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Tag: Exercise

  • Walking helps keep people free of lower back pain for longer

    Walking helps keep people free of lower back pain for longer

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    Being active has a range of health benefits

    Sergio Azenha/Alamy

    People who have recurring bouts of lower back pain seem to avoid the discomfort for longer if they go for regular walks.

    More than 600 million people worldwide experience pain in this part of the back, which often recurs after initially resolving. Despite this high prevalence, there is very little research into its prevention, says Tash Pocovi at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

    Wanting to find an affordable and relatively accessible way for people to avoid the pain returning, Pocovi and her colleagues designed “WalkBack”, the first controlled trial of its kind.

    The researchers selected 701 people, aged between 20 and 82 years old, who lived throughout Australia and had experienced an episode of lower back pain without a specific diagnosis, such as a fracture or infection, within the previous six months that then resolved.

    On average, they had each had 33 episodes of lower back pain, which interfered with their daily activities and lasted at least 24 hours. None of the participants regularly chose to go for recreational walks or engaged in any kind of exercise programme for pain management.

    The scientists asked 351 of them to develop an individualised walking programme with the help of a private physical therapist, aiming for a gradual build-up to 30 minutes of walking, five days a week, within six months. The programme varied according to each individual to help them stick to it, says Pocovi. By 12 weeks, the participants were walking an average of 130 minutes per week.

    They were also told about the latest scientific knowledge regarding lower back pain, which was meant to reassure them that it is safe to move under the supervision of their physical therapist, says Pocovi. “A lot of people become avoidant and fearful of movement when they have a history of back pain,” she says.

    The remaining 350 volunteers received no such education or walking programme recommendation. Pocovi and her team followed all the participants for up to three years. Regardless of which group they were in, they were free to seek any additional treatment for their pain.

    On average, those in the treatment group had their first recurrence of activity-limiting lower back pain 208 days after the study began, compared with 112 days in the control group.

    Furthermore, half the people in the control group sought other interventions, such as massages and chiropractic treatment, compared with only 36 per cent of those following the walking and education programme. However, the latter group was more likely to experience mild complications of exercise, such as sprains.

    “I think this is probably a handy tool that clinicians and even patients can go to their clinicians with,” says Pocovi.

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  • Walking with irregular strides may help you burn more calories

    Walking with irregular strides may help you burn more calories

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    Varying the length of your strides could have health benefits

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    Walking with variable strides uses up more energy than taking consistently sized steps, which suggests it may help to burn more calories.

    Adam Grimmitt and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recruited 18 adults, aged between 18 and 45, who were told to walk as normal for 5 minutes on a treadmill while a motion capture system recorded their average stride length.

    Based on this, the researchers manipulated their strides during another 5-minute walk by lighting up the treadmill at the positions where they wanted…

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  • Morning exercise may be optimal for improving bone health

    Morning exercise may be optimal for improving bone health

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    A mouse running on a wheel

    Morning exercise seemed to improve bone health in mice

    Douglas Sacha/GETTY

    Morning workouts might make for stronger and longer bones compared with nighttime exercise, according to a study in mice.

    Because bone mass starts declining in middle age, it is crucial to keep up with exercise, such as running, jumping and weightlifting, as we age – these movements put force on our bones and keep them strong, similar to how strength training builds muscle.

    Lili Chen at the Huazhong University…

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  • Extreme exercise may help you live longer without stressing your heart

    Extreme exercise may help you live longer without stressing your heart

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    Running is generally associated with good health outcomes

    Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

    It has been suggested that too much extreme exercise can be damaging to our health, but researchers have now found that people who can run a mile in less than 4 minutes generally live several years longer than would otherwise be expected.

    Regular exercise is important for heart health, but too much strenuous activity has been linked to harmful cardiac outcomes.

    “During really intensive or prolonged bouts of endurance exercise like running or cycling, some proteins are released that suggest injury may have happened to the heart,” says Stephen Foulkes at the University of Alberta in Canada.

    To learn more about the effects of exercise, Foulkes and his colleagues looked at the lifespans of the first 200 athletes who were recorded running a mile (1.6 kilometres) in less than 4 minutes.

    The athletes were all men born between 1928 and 1955. They included British neurologist and athlete Roger Bannister, the first person in the world to be recorded running a sub-4-minute mile, 70 years ago this week.

    Sixty of the runners had died by December 2023, with an average lifespan of 73. The surviving runners were 77 years old, on average.

    When accounting for where and when each athlete was born, the team calculated that the sub-4-minute milers outlived the general population by 4.7 years on average.

    Those who ran their first sub-4-minute mile in the 1950s specifically lived more than nine years longer than the general population, while those who achieved the feat in the 1960s and 1970s lived 5.5 and 3 years longer, respectively.

    That might be because the general population has become healthier over time, says team member Mark Haykowsky, also at the University of Alberta.

    The findings suggest that extreme exercise may not be as harmful as previously thought. “These athletes build such a high-capacity system in their hearts, lungs, blood vessels, muscles and immune systems that it may be that they can recover really well from the normal stresses of day-to-day life,” says Foulkes.

    But Thijs Eijsvogels at Radboud University in the Netherlands says that these results alone don’t really challenge the “extreme exercise hypothesis” – the idea that long-term, high-intensity exercise can have negative effects on the heart.

    “They tested whether super-fit individuals had a different mortality risk compared to the general population,” he says, but it could be that people with less extreme exercise regimens have different or even better outcomes.

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  • Want to move fast? Look for these materials in your next running shoes

    Want to move fast? Look for these materials in your next running shoes

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    The technology in your running shoes may affect your performance

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    Choosing shoes with specific sole materials could help you beat your personal running best.

    At the Tokyo Olympic games in 2021, most medals in the middle and long-distance track events were won by athletes wearing spiked running shoes with “advanced footwear technology”, Víctor Rodrigo-Carranza at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain and his colleagues wrote in a research paper.

    To learn more about the types of shoes that may be most beneficial, the team recruited 14 women and 16…

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  • Running around a ‘wall of death’ could keep moon settlers fit

    Running around a ‘wall of death’ could keep moon settlers fit

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    A research participant runs around a circular wall with a bungee cord to simulate the reduction in weight on the moon

    Alberto E. Minetti et al.

    Future moon settlers could exercise by running around the inside of a circular wall – and just a few laps a day could counteract some of the negative effects of low lunar gravity.

    The moon’s gravitational pull is about one-sixth as strong as that of Earth. This means lunar astronauts’ bodies support much less weight, and an extended stay would cause their muscles to atrophy and their bones to get less dense. Microgravity conditions also affect the way blood flows around the body, harming the cardiovascular system.

    Taking inspiration from the “wall of death” stunt performed by motorcycle riders, Gaspare Pavei at the University of Milan in Italy and his colleagues have come up with a novel way for lunar settlers to combat these ill effects.

    High-speed motorcycles can travel along a circular wall without slipping thanks to a combination of friction and centripetal force. People can’t run quickly enough to do that on Earth, says Pavei. “But we wanted to see if it was feasible for us to do it on the moon.”

    The team members hired an amusement park wall of death that was roughly 9.7 metres in diameter and 5 metres high. They separately attached two volunteers by a bungee cord to a pole high above the wall to support their weight, which made them functionally 83 per cent lighter – equivalent to their weight on the moon.

    Both runners were able to complete a few laps around the wall at speeds of around 6 metres per second.

    The force experienced by the volunteers while in contact with the wall was similar in magnitude to gravity on Earth. “What we recreated by running horizontally on the vertical wall is a sort of artificial gravity,” says Pavei.

    On the moon, that would be enough force to counter the main issues of low gravity, such as bone density loss and cardiovascular fitness, he says. “Running twice a day, for a few minutes at a time, should be enough.”

    The exercise could also be used to help astronauts prepare for their return to Earth, he says.

    “From the perspective of experimental design and scientific analysis, this study looks robust, important and relevant,” says Ilan Kelman at University College London. “Especially considering the limited space in any lunar settlement, this experiment is a helpful and needed contribution to understanding time and cost-efficient ways of keeping moon settlers healthy.”

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  • Researchers identify a ‘gene module’ involved in both depression and cardiovascular disease

    Researchers identify a ‘gene module’ involved in both depression and cardiovascular disease

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    Depression and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are serious concerns for public health. Approximately 280 million people worldwide have depression, while 620 million people have CVD. It has been known since the 1990s that the two diseases are somehow related. For example, people with depression run a greater risk of CVD, while effective early treatment for depression cuts the risk of subsequently developing CVD by half. Conversely, people with CVD tend to have depression as well. For these reasons, the American Heart Association (AHA) advises to monitor teenagers with depression for CVD.

    What wasn’t yet known is what causes this apparent relatedness between the two diseases. Part of the answer probably lies in lifestyle factors common in patients with depression and which increase the risk of CVD, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise, and a poor diet. But it’s also possible that both diseases might be related at a deeper level, through shared developmental pathways.

    Now, scientists have shown that depression and CVD do indeed share part of their developmental programs, having at least one functional ‘gene module’ in common. This result, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, provides new markers for depression and CVD, and could ultimately help to find drugs to target both diseases.

    “We looked at gene expression profile in the blood of people with depression and CVD and found 256 genes in a single gene module whose expression at levels higher or lower than average puts people at greater risk of both diseases,” said first author Dr Binisha H Mishra, a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland.

    The authors define a gene module as a group of genes with similar expression patterns across different conditions and hence likely to be functionally related.

    Young Finns study

    Mishra and colleagues studied gene expression data in the blood of 899 women and men between 34 and 49 years old who were participants in the Young Finns study, one of largest studies of cardiovascular risk factors from childhood to adulthood to date. The Young Finns study began in 1980 with a cohort of almost 4,000 children and adolescents, then between three and 18 years old, randomly selected from five cities in Finland. The health of these participants has been followed ever since.

    Finland has the highest estimated incidence of mental disorders in the EU, and is the ninth-highest ranking country in the world for the prevalence of depression. In contrast, the country has a relatively low prevalence of CVD, ranking in the bottom 20% worldwide for this class of diseases.

    In 2011, the researchers running the Young Finns study tested the participants for symptoms of depression with a tried-and-tested questionnaire: Beck’s depression inventory (BDI-II), whose score increases with more severe symptoms. They also tested them for the risk of developing CVD through AHA’s ‘ideal cardiovascular health’ score, on a scale from zero (highest risk) to seven (lowest risk). Mishra et al. further analyzed these data for the present study.

    It’s all in the blood

    In 2011, whole blood had also been taken from each participant, and Mishra and colleagues here analyzed these samples with state-of-the-art gene expression methods.

    They used advanced statistics to identify 22 distinct gene modules, of which just one was associated with both a high score for depressive symptoms and a low score for cardiovascular health.

    The top three genes from this gene module are known to be associated with neurodegenerative diseases, bipolar disorder, and depression. Now we have shown that they are associated with poor cardiovascular health as well.”


    Dr Binisha H Mishra, Postdoctoral Researcher, Tampere University in Finland

    These genes are involved in biological processes such as inflammation that are involved in pathogenesis of both depression and cardiovascular disease. This helps to explain why both diseases often occur together.

    Other genes in the shared module have been shown to be involved in brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease.

    “We can use the genes in this module as biomarkers for depression and cardiovascular disease. Ultimately, these biomarkers may facilitate the development of dual-purpose preventative strategies for both the diseases,” said Mishra.

    Source:

    Journal reference:

    Mishra, B. H., et al. (2024) Identification of gene networks jointly associated with depressive symptoms and cardiovascular health metrics using whole blood transcriptome in the Young Finns Study. Frontiers in Psychiatry. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1345159.

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  • Delving into burning issues about heart disease and much more

    Delving into burning issues about heart disease and much more

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    The hottest science in the prevention of heart disease awaits at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2024, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC), a branch of the ESC, takes place 25 to 27 April at the Megaron – Athens International Conference Centre, Greece. Explore the scientific programme.

    Don’t miss the late breaking science sessions for cutting-edge research in preventive cardiology, including unhealthy food and beverage trends in adolescents and the links between physical activity and smoking in children. Novel research will be presented in hundreds of scientific abstracts including data on stair climbing, insomnia, dairy products, and the potential connections between air pollution, mental health, and cardiovascular disease. Plus scientific sessions delving into burning issues about heart disease, sex, and much more…

    Patients often have insecurities after a heart event and we will discuss important questions such as when sexual activity can be resumed after a heart attack. We know that exercise helps prevent cardiovascular disease, so is sexual activity enough ‘exercise’?”

    Dr. Nicolle Kränkel, Congress Programme Committee Chair

    Hear experts examine the links between the heart and brain in a session exploring common pathways between depression and heart disease, and how patients with cardiac conditions can stop worrying.

    Dr. Kränkel said: “After a heart attack, patients are often scared and depressed. Depression and anxiety can also impact heart health. Additionally, awareness and cognition of one’s heart health play a large role in adhering to a healthy lifestyle. There is also crosstalk between the heart and other organs. That’s why this year’s congress theme is ‘Cardiovascular risk: The heart and beyond’ – exploring how we can harness these interactions to improve heart health and overall wellbeing.”

    Other important questions that you should attend to hear the answers to:

    Heart health and the young:

    • How do energy drinks affect the hearts of adolescents?
    • Is doping dangerous for the heart? Find out in a session dedicated to stimulants and their effects on the heart.
    • What is the impact of e-cigarettes on young hearts?

    Lifestyle issues:

    • Weight loss update: different approaches to weight loss are needed from childhood to old age – hear how one size does not fit all. And it’s not only about losing fat: learn about personalising exercise in obese patients.
    • What’s new in smoking cessation, including digital tools?
    • Can heart healthy diets be affordable? And the latest evidence on demographic and socio-economic disparities in nutrition. Check out nutrition for a better heart.

    And finally, could a vaccine prevent heart disease? Get up-to-the-minute scientific evidence on immunity and cardiovascular risk and what’s on the horizon.

    Source:

    European Society of Cardiology (ESC)

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  • Optimize postprandial glycemic control with tailored exercise prescriptions

    Optimize postprandial glycemic control with tailored exercise prescriptions

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    In a recent study published in Nutrients, researchers elucidate various exercise parameters, such as timing, type, intensity, and volume, influence post-meal glucose responses in healthy and diabetic individuals.

    Study: Exercise Prescription for Postprandial Glycemic Management. Image Credit: C_Production / Shutterstock.com

    Does exercise timing affect postprandial glucose responses? 

    Exercise improves blood flow in active muscles and microvascular recruitment, thereby increasing glucose uptake and reducing its levels in the blood. However, nutritional state at the time of exercise is a crucial factor in the fluctuation of blood glucose levels.

    Pre-meal exercise induces insulin sensitivity and fat oxidation by promoting glycogenolysis, which subsequently stabilizes blood glucose levels and prevents hypoglycemia. In the prandial state, glucose is primarily derived from exogenous sources.

    The timing of exercise after meals plays an important role in managing blood glucose levels after eating. Recent physical activity guidelines for people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) recommends exercising after meals to efficiently control postprandial glucose levels.

    The effect of exercise, especially when performed 12-16 hours before eating, is significantly less for acute blood glucose management. However, moderate-intensity aerobic or resistance exercise 20-45 minutes before a meal leads to significantly lower post-meal glucose levels. 

    Thus, the performance of exercise closer to any meal leads to optimal benefits in glucose management. As compared to pre-meal exercise, post-meal exercise has greater benefits in controlling blood glucose levels for both non-diabetic and diabetic individuals. Several factors, such as exercise intensity and volume, and nutrition status, are responsible for the differential effects of pre- and postprandial exercise.

    For healthy individuals, glucose levels peak 30-60 minutes after eating. However, glucose levels peak 60-120 minutes after a meal in people with T2D. Considering findings from multiple studies, postprandial exercise before glucose levels peak has been recommended at approximately 15 and 30 minutes in healthy individuals and people with diabetes, respectively.

    Which exercise type Is most effective in maintaining blood glucose levels?

    Both aerobic and resistance exercises, particularly in combination, play a significant role in the long-term management of glucose levels in people with T2D. In fact, any form of exercise is recommended to people with T2D to improve their glucose response after a meal. 

    Among the various forms of exercise, cycling at varied intensities significantly reduces post-meal glucose excursions. Furthermore, a 30-minute moderate-intensity walking, elliptical exercise, cycling, or jogging lowers post-meal glucose peak and three hours of postprandial glucose levels in non-diabetic/healthy people. Alternative exercises, such as stair climbing and descending, also have beneficial effects on glucose management in people with diabetes.

    Circuit and traditional resistance training significantly reduce postprandial blood glucose levels. After breakfast, 15-30 minutes of circuit resistance training significantly reduces blood glucose levels in both healthy and diabetic individuals.

    Alternative muscle training programs, such as neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), also decrease glycemic levels in both healthy individuals and those with T2D. For optimal benefits, 30 minutes of passive NMES followed by 30 seconds of work with 60 seconds of rest has been recommended. Voluntary muscle contractions in the lower limbs also reduce glucose peaks.

    Exercise duration and intensity for optimal postprandial glycemic levels

    Exercise volume, duration, and intensity must be suitably customized to accommodate an individual’s capacity. To date, no clear guidelines have been published on the optimal exercise volume to control post-meal glucose levels.

    Exercise intensity must be tailored in terms of exercise duration, health condition, personal capacities, and preferences. For example, some people prefer shorter durations of high-intensity exercise, whereas others enjoy a longer session of moderate-intensity exercise.

    The most recent guidelines for diabetic people are 45 minutes of exercise at any intensity to improve post-meal glucose management; however, there are many limitations to this recommendation. For example, high-intensity exercise could be challenging to perform shortly after a meal, which could increase gastrointestinal disturbances and hepatic glucose production. Therefore, a better exercise volume prescription is required to improve postprandial glucose responses.

    Several studies have shown that exercise duration of 10-120 minutes can positively affect post-meal glucose responses in both non-diabetic and healthy individuals. Exercise sessions of 30-60 minutes have been consistently associated with improvements in postprandial blood glucose levels.

    Likewise, 30-minute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise significantly improves postprandial glucose responses similar to that of a 45-minute session. A shorter duration of light-intensity exercise also has beneficial effects on blood glucose levels and glucose peaks, which is comparable to longer durations of exercise.

    Journal reference:

    • Bellini, A., Nicolò, A., Bazzucchi, I., & Sacchetti, M. (2024). Exercise Prescription for Postprandial Glycemic Management. Nutrients 16(8); 1170. doi:10.3390/nu16081170

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  • Excessive internet use plus lack of sleep, exercise linked to teen truancy and school absence

    Excessive internet use plus lack of sleep, exercise linked to teen truancy and school absence

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    Spending too much time online to the point of compulsion and the neglect of other necessary activities, plus not sleeping or exercising enough, are linked to a heightened risk of both truancy and school absence due to illness among teens, finds research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

    Teenage girls seem to be more vulnerable than teenage boys to excessive internet use, but getting the recommended quota of shut eye and exercise and having a trusting relationship with parents all seem to be protective, the findings indicate.

    Although differences in how excessive internet use is assessed and categorized can make it difficult to quantify, digital media may be a factor tempting teens to stay home from school, and may also hinder learning through lack of sleep, suggest the researchers.

    To try and gauge what impact excessive internet use might have on school attendance and what, if any, mitigating factors there might be, the researchers used data from the School Health Promotion study, a national biennial survey conducted in Finland and managed by the Institute for Health and Welfare.

    They focused on 86,270 year 8 and 9 pupils aged 14 to 16. The teens were specifically asked about their relationship with their parents in terms of how often they shared concerns with them (often to fairly rarely), as well as how long they slept every night, and how many days of the week they had been on the move for at least an hour.

    Excessive internet use was assessed using a validated (Excessive Internet Use; EIU) scale consisting of 5 components indicating compulsion; neglect of family, friends, and study; anxiety if not online; and failure to eat or sleep because of being online.

    Respondents were asked to estimate how often they experienced each of these, scoring them from 1 (‘never’) to 4 (‘very often’) to provide an overall average. 

    And they provided information on how many times during the most recent school year they had played truant and/or had been absent due to illness, ranging from ‘not at all’ through to ‘daily or almost daily’.

    The EIU scale average score was just under 2; and just over 2% (1881) of participants scored the maximum of 4. Girls spent more time online than boys: they were 96% more likely to fall into the excessive internet use category than boys (79%), possibly because they tend to use social media more than boys, suggest the researchers.

    On average, the teens slept 8 hours on school nights, and 9 hours on weekend nights. But more than  a third (35%) clocked up fewer than 8 hours on school nights, and 11% slept fewer than 8 hours at the weekend.

    Participants reported physical activity for at least an hour on 4 days of the preceding week and vigorous physical activity for 2-3 hours a week. But a third reported low levels of physical activity—fewer than 3 days a week. Boys were more likely than girls to report no, or daily, physical activity.

    Overall, 3-4% of respondents reported high rates of school absence. Boys reported more truancy than girls, who reported more medically explained absences than boys.

    Older age was associated with a greater likelihood of truancy. But spending an excessive amount of time online was associated with an increased risk of both truancy (38% heightened risk) and medically explained school absences (24% heightened risk). 

    Good parental relations, longer nightly weekday sleep, and physical activity all emerged as significantly protective, with more of each factor associated with a steadily decreasing risk of both truancy and school absences due to illness. 

    Being able to talk about concerns with parents was most strongly associated with the lowest risk of either type of school absence. Teens who often felt able to share troubling issues with their parents were 59% less likely to play truant and 39% less likely to be absent from school due to illness.

    This is an observational study, and as such, no firm conclusions can be drawn about causal factors, and the researchers acknowledge that the School Health Promotion study didn’t include information on the type of internet use teens engaged in.

    “Despite the limitations, our results have important implications for promotion of health and educational attainment,” suggest the researchers.

    “Our results are relevant for professionals organising and working in school health and wellbeing services, especially when professionals meet students whose school absences raise concern,” they add.

    Source:

    Journal reference:

    Kosola, S., et al. (2024). Associations of excessive internet use, sleep duration and physical activity with school absences: a cross-sectional, population-based study of adolescents in years 8 and 9. Archives of Disease in Childhood. doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2023-326331.

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