Episode Transcript
Recording: Covering all aspects of women's health, this is the Seven Domains of Women's Health with Dr. Kirtly Jones on The Scope.
Dr. Jones: Here in The Scope studio we have Dr. Amy Powell, who is a sports medicine specialist at the University of Utah Orthopedic Center. Now Dr. Powell trained first as an internist, meaning she trained to take care of sick people but her focus has really changed. Not only does she take care of not so sick, like people who want to stay well, but she also trains medical students.
So Dr. Powell, you take care of . . . you're the orthopedic specialist for the faculty here. If you had one thing to say about exercise and sports, but exercise that everybody should think about, what is your passion?
Dr. Powell: I think really exercise is medicine and if we could put it in a pill form and take a pill every day, it would be so much easier to sell exercise as a health tool than it is to try to get people off the couch and exercise at moderate levels for 30 to 60 minutes a day.
Dr. Jones: Do you see that the now having more portable electronic devices that measure your steps, I see many faculty here at the U with their little wristbands on and they look at me with their eyes shining and say, "I'm almost up to my 10,000 steps today." How do you see the couch generation being motivated to move more for their health and wellness?
Dr. Powell: I think those gadgets are really wonderful and I think that especially looking at school and medicine, we're all internally driven and fairly competitive people and so if we have a gadget that says this is our goal, we're going to try to reach that goal. And I think motivating people who aren't used to being active in any way, that's a great tool for some people. It doesn't obviously work for everyone but it is a great tool.
Dr. Jones: The other thing I notice is when I go and if I go to walk around the track or go to a playground, I watch little kids and they're usually . . . I watch the three to six year-olds and they don't just exercise. They just constantly move everything. They swing their eyes, arms. They jump up. They do this little, silly jumping thing. They jump and down. They want to move and then that changes. What should we do as parents?
Dr. Powell: I think free play we absolutely need to encourage our kids to do for as long as possible. I don't know why it changes. It seems to me that earlier and earlier we're getting our kids into organized sports, which is a good thing and a bad thing in so many ways. And just to encourage free play, running up and down safe streets, running in playgrounds, bouncing off walls, those things that kids love to do are naturally going to be healthy for a lot of reasons. It's great for bone density. It's great for keeping them fit. It's great for having fun and kids need to learn all those things and free play's really part of that.
Dr. Jones: Well baby, we were born to run, weren't we?
Dr. Powell: Yes.
Dr. Jones: Let's talk a little bit about the wellness benefits in terms of . . . think about your gut or think about your brain or we all know exercise is good for your heart but think about the other parts of your body. What else is good about exercise?
Dr. Powell: So many things. I think that it's great for mental health. There have been some studies suggesting that exercise is as or more effective then anti-depressants for treating major depression. There are really great studies showing that people can get off of high blood pressure medications and diabetes medications if they exercise regularly and sometimes lose weight. It's just not for losing weight though. It really is for heart health, for mental health, for bone health, for gut health. Again, if we could put it in a bottle and have everybody take it as a pill, we would all be taking one of these pills a day. But it's just harder to motivate people to actually get up and move.
Dr. Jones: So I heard sitting is the new smoking.
Dr. Powell: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jones: So let's talk about that for just a sec. I mean I'm perfectly willing to go out and put my 40 minutes in the treadmill and the rowing machine but then I sit around for the rest of the day. And I've read that that is actually . . . it's like you never exercised at all. If you're going to move, think about moving intermittently throughout the day. What about that?
Dr. Powell: It's true and that to me is scary because there was a study that came out last year that showed that an hour a day of exercise could not overcome a sedentary eight hours of work. So we have to move all the time and there are lots of neat interventions we can use like treadmill desks are being implemented at the School of Medicine Library. Some folks in my building are using treadmill desks so they can walk at a slow pace throughout the day.
We just have to move and it is hard for some people with truly sedentary jobs to do that but I'm teaching right now, so between class, between each hour of teaching I'll run up and down three flights of stairs just to kind of keep moving throughout the day because I can't help seating.
Dr. Jones: And for our listening audience, I want you to know that Dr. Powell is slim and muscular and the woman I want to be when I grow up. Okay, so we go to move to stay well.
Dr. Powell: Yes.
Dr. Jones: And use it or lose it.
Recording: Thescoperadio.com, a university of Utah Health Sciences Radio. If you like what you heard, be sure to get our latest content by following us on Facebook. Just click on the Facebook icon at thescoperadio.com.