Daily Steps Matter

There was a time in those early mornings where I noticed many people were brisk walking. This activity somehow motivated the inner me and encouraged me to join the crew. Days after that, I decided to give it a try, and I started to join the league of brisk walking. When I started my new routine back then, I asked one of the comrades about his purpose of doing this every morning without fail. He told me, "Brisk walking is good in burning off those fats that you can see under my arms." That was the answer, simple and modest.

Without a doubt, brisk walking, or simply walking, can definitely burn the excessive adipose fats that you would not want to store, provided that you achieve certain number of steps per day. In one of the latest study which published on bmj.com, taking more steps everyday now not only helps ward off obesity, but also reduced the risk of diabetes.

That's right. Many other studies shown that physical activity could reduce body mass index effectively, but at the same time, it also improve insulin resistance. Just in case you do not know about it, insulin resistance is an early stage in the development of diabetes. Hence, if taking more steps in a day could really help improving insulin resistance, such activity is worthy to be investigated long-term in future studies.

The research, which was conducted in Melbourne, involved some 592 middle aged adults in order to map diabetes levels across Australia from 2000 to 2005. These participants were given pedometer and were taught the way to use it. Throughout these studies, lifestyle factors like diet, alcohol consumption and smoking were taken into account.

There was a saying that if an individual meets the target of 10,000 daily steps, his or her health condition can be improved drastically. This appears to be very true as far as this study is concerned. The author of this study estimate that, if a sedentary person is able to change his or her lifestyle and meets the popular 10,000 daily steps, the individual would have a threefold improvement in insulin sensitivity.

Be Positive!

Developing a good EQ (Emotional Quotient) in an individual requires the person to be happy all the time, in other words, one should be positive, optimistic all the time in order to have high EQ. But teens these days, many tend to be inferior as long as temper and pessimism are put into the picture. In the study, "A Prospective Study of the Effects of Optimism on Adolescent Health Risks" which published in the February 2011 issue of Pediatrics, it shows that how a teen behave, their mental health condition really makes a difference when they grow older, especially against the onset of depressive symptoms.

This study involved some 5,634 students who were in their adolescent years, where the age range was from 12-14 years old. Several factors were considered in this study, such as optimistic thinking style, emotional problems, substance use and antisocial behaviors. From the results, it is surprising that boys appeared to have more stable in optimism, but in the contrary, girls were the ones who had marked falls in optimism across the study.

This phenomenon really needs to be taken into deep consideration as the youngsters are the future leaders of our society, our country, and hence, their condition, especially this one which concerns depression, should be strongly focused on. Those who were reported to have high level of optimism appeared to be protective in terms of health risks, and interestingly, those who are high in optimism level reported to have only almost half the risks of the least optimistic in developing depression in the future. Other than heath issues, optimism was also said to be protective against the onset of certain activities such as substance abuse, interpersonal violence, theft and vandalism.