In the News
Exercise Sparks New Life in Aging Adults
April 24, 2017
Rutgers Center for Exercise and Aging celebrates 15 years of bringing students and seniors together in a quest for better health
For Ruth Gottlieb, 82, and Jean Timper, 85, and members at the East Brunswick Senior Center, exercise is the high point of their day. What gets them most excited? Line dancing.
"I even dance around the house. When I'm vacuuming or cooking, I just stop and dance around and stretch. I like to be flexible," says Gottlieb, a former teacher who says her only regular exercise before retirement was running after students.
Rutgers Pioneers a New Model for Synchronous Learning
March 2, 2017
New classroom initiative could serve as a blueprint for course sharing among Big Ten schools
New technology at Rutgers is making it possible for a professor to be in two places at once while cutting down on the need for students to take a bus to class.
The university recently unveiled two new classrooms – one on the Cook/Douglass Campus and a second on the Busch Campus – outfitted with high-definition broadcast technology that divides lectures as large as 275 students into two locations.
Rutgers tests remote lecture halls
March 1, 2017
Scanning the nearly 150 students she could see from the front of her lecture halls, Rutgers University professor Sara Campbell waited for a hand.
Campbell was in a test prep session in her exercise physiology course, and when the answers started coming in she quickly called on one of the students in her classroom.
After writing that response on the chalkboard, Campbell turned her attention to a large video screen on the lecture hall's back wall and called on a student watching from a classroom on the other side of campus, nearly five miles away.
Rutgers Students Explore the Science and the Spirit of the Mediterranean Lifestyle
November 2016
An eye-opening and mouth-watering trip to Greece is becoming a staple
The Mediterranean diet it everywhere these days, from the cover of splashy health and fitness magazines to the website of CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
But a group of Rutgers students and faculty recently travelled to Greece to get beyond the headlines and fully explore the region's overall culture of healthy living, studying its specific physiological, social, and psychological elements.
Dr. Sara Campbell's Study is in the News
March 25, 2016
Can Your Workout Impact Your Gut Health? Yes—And Here's Why
By Lauren Mechling | Vogue
Fungi, protozoans, bacteria, nonliving viruses. It might not be pretty, but the human microbiome is a beautiful thing. The approximately 100 trillion bacteria that live in our gut (and, to a lesser degree, our mouths and skin) boost indispensable functions that support metabolism, immune systems, and mental health. Ever-mounting evidence of the powers of the microbiome — some call it “the forgotten organ” — has the health-conscious among us downing probiotic-packed yogurt drinks and investing in prebiotic supplements. Now, it might have us booking into a Spin class.
The link between physical activity and gut flora was noted two years ago, when researchers published a study comparing the national rugby team of Ireland and sedentary men, which found that the elite athletes had healthier guts. But the study did not control for dietary differences among its subjects, which left room for interpretation. The latest research, however, confirms what the rugby study suggested: We can alter our bacterial structure through exercise.
“That people who move more have a more diverse microbiome is something that we noticed at my lab several years ago, but we couldn’t prove causality,” says Rob Knight, Ph.D., director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at U.C. San Diego. “These studies are incredibly exciting.” One, published last week in the journal PLOS One, compared two sets of young mice: those that exercised and those that didn’t. Some of the rodents ate a high-fat diet, others, low fat. Over the course of 12 weeks, the rodents that ran on a wheel, regardless of diet type, experienced an increase in several helpful bacteria—some by as much as 40 percent. The study’s lead author, Sara Campbell, Ph.D., at the Department of Exercise Science and Sport Studies at Rutgers University, points out that she found exercise to be extremely effective at raising levels of butyrate, the bacteria that helps protect against colon cancer. “Exercise might also help you feel less bloated,” she says.
