Olympic weightlifting champion Milen Dobrev has died at the age of 35, the Bulgarian interior ministry announced on March 21.
The cause of death is still not clear.
Milen Dobrev won the Olympic title in the 94kg category at the 2004 Games in Athens. He also won gold at the 2003 world championship in Vancouver as well as two European titles.
That same year, he won the European Championship in Kiev.
A Bulgarian interior ministry spokesperson said: “Dobrev’s body was found at his home. There are no signs of violence and the cause of death is still not clear.”
Milen Dobrev retired before the 2008 Games in Beijing after failing to recover from a series of injuries.
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North Korean weightlifter Om Yun Chol has set a clean and jerk world record after lifting 170 kg in the men’s 56-kg class at this year’s Asian Games.
Om Yun Chol, the 2012 Olympic champion and 2013 world champion, beat his own world record on September 20 by 1kg to win North Korea’s first gold medal at the games, a regional version of the Olympics.
North Korean weightlifter Om Yun Chol has set a clean and jerk world record after lifting 170 kg in the men’s 56-kg class at this year’s Asian Games (photo Reuters)
He also had a combined total of 298 kg to mark an Asian Games record after lifting 128 kg in the snatch.
North Korea has 150 athletes competing in 14 sports at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
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According to a new study, women who lift weights in the gym cut their risk of developing diabetes.
The study tracked the health of nearly 100,000 US nurses over a period of eight years.
Lifting weights, doing press-ups or similar resistance exercises to give the muscles a workout was linked with a lower risk of diabetes, the work in PLoS Medicine shows.
Adults are already advised to do such exercise at least twice a week.
The benefit seen in the study was on top of any gained from doing aerobic workouts that exercise the heart and lungs – something which adults are meant to do for at least 150 minutes a week.
Women who lift weights in the gym cut their risk of developing diabetes
Women who engaged in at least 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity and at least an hour a week of muscle-strengthening activities had the most substantial risk reduction compared with inactive women. They cut their odds of developing type 2 diabetes by a third.
Experts already know that regular aerobic exercise, such as jogging, brisk walking or swimming, can help stave off type 2 diabetes.
The Harvard Medical School researchers point out that their work is not perfect – it looked at only nurses who were mostly Caucasian and relied on the study participants reporting how much exercise they did rather than directly measuring it.
But they say their findings chime with similar results they already have for men.
They believe the explanation may be partly down to maintaining a greater muscle mass to act as a buffer against diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes develops when the insulin-producing cells in the body are unable to produce enough insulin, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly.
Insulin enables the body to use sugar as energy and store any excess in the liver and muscle.
Our genes and lifestyles influence our chances of developing type 2 diabetes. Carrying excess weight increases a person’s risk.
