Health

Diets vs balanced nutrition

As a rule, we are very inattentive to what we eat daily. Neglecting the norms and culture of nutrition leads to the problem of excess weight, and only then there is a need for regulation of our diet. In this case, a dilemma often arises: choose an ultramodern diet or resort to a balanced diet?

The effect of different types of diets on the body

People choose different ways to lose weight: daily training, taking medications for weight loss, fasting, diets. Statistics show that the latter option is the most popular because it gives hope for a quick result. But how effective and beneficial are diets for our bodies?

There are many diets, and all of them are based on certain restrictions. For example, many people choose one nutritious product and prepare all the dishes from it. Others prefer to eat only protein foods, excluding carbohydrates from their own diet. If you persevere and follow all the rules of the chosen diet, it often turns out to be very effective – extra pounds disappear before our eyes. Meanwhile, the emerging prospects of rapid weight loss do not convince experts of the appropriateness of restrictive measures. Numerous medical studies indicate their detrimental effects on health. For example, consuming only one product over a long period leads to a serious undermining of the immune system, sleep disturbances, and allergies. Protein diet provokes digestive problems, poor mood and increased risk of infertility.

The effect of balanced nutrition on the state of the body

A good alternative to diets is a balanced diet. It is based on the inclusion in the product menu of the quantity and quality that the body needs for normal functioning. In particular, daily we need to consume more than 50 components: amino acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, minerals, various vitamins, and others. In this case, a certain ratio of elements must be observed. A lack or overabundance of certain ingredients is dangerous to health: metabolic processes, development of pathologies are possible.

Compliance with the balanced nutrition formula increases the body’s resistance to aggressive factors of influence, improves physical well-being, mental performance, and health in general.

Why is this method of losing weight less popular than dieting? The reason lies in our impatience because we strive to get rid of the hated extra pounds as quickly as possible. If you eat balanced, the weight goes away gradually, and diets promise a quick goal. However, in the first case, we have ensured good health and a stable result, and in the second there is a real threat to the development of pathologies and the return of the previous weight.

So what’s better: Diet vs. Balanced diet

Starting to play sports, people forget about the main thing – in addition to training, you need to eat right. After all, the results in sports depend on what you eat. The article will focus on proper nutrition (nutrition rules) when playing sports. (more…)

Calorie counting is important not only for weight loss. Counting calories is necessary if you are working on your body and want to maintain or build muscle. On an intuitive diet – of course, you can live. But changing for the better is difficult.

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Do you have hard mental work? Why not plan a short but intense workout for this occasion? According to physiologists from Texas Tech University, our brains function better after physical exertion.

How sports affect the brain

A key factor in a well-functioning brain is the neurotrophic factor of the brain, or BDNF, a hormone that helps brain cells establish new connections with each other. In the 1990s, neurologists found that laboratory animals produced more BDNF in various areas of the brain as a result of physical activity. Since then, neurologists, gerontologists, and psychologists have been studying the effects of exercise on cognitive abilities. They found, for example, that the brains of seventy-year-olds who walk more than half an hour every day on foot are somewhat “livelier” than those of people who are not physically active, that intensive workouts reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and three cardio workouts per week for sixty-year-olds to the growth of BDNF in critical parts of the brain.

Sports and the brain: research

The Texans wanted to know if physical exercise also had a directly noticeable positive effect on the brains of young people, so they developed an experiment with 15 healthy students. Researchers forced students to complete two load cycles of 20 minutes. In one case, students performed cycles with moderate intensity: 20% below the lung ventilation threshold (the point at which they began to suffocate) and 56% of the maximum oxygen uptake (VTh-20%). Another time, students worked more intensively: 10% above their lung ventilation threshold at 75% of the maximum oxygen uptake [VTh + 10%].

The effect of sports on the brain: results

Before and after the tests, the researchers used the Stroop test to assess students’ cognitive abilities. This is a test that measures how well your brain handles information. Students equally well performed the two easiest parts of the test after both sessions. But in the most difficult part of the test, students showed the best results only after intensive exercise, as shown in the figure below.

After intensive training, students had a significantly higher blood BDNF, but this did not occur after moderately intense training. The more lactic acid was detected in the students’ blood, the higher was the production of BDNF. Given that BDNF can cross the blood-brain barrier in both directions, intensity-dependent results can help develop exercise recipes to maintain or improve neurological health.

Output

“It’s tempting to suggest that repetitive BDNF impulses caused by exercise are key phenomena in neurological and cognitive improvements that occur as a result of regular exercise,” the researchers write. “Future studies should examine the effect of chronic physical training on the relationship between cardiovascular fitness, resting BDNF levels and cognitive function in humans.”

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