Everyone needs physical activity to stay healthy. If the standard machines at the gym aren't appealing, don't worry -- there's a wide array of other ways to keep in shape. Learn how much exercise is needed and how to get it.
Steven Galeano was a problem child. He couldn't stay out of fights and was "off the hook," his father Edwin recalls.
Endurance swimmer and record-holder Diana Nyad arrived in Florida Tuesday morning, but not in the manner she hoped.
Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad struggled through ocean swells, shoulder pain and asthma Monday as she attempted to become the first person to swim between Cuba and Florida without a shark cage, according to her team and a CNN staffer on a chase boat.
Diana Nyad's personal test has begun. At 7:45 p.m. ET Sunday she jumped into the water and began her 103-mile swim between Cuba and Florida.
Will Nevin had been dreading the doctor for years.
Laura Finlayson, 40, from Westwood, New Jersey, just couldn't seem to shake her persistent cough. It lingered for months and was so violent that she ended up in the emergency room with bruised ribs.
For two years after a hip surgery that didn't work out as well as he'd hoped, pain shot down Jim Heckler's leg like electrical shocks. Several doctors, eager to help Heckler feel better, prescribed various narcotic painkillers.
Gillian Aldrich started growing vegetables in her backyard three years ago, and she's now working on planting a bed of hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, rose campion, and -- her favorite -- pale-pink hardy geraniums along one side of her property.
We're all looking to maximize results while minimizing time and effort in the gym. That search for shortcuts has translated into a lot of myths about exercise.
You could envy Anna Paquin a lot of things. Starting with her rocking body, which is on full display one hot morning when the 28-year-old Academy Award--winning actress shows up for our chat at a café in Venice, California, absolutely killing it in cutoff jeans shorts and a paper-thin white T-shirt.
Unlike most teens in high school, I didn't come home from my summer job smelling like hamburger grease or department store hangers.
In the 21st-century Army, sit-ups have gone the way of bazookas. Soldiers will soon find themselves doing "rowers."
Teenage boys who are even slightly overweight face an increased risk of heart disease later in life, even if they slim down as adults, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It's 7:20 a.m. and Carl Daikeler hasn't worked out yet. Not a big deal for the 49% of Americans who don't exercise regularly, but it's going to bother him all day.
Exercising or having sex just about triples a person's risk of heart attack in the hours immediately afterward, especially if the person does those activities infrequently, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Mississippi, the most obese state in the United States, needs to shed pounds. A former pro football player turned fitness coach wants to make it happen.
At 27, Neil Pokorny is climbing the corporate ladder. A successful regional sales manager for a global automaker, he is driven by competition. But, as he got busier at work, his competitive spirit in his old sports -- swimming and rowing -- took a back seat.
Remember those resolutions in the beginning of the year -- you were going to get in shape, exercise regularly and take fitness classes?
Erase extra flab with these super-effective tricks.
It was the second play of a high school football game. A 16-year-old tight end caught the pass. As he broke free from a defender, he was struck in the chest by another player.
Lugging a nearly 500-pound body, Matt Hoover was unhappy. Like many Americans, he knew how to lose weight, but was paralyzed by inaction.
If you want to stave off the middle-age spread, get active in your 20s and stay that way through your 30s and 40s, especially if you're a woman, a new study suggests.
Half of all Americans may be diabetic or prediabetic by 2020, a report from an insurance company warned Tuesday. That's an even bleaker projection than the Centers for Disease Control's recent estimate that one in three Americans would have diabetes by 2050.
Competing outdoors in almost 90-degree water is like racing inside a hot tub, swim experts said Monday.
Extreme swimmer Diana Nyad has temporarily called off her marathon Cuba-to-Key West swim, citing bad weather and slow progress on government permissions, she tells CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
A controversial new rule by the National Collegiate Athletic Association went into effect this month, requiring all Division I athletes to be screened for a genetic sickle cell trait.
Hallelujah diets. Body by God. Karate for Christ. Gospel groove workouts.
Wearing a body-hugging dress and heels to our interview at an Irish pub in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles, Christina Hendricks is seriously channeling Joan Holloway, the take-no-prisoners office manager she plays on "Mad Men."
Biking for as little as five minutes a day can help women minimize weight gain as they enter middle age, especially if they're overweight to begin with, a new study suggests.
Summer temperatures are soaring, and that scratchy dryness in your throat makes you crave a glass of water.
For two years leading up to the World Cup, Brian Hall exercised four hours almost every day.
From Detroit to Denmark, the power of the pedal is generating electricity and energy conservation awareness.
More than a quarter of young adults are unable to meet physical requirements to join the military, creating a potential threat to national security, a group of retired armed forces leaders said Tuesday.
Forty years ago the competitor field for the Boston Marathon was small enough that doctors listened to every runner's heart before the race.
Among runners, it's a statement that awes: "I qualified for Boston."
Mackenzie Riley is only 13 years old, but her schedule is busier than many adults. Besides being on her middle-school yearbook staff and taking piano and voice lessons once a week, she is also the co-captain of her seventh-grade basketball and volleyball teams.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, which has a reputation for accommodating cyclists, Jessica Eisenbraun gets her exercise riding around the city on her steel bike, which is older than she is but easy to maintain. Biking is the fastest way around the city, she says, when you consider how long it would take to park a car or take a bus.
The headlines sounded promising -- 20 minutes of interval exercise can provide the same benefits as many hours of conventional workouts. But soon after came another study, this one suggesting that women should work out an hour every day just to maintain their weight.
When Chris Dolley's sister-in-law asked her to join her in a weight-loss quest, the fast-food fanatic thought to herself she'd do it to help her relative out. It really wasn't about personal goals or missions or health.
Ever since he was a child, Jasmin Bambur dreamed of going to the Olympics. In college, he played competitive handball and was close to making the national team that would take him to the big games.
Do you cough, wheeze, or get short of breath when you exercise in cold weather? You could have asthma, but you've got plenty of company. Exercise-induced asthma is surprisingly common among people who work out in cold climates, whether they're jogging around the neighborhood or gunning for gold in Vancouver.
Becki Coats was embarrassed, so embarrassed that she didn't want to show pictures of herself with her new grandchild.
Steroids are so 2008. The next way to get an edge may be gene doping.
Terry Chiplin didn't need a Harvard study to tell him what he's known for years.
Some turn to prayer. Others turn to state-of-the-art medicine. Lindsey Vonn turned to the power of fromage.
Deb Lemire has always been "short and square," a figure she inherited from her grandmother and passed on to her child. So when Lemire took her daughter in for a wellness visit and the well-meaning pediatrician pulled her aside to talk about her daughter's weight, the 47-year-old burst into tears "because I was the 10-year-old being told I was overweight."
Everybody says it: This year I'm going to get in shape.
Celebrate the New Year with a new you -- by dipping into our smart batch of strategies to keep you happy and healthy (at no cost!) all year long.
For the first half of 2009, Jason Dinant morphed into a gym rat. He worked out four times a week in a gym cycling on a stationary bike, lifting dumbbells and doing hundreds of sit-ups to attain his New Year's resolution of having "six-pack" abs.
Should a man have to choose between his golf drive and his sex drive?
These days, Becky Griggs starts her morning well before the sun comes up, in time to meet her clients at the gym at 5:30. It's a big change from six years ago, when she was 352 pounds and, as she calls it, engaged in a "slow form of suicide."
These days, Becky Griggs starts her morning well before the sun comes up, in time to meet her clients at the gym at 5:30. It's a big change from six years ago, when she was 352 pounds and, as she calls it, engaged in a "slow form of suicide."
Talbot Kennedy became a quadriplegic on the last day of high school. He's still an athlete.
Halloween is creeping up on us -- and as kids anticipate the occasion with excitement bordering on mania, parents often express concern.
Three runners collapsed and died during the Detroit Marathon on Sunday. Although that news is shocking and frightening for runners and non-runners alike, such deaths are rare, experts say.
When she was about 8, Frida Sepulveda developed dark folds of skin around her neck. It's a well-known warning sign of type 2 diabetes.
When she was about 8, Frida Sepulveda developed dark folds of skin around her neck. It's a well-known warning sign of type 2 diabetes.
A world record was set recently in Houston, Texas. It wasn't the world's fastest quarter-mile run, the world's largest pumpkin or even the world's heaviest man. It was, however, as stunning to witness: the world's largest senior citizen Wii bowling tournament, as confirmed by Guinness World Records.
Parents can check out growth charts -- a nifty graph that tells them where their child falls in relation to peers in terms of height and weight -- just about everywhere, from a child's vaccination records to the doctor's office.
Can't find your keys ... again? Whether your momentary memory loss is linked to doing too many things at once or just a bad case of menopausal brain fog, you don't have to put up with it.
Do you sometimes feel as if going to a doctor's office is like going through a revolving door: in, swoosh-blur, out? You fight traffic to get there, wait a while in the waiting room, wait a while in the exam room, get seen, get dressed and get out. But once you've gone, you realize you're missing something -- maybe a small piece of helpful information. Below, some insider tips from medical specialists who tell you what your doctor doesn't have time to tell you in that all-too-brief appointment.
Matthew Sanchez had rarely seen his father cry. But when Rudjard Hayes looked at the X-rays of his son's spine after a high school football accident, he held his wife close and broke down, not knowing that his son could see him.
Pick a day -- any day -- and you'll probably find Sean Bugg on the courts. A tennis fanatic, he's been playing the sport since he was 9 years old. Now at age 41, Bugg is definitely feeling the pain from his game.
Barbara Simone of Glen Burnie, Maryland, considers herself terribly flawed. She refuses to show her ankles and she'd never allow them to be photographed. She barely wants to talk about them; in fact, when asked about her legs, she mumbles under her breath that she hates them.
Before Friday night lights, there is summer suffering.
Beverly Hunt is a mover and a shaker. A public relations executive who runs her own business in Laurel, Maryland, Hunt believes in looking good. She keeps active and stays in shape.
The thick shoes come with a big promise: to chisel the butt and legs.
Occupational therapist Cathy Kleinman-Barnett works with breast cancer patients, but she has never encouraged women with lymphedema, a breast cancer-related swelling of the arm, to lift weights.
Moderate exercise can help patients with failing hearts feel better -- and it's safe, according to the largest-ever study of exercise in people with chronic heart failure, published as two articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
To look at her, you'd never know Jessica Ordona, 25, has a problem with her jeans. "I don't like the fact that when you sit down, your stomach comes over them," she says.
When it comes to losing weight, the little things add up -- trying just one new thing every day can quickly make a big difference. With that in mind, we've taken science's best weight-loss strategies and created a week's worth of slimming to-do's.
I can still remember it, vivid as yesterday. It was the eve of my 40th birthday, and I walked upstairs to take a shower. And I was winded. I mean very winded. As I was trying to catch my breath, I took off my shirt, looked in the mirror and tried to convince myself that I was still that fit guy I had always thought I was.
Aging athletes don't have the agility they had in their youth. Minor injuries accumulate and become major ones. And by the time they hit their mid-30s and 40s, they're considered geriatric -- that's the conventional wisdom.
Aging athletes don't have the agility they had in their youth. Minor injuries accumulate and become major ones. And by the time they hit their mid-30s and 40s, they're considered geriatric -- that's the conventional wisdom.
After six months, 35 pounds of chicken breast and more than a hundred hours of exercising, Jason Dinant finally sees the fruits of his labor. There are six of them.
Under the California sun in a place known as Muscle Beach, where bronzed bodybuilders pump their cannon-size biceps, an energetic brunette works her arms -- and the weight purrs its approval.
Want to keep your wits sharp as the years go by? You're not alone. Most people are worried about losing their memory as they age, and a new study shows it's a valid concern: In fact, at 53 percent -- more than half of all people -- have at least a minor mental decline in their 70s and 80s, and about 16 percent develop more serious problems with memory and other mental functions as they age.
As the summer months creep ever closer, trying to achieve the perfect set of abs can seem like a lost cause.
When rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings didn't work for Eddie Freas, he sought another way to kick his 20-year drug and alcohol addiction.
The death of boxing champion Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter after a treadmill accident highlights the issue of hidden dangers in the home.
If you're middle-aged or older, a 10-minute walking test can give you and your doctor a pretty clear picture of whether you are at higher risk of dying during the next few years compared with other people your age, according to a large new analysis of data showing that cardiorespiratory fitness is intimately linked with the risk of dying of just about any cause.
Amber Mori drives a forklift in a warehouse in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As a working mom, she's on the go 24/7. But twice a week, Amber transforms into "Cykosis," a fishnet-wearing, skatin' diva, who bumps and jabs her way around a roller rink.
I walk every day, eat a healthful diet, and have no diabetes in my immediate family. I'm not model skinny (truth be told, I've been known to pack on a few extra pounds), but I'm certainly not a couch potato or junk food addict. So, imagine my surprise when a routine blood test showed that my blood sugar was elevated and I was officially prediabetic.
As he strained, crunched and lifted weights, the muscle panels surfaced from Jason Dinant's stomach. Faintly at first, they emerged: one, two, three and four -- not yet a six-pack.
Sports drinks can rehydrate you after a workout, but they also may wreak havoc on your teeth. Prolonged consumption of these types of beverages could lead to erosive tooth wear, according to a study presented at the International Association for Dental Research in Miami on Friday.
Thursday was Giyen Kim's first Korean class. Her plan is to go to Korea to meet some of her father's relatives, as well as find her the siblings of her mother, who died when she was young.
When it comes to educating about cardiovascular health, Rani Whitfield is proving that it's not only what you say but how you say it.
Midway through Jason Dinant's fitness journey to get six-pack abs by June, the 27-year-old had a breakdown.
Barbara Rademacher said she had the "best day I can imagine" two weeks ago when two co-workers independently approached her to ask whether she had lost weight. They told her she looked good.
The bad economy and downturn in the housing market aren't the only painful things for Realtor Anne Stephens. Her knees, hips and ankles hurt from arthritis.
Amanda Wagner and Jessica Tuttle turn 50 this year, but they're not letting age hold them back from their favorite exercise: running. They've been lacing up their running shoes since their teens and show few signs of slowing down. Research on older runners suggests they may not have to.
Ask third-graders what cholesterol means and they will probably just shrug their shoulders, but not Maddie Zacks.
Been squinting a lot lately? Have to move your magazine six inches away from your eyes to read it? Vision problems creep up on you as you age. But good habits -- not unlike the ones you've already established to protect your heart, bones, and brain -- can help keep your eyes healthy. Try these simple tips to safeguard your vision now and for years to come.
First lady Michelle Obama has a fashion following, with blogs tracking her daily garment choices.
My habits weren't horrible, but they weren't great, either. No sodas, fast food, or cigarettes, and I ate my share of broccoli...but I also liked heavy cream in my coffee, butter with dinner, and fortifying spoonfuls of ice cream when afternoon hunger hit.
On February 2, 7-year-old Cameron Dunmore crossed a street to get to his elementary school in Lithonia, Georgia. This scenario takes place thousands of times uneventfully each school day in our country. But this time Cameron did not make it to school. A crossing guard was halting traffic at the time, but the busy intersection did not have a traffic light and one vehicle did not see the boy. Cameron was struck by an SUV and died that same day in the hospital.
Exercise can be a sweaty proposition. And with millions of Americans jumping on the exercise bandwagon, all that perspiration can become downright messy.
Football players guzzle protein shakes, down steaks and lift weights. They train and gain weight, hoping to build mass under the careful eye of the team's coaches, nutritionists and gurus.
Asked by Michele DeGraffinreed
see the answers(0) | answer it