Category: Health & Fitness

Pre-Workout Dry Scooping Trend Is Awful for Your Health and Fitness

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Pre-Workout Dry Scooping Trend Is Awful for Your Health and Fitness

Being into fitness is a good thing, but it’s easy to cross the line into viral fitness trends that hurt your health rather than help it. Enter: dry scooping, one of the latest fitness trends making the rounds on TikTok. Essentially, dry scooping involves eating a scoop of pre-workout powder or protein powder to boost energy before hitting the gym. Instead of diluting these powders and drinking the contents, fitness fanatics jumping on the trend are dumping the powder directly into their mouths and swallowing the powder dry (no water or milk included). But pre-workout dry scooping can have serious detrimental effects on your health. In one of the worst case scenarios, it can even land you in the hospital.

Does Dry Scooping Pre-Workout Have Any Benefits?

The reason why gym buffs dry scoop is to absorb pre-workout energy powder faster. And to this effect, dry scooping does work. Eating the powder dry does get it into your system quicker, allowing the user to feel the effects more rapidly, says Benedict Ifedi, MD, a family and sports medicine physician with Memorial Hermann Medical Group in Texas. However, fast absorption isn’t necessarily a good thing. Not only can rapid absorption of the ingredients found in pre-workout powder be dangerous (more on that in a minute), but these supplements don’t actually have the benefits proponents claim they do. 

When it comes to pre-workout energy powder, which often contains caffeine, there is some proven boost to anaerobic energy. This means it gives you more energy for short, high-intensity bursts of training. But when it comes to increasing your upper and lower body power, you won’t see much benefit.

Further, pre-workout powders are lacking long-term research — not only for efficacy, but also for safety. They’re unregulated and can even contain banned substances, such as anabolic steroids and harmful stimulants or hormones (1,3-dimethylamylamine, or DMAA, which can lead to heart attacks, is one of the most widely publicized).

As for protein powder, research has found that protein intake has a similar effect both before and after workout. So there’s no need to hastily dry scoop before you work out. A post-workout protein shake will work just as well. 

Why Is Dry Scooping Pre-Workout Bad For You?

There are two main dangers of dry scooping. First, consuming dry powder itself can lead to choking or inhalation, which can cause

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A 6.6 Billion Units Global Opportunity for Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors by 2026 – New Research from StrategyR | National News

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A 6.6 Billion Units Global Opportunity for Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors by 2026 – New Research from StrategyR | National News

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — A new market study published by Global Industry Analysts Inc., (GIA) the premier market research company, today released its report titled “Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors – Global Market Trajectory & Analytics”. The report presents fresh perspectives on opportunities and challenges in a significantly transformed post COVID-19 marketplace.

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Edition: 9; Released: April 2021

Executive Pool: 6609

Companies: 18 – Players covered include Fujitsu Ltd.; Abbott Laboratories; Honeywell International, Inc.; Texas Instruments, Inc.; Medtronic, Inc.; GE Healthcare; Qualcomm, Inc.; Omron Corporation; Analog Devices, Inc.; Bayer Healthcare AG; Adidas AG; Casio Computer Co., Ltd.; Jawbone; F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG; AgaMatrix, Inc.; Asahi Kasei Microdevices Corporation; LifeScan, Inc.; Acute Technology, Inc.; Philips Healthcare USA; RF Technologies, Inc.; ChoiceMMed Technology India Pvt. Ltd. and Others.

Coverage: All major geographies and key segments

Segments: Segment (Mobile Health and Fitness Sensor)

Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.

Complimentary Project Preview – This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass™ Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-

Global Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors Market to Reach 6.6 Billion Units by 2026

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors estimated at 953.4 Million Units in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of 6.6 Billion Units by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 37.8% over the analysis period.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at 415.2 Million Units in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach 1.1 Billion Units by 2026

The Mobile Health and Fitness Sensors market in the U.S. is estimated at 415.2 Million Units in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of 1.1 Billion Units by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR

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‘Big & Bold’ demonstrates that while fitness is for all, it’s not one-size-fits-all

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‘Big & Bold’ demonstrates that while fitness is for all, it’s not one-size-fits-all

On Nutrition

Let’s face it: Most people exercise with the hope it will help them lose weight, prevent weight gain or otherwise control the size and shape of their body. Sure, being healthy and feeling fit may also be goals, but the main motivator is often weight.

I once had a client tell me she took an intense fitness boot camp class for six weeks and didn’t lose any weight, so she didn’t see any point in exercising. Another client told me that once she learned that science says exercise does little for weight loss (which is true), she decided there was no reason to try to fit walking into her busy schedule.

That’s unfortunate, because there are so many reasons to move our bodies that have nothing to do with weight loss. For example, a study published last month concluded that physical activity promotes health more effectively than weight loss — with the added benefit of reducing the health risks associated with yo-yo dieting.

The persistent coupling of exercise to the idea of weight loss has also created a narrow view of what exercising bodies look like. If you’re not in a thin body, but you only see thin bodies in fitness books and magazines, in ads for gyms and yoga studios, and embodied in personal trainers and class instructors, what does this suggest? It suggests that exercise will make you thin, too — which can kill motivation when it doesn’t — or that your body has no business being in the gym or yoga studio.

One woman working to offer a more inclusive view of fitness is certified personal trainer Morit Summers, co-owner of Form Fitness, a gym in Brooklyn, New York, and author of the new book, “Big & Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman.” The book is both serious and supportive, with clear, detailed instructions on how to perform movements safely and effectively, plus advice for how to lift in a way that fits your life and helps you reach your strength goals. While the book provides beginner-through-advanced starter workouts, Summers encourages listening to your body and modifying movements as needed. For such a meticulous and thoughtful book, its origins were … unplanned.

“I was asked if I wanted to write the book by the publishing company [Human Kinetics]. I was like, ‘Whoa, what?’ Because that was never something on my bucket

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The Transformation of the Fitness Industry

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The Transformation of the Fitness Industry

This article is part of our Business Transformation special report, about how the pandemic has changed how the world does business.

Like restaurants, retailers and other businesses normally conducted in crowded locations open to the public, the health and fitness industry in Europe is scrambling to recover and get its business back on track — as soon as it figures out what its business will look like.

The orders by public health authorities to close health and fitness clubs several times have had a profound effect on the industry. The consulting firm Deloitte estimates that clubs in Europe lost 15.4 percent of their members, or more than 10 million people, even when closures were relatively brief. Industry revenue fell twice as much, by almost 33 percent, as clients froze their accounts or requested refunds.

While the pandemic drags on, club executives are trying to fully understand how fundamentally Covid-19 has transformed their industry, which generated $96.7 billion in global revenue in 2019.

“For a long time now, I believe that too many health club leaders around the world assume they have the full and undivided attention of the exercising consumer,” said Ray Algar, a global fitness industry business adviser and analyst with Oxygen Consulting in Brighton, England. “That the gym sits at the top of some exercise industry hierarchy.”

“The gym may have once had this temporary monopoly, but this is over, and the pandemic has demonstrated that consumers can capably locate and enjoy many different gym substitutes,” he said. “What the pandemic has done has made these gym substitutes more visible. So, this does represent a significant inflection point because never has this global industry been challenged to demonstrate its right to serve and support the exercising consumer.”

Stefan Ludwig, a Deloitte partner and leader of the Sports Business Group, said that the lockdowns had indeed had a “significant impact on both consumer behavior and operator offerings.”

A report by ClubIntel, a marketing research and consulting firm, found that closed clubs led many people to lose the habit of exercising regularly and caused others to try alternatives, such as biking, joining a walking club, signing up for video classes (dance and boxing are popular options) or buying an interactive device like a Peloton or Mirror.

Many customers, the report found, have chosen remote options offered by providers other than a fitness club. To retain or recoup prepandemic clientele, clubs

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3 Things to Know Before You Arm Your Employees With Fitness Trackers

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3 Things to Know Before You Arm Your Employees With Fitness Trackers

Even the most seasoned and well-adjusted remote workers know the risk: If you’re not careful, working from home can bring your physical activity to a standstill. 

Employers know this too. Increasingly, they are looking for ways to bolster their wellness programs by offering fitness trackers, such as those made by Fitbit, Garmin, and Amazon, to help employees log more movement during the day. Another popular option called Oura makes smart rings that can track sleep, fitness, temperature, and even signs of illness. An Oura dashboard even lets employers view the likelihood of illness across their entire workforce.

Employees who log a certain amount of physical activity can then receive insurance discounts through many major health insurance companies, such as UnitedHealth Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, and Aetna. Beneficiaries can get reimbursed for prescription co-pays and other health care costs under their deductibles. 

But fitness trackers in the workplace, and health surveillance in general, also carry considerable privacy risks. More than 60 million records from Fitbit, Apple, and other companies were compromised in June after a data breach on GetHealth, a third-party group that provides employee fitness incentives. Data breaches of fitness trackers like Strava have revealed personal details such as the name and location of participants, even in anonymized data. Security risks aside, you may not even want to have so many personal details about your employees at your fingertips. After all, constant surveillance won’t exactly put your team at ease. 

Before offering fitness trackers to your employees, here are a few things you should keep in mind:

1. Fitness trackers will save you money on premiums, for now.

Workplace fitness-tracker programs often offer discounts on insurance premiums if employees meet certain fitness goals. Some employees can earn as much as $1,500 a year they can apply toward their health insurance premiums. Workers can get free or discounted wearables, workout clothing, and even gym equipment. On the employer side, a few studies have shown that fitness trackers can help you save money on premiums. But some companies have reported that their insurance costs have remained the same. 

At present, there are no laws or regulations in place to stop insurers from using fitness-tracker data to raise premiums. In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the AMA raised concerns that such data could increase insurance premiums for some groups. 

“Wearables can collect

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Unbiased Medicare plan comparison help available | Health & Fitness

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Unbiased Medicare plan comparison help available | Health & Fitness

Mary Loftis knows the importance of paying attention to Medicare Prescription Drug plans.

Medicare Open Enrollment starts Friday, Oct. 15, and will continue until Dec. 7, said Loftis, a Nebraska State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) counselor.

People with Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance or Medicare Part C Advantage Plan insurance can compare 2022 plans during open enrollment.

Medicare plans can change from one year to the next — potentially affecting how a person’s coverage works.

Nebraska SHIP is available to help provide confidential and unbiased assistance in comparing plans for the coming year.

“It’s another year of changes and the only way to put your mind at ease and know you aren’t spending any more than necessary — you need to compare your prescriptions against all the Medicare health and drug plans,” Loftis told the Tribune.

Medicare enrollees should have received information from their 2021 Medicare Prescription Drug Plan advising of changes in premium, deductibles and drug coverages.

Another change that can affect the most economical plan for an individual in 2022 is that they may have added or reduced the prescriptions they take.

People are also reading…

But if they only look at the information they received by mail, the individual will not know if there are any new Medicare Prescription Drug Plans available in Nebraska for 2022, Loftis said in a prepared statement.

Loftis said there also will be changes in preferred pharmacies this year — and while premium costs are important — it is the coverage and cost of prescriptions which a person takes that really matter.

Even for those happy with their current plan, it’s a good idea to compare.

Then they can rest assured they’re not paying any more than necessary for prescriptions in 2022.

Nebraska SHIP and Medicare offer free counseling.

People need not leave their homes to get help. Nebraska SHIP is again offering phone appointment and virtual meetings using a computer or tablet.

Those interested in getting help comparing their Medicare Part D or Advantage Plan options may make an appointment to speak with a SHIP-certified counselor by calling:

Nebraska Extension in Burt County at 402-374-2929 or the state SHIP number at 1-800-234-7119.

With all the changes, it’s a great idea to make an appointment before they fill up.

Individuals also can visit http://www.medicare.gov/find-a-plan to compare plans themselves or enroll in a new plan.


Some of Tammy’s memorable stories


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