Tag Archives: health

Getting in Shape in the Flat Screen Age

This is unrelated to Asian American intellectualism or activism but fascinating and thought-worthy nonetheless: Full Service Gyms Feel a Bit Flabby.  According to the article, people are signing up for gyms less and less.  The reason, according to the article, is that modern gyms don’t have the social aspect that they used to have:

Blame the gym’s now-ubiquitous flat-screen TVs and the fact that iPods are de rigueur, said Jonathan Fields, a marketing consultant in Manhattan who has helped found personal-training gyms and yoga studios. “Now everybody’s plugged in,” Mr. Fields said. “In the 70s, they came for community. Now they come in and disassociate themselves from everyone in the club. It’s killing the health club.”

Posted in Knowledge, Stuff to make you cool | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Promoting Exercise


(Thanks, D, for Facebooking this.)

This is great. Why don’t we have commercials to encourage healthy lifestyles like daily exercise? It would drastically cut down on our healthcare costs.

By the way, an interesting aside–a friend and I were discussing the most recent episode of Shark Tank where a woman was selling a higher end clothing line for plus size women.  Kevin O’Leary mentioned the possibility that heavier women might not care about fashion as much as thin women.  My friend said he disagreed with this, that he felt plus size women might even care more about fashion.  The problem he saw was that most of the 60% of women who are overweight make less money than the rich women, and therefore many might not have the money to buy the higher end plus sized clothes.  Rich people, he said, are typically thinner because they can afford personal trainers and Stairmasters.

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War on Shortness

The NY Times had an interesting article today. In the words of the author:

The economist John Komlos has shown that the United States is losing height relative to other developed nations, and some American demographic groups are even shrinking in absolute terms. Yet we tend to discount shortness as a mere byproduct of genetics and early-life experience, while treating the obesity epidemic as if it were a grave danger to public health. Why can’t our campaign to reshape the American body have two fronts? If we really want to make our country healthier, let’s have a war on shortness too.

Posted in News | Tagged | 22 Comments

Eating Right

APAP has the full transcription of Obama’s health care speech yesterday for those who want to check it out.  I believe in universal health care, and I would like to see some improvement in this area, but I haven’t looked at the numbers of Obama’s plan to really think through if it would really work.  In my industry, we’ve seen Obama’s Home Affordable Refinance Program, and because so much of that plan is based on the voluntary participation of the already skittish banks who are lending the money, HARP has been a complete failure.  Obama should have thought it through before signing.

Posted in News, Politics | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Fish and more fish

10fish5002

Does everyone out there eat fish?

I’m a big Asian fish fan, that is, I usually prefer it Asian style–either Chinese style or Japanese sushi style.  It’s healthy, it’s clean, and it requires very little in terms of marinating, rubbing, etc.  There’s a clean feeling that comes from eating fish that doesn’t exist with other “meats.”  It’s good eating too–it won’t clog your arteries with cholesterol, and there are health benefits from the fact that most fish contain Omega 3. Plus, fish don’t release large amounts of methane into the atmosphere like cows.  Fish contain protein, which is essential to a healthy lifestyle.

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Asian Red Face May Indicate Risk of Cancer

According to the NY Times, if you get red face when you drink but are still able to consume large amounts of alcohol, it means that you’re at an increased risk of throat cancer. 

Turning red is a trait shared by 1/3 of people of East Asian ancestry, caused by a lack of the enzyme called ALDH2.  If you have two copies of the gene responsible for the missing enzyme, you get red and feel sick after very little alcohol.  If you have only one copy of the gene, you’ll get red, but you’ll still be able to drink.  It’s these people–the red faced drinkers–who are at an increased risk of throat cancer.  So if you’re a drinker who turns red, you may want to cut down.

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