What I Learnt Today

We all know that people of West African origin are good sprinters because they have more ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibers. Right? And people of East African origin, particularly those from Ethiopia, have muscles that are better for endurance running because of ‘slow twitch muscle fibres’. Correct?

No, wrong – according to Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, who’s Reader in Exercise Physiology at the University of Glasgow. There are no published studies comparing muscle biopsies between different ethic groups that can demonstrate such a difference. Certainly successful sprinters have more fast twitch fibres, and marathon runners have slow twitch, but this is not based on ethnicity.

“Our students would often ask us in class why is it that no white man up until last year has run 100 metres in under 10 seconds while there have been hundreds of individuals of black colour who’ve managed to do that? Why?” asked Dr Pitsiladis on a recent Health Report.

Of course, genes play an important part in determining athletic potential. If you want to be an athelete, it is better to have athletic parents. But this is independent of ethnicity.  Interestingly, in all the studies of the human genome, they have not determined the difference in genes that make someone look black and someone else look white. (nor tall, for that matter)

So what are the other important factors

Run lots when you are a kid. In Dr Pitsiladis’s studies, many of the kids in Ethiopia ran 5km to their primary schools, home at lunch, back to school and then ran home again at the end of the day. 20km a day! Ethiopians consider running a gift from God. If our kids have to walk a mile it is a Federal Case.

Run without shoes from a young age. Running bare feet, we land on our toes (it hurts too much to heel strike). This has greater shock absorber effect, reduces injuries and prepares us for a lifetime of running and for the hard training required to make it as an elite athelete. By the time we a adolescents, it is too late to change to bare feet running.

Have a hunger to do well. Many young people have to do well at sport or return to poverty. That is a strong motivator.

Too late for me, I’m afraid, but the shoes are coming off Millie tomorrow. A 5km barefoot jog to school each morning should be just the ticket.

You can listen to or read the interview between Norman Swan and Yannis Pitsiladis at the Health Report site.

 

 

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Performing a coordinated High Five requires quite a knack.
Cool when done well, it can be a common cause of an ‘epic fail’.

 

NASA crashed a bomb into the moon – which you’d have to agree is a good shot. However, the red-shirted scientist in this live feed got ‘dissed’ when he tried to initiate a celebratory high five.

 

Even the usually very cool John Mayer can fail

 

This bear can’t take a trick

 

Luckilly, not all are as disastrous as this one

 

For a coordinated sportsman, this is a sad miss.

(Lucky the crowd was so small)

 

So what is the secret to a perfect high five.

Will tells me that the secret to never missing a high five is for each person to watch the other’s elbow.

 

This is confirmed by the team at Perfect High Five.

 

High Five!

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Last night we were having a quiet chat in a restaurant when a large group was shown to another table. They had spent some time beforehand in the bar – as evidenced by the loudness of their conversation – which got louder as the wine was served. A quiet chat no longer being possible, we did the only sensible thing – and ordered another few bottles of wine ourselves. If you can’t beat them, join them.

“Cocktail Party Deafness” is a common cause for medical consultation, but is not necessarily caused by deteriorating hearing with age. Alcohol has an acute effect on our hearing threshold, which was demonstrated in a 2007 study by the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in London.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031886/

Volunteers had their hearing tested before and after a number of alcoholic drinks. (No, the study report doesn’t say what drink was used) Volunteers kept drinking until their blood alcohol concentration was greater than 0.06%, just above the driving limit. They were excluded from the test if their coordination had become so bad that they could’t work the hearing test machine. (I wonder if they got them to play Donkey Kong to test their level of coordination – which was the standard test at my University).

The experiment demonstrated a very significant impairment of hearing after alcohol, especially in the lower thresholds responsible for speech discrimination.

Therefore, people speak louder after a few drinks because they can’t hear themselves speaking. You may notice they also stand closer to the people they are speaking with so that they can hear them. I wonder if the temporary deafness also affects musical taste. Does it explain Jimmy Barnes?

Previous studies have documented the disinhibitory effects of alcohol.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1910701/

This disinhibition means that there is an increase in quantity of what is said while under the influence, on top of the increase in volume we have described.

Perhaps we need to do another study to determine if there is a corresponding increase in quality of conversation. In vino veritas – in wine there is truth. Come round next Saturday and we’ll discuss it over a nice red.

Cheers.

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Did your mum tell you not to crack your knuckles as it will give you arthritis?

Researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, have published a retrospective case-control study of 215 people aged 50-89.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21383216?dopt=Abstract

Their conclusion

“A history of habitual Knuckle Cracking -including the total duration and total cumulative exposure-does not seem to be a risk factor for hand Osteoarthritis.”

You should celebrate by cracking your knuckles in front of your mum.

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Not renown as an early riser, I’ll be up at 5am tomorrow (ie soon) to have a look at the Morning Planet Show – Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury will be very close together in the Eastern Sky just before sunrise.

Sydney Observatory says that this alignment occurs only every 50-100 years. They are hosting a breakfast to celebrate.

This video from Nasa shows what you can expect to see tomorrow, as well as on the following few days.

This graphic from the Sydney Observatory explains why they appear to be lined up, when viewed from Earth,

Might be a good chance to test out the amazing Star Walk app for iPad – which provides a real time ‘heads up display’ of the visible celestial objects in whatever direction you point it.

Thanks to Sue for the tip about this.

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