Study Shows Yoga Also Reduces Fear of Falling

July 26, 2012 -- Starting yoga even long after a stroke may improve the balance of stroke survivors, a study shows.

"It's an exciting thing," says study researcher Arlene Schmid, PhD. "People can improve their balance years after a stroke. They can change their brain and change their body. They are not stuck with what they have."

The study is published in the journal Stroke.

Schmid is a rehabilitation research scientist at Roudebush Veterans Administration-Medical Center and Indiana University in Indianapolis. For the study, her team recruited 47 stroke survivors who'd had strokes more than six months ago. Seventy-five percent of them were male veterans, including veterans of World War II.

They were divided into two groups. Ten received no therapy. The other 37 got a specialized version of yoga developed by a yoga therapist and the research team.

At first, many of the veterans scoffed at the therapy.

"'Yoga is for girls, yoga is for hippies,'" Schmid recalls them telling her. "A stereotypical male veteran's response."

After a couple of sessions, though, and with encouragement from their wives, the veterans came to appreciate yoga and the impact it had on their disabilities.

"It was a hard sell, but by the end they wanted more," Schmid says.

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Yoga Improves Balance After Stroke

MINNEAPOLIS, July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --RedBrick Health, a fast-growing leader in consumer health engagement technology, announces the launch of its new partner certification program, RedBrick Ready. RedBrick Ready brings an expanding collection of devices, apps and programs to the RedBrick Health platform, while allowing certified partners to reach the rapidly growing network of RedBrick participants and client organizations. Joining the launch list of certified RedBrick Ready partners are Fitbit and RunKeeper, both of which make physical activity tracking simple, social and fun.

RedBrick Ready certifies partners across four key areas:

"Consumers engaged in improving their health by getting active, eating healthier and taking control of their conditions need convenient and reinforcing options. Employers and health plans want a variety of established choices for their participants. RedBrick Ready makes both possible," said Dan Ryan, chief executive officer for RedBrick Health. "By adding best-in-class products and services to our own innovations, we help our clients achieve the best of both worlds."

With RedBrick Ready, users can link their Fitbit or RunKeeper account to RedBrick, eliminating the need to log data twice. All activity captured via device, web or mobile app is automatically integrated into RedBrick's tracking, social challenge and reward engines.

Fitbit, a maker of popular tracking devices like the Fitbit Ultra Wireless Activity + Sleep Tracker and associated apps, adds a reinforcing dimension to health and fitness. Fitbit Ultra is a small device that tracks and provides real-time feedback on steps taken, distance walked, calories burned and stairs climbed to encourage people to be more active throughout the day. The data captured is wirelessly uploaded online or via iPhone and Android apps, so users can track fitness trends with free charts and graphs. RunKeeper, a leader in GPS activity tracking and creator of the Health Graph, a platform that integrates health data from a variety of apps, sensors and services, enables consumers to cross-connect their activity to the RedBrick Health platform using dozens of additional apps and devices.

"We're honored to be among the first devices to be selected as Redbrick Ready. Redbrick Ready provides an excellent way for RedBrick users to integrate Fitbit activity tracking data to see their fitness trends over time or throughout the day," said Amy McDonough, Director of Business Development for Fitbit.

"We're excited about the opportunity to support RedBrick members who are also RunKeeper users," said Jake Cacciapaglia, Head of Business Development for RunKeeper. "We're proud to be certified 'RedBrick Ready' and look forward to future collaboration to the benefit of our shared users."

Consumers may nominate apps, devices, programs and locations for consideration, and suppliers may register their interest in becoming a certified RedBrick Ready partner at Ready@RedBrickHealth.com.

About RedBrick HealthRedBrick is a health engagement technology company that helps employers reinvigorate their health & wellness programs. The company combines financial accountability, clinical and behavioral insight, social and game mechanics and powerful data analytics to create a personalized and persuasive experience delivered through web, mobile and live interactions. As a result, RedBrick drives healthy behaviors, better outcomes, and stronger returns on everyone's investment in health. The company serves large, self-insured employers and strategic distribution partners. Visit RedBrick at redbrickhealth.com, read more at healthinnovationblog.com or follow the company at twitter.com/redbrickhealth.

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RedBrick Health Launches Open Integration and Partner Certification Program, Selects Fitbit, RunKeeper Among First to ...

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

American Council on Exercise (ACE), a leading authority on fitness and the worlds largest nonprofit fitness certification organization, is pleased to announce the launch of its new ACE Academy Elite, an interactive, video-led study tool designed to help aspiring professionals be more successful on the ACE Personal Trainer Certification Exam.

Through a video-led lecture series and custom progress tracking, ACE Academy Elite helps candidates retain the knowledge necessary to not only pass the exam but become better at their job later on.

When people decide to become personal trainers, as with any dream, they want to be the best at what they do. Getting there can be hard, said ACE Chief Science Officer Cedric Bryant, Ph.D. ACE Academy Elite coaches them every step of the way, and helps them learn the material like they would in a classroom. Bottom line, it helps them start their careers with a solid foundation.

Through video lectures led by ACE-certified professionals, reading assignments, custom progress tracking, interactive lesson quizzes, practice tests and a 2-hour Exam Review Course, ACE Academy Elite provides a fun, motivating e-learning environment that corresponds to existing ACE core study materials. The Web-based tool also comes with access to the ACE Resource Center, staffed with fitness professionals who answer study questions by phone or e-mail.

As a nonprofit organization, our mission at ACE is to create an army of qualified personal trainers who are equipped with the tools they need to help people live their most fit lives, Bryant said. ACE Academy Elite gets our candidates in excellent shape to do that. Using it is another way we can empower ACE-certified Personal Trainers to be the best in the industry.

ACE Academy Elite joins other study resources used by aspiring fitness professionals, including the Exam Prep blog and ACEStudyCenter Facebook page, designed to connect candidates with others who are studying and provide an open forum for questions.

The interactive tool is available as part of ACEs Premium and Premium Plus study bundles. For more information, please visit ACEfitness.org/PersonalTrainer or call (800) 825-3636.

About ACE

Since 1985, American Council on Exercise (ACE) has evolved from a small nonprofit dedicated to educating people about proper fitness to a 50,000-strong network of certified Personal Trainers, Group Fitness Instructors (GFI), Lifestyle & Weight Management Coaches (LWMC), and Advanced Health & Fitness Specialists (AHFS). As the largest NCCA-accredited nonprofit fitness certification organization in the world, ACE provides quality continuing education to professionals and conducts independent science-based research to protect all Americans from unsafe and ineffective products. Our goal is to inspire people to live their most fit lives through free fitness resources including workouts, nutrition information and expert advice. For more information, call (800) 825-3636 or visit ACEfitness.org. AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EXERCISE, ACE and ACE logos are Registered Trademarks of the American Council on Exercise.

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American Council on Exercise Launches Interactive Study Tool for Aspiring Fitness Professionals

WORCESTER, Mass., July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --With the Summer Olympic Games expected to boost participation in organized, amateur sports as well as fitness activities, The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (THG), is helping independent agents tackle this large and steadily growing market.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120404/NE82147LOGO)

Through Sports & Fitness Advantage, The Hanover's agent partners can offer amateur sports and fitness-related businesses and organizations a broad, customizable line of industry-specific products as well as specialized loss control and claims services to provide complete and specialized protection.

The distinctive offering is available to agents through The Hanover's local middle market underwriters and small niche underwriters. It is one of the many industry-specific products and services within the company's Middle Market Advantage portfolio, which covers dozens of niches and segments. The Hanover's expertise helps agents capitalize on opportunities in specialized industries, creating more value for its agencies and their customers.

"We are dedicated to continuing to grow our innovative suite of industry capabilities to meet the needs of our partners, who increasingly are becoming more specialized," said Jack Roche, president, business insurance. "With this in mind, we are pleased to offer a comprehensive program that meets the unique needs of the amateur sports and fitness industrywhich is one of the fastest growing segments of our economy."

The program is available for a broad range of organizations and businesses, including:

The total solution provides customized coverage for commercial property, general liability, auto, umbrella, employment practices liability, emergency event management, professional liability and green buildings. Other highlights of The Hanover's Sports & Fitness Advantage include:

Emergency Event Managementincludes broad coverage to respond to emergencies such as actual or attempted acts of violence. Coverage includes income lost as well as public relations expenses, and post-event expenses such as medical treatment and victim counseling

Property Broadening Endorsementincludes 55 separate coverages, such as denial of access to an insured's premises, eCommerce and money and securities loss. The blanket limit also automatically includes six important coverages: accounts receivable; consequential loss of stock; electronic data processing equipment; fine arts; personal effects; and outdoor property

General Liability Broadening Endorsementprovides additional coverage that many Sports & Fitness organizations need, such as for subcontracted employees such as instructors, massage therapists, trainers and financial sponsors

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The Hanover Helps Agent Partners Tackle The Amateur Sports And Fitness Industry

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

National 4-H Council and UnitedHealthcare are expanding their partnership to promote healthy living by launching a new campaign designed to empower youth to help tackle the nations obesity epidemic.

The UnitedHealthcare 4-H Eat4-Health campaign begins this summer in 10 states, activating thousands of 4-H youth ambassadors to make healthy choices for themselves and encourage friends, families and people in their communities to make positive changes through training, creative programs and educational events.

Eat4-Health builds on UnitedHealthcares successful partnership with 4-H that began last year in Florida, Mississippi and Texas. The campaign will expand to a total of 10 states to include Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee. Each state will receive a $30,000 grant funded by UnitedHealthcare to support healthy-living programs, events and other activities administered by 4-H that encourage young people and their families to eat more nutritious foods and exercise regularly.

The program was officially launched today with more than 400 4-H youth and community leaders at the Tennessee State 4-H Round-Up and All Star Conference. They joined UnitedHealthcares mascot Dr. Health E. Hound in a discussion about the importance of healthy living and participated in a group exercise activity.

4-H is pleased to expand its partnership with UnitedHealthcare and launch this new campaign to empower youth to help improve the health of their peers, their families and their communities, said Donald T. Floyd Jr., president and CEO of National 4-H Council. 4-H youth ambassadors are prepared to work with UnitedHealthcare to make a positive impact on the health and wellness of our nations future leaders.

The Eat4-Health program is making a positive difference in the lives of so many families in communities that are hardest hit by the childhood obesity epidemic, said Russell C. Petrella, Ph.D., president of UnitedHealthcare Community & State, a UnitedHealth Group (UNH) company. UnitedHealthcare and 4-H look forward to expanding the program in more states and harnessing the energy and excitement of 4-H youth to promote healthy living.

Participating 4-H state programs receiving a grant will develop action plans that provide innovative, hands-on learning approaches that target specific community needs in their state. Many of these activities will support healthy living programs led by 4-H that encourage youth and community participation through events such as health fairs, cooking demonstrations, after-school programs, workshops and educational forums, among others. UnitedHealthcare employees will team up with 4-H at many of these events, assisting with planning and executing projects that lead to positive, sustainable change at the community and individual level.

As part of the Eat4-Health campaign, each state will organize and host a Youth Summit/Conference to train 4-H youth ambassadors to implement programs and reach goals in each state. The summits will provide the venue where participants will learn more about nutrition, health and fitness, obtain information on promoting health within their communities, and gain new tools for participating in multi-session educational trainings and one-time community activities and events.

This teen leadership experience will also serve as a launch to a Teen Ambassadors pledge and prepare 4-Hers to use their increased healthy-living knowledge and skills to make an impact in their own communities.

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4-H and UnitedHealthcare Launch “Eat4-Health” Campaign in 10 States Aimed at Empowering Youth to Promote Healthy Living

David Icke, CEO of MC10, wants you to feel like an Olympian. The company wants to provide users with sophisticated knowledge to fuel individual fitness and improve health, all through wearable electronics.

During a TEDMED talk this past spring, Icke lamented that electronics for fitness and medicine havent experienced the rapid innovation seen in computing and communications. Icke envisions unobtrusive technology that is worn on, and even in, our bodies. What if electronics conformed to us, instead of us conforming to them? ... Reshaping electronics will change medicine and advance [our] quality of life, he says.

MC10 has announced a Sports Advisory Board of respected professional athletes to help shape the next generation of athletic performance monitoring devices. (Read more on this group here.) MC10s groundbreaking technology will provide athletes of all stripes with critical performance information that will inform the way we all train and compete, said Grant Hill of the NBAs LA Clippers.

Ickes presentation from TEDMED can be seen here:

The biggest opportunity offered by wearable electronics, he claims, is to unlock the mysteries of human biology so that we understand what makes us sick, and what expands our capacities. Imagine what we dont know today that we will learn from a closer look at our systems, which is possible when sensing and computing electronics conform to us, he says.

Technology Review wrote about the self-quantification movement in its July/August cover story, The Measured Life, by Emily Singer.

David Icke is speaking at Technology Reviews annual EmTech MIT conference this October.

The conference will further explore the next wave of personal quantification: genomics. A forthcoming post will preview speakers who will share new ways that gene sequencing technologies are enabling personal genomics to redefine medicine.

Register today for EmTech 2012, coming up October 2425 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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EmTech Preview: David Icke of MC10 on the Revolution in Fitness and Health Tools

The Buccaneers' Eric LeGrand announced his retirement Thursday. He was originally signed by the team on May 2.

"Making it to the NFL was my dream. But now I want to see my team as strong as possible at the start of training camp," LeGrand said. "I'm a Buc for life."

LeGrand was honored with the Jimmy V Award for perseverance at the 2012 ESPYs earlier this month. In September, HarperCollins Publishers will release LeGrand's first book, a memoir entitled "Believe: My Faith And The Tackle That Changed My Life." There also will be a young readers version, "Believe: The Victorious Story Of Eric LeGrand."

LeGrand will be placed on Tampa Bay's reserve/retired list.

He was paralyzed from the neck down on Oct. 16, 2010 while tackling an Army kickoff returner while playing under Buccaneers head coach Greg Schiano at Rutgers. A junior at the time of his injury, LeGrand would have been a part of the 2012 draft.

As a college player, he recorded 60 tackles, 11 for loss and 2 sacks.

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Buccaneers' LeGrand announces retirement

LONDON -- The last five years have been tough for those in retirement. Portfolio valuations have been hammered, and annuity rates have plunged. There's no sign that matters will improve anytime soon, either, as the eurozone and the U.K. economy look set to muddle through at best for some years to come.

A great way to protect yourself from the downturn, however, is to build your retirement fund with shares of large, well-run companies that should grow their earnings steadily over the coming decades. Over time, such investments ought to result in rising dividends and inflation-beating capital growth.

In this series, I'm tracking down the U.K. large caps that have the potential to beat the FTSE 100 over the long term and support a lower-risk, income-generating retirement fund. (You can see the companies I've covered so far on this page.)

Today I'll take a look at British American Tobacco (LSE: BATS.L) , the world's second-largest tobacco company and a favored share among dividend investors (including Neil Woodford), thanks to its high profits and its policy of paying out 65% of earnings as dividends.

Smoking performance?The addictive nature of their products makes tobacco companies good defensive shares; they perform well in a downturn. BAT has proved the truth of this by comprehensively outperforming the FTSE 100 over the last 10 years:

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

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Is BAT the Ultimate Retirement Share?

IT director Karriem Shakoor noticed a trend among high-performing athletes: They all had personal performance coaches. It made him wonder: Should he get a coach to up his professional game?

His own boss supported the idea, and his research showed that many CEOs hire executive coaches. So Shakoor, who has worked in IT since 1991, hired a coach to help him take his leadership skills to the next level.

"I felt that in order for me to really assess my strengths and weaknesses, I had to engage with a coach who could step back to observe me, provide feedback and then help me tweak my performance," says Shakoor, who, as the senior director of IT shared services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, manages eight direct reports and just over 300 full-time employees.

Shakoor started meeting with coach John Baldoni in 2009 for scheduled face-to-face meetings, interspersed with phone calls to discuss additional topics as they arose. A coach, he says, is different from a mentor or a boss. "What he really is, is a person who has an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and how they translate into my style as a leader."

The initial goal was for Shakoor to improve his executive presence and executive style. Even though a six-month assessment showed he had indeed improved in those areas, based on feedback from company executives, Shakoor continues to meet with Baldoni for an hour every month or two as he aims to earn a CIO position in the future.

Shakoor can't point to any one work situation where coaching helped him score rather than strike out; rather, it's his overall ability to assess and successfully navigate various management challenges that's improved. "As an executive in a very fast-paced, demanding field, I view myself as an athlete, and having a coach who keeps me well-tuned as a corporate athlete has been a great benefit," he says.

Could a coach do the same for you?

Typically, IT professionals haven't engaged such services at the same pace as other senior managers, say coaches, CIOs and other corporate leaders. But that is changing as tech executives -- and their companies -- see that IT can gain as much from coaching as the others in the C suite. In fact, IT leaders may even benefit more, particularly those who rise through the ranks on the strength of their technical expertise rather than their management experience.

The good news: As CIO demand for coaching services increases, they're able to engage coaches who have experience in either IT management or coaching IT leaders, further bringing value to the service, says Suzanne Fairlie, the founder and president of national executive staffing firm ProSearch in Ambler, Pa., who frequently recommends coaching to CIOs.

Who gets coached, and when

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IT careers: Do you need an executive coach?

July 26, 2012 - By Deborah Brooks

With the heat of summer upon us, proper hydration is essential for sports and fitness performance.

The cooling of elevated core temperature during exercise results in fluid loss in the form of sweat on the skins surface. It is a natural and healthy response to rising body temperature. As a general rule, the more fit we become the more we sweat as our body becomes an efficient cooling machine. We must replace the lost fluids from sweating during exercise to:

Maintain proper body temperature

Lubricate the joints

Transport nutrients to the tissue

Rid the body of toxic waste built up during exercise

Along with water, sodium, potassium and other electrolytes are lost from the body in this process. Replacing lost fluid and electrolytes is the key to peak performance, endurance and injury prevention.

The big questions are what, how much and when should we be drinking?

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Personal Best: Proper Hydration for Peak Sports and Fitness Performance