At age 80, Burton Fischman is proof it’s never too late to get into fitness.

After surviving a heart attack and cancer, the Mundelein resident recently completed certification to become a personal trainer. He’s now teaching an exercise class for adults at Vernon Hills High School.

“I saw a story about this guy in his 70s who had become a personal trainer,” he said. “I said, ‘Awesome, I want to do that.’ ”

Fischman suffered a heart attack about 21/2 years ago. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 11/2 years ago and underwent radiation treatment.

While undergoing cardiac rehabilitation, Fischman said he started studying on the Internet to become a personal trainer. He also got help from Bob Bresloff, a personal trainer for the Mundelein Park District and Brenda Zagula of Living Well Physical Therapy in Libertyville.

Learning how the different muscles of the body are connected and work together really changed things for him personally.

“Once I mastered this stuff, I have zero aches and pains,” he said. “It’s amazing. It’s fabulous.”

Birthday gift

Fischman obtained his certification to become a personal trainer on his 80th birthday last fall. So far, he has taught a class for physical therapy patients in Libertyville and also has given one-on-one personal training sessions.

As a trainer, Fischman said he tries to tailor a training regimen to the individual client’s needs.

He said one woman he was training was recovering from radical mastectomy surgery and couldn’t lift her arm up more than half-way. She was reluctant to use weights so he started her out slowly with lifting exercises using two soup cans. Gradually, he incorporated other exercises using resistance bands to help build up strength in her arm and shoulder. Eventually, within about seven or eight weeks, she had regained full range of motion in the arm.

Originally from the East Coast, Fischman was a professor of public speaking and communications for about 35 years at Bryant University in Rhode Island. In 2001 he moved to Mundelein to be closer to his grandchildren.

In addition to exercising, Fischman believes maintaining a positive mental attitude is key to longevity in life and happiness.

“It makes all the difference in health and life and your ability to help other people,” he said.

The seven-week class Fischman is leading includes low-impact aerobic exercise, balance exercises, strength building and stretching.

Regular exercise improves the ability of overweight, previously inactive children to think, plan and even do math, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report.

They hope the findings in 171 overweight 7- to 11-year-olds - all sedentary when the study started - gives educators the evidence they need to ensure that regular, vigorous physical activity is a part of every school day, said Dr. Catherine Davis, clinical health psychologist at GHSU's Georgia Prevention Institute and corresponding author on the study in Health Psychology

"I hope these findings will help reestablish physical activity's important place in the schools in helping kids stay physically well and mentally sharp," Davis said. "For children to reach their potential, they need to be active."

To measure cognition, researchers used the Cognitive Assessment System and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement III that measure abilities such as planning and academic skills such as math and reading. A subset of the children received functional magnetic resonance imaging highlighting increased or decreased areas of brain activity.

MRIs showed those who exercised experienced increased brain activity in the prefrontal cortex - an area associated with complex thinking, decision making and correct social behavior - and decreased activity in an area of the brain that sits behind it. The shift forward appears consistent with more rapidly developing cognitive skills, Davis said.

And the more they exercised, the better the result. Intelligence scores increased an average 3.8 points in those exercising 40 minutes per day after school for three months with a smaller benefit in those exercising 20 minutes daily.

Activity in the part of their brain responsible for so-called executive function also increased in children who exercised. "In kids you just don't know what impact you are going to have when you improve their ability to control their attention, to behave better in school, to make better choices," Davis notes. "Maybe they will be more likely to stay in school and out of trouble."

Similar improvements were seen in math skills; interestingly, no improvements were found in reading skill. Researchers note that improved math achievement was "remarkable" since no math lessons were given and suggests longer intervention could produce even better results.

Children in the exercise program played hard, with running games, hula hoops and jump ropes, raising their heart rates to 79 percent of maximum, which is considered vigorous.

Cognitive improvements likely resulted from the brain stimulation that came from movement rather than resulting cardiovascular improvements, such as increased blood and oxygen supplies, Davis said. "You cannot move your body without your brain."

The researchers hypothesize that such vigorous physical activity promotes development of brain systems that underlie cognition and behavior. Animal studies have shown that aerobic activity increases growth factors so the brain gets more blood vessels, more neurons and more connections between neurons. Studies in older adults have shown exercise benefits the brain and Davis's study extends the science to children and their ability to learn in school.

About one-third of U.S. children are overweight. Davis suspects exercise would have a similar impact on their leaner counterparts.

Eating a big breakfast is not linked to consuming fewer daily calories as many might think, in fact researchers in Germany found people who ate a breakfast with 400 calories more than a small breakfast tended to eat 400 more calories per day.

Their findings suggest that the myth about eating a big breakfast helping to lose weight is not true, and may have come about from misinterpretation of research that was actually saying given a fixed number of calories per day, those people who consumed more of them at breakfast tended to eat less the rest of the day.

You can read how Dr Volker Schusdziarra, from the Else-Kröner-Fresenius Center of Nutritional Medicine at the Technical University Munich, and colleagues, conducted their study in the 17 January online issue of Nutrition Journal, a BioMed Central open access journal.

Schusdziarra and colleagues said the available information about the role of breakfast energy in total daily energy intake was confusing and contradictory: research that analyzed results across a population suggests eating a high calorie breakfast leads to greater overall intake, while other studies that analysed what individuals did suggest that when people eat a higher proportion of their calories at breakfast then they eat fewer calories per day.

So to evaluate these findings they decided to do their own investigation and apply both types of analysis to the same data.

For their study they recruited 280 obese and 100 normal weight volunteers and asked them to keep food diaries and record their food intake for up to 2 weeks. Some of the participants ate a big breakfast, some had a small one, and some skipped it altogether.

The results showed that:

• Eating more calories at breakfast was linked to greater overall daily intake in both normal weight and obese participants.


• When breakfast was a larger proportion of daily intake, this was linked to significant reduction in daily intake only on days when fewer calories were consumed the rest of the day.


• Statistical tests of the factors influencing daily calorie intake (correlation and multiple regression) showed that the number of calories eaten at breakfast (absolute breakfast calories) had the strongest influence.

The researchers concluded that:

"Reduced breakfast energy intake is associated with lower total daily intake."

They wrote that overweight and obese people should consider cutting back on breakfast calories as a "simple option to improve their daily energy balance", because the "influence of the ratio of breakfast to overall energy intake largely depends on the post-breakfast rather than breakfast intake pattern".

Schusdziarra told the press that:

"The results of the study showed that people ate the same at lunch and dinner, regardless of what they had for breakfast."

He said they found that a big breakfast averaging about 400 kcal more than a small breakfast resulted in a total increase of about 400 kcal over the day.

The only difference was, if someone ate a really big breakfast, they skipped a mid morning snack, but this was not enough to offset the extra calories they had already eaten.

In a statement, the researchers explained that earlier studies that suggest eating a big breakfast reduces overall daily calories are misleading. Those studies only looked at the ratio of breakfast calories to daily calories, and in this study Schusdziarra and colleagues found this ratio was more strongly affected by people eating less during the day, so their breakfast was proportionally but not absolutely, bigger.

So it would seem, according to the results of this study, that eating a big breakfast has to be followed by eating a lot less the rest of the day, to keep the calories in check if you are trying to lose weight.

Most authorities, such as the UK's NHS guidelines stress that sensible weight loss involves eating fewer calories while cutting down on saturated fats and sugar, and eating at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

And experts still suggest breakfast is an important meal, in that it can influence the content of our diet.

A spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, Sian Porter, said there is evidence that people who eat breakfast tend to follow a more balanced diet than people who skip it. They are also less likely to be overweight, they are more successful at losing weight and they are less prone to certain diseases:

"Missing breakfast may lead you to snack on less healthy foods later on in the morning and you won't necessarily catch up nutritionally later in the day if you skip breakfast," Porter told the BBC.

If you've worked hard to shed those extra pounds and want to keep the weight off, a new Danish study suggests that you consider eating more protein and fewer refined carbohydrates.

Based on the findings, the researchers advise consuming mostly what's known as low-glycemic index carbohydrates, such as whole-grain breads. The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the ability of carbohydrates to increase blood glucose levels; those with a low GI cause blood levels to increase more slowly, explained Dr. Thomas Meinert Larsen, a co-author of the study, published in the Nov. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

What is it about the high-protein, low-glycemic index carbohydrate diet that keeps weight under control? "Possibly a stronger satiating effect and more balanced blood sugar regulation," Larsen hypothesized.

With his colleagues, Larsen evaluated 938 adults with an average body-mass index (BMI) of 34, which is considered obese. In all, 773 completed the initial weight-loss phase and then were assigned to one of five different maintenance plans:

• Low-protein diet, (13% of energy) with a high GI
• Low protein, low GI diet
• High protein (25% of energy), low GI diet
• High protein, high GI diet
• Control group, which got no special instructions

During the weight-loss period of eight weeks, participants lost an average of 24 pounds. All five maintenance diets had a moderate fat content, about 25 percent to 30 percent of total calories. After six months, Larsen's team found that the 548 who completed the program had an average weight regain of 1.2 pounds.

Those in the low-protein/high-GI group showed the worst results, the researchers found, with a weight gain averaging 3.6 pounds. Those on the low-GI diet had an average weight regain of 2 pounds less than those on the high-GI diet.

"Thus, we have ourselves been quite hesitant to advocate the use of glycemic index," Larsen said. "But our new data, based on the largest randomized study on this topic ever, shows that, indeed, GI is of importance."

So what is a typical high-protein, low-GI diet? According to Larsen:

• Breakfast of natural, unflavored yogurt low in fat and fairly high in protein, with muesli, whole-grain crisp bread with low-fat cheese and an orange.
• Vegetable sticks and low-fat cheese sticks for a snack.
• Lunch of whole-grain rye bread with lean meat or chicken cold cuts, mackerel in tomato sauce and vegetables
• Whole-grain rye bread with low-fat liver pate and cucumber for a snack.
• Dinner of stir-fried turkey with vegetable and whole-grain pasta; avocado salad with feta cheese and sugar peas.

"These newer approaches may be more effective than conventional approaches in weight maintenance," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children's Hospital in Boston, who wrote an editorial to accompany the study.

"There has been considerable controversy over the role of glycemic index in general, and obesity treatment in particular," he said. "This study provides very strong, supportive evidence for the importance of this low-glycemic concept."

It's not difficult, he said, to shift from high-glycemic foods to low-glycemic foods. "It's shifting to somewhat less processed carbohydrates and, importantly, not making the carbohydrate the only thing you are having at the meal."

As for boosting protein, he said, "we're not talking about a 16-ounce slab of prime rib" or the very high levels of protein popularized in some low-carb diets.

Despite fewer visits to gyms and a love of high-fat foods, people in the 1960s were slimmer simply because they were more active, the government says.

Rates of obesity in English adults have risen from 1-2% in the 1960s to around 26% today, figures show. Yet in 2010, overweight adults are far less likely to try to lose weight, a repeat of a survey done in 1967 showed. Plus adults in the 1960s did more housework and used the car less, the Department of Health said. The 1967 survey of 1,900 adults found nine in ten people had attempted to lose weight in the past year compared with 57% of 1,500 adults questioned in 2010.

Forty years ago, only 7% of those who considered themselves to be overweight had failed to do anything about it compared with 43% of today's adults. And in 1967, 66% of those surveyed said they wanted to lose up to a stone compared with 46% in 2010.

Lifestyles

The Department of Health, which carried out the survey to promote the Change4Life campaign, said the findings were supported by differences in the way people lived. For example, in the 1960s there were 10.5m television sets compared with a predicted 74m by 2020. And people are now far less likely to walk or cycle to work or school as seven out of ten households now have a car compared with three out of ten in the 1960s.

In 1967, more than three-quarters of adults said that they walked for at least half an hour every day compared with only 42% in 2010. People spent twice as much time every week doing household chores and hardly anyone ate takeaway meals, which appeared in the mid-sixties. Gyms were rarer and high fat foods like condensed milk and cooked breakfast were popular but even though weight loss technology was still in its infancy, 2% of people claimed to have used vibrating massage belts for weight loss in 1967.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the faculty of public health, said people are probably healthier these days in terms of life expectancy. "But we have these problems which are problems of affluence and we need to get back to being more physically active. "One observation I would make is that overweight people in the 1960s were less common so they may have been more inclined to get back to a normal weight - it's about social norms."

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "In the 60s our daily routines involved more exercise which helped people stay slimmer. "Nowadays, our increasingly sedentary lives paired with the proliferation of a wide range of unhealthy foods have combined to create a very difficult environment for people to reach and maintain a healthy weight."