scholarly journals Deep Squat – Should We Be Afraid?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-33
Author(s):  
Petr Schlegel ◽  
Adrián Agricola ◽  
Dana Fialová

PURPOSE Squats are among the basic exercises that have become an integral part of exercise programs. It is commonly used by athletes in many sports. Its potential is shown in the development of strength, power, and overall sports performance. The aim of the study was to verify inconsistent views on deep squats, technical design, and related health risks. METHODS For the purposes of the review, the terms "squat, knee, biomechanics, deep, patellofemoral, back squat, performance, arthritis, health, injury, risk" were used. RESULTS It turns out that the technique of performing a deep squat has its strict principles, which must be respected and which have a significant impact on the benefits and risks. From loading, the lower position represents an increase in compressive and shear forces on the patellofemoral joint, however, this is a natural state that is not risky. Health hazards cannot be based on analytical-mathematical models, which are insufficient in this aspect. Extreme long-term exposure carries the risk of permanent consequences in the form of osteoarthritis. For prophylaxis or convalescence, it is possible to use effective aids like sleeves, kinesio taping, bandage or "knee savers". CONCLUSIONS With optimal technique and sensible exercise selection, there is no greater risk in healthy individuals without degenerative anatomical changes. In order to assess the effects of the squat forces on the ankle, knee, hip, spine, it is necessary to consider the technique and also individual anatomical differences. 

Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 391
Author(s):  
Christine Lundtorp-Olsen ◽  
Christian Enevold ◽  
Svante Twetman ◽  
Daniel Belstrøm

Background: The purpose of the present study was to longitudinally characterize the supragingival microbiota throughout a three months period in orally healthy individuals. We tested the hypothesis that the supragingival microbiota shows a high degree of compositional stability, which is resilient against the external perturbation of regular use of probiotics, as long as oral health is maintained. Methods: The present study was a double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial. The study population comprised a total of 110 oral and systemic healthy individuals, distributed in a probiotic (n = 55) and placebo (n = 55) group, where the test group consumed tablets with the probiotic strains Lacticaseibacillusrhamnosus (formerly Lactobacillus) PB01 DSM14870 and Latilactobacillus curvatus (formerly Lactobacillus) EB10 DSM32307 for a period of 12 weeks. Supragingival plaque samples and clinical registrations were performed at baseline, and after 4, 8, and 12 weeks, respectively. The supragingival microbiota was characterized by means of 16S rDNA sequencing. Sequences were referenced against the HOMD database. Results: No significant changes of the core microbiota, as expressed by relative abundance of predominant genera and species were evident during the three months observation period in the probiotic or the placebo group. Conclusions: Data from the present study clearly demonstrate long term compositional stability of the supragingival microbiota as long as oral health is maintained. In addition, the tested probiotics had no augmenting effect on the supragingival microbiota in oral health.


2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 360-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily I Schindler ◽  
Jeffrey J Szymanski ◽  
Karl G Hock ◽  
Edward M Geltman ◽  
Mitchell G Scott

Abstract BACKGROUND Galectin-3 (Gal-3) has been suggested as a prognostic biomarker in heart failure (HF) patients that may better reflect disease progression than traditional markers, including B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and cardiac troponins. To fully establish the utility of any biomarker in HF, its biologic variability must be characterized. METHODS To assess biologic variability, 59 patients were prospectively recruited, including 23 male and 16 female patients with stable HF and 10 male and 10 female healthy individuals. Gal-3, BNP, and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hs-cTnI) were assayed at 5 time points within a 3-week period to assess short-term biologic variability. Long-term (3-month) biologic variability was assessed with samples collected at enrollment and after 4, 8, and 12 weeks. RESULTS Among healthy individuals, mean short-term biologic variability, expressed as intraindividual CV (CVI), was 4.5% for Gal-3, 29.0% for BNP, and 14.5% for hs-cTnI; long-term biologic variability was 5.5% for Gal-3, 34.7% for BNP, and 14.7% for hs-cTnI. In stable HF patients, mean short-term biologic variability was 7.1% for Gal-3, 22.5% for BNP, and 8.5% for hs-cTnI, and mean long-term biologic variability was 7.7% for Gal-3, 27.6% for BNP, and 9.6% for hs-cTnI. CONCLUSIONS The finding that Gal-3 has minimal intraindividual biological variability adds to its potential as a useful biomarker in HF patients.


PLoS Medicine ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. e24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Stasi ◽  
Sergio Amadori ◽  
John Osborn ◽  
Adrian C Newland ◽  
Drew Provan

2021 ◽  
Vol 92 (8) ◽  
pp. A3.2-A3
Author(s):  
Masud Husain

Disorders of motivation are common across brain disorders. Clinicians frequently encounter pathological apathy across a range of conditions, including many neurodegenerative conditions such as small cerebrovascular disease, Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease. It is now becoming understood that apathy has a poor prognosis for long-term functional and cognitive outcome. Unfortunately, we understand very little about the mechanisms underlying the syndrome.In this talk, I shall put forward a conceptual framework with which we can begin to understand apathy by considering the processes that normally underlie motivated, goal- directed behavior. In particular Ill focus on the ability to generate options for behavior and effort-based decision making for rewards. Recent studies of the latter have been particularly revealing in both healthy people and neurological patient populations.Several lines of evidence suggest that when we make decisions about how much effort we might invest in actions, we weigh up the costs involved for the potential rewards to be obtained. Functional imaging in healthy people reveals both medial frontal and basal ganglia involvement when individuals make such decisions. In patients with apathy, this evaluation is altered. Apathetic patients show blunted sensitivity to rewards and less inclination to invest effort for low rewards than healthy individuals. Some evidence shows that these factors can be improved by dopaminergic medication. The findings support the view that it might be possible to provide a mechanistic account of the syndrome of apathy which might lead to treatments for the disorder.


Author(s):  
Shuo Wang ◽  
Min Zhao ◽  
Zihan Su ◽  
Runqing Mu

Abstract Objectives A large number of people undergo annual health checkup but accurate laboratory criterion for evaluating their health status is limited. The present study determined annual biological variation (BV) and derived parameters of common laboratory analytes in order to accurately evaluate the test results of the annual healthcare population. Methods A total of 43 healthy individuals who had regular healthcare once a year for six consecutive years, were enrolled using physical, electrocardiogram, ultrasonography and laboratory. The annual BV data and derived parameters, such as reference change value (RCV) and index of individuality (II) were calculated and compared with weekly data. We used annual BV and homeostatic set point to calculate personalized reference intervals (RIper) which were compared with population-based reference intervals (RIpop). Results We have established the annual within-subject BV (CVI), RCV, II, RIper of 24 commonly used clinical chemistry and hematology analytes for healthy individuals. Among the 18 comparable measurands, CVI estimates of annual data for 11 measurands were significantly higher than the weekly data. Approximately 50% measurands of II were <0.6, the utility of their RIpop were limited. The distribution range of RIper for most measurands only copied small part of RIpop with reference range index for 8 measurands <0.5. Conclusions Compared with weekly BV, for annual healthcare individuals, annual BV and related parameters can provide more accurate evaluation of laboratory results. RIper based on long-term BV data is very valuable for “personalized” diagnosis on annual health assessments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Laurita Marconi SCHIAVON ◽  
Daniela Bento SOARES

Abstract Sports development involves important aspects that collaborate towards the achievement of a high level sports performance. Parental support is one such fact to be considered in Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD), capable of benefiting or harming athletes if not adequately administered. This study registers and discusses the importance of parental support in female Artistic Gymnastics, from the perspective of Brazilian gymnasts who have participated in the Olympic Games. The method used was Oral History with the technique known as oral testimony. The participants of the study were the ten Brazilian gymnasts who represented Brazil in the Olympic Games from when the country first participated in this championship, in 1980, up to the best Brazilian classification in Athens (2004), totaling ten gymnasts (a sample comprising 100% or the research universe). Testimony analysis was conducted through crossanalysis. The study shows unanimity among the gymnasts in regards to the importance of parental support in the sports development process. In addition to reinforcing the results found in the literature, the testimonies provide details of the relationships between the gymnasts and their families for deeper reflections around the subject, a distinguishing feature of studies with oral testimonies.


eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Heli Julkunen ◽  
Anna Cichońska ◽  
P Eline Slagboom ◽  
Peter Würtz

Biomarkers of low-grade inflammation have been associated with susceptibility to a severe infectious disease course, even when measured prior to disease onset. We investigated whether metabolic biomarkers measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy could be associated with susceptibility to severe pneumonia (2507 hospitalised or fatal cases) and severe COVID-19 (652 hospitalised cases) in 105,146 generally healthy individuals from UK Biobank, with blood samples collected 2007–2010. The overall signature of metabolic biomarker associations was similar for the risk of severe pneumonia and severe COVID-19. A multi-biomarker score, comprised of 25 proteins, fatty acids, amino acids and lipids, was associated equally strongly with enhanced susceptibility to severe COVID-19 (odds ratio 2.9 [95%CI 2.1–3.8] for highest vs lowest quintile) and severe pneumonia events occurring 7–11 years after blood sampling (2.6 [1.7–3.9]). However, the risk for severe pneumonia occurring during the first 2 years after blood sampling for people with elevated levels of the multi-biomarker score was over four times higher than for long-term risk (8.0 [4.1–15.6]). If these hypothesis generating findings on increased susceptibility to severe pneumonia during the first few years after blood sampling extend to severe COVID-19, metabolic biomarker profiling could potentially complement existing tools for identifying individuals at high risk. These results provide novel molecular understanding on how metabolic biomarkers reflect the susceptibility to severe COVID-19 and other infections in the general population.


2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 663-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ingrid Tasca ◽  
Sueli Aparecida Calvi ◽  
Lenice do Rosário de Souza

Although modern combined antiretroviral therapies (cART) result in lower morbidity and mortality and a visible improvement of clinical and laboratory parameters in HIV-infected, it is known that their long-term use contributes to appearance of the many events unrelated to AIDS such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and osteoporosis, comorbidities which have been proposed as some of the most important that deprive the majority of infected to present an even better prognosis. This is because even with a decrease in inflammation and immune activation after drug intervention to the patient, these parameters remain higher than those shown by healthy individuals and the imbalance of cytokine profiles also persists. Therefore, evaluations of other biomarkers in clinical practice are needed to complement the exams already carried out routinely and allow more effective monitoring of HIV patients. This review aims to investigate the role of cytokines as potential markers showing studies on their behavior in various stages of HIV infection, with or without cART.


Author(s):  
Sean Gallagher ◽  
Christopher A. Hamrick ◽  
Mark S. Redfern

Analysis of lost-time back injuries in underground coal mines indicates that handling continuous miner cable places workers at high risk of injury. Manual hanging of this type of cable is a common lifting task in underground mines. This study was performed to assess the ground reaction forces associated with hanging cable in various postures and employing different methods of securing the cable. Seven experienced coal miners (mean age: 41.4 years ± 2.1) performed a series of 12 cable hanging tasks. Independent variables included a set of six posture/vertical space constraint conditions (LIFTCOND), and two techniques of securing the cable to the ceiling (METHOD). The dependent variables consisted of ground reaction forces measured using two force plates. LIFTCOND ( F5.66 = 21.31, p < 0.0001) and METHOD ( F1,66 = 10.89, p < 0.005) both significantly affected the magnitude of the peak resultant forces generated during the tasks. Post hoc analysis indicated that kneeling postures resulted in significantly lower forces than stooping for the same ceiling heights. Greater forces were associated with higher lifting conditions, attributable in part to the fact that higher lifts require more cable to be hoisted. Forces were also increased when subjects twisted baling wire to secure the cable, as compared to hanging it on a hook. An interaction between LIFTCOND and METHOD was identified with lateral shear forces - stooping conditions where the subjects twisted the cable with wire resulted in higher lateral shear forces. Results of this study will be used to develop recommendations to reduce back injury risk when handling cable.


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