A study performed by researchers in Iran concluded that nbUVB vitiligo treatments are more successful when associated with topical immunomodulators (Elidel, Protopic).
“Sixty-eight patients with vitiligo enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The patients were randomized into two groups and treated with NB-UVB plus either pimecrolimus or placebo for 3 months. Tri-weekly radiation was started at 280 mj/cm2, with 15% increments for each subsequent treatment until erythema was reported or a maximum of 800 mj/cm was achieved.
At baseline and 6 and 12weeks after commencement of therapy, vitiliginous patches were measured. …

I talk a lot about staying fit at the office and finding ways to get out of the chair every so often to give your body a break. Our tendency to sit has always been a concern among health and fitness professionals, not only because it leads to problems like back pain, headaches and chair-butt (a scientific term referring to tendency of your butt to spread when you don’t exercise it enough), but because sitting can actually shut down the body’s fat-burning enzymes.

Maybe you’ve found the news about this motivating and have started doing things like taking more breaks, standing up to work or shoving your computer out the window. If you haven’t gone there yet, another recent study may just do the trick. In an editorial published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers talked about the detrimental affects of sitting, including an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.

What stands out about this editorial is the following statement: “Even if people meet the current recommendation of 30 minutes of physical activity on most days each week, there may be significant adverse metabolic and health effects from prolonged sitting–the activity that dominates most people’s remaining “non-exercise” waking hours.”

I think this is important because, if you’re an exerciser like me, you may think your exercise program protects you from the dangers of sitting too much. This article points out that exercise may not be enough to offset the sitting, which leads us to the daunting question: What do we do when much of our work (and lives) requires so much sitting?

Most of us can’t just attach our computers to a treadmill or ride a bike instead of drive a car, so what do we do? One place to start is with the small things. Changing your life in a day is much too difficult, but are there some some small ways you could create new, active habits? Establish a morning and/or afternoon walking break. Put a sign on your desk that reads, “STAND UP” and do it every time you look at it. Stand up every 30 minutes and do 10 squats, 10 arm swings and 10 wrist circles. Every time you finish a task (a conference call, email, a report), walk around the office for a few minutes. Whatever you decide, it’s a matter of creating new behaviors that can become just as natural as sitting feels to you right now.

What about you? How do you avoid sitting? Do you have daily rituals or habits you follow to stay more active? Perhaps you struggle to stay active each day and wish you had some good advice. Either way, leave a comment and tell us your thoughts on sitting, exercisers who sit too much and ways to avoid chair-butt.

Get More Active Right Now

• Reader Advice: How to Stay Fit At Work
• Stay Active at Work
• Office Workout
• Best Stretches for Office Workers
• Wear an activity monitor to track your daily activity
• Keep a daily activity log - how much time do you spend exercising? Sitting at your desk? Watching TV? Just being aware of your habits will help you change them for the better.

_Source:

_{Owen N; Bauman A; Brown W. Too much sitting: a novel and important predictor of chronic disease risk? Br J Sports Med 2009;43:81-83.}

Fit Fact: Exercise may not offset too much sitting originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 10:10:50.

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Julie is probably like a lot of people out there. She never had a weight problem growing up - in fact, she was a self-described “skinny girl” and she loved it. Then, she got pregnant and, as she puts it, “There wasn’t a buffet that could keep me down. I was a power eater. I just didn’t get full. I’d only stop eating when I was sick of chewing the food.”

She ended her pregnancy at 178 pounds, thinking the weight would come right off after she had the baby, especially with regular breastfeeding. Unfortunately, Julie found that losing weight after having a baby wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped. What’s interesting is how Julie ended up losing her weight. She started following the South Beach Diet and using Wii Fit to get in shape. While many experts say that Wii Fit doesn’t give you much of a workout, Julie found it was the perfect way to ease into exercise and stay motivated on a regular basis.

Read more about Julie’s success and be sure to share your own story, if you’ve got one.

Reader Success Story: How Julie Lost 75 Pounds originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 05:00:40.

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There’s a bad case of the blahs making its way through Chicagoland and I’m pretty sure it’s because, 1) The sun has taken quite a long vacation, 2) It’s cold and spring is a long way away and 3) With the holidays over, it feels like there’s not much to look forward to. This is a tough time of year to get through, especially for those of you who just started working on your resolutions and you may wonder how to keep going.

Moving to a tropical island always helps, but less fanciful ideas include:

• Get outside - Even if it’s just for a quick walk, getting out can boost your mood and help you feel less crazy from cabin fever.
• Spice things up - If you’re stuck working out indoors, workouts can quickly get tedious. Now is a great time to try that class or workout you’ve been thinking about. Try a new exercise video or a new activity like kettlebell training.
• Plan a future event - It may feel like spring will never come, but it really will and you can prove it to yourself by finding a spring race to train for. Or you can tack your bathing suit up in your bedroom as a reminder that it will eventually be warm enough to wear it. Even better? Schedule a massage on the condition that you get all your workouts completed for the week - that may just give you something to look forward to.
• Exercise with others - I tend to workout alone, but winter exercise often brings out the social exerciser inside and I find a little extra energy around other people. If you’re the same way, break out a little and workout with a friend or take a fitness class at the gym - just being around others can make you feel better.

You’ll find more ideas in my article about beating the winter blahs, but I want to hear from you. How do you get through the toughest part of winter? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

Getting Through the Winter Workout Blahs originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 06:00:51.

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My clients regularly say things to me like, “Please teach me new, strange and more difficult exercises,” and, because I’m a very accommodating trainer, I comply. For example, this crossover step up is a recent favorite of mine, despite the fact that it is, indeed, awkward (made moreso if you use a higher step or platform). Moreover, not everyone’s knees, hips or ankles will put up with this exercise, so keep that in mind if you’re thinking of trying it. With that said, this is an excellent functional exercise.

By changing the direction of the traditional step up, you get lots of great lateral movement with both internal and external rotation of the hips. You also engage the glutes and abductors, all while working on your coordination and balance. My, my.

The biggest decision to make is with the height of your platform. As I mentioned, this is an awkward exercise that requires practice and patience, so I’ve found that starting out at a lower level (say, with a step on 1-2 risers or a platform that’s about a foot off the ground) works best to get a feel for the exercise. Once you’ve mastered it, try it at a higher level (e.g., a height where your thigh is parallel to the floor).

Do it right: Stand with your right side facing a step, bench or platform and hold weights if desired. Lift the left foot and cross it over the right leg, placing the foot flat on the step. Keep your hips square to the front of the room as you press up with the left leg, bringing the right foot beside the left. Step back down with the right foot and repeat for 1-3 sets of 8-16 reps.

Exercise of the Week - Crossover Step Ups originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 06:00:54.

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The desire to deepen our understanding and knowledge is a vein that runs deep in the tradition of yoga….

I confess, I’ve only watched a few Biggest Loser episodes, but I’m regularly updated by many of my clients, who watch the show with a combination of fascination, inspiration, horror and skepticism. There is something compelling about watching people lose so much weight in a short period of time, but there are also aspects of the show that leave a bad taste in my mouth and I’m not the only one.

Many other trainers and pros in the fitness industry have strong opinions about the show, something Amanda Vogel wrote about in the September 2009 issue of the IDEA Fitness Journal. In “Weighing in on The Biggest Loser,” Amanda asked a variety of fitness professionals what they thought about the show. Below is just a snapshot of some of the major issues:

• Overweight and sedentary contestants doing too much too soon. During some scenes, participants were doing things most pros wouldn’t dream of doing with beginners, such as plyometrics, sprints and other explosive movements that could easily cause injury if done incorrectly.
• There appears to be no progression based on the principles of exercise, which caution beginners to move slowly through different phases of training to build strength, endurance and conditioning. If you watch the show, you’ll see participants being pushed, sometimes well beyond their limits, which may be one reason some contestants have actually collapsed and been rushed to the hospital.
• Safety. Watching some of the shows and seeing some of the bad form and awdward movements, I wondered if contestants were doing a level of exercise they simply weren’t ready for. Many pros also worry that viewers may think it’s appropriate for a sedentary person to jump into high intensity, high impact exercise without any transition.

These are just a few concerns and I highly recommend Amanda’s article for more insight into what the pros think and what the producers on the show say about it.

That said, what about you? Do you watch the show and, if so, what do you think about it? Does it inspire you? Do you think it’s dangerous? Do you think it helps the fitness industry or does it hurt? Vote in this week’s poll and leave a comment to tell us what you think about The Biggest Loser.

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Vote in This Week’s Poll: What do you think about The Biggest Loser? originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 06:00:17.

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No one knows the exact cause of vitiligo, and there are many theories as to why it manifests. We can all agree that who ever gets vitiligo has a particular gene which predisposes them to it, but is the catalyst simply the predisposition, a chemical reaction, or is there an emotional connection? Perhaps it is any of the 3, or a combination, depending on the individual.
Let’s look at the emotional connection. This one is pretty easy to determine whether or not it applies to you. Did your vitiligo manifest after …

Sometimes researchers do studies, like the one I’m talking about today involving the relationship between TV-watching and energy expenditure and you think - “Did I actually have to pay for this study?”

In this particular study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers studied 36 adults who watched about 3 hours of TV each day and had BMIs that fell between 25 and 50 (considered overweight/obese). 20 participants got a lock-out system which shut their TVs off after they’d watched about half of their normal TV time. The result? According to armbands which measured their physical activity, those with lock-out systems burned 119 more calories a day.

This is probably a surprise to no one, since watching TV involves couch potato-ness in a way no other activity does, but an interesting point in the study caught my eye: Researchers surmised that the average adult watches almost 5 hours of TV a day. Wow - that’s a lot of TV-watching and I would bet most of us aren’t running on the treadmill while we’re doing it.

Watching TV is just one of the sit-on-your-butt activities we all do, along with sitting at the computer and sitting in the car, and it’s also a hard habit to break. Not only is TV entertaining, it’s a way some of us relax after a hard day and it’s oh so easy to do.

What are your TV habits? Do you worry that you watch too much TV or do you take steps to limit how much you and your family watch? Leave a comment and tell us how watching TV affects your waistline.

_Source

_{Otten J, Jonas K, Littenberg B, et al. Effects of Television Viewing Reduction on Energy Intake and Expenditure in Overweight and Obese Adults. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(22):2109-2115.}

News Flash: Reducing TV time can help your waistline originally appeared on About.com Exercise on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 06:00:35.

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Winter is a time of deep stillness and inner reflection. We can use winter’s introspective energy to gain clarity…