Back by popular demand, more insights from the textbook, Introductory Physiology and Hygiene, by H. W. Conn, Ph.D., published by Silver, Burdett and Company, in 1908.

Apparently the Tour de France riders never learned as children that they should sit straight, ride slowly, and stop before they are too tired. However, they did learn about the importance of ‘out-of-door’ exercise.

The handwriting over the chapter title reads “Begin” most likely marking the start of a lesson or assignment. Almost all the chapters have this, and the end of the chapter on ‘How to strengthen the muscles’ has the handwriting, “End of 1st quarter.”

Don’t miss Twelve Everyday Health Rules from the same book which was picked up by the NIH MedlinePlus Magazine spring/summer 2010 edition for their ‘Then & Now” feature.

Related posts

• What can pro cyclists teach us about pain?
• Childhood Obesity By The (Big) Numbers
• The Magic of Red Helmets

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

The fast moving, participatory world of social media is embraced by the White House and the CDC, as well as by professional athletes and major corporations. This presentation, given by invitation at the 2010 American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Summit, educates health professionals on the basics and illustrates how social media and mobile technology can be used to promote programs and engage, educate and motivate individuals.

The resources  cited or utilized for this presentation  are listed below. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or more examples,  feel free to contact me through the ‘contact’ page or  post a comment below. I’d love to hear from you!

Basic Guidelines  and information

• AIDS.gov Using new media
• CDC eHealth marketing
• FDA’s 2.0 / Social Media Strategy (slideshare)
• The HHS Center for New Media
• Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government
• Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab: Captology
• White House OpenGov

Reports

• ComSCORE, The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review. A Recap of the Year in Digital Marketing, Feb 2010
• Kaiser Family Foundation Report, Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. Victoria Rideout, Ulla Foehr and Donald Roberts, January 2010

Pew Internet & American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/ Recent relevant reports include:

• Internet, broadband, and cell phone statistics. Lee Rainie, Jan 5, 2010
• Social Isolation and New Technology. Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions, Eun Ja Her, Lee Rainie, Nov 4, 2009
• Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009. Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith, Oct 21, 2009
• The Social Life of Health Information. Susannah Fox, Sydney Jones, Jun 11, 2009
• Chronic disease and the internet. Susannah Fox, Kristen Purcell, Mar 24, 2010

Policies

• List of social media policies
• HHS Standards and policies

mHealth

• Mobile Health News The World Bank Day @ mHealth Summit October 28, 2009
• The pocket spy: Will your smartphone rat you out? Gedes, L. New Scientist, 14 Oct 2009
• EpiSurveyor: Data collection on mobile phones made incredibly simple
• GeoChat: Integrating mobile field communications with situational awareness

Examples

• CDC Mobile
• CDC – H1N1 video contest winner
• National Wear Red Day, NHLBI, NIH Wear Red group photo pool on Flickr
• Please Rob Me
• Project Masiluleke
• text4baby
• TSA blog

Terminology

• Smac wiki  Wiki of social media definitions
• Webopedia Online dictionary and search engine for computer and Internet technology definitions
• What is e-health? G Eysenbach, J Med Internet Res 2001;3(2):e20, 2001

Stats

• CTIA-The Wireless Association®  Wireless quick facts
• Facebook stats
• Social Media Statistics

Journals

• Journal of Consumer Health On the Internet
• Journal of Medical Internet Research
• Journal of Participatory Medicine

Miscellaneous

• Food spotting
• FourSquare
• Geocaching
• Get up and move
• Nokia Sports Tracker
• Quantified Self

Staying up to date

• Mashable
• SocialMedia.biz
• TechCrunch

Related posts

• Kids and Media Use: Letting their fingers do the walking?
• The mHealth Summit: Local & Global Converge
• Health 2.0 STAT: Plugged in and Unplugged

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

Our ability to balance and grasp objects and accelerate our limbs through space allows us to experience the multidimensional, multisensory, global playground around us. Our urge to play and explore are so innately woven into our DNA that we routinely create new ways to engage with our universe – to experience wind and water and sky and earth. Extreme sports, such as those on display in the video above, showcase this innate urge to play.

Extreme sports are not just for highly trained, technically savvy adults. The Extreme Sports Camp (ESC) in Colorado offers extreme sports for individuals ages 5 and up with an autism spectrum disorder.

“”My son not only had the time of his life at this camp, but he was given the opportunity to overcome so many of his fears. Our children are not often challenged to the extent that I believe they should be, for their best benefit. This one week adventure provided a supportive environment that allowed him to experience many things beyond his typical boundaries, and gave him the chance to gain confidence, overcome fears and anxieties, and feel better about confronting new and not always so welcoming opportunities in the future.” – Laura from Tennessee

Like their professional and playful kindred spirits, the children also wear red helmets (and white ones and yellow ones). And they also wear big smiles on their faces.

We’re often admonished to “walk, don’t run.” But if we don’t occasionally try to run our fastest (or jump or climb) and feel the wind in our hair and the ground passing beneath our feet, how will we know what we’re capable of, what we have to watch out for, and what we ultimately can achieve?

About The Red Helmet video
This film was part of the Nissan Outdoor Games in 2008. Over one week, 5 teams compete to showcase 5 sports in a 5-minute film. Renowned kayakers, mountain-bikers, climbers, paragliders and base jumpers perform in teams with a cameraman and photographer to develop the most engaging interpretation of adventure sports in the outdoor environment. The competition takes place in Interlaken, Switzerland. The song featured in the video is ‘Cold Cold’ from the album Grus americanus by the band Stephanie’s Id.

Related posts
Are humans designed to be endurance runners?
What can pro cyclists teach us about pain?
100+ Top Play Resources

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

Are we designed to run?

“A squirrel can probably outrun most humans.”
— Dan Lieberman, Ph.D., professor of biological anthropology, Harvard University

Have you experienced Zen-like runs in which you glide along, your limbs moving rhythmically, your breath even, your heart echoing the beat of the world around you, and your senses alive? And have you experienced runs where your limbs are heavy and awkward, your breath labored, your joints aching, your brain starving, and your body screaming “STOP”?

Most of us have experienced both types of runs, especially as we prepare for a season of marathons and charity events or as we seek to burn a few calories and get some fresh air. As a physiologist, the wide range of euphoria and misery induced by running has often left me pondering whether we are designed to run, and if so, what type of running is buried in the genes of our ancestors. Now I know the answer:

“We have an evolutionary legacy to be endurance athletes.”

That’s according to biological anthropologist Dr. Dan Lieberman. As Homo sapiens, we are born to run. Dr. Lieberman delivered the keynote Joseph B. Wolffe Memorial Lecture on “Human Evolution, Endurance Running and Injury” at the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting in Seattle, Wash. His talk was so intriguing that I found myself reading through years of his research. The more I explored the data, the more amazing the evidence became. And clearly, I’m not the only one fascinated with this topic, as illustrated by the recent popularity of books such as Born to Run, Why We Run: A Natural History, and ChiRunning.

Humans are designed to run long distances, according to Dr. Lieberman. By long, he means over 3 miles (5 kilometers) — distances that rely on aerobic metabolism. We aren’t designed to be sprinters, and hence we’ll lose short-distance races against squirrels and other four-legged animals.

The evidence for our long-distance prowess stretches back about 1.5 million years to Homo erectus, and stretches from our head to our toes. Based primarily on fossil evidence, it appears we’ve evolved a range of amazing traits that distinguish us from our tree-climbing primate relatives and that go well beyond the characteristics needed for two-legged walking. These features enable us to regulate our body heat, stabilize our heads so we don’t resemble bobblehead dolls, stabilize our trunks, absorb shock and store mechanical energy.

Some top features that enable us to excel at running include:

A head with a fairly flat face and small nose — which shifts the center of mass of our head back so it’s easier to balance.

A preference for mouth breathing rather than nasal breathing at greater running intensities. While we don’t pant in the manner of many four-legged animals, mouth breathing helps us dissipate heat and offers less resistance and a greater rate of airflow than nasal breathing.

Reduced body hair (fur) and extensive sweat glands that help us dissipate the heat generated by our contracting muscles and thus maintain a stable body temperature. The ability to sweat from our scalp, forehead and face may help cool blood before it reaches our brain.

Wide shoulders that rotate independently of our head and neck, allowing our arms to freely swing while our head aims forward. Wide shoulders also help with balance and stabilization.

Short and light forearms that reduce the energy required to maintain our elbows in a flexed position during running.

A large gluteus maximus (butt muscle) that enhances stabilization of our trunk. This muscle is barely used for walking, but it is used extensively during running and keeps us from falling forward onto our faces.

Large joint surfaces relative to our body mass in most of our lower limb joints (sacroiliac, hip and knee) — which help dissipate impact forces.

Long tendons and ligaments in our legs and feet that act like springs to store and release mechanical energy, thus reducing the metabolic cost of running. These include the Achilles tendon, the iliotibial tract and the peroneus longus muscle.

Arches in our feet that absorb impact and serve as springs.

Compact, rigid feet and short toes that allow efficient use of our feet to push off from the ground during running.

While we are designed for endurance running, our ability to store only about 18 to 20 miles worth of glycogen (sugar), as well as our need to replenish water and electrolytes lost from sweating, suggest we did not evolve to run marathon-length (or greater) distances. Hence the evolution of the electrolyte drink, power bar and race-day water stops staffed with cheering volunteers.

Cruise control
It’s easy for us to take these amazing anatomical structures for granted. We curse when we suffer Achilles tendinitis or plantar fasciitis or get irritated when sweat drips into our eyes. The next time you find yourself lacking motivation to head out the door for a jog or struggling through a run, give thanks to your ancestors. Channel your inner Homo erectus, embrace your big strong glutes, hold your head high and relish the astounding evidence that we are born to be endurance runners — and you may find yourself gliding along filled with gratitude.

Learn more

• Endurance running and the evolution of Homo. D.M. Bramble and D. E. Lieberman, Nature 432: 345-352, 2004.
• The human gluteus maximus and its role in running. D. E. Lieberman, et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 209:2143-2155, 2006.
• Q & A: Joseph B. Wolffe Memorial Lecturer, Sports Medicine Bulletin, American College of Sports Medicine

Related posts

• Carbohydrates and sports performance: rinse, repeat, win?
• What can pro cyclists teach us about pain?

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park

“The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of the present travel.” Theodore Roosevelt

When I was growing up in Colorado our family would routinely load up the station wagon and head off to a National Park. We explored Glacier, Arches, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Mesa Verde, Dinosaur, Grand Teton and Rocky Mountain National Park (our ‘neighborhood’ park). As a college graduation gift my mom took me to Denali. Several years later friends and I headed off to Volcano National Park for a reunion. This past year we loaded up the car for a multisport visit to Acadia.

Our national parks cover over 80 million acres and offer the perfect blend of inspiration and perspiration. There are 12,250 miles of unpaved trails, 8,500 miles of roads and 26,830 campsites. My parents shared their love of  spacious skies and purple mountains majesty and now when I visit national parks I often encounter smells and sounds that bring back fond childhood memories of family outings.

“Life is a great adventure…accept it in such a spirit.”  Theodore Roosevelt

In celebration of America’s National Parks: America’s Best Idea, here are 14 great national park resources to help you plan a most excellent outdoor adventure with your family and friends.

1. National Park Service (NPS) Main Website The perfect place to get acquainted with the parks.
2. Find a National Park Search by name, location, activity (biking, boating, climbing, swimming) and topic (caves, civil war, fossils, glaciers, volcanoes).
3. Park Reservations Make reservations for cabins, tents and ranger-guided tours as well as for various permits. Federal and private campsite reservations can also be made via ReserveAmerica.
4. Fuel Cost Calculator Planning to load up the family car and take a road trip to a National Park? Calculate the estimated fuel cost of your trip, courtesy of AAA.
5. National Parks Weather Search a national park, state park, or recreation area by name or search by location.  Visit a specific national park website or the National Weather Service to get local weather updates and travel advisories (road closures due to blizzards or lava flows).
6. NPS Interactive Map Center (IMC) Base maps and park brochure maps for geographic reference and navigation to and within parks.   Maps are also available from the National Park Service Maps site.
7. National Parks Geology 3D and photographic tours that feature park geology and natural history from the U.S. Geological Survey.
8. National Parks Service Jobs Permanent, temporary and seasonal positions.
9. NPS Volunteer Opportunities Search for positions throughout the National Parks (use ‘National Park’ for the keywords).
10. Junior Ranger Program Complete a series of activities during a park visit, share answers with a park ranger, and receive an official Junior Ranger badge and certificate. Or become a Web Ranger through the online program for kids of all ages.
11. ‘Share the Experience’ Photo Contest Official federal recreation lands photo contest. For inspiration, view the NPS historic photo collection.
12. News and Commentary A multimedia blend of news, feature content, debate, and discussion tied to America’s national parks.
13. Tips for Visiting National Parks Information from the Sierra Club on fees, lodging, gear, activities and avoiding crowds.
14. National Parks by the Numbers NPS stats, workbooks to estimate the economic impact of NPS visitor spending, and acreage reports. Also see NPS Quick Facts.

“It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one’s sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature.”  Theodore Roosevelt

Other Resources

Dad fishing near Rocky Mountain National Park

Theodore Roosevelt quotes from the NPS
National Parks Foundation
On Twitter:
National Parks News @NPCA
U.S. Forest Service @forestservice
National Park Foundation @GoParks

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

‘Basketball’ courtesy of Hakan Dahlstrom on Flickr

“For years when I got in an exercise rut and got bored or tired of my workouts I would always take time off from my normal workouts and play basketball. I would get a ball and go shoot like when I was a kid. I would find myself playing, sweating, and not counting the minutes.”

Those are the words of Michael O’Shea, Ph.D., Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (FACSM). Mike is Fitness Editor for Parade Magazine, and author of the magazine’s extremely popular Get Fit Now column.

Mike is a tireless advocate for physical activity for individuals of all ages and stages, and he recently interviewed me about the importance of play. We had a great chat and he shared his memories of play, as well as his current play activities.

“I play with my two youngest, ages five and seven. We go to the pool, go on long walks, climb trees, and go to the playground. My 5-year-old daughter and I take her rabbit for walks. She even has a leash for her rabbit, and my job is to look out for big dogs that might hurt LuLu.”

In his column on play, Make Fitness Fun, Mike reminds us, “Don’t let kids have all the fun this summer. Getting in shape doesn’t always have to feel like work. If you’re doing something you enjoy, you’ll feel more energized and engaged.”  Great words from someone who leads by example.

To get ideas on play programs, activities, events, and resources, see 100+ Top Play Resources.

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

'Just Rome' courtesy of Pensiero at Flickr

There’s growing recognition that play is not just, well, child’s play. Mounting evidence shows play has a crucial role in cognitive, physiological, behavioral and social development and adaptation at all ages and stages of life.

In essence, we need to take play seriously. Play has been recognized as a right of every child by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. It is also the right of teens, adults and seniors. As we learn more about the benefits of play, it’s apparent it belongs in living rooms and boardrooms, and in sand lots and parking lots – any place there’s room to move. Play sculpts our brains, our bodies, our relationships, and our future.

Below is a wide ranging – but by no means exhaustive – list of play resources that includes organizations, resources, guidelines and reports, current news stories, books, audio and video, e-newsletters, blogs, twitter hashtags, programs, locations, and events.

Many of these sites offer extensive resource lists and news feeds of their own that integrate the fields of education, urban design, transportation, the environment, physical activity, sports, nutrition, and obesity. While the list focuses on more recent resources that mainly center on play, there are many, many outstanding resources I’ve overlooked. Please feel free to add them in the comment section…on your way out the door to play.

Play: Organizations (alphabetical)

• Alliance for Childhood
• Alliance for Childhood (UK) New!
• Association of Children’s Museums
• Boundless Playgrounds
• Children and Nature Alliance (Canada)
• Children and Nature Network (C&NN)
• Common Good: The Value of Play
• Fair Play For Children (U.K.)
• Free Play Network (U.K.)
• Imagination Playground
• International Playground Equipment Manufacturers Association (IPEMA)
• International Play Association (IPA)
• KaBOOM!
• National Institute for Play
• National Program for Playground Safety
• National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA)
• Partnership for Play Every Day
• PlayBoard (Northern Ireland)
• Play England
• Play For Peace
• Play Matters! New!
• Play Shaper New!
• Play Wales
• Playwork Partnerships
• Project For Public Spaces
• Shane’s Inspiration
• The Association for the Study of Play (TASP)
• U.S. Play Coalition New!

Play: Resources (alphabetical)

• Active Healthy Kids Canada
• Active Living Resource Center (ALRC)
• Adventure Playgrounds
• American Journal of Play
• Atlanta Taskforce on Play New!
• Eat Smart. Play Hard. USDA
• Kids Outdoors (U.K.)
• Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation: Invention at Play
• Let’s Go Outside! U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
• London Play
• National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE)
• National Center for Bicycling & Walking (NCBW)
• National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA)
• Natural Learning Initiative
• Outdoors: The Ultimate Playground (Toronto, Canada)
• Playground Magazine
• PlayPumps International
• Playworks (formerly Sports4Kids)
• Safe Routes
• Streetplay
• Trust for Public Lands
• Voice of Play
• Wild Zones
• YMCA of the USA

Play: Guidelines & Reports (most recent first)

• The Loss of Children’s Play: A Public Health Issue. Alliance for Childhood, Policy Brief 1, November, 2009. (pdf) New!
• Restoring Play and Playful Learning to U.S. Kindergartens. Alliance for Childhood, Policy Brief 2, November, 2009. (pdf) New!
• Children’s Nature Deficit: What We Know – and Don’t Know. Cheryl Charles, Richard Louv, Children and Nature Network, September, 2009. (pdf) New!
• The Playwork Primer, Penny Wilson, in conjunction with The Alliance for Childhood. April, 2009. (pdf) New!
• F as in Fat 2009. How obesity policies are failing in America. Trust for America’s Health, July, 2009.
• The built environment: Designing communities to promote physical activity in children. Pediatrics. Vol. 123 No. 6 June 2009, pgs 1591-1598. (Policy statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics)
• What is playwork? Fact sheet No. 14. Frazer Brown, June, 2009. The Children’s Play Information Service. (pdf)
• Creating & retrofitting play environments: best practice guidelines. PlayCore, Inc. and Natural Learning Initiative, 2009.
• Crisis in the kindergarten: why children need to play in school. Alliance for Childhood, March 2009. (pdf)
• Managing Risk in Play Provision: Implementation guide. Guide commissioned by Play England. David Ball, Tim Gill and Bernard Spiegal, The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), December 2008.  (pdf) New!
• The Play Strategy. Department for Children, Schools and Families, U.K., December, 2008.  New!
• 2008 Physical activity guidelines for Americans. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, Oct 2008.
• Time out: Is recess in danger? Patte Barth, The Center for Public Education, August 2008.
• Design for Play – A guide to creating successful play spaces. Guide commissioned by Play England. Aileen Shackell, Nicola Butler, Phil Doyle, David Ball, The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), August 2008. New!
• The VERB campaign. Not about health, all about fun: marketing physical activity to children. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Vol 34, Issue 6, Supplement, June 2008.
• Call to activity: getting kids moving in the great outdoors. President’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports, DHHS, February, 2008. (pdf)
• Recess Rules. Why the undervalued playtime may be America’s best investment for healthy kids and healthy schools. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2007. (pdf)
• Building “Generation Play”: Addressing the crisis of inactivity among America’s children. A report by Stanford University, February, 2007. Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine. (pdf)
• The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bonds. Pediatrics vol 119, No. 1, Jan 2007. Clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. (pdf)
• The trouble with 21st Century Kids. A special report by SPI Play in association with Peter Smith and Rachel Biggins. Richard Emmott Marketing Ltd, 2006. (pdf) New!
• A Guide to the ADA accessibility guidelines for play areas. U.S. Access Board, Oct 2005.

Play: Current News Stories (most recent first)

• In summer, kids need real play time. Nanci Hellmich, USA Today, June 24, 2009.
• 10 reasons play can make you healthy, happy, and more productive. Nancy Shute, U.S. News and World Report, March 9, 2009.
• Deskercise: Staying jazzed and focused at school. Allison Aubrey, NPR, Morning Edition, February 26, 2009.
• The serious need for play. Melinda Wenner, Scientific American, January 2009.
• The new playground: bye, jungle gym. Kathleen Kingsbury, Time, Jan. 28, 2009.
• Old-fashioned play builds serious skills. Alex Spiegel, NPR, Morning Edition, February 21, 2008.
• Taking play seriously. Robin Marantz Henig, The New York Times (magazine), Feb 17, 2008.
• No outdoor play ‘hurts children.’ BBC News, September 10, 2007.
• Putting the skinned knees back into playtime. Alex Williams, The New York Times, May 20, 2007.
• A classroom of monkey bars and slides. Jane E. Brody, The New York Times, April 3, 2007.

Play: Books (alphabetical order)

• The ambiguity of play. Brian Sutton-Smith, Harvard University Press, 2001.
• Children at play: an American history . Howard Chudacoff, NYU Press, 2007.
• The dangerous book for boys. Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, William Morrow, 2007.
• The daring book for girls. Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, William Morrow, 2007.
• Exuberant animal: the power of health, play and joyful movement. Frank Forencich, AuthorHouse, 2006.
• The genesis of animal play: testing the limits. Gordon Burghardt, The MIT Press, 2005.
• The genius of play: Celebrating the spirit of childhood. Sally Jenkinson, Hawthorn Press Ltd, 2001. New!
• Homo Ludens – A study of the play element in culture. Johan Huizinga, Beacon Press, 1971.
• Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Richard Louv, Algonquin Books, 2008.
• Play = learning: how play motivates and enhances children’s cognitive and social-emotional growth. Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (eds). Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Play as if your life depends on it: functional exercise and living for Homo sapiens. Frank Forencich, Go Animal, 2003.
• Play. How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Stuart Brown, with Christopher Vaughan. Avery, New York, 2009.
• Playing and learning outdoors: Making provision for high quality experiences in the outdoor environment. Jan White, Routledge, 2007. New!
• Play reconsidered: sociological perspectives on human expression. Thomas S. Henricks, University of Illinois Press, 2006.
• The power of play. David Elkind, Da Capo Press, 2007.
• Under the sky: Playing, working and enjoying adventures in the open air – a handbook for parents, carers and teachers. Sally Schweizer, Rudolf Steiner Press, April 2009. New!

Play: Audio & videos (Most recent first)

• Jill Vialet, Living in Communities: Now Press Play. TEDx SF, November, 2009.  New!
• Videos from The Summit on the Value of Play, June 2009.  New!
• The science of play. Radiolab, WNYC, May 30, 2008.
• Stuart Brown: Play is more than fun. TED talk, May 2008 from the 2008 Serious Play conference.
• Tim Brown: Creativity and play. TED talk, May 2008 from the 2008 Serious Play conference.
• Playgrounds for the elderly. ABC news, March 18, 2008.
• Where do the children play? Documentary, Michigan Television, 2008.
• Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things for kids. TED talk, March 2007.
• Adventure playgrounds’ a dying breed in the U.S. Kristin Wiederholt, NPR, Day to Day, March 9, 2006.

Playful popular videos

• Dolphin play bubble rings, chiajungchi New!
• Piano Staircase, Thefuntheory.com New!
• Polar bears and dogs playing, FirstScience TV New!
• Sesame Street: Outdoors with Jason Mraz New!
• The Elk Dance, QuietBuck (originally from David Neils) New!
  
• Where Do The Children Play, muppetmeatloaf New!
• Your ball needs you, Let’s Move New!
  

Play: e-Newsletters (alphabetical order)

• Centerlines (National Center for Bicycling & Walking)
• Green Hour (National Wildlife Federation)
• National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA) News
• NCPPA Activity Advocate
• Parks and Recreation Weekly News Brief (NRPA)
• P.E.4LIFE Newsletter
• Prevention Research Center Notes (University of South Carolina)

Play: Blogs (alphabetical)

• Active Kids Club
• Creative Play Plus
• Eco Child’s Play New!
• Experimental Play New!
• Free-Range Kids
• The Grass Stain Guru
• Green Hour (NWF)
• KaBOOM! Blog
• Let Kids Play!!
• Let the children play New!
• Parklover New!
• Peaceful Playgrounds
• Peekabooplay
• PhD in Parenting (see Carnival of Play posts)
• Play Activities New!
• Playborhood
• Play Everything
• Playground Chronicles New!
• PlayGroundology New!
• Play Outdoors: The Campfire
• Play Parks Central: Play, Pretend, Play
• Playscapes
• Playward
• Your Wild Child
• What’s out there? New!

Play: Twitter http://twitter.com/
Hashtags  #play  #playoutdoors  #parks
(These streams are a great way to find play-centric individuals and organizations to follow)

Play: Programs (alphabetical order)

• Boston Schoolyard Initiative
• Empower Me New!
• Green Hour, National Wildlife Federation
• Let’s Just Play, Nickelodeon
• Let’s Move! New!
• New York City Playgrounds Program, The Trust for Public Land
• National Recess Week, Cartoon Network
• Out2Play
• Project Adventure, Peaceable Playgrounds
• The Fun Fed New!
• We Can! Ways to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health
• YMCA Healthy Kids Day

Play: Locations

• City Museum (Saint Louis, MO)
• KaBoom! Find a play space in the U.S.
• NJ Playgrounds New!
• North San Diego County Playgrounds New!
• Playground Chronicles: Greater Halifax, Nova Scotia playground spaces New!
• Playground finder: Australia
• Strong National Museum of Play (Rochester, NY)
• Swings and Roundabouts: playground reviews in Victoria and Vancouver, Canada New!

Play: Events (alphabetical order)

• Come Out and Play Festival (NYC)
• London Play: Street Play
• World Wide Day of Play, Nickelodeon
• Sunday Streets: San Francisco
• Take a Child Outside Week

Related posts on play

• The definition of play (courtesy of Tiger Woods)
• Nanci Hellmich from USA Today on Retro Play
• Tired of the treadmill? Get out and play instead

Note: I have bookmarked all these resources on the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us at http://delicious.com/ctorgan/

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

Hand off – Courtesy of Anna.Hawaii at Flickr

Can simply swishing a carbohydrate-containing solution around in your mouth improve short-duration exercise performance? Yes, according to intriguing new research.

It’s been well documented that ingesting carbohydrates during exercise can improve athletic performance in events lasting for several hours or more. But in events lasting for only an hour, the carbohydrates you suck down aren’t needed by your muscles for fuel.

Surprisingly, however, consuming carbohydrates has been found to improve short, intense exercise performance. Since the carbs aren’t needed for energy by the working muscles, physiologists have been left scratching their heads. A key insight appears to be in how the carbohydrates are consumed.

From the lips to the hips
If individuals perform a simulated one-hour cycling time trial in a lab and are given glucose intravenously, bypassing the mouth and gut, their bloodstreams will fill with the energy-supplying sugar. Yet the subjects will show no improvement in cycling performance as compared to when they complete the time trial with an infusion of only saline.

However, if individuals perform a stationary cycling time trial in the lab and do nothing more than rinse their mouths with a maltodextrin solution, they’ll show an improvement in their exercise performance. Maltodextrin is a type of sugar that is not sweet — which offers another clue to this crazy paradox.

This evidence suggests it’s the mouth, not the muscles, that is happy to see carbohydrates. These results hint that there are taste receptors in the mouth that are sensitive to carbohydrates, even non-sweet ones such as maltodextrin. The theory is that once the receptors are activated, signals are sent to the brain that ultimately result in improved exercise performance.

A real tongue twister
As you might recall from science class, our tongues have taste buds for sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Our mouths now appear to also contain receptors that respond to carbohydrates. New evidence is provided in a nice set of experiments done by Drs. Ed S. Chambers, Matt W. Bridge and David A. Jones from the University of Birmingham and published in Journal of Physiology.

The researchers asked cyclists to perform a simulated time trial in which they completed a set amount of work in the shortest time possible. The participants were given a solution of 6.4 percent glucose, 6.4 percent maltodextrin, or water, which was the placebo. (As a reference, Gatorade is 6 percent carbohydrate, and regular Coke is 11 percent carbohydrate.) All three solutions included a noncaloric artificial sweetener (containing aspartame and saccharin) to make them indistinguishable from each other. The cyclists rinsed their mouths with one of the solutions at the start of the time trial and then approximately every seven minutes during the ride.

The cyclists completed the time trial 2 to 3 percent faster when they rinsed their mouths with the glucose or maltodextrin solution than with the placebo (60.4 minutes with glucose vs. 61.6 minutes with placebo in one experiment, and 62.6 minutes with maltodextrin vs. 64.6 minutes with placebo in a second experiment). There was a corresponding increase in power output during the faster ride, with no change in perceived exertion or heart rate. This indicates the sugar swishing lowered the participants’ perception of how hard they were working.

Your brain on carbs
The researchers next had individuals swish a carbohydrate solution in their mouths while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The technology, which monitors the anatomical detail of brain activity, revealed that oral exposure to carbohydrates, both sweet and non-sweet, activates regions of the brain associated with reward. The areas include the striatum, the anterior cingulate cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex.

Before you start using Sprite as a mouthwash, there are several caveats to this research worth noting. The cyclists all performed the time trial following a six-hour or overnight fast, which is not how most of us start a bike ride or race. The concentration of some of the glucose and maltodextrin solutions used for the brain-imaging studies was almost three times greater (18 percent) than the one used during the exercise studies. The exact concentrations, types (glucose, fructose, maltodextrin, etc.) and forms (liquid, gel, solid) of carbs that are most effective in activating the brain to create more brawn are not known. These results also don’t reveal whether ingesting protein or other nutrients along with the carbs in a drink might alter the effects.

Elwood Gatorade Race. Courtesy of Alistair 35 at Flickr

The bottom line
Mounting evidence suggests we have receptors (both sweet and non-sweet) in our mouths that are sensitive to carbohydrates, and that when triggered, they activate areas in our brains associated with reward. This has implications for exercise performance and for the food industry. The research raises the intriguing question of whether other undiscovered receptors are lurking in our mouths as well.

By swishing a carbohydrate-containing drink in your mouth, you may be able to improve your exercise performance. If you are running a 5k or 10k race, or competing in a cycling time trial or other short-duration, high-intensity event, it may be worth your while to reach for a drink that contains carbs and to swish it around in your mouth. A potential 2 to 3 percent improvement in time is substantial. But if you need to slow your pace in order to swill, you may negate the improvement in time. And if you’re exercising in hot weather, be sure to swirl and then swallow the liquid in order to help stay hydrated.

Resources

• Carbohydrate sensing in the human mouth: effects on exercise performance and brain activity. Chambers ES, Bridge MW, Jones DA. The Journal of Physiology, Apr 15;587(Pt 8):1779-94, 2009.
• Historical Perspective of Biomedical Imaging: From MRI to fMRI

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©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

“Next time you’re in a car going 50 mph, strip down to your underwear and jump out the door. That’s what it’s like to crash in professional bike racing.”

That was a promo for the 2008 Tour de France from Versus. I’m an avid cycling fan and lately I’ve been tuning in to watch the grueling Giro d’Italia, where men on bikes careen down mountaintops at 50-60 mph. Only a thin layer of logo-splashed cloth separates them from the pavement.

If they misjudge the road by a fraction of an inch, they splatter. If they are able to peel themselves up off the pavement and stand up, they will get back on their bikes and keep going. With bleeding limbs and contorted faces, they climb the next gravity-defying peak. The next day, they get up and do it again.

The cyclists speak often of their pain. They speak of emptying their tank and turning themselves inside out. During interviews, they mutter phrases like “the more you suffer, the better you get at it” and “pain and suffering can be satisfying.”

As a health professional, many individuals have shared their stories of pain and suffering with me. This pain is revealed in quite a different voice than that of the cyclists. This pain is most often uninvited, unwelcome and misunderstood.

To truly excel at their day job, the cyclists must learn to embrace their pain, understand what it is telling them about the limits of their body, and use it to drive them forward over a finish line.

I wonder what these men — and other top athletes — can teach us about pain. How do they visualize it? Do they give it a name? A color? Do they play games with it and taunt it? What can we learn from them?

(The song in the video is “Hurt” performed by Johnny Cash. It was written by singer-songwriter Trent Reznor and first released on Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 album The Downward Spiral.)

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

When you look up the definition of play or ask play researchers for their definition, you’ll typically end up with a jumble of words that include “unstructured,” “fun,” “voluntary,” “creative,” “unpredictable,” “improvised” and “joyous.”

But play is much easier to define and describe with movement. These videos of Tiger Woods completely embody the defining elements of play.

The story behind the commercial is a classic. During a break in filming for a different Nike commercial, Woods started bouncing a golf ball on the face of his sand wedge. According to a story in Golf Digest, “One man on the set knew exactly what he saw. He saw genius at play.”

The Nike Golf director of sports marketing was contacted. He called a creative director and producer. They contacted the advertising agency. And you know the rest.

Play can be hard to define with only words. It’s a little easier to describe with a video. But the best way to understand play is to just do it.

Here’s the commercial:

©2010 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.