. Although I have practiced meditation over the past 40 years, it is especially fruitful and fulfilling at the moment. I am amazed that it can be both familiar and new.
KOL What do you do in your downtime?
Peggy I love to spend time in nature, whatever the season. I treasure connecting deeply with friends and family, whether through traveling, art activities, or simply sharing a good meal together. I love doing what makes me laugh.
This interview appeared in Kripalu Onlines: http://www.kripalu.org/article/890/
By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2 (HealthDay News) — A mother’s history of stroke can help predict a daughter’s chances of not only having a stroke but also her chances of having a heart attack, new research shows.
“Our new study shows that stroke in mothers is associated with heart attacks in daughters,” said Dr. Amitava Banerjee, a clinical research associate at the Stroke Prevention Research Unit at the University of Oxford, in England.
In other words, a stroke in mothers or other first-degree relatives can help identify women at increased risk for heart attacks — even if their mother has not had a heart attack.
The research, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, shows an association, but a cause-and-effect relationship has yet to be determined, Banerjee said.
Putting the research in perspective, he said: “We know that, in men and women, stroke or heart attack in the parents increases the risk of heart attack. Previous studies have not looked at these issues by sex of the parent or sex of the patient and have not looked in a ‘prospective’ way — that is, they have not followed up a population over time.”
In the new study, Banerjee and his colleagues evaluated 2,210 men and women who had either heart attacks or other coronary syndromes or strokes. Complete family histories were not available for all of them. But the researchers found that more than 24 percent of those who’d had heart attacks and angina — and about the same percentage of patients who had had strokes or transient ischemic attacks (called TIAs, or mini-strokes) — had a history of stroke in one or more first-degree relatives, such as their parents or siblings.
This indicates that stroke history in parents and siblings is as important to a person’s risk for a heart attack as it is to stroke risk, according to Banerjee.
Maternal stroke was more common than paternal stroke history in women with heart attacks or unstable angina. Women heart patients were more than twice as likely to have a mother who’d had a stroke than a father who did. The same link was not found in men with heart problems, however.
Exactly why mothers’ history of stroke seems to play a role in their daughters’ heart attacks is not known. Banerjee said it’s not possible to say whether environment or genes are playing the larger role in the mother-daughter association.
The link found between a mother’s stroke history and a daughter’s heart attack and stroke held even if the mother had only a stroke, with no heart attack history, Banerjee said.
Dr. Tatjana Rundek, an associate professor of neurology, epidemiology and public health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said that the association between maternal stroke and a daughter’s heart attack is relatively new but that it ties in with other research, including her own, that examines sex differences in cardiovascular risk.
In her own recent study, Rundek said, she found that genetic variations in genes involved in fat metabolism may have gender-dependent effects on plaque in arteries.
Research also has found that women have more systemic inflammation, she said. Inflammation is linked with buildup of fatty deposits in arteries.
What the new findings mean for women whose mothers had a stroke, Rundek said, is the need to “understand your own personal risk of stroke or heart attack.” Be sure you know your numbers — blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels, she said, and change behaviors to improve the numbers if need be.
Banerjee added that “women whose mothers have had stroke — particularly before the age of 65 — should have their blood pressure and cholesterol checked, and think about lifestyle factors such as smoking more than women without family history of stroke.”
More information
The American Stroke Association has more about risk factors for stroke. 
(SOURCES: Amitava Banerjee, M.R.C.P., M.P.H., clinical research fellow, Stroke Prevention Research Unit, University of Oxford, England; Tatjana Rundek, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor, neurology, epidemiology and public health, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami; February 2011, Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics )
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