News lifestyle 2008-06-03 Andanh.com

Alzheimer's patients speak out Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:03 EDT
Don Hayen has a handy way of deflecting the instant pity that comes when he reveals his Alzheimer's disease: "But I haven't lost my keys all day," he quickly jokes.

Hayen is part of a growing movement in Alzheimer's: Patients diagnosed early enough to still be articulate and demand better care and better research. They are giving a voice to a disease whose victims until now have remained largely silent and powerless.

It's a shift with big ramifications.

Alzheimer's patients are joining those with cancer and HIV to lobby Congress for more money to hunt treatments. Some are advising top scientists to push for higher-stakes research. They're even offering unprecedented glimpses into how a mind slowly unravels as they blog about their dementia.

"It's labeled incurable and you end up being a vegetable. People think as soon as you're labeled that way, you are. A lot of us aren't," says Hayen, 74, a retired San Diego physician who joined about 30 other early-stage Alzheimer's patients last month for a lobbying blitz at the nation's capital.

Power of the pole: Nordic walking burns more calories Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:46 EDT

FORT WORTH, Texas . When researchers at the .Cooper Institute in Dallas found that Nordic .walking burns 20 percent more calories than regular power walking, they expected the new sport to take off among fitness enthusiasts eager to take up lightweight trekking poles and turn low-stress walking into a great weight-loss workout.

.In Finland, you can't get from the airport to your hotel without seeing hundreds of people walking with sticks,. says Dr. Tim Church, former medical director of the .Cooper Institute. He headed the 2002 study that found that using poles to push off while walking increases calories burned and oxygen consumed without any perceived increase in exertion. A few participants in the study and Church himself increased their calorie burning by more than 40 percent, without increasing their walking speed. The average was 20 percent.

.It's really pretty simple,. Church says. .The more muscle mass you use (in any exercise), the more oxygen you consume and calories you expend. When you use sticks, you get your arms and shoulders and neck into your walking. The more vigorously you pole, the more calories you use..

Church is now director of preventive medicine research at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., the largest free-standing diet research center in the world. He is co-author of a new book, Move Yourself: The Cooper Clinic Medical Director's Guide to All the Healing Benefits of Exercise (Even a Little) (Wiley, $24.95).

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