That's Fit

She recently shocked the nation by being named John McCain's running mate in the 2008 federal election. But Sarah Palin has been her own running mate for a long time -- only this time, we're talking conventional running, the kind you do on the side of the road. She recently opened up about her healthy habits:

• Her diet: Palin and family eat a lot of wild Alaskan seafood, moose, caribou and fresh fruit.
• Her fitness: Palin ran seven to 10 miles a day until her pregnancy, then switched to aerobics. Nowadays, she is running around three miles a day. "Conventional running is my sanity," she says.
• Her unhealthy habit: She skips breakfast: "I know it's the most important meal of the day but I still haven't bought into it. I hate to admit it, but a skinny white-chocolate mocha is my staple in the morning."
  

Love or hate her politics, it sounds like she's living well and making healthy choices despite her busy schedule. What do you think?

(via Celebrity Diet Doctor)

Come November 4th, 2008, a new President will be elected into office in the United States. This much we know almost with certainty. What is not known, however, is who that person will be. While I would love to wax on about my political beliefs and who I think the next person will be to sit in the Oval Office, I have no interest in causing a war of words -- polemics aren't really our thing here on That's Fit. Things concerning the human body? Yeah, that's more our speed.

To that end, there are very specific physical traits that many of our past Presidents have possessed, some of which may serve as a predictor of who will win the race for the White House. Newsweek recently used this criteria to create a physical feature-by-feature breakdown of how John McCain and Barack Obama may fare come November.

Here's a summary of their findings...

HEIGHT: Four of the last nine elections have been won by the shorter candidate, giving the 5'7" McCain a fighting chance against the 6'3" Obama. However, in most of those cases the height disparity was not significant, whereas in this case McCain is giving up 6 inches to Obama. The last time anyone overcame such a blatant difference in height was in 1852. What's more, we haven't had a shorter-than-average President since the 5'6" Benjamin Harrison. Advantage: Obama

As it turns out, it isn't worth a pound of cure, according to the Washington Post.

I was more than a little disheartened to read the cover story in the Health section of yesterday's paper. Apparently, as the story points out with examples, an ounce of prevention is worth a whole lot less than a pound of cure despite political campaign banter claiming otherwise. Not even close, in fact. The scales are actually tipped the other way. It's cheaper to let people get sick. Smoking cessation, colonoscopies for guys in their 60s and childhood vaccinations are among exceptions.

The article mentions at the very end a point that I think is bigger than dollars and cents. Paying for good health is an investment. And a good one. I wonder how any attempt to calculate the cost of prevention and measure it up against cure can be absolutely accurate. The examples in the Post are convincing. Giving a bunch of people cholesterol-reducing drugs in an effort to prevent heart disease that will develop in only a fraction of them clearly requires a heap o' dough for prescriptions. But if life is all about how much things cost and that leads to deciding whether our health -- and by extension our very lives -- are worth the expense, what's the point anyway? Have we really reached a point at which money is more valuable than life?

Wow. I think our society needs a colonoscopy. On second thought, we can save the money. I think we can skip ahead to diagnosing cancer. The good news: I believe this type can be cured. What do you think? What's the cure? Am I wrong? Do you disagree with the diagnosis?

We're currently right smack in the middle of one of the most interesting presidential races of our time, and although trying to keep on top of the latest developments and deciding who to support may seem like a daunting and sometimes stressful job imagine what it must be like on the campaign trail for the candidates themselves. Running for President is an exhausting, stressful, "go-go-go" type endeavor and it can be downright hazardous to your health for a variety of reasons.

One of the more obvious health issues is the constant traveling combined with tightly packed schedules making finding time for working out difficult, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

How running for President is hazardous to your health:

Sleep deprivation
We all know how important sleep is for everything from being in a good mood to controlling your appetite and slowing the aging process, but for a presidential candidates it might be an even bigger deal that lack of sleep can also lead to memory slips, poor decision-making, and even inappropriate comments or outbursts.

Nature versus nurture: this is the classic comparison between the way we are genetically made, and the way we were raised in our environment. Now the same mentality is coming to a voting booth near you. Is there a possibility that political leanings are genetically acquired, as opposed to being taught?

This is a question that researchers are trying to answer. Scientists are not necessarily saying that there's a Republican gene powering the McCain supporters or a Democratic one backing the Obama campaign. They do think, however, that DNA composition could play a role in how we approach the polls.

In fact, our genetic makeup could influence whether we even vote or not at all! A study tracked certain voters, and they discovered people with a certain variation of one gene were 60 percent more likely to hit the polls than those people without that version. But that doesn't explain how people vote (ie: their political beliefs). Researchers know that we make judgments on these kind of issues by complex processing in our brain. They think the way our brains process political judgments could be hard-wired from birth! Not 100 percent, of course, but at least on a basic level. Pretty interesting theory given the upcoming election. Read on for more information if you're curious.

I remember being a teenager, sitting at dinner with my family and announcing that I was ready to join a certain political party. All of them being members of the opposite party, their jaws dropped as they asked -- almost in unison -- "Where DID you come from?"

Recent studies show that the neurons in the brains of liberals and conservatives fire differently when faced with difficult decisions and other research also shows a link between personality traits and political leanings. Conservatives appear to crave order and structure, while liberals seem to be comfortable with a little more flexibility.

Of course, all of this is fodder for debate between the two groups and gives them the opportunity to pick on each other a little more. I'm not sure how much stock I put into it anyway; a decade after I made that statement at the dinner table, my family members had all made their way over to my side of the political fence, all for their own individual reasons. Maybe people aren't as hardwired as they think they are.

It makes no sense, but it seems that as health care becomes a bigger and bigger issue in this country some of the people who should care about it the most, the doctors, are voting less and less. A study coming out of Johns Hopkins Medical School looked at different professions and much they participated in voting in presidential elections and found that although not at the very bottom of the list (laborers came in last) doctors are shockingly uninvolved in the political process. 1 in 4 doctors haven't bothered to vote in the last 3 presidential elections.

And guess who came in first, with the best turnout of all? Lawyers, of course.

Reading the recent blog here on That's Fit about "Why men ignore their wives" prompted me into a little fun research myself. So if men ignore their wives, why do women put up with it? The websites were endless. WOW. It seems that women tolerate a lot of certain behaviors from their spouses like being ignored, being fussed at or looked down upon and even being abused physically because of cultural beliefs, economic factors and personal fears. There is the disgrace of being a statistic, of being a divorcee. With our divorce rate hovering somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent it is not hard to see that men and women really can not get along. Maybe the high divorce rate can be contributed to being ignored. wink wink...

But one study in particular stood out to me on why divorce rates are climbing. It emphasized that attraction in the work place between men and women has always been relevant but men had always held the dominant jobs in the work force. But that statistic is changing with women bosses increasing and more jobs like doctors, lawyers, police officers, fire fighters, and even politics with many women now leading in congress and the senate. Women are beginning to have equality in leadership roles. Many women who do well professionally find few men who are secure enough to be with them.

Being a man and being masculine are two different things. A man is a boy who has reached a certain age. A masculine man is a boy who has finally matured as an adult. Some men never reach that maturity. So I guess women have to look at being ignored by their husbands the same way they look at their children that ignore them when asked to do their chores.