Time to throw out the bread! A low-carb diet IS the most effective way to lose weight – and it cuts the risk of heart disease, too.

Zoë Harcombe, nutritionist-researcher-writer, has a no-nonsence approach to addressing obesity. Her personal insights and reviews of information published in main-stream media are always refreshing and challenging.

Zoë recently discovered some breaking news coming from the US on the back of a study looking at the effects of low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets. My interest peaked when I noticed her surprise that the study was 'refreshingly void of conflict' giving opinion that it is a rare thing to find a drug or food study genuinely independent and run so well. The results are intriguing.

I first began suffering the pain and symptons of patellar tendonitis near the start of this year. It has taken a long time to recover from this painful condition and every now and then I still feel a 'tweak' of pain in my knee.

Naturally, I find myself wondering how long it could take before my patellar tendonitis eventually heals completely.

Image: "Blausen gallery 2014". Wikiversity Journal of Medicine. DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 20018762.

I am sure you have read or heard that running will naturally offer greater cardiovascular benefits for the body compared to walking. This is mainly due to the required increase in workrate of the heart to sustain the more intense acivity of running. This greater intensity demands a faster blood flow - good for moving oxygen around the body. This intensity also offers numerous benefits for the heart itself and the overall strength and fitness of the body.

We have written previously about the merits of running - Is Running The Best Exercise For Fitness

A critical consideration is the additional time and effort required to participate in a run versus a walk and whether this extra effort actually causes no activity to be taken.

Our autumn Pilates term gets underway today and it’s our biggest schedule we have ever run. We have 12 classes running per week across our usual 7 or 8 week courses and overall we have 94% of places booked. The demand for Pilates led by a Physiotherapist is very encouraging and we are delighted to see such interest in the maintenance of physical wellbeing.

In this article I thought I’d share a collection of recently published articles discovered across the web relating to the health benefits of physical activity. I hope some or all of these are of interest - so here goes…

Lifetime of fitness: Fountain of youth for bone, joint health?

Information coming out of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons suggests we can minimise or delay the effects of ageing by keeping physically fit and conversely a sedentary lifestyle will likely contribute to more rapid physical deterioration of our bodies and health.

We do go on about the value of exercise a lot, don't we? We do for a very good reason - exercise is one of the best, if not the best, efforts anyone can make for improving their short term and long term health.

We've written about the benefits of exercise in many previous blog posts - benefits such as improving your mood thanks to a release of feel good hormones, by challenging your heart and increasing blood circulation you are improving your cardiovascular health - reducing your chances of developing chronic disease, the list goes on and on...

Despite awareness of these tremendous health benefits many people still do not exercise regularly. The word 'awareness' here is key for creating new and positive habits in your life.

Developing greater awareness, not just about the benefits of regular exercise, but also awareness for what is preventing you from taking up a regular physical activity.

We usually prefer to talk about the fun and health-promoting benefits of exercises but in this article I want to highlight 2 reasons why exercise may possibly cause damage to your long-term health.

I appreciate that for some people exercising is a chore and is done out of a sense of obligation to their own health as a result of advice from a doctor, friend or relative. If you fall into this category then these risks I am about to talk about will likely not apply to you. In case you decide to stop reading this article right now let me leave you with one simple nugget of wisdom before you go - you need to find an activity that is fun. When you really enjoy the sport or activity you are doing it no longer feels like a chore. One sure way of finding more enjoyment in your activity might be less about the choice of exercise but rather your choice whether to exercise alone or with a partner. Sharing your workout time with a friend is a lot more fun and motivating than doing it alone.

Back to those who may be at risk, people like me. I have always loved to be physically active but as I get older I become more aware of the need to self-regulate. If I don’t, it catches up with me and negatively affects not only my body but how I think and feel about life in general.

We have written a fair few articles about the barefoot running movement, exploring the debate for and against the merits of ditching the traditional running shoe.

Recent article: Running Confusion - Shoes vs Orthotics vs Barefoot Movement

The very first version of the five-fingered running shoe (a flat, rubber soled slip on style shoe with glove like inserts for each toe) was made by a company called Vibram. Since this first design a lot of other manufacturers have produced a diverse range of flatter style shoes to meet the growing demand for the more ‘natural’ running with less supporting cushion under your feet, AKA barefoot running.

Arguments over the merits of barefoot running have been intense with questionable claims supporting for and against it. The company Vibram has just recently settled a claim of nearly $4million for deceptive marketing about the health benefits of the five-fingered. It seems an estimated 70 million Vibram customers might be getting a payout to some extent.

Read about the Vibram lawsuit here…- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/10/_n_5302213.html

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my personal experience in how I recognised I was suffering from patellar tendonitis. I covered some technical points about who is at risk and what some of the contributing risk factors are for developing patellar tendonitis.

If you are considering whether your knee pain might be patellar tendonitis then be sure to read my initial blog post - What Is Patellar Tendonosis

In this part 2 follow-up I want to share some of the first stage rehabilitation activities that I have been doing to help my recovery.

After doing all the wrong things at first I sought advice from the Mount Merrion Physiotheray team who set me straight on what I should be doing. Having an inquisitive mind for the detail I asked for some evidence-based literature on the treatment of patellar tendonitis which I duly studied and supports my personal account here.

The first time I felt the sharp and stabbing front of left knee pain was a few months ago while enjoying my usual afternoon run with my dog. It was unlike the more familiar muscle aches and pains and there was no swelling present. I remember worrying this could be a potentially serious issue because this was a knee pain I had not felt before.

I was experiencing for the first time a condition which has since been diagnosed by my Chartered Physiotherapist as patellar tendinosis. After discussing my condition with my physiotherapist he directed me to various evidence-based online information resources as well as sending on relevant journal articles to help me understand the condition better. What follows is an account of a knee problem from a patients point of view.

This condition can become a more serious and chronic issue requiring many months of rest and rehabilitation if not appropriately cared for in the early stages. My knee pain started with repeated deep squat movements in the gym with a heavily weighted bar across my shoulders. Oddly the pain did not last more than a second during the exercise and almost no pain followed in the days after. Naturally I did not give it much more thought at the time until many weeks later when the pain returned, much more intensely and persistently, during a less than demanding run.

I now find myself in a delicate situation having to manage my knee pain very carefully indeed with fear of my condition becoming a much more difficult one to cure if I don’t give it the right attention.

Physiotherapists regularly prescribe exercise as a fundamental part of the rehabilitation process, following a muscle or joint injury for example. Running is a very common form of exercise to which many patients will want to progress, when enough function has returned, in order to build up their fitness again. But is running the best exercise for improving fitness?

The short answer is no, in my opinion.

However, possibly a more appropriate answer would likely be that it depends on what your fitness goals are and how you want to define fitness.

Let’s take a look at a local event to help describe what I mean. The Great Ireland Run 10km recently passed earlier in April with the winners achieving some impressive results; men’s first place came in under 30 minutes and the women’s first achieved a 33 minutes and 39 seconds. How do we think the top running athletes prepare for such an event? They will do a lot of running training no doubt but I am certain this is not all they do. Athletes performing at this level need to be in peak physical fitness to sustain the demands they are placing on their bodies and to keep their risk of injury as low as possible.

You may be wondering what do top performing athletes have in common with patient rehabilitation and recreational running. Well, my point is that we can learn from the best in their field and adopt some of the principles used in their training. Naturally our training won’t be nearly as intense or demanding as that of elite athletes so what can we learn from them?