It’s Friday, and what’s even better is that it is a holiday weekend (at least here in the states)! Whoo Hoo! If your place of business is anything like mine things are probably pretty dead right about now and you’re all sitting around watching the clock in eager anticipation of three days of non-work related bliss. You may also be staring in the face of a whole bunch of eating challenges in the form of grilled meats, chips, and tasty adult beverages.

In order to help you pass the time and perhaps provide you with a little motivation for the upcoming weekend I’ve compiled a list of news items from the last few weeks that you might be interested to know about. This will actually be the first in an ongoing series of Friday afternoon news summary posts, so I hope you enjoy it!

So let’s see what’s going on in the world of health and fitness!

Okay, who's the wise guy? (Image courtesy of RBerteig on Flickr)

It’s no surprise that the amount of time that experts say you should exercise has some variability to it. The same goes for the intensity of your workouts. Heck, Mike and I don’t always agree, we’re not even experts! So what should you do if you’ve found yourself in a portion of your fitness world where you haven’t explored the map yet? Well, for one thing, you could take a page out of the Galaxy Quest handbook: “Never give up. Never surrender!” Let’s assume that’s a given. Now, how long should you keep up the fight, and how hard?

Health experts say that, at a minimum, folks should at least try to reach the recommended exercise allotment. For kids and teenagers, that’s an hour a day. For adults, on any given week, we should try and get two and a half hours of moderate intensity activity (walking or dancing or some other active hobby) or about half that much (75 minutes) of vigorous activity (jogging, weightlifting, or playing a sport). It’s a very reachable goal – going for a brisk half hour walk or bike ride, Monday through Friday? Doing a couple of dance or yoga classes, or maybe learning a martial art? Piece of cake!

Would the real slim Jamie please stand up? (Image courtesy of Krossbow on Flickr)

So, when he’s not helping Adam blow things up, it seems that Mythbusters’ Jamie Hyneman is something of a Renaissance man. He has one theory in particular that we here at SG Orbital HQ hope is borne out: exercising makes you smarter.

In Jamie’s own words: This came from my own personal experience; I work out on a treadmill when I do my design work. For me, it’s like hitting a switch. It’s almost like, when I’m not on my treadmill, I’m stupid…. The greatest mental activity during our evolution would had to have been through heavy physical activity. [The current state of the art in brain-observing technology] points to us being much smarter the more physically active you are.

It’s certainly not uncommon for folks who engage in regular exercise to report that it does good things for their mood or focus, or even provides a built-in part of their day where they can think about what they’re working on while the body is on auto-pilot. It’s not necessarily the same neuro-chemical scenario that leads to “runner’s high,” but increased blood flow, coupled with elevated oxygen levels, certainly looks like it would provide an environment conducive to some mental overclocking.

All sugar is not created equal. (Image courtesy of Uwe Hermann on Flickr)

We have alluded to the nutritional atrocity that is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS),  in the past, but now there’s a fair bit of clinical ammunition to back particular assertion that up.

And by “fair bit,” we mean “a couple of headshots using a railgun with Quad Damage.”

The BFG10K in question was some research done at Princeton University, which studied weight gain in rats. Using two different control groups – one eating plain rat chow, and one getting rat chow and a sugar-water concoction approximating a soft drink – rats that were washing their kibble down with a HFCS-sweetened beverage gained much more weight, as well as exhibited a greater number of markers for serious health issues in humans. These markers include elevated levels of triglycerides, more visceral fat, and the beginnings of what is called “metabolic syndrome” (in a nutshell, this is the body becoming less-sensitive to insulin; in other words, pre-diabetic). How much more weight? Nearly fifty percent more than the rats getting the same number of extra calories from drinking sugar water.

Image via Silly Rabit, Trix are for Kids on flickr

Back in the late 1980′s Science Fiction and Fantasy author George R. R. Martin cobbled together a group of talented writers to create Wild Cards, a series of alternate history novels set in a universe where super heroes were real. One of the recurring characters in the series was a man named Croyd Crenson, alternately referred to as The Sleeper. In the Wild Cards universe people who were exposed to a virus had a chance to either die, become horribly deformed, or develop extraordinary abilities. The Sleeper was unique in that every time he fell asleep he would be infected with the virus anew, awaking in an entirely different form. Convinced that one day he would draw the “Black Queen” and die as a result of his re-infection with the virus, Crenson fought sleep for weeks on end.

Needless to say, this made him a bit crazy.

As anyone who has seen a Nightmare on Elm Street film can attest to, sleep is important (unless, that is, a scary dude who is covered in burns and has razors on his fingers is going to kill you in it). Going without sleep for long periods of time can have very negative effects on the psyche, but many of us aren’t likely to find ourselves in those kind of situations. What we do commonly face, however, are situations in which we simply do not get enough sleep. The average adult gets about 7 hours of sleep a night, but most studies suggest that in order to be fully rested they should be getting 8. Those numbers come from a study in Consumer Reports back in 1997. Chances are that if you did the same study today we’d probably be getting even less sleep.

One of the reasons? iPads.