Sunday, 10 July 2016


5 Remarkable Websites to Help You Understand Your Health & Fitness
By Mihir Patkar,
Make Use Of, 9 July 2016.

For those who didn’t pay much attention during biology class (yup, that includes me), it’s important to gain information about your body and your health. This pretty much dictates your lifestyle. Not knowing these things is what has you relying on tools to relieve back pain and exercise individual muscles later in life.

Instead, get started now to understand your body, and how exercise and nutrition affects it. The secret to long-term health is having the knowledge to do the right things for yourself, which is what we want to push here.

1. Eriba Science Hall (Web): Experts Explain How the Body Changes with Age


As much as scientists try to stop the ageing process, it’s inevitable. And as you age, your body changes. But what exactly happens to it? How does it affect you on a day-to-day basis? Researchers at the Eriba Science Hall from the Netherlands-based University Medical Center Groningen put together a little step-by-step guide to educate you on the major body parts that are changing, and their impact.

The site explains the evolution of the human skin, brain, stem cells, blood, cells, nucleus, chromosomes, telomeres, and DNA. Scroll down to play the animated explanation along with its captions, moving from one part to another. If you’re interested in knowing more, each section has an expert that talks about it in a short video.

It might seem silly, but it’s one of those “things you wanted to know but were too embarrassed to ask.” By touching upon the salient points of the ageing process, you’ll understand how your body will change and not be surprised when someone brings it up the next time.

2. The Making of Me and You (Web): BBC Breaks Down Your Body by Data


You can get full virtual tours of the human body on the Internet, but you haven’t really understood what it’s made of. For example, do you know which chemical elements make up your body, or how many billions (or rather, octillions) of atoms come together to make the shape you are now? Heck, how many times has your heart beaten in your lifetime?

The Making of Me and You is BBC’s new interactive web app that tries to answer all those and more. Start off by keying in your date, your height, and your weight (you might need a unit converter to get it right), and the tool will calculate everything based on that. Four categories - body shop, body count, body size, body builder - give you a ton of information, all based on scientific data.

You’ll get to know how many cells your body has or even how many hair follicles. As a male, you might find out how much sperm you’ll produce in your lifetime. You’ll visualize how big your lungs are, or how much of your body is water. It’s incredible, and you’ll love every bit of The Making of Me and You.

3. World Fitness Level (Web): Compare Your Health to Worldwide Averages


You might think you’re healthy, but are you really? Test yourself against worldwide averages, if you’re so sure. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Cardiac Exercise Research Group have collaborated to make World Fitness Level, a site that checks your fitness against that of other individuals around the world, just to give you a reality check.

You are asked a series of basic questions, like your weight, height, resting heart rate, and other health-related statistics. Hopefully, you have been tracking your fitness with templates, but if not, a quick Google search will show you how to calculate answers for what you don’t know. Once you’ve filled everything in, World Fitness Level crunches the numbers to give you a result.

The result tells you how fit you are right now in terms of age. So for example, you might be 31 years old, but you have the fitness of a 40-year-old. And once you get that reality check, it will spur you into action about your health.

4. Simple Science Fitness (Web): Science-Based Explanation of Your Body


When you want to get fit, the amount of information about nutrition and exercises can be overwhelming. You also don’t know how much of it is being pushed by charlatan “experts” and what is actually scientifically proven. Simple Science Fitness is your one-stop resource to put all doubts at rest and truly understand how exercise benefits you.

For example, let’s say you are happy that you have met your body mass index (BMI) as recommended by experts. SS Fitness explains what body composition is, how body mass index applies to it, and why body fat percentage is a better indicator of overall fitness and health. And so it has a “Desired Body Weight Calculator” to set a more realistic, healthier goal for you. You can use all the best health and fitness gadgets available, but what’s the point if you don’t know what really matters and what doesn’t?

Simple Science Fitness will take you a couple of hours to go through everything it has to offer, but it’s completely worth that time. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to improve your body in ways you never would have considered before.

5. Guides to Fitness (E-Books): What to Read On Your Body’s Journey


Once you have understood the human body, you want to put it to work in the right way. A good book can be just the place to start, guiding you to take the right steps to transform your body.

The Idle Man is one of those websites every man should know about, and its free e-book on fitness is a good beginning. This 26-week course is made for beginners or those who are starting from scratch, helping you to achieve all your fitness goals.

Much like Idle Man, Urban Women Fitness is a website every woman should know about, and it too has a wonderful e-book. You will find exercises that not only make your physique better, but also teach you how to train your mind and relax - two points that affect your fitness goals.

You should know that while one is a men’s site and the other is a women’s site, the advice offered in both e-books is largely applicable to either gender. The Idle Guide focuses more on workouts and nutrition, while Healthy Habits adds wholesome routines and happiness to round out your overall well-being. But more than anything, they both focus on the human body and how things affect it, which is the primary goal here.

It’s incredible how much misinformation is floating around about the human body, and hopefully, these links will help you find the scientific truths you’re looking for. For example, reading about nutrition helped me get over “the war on fats” and realize there are good fats and bad fats, and that eating carbohydrates affect weight gain more than eating fats.

Top image credit: skeeze/Pixabay.

[Source: Make Use Of. Edited. Top image added.]

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