Exercise

Campus News Briefs: Spring 2024

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs: Spring 2024 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/04/2024 - 00:00

Consistent Yoga for Good Health

A ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ study found yoga to be very beneficial to those who practice it — when done regularly. The study, which examined both typical yoga classes and those with only stretching, found the benefits of better emotion regulation, self-control, distress tolerance and mindfulness lasted about a week after either type of class. “One yoga class is not enough to reap long-term health benefits,” ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Institute of Behavioral Science research associate Charleen Gust told The Denver Post. Researchers hope further study will determine how often people must practice to experience benefits.

Study Abroad Hits Record Number

This spring, the number of CU students studying abroad exceeded the record-setting 900 students studying abroad at the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. Nearly 1,200 students were enrolled to study abroad this spring, with Western Europe serving as the most popular destination. ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s study abroad program is ranked 15th-largest in the nation

CU Economist Tackles English Mystery

From 1761 to 1834 the mortality rate of English people dropped from 28 to 25 per 1,000 people, a statistic that has confused historians due to the population influx around that time. “With people coming into cities to work, you would expect, given the level of sanitation they have, that the big killer is water,” ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ economics professor Fransica Antman told the BBC in December. Antman authored a study linking the change to the rise in tea consumption. In 1784, the tea tax went from 119% to 12.5%, boosting tea consumption. Boiling the water when making tea, Antman explained, killed off the bacteria that was prevalent in drinking water at the time, thus saving lives. In her study, Antman examined the quality of water sources for about 400 parishes in England and determined that the death rate declined even in those parishes with poor water quality due to the high prevalence of tea.

Heard Around Campus

“CU naturally attracts really outstanding leaders.”

— Stefanie Johnson, director of the Center for Leadership, told the Daily Camera in January after Time magazine and Statista named ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ one of the top 100 best colleges for future leaders.

Digits: 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

4/8

Date of eclipse

11:28 a.m.

Time solar eclipse appears in Boulder

1,500

Children participating in Fiske’s eclipse outreach program

U.S. states will experience total solar eclipse

Fiske Planetarium films related to the total eclipse

7,500

Public and K-12 visitors watched the planetarium’s eclipse films from May 2023 to January 2024

Submit feedback to the editor

Photos and illustrations courtesy Pixabay

Solar eclipse, benefits of yoga, historical research on tea and more.

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Spring 2024

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Sweat Effects

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Sweat Effects Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 00:00

90%

Approximate amount of time people spend indoors

Person exercising emits as many chemicals as five resting people

Additional airborne compounds created from sweat-produced amino acids and bleach products

Unique compounds directly emitted from people exercising in gyms

Unique compounds originating from personal care products released by people exercising

78%

of deodorant applied in the morning evaporates from the body by noon

Human sweat and bleach cleaners mix to create new airborne chemicals in gyms. A CU study from Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) says this could affect air quality.

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Spring 2021

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The Birth of SoulCycle

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000

The Birth of SoulCycle Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

In 2015, SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler (DistSt'89) launched a spin sensation.

Amid the sea of freshmen fidgeting in the stands of CU’s basketball arena at convocation in August 1985, Elizabeth Cutler (DistSt’89) pondered what she’d just heard.

“First, he said 25 percent of us wouldn’t be here next year because we’d flunk out,” she said of a dean. “The second was that we’d have to be our own advocates, because CU is a large school. The third thing he said is don’t get too focused on what job you think you are going to do, as 90 percent of us are going to do a job that has not yet been invented.”

The final point struck a chord: You can blaze your own way.

Two decades later, in 2006, Cutler and a partner did it by opening a fitness center, SoulCycle, in a 1,400-square-foot former dance studio in Manhattan. It proved the start of a high-end fitness phenomenon.

“You could hardly find our front door, and we turned the hallway into the locker room,” Cutler said. “But we were beyond freaking-out-excited.”

SoulCycle was born of Cutler’s search for community in New York.

Today, SoulCycle is a marquee name in the business of boutique fitness, operating 90 studios across North America. There are no memberships — exercisers book seats online by noon on Mondays — and classes sell out fast, even at $40 or more per session. Charismatic instructors teach up-tempo cycling classes in candlelit rooms, shouting encouragement to cyclists by name. It’s not uncommon for riders to cry as they pedal in sync in the dark.

“As I dabbed my eyes and my sweat after class,” wrote an Atlanta magazine journalist in June, “I wiped away my cynicism, too. Whatever the special sauce, whatever the science, I’m sold on SoulCycle.”

Acquired in 2015 by Equinox Fitness, SoulCycle was born of Cutler’s search for community in New York.

Although a big-city girl from Chicago, she’d moved east from tiny Telluride, Colo., where she’d lived 10 years, working as a real estate agent and Jin Shin Jyutsu acupressure practitioner. She was used to seeing familiar faces on the street and taking restorative hikes with friends.

“By the time the hike was over, we had solved our problems and were ready to get on with our day,” she said.

After the birth of her second daughter, in 2005, a friend invited her to a spin class. Cutler was anxious — about whether she’d finish, about how she’d feel afterward. She hungered for an urban sanctuary offering the physical, social and psychic benefits of an outdoor escapade with friends.

Soon Cutler met Julie Rice, a former Hollywood talent agent with a similar yearning for socially fulfilling exercise. Over lunch they hatched a plan for a cycling studio prioritizing communal feeling.

“[T]here was really nothing out there that was efficient, that was joyful, that was about community,” Rice told Business Insider.

Cutler found a tiny West 72nd Street studio for rent on Craigslist and the pair opened shop. They charged $27 a session and adopted the then-unusual per-class reservation system to encourage riders to feel invested — and show up.

“We wanted to create an experience where people could clip into the bike when the lights came down, listen to a teacher who spoke to them in a real way and leave the class after 45 minutes having allowed their being to be able to sort everything out,” said Cutler.

As SoulCycle grew, first in New York, then in California, celebrities discovered it. Kelly Ripa raved. Jake Gyllenhaal, David Beckham and Lady Gaga became regulars. Oprah came on her 60th birthday.

“We were in service for people living their best lives,” said Cutler, who left SoulCycle in 2016, after she and Rice sold their full stakes to Equinox for $90 million each. They now run LifeShop, a business advisory and investment firm.

Cutler still enjoys the fellowship of SoulCycle. ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Chicago last year, she joined a class — pedaling and sweating her way into harmony in the dark.

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "Master of Soul." Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

In 2015, SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler launched a spin sensation. The key to her success? A focus on community.

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Exercising to Remember

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Exercising to Remember Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/01/2011 - 00:00

Greg Swenson

For those looking for another reason to get out and exercise, a CU-Boulder study reveals that just a little physical exercise can help protect us from long-term memory loss in old age.

In the study, CU research associate Ruth Barrientos and her colleagues in the psychology and neuroscience department showed aging rats that ran just over half a kilometer each week were protected against infection-induced memory loss.

“Strikingly, this small amount of running was sufficient to confer robust benefits for those that ran over those that did not run,” Barrientos says. “This is an important finding because people of an advanced age are more vulnerable to memory impairments following immune challenges, such as bacterial infections or surgery.”

The news is especially significant because the nation’s baby boomers are aging and the risk of diminished memory function in this population is of great concern, says Barrientos, who emphasizes the importance of developing effective noninvasive therapies.

Past research has shown that exercise in humans protects against dementia and declines in cognitive function associated with aging. Researchers also have shown that dementia is often preceded by bacterial infections, such as pneumonia or other immune challenges.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show that voluntary exercise in rats reduces aging-induced susceptibility to the cognitive impairments that follow a bacterial infection and the processes thought to underlie these impairments,” Barrientos says.

In the study, researchers found rats infected with E. coli bacteria experienced detrimental effects on the hippocampus, an area of the brain that mediates learning and memory.

When the older rats in the study encountered a bacterial infection, the immune cells of the brain, called microglia, released inflammatory molecules called cytokines in an exaggerated and prolonged manner. This supports earlier research that has shown these immune cells become more reactive with age.

“In the current study we found that small amounts of voluntary exercise prevented the priming of microglia, the exaggerated inflammation in the brain and the decrease of growth factors,” Barrientos says.

What’s next? She plans to examine the role stress hormones may play in sensitizing microglia and whether physical exercise slows these hormones in older rats.

For those looking for another reason to get out and exercise, a CU-Boulder study reveals that just a little physical exercise can help protect us from long-term memory loss in old age.

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Exercise

Campus News Briefs: Spring 2024

Consistent Yoga for Good Health

Study Abroad Hits Record Number

CU Economist Tackles English Mystery

Heard Around Campus

Digits: 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

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