Humans are Meant to Move

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

the first 20 minutes
Gretchen Reynolds, the popular New York Times contributor recently released a book titled ‘The First 20 Minutes.‘ In her interview about the book she says that she chose the title so that readers would see that the benefits of exercise can be seen in as little as 20 minutes. Two thirds of American’s get no daily exercise. Something as simple as standing will show your body the benefits of being active.

American’s have a preconceived thought that exercise has be to hard and strenuous such as running a marathon or riding a bike for hours at time. Exercise is as simple as getting up and moving. People will see benefits from stretching, walking, standing, doing yard work, cleaning the house.

In her research Gretchen found that many American’s associated exercise with losing weight. We need to focus more on getting and staying fit so that we reduce the likely hood of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and ultimately premature death.

All we really need to do to see the benefits of exercise is walk, move and stand. Try not to walk into your house and plop down on the couch, try to stand up during conference calls, take the dog out in the back yard, stroll around the park with your kids. Exercise doesn’t have to hurt or be an activity you don’t enjoy.

Source: New York Times, Health and Fitness

Filed Under: Fitness Tagged With: , , ,

Avoid the Hazards of Summer with these 6 tips:

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Tip #1: Drink lots of water. It sounds like a lot but you need 64 ounces of water per day, plus 8 additional ounces per 30 minutes of exercise, especially of your are exercising in the heat. Keep a container water with you at all times and get into the habit of drinking water off and on all day.

Tip #2: Repel mosquitoes with vitamin B1. In 1943, Dr. Ray Shannon from St. Paul, Minnesota, reported on 10 dramatic cases of resistance to mosquitoes from taking vitamin B-1 orally. In one gentleman who was constantly ravaged by mosquitoes while trout fishing, the vitamin allowed him to return home without a single bite, while his fishing companions were covered with welts. It is recommend that you take 100 mg daily, in divided doses.

Tip #3: Ease the sting and itching of bug bites with toothpaste. Toothpaste does an amazing job reducing the discomfort of an insect bite. Just dab the irritated, the alkalinity of the baking soda in most brands of toothpaste relieves itching. The antibacterial components will prevent infection.

Tip #4: Wear sunglasses. Any sun glasses are better than nothing but studies show that yellow, amber, or orange sunglasses best protect your eyes from the summer sun. These colors do a better job of filtering out UV and blue wavelengths of light that can be harmful to your retina.

Tip #5: Limit your time outdoors on days when air quality is poor. It’s a good idea to avoid air pollution whenever you can, however, hot weather may make air pollution even more dangerous. The pairing of these two elements has the potential to increase risk of stroke by about 50 percent! Your best bet is to stay indoors on hot days when air quality is poor.

Tip #6: Cover Up. Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer. Most cases are due to over exposure to the sun. You should wear sun screen everyday, even if you’re not lying out by the pool or the beach. Hats, umbrellas and cover-ups are helpful in reducing the amount of sun you are exposed to as well.

Filed Under: Total Body Health Tagged With: , ,

Age Defining Berries

May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The beginning of spring makes us think of fresh fruits and vegetables. Succulent strawberries, tart kiwis, crisp lettuce. If you weren’t already excited about all of the freshness coming to your local farmer’s market this recent study posted by Dr. Julian Whitaker will get you pumped.

Berries can stop age-related memory decline, and even help reverse it, a new large-scale study shows just how powerful berries are for protecting the brain—especially as we age.

Researchers analyzed data from the well known Nurses’ Health Study, which included 121,700 women. Starting in 1980, they followed a group of 16,010 of those women ages 70 and older, monitoring their dietary habits every four years and assessing their cognitive function every two years.

What they found is that the women who ate blueberries and strawberries on a regular basis had a 2.5 year slower decline in cognitive function than those whose berry consumption was much lower.

The reason is that berries are nature’s richest sources of proanthocyanidins, powerful phytochemicals that protect against free radicals and oxidative damage. Free-radical damage is one of the predominant theories of aging, and that includes aging of the brain.

So, enjoy all of the delicious berries while they’re at their peak throughout the summer months, or buy them frozen for year-round use. Another option is a concentrated, nutrient-dense berry extract. Remember that convention (non-organic) fruits are covered in a layer of pesticides and do not yield the same nutritionally dense benefits as organic fruits.

Filed Under: Nutrition Tagged With: , , ,

Stroke Prevention Month

May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

May is Stroke Prevention Month. A stroke is defined by Wikipedia as the rapid loss of brain function due to a disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia (lack of blood flow) caused by a blockage or a hemorrhage (leakage of blood). As a result, the affected area of the brain cannot function, which might result in the inability to move limbs, speak or see from one side of the body.

Strokes are a medical emergency and can cause permanent neurological damage, complications and death. Strokes are the leading cause of adult disability in the United States.

Risk factors include old age, hypertension, previous strokes, diabetes, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking and atrial fibrillation. High blood pressure is the most important modifiable risk factor.

Nutrition is also a factor in stroke prevention. Including oranges and grapes daily seem to lower your risks. This news comes from reviewing 14 years of follow-up data gathered from 70,000 women participating in the U.S. Nurses’ Health Study, a landmark trial that has been on-going since 1976 and is still recruiting volunteers. The stroke findings were published online February 23 in the journal Stroke.

Flavones are a subclass of flavonoids, antioxidant compounds found naturally in fruits, vegetables, red wine, dark chocolate, coffee and tea. The researchers, from England’s Norwich Medical School, found that women whose diets included the most flavones had a 19 percent lower risk of stroke linked to blood clots than those whose diets were lowest in flavones. They reported that most of the flavones came from citrus fruits, and recommended that women choose whole fruits rather than juice to increase their flavones intake. A typical serving of citrus fruit contains 45 to 50 mg of flavones. The women with the highest intake consumed more than 470 mg per day. The researchers noted that the women whose diets included the most flavones also ate more fiber, took in less caffeine and alcohol, smoked less and exercised more than the women with the lowest flavones intake.

Dr. Weil suggests that eating an abundance of vegetables and fruit, particularly purple fruits and berries (and red wine if you drink alcohol), all of which contain protective compounds called proanthocyanidins. This study adds new and valuable information to what we already knew about effective dietary changes to maintain cardiovascular health. In addition, I recommend omega-3 fatty acids in the form of wild, cold-water fish or fish-oil supplements, freshly ground flaxseeds and walnuts to help reduce the inflammatory reactions that can raise the risk of stroke. Other measures to help cut stroke risk include getting plenty of garlic in your diet, since it can act as a blood thinner, and drinking green tea on a regular basis for its antioxidant effects. Be sure to get regular exercise and take measures to reduce stress in your life.

Filed Under: Total Body Health Tagged With: , , , ,

Biggest Loser: Realistic or Long Term Struggle

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The term metabolic adaptation is when a person loses a certain percentage of weight, their metabolisms slow by greater amounts. This process may be theoretically accelerated with more rapid weight loss as a consequence of the rapidly losing body metabolizing calorie burning muscle along with fat to make up for its massive energy deficit.

There’s probably no weight loss program (aside from surgery) more rapid than that of the television show The Biggest Loser, where it’s not uncommon for contestants to lose upwards of 150lbs at an averaged pace of nearly 10lbs a week.

Of course what’s different about the Biggest Loser as compared with most other non-televised rapid weight loss programs is the incredibly large amount of exercise involved, along with an almost certainly severe degree of stress, peer pressure and dietary restriction given the team and competitive nature of the show.

What does this say about how we as a nation are inspiring each other to live a healthy life? Are we expected to exercises for 5 or more hours a day, eat a constricted diet? Is this manageable in day to day life?

The answer appears to be, “No”.

In an article published yesterday ahead of print, Darcy Johannsen and friends studied the impact 7 months of Biggest Loser weight loss had on the resting and total energy expenditures of 16 participants. They used all the latest gadgets to do so including indirect calorimetry and doubly labeled water. So what happened? By week 6 participants had lost 13% of their body weight and by week 30, 39%. More importantly by week 6 participants metabolisms had slowed by 244 more calories per day than would have been expected simply as a function of their weight loss and by week 30, by 504 more.

That’s basically a meal’s worth of calories a day that Biggest Loser contestants no longer burn as a direct consequence of their involvement. How do you think you’d do at maintaining your weight if you ate an extra meal a day?

But maybe that’s typical. After all, metabolic adaptations are a known consequence to weight loss – couldn’t that be all we’re seeing here? I guess it’s too bad there’s no control group the study could have used for comparison.

Actually there kind of is. Bariatric surgery patients lose massive amounts of weight in a hurry as well, and they generally do so without the inane extremes of lifestyle endorsed by the Biggest Loser. If there were a study on the impact bariatric surgery losses had on resting and total energy expenditure, that would certainly offer some insight as to the healthfulness of Biggest Loser’s weight loss program.

Good news! There is such a study. Published in 2003 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition researchers looked at the impact bariatric surgical losses had on the resting and total energy expenditures of 30 men and women whose pre-operative average BMIs of 50 were within 1 point of the Biggest Loser contestants’ averages of 49, and who lost a Biggest Loser style average of 117.5lbs. And guess what? While resting energy expenditure indeed was shown to slow, it didn’t slow down in excess of what would be expected by weight loss alone. In other words? Looking at these two studies, Biggest Loser style weight loss destroys metabolisms dramatically more than does bariatric surgery and does so in huge excess of what would be expected simply as a consequence of losing weight (though I suppose to be fair, the study on the surgical patients was done at 14 +/- 2 months, while the Biggest Losers’ was at 7 – perhaps the Losers’ metabolisms will improve with time)

That’s a rather ironic finding given that one of the Biggest Loser study’s authors, Biggest Loser’s TV doctor Dr. Robert Huizenga, regularly trash talks bariatric surgery on the show as a terrifically unhealthy way to lose weight. Metabolically speaking, it would seem to me that his own study would suggest bariatric surgical weight loss is far healthier to a body’s metabolism than is Biggest Loser style loss.

The study concludes,

“Unfortunately, fat free mass preservation did not prevent the slowing of metabolic rate during active weight loss, which may predispose to weight regain unless the participants maintain high levels of physical activity or significant caloric restriction”

Gee, ya think? “May”?

Here’s my though. While some contestants of the Biggest Loser will translate their new lifestyles into careers as product spokespeople or fitness trainers and have new external motivators to maintain their extreme behaviors, those who don’t are doomed as their lifestyle is unmanageable.

Case in point? That picture up above, that’s Eric Chopin. He was the winner of the third season of the Biggest Loser. He lost just over 200lbs. A few years later he was on Oprah to talk about his massive regain. The Biggest Loser provided him with a nonsensical approach to weight management, and in the process, stacked his deck entirely against him.


Source: Weighty Matters
Darcy L. Johannsen, Nicolas D. Knuth, Robert Huizenga, Jennifer C. Rood, Eric Ravussin, & Kevin D. Hall (2012). Metabolic Slowing with Massive Weight Loss despite Preservation of Fat-Free Mass The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism : 10.1210/jc.2012-1444

Das SK, Roberts SB, McCrory MA, Hsu LK, Shikora SA, Kehayias JJ, Dallal GE, & Saltzman E (2003). Long-term changes in energy expenditure and body composition after massive weight loss induced by gastric bypass surgery. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 78 (1), 22-30 PMID: 12816767

Filed Under: Fitness Tagged With: , ,

Stand Up for Fitness

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We all know by now that being inactive is unhealthy. But far too many of us think that being inactive is something that happens to other people.

Studies of daily movement patterns, though, show that your typical modern exerciser, even someone who runs, subsequently sits for hours afterward, often moving less over all than on days when he or she does not work out.

Exercise only slightly lessened the health risks of sitting. People in the Australian study who exercised for seven hours or more a week but spent at least seven hours a day in front of the television were more likely to die prematurely than the small group who worked out seven hours a week and watched less than an hour of TV a day.

In the study researchers determined that watching an hour of television can snip 22 minutes from someone’s life. If an average man watched no TV in his adult life, the authors concluded, his life span might be 1.8 years longer, and a TV-less woman might live for a year and half longer than otherwise.
Consider working while standing up. Take phone calls standing up, prepare for your next presentation standing up. In an inspiring study being published next month in Diabetes Care, scientists at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, had 19 adults sit completely still for seven hours or, on a separate day, rise every 20 minutes and walk leisurely on a treadmill (handily situated next to their chairs) for two minutes. On another day, they had the volunteers jog gently during their two-minute breaks.

When the volunteers remained stationary for the full seven hours, their blood sugar spiked and insulin levels were out of whack. But when they broke up the hours with movement, even that short two-minute stroll, their blood sugar levels remained stable. Interestingly, the jogging didn’t improve blood sugar regulation any more than standing and walking did. What was important, the scientists concluded, was simply breaking up the long, interminable hours of sitting

So every 20 minutes or so, get up. You don’t need a treadmill in your office to stay healthy.
I do encourage your to go for a run, grunt through push-ups, strengthen your core. Build a well-rounded foundation by incorporating balance and stability into your daily breaks. Stand on one leg while brushing your teeth, time yourself, and see how long you can stand on one leg.
Keep your insulin levels in check and your fat-fighting enzymes robust.

Source: NY Times- Health. The “Phys Ed” columnist for The New York Times and the author of a new book on science and exercise, “The First 20 Minutes.”

Filed Under: Fitness Tagged With: ,