This Baby Girl’s Reaction to Seeing Clearly for the First Time Will Make You Cry Happy Tears

 

For a lot of kids, getting glasses can be a less than happy experience. But this little girl couldn’t be more delighted about seeing the world through her brand new pair of pink-colored specs.

Meet 11-month-old Piper Verdusco. Last month, her mom posted a video on Facebook of the tot’s reaction to seeing her family, clearly, for the first time ever. Since then, the Cincinnati native has become nothing short of an Internet sensation.

RELATED: The Best Sunglasses for Healthy Eyes

At first, Piper wasn’t quite sure what to make of her brand-new view of the world after her mom slipped on the cool, custom-made frames. But after a couple of seconds, she broke into a big, happy smile of utter amazement when she saw her family’s faces.

“Picked up her glasses. Went out to eat and put them on her. Her reaction melts my heart,” her mom, Jessica Sinclair, wrote in the caption that ran with the video.

The reason for the eyewear? “We started to notice that she was having issues reaching her milestone of crawling,” Sinclair told Cincinnati TV station WKRC. “So at her regular pediatric check they did an eye screening and saw that she might have had a slight astigmatism.”

RELATED: Why It’s a Good Idea to Have a Dilated Eye Exam Every Year

Turns out, Piper didn’t have astigmatism, but she was extremely farsighted and needed glasses.

Sinclair told WKRC that she’s hoping the video’s high click count will make people aware of just how important eye check-ups are for infants.

Mission accomplished. Since going viral, the footage has nabbed over 26 million views and warmed a lot of hearts too. In fact, some Facebook commenters admitted that the video of Piper brought them to tears. “I was tearing up too,” Sinclair admitted in response. “Just so happy for her.”

Count us among the misty-eyed.

RELATED: Should You See An Eye Doctor?

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6 best exercises for triceps

Bingo wings, be gone! These exercises specifically target your triceps so you can tone your upper arms.

Medicine ball lunge with triceps extension

Step 1

•     Stand upright, feet together, medicine ball extended directly above the head
•     Step out into a lunge position, keeping the medicine ball extended directly above the head
•     Ensure the front knee does not extend beyond the front foot
•     Keep core engaged and pelvis tucked under

Step 2

•     Remain in lunge position
•     Lower medicine ball down behind the head
•     Ensure elbows and upper arms are kept back in alignment with the side of the head
•     Extend medicine ball back to original position directly above the head
•     Return to start position, feet together, medicine ball extended directly above the head
•     Repeat entire exercise with alternate leg

* Reps: 24 with alternating legs

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One-leg tricep dips

No need to neglect your triceps just because you don’t have all the ‘right’ equipment. A floor tricep sans bench is just as effective at toning your arms.

By challenging your balance you also engage your core and up the intensity of this powerful movement.

How to:

1.    Sit on the floor with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor and your hands about a foot behind your hips. Keep palms shoulder-distance apart and fingers pointing toward you.

2.    Engaging your core, extend one leg upward and hold it there.

3.    Bend at the elbows, lowering your hips towards the floor while keeping your leg extended.

4.    Avoid bending at the hips to ensure you feel the burn in your triceps.

5.    Do 10 to 15 reps and change legs.

6.    To make this move harder, you can speed this up by alternating leg and speeding up the tempo.

 

Photo credit: Blake Pearl

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Tricep kick-back kneeling

A nice addition to a circuit, triceps respond really well to isolated movements.

How to

Kneel with one foot planted on the ground and the other leg back – tall posture.

Weight in your hand starts by your sides then kick it back behind you.

Be careful not to bend over but stay straight and let your triceps do all the work. 

Photography: Keith Hamlyn; Words/workout: Nikki Fogden-Moore

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One-arm overhead tricep extension

How to

Sit down on a bench. Position the dumbbell overhead with arm straight up.

Lower dumbbell behind your neck while keeping your upper arm vertical throughout the exercise. Extend your arm back up to the starting position.

Repeat for desired amount of reps, then repeat on the other side.

 

Model: Nichelle Laus; Photo credit: Dave Laus

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Half moon rotations

Targets: Biceps, triceps and shoulders

Stand tall with your feet together with arms at shoulder height and straight out and your palms facing the floor.

Counting to 20, rotate your arms in forward circles. The circles should be about the size of a watermelon.

After 20, reverse the circles and again count to 20.

Without stopping, lift your arms up and down like flapping wings for 20 counts, then forwards and backwards for another 20.

By now your arms and shoulders should be burning. The last challenge is to hold your arms out still and straight for a final 20 seconds. 

Repeat for at least one additional set.

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Triceps extension with kettlebell

FOCUS: Abs, and triceps

How to

Stand with one foot in front of the other for a good, stable position. Shoulders are back and abs engaged. It helps to activate the thighs, so imagine ‘pulling’ your kneecaps upwards, which gives you strong legs at the same time.

Grasp the kettlebell or weight with both hands, bring it overhead, keep elbows tight and lower the weight behind your head, then bring back to the top.

Repeat this 15 times and then return to the start position.

Keep a tension on the flex and extension of this exercise – i.e. don’t let the kettlebell or weight fall back too quickly. Keeping your elbows in will ensure you can isolate the triceps.

NEXT: 14 exercises for toned arms>>

 

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More Teen Athletes Undergoing Tommy John Elbow Surgery: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Most Tommy John surgeries to fix elbows torn in sports-related injuries are being performed on teenagers, especially baseball pitchers, and the numbers are rising every year, a new study reports.

Tommy John surgery fixes a torn ulnar collateral ligament, or UCL. The UCL is located on the inside of the elbow and connects the bone of the upper arm to a bone in the forearm.

Teens between ages 15 and 19 accounted for nearly 60 percent of all Tommy John surgeries performed in the United States between 2007 and 2011, the study said.

Kids these days are playing sports year-round, and often specializing in a single sport to improve their chances of getting a scholarship or making the big leagues, said lead author Dr. Brandon Erickson, an orthopedic surgery resident at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

“The more pitches kids throw and the faster they throw seems to put them at increased risk for elbow injury,” Erickson said. “Kids are throwing harder and more often than they had in previous years, and it puts additional stress on their arm.”

The study findings were to be presented this week at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. Findings presented at meetings are generally considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Injuries that require Tommy John surgeries often occur in baseball players, especially pitchers, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). In fact, the surgery is named after major league pitcher Tommy John, who was the first professional baseball player to have the surgery, in 1974.

In the procedure, surgeons replace the injured UCL with a tendon taken from the player’s own body, usually either the forearm or the knee.

To get some idea how often Tommy John surgery is performed, the researchers reviewed medical records from a private insurance database.

They found that 15- to 19-year-olds accounted for 57 percent of the 790 Tommy John surgeries that occurred between 2007 and 2011. Young adults between 20 and 24 accounted for another 22 percent of Tommy John surgeries performed.

The 15-to-19 age group experienced an average 9 percent increase per year in the number of Tommy John surgeries, more than double the annual overall growth rate of 4 percent for all ages, the researchers found.

“What is worrisome is even within a five-year span you can see the incidence of the surgery has gone up,” said Dr. Barry Boden, a sports medicine specialist at The Orthopaedic Center in Rockville, Md.

Sports medicine experts chalked up this increase to overuse.

“A lot of these younger players are being pushed to perform at a younger age, and in some areas of the country they are playing year-round,” Boden said. “There’s a lot of competition out there, and a lot of people who want to make it to the top. They are pushing their bodies to the limit.”

It used to be that athletic teens played different sports depending on the season, rotating from baseball to basketball to football to soccer, said Dr. David Geier, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist in Charleston, S.C.

That rotation protected young athletes from injuries caused by repetitively stressing any single part of their body year-round, Geier said.

Tommy John surgery has been hailed for its ability to return major league pitchers to play. Four out of five pitchers in the major leagues who undergo Tommy John surgery eventually return to pitch as well as they had prior to surgery, according to a study presented at last year’s meeting of the AAOS.

But an elbow tear that requires Tommy John surgery will keep a kid out of play for at least a year, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever return to the sport, Geier said.

“About 15 to 20 percent of players never return to the same level of performance, and even if you do get back you generally have to go through a year of physical therapy and rehabilitation,” he said. “It’s a lot of work to get back to that point, and there’s a chance you won’t make it.”

Erickson, Geier and Boden all agree that preventing elbow ligament tears is much better than relying on Tommy John surgery to repair the damage.

Parents and coaches need to monitor players’ pitch counts to make sure they aren’t throwing the ball too often, Boden said.

Even better, parents and coaches should be encouraged to hold a child out of play for at least three months every year, Geier said.

“You can play sports, but play something that doesn’t stress the elbow and shoulder, like soccer or track,” he said.

Players also need to be taught proper body mechanics, and encouraged not to pitch through pain or fatigue, Geier said.

“The key is that young pitchers really want to avoid ever having this injury,” he said. “This is one that’s much better to prevent than to treat.”

More information

For more on preventing baseball injuries, visit Stop Sports Injuries.

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Nursing Home Care Improving for U.S. Minorities, Study Finds

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A bump up in Medicaid payments to nursing homes may be paying off in better care for minority residents, new research suggests.

“This study shows that recent regulatory, financial and market-driven changes have resulted in an improvement not only in homes with higher numbers of minorities, but across the board,” lead researcher Yue Li, an associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Rochester, said in a university news release.

Right now, there are about 1.3 million people in some 15,000 nursing homes across the United States, the researchers noted, and nearly 20 percent of them are Hispanic, black or Asian. Nursing homes with high numbers of racial/ethnic minorities tend to have less money, fewer nursing staff and a lower level of care, according to the study.

Li noted that, in the past, “racial and ethnic disparities in quality of care have long been documented in nursing homes.”

To see if any headway had been made in closing those gaps, his team looked at data on more than 14,000 U.S. nursing homes between 2006 and 2011.

They found that the number of care-related problems declined in facilities, whether they had low numbers of minority residents (fewer than 5 percent) or high numbers (more than 35 percent).

However, nursing homes with higher numbers of minority residents still tended to have a greater number of problems, according to the study published recently in the journal Health Affairs.

Li’s team also examined state Medicaid reimbursement rates. Although it’s tough to prove cause-and-effect, they found that an increase of $10 per resident per day was associated with improved care at nursing homes.

In recent years, government policies have aimed to improve the quality of nursing home care nationwide.

“Although none of these policies have focused specifically on racial and ethnic disparities, it appears that these global efforts to improve the quality of nursing home care have effectively narrowed the gap over time,” Li said. “These findings also suggest the need to reevaluate quality improvement and cost containment efforts to better foster quality and equity in nursing home care.”

More information

The AGS Foundation for Health in Aging has more about nursing homes.

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New Drug May Help Diabetic Kidney Disease Patients

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A new drug decreases dangerously high levels of potassium in people with diabetes-related kidney disease, a new study finds.

Potassium is necessary for the heart, kidneys and other organs to work normally, but damage to the kidneys can cause potassium levels to increase to dangerous levels. This condition is called hyperkalemia.

Elevated potassium levels are associated with sudden death — your heart stops, said lead researcher Dr. George Bakris, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

“High potassium is a problem seen in people with advanced kidney disease and advanced diabetes with kidney disease and with people with heart failure,” Bakris explained.

The new drug, patiromer, significantly reduced potassium levels when taken for a month, researchers found. Moreover, that effect lasted for a year.

Patiromer is a powder you mix with water and drink twice a day.

Bakris said a change in diet has been the traditional approach to lowering potassium levels. Patients are told to avoid foods such as tomatoes, bananas and other fruits that are high in this mineral.

If diet fails to control potassium levels, patients are usually given the drug sodium polystyrene (Kayexalate), Bakris said. This drug, which has been around for over 40 years, works by binding potassium in the lower intestine. However, the binding power of Kayexalate is spotty, he said.

Patiromer works by reliably binding potassium throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, which helps remove potassium from the body, he explained.

But whether patiromer changes outcomes for patients beyond lowering potassium levels isn’t known, Bakris said. “We do not have any data like that yet. It’s all speculative and theoretical,” he said.

The current trial is the second of three required for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Based on these findings, a phase 3 study was done in which patiromer appeared similarly effective, Bakris said.

The current study was funded by Relypsa, the maker of patiromer, and the results were published July 14 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, Bakris and colleagues randomly assigned 306 patients with type 2 diabetes and high potassium to one of three doses of patiromer twice a day for a month.

Patients also took renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors, such as angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), before and during the trial.

Dr. Maria DeVita, a nephrologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, explained, “These medications help delay progression of kidney disease, [but] have the side effect of also causing increased potassium. This may result in the need to discontinue their use, taking away a weapon to fight progressive kidney deterioration.”

The researchers found that all doses of patiromer significantly reduced potassium levels after a month and continued to keep levels low over a year. And for most patients, potassium levels remained low without falling below normal.

Over the course of a year, less than 6 percent of patients had potassium levels drop below normal; about 7 percent experienced abnormally low levels of magnesium, and 6 percent suffered from mild to moderate constipation.

“If you have advanced kidney disease, if you have been told by your physician that your potassium is high, if you have heart failure and you can’t take certain medicine because your potassium is elevated, there is now a reliable agent that will reduce risk of your potassium going up and enable you to take these other medicines,” Bakris said. “Theoretically, it should lead to better outcomes.”

DeVita said this new drug could be a welcome tool.

“Dr. Bakris’ study is a tremendous victory for the management of this serious abnormality,” said DeVita, who was not involved with the study. “We look forward to more studies embracing its safety and success.”

If patiromer is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the author of an accompanying journal editorial urges the agency to consider requiring post-marketing studies. These should assess whether the drug slows kidney disease progression, reduces the need for dialysis and improves heart-failure outcomes, wrote Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmayer, chair of nephrology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

More information

For more on diabetic kidney disease, visit the American Diabetes Association.

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Too Much Sitting May Raise a Woman’s Cancer Risk: Study

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Lots of time spent sitting may increase a woman’s odds for cancer, but it does not seem to have a similar effect on men, a new study suggests.

“Longer leisure time spent sitting was associated with a higher risk of total cancer risk in women, and specifically with multiple myeloma, breast and ovarian cancers. But sitting time was not associated with cancer risk in men,” concluded a team led by Dr. Alpa Patel, who directs the Cancer Prevention Study-3 at the American Cancer Society.

One doctor said the message from the study is clear.

“Encouraging individuals across all categories of weight to reduce sitting time would have an impact on their physical activity, with beneficial effects on cancer and other chronic diseases,” said Dr. Paolo Bofetta, a professor of preventative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.

Reported recently in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the study tracked outcomes for more than 146,000 men and women who were cancer-free at the start of the study and then followed from 1992 to 2009. During that time, nearly 31,000 of the participants developed cancer.

More time spent sitting during leisure time was associated with a 10 percent overall higher risk of cancer in women, after the researchers adjusted for factors such as physical activity levels and weight. There was no such link found in men, however.

Among women, specific cancers associated with high levels of sitting during leisure time were the blood cancer multiple myeloma, invasive breast cancer, and ovarian cancer.

“Further research is warranted to better understand the differences in associations between men and women,” Alpa Patel and colleagues wrote.

Previous research has shown that physical activity can reduce cancer risk, but few studies have examined the link between sitting time and cancer risk. Over the past few decades, sitting time in the United States has increased, the researchers said.

The study wasn’t designed to prove cause-and-effect. However, given the large amount of time Americans spend sitting, even a slight link between sitting and increased cancer risk could have major public health implications, Patel’s group said.

Experts were puzzled by the fact that sitting appeared to boost a woman’s odds for cancer, even after the research team factored out the notion that sitting might simply mean less daily exercise.

For example, “one would assume that women that exercise more have a decreased risk of breast cancer, but the study tried to control for this variable,” said breast cancer specialist Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“It is unclear why leisure time spent sitting, if not a marker for decreased physical activity, would increase the risk of cancer,” she said. Bernik believes more study is needed to pinpoint the reason behind the finding.

Dr. Charles Shapiro directs translational breast cancer research at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, also in New York City. He said the study was limited by the fact that it relied on the recall of people answering questionnaires about past habits. Still, he said, “the study is of importance because it highlights that less leisure-time sitting and increased physical activity are distinct [entities],” with separate implications for cancer risk.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about cancer prevention.

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Wider Use of Statin Drugs Could Save Thousands More Lives: Report

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — New expert guidelines from two major cardiologists’ groups may boost doctors’ ability to spot patients who should take cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, researchers said.

The updated guidelines were released in 2013 by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. Now, a new report finds they are more accurate and efficient than earlier guidelines in identifying adults at high risk for heart trouble who could gain from statins.

All of that should add up to lives saved, the researchers said.

“Extrapolating our results to the approximately 10 million U.S. adults who would be newly eligible for statin therapy under the new guidelines, we estimate that between 41,000 and 63,000 cardiovascular events — heart attacks, strokes or deaths from cardiovascular disease — would be prevented over a 10-year period,” lead researcher Dr. Udo Hoffman, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said in a hospital news release.

The new guidelines are also better at identifying low-risk patients who do not need to take the drugs, his team noted.

The findings are published July 15 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The 2013 guidelines replace a former advisory to doctors published in 2004. The new guidelines focus more specifically on the use of statins — drugs such as Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor — to prevent heart disease by lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol.

The updated criteria also broaden prevention efforts to focus on all forms of heart disease.

The researchers compared the two sets of guidelines by analyzing how they might predict the risk of heart events among men aged 35 and older, and among women aged 40 and older — none of whom had any known heart disease in 2002-2005, but whose health was tracked up until 2013.

All of the patients were assigned to repeated CT scans that looked for evidence of increased calcium deposits in their arteries, a sign of heart disease.

“The data from their study suggests that this noninvasive measure is useful for initiating preventive therapy with a statin — lowering the future risk of cardiovascular events and reduce health care expenditures,” said one expert familiar with the report, Dr. Robert Rosenson. He is a professor of medicine and cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Hoffman’s team believe the newer guidelines will save tens of thousands of lives. They are also expected to boost the number of adults who are eligible to take statins by nearly 13 million, the researchers said. That has raised concerns that statins may be prescribed to people who don’t need them, unnecessarily exposing them to potential risks from the drugs.

The researchers also believe the new guidelines are also better at spotting low-risk patients who do not need to take the drugs.

The new guidelines, “have improved our ability to achieve the precision medicine goal of delivering the right treatments to the right patients,” study co-author Dr. Christopher O’Donnell of the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, said in the news release.

Dr. David Friedman is chief of heart failure services at North Shore-LIJ’s Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream, N.Y. He believes that a healthy diet, regular exercise, quitting smoking and managing your weight can all help protect the heart. Now, the new study adds evidence to the notion that the “earlier use of preventive statins” may help do the same, he said.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about statins.

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Despite Benefits, Few U.S. States Mandate Cervical Cancer Vaccine

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Almost a decade after the HPV vaccine was first recommended for girls, only two U.S. states and Washington, D.C., require the immunization, a new study finds.

What’s more, researchers say, most U.S. states do require other vaccines routinely recommended for preteens and teenagers — the vaccines against hepatitis B, chickenpox and meningitis.

“Our study can’t answer the question of why,” said Jason Schwartz, a bioethics researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. “We can only show that there’s a stark difference between HPV and these other vaccines.”

But Schwartz speculated that states may not want to revisit the controversy that arose with HPV vaccine approval in 2006.

At the time, numerous states did propose legislation to require the vaccine. But that drew opposition from wary parents and even public health experts, who said it was too soon for mandates.

“It’s a controversy that was unique to the HPV vaccine,” Schwartz said.

The study findings appear in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The HPV vaccine protects against several strains of the human papillomavirus that cause genital or anal warts and can eventually lead to cancer. Most cervical cancers are caused by HPV, and the virus can also contribute to vaginal, anal and vulvar tumors.

Since 2007, U.S. health officials have recommended that all girls ages 11 and 12 receive the HPV vaccine, and that teenagers and young women up to age 26 get “catch-up” shots if they missed the earlier window. The advice was later extended to boys and young men.

Right now, though, Virginia and Washington, D.C. are the only jurisdictions that require HPV vaccination. In August, Rhode Island will join them, Schwartz said.

In contrast, 29 states and the District of Columbia require the meningococcal vaccine, which protects against serious infections of the brain, spinal cord and blood, the researchers said in background notes. Forty-seven states and D.C. require the vaccine against hepatitis B, which, like HPV, is sexually transmitted.

All states require kids to be vaccinated against chickenpox, the study authors added.

And it’s not just because those vaccines have been around longer, Schwartz’s team found. When the hepatitis B vaccine was at its eight-year mark, for example, 36 states and Washington, D.C. had made it mandatory.

“The difference is striking between state-level requirements for the HPV vaccine and other recently recommended adolescent vaccines,” said Dr. Jessica Kahn, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

If more states made the vaccine a requirement, that would help boost the low rate of HPV vaccination nationwide, said Kahn, who was not involved in the study.

In 2013, only 38 percent of U.S. teenage girls and 14 percent of boys had received all three doses of the HPV vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are three vaccines that can prevent infection with certain cancer-related strains of HPV: Cervarix, which protects females against genital warts and cervical cancer; and Gardasil and Gardasil 9, which protect against warts and anal cancer in both sexes, as well as vaginal and vulvar cancers, the CDC says.

The vaccines cost about $400 for all three doses, but most insurance plans and Medicaid cover them.

Schwartz said he did not think cost was a major barrier to state requirements for HPV vaccination. Some other vaccines that are required, such as the meningococcal jab, are not cheap, he pointed out.

“Strong” recommendations from doctors would also help improve HPV vaccination rates, Kahn said, as would efforts to make more parents aware of the potential benefits of vaccination.

Some parents worry that HPV vaccination gives kids tacit approval to have sex, Schwartz said. “But we now have clear evidence, from a number of studies, that vaccination does not encourage sexual activity,” he said.

Schwartz agreed that state mandates are not the only way to boost HPV vaccination rates.

“But I also think it may be time to start thinking about requirements, and how they could raise (HPV vaccine) coverage,” he said.

According to Fred Wyand, communications director for the American Sexual Health Association, mandates are “obviously” an effective way to boost vaccination rates.

But even without laws, Wyand said, HPV vaccination needs to be seen as “normal and routine,” and doctors should promote it that way. Some parents, he noted, mistakenly believe their children are unlikely to need protection against HPV.

“The majority of sexually active individuals will have one or more HPV infections in their lifetime,” Wyand said, “and HPV cuts across all demographics.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on HPV vaccination.

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Here’s the Best Way to Make Your Exercise Habit Stick

Photo: Getty Images

It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.

The most consistent exercisers, researchers found, were those who made exercise into a specific type of habit—one triggered by a cue, like hearing your morning alarm and going to the gym without even thinking about it, or getting stressed and immediately deciding to exercise. “It’s not something you have to deliberate about; you don’t have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work,” explains L. Alison Phillips, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and one of the study’s authors. Instead, it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue.

The researchers wanted to see whether this type of habit, known as an instigation habit, was better than another type of habit at predicting who stuck with a month of exercise. At the beginning and end of the month long study, they asked 123 university students and faculty questions that assessed how often they exercised and how strong their exercise habits were—whether they did it without thinking, for example. From these questions, they gleaned whether a person has a strong instigation habit—one where a cue triggers the instantaneous decision to exercise—and whether a person has a strong execution habit—that is, knowing exactly what kind of exercise they’ll do once you get to the gym, or being able to go through the motions of an exercise routine while being mentally checked out.

The only factor that predicted how often a person exercised over the long-term, they found, was the strength of their instigation habit.

It got stronger with time, too. “When people started exercising more frequently over the month and became more active, I saw that their instigation habit strength increased with that frequency, but execution habit didn’t really change in relation to frequency at all,” Phillips says. Zoning out mentally during exercise didn’t have a negative effect, but it didn’t help a person adhere to a regimen, either.

That’s good news for newbie exercisers who might be intimidated by the same routine day in, day out. “In the long term, it seems beneficial, or at least not harmful, to have variety in your routine,” Phillips says of the results. “A lot of people might shy away from starting to exercise because they think, oh man, I can’t possibly imagine myself doing this forever. They might think of one boring routine—running on the treadmill—and to them it sounds like torture, so they give up before they even begin.”

Some repetitive behaviors do reinforce exercise, she says. “When you’re just starting to develop an exercise routine, I think it might be helpful to engage in the same behaviors, to have this patterned action.” But sticking with a cue—instead of clinging to the same tired routine—appears to be what will get you back to your workout again and again.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Cell Calls, Texts Can Distract Even If Unanswered

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Simply hearing your mobile phone ring or feeling it vibrate is enough to significantly distract you, a new study suggests.

And, the level of distraction is similar to that of actually talking or sending text messages on the device, the researchers found.

“The level of how much it affected the task at hand was really shocking,” study co-author Courtney Yehnert, a research coordinator at Florida State University, said in a university news release.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

“Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance,” the researchers wrote.

“Cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task,” they added.

In the study, participants’ performance on a computer task was assessed when they had no distractions and when they received calls or message alerts on their cellphones. They did much worse — making about three times as many mistakes — on the task when distracted by calls or text alerts on their cellphones, the study found.

Previous studies have shown that using a mobile phone leads to poorer performance when people are trying to do other things. This study is the first of its kind and shows that simply being aware of a missed call or text can have the same effect, the researchers said.

They added that while the study did not involve driving, the results are relevant to the issue of distracted driving.

“Even a slight distraction can have severe, potentially life-threatening effects if that distraction occurs at the wrong time,” lead author Cary Stothart, a psychology doctoral student at Florida State University, said in the news release.

“When driving, it’s impossible to know when ‘the wrong time’ will occur. Our results suggest that it is safest for people to mute or turn off their phones and put them out of sight while driving,” Stothart added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about distracted driving.

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