Lisa Liddane of Knight Ridder has a quick dispatch…

Soda and junk food vending machines are getting kicked out of French schools as part of a broad public health bill passed by parliament Friday to combat rising obesity among youths.

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Some television shows and video games are trying to get kids off the couch and into motion. With television and computer games taking some of the blame for the increasing weight of children, doing something about it has become a priority.

With television and video games often blamed for contributing to the growing problem of obesity in children, video game makers and children’s TV companies are creating shows and games that motivate children to move around or offer story lines that encourage exercise.

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A woman’s body changes as she ages, and her exercise needs change as well.

“I have a lot of patients who come in in their fourth, fifth and sixth decade and a long time ago gave up physical activity,” said Dr. Robert Schwartz, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Miami. “It’s hard to start in your fifth and sixth decade and get into a regular pattern of behavior.”

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Mike Strickland is a competitive cyclist and a University of Alberta PhD studying the affects of aerobic exercise on heart and lungs. It has been long accepted theory that too much intense exercise can actually be damaging to the lungs, as pressure built up from the heart causes swelling and fluid accumulation. Strickland set out to test and shed new light on the theory.

That theory is based on research that suggests when the heart is putting out 35 litres of blood per minute during hard aerobic exercise, it creates high pressure in the lungs, causing swelling and fluid accumulation. This effect, which includes bleeding into the lungs, has been documented in thoroughbred race horses.

What they found was that before the pressure gets too high, some blood is shunted away from the lungs. This reduces the pressure at the cost of lower oxygenation.

Read the entire article here…