Caloric Bargaining

Caloric Bargaining

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Caloric bargaining

These stairs in Norway attempt to make the point that if you take the stairs, you may enjoy the extra calories in regular Coke. Seems counter productive for Coke to remind us that one is bad for us and the other is supposedly better (Movers don’t do “diet” drinks either). The beauty for Coke is that rather than reminding us that we shouldn’t be drinking sugar sweetened beverages, they show us that we deserve the reward for completing our activities of daily life. It’s bad enough when we binge after a workout because, “we deserve it” but now we’re giving ourselves “calorie credits” for taking the stairs.

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Move To the Past for your Health

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I work day after day with the chronically ill. I help coordinate their medications, labs and general care plan to help them live their best lives possible under the circumstances. I sense so much frustration in their voices when I speak to them about their health that I almost start feeling as hopeless as they do. There is so much conflicting information out there that even the most savy of independent health investigators (such as you and I) can feel lost.

The more I learn about modern medicine and our healthcare system in general, the more it becomes evident that there truly is nothing new under the sun. So much of health and wellness depends on where we have come from as a species. For this reason I am happy to bring to my readers the ultimate in Ancestral Health.

My good friend & popular health blogger, Sean Croxton, has just put
the finishing touches on the first ever online PALEO extravaganza.

Whether you’re hardcore into paleo, just getting started, don’t
really know anything about it, or hate it and think it’s all hype –
this event has something for you.

Sean recorded presentations from the top experts in the
health & nutrition wellnessphere about the Paleo diet – putting their
knowledge to the test – and created The Paleo Summit.

Mark your calendars, because this event (all 8 days of it!) starts
Sunday, February 26th.

Oh, and it’s FREE to attend.

In this first-of-it’s-kind online event, you guys are going to see:

* Primal living expert Mark Sisson discuss EXACTLY what ancestral
living means – as well as what to eat, what not to eat, and why.

* For parents – Sarah Fragoso will show you how to transition your
family into the primal lifestyle – while keeping it fun for the kids
AND the adults

* Dr. Thomas O’Bryan give you the scoop on gluten – why it can lead
to autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, and muscle pain!

* Get the scientific perspective on Paleo from Ivy League research
biochemist Mat Lalonde – so you can differentiate between the
rampant paleo extremism and what’s truly backed by science

* Get the scoop from independent health researcher & blogger Matt
Stone on why he thinks the Paleo diet is bunk!

* Paul Chek give you the six foundational principles for abundant
health – and how you can break your social conditioning to truly
become the healthiest version of yourself.

And that’s just a SMALL taste of what’s happening starting on
February 26th.

As an added bonus, when you register today, you’ll also get an
awesome video interview with Mark Sisson regarding why we should eat
like our ancestors, as well as a 40-minute interview with Gary
Taubes on why we get fat – I know you’re going to love them!

Pre-registration begins TODAY – so make sure you head over to
the sign-up page right now.

Here’s to your Ancestral Health!!!

Real Food is ALIVE!

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Think about it…

If you are a living and breathing person, you are nothing but a colony of specified cells that themselves, are living and breathing. Sure, there’s that little old thing called a soul but that’s another topic for another blog.

I have spent the better part of the last decade with one foot in mainstream medicine and the other in the study of traditional health systems. Still, with as much study and practice as I have committed to the pursuit of health, I find myself at a loss when people ask me about diet; not for lack of knowledge on the part of either party but simply because we are seldom even speaking the same language.

When it comes to making food choices, it seems American public is fixated on just a handful of parameters; Calories, fat, carbohydrates, taste and cost. It’s no wonder we talk about food in such myopic terms. Watch enough daytime television and you will see doctor after dietician after celebrity trainer giving a nutrition sermon using this language of dietary dogma. They’ve got us focused on the minutia so we never stop to think about what real food is and why we eat what we do.

Dr. Catherine Shanahan deems this language, foodspeak (a play on Orwellian newspeak). She describes how and why we willingly abandoned our cultural relationship with food in her book Deep Nutrition. Dr. Cate makes the case for reverting to a more traditional language about food for the benefit of our health as well as that of future generations.

Like everything else, foodspeak has to meet the requirements of a sound bite culture and is limited to grunting imperatives such as “eat your veggies,” “watch your carbs,” and “avoid saturated fat.” Having lost the old ways of talking about food, we’ve also lost the physiologic prosperity that once endowed us with the gift of perfectly proportionate growth.

Catherine Shanahan M.D.

Food, as our ancestors understood it, was a most sacred gift. Be it from a deity or the plant/animal itself, that which was consumed as food was seen as pure life to be incorporated in to the person. This type of “new age” (ironic) language that our ancestors used does not lend itself to our overly cerebral health authorities today. In fact, scratch the word, “today”. This concept of food didn’t lend itself to the health authorities of last century. Why not? Well because it is only in the last half century or so that food production has become so consolidated in to a few corporate interests. As Dr. Cate says, foodspeak had to be invented so that they could fit the message in to an ad. Since industry drives research, it was only a matter of time before the medical schools were chock full of studies and statistics that cast these new “processed foodstuffs” in a good light. Ever since then, they have been coming out with new research that seemingly contradicts itself as time goes by. This constant supply of novel dietary advice is no failure of science. It is intentional. As the saying goes, “keep them rowing so they don’t have time to rock the boat.”

What we need now is the mind of a child.

This little girl is smarter than most people at the USDA. In fact, I’d go so far as to say she is more wise  than even the top health and medical authorities in the nation in reaching the conclusions she did from her experiment. How can this be you ask? Because she possess the mind of a child that is immune to analysis paralysis and is able to use common sense.

Gary Zukav calls this “a beginners mind“. In his 1984 classic, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Zukav reveals how “the new physics” (Quantum Mechanics) was discovered by forgetting what we think we know of the world, and accepting what we observe as the truth. He notes that Einsteins genius had minimally to do with his brain power and more to do with his ability to see possible alternative explanations that his contemporaries didn’t. When we discuss diet and nutrition with our respected health authorities it is almost as if they are intentionally diverting our attention to calories and fat content while we yearn to cry out, “the farmer is naked.”

A scientist should accept reality as he sees it, even if that lands him in contradiction and nonsense; a scientist must have a beginner’s mind…. a childlike ability to see the world as it is, and not as it appears according to what we know about it.

Gary Zukav

 

Organic? But studies show “no health benefits” to organic food

We intuitively know that organic food (formerly known as food) is what we should be eating. There are many forces that keep us from bringing organic food to our family dinner table. For some it is cost. Others don’t like the shorter shelf life of organic food. Perhaps the largest reason these unadulterated genetic information packets don’t make it to our homes is because we haven’t been convinced it is worth it.

We are a society that is rarely convinced of anything unless we can either see it with our own eyes, or we see enough studies to prove it. The problem with the issue of organic food is that no study is possible to show the benefits. The only tests the FDA runs on our food is to see if it will cause you to keel over and die after consuming (see GRAS laws). To add to the problem, headlines like this make for a great story because it goes against common sense.

The reason the debate about organic still exists is twofold. The harm of industrialized food is only seen in the chronic degradation of health throughout the course of ones life as well as throughout the generations. Also, the benefits of organic are not measured in the short-term outcomes our current food regulatory system is monitoring. It all comes down to how you define health and sickness. If you are merely looking for acute infections and quick-onset disabilities, you could pretty much eat anything non-toxic and it would pass the GRAS standards of the FDA.

It is impossible to expect to create a healthy, vibrant individual from dead food. There must be life in your food. Every bit of processing and every additive is for the expressed intent of rendering the food undesirable to microorganisms that may want to eat it before you do. If they won’t eat it, why would you?

Bugs won't eat it, why would you?

“Muscle Musolini” and A New Years Resolution Warning

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...maybe he wasn't so muscular after all

Happy New Year!  I love to see all the new faces in the gym during this time of year.  Sure it’s packed but that only forces me to get more creative with my workouts and how I use my body in the given space.  I do elicit some stares as I conduct my movement experiments but I don’t let that stop me from getting work done in the gym.  Perhaps it was a little reflection on the crowded gym or maybe an article by a chef/MD I read today, but I felt especially inclined to provide a word on new years resolutions today.

Spend enough time in the fitness industry and you will run in to your fair share of trainers I like to call “Muscle Musolinis”.  You know the type.  They are the super motivational, dogmatic purists who tell you exactly what to do and how hard to do it.  These guys and gals are full of fire and love to inflict pain for the betterment of your waistline.  They know how to get results and are with you every step of the way to motivate you when you let up in the least bit.

This works well for most people seeking personal training however, it is hardly sustainable.

We’ll delve in to that specific dynamic in the near future.  For now, I would like to explore an analogous dynamic that takes place in the doctors office.

There is no question that modern medicine has brought us great scientific advancements over the last 150 years.  The most revolutionary development of modern medicine, however, has nothing to do with any of the core sciences at all.  Medicine, as it is most widely practiced today, is based on the premise that when we fall ill, the body is actively destroying itself and nobody but the physician knows how to stop it.  This makes sense since, afterall, this person spent nearly a decade eating, drinking and sleeping nothing but the core sciences.  Whom better to come to the rescue but they physician?

I had never really given this concept much thought before my exploration of more traditional modalities.  What I found was that never before the creation of what we call Conventional Medicine, has there been a power shift from the patient to the physician.  Though lacking in the technology of today, traditional medicine has been effective at building health (as opposed to treating sickness)  due to the belief that the body knows what is good for it and the physician is simply there as a facilitator.  For better or for worse, we now go to our doctors office ready to report a basic chief complaint and provide a few brief symptoms.  That’s it.  We actively remove ourselves as much as possible from the care team.  We then expect another human being to tell us how to rid ourselves of our ailments.  

This is why, as much as I criticize modern medicine, I don’t fault physicians for our failing health status in this country.  For as long as we continue to deny that our bodies inherently possess the potential to heal themselves, and that we know better than any other human being what is best for us, we will continue to flounder in a perpetual state of sub-clinical sickness.  As long as we aren’t sick enough to notice, your doctor and the healthcare system at large, is happy….

…but where does that leave you?

geek speak for "this changes that"

Cost/Benefit

Nearly everything in life is a balance between the good and bad.  We find this articulated in the writings on morality in holy scriptures throughout history as well as Newton’s 3rd law of motion. The most obvious example of this in medicine is the balance between the potential benefit of a drug vs. the side effects.

There is a grander implication of this perpetual balancing act to which we are condemned. We all pretty much know what is good for us in terms of diet and exercise.  I opened up with the image of a drill sergeant personal trainer because we all know that as long as we put in the work, we will get the results we desire.   We all know what to do.  It is the how that causes us to fail.

The easiest way to abandon a new year’s resolution of any other commitment to get healthy is to sacrifice too much of that precious commodity called quality of life (QOL).  Sure, you may see some initial results and feel pretty good about yourself but if you don’t maintain and experience a healthy quality of life throughout the process of self-improvement, you will be faced with that inevitable question: “Why am I doing this?”

The spice of life

An article in The Atlantic hit my own personal Twittersphere today.  It is a piece written by an interventional cardiologist who works as a professional chef.  He goes by, “Dr. Mike” on his blog titled, “Grassroots Gourmet“.

Dr. Mike shares his opinions about the latest policy move by the FDA to reduce the amount of dietary salt available to the public.  Not only does he elucidate the QOL costs of painting salt to be a villain with such a broad brush, but he also questions the science behind the governmental recommendations set forth.

As is usually the case, my favorite line of the article comes at the very end:

The government needs to leave the recipes and the cookery to the chefs. And leave the salt on my pommes frites.

In the end, we must enjoy life.  This isn’t the usual declaration that moderation is the key to your fitness goals.  Let me make that clear lest you accuse me of holding such a simplistic position.  No, there are some things to be added and subtracted in varying degrees if we want to achieve any goal in the realm of health and fitness.  The key is to know which guilty pleasures are ok and which will derail your efforts.

Part of that entails hard work (personal training) to right the wrongs of life of corporeal neglect.  The other part of the balanced equation is informed strategizing (wellness coaching) to make sure YOU maintain the power and don’t put yourself at the mercy of the cookie-cutter plan some other human devised for you.  We are all infinitely unique and require someone to help us ask the right questions of ourselves so that we may uncover our true potential.

We all make resolutions from differing starting points.  This is why, as much as I love to see people just get up and move on their own, I always watch with a bit of morbid curiosity as I know that if they are anything like most people, they will sacrifice too much QOL for the sake of the image that comes to them as the clock strikes 12:00 every December, 31st.

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2011 in review

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This year has been one of transition.  The blog got a new look, some new subscribers and helped me zero in on the subject of my graduate studies.  There will continue to be an evolution in 2012 as I continue my studies of Kinesiology and Sport Psychology.  I thank you for your readership, comments and encouragement.  I hope you continue to share your thoughts, wisdom and passion for wellness and performance with me in the coming years.

Below is a little “year in review” feature the good people at WordPress were nice enough to create for me.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 40 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Pumagility for wellness

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I can’t say I have always been a fan of Puma.  They’ve always been more about making a fashion statement than performance in my opinion.  I have been known to sport some of their shoes while throwing around some weights but as far as doing anything athletic, they all fell a bit flat.

That said, I have fallen in love with their latest shoe.  Not so much for its utility, but more for the message surrounding it.  The tagline is “Get a Move On”.  Sound familiar?  This is the type of mentality/lifestyle I began writing about in my very first post (titled, “Get Moving!”) on this humble blog.  When I first saw the television commercial, I immediately thought that if MFW were to run a spot, that it would look very similar to this:

 

Why does my personal trainer tell me to exercise less?

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Pacific Ocean (Nov. 10, 2004) - Machinist Mate...

Image via Wikipedia

The exercise and health equation is pretty simple. “A” increases with “B” right? Wrong.

Exercise is medicine. I don’t say this in a cutesy way either. Exercise, just like any pill you can pop, initiates a number of chemical reactions within your body. It must be carefully applied so as to elicit the desired effect while minimizing any negative side effects.

Believe it or not, there is a time when exercise can be toxic for you. As my great human physiology professor often reminded us, “The dose makes the poison.”  His most shocking example of this truth is when he would relate how endurance runners sometimes perish by drinking too much water after a race. (see hyponatremia)

Before I go any further, please let it be known that this will not be another cardio-bashing blog post.  There are enough of those out there in the blogosphere.  My purpose is only to attempt to pre-emptively justify why, after just receiving your payment for personal training, your personal trainer may now be telling you to stay out of the gym.

When I first attempt to explain this concept to my clients, they often ask me why I bothered studying exercise for so long if I’m telling them it is bad for them.  In order to answer this, allow me to give some quick background on what a degree in Kinesiology entails.

My formal education has been full of studying athletes, seniors, stroke victims and cadavers in applied settings as well as exercise physiology labs.  All of this after basically completing a pre-med track of courses.  I’ve studied how the body responds to exercise in all conceivable environmental variations.  Aside from all the anatomy, biochemistry and physiology, I have ultimately learned that exercise is nothing more than self-induced stress.  Your hypothalamus and limbic system can not tell the difference between running in the park and getting yelled at by your boss.

 

Stress is stress is stress is stress….

The end result of too much stress is as varied as the possible sources.  Every living being utilizes the awesome force of adaptation.  Central to that force is the concept of hormesis: (as described at gettingstronger.org)

Hormesis is a biological phenomenon whereby a beneficial effect (improved health, stress tolerance, growth or longevity) results from exposure to low doses of an agent that is otherwise toxic or lethal when given at higher doses.

We realize that stressors can serve a purpose however when we fail to account for all possible stressors, we find ourselves writing checks our body can’t cash.  Be it physical stress, chemical stress, emotional stress or financial stress, your body knows not the difference.  The “stress pathway” within you is very complex and deserves its own post (soon to be linked here).

Exercise is only a stress-reducer when the one exercising is perfectly healthy and free from chronic stress in the first place.

The point is that it is most likely the case that you hired a personal trainer because you don’t feel and/or look as healthy as you would like to.  This current state of dissatisfaction was not brought on by a sudden case of the “lazies”.  It is probably closer to the truth that you have packed on some pounds due to an overload of stress in one form or another.

My Golden Rule of Wellness

I  hesitate to declare a rule of Wellness “Golden” this early in my life but I feel that even through my continuing exploration of all things in wellness and human performance, I will not have to revise the following statement.  The single characteristic all humans operating at an optimal level of health and performance share is that they are honest with their bodies.  The first truth they allow themselves to believe is that they are infinitely unique in mind, soul AND BODY.  We all know we each possess a unique personality and spirituality yet we relinquish our authority when it comes to our biology.  We let others tell us what healthy is rather than experiencing it for ourselves.  Every major traditional system of medicine has respected the biochemical individuality of the patient despite having the technology necessary to articulate this principle in full.  Our ability to break down everything to it’s biochemical pathway has left us with an inability to see the forrest for the trees.

To thrive is to realize that our physical bodies are but an intermediary to a causal universe.  The world around us is always striving for homeostasis or balance.  Our bodies do the same; we just have to listen to them.  In order to acheive true wellness, we must learn to take every sub-clinical symptom (those idiopathic nagging headaches, bouts of brain fog, fatigue, gas, joint pain, etc) and use it as a means to discovering our own personal triggers. 

Fat is Energy; Energy is not Fat

For far too long, we have thought of weight gain in terms of sloth and gluttony.  Ask your MD why you are overweight and they’ll tell you that your intake of calories must be greater than your level of physical activity.  It’s simple Newtonian Physics as far as most obesity authorities are concerned.  Thankfully, there are some prominent researchers who actually get it.

Fat is a symptom, not a cause of chronic disease.  Gaining weight is the body’s way of preparing for drastic conditions.  This change is brought on by real stressors perceived by our glands and organs.  If we are honest with our bodies, we will notice this change and truly ask ourselves what factors may be contributing to the problem.  Going straight to, “I need to eat less and exercise more” is an irresponsible knee-jerk reaction that will only pile more stress upon all the stress that got you fat in the first place.  Be honest with your body.  Pay it the respect it deserves by fully and truthfully investigating any and all causes of stress and imbalance in your life.  Do not be afraid to start slow.  Becoming a Mover takes time.

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Move for your Bones

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Compact bone & spongy bone

Image via Wikipedia

As more of us live beyond our 80′s, our bones become an increasingly important element of healthy ageing.  The statistics (found here) are just as dire as the obesity epidemic.  The good news is that although we all stop accumulating bone mass at age 30, there are scientifically proven methods of maintaining a strong and functional skeleton for as long as you have breath in your lungs. 

The average adult human skeleton is made up of 206 bones.  The talus is the only bone in the body with no muscular attachments.  This means that the other 204 bones you possess are under varying amounts of muscular force at any given time.  Muscular force is the pulling, twisting or bending force that an attached muscle inflicts on the bone when it contracts.  The other type of force is Ground Reaction Force (GRF).  GRF is the force originating from the ground that is transferred upwards throughout our skeletal structure.  There are more forces under these two classifications, i.e. torsional, shearing, axial compressing, etc.  For the purpose of this concept, just know that the ground creates a force on our bones from the outside and our muscles create a force on our bones from the inside.

This is important to note because the demand (force) we impose on our bones in our daily lives is the only way we can encourage the remodeling of spongy bone to compact bone.  Yes, remodeling is the true scientific term…look it up.  Your bones are constantly being broken down by some cells (osteoclasts) and built up by other cells (osteoblasts).  This is the body’s way of ensuring you only have as many precious minerals devoted to structural support as you need based on the current demands of your daily life.  There is a finite amount of Calcium in your body.  If it all was deposited in to your bones, there would be no way of contracting a muscle to act on said bone.  This is why physicians tell their patients to walk and resistance train for their bone health.  Through exercise, you communicate to those osteoclasts to leave a little bone tissue to keep you upright through all 18 holes this weekend.

Bone is a living, breathing organ.  We tend to think of it more like a bunch of white rocks stacked up in a particular fashion.  Even when we discuss supplementation (Calcium and/or Vitamin D), we still picture little particles of Calcium floating around in our blood and being deposited on various parts of our skeleton.  The truth is, we have far greater ability to create a bone building environment within ourselves than we think.

ashes, ashes, we all fall down…

Provided that you don’t overindulge on processed foods that lack minerals and/or blindly supplement your diet with random vitamins you find in the bargain bin of your local mega mart, your bones will stay dense enough to support your body in an upright position until you die.  We do not need to rely on walkers, rascal scooters or robo legs to carry us across the finish line of this race called life.  We seem to assume that osteoporosis and osteopenia are inevitabilities that we all must succumb to as soon as we reach a certain age.  This is plain false.  We didn’t go through millions of years of evolution to rise to the top of the food chain only to be limited to 70-90 years by a perpetually crumbling skeleton.

Several fractures such as this have been associated to use of bisphosphonates

Since all but one bone two bones (you’ve got one talus in each foot) are attached to muscles, this means that even if you are in outer space, you can maintain your bone density by regularly using your muscles and properly nourishing your body.  You don’t have to spend all your money on medication that may or may not work.  You may have heard of drugs like Fosamax after your doctor read your paltry numbers from your DEXA scan.  Sure these drugs, called bisphosphonates, improve mineral density but what exactly does that mean?  The only thing these drugs do is improve your DEXA score.  They promote the retention of minerals in your bones but they do not work together with the innate wisdom of your body.  They merely stop the resorption of bone by the osteoclasts.  As you recall, osteoblasts work with osteoblasts to maintain healthy levels of bone density in proportion to the imposed structural demand.  If you shut off the osteoclasts, you also shut down the osteoblasts.  This can lead to more brittle bones and eventually to fractures.

Walk your way to bone health?

Some health professionals promote walking for bone health.  The idea is that the repeated impact with each step will signal to your bones that they need to “beef up”.  The truth is that the evidence is just not there to support this low-intensity mode of exercise as an effective bone preservation strategy.  I suppose that for somebody considered sedentary, (Click here to see if that’s you) walking would provide some positive bone remodeling effect in the first few weeks.  My only fear is that in promoting walking for bone health, we may lull those at risk of fracture in to a false sense of security; just as improving your DEXA results with bisphosphonates does.

She's got healthy bones. Click to see how you can too.

It is crucial to incorporate a safe amount of running and resistance training in to your daily life.  This is most effectively done with the coaching of an experienced fitness professional.  If your bones are porous to begin with, your program must be fine tuned to weigh your needs with your abilities.  If you are simply moving to prevent osteopenia, you needn’t be so structured.  The beauty about moving for your bones is that you don’t need to worry about number or sets, duration or intensity like you do when training your cardiovascular system.  Cardio training involves at least 3-5 systems at one time.  The mode rate and volume of exercise must be carefully designed in order to evoke a desired adaptation response by the body.  Bone density training however only involves one system; the musculoskeletal system.  All you have to do is move your bones at any given point in the day.  Of course you get out of it what you put in but any little bit adds up to a total daily demand that your body comes to expect.  Demand more of your bones on a daily basis and your body will reward you with a couple hips that are less likely to fracture.  

Wiggle your toes at your desk.  Reach for the sky and pull on that shoulder girdle and ribcage.  Every little bit helps and you get quite a stretch on your muscles at the same time. 

 

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