ROCHESTER, Minn. — August 13, 2012. A sedentary lifestyle is a common cause of obesity, and excessive body weight and fat in turn are considered catalysts for diabetes, high blood pressure, joint damage and other serious health problems. But what if lack of exercise itself were treated as a medical condition? Mayo Clinic physiologist Michael Joyner, M.D., argues that it should be. His commentary is published this month in The Journal of Physiology.
VIDEO ALERT: A video interview with Dr. Joyner is available for journalists to download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.
Physical inactivity affects the health not only of many obese patients, but also people of normal weight, such as workers with desk jobs, patients immobilized for long periods after injuries or surgery, and women on extended bed rest during pregnancies, among others, Dr. Joyner says. Prolonged lack of exercise can cause the body to become deconditioned, with wide-ranging structural and metabolic changes: the heart rate may rise excessively during physical activity, bones and muscles atrophy, physical endurance wane, and blood volume decline. When deconditioned people try to exercise, they may tire quickly and experience dizziness or other discomfort, then give up trying to exercise and find the problem gets worse rather than better. "I would argue that physical inactivity is the root cause of many of the common problems that we have," Dr. Joyner says. "If we were to medicalize it, we could then develop a way, just like we've done for addiction, cigarettes and other things, to give people treatments, and lifelong treatments, that focus on behavioral modifications and physical activity. And then we can take public health measures, like we did for smoking, drunken driving and other things, to limit physical inactivity and promote physical activity." Several chronic medical conditions are associated with poor capacity to exercise, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, better known as POTS, a syndrome marked by an excessive heart rate and flu-like symptoms when standing or a given level of exercise. Too often, medication rather than progressive exercise is prescribed, Dr. Joyner says. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researchers found that three months of exercise training can reverse or improve many POTS symptoms, Dr. Joyner notes. That study offers hope for such patients and shows that physicians should consider prescribing carefully monitored exercise before medication, he says. If physical inactivity were treated as a medical condition itself rather than simply a cause or byproduct of other medical conditions, physicians may become more aware of the value of prescribing supported exercise, and more formal rehabilitation programs that include cognitive and behavioral therapy would develop, Dr. Joyner says.ROCHESTER, Minn. — July 9, 2012. Mayo Clinic experts are available to offer comment throughout the Olympics and Paralympic Games on everything from the physiology [...]
ROCHESTER, Minn. — June 4, 2012. With the 2012 Summer Olympics fast approaching, two Mayo Clinic researchers have penned a timely and thought-provoking editorial in the June issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings that explores genetic variation and how it plays out in professional athletic competition.
The authors, Mayo Clinic's J. Michael Bostwick, M.D. and Michael Joyner, M.D., argue that fairness in athletic competition is not defined in terms of everyone being equal. The reality, they say, is that athletes need a great deal of practice and exercise, but also certain athletic endowments that make it possible to achieve at a high level.
The editorial analyzes the recent case of Castor Semenya, a South African female runner disbarred from competition after she won the 800-meter race at the world championships in Berlin in 2009. Semenya was temporarily banned from competing because some argued she looked too much like a man, even though she had never identified as a man or been treated as one; she later was reinstated. "There really is no fast and hard definition of what constitutes a male and what constitutes a female," Dr. Bostwick says. "Nature is diverse, and there is variation of all kinds that can occur. It becomes a real challenge when we have an athletic system that is set up on a binary understanding of sex — you are either a man or a woman." Any advantage Semenya's physique gives her is no different from many other competitive athletes, Bostwick and Joyner say. A few examples:ROCHESTER, Minn. — May 3, 2012. Mayo Clinic's Mount Everest expedition is exploring heart problems, sleep apnea, muscle wasting, calorie burning and other health issues [...]
ROCHESTER, Minn. — August 27, 2012. With the fall sports season getting under way, Mayo Clinic experts are available to discuss the full range of athletic injuries. Common football, soccer and other falls sports injuries include concussions, stingers, MCL and ACL sprains/tears, meniscus tears, hip pointers, hamstring pulls, muscle contusions and ankle sprains.
MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Graphics and animation on common injuries available on the Mayo Clinic News Network.
Mayo Clinic fall sports injury experts include, but are not limited to: