For a Healthy Holiday: Move, Please

Let's head into the Memorial Day weekend with three short items in our heads:

Kids with Type 1 diabetes who watch 2 or more hours of TV daily have a harder time controlling their blood sugar than diabetic kids who watch less TV. More evidence--this by very, very broad, rickety inference [hey, cut me a break, it's a holiday weekend]--that exercise [i.e., the opposite of watching TV] can help control blood sugar in diabetics. The voluminous crap often eaten while watching TV may play a role too. Research on exercise by adults with Type 2 diabetes, or just at risk for it, has shown the same thing. Exercise, even a regular mild walk, helps control blood sugar.

Obese adults with asthma suffer worse symptoms than normal weight people with asthma. One interpretation offered by presenters at an American Thoracic Society meeting: Severe asthmatics get less exercise, which makes them more likely to be obese.

Overweight people may get less benefit from strength training than people of average weight. This from a report in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Heavier people still got lots of strength gains, just not as much as the leaner folk.

And what does all this mean for you? Not much beyond this: Have a great holiday weekend--but be active while you do it.