Apr 04
0

Improving Posture While Working On Your Computer

By | Health, nutrition, wellness

A large portion of the work force sits at a computer all day with their backs hunched, their shoulders caved in, and their head telescoping forward (the unhealthy C-curve). This problem occurs when we don’t have a strategy for stabilizing the body in a neutral position (an S-curve, which is the proper and normal anatomical position for the spine). If not mindfully stabilized, the spine will default into poor posture habits. Your body can remodel itself into a better posture and if you work on it daily, good posture will be more automatic.

One of the first things to do in order to improve sitting posture while at your work desk is to put the pelvis in a neutral position. I like sitting on the edge of a chair or stool. The idea is to lean against the edge, not to sit directly on the top of the stool. My favorite type of stool is one with a semi-round base. Notice in the picture below that I’m sitting with the stool tilted forward. This forward-tilting position automatically puts my pelvis into a more neutral position, which is foundational for keeping the proper S-curve.

I also like the prospect of a varying height, standing work desk, which moves up and down. With this option, you can vary your position often, rather than staying in a stagnant position. The stool pictured can vary its height from low to high, while still tilting forward.

Another important positional consideration is the monitor. Notice in the picture that my eyes are looking straight forward. I don’t have to flex my neck downwards in order to see the monitor. This, again, puts my neck in a neutral position.

Importantly, whether sitting or standing, remember to slightly squeeze your glutes just enough to feel them. Also, slightly stiffen your trunk by tightening your abs, almost like shrink wrap. This will help to keep you in your new anatomically correct postural position.

Mar 16
0

Tight hip flexors…or WEAK hip flexors?

By | Health, nutrition, wellness

Much more than we used to, our society now spends much more time sitting…sitting at work, sitting while driving, sitting while eating, sitting while watching TV or using the computer. Many people default to doing stretches for the front of the hip in order to get rid of their tight hip flexors, when really, many times, this tightness is because the hip flexors are weak. If you have tried stretching and foam rolling your hips without noticing much of a difference, then these exercises could surprise you by how effective they are.


The first thing you want to do is to test your hip flexor strength. DO THIS ON BOTH SIDES. Stand tall, and pull one of your knees as far as you can to your chest with both hands, then slowly let go of your knee with both hands and try and hold this position for 10 seconds. Does your knee stay in the same exact spot after you let go? Or does it drop down a few inches? Or does it slowly get lower over the 10 seconds? If your knee dropped down at all, this could indicate weakness in your hip flexors.

Not all tight muscles need to be stretched. Quite often, a muscle is tight because it is protecting you against injury because it is weaker than it should be. Try these exercises consistently for a month and see if you notice a difference in how tight your hip flexors feel.

Standing Marches:
Grab a small loop band and place it around both feet. Stand tall and keep your core engaged. Raise one leg up, like you are marching, without letting your torso move, then lower back down. Repeat on the other leg, alternating sides. Try 2-3 sets of 10 reps on each leg.

Marches in a Bridge:
You can do a similar exercise lying down. Place the band around your feet and place your feet up on a box or bench. Raise your hips off the ground so you are in a glute bridge, then slowly bring one knee towards your chest and back. Alternate legs. Do not leg your hips drop down towards the ground or let your back arch. Try 2-3 sets of 10 reps on each leg.

Isometric Hip Flexor Marches:
If the marches in a bridge were a little tough, try this isometric exercise for your hip flexors. Lie on the ground with the band around your feet. Lift legs off the ground into a 90 degree angle (90/90 position). While keeping one leg still, kick the other leg out straight, and then slowly come back to starting position. Alternate legs. Try 2-3 sets of 10 reps on each leg.

Single Leg Glute Bridges:
Similar to regular glute bridges, but with one leg. Try grabbing one knee and pulling to towards your chest with your hands to keep your back flat, then with the bent leg, push through your foot and lift your hips off the ground as high as you can go without arching your back. Make sure to keep hips level. Try 3 sets of 10 reps on each side. These are also great exercise to do as a warm-up before you exercise.

Apr 26
0

Why Are So Many People Going Gluten-Free?

By | Health, nutrition, wellness

Of all the grains, why is wheat always picked on?  Because wheat is our dominant source of gluten protein. Most people don’t eat a lot of rye, barley, spelt, bulgar, or kamut. Wheat accounts for 20% of all calories consumed in our diets. Wheat is everywhere in our diet, often being hidden.

Glutens are the storage proteins of the wheat plant for the germination to form new wheat plants. Gluten is what makes wheat “doughy” (think of someone tossing a pizza, with it stretching more and more with each toss). Gluten is what makes dough stretchable, rollable, spreadable, and twistable. You can’t do this with rice, corn, or any other grain flour.

The problem is, the wheat we consume today is not the same grain our ancestors ground into their daily bread 100 years ago. Agricultural scientists originally dramatically modified wheat using hybridization and cross-breeding techniques in order to decrease the production costs, expand the large-scale production, and increase the yield per acre of wheat (which has required drastic changes in genetic code). Over the past 50 years, over 25,000 new different varieties of wheat strains have been consumed by humans without any safety testing. With hybridization, variation in gluten structure has made its way to humans without the consideration of these safety concerns (wheat gluten proteins undergo a considerable structural change when they’re hybridized or genetically modified). Changes in gluten proteins are not evident by sight, smell, or taste. For many, however, they are evident in their gut.

Gluten has the unique ability to disrupt the tight junctions of the intestine, making our intestine permeable (intestines aren’t meant to be freely permeable). Normally when you eat, nutrition has to be absorbed in the gut, while the rest is discarded (yes, poop and pee). This “leaky gut” syndrome can cause all kinds of symptoms, such as autoimmunity, inflammation, diarrhea, IBS, cramping, abdominal pain, loose stools alternating with constipation, and acid reflux. Eliminate wheat and IBS, acid reflux, and other disorders improve.

Wheat also yields morphine-like compounds that bind to the brain’s opiate receptors, causing a mild euphoria. Get rid of the wheat and you’ll eat fewer calories because you’ll no longer encourage the repetitive consumption of carbs that generate that addictive good feeling (similar to the feeling alcohol gives).

Aside from some fiber, eating 2 slices of whole wheat bread is worse than drinking a soda. First, the scientific technicalities: wheat is 75% amylopectin A and 25% amylose. Both are broken down into glucose and more rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream than nearly any other carbohydrate food! Increased glucose (the “sugar high”) is accompanied by increased insulin, which causes the “sugar low” about 2 hours after consuming a high carb or wheat meal. This sugar low is responsible for your mental fog, fatigue, irritability, and quick increase in hunger after your last meal. Over long periods of time, high blood sugars and insulin cause more fat accumulation, especially in the abdomen. The big belly results from years of consuming foods that trigger insulin, the hormone of fat storage.

Wheat is an appetite stimulant, making you want more cookies, cupcakes, pizza, pretzels, etc. Removing wheat from your diet cuts the biggest problem source of carbs in our modern-day diets and the weight loss can be shocking. Cutting soda and ice cream is obvious for weight loss…it’s the wheat that is counterintuitive. Who knew that wheat was so sneaky?

Personally, I gave up wheat (maybe 98% of it) a few years ago and it’s made a real difference for me. This is the first in a series of articles that, hopefully, you’ll find informative and interesting, allowing you to make better decisions about eating wheat and what it does to your body. The next article will be more specific to diabetes and how wheat affects blood sugar, diabetes, and insulin.

Jan 12
0

Are We Better Off Because of This Outrageous Spending On Health Care?

By | Health, nutrition, wellness

Our politicians are in full force, debating health care…who should be covered and who should pay the bill (private insurance, Medicare-for-all, or a hybrid)?  This is a hot topic because health care is expensive. The costs continue to rise and many people don’t have health insurance. But with all the focus on how expensive health care is and who is going to pay for it, no one is talking about the core problem: AMERICANS ARE SICK.

Americans have access to the best doctors and hospitals, the newest drugs, and the most cutting-edge technology available in the world. Still, our nation is the 35th healthiest in the world. As the richest and most powerful country in the world, this ranking is a disgrace.

Cuba placed five spots above the U.S., making it the only nation not classified on the list as “high income” by the World Bank. According to the American Bar Association Health Law, one reason for the island nation’s success may be its emphasis on preventative care over the health care model in the U.S., which focuses on diagnosing and treating illness instead.

Health care costs will continue to rise. We’re also in a new period where, for the first time in history, there are more people over 65 years of age than under 5 years of age. That means that ther are more elderly people and, in America, an aging population equates to more chronic disease, more doctor and hospital visits, more medication use, and more disability. About 50% of the U.S. adult population has either pre-diabetes or diabetes. Half of all Americans have cardiovascular disease. Three out of four adults in America are either overweight or obese. This means more Americans are sick than healthy.

Here’s a statistic for you: The total economic cost of obesity is estimated to be $1.72 Trillion per year. Rather than politicians arguing about who should pay for this health care disaster, the obvious (though ignored) question is: WHY ARE WE SO SICK?

A major part of this answer is right in-front of us: what we are eating and other lifestyle choices! Active lifestyles and exercise are very important, but the most important daily decision has to do with what foods we’re going to eat. If we can get better at making healthier decisions (ie: not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight BMI, minimum 30 minutes of daily activity, limiting alcohol, eating well), this whole conundrum regarding health insurance coverage and who’s going to pay for health care won’t go away, but it will get a lot less messy (healthier people need less health care).

Following are some interesting statistics:

1950 – U.S. spent $12.7 billion on health care (4.4% of GDP)

2015 – U.S. spent $3.2 trillion on healch care (17.8% of GDP)

2025 – health care cost estimated to be 20% of GDP

1970 – U.S. ranked 15th in healthy nations

2015 – U.S. ranked 33rd  in healthy nations

2019 – U.S. ranked 35th in healthy nations

1983 – $17 billion spent on prescription drugs in the U.S.

2000 – $76 billion spent on prescription drugs in the U.S.

2015 – $425 billion spent on prescription drugs in the U.S.

Sep 01
2

An Elimination Diet Will Change Your Eating Habits

By | General Health Topics, Nutrition

Last September my wife and I did this elimination diet called the Whole 30. It cuts out certain food groups, reintroducing them one-at-a-time in order to identify foods that are inflammatory and don’t agree with you specifically (everyone’s different).

What you DO EAT: Moderate portions of meat, seafood, and eggs; lots of vegetables; some fruit; plenty of natural fats; herbs, spices, and seasonings; tree nuts (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pistachios, walnuts).

What you DO NOT EAT for 30 days: No beans (black, red, pinto, navy, white, kidney, lima, fava, etc.), chickpeas, lentils or peanuts (peanut butter too). No soy (MSG, soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, edamame, lecithin, soy milk). No added sugar or sweeteners, real or artificial. No alcohol…sorry. No grains (wheat, corn, quinoa, rice, buckwheat, oats, rye, barley, etc. No dairy (any type of cheese, yogurt, cream cheese, milk, cream in your coffee, ice cream, butter, kefir). No baked foods or junk foods (muffins, cookies, crackers, cakes, pies).

Since today is September 1st, I am, once again, doing a Whole 30. Mind you, I am not doing this to lose weight. While that may be the goal for most people that do this diet, I am doing it to change my relationship with food. Even though I was not trying to lose weight the first time I did the diet last year, I did end up losing 20 lbs. in 3 weeks. This year I want to see if I can lose no weight, but just really clean up my eating. Since doing the diet last year, I noticed some less than healthy habits creeping back in, so I figured it’s time for a re-set.

This diet takes some mental work and physical preparation. It’s kind-of hard because you’re shifting out of your automatic patterns (binging and eating without thinking about what you’re putting into your body), but I think people make it out to be way harder than it is. I like it because it’s a self-experiment that you’re doing for the betterment of your health. I’ve learned that what you eat is way more important than I ever gave credence to. I did ok with my eating, but allowed way too many infringements.

What ended up sticking for me after last year’s Whole 30 is that I almost completely eliminated wheat (all bread, muffins, crackers, beer, wheat pasta, sandwiches, pizza). I say almost because one or two times I’ve had a cheat desert, like pie with a crust. Everything else wheat is totally gone from my diet. I did re-introduce other grains back into my diet successfully, such as rice, oats, and quinoa. Although I did also re-introduce corn, I’ve cut back on it. I eliminated red wine, which, surprisingly, ended up being really toxic for me. After eliminating it for 30 days and then re-introducing red wine, it turned out to be really noxious to my system. I eliminated almost all dairy. I say almost because the only thing I allow is very occasional ice cream when we’re out as a family to get it. Otherwise, all cheese, cream cheese and yogurt is gone. I use cashew milk in my coffee and eat a special type of unsweetened almond milk Greek yogurt made by Kite Hill. Another thing that ended up being toxic for my system was black beans. While I re-introduced other types of beans, black beans ended up being particularly irritating to my gastric system. Another habit that I changed after the diet was that I don’t drink any alcohol during weekdays anymore, only on Friday or Saturday if I want a drink.

2 other things that I noticed while on the Whole 30 were that (1) my gastric system did way better and (2) my adult acne, which I’ve had for 40 years, totally cleared up like I’ve never seen before. It came back a little when I re-introduced foods, but nothing like before.

That’s the beauty of an elimination diet…you can wipe your system clean and then see what works and what doesn’t work for you. It’s completely specific to you and, I think, very revealing. If you feel like you’re on automatic pilot with your eating habits, it’s worth a try. But commit to all 30 days and see what your body tells you after.

Mar 02
0

Throughout Your Day, Add This One Habit For Vast Health Improvements

By | Exercise, General Health Topics

Data shows that, as a whole, exercise is something that our species struggles with. For most of us, it’s an additional demand that is added to our already overwhelming day. Data is showing that the majority of us would rather engage in sedentary leisure than an additional demand on our time. Exercise happens to be one of the easiest things to not prioritize in our schedules.

With close to 90% of the modern workforce engaged in sedentary and seated jobs (along with advancements in technology), we have had an astounding reduction of minor, simple movements that, in the past, would happen automatically throughout each day. The problem is that we’re not thinking about how we’re going to replace this lost activity. This lack of movement is directly associated with our dismal health statistics. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s …the statistics keep going up, not down.

Nowadays, a lot is talked about with a daily goal of 10,000 steps per day, but 15,000 is closer to what our prehistoric ancestors accomplished. For hundreds of thousands of years, what was considered a “normal level” of movement was significantly higher than our level today. It’s common knowledge that, as a species, we are becoming more sedentary. As long as people have to give up what little leisure time they have in order to exercise (which requires substantial motivation and effort), it’s unlikely that the 1/5th of the population that does exercise will increase in number.

The concept of exercise gets re-defined as “physical activity” when we integrate it into our daily lives, rather than, for example, taking an hour each morning to go to the gym. Data shows that as long as exercise and physical activity are dissociated from our daily work activities, many of us will continue to find reasons not to do it.

The difference in concept is to put many short, low-level activity expenditures throughout your daily routine, rather than to block off an hour of time for exercise.

What most people don’t understand is that even if you do exercise vigorously every day, but then go to work and sit for most of the day, your health risks are just as high as that of a couch potato. Many people have started using a standing work desk as a solution, but that’s only slightly better than sitting at a computer if you simply stand in one place for hours.

 

SOME SOLUTIONS INCLUDE:

  •      A treadmill work desk, where people walk very slowly on a treadmill while doing their work
  •      A Fitbit, Apple watch, etc that buzzes throughout your day to remind you to move
  •      A free phone app called “Move,” which buzzes every 45 minutes, assigning a random exercise
  •      Writing down different exercises that you can implement at short, 1-minute breaks during your day (ie: wall sits, push-ups, body-weight squats, side lunges, side abduction leg raises, planks, burpees, walking stairs, Hindu push-ups, chair poses)

So if you already exercise, keep it up. But whether you exercise or not, get down on the floor during a TV commercial or while on a break at work and do a plank!

 

SOME EXAMPLES OF EXERCISES YOU CAN PERFORM THROUGHOUT YOUR DAY:

Image result for exercise at work
Feb 04
1

Brown Fat is not Just For Babies!

By | Exercise, General Health Topics

One of the reasons babies are so cute is because they’re plump. That’s because they have a generous supply of brown fat to keep them warm. But…once they’re adults, most of their brown fat has been lost.

Last week I read a small excerpt in Men’s Health magazine that referred to the usefulness of brown fat.  It had to do with how people exposed to colder temperatures develop more brown fat. So last week at 5 AM, on a 20-degree morning, I ran with only 2 layers rather than the 4 layers that I usually use…all in the name of brown fat!

I’ve also noticed that, at 55 years old, I can no longer eat whatever I want without gaining weight in my stomach. A frequent complaint amongst middle aged people is that we have to work-out twice as hard and painfully restrict our diets, just to get a fraction of the results as younger people. One reason is that brown fat naturally decreases with age…unless you do something about it.

Brown fat is packed with little metabolic-engines called mitochondria (that’s why it’s brown). Compared to white fat, brown fat is able to burn faster to give us energy. Just like we have ‘good’ cholesterol (HDL) and ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL), consider brown fat as ‘good’ fat and white fat as ‘bad’ fat. Researchers have been surprised to find that brown fat and white fat have completely different origins. Brown fat is derived from muscle.

Conversely, white fat IS NOT derived from muscle, it is a way for the body to store excess calories that have not been used for energy; it’s the fat that we’re all familiar with. White fat STORES calories in large deposits around your body (remember, brown fat BURNS calories). White fat, especially in the midsection, puts you at a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol/triglyceride issues (metabolic syndrome).

Everyone has fat that constitutes part of their body make-up and each of us has a different amount that we’re born with. But under the right circumstances, white fat can turn to brown fat; that’s called the ‘recruitable’ type of brown fat.

Turns out that exposing your body to cold temperatures can help with this recruitment process. Research suggests that a couple of hours of exposure to cold temperatures can turn the recruitable fat to brown. Ice baths, cool to cold showers, and drinking cold ice water first thing in the morning are a few ways to promote this process, but the two ways that I like best are to sleep with your thermostat turned down (68 degrees or lower) and exercising out in the cold without too many layers. Interestingly, intermittent fasting is also a mechanism to develop more brown fat (ie: only eating food between the hours of 10 AM to 6 PM), but that’s to be discussed in another article.

Just the act of exercise itself, no matter the temperature, can promote the transformation of white fat to brown. It’s in the research stages, but it looks like it happens through a hormone called irisin. People who are inactive have been found to produce a lot less irisin than people who exercise often. Irisin is especially increased with intense aerobic interval training (think of sprinting for 100 yards rather than a slow, steady jog).

Irisin is called the ‘exercise hormone’ because it’s released during moderate to high-intensity aerobic activity. Think of when you’re breathing really hard and you can feel intense muscle exertion. Irisin is an anti-obesity and anti-diabetes hormone that regulates fat tissue and blood sugar. Irisin works in a few ways to fight fat: 1) It activates a protein that turns white fat to brown fat, which helps to continue to burn energy after you finish exercising 2) It inhibits the formation of white fat in the first place 3) It improves blood sugar regulation

Just sayin’… one more reason to get exercising and avoid sedentary lifestyles.

Jan 13
2

For Losing Weight, What’s More Important, Diet or Exercise?

By | Exercise, General Health Topics, Nutrition

tortoiseandhare

Last September, my wife and I did an elimination diet (the Whole 30); I was astonished by the results. I was not doing it to lose weight, although I did. Instead, I was doing it to re-set how and what I ate and to eliminate cravings. It worked beautifully and it changed how I eat to this day. I am in my mid-50’s and have been starkly reminded that the amount of time it takes to exercise off a piece of cake or a morning muffin is disproportionately long to how long it takes to eat them.

As far as losing weight, diet is much more important than exercise. Exercise is critical for maintaining lean muscle mass and quality of life, but regarding weight loss, it’s not nearly as important as what you eat or drink. In other words, for weight loss, eliminating poor dietary choices is much more important than how much you exercise. Think of the equation CICO (calories in, calories out). 100% of ‘calories in’ come from what you eat and drink, whereas only a small portion (10-30%) of ‘calories out’ are lost through exercise.

There are 3 main sources of‘ ‘calories out’ :

  • BMR – Basal metabolic rate is the energy used to keep your body operating (ie: heart and brain function, breathing). It consumes 60-80% of calories that you take in.
  • Thermogenesis – The breaking down of foods. It consumes 10% of calories that you take in.
  • Physical activity – Exercise, going upstairs, walking, gardening, etc. It consumes 10-30% of calories that you take in.

The average person only loses, specifically from exercise, 5-15% of the calories that they take in (from what they eat and drink). Even if you’re a hardcore exerciser, you are only burning 30% of the caloric intake that you derive from foods. In addition, exercising will increase appetite. If you choose a burger, shake, and fries, it will kill that hour or two that you just spent in the gym.

For the average person, let’s say that 300-400 calories are burned with an hour at the gym. That can easily be undone by eating a few cookies, a Starbucks latte, or a scoop of ice cream. Even a high-intensity workout that burns 800-1,200 calories could be canceled out with 2 mixed drinks or 3 slices of pizza. With this scenario, it would be better to just eat less and not exercise. This all rings true in the common sayings “abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym” and “you can’t out-exercise your mouth.”

I should also clarify that some people may have weight gain issues from organic pathologies, such as thyroid or hormonal disorders. In such cases, blood-work is valuable. However, as a general rule, CICO is worthwhile to keep forefront in your mind.

If you’re someone who diets in the spring because you want to fit into your bathing suit in the summer, remember the story of the tortoise and the hare. People who slowly lose weight end up keeping it off in the long run. It really is something that you have to work on daily and constantly, not just for a season. Losing weight and maintaining ideal weight level involves lifestyle modifications and making better choices every time you eat or drink something. The big thing is to make sure that the calories that you do consume are nutrient dense (whole, clean, healthy foods loaded with nutrition) rather than empty calories (a lot of calories with little beneficial nutrition). For me, choices, like drinking water over juice at lunch-time, doing away with my daily bagel for breakfast, or forgoing the weekend growler of stout beer, are examples of small modifications that, over time, have helped reduce visceral fat in my abdomen.

May 27
0

Why Should You Lift Heavy Weights In Middle-Age?

By | Exercise, General Health Topics, Health, nutrition, wellness

I had a 40-year-old friend recently ask me, “why do I still need to lift weights?”  He’s more interested in stretching and running. Running and stretching are great, but adding in 2-3 days per week of strength training would be an important and beneficial addition, particularly at his age.

We are metabolically and hormonally designed to be anabolic (building our bodies) until about our mid 20’s. Muscles grow larger and stronger. But at some point in our 30’s, we start to lose muscle mass and function, and our bodies become more catabolic (breaking down). The cause is age-related sarcopenia (muscle loss), hormonal shifts, and weight gain.

Even if you continue to be active, you’ll still have some loss of muscle. The good news is that you can vastly slow and limit the decline if you use heavy, intense resistance training principles.

Inactive, sedentary lifestyles cause about a 5% loss of muscle mass each decade after age 30. Loss of muscle causes a decrease in strength, mobility, balance, and functional capacity (e.g. the capacity to get up and down stairs, do yardwork, get around on vacation trips).

Keeping a heavy resistance training program not only helps you maintain lean muscle mass, it also:

  • increases neurogenesis (forming new brain and nerve cells)
  • increases beneficial hormones that normally decline with age, such as growth hormone, testosterone, insulin-like growth factor, DHEA, while lowering the hormones of estrogen, insulin, and cortisol
  • Increases the ability to turn protein into energy
  • Creates a unique metabolic afterburn in the body where your metabolism stays elevated after the workout for 24-48 hours, burning more fat than sugar (carbs). Strength training and interval training create this afterburn much better than aerobic exercise
  • Helps bone become stronger and denser by stressing it
  • Acts as a storage mechanism for important proteins that help you recover from injury or illness

When we have muscle mass, it consumes a lot of calories just in order to maintain the muscle, even while we’re asleep. Fat needs zero calories in order to maintain itself. So, as we get older and we tend to lose muscle and gain fat, the aging body burns fewer calories. In addition, even as our metabolism slows down, most of us continue to take in as many calories or more as we did in our 20’s and 30’s. We have to remember that our appetites don’t naturally decline as we age.

It takes hard work, discipline, and a plan, but it’s never too late to build lean muscle mass. It’s important and totally worth the work. As far as anti-aging goes, it’s one of the most important things you can do.

Jan 17
0

The Most Powerful Medication Ever Developed

By | Exercise

A couple of years ago, Time magazine did a great article on the topic of exercise (Sept. 12, 2016). The article had a lot of the research work of scientists such as Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky (a genetic metabolic neurologist). Basically, the article talked about how even severely sick people can use exercise as medicine. Dr. Tarnopolsky stated:

“if there were a drug that could do for human health everything that exercise can, it would likely be the most valuable pharmaceutical ever developed.” 

In the early 1900’s doctors shifted their focus away from keeping people healthy (the PREVENTION of symptoms and disease). Instead, with the rise of modern pharmaceutical companies and surgical procedures, they started to focus on the TREATMENT of symptoms and sickness. This has been the trend ever since.  Statistics increase every year with people with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and even childhood obesity. In an article published in 1905 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the authors emphasized how people were losing attention on the healthy-benefits of exercise.

All the research is showing that exercise is the best and most effective way to improve our quality and duration of life. An exercise session will improve the health of your heart, skin, eyes, gut, and even your gonads!  It will slow the aging process, put you in a better mood, and decreases chronic pain from all sorts of sources.  Exercise will also lower your risk for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and early death from any other cause.  When you exercise, it helps you to improve your memory and to learn quicker by way of improving blood flow to the brain. Increased blood to the brain stimulates the growth of new blood vessels and brain cells (while also repairing damaged brain cells and protecting brain cells from degeneration).  Physical activity will also decrease all of the following:  back pain and arthritis symptoms, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. The list goes on and on. Another researcher, exercise physiologist Marcas Bamman, says:

“exercise is regenerative medicine – restoring and repairing and basically fixing things that are broken.” 

Still, an overwhelming percentage of the population does not exercise. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) says that more than  80% of the population does not get the recommended amount of exercise.

The CDC recommends 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity (ie: when your breathing speeds up from brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, etc) and twice a week strength training.

Strength training doesn’t mean that you have to join a gym. You can just use your body weight as resistance, such as with yoga, tai chi, pilates, or calisthenics.

Rats and mice are used in medical testing because their genetic, biological and behavioral characteristics closely resemble those of humans. Also, many human conditions can be replicated in mice and rats. Dr. Tarnopolsky says, “you open up sedentary mice and there’s fat all over the place. About half of those mice have tumors.”  When comparing that to mice who run on an exercise wheel every day, he says, “We haven’t found a single tumor.” He thinks that if people could see this, they’d be pretty motivated to exercise.

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