Posts Tagged: exercise

Exercise and thoughts

Many of us, me included, enjoy getting out of the office or house to go for a walk to get the heart pumping for a little exercise.  My walks afford me a vacation from daily stress while providing me with the opportunity for an adventure through Solano’s garden oasis.  I try to take a little different path each time I venture out so that I can feast my eyes on all the horticultural aspects my surroundings have on display. While I explore, I am tantalized by the immense creativity gardeners have and I am even more mesmerized by natural landscapes that somehow create art without much human intervention at all.  I often forget I am “exercising” because while I move my thought stream around how visually captivating the landscape is.  I enjoy the lingering uplifting effects that the gardens intrinsically inspire me. While I am out enjoying the landscapes, I find myself wishing that I was the proud parent of some of the more unique foliage I encounter. It occurs to me that the general public is an eclectic group, often times reinforcing the phrase “ignorance is bliss”.  An example was seen when I walked past a front yard full of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis someone just planted in mid-October in Vallejo. I think that I have pretty liberal feelings toward gardening ignorance and personally give an A grade for those who display much effort at all.  When someone plants their most favorite subject in the most incorrect place horticulturally-speaking, I tend to let it slide but sort of chuckle inside.  So what if you have to pull them up in 45 days because the seasonal climate change slaughtered the whole batch?  During those 45 days, I appreciated the graceful ignorance that killed them, but most especially those very first days when those Hibiscus rosa-sinensis were still in their warehouse store garden department prime.

It sounds too good to be true: Exercise in a pill

The news this week that scientists think they've found a way to put exercise in a pill has been very widely reported. Google News lists 565 articles about the new exercise pill, including news outlets all over the United States, in India, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

According to the numerous media reports, scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla fed ordinary mice two experimental drugs that made them capable of running 44 percent longer on a treadmill than before they were medicated.

The discovery that swallowing a capsule may one day be a time-saving substitution for sweating at the gym sounds too good to be true, and, alas, according to UC Berkeley nutrition specialist emeritus Joanne Ikeda, it probably is.

"I have read hundreds of studies done with mice or rats investigating compounds that cause weight loss in the little creatures," Ikeda was quoted in a story on the ABC News Web site. "None of these compounds had the same effect in humans."

Exercise in a pill would be handy, but I can think of other things I'd like to see encapsulated to make life easier:

• Air conditioning
• Patience
• Peace

What would you like to see scientists put in a pill? Leave a comment with your ideas.

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