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VOLUME 18 NUMBER 4

January/February 2018

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VOLUME 18 NUMBER 4

January/February 2018 10 Introducing the dumbbell Depending on the way dumbbells are used, they can tone and build just about any part of your body.

26 Soy Health food or a cleverly marketed waste product?

30 Managing pain with a healthy lifestyle Millennials are the next generation poised to experience chronic pain.

32 GMO and babys You’ve probably come across ongoing debates regarding the term “organic” and what should go into your body.

33 Essential oils Top 10 essential oils to enhance the quality of everyday life.

34 Make the most of your brain as you age It is important to remember the health of our brain.

36 Inflammation Put out the infection with smart nutrition.

37 FDA Problems What is going on?

38 Food for thought Emotions and hunger have many parallels and consequences.

42 You are what you eat During the Dark Ages of medicine, dying from heart disease meant the heart died.

44 What’s the big deal about antioxidants? Is the word antioxidant just another health industry marketing phrase?

45 Be mindful when you eat Mindfulness in relation to eating is necessary now more than ever.

46 The great protein debate Protein perhaps the greatest anti-obesity weapon we have.

48 Is hydrolyzed protein healthy? We should carefully abide by nature’s laws when it comes to how we process foods.

50 Why we crave bad food It’s important to understand the pathology of how cravings develop.

52 The GMO games go on China is continuing to refuse GMO corn from the U.S., incurring a $3 billion loss for the U.S. agricultural industry.

53 Heart disease How not to be its next victim.

54 The healing diet Hundred of diseases are caused by or involve inflammation.

55 Thermic effect of food Foundational concept to fat loss.

56 Foods that heal Food does 1 of 2 things — it either builds the body up or tears it down.

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VOLUME 18 NUMBER 4

January/February 2018 57 What’s on your table? What type of salt do you typically eat?

58 Butt exercises for guys Let’s face it, your butt is just as sexy as your abs and your biceps.

60 The first 12 weeks Training considerations for new lifters.

62 Building a second gear By training in this second gear, you can take your body beyond its current conditioning.

64 Hard Core ab workout These exercises guarantee fat loss.

65 Superset back routine Have you ever thought of supersetting some back routines?

65 The kettlebell swing A phenomenal strength-building exercise.

66 Radical ways to increase strength Is increasing brute muscle power is your primary goal?

68 The what and why of deep squatting It may sometimes feels like a medieval torture chamber.

70 Power training Building bigger, stronger muscles through performance-based conditioning.

71 Rebounding after taking time off This 2-way split routine is done twice a week.

72 What makes a champion?

The Janet Barry story.

75 Winning your next marathon There is no such thing as an ideal marathon training program.

76 Mud racing Mud racing events are gathering steam like no other event.

78 Parkour fitness Parkour can become a part of practically any cross-training regimen.

80 Sex and exercise Why a woman’s primary sex hormone is the single biggest thing that influences everything.

84 Harnessing muscle Metabolic exercise is about burning the maximum amount of fat calories possible during a workout.

86 The science of growth hormone Why do athletes and bodybuilders take growth hormone?

88 Weighs and measures Tons of useful tidbits.

98 Fitness trends for 2018 The American College of Sports Medicine has once again come out with their list of the top fitness trends for the coming year.

EXPERIENCED FREELANCE WRITER WANTED: great opportunity for a personal trainer who has excellent writing skills. Must be extremely talented in articulating your fitness and nutrition knowledge in words. You must be a certified fitness professional with mastery of workouts and the science behind them. You must be able to meet editorial deadlines. Please email sample articles of your work to: Joseph@OnFitnessmag.com

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The dumbbell originated in it’s most basic form in ancient Greece. These weights were called halteres. They were usually large and made of stone and had a hole in them which the weights were held by.

The word dumbbell first appeared during the Tudor era in England. At that time, athletes were using hand-held church bells to train their arms and upper bodies. Since the bells were making a lot of noise during training, they decided to remove the clappers rendering the bells “dumb”.

Today they’re one of the most popular pieces of training equipment. Depending on the way dumbbells are used, they can tone and build just about any part of your body depending on the amount of weight used and the way that they’re held.

Being a versatile piece of equipment, there are lots of exercises you can perform with dumbbells, they can be used to train just about every part of your body. A list of the most common exercises include: seated biceps curls, hammer curls, French presses, preacher curls, overhead triceps extensions, triceps kickbacks, flat and incline bench presses, flat and incline chest flyes, lateral raises, seated shoulder presses, front raise, reverse flies, upright rows, shrugs, lunges, half squats, calf raises, and the dumbbell goblet squat, just to name a few.

The way a dumbbell works completely relies on how it’s held and lifted so there are simple safety tips you should adhered to: always warm up before beginning a workout so you don’t surprise your muscles with the sudden weight, consequently straining them. You should also make sure that you’re using the weight you can handle. You may be of the opinion that heavier is better for results, however, using lesser weight and doing more repetitions is a way to ensure you don’t hurt yourself.

INTRODUCING THE DUMBBELL

RIM

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DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Seated biceps curl Targeting biceps. Holding onto dumbbells, sit back on an incline bench with both arms hanging down by your sides, your palms facing inward. Slowly curl both dumbbells up to your shoulders while rotating your hands so that at the top of the move your palms facing behind you. Then slowly slower the weight to the starting position and repeat. You can also perform this routine alternating your arms.

Preacher curl Targeting biceps. These curls can be performed using one arm at a time or both. Hold a dumbbell with the back of your upper arm resting on the pad of a preacher curl bench. Adjust the seat so that your arm pit is resting near the top of the pad, the back of your upper arm remains on pad throughout the move. Using your biceps, slowly curl the weight up to your shoulder. Hold, squeezing your biceps hard, then slowly lower the weight until your arm is fully extended off the pad and repeat. After a set number of reps, repeat with your other arm.

Hammer curls Targeting biceps. Stand holding dumbbells by your sides and your palms facing each other. Slowly curl 1 of the dumbbells up until your forearm is vertical to the ground — without rotating your hand like you do for biceps curls. Hold, squeezing your biceps, then slowly lower the weight to the starting position and repeat with your other arm. You can also perform this routine curling both arms at once.

A few of the benefits of using dumbbells DUMBBELLS are more joint-friendly than

barbells. For instance, a flat bench dumbbell press compared to a flat bench barbell press. The dumbbell version is more elbow and shoulder friendly because you have natural movements, you can turn or rotate them as you press.

If you’ve have shoulder or elbow issues, use dumbbells instead of barbells.

If you have limited space, dumbbells are great for home-training, you can’t go wrong with an adjustable set that allows you to increase weight in increments.

Using dumbbells guarantees that both your limbs do always the same amount of work. If you have a strength imbalance, dumbbell exercises will help.

With barbells, 1 limb may have to do more work lifting weight whereas with dumbbells both limbs are forced to push and pull the same amount of weight.

Some exercises are safer when done with dumbbells; for example, if you’re doing dumbbell lunges and lose your balance, you can easily drop the weights.

But with a barbell on your back, if you loose your balance you could risk serious injury.

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Seated shoulder presses

DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Targeting shoulders. Sitting on a bench, hold a dumbbell in each hand upright on top of your thighs. Using your knees to help propel them, raise the weights up to your shoulders while rotating your wrists so that the palms of your hands end up facing forward. Now press the dumbbells up over your head. After a brief pause, slowly lower the weights back down to your shoulders and repeat.

You can also perform the exercise standing or sitting on a regular flat bench, but if you have lower back problems, a back support is recommended.

Chest flyes Targeting chest. Lie back on a flat bench holding a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level with your palms facing each other.

Slowly press the weights straight up over your chest (not over your head) stopping just before your arms lock out. With a slight bend in your elbows and using only your shoulders, lower your arms out to your sides in a wide arc motion until your elbows start to dip pass the bench, you should feel a deep stretch in your chest muscles. Using only your shoulders again, press the dumbbells back up to the starting position making sure to use the same arc motion you used to lower them. Hold the dumbbells above your chest for a second and repeat.

Overhead triceps extension Targeting triceps, biceps, delts, traps and forearms. Sitting on a bench, or standing, hold a dumbbell with a hammer grip. Slowly lift it high above your head, then, bending only your elbow, lower the weight behind you, hold, then slowly press it back up over your head and repeat. After a set number of reps, repeat with your other arm.

Another way to perform this exercise is, sitting on a bench, or standing, hold a single dumbbell with both hands.

While raising the weight over your head, rotate it so that when it’s above you it’s vertical and the top plate is resting comfortably on the palms of your hands, your thumbs hanging onto the handle. Then slowly lower the weight behind your head until your forearms touch your biceps, hold, return to the starting position and repeat.

Bench press Targeting chest. Lie back on a flat bench with a dumbbell in each hand, your palms facing each other.

Holding the weights at shoulder level slowly press them straight over head rotating your wrists so the palms of your hands are now facing away from you.

Hold, return, then press up again.

Buying dumbbells IF YOU’RE A BEGINNER, and you’re

only concentrating on improving your biceps and triceps, why should you pay for the high cost of a gym.

Instead, purchase a pair of dumbbells and start building your arms at home.

The first thing to consider, if you want to achieve results is, adjustable dumbbells will best serve your needs. You’ll be able to start with light plates and gradually increase the weight as your strength improves.

And with adjustable dumbbells you can purchase additional plates as you need them. Check around, used plates, and dumbbells for that matter, are readily available and are obviously just a good as new equipment.

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DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Reverse flyes Targeting shoulders. Holding dumbbells in each hand; stand, hinging your body from your hips until your chest is almost parallel to the ground, your arms are hanging straight down in front of you. Take a deep breath and raise the dumbbells out to your sides until they’re parallel to the ground — without locking your elbows. Hold, then slowly lower them back to the starting position and repeat. Remember to keep your abs braced and not to arch your back at the top of the move. This can also be done while your seated.

Lateral raises Targeting

Front raise Targeting shoulders. Stand holding dumbbells at arms length in front of your thighs, your palms facing you. Without swinging your torso, slowly lift 1 dumbbell out in front of you until your arm is slightly above parallel to the ground, keeping a slight bend in your elbow and the palms of your hand facing down. Pause, then slowly lower the weight back down to your thigh. Now lifting the other dumbbell the same way and continue alternating dumbbell raises in this fashion. This can also be done with a single dumbbell held by both your hands.

shoulders. Stand holding dumbbells by your sides, your palms facing each other. Keeping your torso in a stationary position (no swinging), start raising the weights out to your sides keeping a slight bend in your elbows and your hands slightly tilted forward as if your about to pour water. Continue raising your arms until they’re parallel to the ground, pause for a second then slowly lower the weights back to the starting position and repeat. This can also be done while your seated.

Dumbbell workout tips SELECT THE RIGHT WEIGHT.

This is particularly important if you’ve never done weight training.

Never think you can lift more than you can, select weight that you can be comfortable with.

Once a workout is no longer challenging, then you can increase the weight.

If you’re looking for a toned lean look, use weights that allow you to do 12-20 reps of any given exercise before you burnout. If

your goal is muscle and strength go for heavier weights that limit you to 8-10 reps max.

Focus on technique; correct positioning of your arms, elbows, wrists and legs will prevent injury while ensuring that you reap the full benefit of your workouts.

Perform your dumbbell workout in front of a mirror keeping an eye on technique, making sure you’re form is perfect.

Take it slow. Weight training will strain your muscles, which is good, strain builds greater resistance, stabilization and stronger muscles.

Sumo squat Targeting quadriceps, gluteus muscles, hips, hamstrings, calves and inner thighs. Hold a dumbbell with both hands keeping your arms close to your body and elbows tucked in. Your feet should be much wider than shoulder-width apart with your toes pointing outward.

Keeping your back straight and abdominals tight, squeeze your glutes and squat until your thighs are parallel to the ground.

Then, pressing through the heels of your feet, stand back up and repeat.

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18

DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Armpit row

Shrugs Targeting traps. This is a simple one. Stand holding a dumbbell in each hand, your arms hanging loose by your sides, your palms facing you. Shrug your shoulders as high as you can keeping your arms and dumbbells hanging loose. Squeeze your traps and hold the contraction at the top of the shrug for a second, then relax your shoulders lowering your arms and the weights and repeat. Your arms should remain loose and hanging down at all times, only your shoulders shrug, moving up and down.

Targeting deltoids. Stand holding a pair of dumbbells by your sides, the palms of your hands facing your thighs. Pull the dumbbells up along the sides of your torso toward your armpits with your elbows pointing out to the sides. Hold for a moment then lower the weights back down and repeat. Pull with your elbows, not your biceps. Keep your back straight and your elbows slightly bent.

Tate press Targeting triceps. Lie on a flat bench holding 2 dumbbells over your head. Don’t lock your elbows and keep your feet flat on the floor. Keeping the dumbbells close together to maintain stability and the movement of your upper arms to a minimum, slowly lower the weights in a semi-circular motion until they almost touch your upper chest.

Hold, then using your triceps, press the weights back up through the same semi-circular motion and repeat.

BeneďŹ ts Dumbbells can provide the 2 types of overload that lead to muscle growth: mechanic and metabolic. Mechanic overload is the result of damage caused by muscle contractions, which stimulates the repair process and leads to an increase in muscle size. Metabolic overload occurs when a muscle is worked to fatigue which leads to the adaptation of muscle cells being able to store more glycogen which can cause muscles to increase in size. Heavy dumbbells can generate mechanical overload, while moderate-weight dumbbells combined with high reps to fatigue can produce a metabolic overload. Due to their size and the fact they can be held in each hand, dumbbells can be used in a variety of different movement patterns to develop strength; they allow the user to focus on 1 arm or 1 leg at a time, which is 1 way to initiate strength gains when using a heavy overload.

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DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Concentration curl Targeting biceps. Sit down on a flat bench with a dumbbell in front of you between your legs, the back of your upper lifting arm against your inner thigh. While holding your upper lifting arm stationary, curl the weight forward while contracting your biceps. Only your forearms moves. Curl the weight until your biceps are fully contracted and the dumbbell’s at shoulder level.

Hold the contracted position for a moment squeezing your biceps, then slowly return it to starting position and repeat. < A reverse consentration cure will target your forearms; the only differance in technique is, you’ll be using a reverse grip.

Triceps kickback Targeting triceps. Stand, bending forward with a light dumbbell in 1 hand, your other forearm braced on your upper leg for support. Or, kneel with 1 leg on a bench and 1 hand braced on the bench for support. In both cases your weight-bearing upper arm should be parallel to the ground. Keeping your elbow tight to your side and curling only your forearm, slowly raise the dumbbell up behind you until the full length of your arm is extended and parallel to the ground. Hold, then return your forearm to the starting position and repeat. After a set number of reps, perform a set with your other arm.

Half squat Targeting quadriceps. Stand with a shoulder width stance holding a dumbbell in each hand, palms facing you.

Maintaining a straight back with your head up at all times (looking down may throw you off balance), slowly lower yourself by bending your knees until your thighs are parallel, your lower legs are perpendicular, to the ground. If your knees reach pass your toes you’re placing undue stress on the them. Raise yourself back up by pushing with the heels of your feet, and repeat. Be cautious with the amount of weight you use; in case of doubt, use less rather than more.

Alternating1arm press Targeting shoulders. The alternating dumbbell press is similar to the regular press; the only difference being, your pressing up only 1 dumbbell up at a time, alternating your arms.

This can be done standing or seated with a neutral or pronated grip. Start by holding a dumbbell in 1 hand with your arm fully extended at your side. (Use your other arm to hold onto something — if you need — for balance.) Slowly lift the weight until your upper arm is parallel to the ground, your forearm perpendicular to the ground. Then slowly press the weight up until your arm is fully extended. Hold, then slowly lower it until upper arm is parallel to the ground again, repeat, then switch arms.

Lighten up Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of building muscles with light weights due to the myth that light weights will only tone your muscles. Research has concluded that lifting lighter weights with more repetitions is more effective than heavy weights with low reps when you exercise to fatigue.

Dumbbells are free weights which take more muscle and joint coordination to use than machines. Light weights give you greater control while lifting which can help prevent muscle pulls and strains. Working your muscles to fatigue may take longer with lighter weights, but results in a higher rate of calorie expenditure than a heavy weight training session.

Determining what constitutes as light weight is dependent on how many reps it takes you to fatigue. With light weights, 15 to 20 repetitions should cause muscle fatigue for muscle growth and strength. If you can easily perform 20 repetitions or more, then the weight is too light and if you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t perform at least 15 repetitions, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re too heavy.

Strength training with light weights to failure can have the same effect on muscle growth as heavy weight.

Also, training with light weights and high repetitions improves muscle endurance.

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DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Standing calf raise Targeting calves. Stand upright holding dumbbells by your sides. Place the balls of your feet on a sturdy surface that’s about 2 or 3 inches above the ground, your heels will be hanging down. With your toes pointed straight ahead, all parts of your calfs will be hit equally; with your toes pointed inward, emphasis will be on your calfs outer head; and with your toes pointed outward, emphasis will be on your calfs inner head. Slowly raise your heels off the ground by flexing your calves. Hold yourself in a tip-toe position for a second, then slowly lower your heels back to the ground and repeat. This exercise can also be done lifting 1 foot at a time.

Dead lift Targeting buttocks. Squat and grab a pair of dumbbells on the floor in front of your feet using an overhand grip. Raise your hips a little straighten your back and lean backward so that your torso is upright. As you stand back up pull the dumbbells up across the front of your body.

Then, pushing your butt backward, flex your hips and knees and lower the dumbbells back down and repeat. To improve mechanical leverage, keep the dumbbells close to your body.

Bent over row Targeting the back in general.

Holding a dumbbell in 1 hand, kneel on a bench with 1 knee and support your body by bracing with 1 arm on the pad. Slowly lift the dumbbell up to the side of your waist pulling with your elbow and not with your biceps.

Hold for a moment, lower and repeat, then switch arms. Keep your torso near horizontal and your elbow tucked in at all times and don’t rotate your torso as you pull the weight up.

Bent over rows can also be performed standing with a dumbbell in each hand lifting both at the same time.

Safe dumbbell workouts IF YOUR AIM IS TO SCULPT MUSCLES and burn fat then the

dumbbell workout is an appropriate and effective choice.

Dumbbells are an easy and inexpensive way to strengthen muscles and tone your body and aid in fat loss with a comfortable range of motion that’s great for developing shoulder stability and improving overall fitness. However, safety is a primary concern. To get the full benefit of dumbbell workouts, it’s essential to learn how to use dumbbells safely.

Warming up before lifting weight reduces your risk of injury by boosting blood flow to the muscles so that they can work better; cardio and stretching will do the trick.

Start by choosing a weight that you can lift for at least 10 to 12 repetitions. Lifting heavy weight at initial stage is 1 of the most common causes of muscle strain and sprains.

Make sure you maintain good posture while lifting weights. Keep your spine erect and avoid hunching shoulders. Different exercises require different movements, learn the proper way to do each exercise before you start using dumbbells.

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DUMBBELL ROUTINES

Lunges Targeting quadriceps and glutes. Standing tall, holding dumbbells by your sides, lunge forward a couple feet lowering your body down so that your forward thigh is parallel to the ground, all the while keeping your torso upright and maintaining good balance; the knee of your back leg should almost touch the ground. Using the heel of your forward foot, push yourself back up and either repeat with your other leg or continue a set with the same leg before switching to your other leg.

Upright row French press Targeting triceps, biceps and forearms. Lay down on a bench holding 2 dumbbells at arms length above your chest. Locking your shoulders, slowly lower your forearms bending only your elbows until the weights are down by your ears. Hold, then slowly return the weights overhead. Only your triceps are doing the work, your upper arms should remain vertical and not move.

Targeting traps and deltoids. Stand with dumbbells in each hand resting on your thighs, the palms of your hands facing you and slightly less than shoulder width apart. As you slowly pull the weights up, keep your back straight, your elbows higher than your forearms and the dumbbells close to your body until they almost touch your chin. Pause at the top of the move then slowly lower the weights back down and repeat. Be careful with how much weight you use, too much will lead to bad form which can cause shoulder injury.

Seated wrist curl Targeting forearms.

Sitting on the edge of the ďŹ&#x201A;at bench, your legs shoulder width apart, hold a pair of dumbbells with your forearms resting on your thighs and the palms of the hands either facing up or down, your wrists are hanging over the edge of your knees.

Your forearms should remain stationary, only your wrists move as you slowly curl them up and down.

Goblet squat With goblets squats, the weight is held in front of you as a counterbalance, which helps you master proper squat form. Holding a weight in front of your body is much more difďŹ cult than squatting with weight on your back. Goblet squats build full-body strength engaging your core, leg and shoulders.

Goblet squats target quadriceps, gluts, upper back, arms, shoulders and core muscles, increasing strength and muscular development. From a standing position cradle the head of a dumbbell close to your chest with both hands. Looking straight ahead with your shoulders back, your spine straight, and your feet wider then shoulder width, lower your body into a full squat with your hamstrings touching your calves, or until your back starts to round. As you go down, push your knees forward keeping all your weight on your heels. Pause brieďŹ&#x201A;y before you return to the starting position, and repeat.

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Clean nutrition report

Previously classified strictly as an “industrial product” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, unfermented soy takes the form of tofu, veggie burgers and protein bars.

SOY Health food or a cleverly marketed waste product?

Ryan Halvorson Despite research’s health claims (funded by soy companies) and soy’s popularity, emerging research and mounting health issues have scientists challenging 90 PERCENT OF whether or not soy is actually a SOY TODAY IS marketing bonanza disguised as a GENETICALLY MODIFIED health food.

A recent survey reveals that 85 percent of the U.S. population believes soy is healthy. Sales of this waste product were $4 billion in 2007. According to the American Soybean Association, 69 percent of the world’s protein meal consumption comes from soy. Whew! Just what is going on here?

From hippie to CEO Before soy rose to prominence in the U.S., it was considered a fall-back item for cash-strapped folk.

Hundreds of years ago, poor Chinese families chose soy as a last resort when they couldn’t purchase pricier sources of animal proteins. Soy was processed carefully so that it was void of toxins and nutrient-absorbing inhibitors. This particular variation — fermented soy — gained acclaim as a heart healthy foodstuff that soon caught the eye of soy manufacturers.

But first, realize that developers of canola oil, shortening and other such products had been concerned with the amount of waste created from the soy process, and sought out a way to sell off what was left behind. The result was tasteless, bland unfermented soy (think tofu). Not surprisingly, soy manufacturers experienced difficulty in selling off their waste product.

“The problem with marketing soy protein is that most people don’t like the taste and it had a bad reputation as being a food for hippies or poverty-stricken people,” states nutritional biochemist Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CN. Undeterred, these cunning organizations eventually, as mentioned above, locked onto Asian fermented soy-based research, and began to market unfermented soy as a heart healthy alternative to animal proteins.

With the support of soybean producers, soy giant Cargill and other companies approached the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with research claiming that a link between soy and lowered risk of coronary heart disease had been discovered.

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U.S. consumers can experience up to 70 daily exposures to residues from persistent organic pollutants through their diets, according to a report from the Pesticide Action Network North America.

The use of persistent organic pollutants is not allowed in organic agriculture. The top 10 persistent organic pollutants-contaminated food items, in alphabetical order, are butter, cantaloupe, cucumbers/pickles, meatloaf, peanuts, popcorn, radishes, spinach, summer squash, and winter squash. The 2 most pervasive persistent organic pollutants in food are dieldrin and DDT.

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Nowhere to hide

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Clean nutrition report According to a document on the Food and Drug Administration website, the government agency eventually: …gave food manufacturers permission to put labels on products high in soy protein indicating that these foods may help lower heart disease risk.

Encouraged by the Food and Drug Administration’s stamp of approval, the American Heart Association lent its support.

This gave the soy industry a green light to market its products to the public. “By marketing it as a ‘health food’ they were able to give it an upscale image,” adds Daniel.

“The result is rich people paying more for the product — then making it seem more desirable to middle or lower class people.”

It was this marketing scheme that led the soy industry to experience a staggering $3.7 billion increase over 15 years.

According to Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, CN, the push for soy came at an opportune period, as people had become increasingly aware about the ecological effect of meat production. “It hit at a time when people were becoming more concerned about the environment and the animals using up huge spaces,” she suggests. “You can produce much more soy in much smaller areas.”

Many consumers also developed moral objections regarding the mistreatment of livestock and sought out soy to avoid any indirect participation. Dr. Dean was one such person eager to jump on the soy bandwagon.

“Years ago I started to get into macrobiotics, and when you go vegetarian, you add soy,” she recalls. Yet even though her conscience may have been freed, she noticed that her body seemed to have a negative reaction to the increase in soy consumption. “I realized soon that my body was having a hard time digesting it, so I started to do some research on it to see if anyone else had similar problems.”

Indeed, Dr. Dean learned that she was not the only person having difficulty with soy. Her search led to countless claims of digestion issues and other eye-opening facts and figures. She discovered that the origins for soy may not have been adequately revealed by its manufacturers; a detail that might have proven detrimental to its marketing success. “I found out that the Chinese didn’t use unfermented soy and won’t even give it to animals unless it had gone through the fermentation process.”

Fermented vs. unfermented soy: the science As previously stated, the health claims regarding fermented soy appear to be spoton, as it contains high quality proteins, oil, B vitamins, fiber and essential fatty acids.

Soy also contains phytochemicals that may help prevent chronic diseases, including heart disease, some cancers, osteoporosis and diabetes. These are the claims utilized by industry giants to convince the Food and Drug Administration to approve soy as a

Most soy today contains something called phytoestrogens which are estrogen mimickers in your body. If you’re a male consuming extra estrogen, it’s going to give you more feminine characteristics; if you’re female, it’s going to increase your risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome and other hormone imbalance-related disorders.

Tofu burger with tomato, lettuce and a dip of herbs garlic and yogurt.

low-calorie, high protein health food.

However, it’s the processing that makes all the difference. And, unfortunately, a vast majority of soy consumed in the U.S., such as tofu, is void of many of these benefits and may actually contain elements that negatively affect the body.

Fermentation. Fermented soy (i.e., miso, natto, tempeh), goes through an extensive process before being considered fit for consumption. Beans are first washed and soaked in water for up to 20 hours and then steamed for six more hours. The beans are then exposed to specific bacteria, increasing their tolerance of extreme temperatures.

They are then sealed and fermented at 104º F for 24 hours, then cooled and aged for about a week. This process reinforces amino acids essential for helping break down the proteins for optimal absorption into the body and rids the substance of toxins.

Unfermented soy. Previously classified strictly as an “industrial product” by the U.S.

Department of Agriculture, unfermented soy takes the form of tofu, veggie burgers, “cheese,” munchies, infant formula, soymilk, protein or meal replacement shakes, protein bars, and is even used as cheap filler in many fast-food restaurant “meat” products. So what’s the big deal?

According to a variety of research-based health reports developed by well-known universities and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, unfermented soy is not all it’s cracked up to be. For example, a study published in the 2002 issue of the Journal of Nutrition discovered promising evidence that men consuming soy had greater likelihood of increased levels of insulin-like growth factor than those drinking regular milk. These high levels were closely associated with the development of hormonal cancers.

Inadequate protein absorption. Without going through the fermentation process, soy comes packed with an agent called phytic

Daniel and colleagues debunked Solae’s research claims, proving that the results weren’t significant enough to warrant Food and Drug Administration approval.

In their document, Daniel and colleagues stated: “We find that the petitioners were highly selective in their choice of evidence and in their commentary, omitting many studies that show soy to be ineffective as a cancer prevention agent, emphasizing favorable outcomes in studies where results were mixed, and providing excuses for results of the few unfavorable studies that they included to give the illusion of balance.”

They further described instances in which Solae omitted information linking soy consumption to a variety of health risks. “Solae also does not mention that soy protein contains many other constituents that have traditionally been considered antinutrients or toxins. These include protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, oxalates and oligosaccharides, which may possess valuable pharmaceutical properties but which have also been linked in more than 100 studies to digestive distress, intestinal disorders, mineral deficiencies, flatulence and even cancer development and growth.”

The following year, The Solae Company withdrew its petition (at the Food and Drug Administration’s suggestion) based on inadequate evidence to support its claims.

Heart health After the soy heart health claim was sent to the Food and Drug Administration , soy was labeled a “heart healthy” food. Subsequently, the American Heart Association also offered support of soy.

However, in 2008, American Heart Association president Daniel W. Jones, MD, sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration urging a retraction of the soy heart health claim. Dr. Jones stated that, upon the surge of “well-controlled studies on soy protein and soyderived isoflavones that have been released since that time, the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee recently undertook a reevaluation of the evidence on soy protein and cardiovascular disease to update its scientific advisory.” According to the Food and Drug Administration website, soy is still considered a heart health food.

Organic verses conventional Bluecrop variety of highbush blueberries were grown on 5 organic and conventional farms in New Jersey. The farms shared comparable soils and weather conditions, and the berries were harvested in precisely the same way. The scientists carrying out the study are based at the USDA’s Genetic Improvement of Fruits and Vegetables Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, and at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The team found consistent and significant differences in nutrient content. The organic blueberries contained 46 ORAC units, a measure of total antioxidant capacity, while the conventional berries contained 31 ORAC units.

Accordingly, the organic berries had over 50 percent more total antioxidant activity. They also contained about 50 percent higher levels of total anthocyanins, the natural plant phytochemicals that give blueberries their dark color.

The organic blueberries also had 67 percent more total phenolics.

The authors’ concluding sentence reads: “Blueberries produced from organic culture contained significantly higher amounts of phytonutrients than those produced from conventional culture.”

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those symptoms.”

Men and phytoestrogen. Known as “dietary estrogens,” phytoestrogens mimic female estrogen and are prevalent in unfermented soy. According to a recent study published in the July 2008 issue of Reproduction, men who regularly consumed unfermented soy had a significantly smaller sperm count than men who did not eat soy. Several other reports corroborate the Reproduction study, drawing a definite link between soy consumption and male infertility.

Another concern is that the increase in estrogen may impede the development of muscular strength. “The estrogens in soy can also lower testosterone,” adds Daniel. “This is the last thing any man interested in gaining muscle would want in his body.”

Baby formula. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2025 percent of formula-fed infants are given the soy variety. No one consumes more soy per kilogram of body weight than infants who are fed a soy-based formula, states information on the USDA website.

A variety of studies highlights the potential dangers of ingesting such a significant amount of soy at a young age.

One study, published in Nutrition (June 2004), discovered that infants who are given soy experience significantly lower “proliferation” of intestinal cells than non-soy fed babies, leading to inadequate nutrient absorption.

Another concern involves the influx of phytoestrogens, which can initiate premature puberty in girls and inhibit the production of testosterone in boys.

“Babies are at the highest risk during this key developmental stage,” adds Daniel. “A baby boy in his first month is making a huge amount of testosterone — similar to that produced by a grown man.

The boy’s body is programming him to go through puberty, a function that estrogen can interfere with.”

Cancer. In 2004, soy giant The Solae Company approached the Food and Drug Administration with claims that soy products can help fight cancer. Upon learning of this claim, Daniel and her colleagues offered a rebuttal to the petition, stating that The Solae Company’s research was limited and ignored scientific evidence connecting soy consumption to increased growth of breast, prostate and other cancers.

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acid which binds together proteins and starches (as well as calcium and others), making it difficult for the body to absorb. Though this is the type of soy found in many protein shakes and nutrition bars, “The body just can’t use it,” states Daniel.

And despite what nutrition labels say about protein content, the truth is that much of that protein won’t be absorbed, she adds. If the body cannot absorb this type of protein, then why do bodybuilders or time-crunched business people regularly consume it? “Clever marketing,” says Dr. Dean.

Allergies. According to the Mayo Clinic website, soy is one of the top eight most common food allergens, and these allergies affect 1 percent of the population. In most cases signs and symptoms of soy allergy are mild, states information on the website. But in rare cases, soy allergy can cause a lifethreatening allergic reaction. Deaths linked to soy allergy have occurred in people who also had both severe peanut allergy and asthma.

Optimum Health Resource Laboratories, which specializes in food allergy testing, states that soyrelated allergies increased 50 percent in a single year — the same year soy became a genetically modified food.

Genetic modification includes altering cell DNA that is artificially grown in a laboratory.

Approximately 80-90 percent of U.S. soy is genetically modified, and it’s uncertain yet how dangerous consumption of this type of food can be.

Thyroid dysfunction. While inadequate protein uptake may not be a major concern for soy proponents, researchers are taking umbrage with its ill-effects on thyroid function. The thyroid is a hormone-producing gland that regulates metabolism. This gland utilizes iodine, found in many foods, and converts it into thyroid hormones. The phytic acid in soy inhibits the body’s iodine absorption, which can lead to thyroid dysfunction, which may result in hampered immunity, dry skin, hair loss, constipation, weight gain and more.

“Many of my clients come to me and complain of hair loss and dry, flaky skin,” states Dr. Dean. “I often find that they eat soy on a regular basis. I then ask them to discontinue use for a few months and they no longer experience

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Clean nutrition report Dr. Jones adds that research culled over the past 10 years does not offer enough evidence to warrant the previous heart health claims according to today’s standards. “The majority of research suggests that a very large amount of (soy) protein, more than half the daily protein intake, may lower LDL cholesterol by a few percentage points when it replaces dairy protein or a mixture of animal proteins,” he continues. “This reduction is very small relative to the large amount of soy protein tested in these studies, and the data are mainly from hypercholesterolemic individuals. Thus, the direct cardiovascular health benefit of soy protein or isoflavone supplements is minimal at best.”

Currently the Food and Drug Administration states that those looking to lower cholesterol should consume at least 25 grams per day. However, an Australian study found that reductions in cholesterol due to soy were “statistically insignificant.” Your best bets for improving cholesterol profile: more fruit and vegetables, less sugar and saturated fats, omega 3 fish oil supplements, nuts, oats, pomegranate juice, red grapes, green tea, olive/canola oil, plant sterols and exercise that includes short bouts of high intensity.

But soy is a staple of Asian cuisine, no?

One of the biggest myths about soy safety is that we believe Asians consume it en masse. What soy manufacturers don’t want you to know is that the amount of soy consumed in Asian countries does not come close to the amount consumed in the U.S. For example, a survey of almost 5,000 men and women in Japan reported a mere 6-8 grams of daily soy consumption.

A cool, refreshing glass of soymilk has more than 225 grams of soy. One little soy protein bar may have 15 grams. “Soy is used as a condiment in these countries rather than a staple food,” adds Daniel. “However, in this country we have a large number of people who are eating soy for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.”

Break free When you’ve got big business with tremendous marketing budgets, it’s no surprise that sometimes the bottom dollar wins out over consumer interest.

While we may want to believe that the soy industry has provided us with healthy proteins, they’ve duped us into consuming their indigestible waste product. Unfermented soy is harmful — plain and simple. The numerous research reports should be enough to warrant your own investigation into the matter.

“People need to do their own selfexperimentation,” adds Dr. Dean. “Eliminate soy from your diet for a few weeks and see if you notice any differences.” But be savvy because soy is everywhere. Scour nutrition labels and you’ll be shocked at the alarming number of foods that contain this harmful waste product. This includes frozen dinners, whole-grain bread, nutrient supplements such as lycopene gel caps, salad dressing, and even fresh salad preparations at whole-foods markets; ask the prepared-foods manager if that tasty-looking pasta salad, cucumber salad, lentil salad or any salad just happens to contain soy. Z

MANAGING PAIN WITH A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE Lorraine Page Spending their days hunched over phones, tablets or computers and their free time at spin class or playing sports, millennials are the next generation poised to experience chronic pain. Millennials say acute and chronic pain are already interfering with their quality of life.

But while older generations are more likely to turn to medication for pain relief, millennials’ preferred method is lifestyle changes such as exercising, eating right, quitting smoking and losing weight, according to a nationwide survey commissioned by the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

The survey found that millennials were half as likely as baby boomers to have turned to opioids to manage pain, and 1 in 5 millennials regret that they used the highly addictive painkillers.

But while the results reflect a positive trend, they also reveal a knowledge gap. The survey found many millennials were more likely to obtain opioids inappropriately. Ten percent of millennials ages 18-36 obtained opioids through another household member’s prescription, compared to 3 percent of Gen Xers ages 37-52, 1 percent of baby boomers ages 53-71 and none of the silent generation ages 72-92.

Millennials were more likely to think it’s okay to take an opioid without a prescription. Nearly 30 percent of millennials thought it was OK to take an opioid without a prescription, compared to 20 percent of Gen Xers, 12 percent of baby boomers and 3 percent of the silent generation.

Millennials were less likely to dispose of leftover opioids safely. In fact, 1 in 5 millennials said they “did not know” the best way to safely dispose of opioids, and only 37 percent were aware that a collection center at a local police station, hospital pharmacy or drug store was the best method of disposal.

“It’s encouraging that millennials see the value of opting for safer and often more effective methods of managing pain,” said American Society of Anesthesiologists President Dr. Jeffrey Plagenhoef, “But clearly they are in need of further education because using opioids initially to treat pain can turn into a lifelong struggle with addiction.”

Learning how to manage pain is vital: 75 percent of millennials say they have had acute pain (which comes on suddenly and lasts less than three months) and nearly 60 percent have experienced chronic pain (which lasts longer than three months). The

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Clean nutrition report source of that pain is reflective of millennials’ lifestyle, including technology use, migraines and sports injuries.

People in severe pain who don’t find relief through lifestyle changes can see a physician who specializes in pain management, such as a physician anesthesiologist, to address pain before it interferes with quality of life.

To help all generations cope with pain, American Society of Anesthesiologists offers the following tips: take a break from devices and gaming. To avoid aches from smartphone, tablet and gaming overuse, use devices at eye level instead of looking down for long periods of time, which puts strain on your neck and back. To avoid digital eye strain, look away from the screen every 20 seconds and don’t sit too close.

Don’t be a weekend warrior. Whether you plan to hit the basketball court after many years away or do CrossFit weekly, ease into it. Warm up your muscles and stretch to avoid pain and injury. If you think you’ve been injured, see a pain management specialist right away.

Remember to move. Whether you’re in the library studying or at a desk job, get up and move at least once an hour, if not more.

Get healthy. Take charge of your health now and engage in healthy lifestyle changes before chronic pain sets in. Maintain a healthy weight and eat a balanced diet. Quit smoking.

Take and dispose of opioids the right way.

If prescribed opioids, ask questions about taking them appropriately. If you have leftover opioids, dispose of them at a collection center at a local police station, hospital pharmacy or drugstore. This will ensure that others who have not been prescribed the opioids do not have access to them. Z

Water REMEMBER to drink your quota of

water every day, fill a glass pitcher with water before you go to bed, and place it in the refrigerator. This is your water for the next day. It will already be chilled and ready to drink, sparing you from having to keep track of how many glasses you’re drinking

GMO&BABYS Joanne Baxter If you’re a parent, you’ve probably come across ongoing debates regarding the term “organic” and what should go into your child’s body. But, what about organic versus non-GMO? A recent study from Perrigo Nutritionals revealed that more than half of moms didn’t know that organic is inherently non-GMO. So, what’s the real difference? Organic is always non-GMO, but, unlike non-GMO, products labeled organic also guarantee: > No use of toxic pesticides or chemical/synthetic fertilizers. > No use of antibiotics or synthetic hormones, artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. > Support for organic farming practices and animal health and welfare. > Regulated by the federal government under the USDA. “It’s important to understand the difference between these labels so you can make the right nutritional decisions for your family,” says Jessica Turner, best-selling author and founder of the Mom Creative blog.

Looking beyond the non-GMO label doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach, especially since purchasing all organic can add up. As a mother of three, Turner believes the following products are worth the extra splurge for organic instead of just non-GMO for your child.

Baby food As a child starts eating solids, many organizations recommend going organic when it comes to the “dirty dozen,” such as apples, bell peppers, peaches, etc., to avoid

pesticides. Purchasing baby food? Make sure you look for the USDA Certified Organic label, not just a non-GMO certified label, to avoid all those chemicals.

Milk Milk is a nutrient powerhouse when it comes to your child’s nutrition with vitamin D, calcium and protein, but it can sometimes contain not-so-good ingredients.

Organic milk brands have no antibiotics, synthetic hormones, toxic pesticides or GMO anything. Going organic also supports a better life for the cows since they have access to pastures.

Infant formula The Perrigo Nutritionals study said 43 percent of moms purchased organic foods for their babies when they started eating solids, but only 10 percent purchased organic infant formula. So why not choose organic for your baby from the very beginning? Choosing organic brands may be worth the extra investment since it will ensure you are avoiding pesticides and hormones.

Skin care Skin care products, like lotion, diaper cream, shampoo and soap, are being absorbed into a baby’s bloodstream. Since their skin is more porous than adults’ skin, products from organic/natural lines may be worth the extra splurge to ensure your child is being exposed to the fewest chemicals.

At the end of the day, if you’re not sure, err on the side of buying organic since organic is always non-GMO. Z

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Susan Black Essential oils are nature’s pharmacy.

The top 10 essential oils enhance the quality of everyday life, much like fresh flowers. Each essential oil has unique therapeutic properties which have been documented by use throughout history. Because each oil contains active ingredients in a highly concentrated form, they should be diluted in oil or water before use.

Eucalyptus (eucalyptus globulus) As a decongestant, eucalyptus is helpful for opening up sinus and air passages and will encourage easier breathing. It’s a cooling and drying agent and helps stimulate thinking and increases concentration under emotional pressure. Uses: A few drops on the shower floor, turn on hottest water and turn down water temperature before getting in – great for waking up, decongestant, and soothing aches and pains. Also use in bath.

Geranium (pelargonium graveolens) The beautiful pale green oil of geranium is a balancing tonic for both skin and mind. It has been used to help regulate hormonal fluctuations, edema and fluid retention, especially during

Essential oil guidelines Baths: add 10-18 drops of essential oils to a warm, drawn bath. Make sure the door is closed to retain vapors. If your skin is very sensitive, blend the essential oils

menstrual cycle/menopause. Uses: Sprinkle a few drops on a tissue/hankie and inhale to dispel tension.

Lavender (lavender officinale) For centuries lavender has been used for bathing because of its pure, clean fragrance. It’s well-known for its balancing effect on the nervous system and may help insomnia. In ancient Rome, lavender was used to disinfect sickrooms and hospitals because of its antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Gattefosse, “the father of aromatherapy,” was working as a chemist when he accidently burned his arm. He immersed his arm in a vat of lavender essential oil and noticed that the painful symptoms were reduced and the burn healed quickly without scarring. Place directly on skin in cases of minor burns. Uses: Everyone should have a bottle of this extremely useful oil.

Lemon (citrus limon) This essential oil with its antiseptic and astringent properties is useful in personal care as well as a household cleaning agent. Uses: Add 3 drops of lemon oil to 3 ounces of water, shake and use to wipe down wooden furniture or children’s toys.

Peppermint (mentha piperita) Peppermint has a cooling effect, as the principal constituent is

into a base oil (sweet almond oil, olive oil, etc) before adding to your bath.

Massages: for 1 application, pour 2 tablespoons of a base oil into a saucer and add 37 drops of essential oils.

Inhalations: add 5-10 drops of essential oils to

a bowl of hot, steaming water. Place a towel over your head and the bowl to enclose the steam and inhale. Another quick way, especially good for eucalyptus during cold season, is to pour a few drops of essential oil on the shower floor and turn on

menthol. It’s an antiseptic and helps settle the digestive system. Uses: Peppermint is great for tired feet.

Sprinkle a few drops in a basin or bathtub with warm water for a soothing and cooling foot bath.

Rosemary (rosemarinus officinalis) Rosemary is stimulating, clarifying and an aid to memory. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was common practice for students to wear wreaths of rosemary on their heads to assist with studies.

Rosemary is both a physical and mental stimulant which makes it good for a morning shower. It’s also excellent in a bath at the end of a long and tiring day, as it eases muscular aches by increasing circulation. It’s used in haircare products — adding vitality and shine. Uses: Sprinkle a few drops on tissue and inhale during exams, or deadlines to aid in concentration and combat fatigue.

Ylang Ylang (canaga odorata) These exotic, highly fragrant blossoms are handpicked and distilled early in the morning when they are most fragrant. Ylang stimulates the release of endorphins which are known to produce euphoria and relieve pain. It’s a sensual fragrance and is known to be an aphrodisiac. Uses: bathing, perfume and massage. Z

steaming, hot water.

Close the bathroom door for maximum effect.

Readjust the water temperature before you get into the shower.

Compresses: add 5-10 drops of essential oils to a small bowl of warm water. Soak a piece of gauze in the water and

place on affected area.

Repeat. Keep the water warm.

Air Freshener: add 60100 drops of essential oils to the water in a 3-4 ounce bottle with spray top. Shake well to disperse oil into water and spray liberally into the room.

If the nutrition label says 0 g for trans fat, the food may still contain trans fat. The “0 g” pertains to the listed serving size.

According to the FDA, a product that has half a gram of trans fat can legally get away with claiming zero grams if the listed serving size is small enough.

So it’s possible that here you are, thinking that this food item has zero trans fats, and you’re munching on many serving sizes.

The way to find out if there are any trans fats whatsoever in a food, is to read the ingredients list. It won’t necessarily say trans fat. But if the ingredients list says partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, or vegetable shortening, then the food indeed contains trans fats.

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ESSENTIAL OILS

Zero grams’ of trans fat doesn’t mean no trans fat

Clean Nutrition Report

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on your brain health down the road. If your blood pressure is high, talk to your doctor about how to get it under control.

Drink moderately, if at all Alcohol may affect older adults differently than it had previously and even make them feel “high” without increasing the amount they drink. This can make you more likely to become confused or have accidents.

Get some shuteye Poor sleep can not only have serious physical effects but can impact memory and thinking, too. Seven to eight hours of sleep a night may help you keep your brain healthy.

Discover a new talent When you learn new things, you engage your brain and help reduce some risks to it. Challenge your brain on a regular basis by trying something you haven’t done before.

Stay connected Regular engagement in social activities may be good for your brain.

Stay connected and make it a point to keep in touch with your family and friends.

Talk to your doctor As you age, changes in brain function, including shortterm memory loss, are expected. If you have questions or concerns, ask your doctor at your next appointment.

Mind your meds A medication that didn’t trigger side effects in the past can cause an abnormal reaction and even change your cognitive function as you age. Talk to your doctor about all of your medications.

Maintain your balance Regular balancing and strengthening exercises may help reduce your chances of a fall-related head injury. Work to improve your balance and talk to your doctor if you fall. Z

Shake it up naturally IT ISN’T NECESSARY to buy

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR BRAIN AS YOU AGE Gabriel Bates It is important to remember the health of our most complex organ: our brain. While the brain constantly changes throughout our lives, it’s critical that we take steps to help us stay on top of our game as we age.

Help give your brain a boost in the right direction by implementing these 10 brainhealthy habits.

Get moving Studies show that being

physically active may help reduce some risks to your brain health. It doesn’t matter what activity you do as long as you get your heart pumping for 30 minutes most days.

Eat up By watching your diet, you may be able to help increase your chances of staying engaged as you age. Try eating a healthy, low solid-fat diet - one that is low in saturated and trans fats - with lots of veggies and fruits.

Know your blood pressure High blood pressure in midlife can have serious effects

a bunch of protein powders to create a good musclebuilding shake. Milk, yogurt and fruit add up to a lot of quality protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

For an extra touch, add some fiber via a supplement. When taking the shake after a workout, forgo the fiber supplement, as you want the fuel to hit your bloodstream as soon as possible.

However, when having the shake at any other time, add the fiber for slower digestion.

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good diet. And it is a good idea to snuff the inflammation from a workout with postworkout nutrition.

When it comes to addressing inflammation, there are quite a few nutritional elements that can really benefit your body. These foods have properties that abate the effects of inflammation. When it comes to nutritional choices to deal with inflammation, there are a lot of choices and many are delicious as well as nutritious.

Foods that have these anti-inflammatory properties include grapes, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, kiwis, olive oil, celery, ginger, garlic, curry powder, eggplant, nuts, tuna, salmon, mackerel, and green tea.

A few other nutritional choices also have powerful anti-inflammatory properties such as fish oil, cherries and almonds. Not everyone is going to get into eggplant or curry powder on a consistent basis, so let’s examine three tasty choices that fight the flame of inflammation and may be eaten frequently by most people.

INFLAMMATION Put out the infection with smart nutrition Dwayne Hines II One of the most damaging factors in the human body is inflammation. In fact, the emerging medical viewpoint is that inflammation may be at the core of a wide swath of health problems.

These include cancer issues, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, arthritis and related diseases, and even diabetes.

W hy is inflammation so alarming?

Inflammation has been found to tie directly into C-reactive protein (CRP). C-reactive protein appears to lie at the heart of the inflammation issue, and medical research is turning up more and more evidence it may be one of the main culprits in the impairment of the human body. This is certainly true for the heart, where C-reactive protein has been found to be a key indicator of heart disease.

In the human body, inflammation is initially a good thing. Without it your body wouldn’t heal as it properly needs to after an injury or illness. However, it can soon

overstay its welcome and becomes harmful instead of helpful. The longer it lingers, the worse the effect it has on the body. And the longer it hangs around, the more damaging effect it can have on longer-term health issues for the body as well. The collateral damage from inflammation is quite high.

Working out can exacerbate the inflammation issue at times. Workouts tear the body down (including boosting free radical activity), and the body needs rest and nutrition to build back up. If you get out of sync, working out too hard or too frequently without adequate rest, repair, nutrition and recuperation, you can add to the inflammation problem. The right response is crucial for fending off inflammation issues instead of exacerbating them. Rest and recuperation are important, and so is nutrition.

Although many people fight inflammation with drugs, nutrition is also a powerful tool without the downside of drugs. In fact, there are many avenues through which nutrition can address the inflam-mation and recovery issue. It is smart to put out the flame of inflammation with a

Cherries Cherries are tasty in a pie, but they also have some specific benefits against inflammation. Consider this study from the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology (2004; 2004(5): 253–258): In the recent years many studies on anthocyanins have revealed their strong antioxidant activity and their possible use as chemotherapeutics. The finding that sour cherries (Prunus cerasus L) (also called tart cherries) contain high levels of anthocyanins that possess strong anti-oxidant and antiinflammatory properties has attracted much attention to this species.

Sour cherries are not the only cherries with anti-inflammatory pro-perties. Bing cherries also have some anti-inflammatory effects without the tart flavor: Blood samples indicated that levels of three telltale indicators of inflammation — nitric oxide, C reactive protein and a marker for T cell activation — dropped 18 to 25 percent by the end of the cherry-eating stint.

Eating cherries is a great way to help

Smokers should eat apples every day APPLES MAY CUT lung cancer risk by up to 50 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. So if you smoke, eat an apple, including the skin, every day. If this is difficult, cut the apple into small segments that can be easily chewed and swallowed. If you must choose between apple juice and apple cider, buy the cider, cider is made with apple skins, and the juice is not.

Almonds Those who love to snack on almonds are enjoying one of the better inflammation fighting snacks on the market. A study cited in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (June 1, 2005) found that the subjects on a diet that included a high intake of almonds had a reduction in C-reactive protein levels that were 24 percent from the baseline, which is similar to the reduction achieved by taking a firstgeneration statin drug (16 percent).

Did you get that — almonds have a similar effect as first-generation statin drugs — without the disturbing side effects of the drugs.

Inflammation can cause problems with your body, and it’s a good idea to address the issue with solid nutri-tional intake. While you’re at it, consider making it flavorsome as well with cherries, strawberries and almonds. If you are creative, you should be able to come up with a salad or dessert that includes all three of these great inflammation fighters, along with an inflammation fighting main dish like salmon. And it’s especially important to put one or more of the inflammation-curbing foods to work after a workout for the best recovery. Put out that flame of inflammation with natural means via smart nutrition. Z

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Strawberries Another food that is both delicious and an inflammation fighter are strawberries. Strawberries are noted for lowering blood levels of Creactive protein, a biomarker for inflammation in the blood vessels. A study reported in the same issue of Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, comparing women who eat a lot of strawberries versus those who did not, revealed that strawberries can be very beneficial for health, including the area of fighting inflammation.

In light of this, consider making strawberries more than an occasional summer side dish.

Instead, focus on boosting your strawberry intake each week. And if you have a post-workout strawberry drink, use real strawberries instead of imitation.

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keep inflammation down. A bowl of fresh cherries in your post-workout meal is a super idea, particularly if you want to avoid the sugar in a cherry pie. Cherry juice (100 percent natural, organic) is also an option.

FDA PROBLEMS Arthur Remington What is going on at the Food and Drug Administration?

Even other government agencies are becoming concerned. The Government Accountability Office recently stated that the Food and Drug Administration does not have the data “to develop a complete and reliable estimate of the resources it needs.” And another government agency jumped on the FDA, starting an investigation of the FDA for conflict-of-interest allegations.

The Department of Health and Human Services looked into concerns about the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. Janet Woodcock, in regards to an ethics complaint over her collaboration with a pharmaceutical company.

The FDA also revealed that Daniel Schultz, the top regulator for medical devices, resigned after turmoil at the agency over claims that he was too cozy with industry erupted.

It is incredible that an agency like the FDA is unable to even estimate the resources required to do the job. This is a certain red flag that elements are seriously off track and need to be fixed.

If you have no idea of the resources you need, that means the parameters of your duty are also sketchy, and that is a bad situation for an agency charged with the health and well-being of the consumer to be in.

The charge of being cozy with industry dovetails with the lack of resources (particularly dedicated staff) that the FDA is wrestling with.

An AP storyline noted, “When certain pharmaceutical consulting firms want to hire a new employees, the first place they look is the Food and Drug Administration. What you have now is a big sucking sound of these staffers leaving FDA and going into the more lucrative side of the business.” Perhaps it is more of a collapsing sound? Z

What’s up, doc?

A study by the University of Arkansas showed that cooked carrots actually have stronger cancer-fighting potential than raw carrots.

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Clean nutrition report

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Susan Black I’ve been observing lately that when I am nurtured and filled up with passionate work, connected conversation, romantic interludes or listening to great music, I am not all that physically hungry. It’s like when I am more connected to myself and at peace with my surroundings, my desire for food shifts and changes.

We all know that emotions and hunger have so many parallels and consequences.

Oftentimes, I have to make myself eat in order to nurture and sustain myself because I’m so filled up inside, I’m simply not hungry. It makes perfect sense to me after hearing Joshua Rosenthal, the founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition discuss his unique theory about what he calls our “primary food.” He says that primary food is what feeds us the most, and oftentimes it is not actually, literally food.

Our primary food is our relationships, exercise, our work, and spirituality. If we are taking care of and expressing ourselves in

relationships, our connection to ourselves and our loved ones results in greater happiness and health. If we understand exercise to be a way to listen and care for our bodies, then we are administering good self-care which creates self-respect and other respect. If our work is aligned with our values and expresses who we are, we experience purpose and meaning.

If we have a spiritual practice that addresses the big questions and gives us a way to let go and see ourselves even for a moment as part of a greater whole, our life is infused with meaning, love and compassion. I agree with this primary food theory because I find when I slow myself down and am present to my hunger or lack of, I realize that there are so many other things that fulfill me.

What do I want to eat has become a weighty question as of late. The issues of organic or local, genetically modified organisms, consideration for how animals are being raised, and what are optimal food choices for our well-being requires a multitalented team of farmers, shamans and

environmentalists with doctorates in nutrition. So now more than ever, I check in with my emotional state and hunger level, and just notice and observe how and if that affects what I’m drawn to eat or buy.

When I heard Joshua talk about this, I thought about my eating habits and how they differ when I’m traveling, hanging out with loved ones, at a packed day at work or I’m alone and feeling sorry for myself. When I’m traveling, I barely eat, try to drink enough water and chant the loving kindness sutra while I fly. I’m so glad to arrive safely, that my appetite is back full force, and food and drink are a welcome celebration either through the chocolate almonds in the mini bar, room service (order whatever you want) or meeting someone for a meal (the world is our local farm raised oyster).

When I’m hanging out with loved ones as in family — the food and conversation are simultaneously critical, and depending on the depth of the conversation and the emotions that arise, so goes my interest in food portion and dessert — in which the quantity is related to the level of tension or relaxation.

Packed day at work means plenty of cups of tea and a power bar of some kind for lunch unless someone else offers to go out, and then a salad. When I’m alone and feeling sorry for myself — there’s nothing like organic vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Then I also noticed that when I am in love and spending time with that person, food is way down on the list. It’s the company and intimacy that feed me. When I’m exercising and in the groove (as in the second half of a 30 minute stationary bike ride), and I’m sweating and pouring water on myself and so happy that I made it to the gym, food doesn’t enter the picture. When I’m in an engaging meeting at work with coworkers and we’re into it — there’s no room for anything else. When I’ve been on meditation retreats, food is the innerconnectedness of all life and I eat mindfully with gratitude.

Once we understand our primary food, we’re able to interpret the multitude of nutritional theories. As Joshua said, “Nutrition is not that different from fundamental religion.” It seems like an extreme statement until you, a friend or someone at the next table, orders the organic greens (are they local?), with the dressing on the side, and substitutes wild salmon for free-range chicken (because wild is better than free-range), and forget the dressing if the olive oil is organic and local, and then can I have that with a sprinkle of sel de gris from the Isle of Re? We’re behaving like a bunch of self-deluded crazy people. Stop the madness. Take a deep breath and a minute to ask yourself what you really want or need.

The truth is one person’s food is another person’s poison. We have to know ourselves and our own bodies to guide us to what is best for us. Z

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As a child Gregory Kunin suffered from persistent headaches. His father, Richard Kunin, MD, had begun researching nutrition in his work and decided to test his son to see if he could find a cause for the headaches. Through testing, Gregory showed sensitivities to sugar and he had lead poisoning. In response to the vitamins Dr. Kunin prescribed for his son, the headaches disappeared.

Dr. Kunin was no lightweight in the field of nutrition medicine and with Dr. Linus Pauling, in 1976 founded the Orthomolecular Medical Society in San Francisco. In his own clinic today, Dr. Kunin combines nutrition, detoxification and adaptive support in a preventive approach to health care.

The Kunins originally developed a line of pills in supplement form, but over time they moved to a supplement form in powder to mix with water. They continually heard the same reactions to taking pills: “I hate taking pills; if I don’t take them with food I get an upset stomach.” And of course the big one: too many pills to keep track of and take properly. Their aim was to develop a powder that was both simple to take by mixing with water, and tasted good, and rapidly absorbed by the body.

Dr. Kunin began working in the 1960’s in the areas of biochemistry and physiology and was researching nutrient levels. By the 70’s he had begun studying toxins like heavy metals like mercury and lead, moving on to include the study of pesticides. His work expanded to blood circulation and people at risk for clotting problems, specifically those patients with elevated homocysteine,

fibrinogen and Lipoprotein-a. This foundation of research over the years led to the development of their first product.

Dr. Kunin has gone on to research genetic mutations in his patients that cause “their individual biochemical individuality and their special nutrition needs.”

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In the brain Glycine has a calming effect and is an antidote for anxiety and muscle spasm; it works as a normalizer for combining muscle energy and endurance with a calm, relaxed mood. trimethylglycine, a source of methyl groups, is a key to muscle energy, nerve transition and cell membrane repair, and it also plays a role in reducing risk of heart attack. Acetyl Cysteine works to help protect cell membranes against the wear and tear that comes with aging. Coenzyme Q 10 has a role in supporting cell energy and protecting against free radical damage. Also packed into a dose of “Drink Your Vitamins” 001 ate vitamin C, Arginine, Lysine, B vitamins, Vitamin A-Retinol and Selenium. A complete Multivitamin Formula.

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Clean Nutrition Report

FOODS THAT HEAL Smart eating tactics to get healthy, lean and fit TACTIC

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT Dr. Case Adams

During the Dark Ages of medicine, dying from heart disease meant the heart died. “He died from a broken heart” was a popular saying.

Those days are gone, yet the mystery of heart disease has continued for many.

Actually, most heart disease is vascular disease — also described as cardiovascular disease. Most problems attributed to a weak and/or diseased heart are caused by damaged blood vessels.

Like any part of the body, when the heart is deprived of nutrition — and oxygen rich blood — it becomes weaker.

Decreased blood flow to the heart over a period of time can thus weaken the heart.

And shutting off blood flow to the heart due to an occlusion (clogging) results in ischemia — heart attack.

When narrowed arteries that feed the brain become clogged, this causes a stroke.

The release of thrombin — blood vessel wall scar tissue — can clog 1 or more of the tiny vessels feeding brain tissues. The result is often brain damage.

Damaged and narrowed arteries feeding the heart is coronary artery disease. Likewise, cor pulmonale heart disease is the obstruction of lung-heart blood vessels, often related to high blood pressure.

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is caused by a lack of elasticity in the blood vessels — produced by the hardening (scarring) of damaged blood vessel walls.

Varicose veins occur when the blood vessels that return blood to the heart become damaged. The lifter valves within the veins become weak, and don’t pump all the blood back to the heart. This accumulates blood in the veins and surrounding tissues — seriously engorging veins.

Fibromuscular dysplasia, or FMD, is a swelling of the blood vessel walls. Research from the Mayo Clinic has found that at least 10 million Americans may unknowingly suffer from FMD.

So what is vascular disease?

Atherosclerosis is the typical scenario relating to blood vessel damage. Atherosclerosis occurs when the cells of blood vessel walls are injured by: oxidized low density lipoproteins (LDL), oxidized very low density lipoproteins (VLDL), and other oxidative radicals.

The damage produces an immune response to heal the injury site. The immune system sends macrophages, T-cells, fibrin, plasmin, platelet-aggregating factor and other supporting players to the site to patch it up.

The result is not unlike a scab, but it occurs inside the walls of blood vessels. This scabbing, or plaque, hardens the blood vessel walls and removes their elasticity and flexibility.

It also results in a narrowing of the lumen — the opening through which blood flows. This loss of elasticity and narrowed lumen size results in high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.

How do we know if we have vascular disease?

There are several tests that can reveal — by measuring inflammation markers — whether we have damaged, hardened and/or scarred blood vessels.

These inflammation markers include homocysteine, fibrinogen and C-reactive protein. High levels of these indicate an increased immune response to blood vessel wall damage.

As inflammation increases, the risk of thrombosis (and embolism) increases. Two test markers for this are beta-thromboglobulin and platelet factor 4. These indicate increased risk of heart attack, stroke and aneurysms.

Physicians also measure cholesterol levels to gauge the oxidizing potential of LDL and VLDL. The ischemia-modified albumin marker measures a combination of abnormal cholesterol, vascular damage, inflammation, hypertension and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar — which can increase VLDL

levels).

The last National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) National Cholesterol Education Report detailed guidelines for serum cholesterol levels.

The report showed that risk for vascular damage increases when total cholesterol is: more than 200 mg/dL, triglycerides are more than 150 mg/dL, HDL-C is outside the 40 to 60 mg/dL range, and LDL-C is above 100 mg/dL. LDL levels above 130 mg/dL warrant therapeutic intervention, according to the report’s guidelines.

Cardiovascular disease is still the number 1 killer in the U.S., and it is anticipated to remain number 1 through 2020. The American Heart Association has reported that 1/3 of Americans — about 80 million — have some form of cardiovascular disease, and almost half of Americans have cholesterol levels that increase their risk for heart disease.

The link between diet and vascular disease Why is cholesterol so important?

Remember that LDL cholesterol (and VLDL) easily oxidizes, and becomes a free radical that damages blood vessel walls.

Foods that create high levels of LDL/VLDL in the body include fried foods, overly processed foods, sugary foods, saturated fats, hydrogenated oils — especially partially hydrogenated oils — and low fiber refined foods. Because the fatty acids in these foods have been degraded by high heat and other processing, they lend to higher levels of LDL/VLDL. A lack of fiber in the diet also lends to higher levels of LDL/VLDL. This is because fiber helps regulate and maintain healthy cholesterol levels by attaching to LDL/VLDL in the gut.

Dietary strategies A number of dietary strategies can significantly lower LDL/VLDL cholesterol, thereby reducing vascular damage.

Even the conservative NHLBI has suggested “therapeutic lifestyle changes,” including reducing saturated fats to less than 7 percent of calories and increasing soluble fiber to 10-25 g/day. It also recommends plant sterols as “therapeutic options to enhance LDL lowering.”

Let’s clarify these a bit further.

Reducing saturated fat levels is an easy one. Most saturated fats are derived from animal products, so we can easily reduce saturated fat content in our diet by scaling these foods back.

Increasing soluble fiber means eating more fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and replacing processed foods with the real thing — whole foods. This means preparing whole yourself, a complete meal, rather than eating it in the form of a frozen dinner.

Most nutritionists agree that 35-45 grams of fiber a day are important, with about 3-quarters of that being insoluble.

Yet, it is the soluble fiber that is most known for its cholesterol reducing abilities.

Sterols and polyphenols Plant sterols make up the cell membranes of plant cells, and soluble plant fibers contain sterols.

Research from the University of Toronto has established that plant sterols reduce LDL cholesterol levels.

Plant derived phenols have also been shown to reduce lipoprotein oxidation and LDL/VLDL levels.

Sterols and phenols do this by stabilizing the oxidized radicals that can damage blood vessels.

They connect to and carry these “bad guys” that damage blood vessel walls out of the body.

Some of the polyphenols showing significant LDL lowering benefits in the research include those from green tea, grapes and pomegranates. Most antioxidant fruits contain polyphenols and/or sterols.

Other heart healthy foods Oats and barley contain significant portions of soluble fibers called beta-glucans. A 2007 analysis from the UK concluded that oats lowered total cholesterol and low density lipoproteins an average of 7 mg/dL among 10 different clinical studies.

Despite its saturated fat content, healthy dairy reduces LDL. A study of 51 healthy adults illustrated that CLA lowered VLDL-C and triglycerides.

Probiotic dairy such as yogurt and kefir have shown additional benefit. These are rich in the blood-pressure lowering peptides valine-prolyl-proline (VPP) and tripeptide isoleucine-prolineproline (IPP).

Greens for immune defense An October 2011 report in the journal Cell found green vegetables to be a source of a chemical signal that is essential to a fully functioning immune system.

Green vegetables ensure that immune cells in the gut and the skin, known as intraepithelial lymphocytes, function properly. Just one more reason to eat your greens!

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We can link most disorders related to heart disease or cardiovascular disease to 1 issue: damaged and weakened blood vessels: vascular disease, in other words.

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Clean Nutrition Report USDA research has shown that polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs) can reduce cholesterol, high blood pressure and artery damage. PMFs are found in citrus fruits, especially in the peels.

Apples have significant LDL lowering effects because of their high pectin levels. Pectin is rich in soluble fiber. Pectin has been shown to significantly absorb and remove LDL/VLDL in the gut.

Avocado is good for vascular health. Avocados are rich in monounsaturated fats. They have been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol by as much as 18 percent.

Another vascular friendly food is coconut and coconut oil.

Coconut oil’s medium chain fatty acids have been shown to lower lipoprotein-A levels and reduce artery plaque.

Garlic and onions have also been shown to reduce cholesterol levels and increase artery health.

Many ascribe this benefit to their high levels of the antioxidant quercetin.

Vitamin D Vitamin D has been shown to significantly reduce artery damage. A 15-year study that followed 559 adult women presented at an American Heart Association’s High Blood Pressure Research Conference found that vitamin D deficient women had triple the likelihood of developing hypertension.

About 10-15 minutes a day of sun exposure produce the healthiest form of vitamin D, D3.

Vascular disease and exercise Exercise is also critical to preventing vascular disease.

Why? Because exercise increases blood flow, increases the nutrient content of tissues, helps slow oxidation, and expands and contracts blood vessel walls.

“Use it or lose it” is an apt statement when it comes to blood vessel health. When we exercise, our faster heart rate and blood flow increase the elasticity of blood vessels.

The bottom line is that by eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, we should be able to dodge much of the vascular damage bullet that most Westerners face. We’ll feel a heck of a lot better too. Z

TACTIC –— —–

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WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT ANTIOXIDANTS? Natasha Linton Is the word antioxidant just another health industry marketing phrase? Because we hear it so much, is it just another cool trend to even use it in a sentence and drink the juices that contain antioxidants?

All over now in ads on TV, radio and in our neighborhood supermarkets, we see that word.

What exactly are antioxidants other than the content of some foods and drinks in hip designed packaging? Are they really that good for us?

Absolutely.

On a daily basis and no matter where we live, our bodies are exposed to all sorts of intruders that aim to only make us sick and damage our bodies. These intruders are called free radicals: unstable oxygen molecules. Free radicals damage cells and cause harm to the immune system. Also, they can speed up the aging process.

Yes, if you don’t eat properly, your body’s aging process can speed up and thus make you look older than your true age. By eating properly (consuming sufficient amounts of antioxidants), not only would this help minimize premature aging of the skin, but it would also possibly reverse the effects of an aging mind.

Besides aging, among the other harmful effects of free radicals are heart disease, cancer and diabetes. In addition, recovery from athletic performance is negatively affected.

Let’s take a deeper look at free radicals Free radicals are formed by a process called oxidation (damage caused by oxygen). This is the same process that causes rust on metals. You can slow down the oxidation process by consuming antioxidants.

Exposure to toxins such as cigarette smoke, pollution, chemicals and radiation aid in the development of free radicals. These exposures cause the oxygen molecules in our bodies to break down to eventually form the reactive molecule known as a free radical.

As science discovers how to better fight free radicals, we will be able to improve our lifespan by a number of years.

Recommended preventive measures are to avoid smoking, stick with a well-designed exercise program and to stay away from pollutants, if possible. We must take extra measures to ensure that we are indeed protecting ourselves. As with any health and wellness goal, diet is an important part, especially a diet containing plentiful antioxidants.

Antioxidants, which neutralize free radicals,

are natural substances that we can use to fight and prevent any damage to cells caused by the unstable oxygen molecules. They also stop the chemical reactions that lead up to the creation of free radicals.

So be sure to increase consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts and fish, and reduce eating processed foods and items with white sugar or high fructose corn syrup.

Betacarotene ( a form of vitamin A) Carotenes are found in plant foods. They not only protect plants, but also help protect the body from free radicals.

Sources of betacarotene include apricots, carrots, pumpkin, cantaloupe and broccoli. A darker color of the fruit or vegetable means more betacarotene content.

Vitamin C Vitamin C helps the body produce collagen, which is important to skin health and skin aging.

It also helps the body absorb iron. Vitamin C also helps wounds repair rather quickly.

Sources of vitamin C include many fruits (citrus and strawberries), vegetables (Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, etc.) and also beef, poultry and fish.

Vitamin E Some may say that vitamin E is known as the answer to anti-aging. Sources of vitamin E include mangoes, eggs, sunflower seeds, walnuts, hazelnuts, sesame oil and whole grains. Vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and corn are other great sources.

Green tea Green tea is one of the most potent antioxidants.

It reduces risks of skin damage and skin cancer due to radiation, and the risks of lung cancer due to smoking. Green tea is unprocessed, while black tea and oolong tea are partially processed.

Berries From berries you will get vitamins and minerals full of antioxidants. For fighting cancer and heart disease, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries are great choices. Blueberries also help keep the aging process away.

Ginkgo biloba Ginkgo extract has been known to reduce clots and reduce blood pressure. It also hunts and destroys free radicals and prevents the formation of them in the first place.

Another duty of ginkgo biloba is to protect the brain, as it promotes proper blood flow to the brain and improves alertness. Z

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BE MINDFUL WHEN YOU EAT Aimee Hughes Mindfulness in relation to eating is necessary now more than ever.

We live in a time when we are constantly plugged in and over-stimulated. This affects every aspect of our life — especially our relation to food. We see this in the widespread epidemic of eating disorders and obesity.

The “super-sized” nation is at the opposite end of the spectrum in relation to mindful eating. Being mindful means deliberately paying attention to our experiences, both internal and external. It is awareness without judgment or criticism.

This is a tall order given the state of our food system. It can be done, of course. One just needs to wander off the beaten path.

Are you hungry?

Before you sit down to eat a meal, ask yourself if you’re truly hungry.

Take inventory. Maybe drink a couple glasses of water first. Too often we eat because we are tired, bored or distracted.

You want to be hungry but not famished, to avoid scarfing down everything in sight. You may wish to eat meals at the same time every day, thereby giving your body a schedule its clock can rely upon.

Clear distractions It’s amazing how many of us take our meals with our heads buried in cell phones or a dizzying array of other distractions. I often find myself engrossed in a novel while having lunch or dinner. Many a morning meals are spent checking e-mails or reading news articles on the computer.

I am also guilty of vegging out in front of the TV with dinner to watch a movie or my favorite show.

Does this sound at all familiar? If so, you are not alone. This type of mindless eating is a pastime shared by millions.

Create a sacred space Clear the kitchen table that is so often cluttered with mail, magazines, newspapers and other distractions. Set a mood that is pleasing to you. Give your meals meaning by creating a ritual out of them. Light a few candles and set the table in a way that is pleasing to your aesthetic.

Maybe you like a centerpiece of fresh cut flowers, or perhaps a clean white tablecloth or some handmade pottery from which to eat and drink.

When you have a beautifully set table, you will truly enjoy sitting at it. Sitting is key as well.

Get centered After you sit down, take several deep breaths. It’s best to eat while you are fully relaxed. You will eat slower and digest more efficiently.

Be grateful. Say a prayer or give a blessing to show gratitude for the food and people and animals that played a part in bringing it to your table.

Be aware of the connection between the earth, cultural practices, living beings and the impact that your food choices have on each of these aspects of life.

Silence Try taking your meal like a monk — in silence. If you have meals as a family, take the first 5 minutes to eat in silence. You’ll find that you’ll better appreciate your food when eating without external noise and will therefore eat less.

Slow down Pause for a couple minutes in the middle of your meal. Take time to

Hope for sufferers of hepatic encephalopathy A study in the American Journal of Nutrition offers some hope for those suffering from hepatic encephalopathy, a condition associated with liver cirrhosis. In this condition, liver function is extremely poor and the liver has a hard time clearing toxins from the body.

Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of the disease. Researchers found that by taking the supplement acetylL-carnitine, a nutritional supplement that has neuroprotective benefits, mitochondrial energetics and function were improved, as was overall liver function.

The supplement also improved the liver’s ability to remove toxins from the body. Patients in the study showed a decrease in both physical and mental fatigue and an increase in physical activity.

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TACTIC –— —–

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Clean Nutrition Report breathe a bit more and further relax.

Practice chewing your food. See what it feels like to take 20-30 chews for each mouthful of food. You may also want to take smaller bites. This will certainly slow you down.

Use cutlery or chopsticks You will inevitably slow down if you use a fork and knife and set them down from time to time.

Chopsticks help us eat slower, as it’s nearly impossible to eat a whole lot at once. They also provide us a challenge and therefore something else to meditate upon while we eat.

Get in touch with your senses Think about eating in a way that nourishes not only your body, but also your soul. Pay attention to texture, taste, smell and appearance. Appreciate the beauty inherent in food and express that to yourself and the people around you.

Go for quality over quantity It’s better to spend money on high quality food rather than spending less on junky food that fails to nourish you while encouraging binge eating. All those refined carbohydrate snacks are at the center of mindless eating.

With smaller quantities of food you really enjoy, you will be satisfied with less.

Expand your culinary horizons When cooking is a pleasure, so is eating.

Experiment with various food traditions. Cook a new dish every week and see how you pay more attention to its unique tastes, aromas and textures. The cooking process itself can be relaxing and enjoyable.

Knowing exactly what goes on your plate will further encourage a peaceful state of mind as you eat. Z

THE GREAT PROTEIN DEBATE Is protein perhaps the greatest anti-obesity weapon we have?

Jade Teta and Keoni Teta Along with politics and religion, you can add nutrition to the list of topics to avoid at your next cocktail party. This is especially true of the latest misunderstood bad boy of the nutrition world: protein.

Fat, carbs and protein In the 1980s it was fat. In the ‘90s and 2000s it was carbs. Now, you can add protein to the list of macronutrients experts are telling you to avoid. The experts made mistakes then, and are about to make the biggest nutrition blunder of them all with their

Lessons from fat It’s not that these researchers are not acting on what they think is good information. The 1980s fat scare was based first on rat studies showing high fat diets induced atherosclerosis.

Population studies also showed a correlation. This correlation was attached to cholesterol and without the whole story; the fat phobic message was born.

The problem was that neither animal studies nor population studies can prove causation, and often both forms of research can be misleading. This is what happened with fat. Over the ensuing years we learned about the differences between saturated fat and other types of fat.

We learned about hydrogenated oils, which many of the initial fat studies did not control for. We learned about the protective effect of omega-3 fats. We learned there is more to cholesterol and fat than total amounts. In short, we learned we were wrong, but not before we created an epidemic of carb gorging that correlates perfectly with the huge spike in obesity and diabetes we have experienced since the ‘80s fat scare.

Good research gone bad Now we find the same things that happened with fat and carbs happening with protein. It sounds good: “Huge population studies on Chinese populations link protein with cancer,” or, “Animal studies prove high protein diets cause cancer.”

But they don’t mention the same data shows low protein diets are also correlated with increased risk of cancer. What they don’t say is the animals were poisoned first and then fed high protein diets. No distinction is made between the dairy protein casein and other animal proteins. They don’t explain why intervention trials on humans show protein substituted for fat or carbs in human diets usually makes people healthier.

It’s important to briefly discuss the different types of research so people can understand why

nutrition can be so confusing. First are the animal studies. Mice have metabolisms that are similar enough to humans to get us headed in the right direction. However, they also have metabolisms dissimilar enough to not draw clear conclusions.

In other words, if an animal study shows something, we should not get too excited, but instead try it out in humans. Then if it works, we can get a little excited. If we then try it out on a lot of humans and it still works, we can get very excited.

Population studies, called epidemiological studies, are the most difficult to draw conclusions from. The reason? People and the worlds they live in are so complex.

If some Chinese eat more protein than others, are they also more stressed? Do they sleep less? Is the protein they eat different from other types of protein? There is no way to control for all this vast complexity.

Here is an example. Non-calorie sweeteners are highly correlated with obesity. Does this mean they make people fat? Or does it mean overweight people are the ones who use them? The more likely truth is the latter, not the former.

To really assess whether something is valid or not, intervention studies should be done. These are studies done on humans where one group is given something while the other group is not. Everything else is left the same. These studies tell us the most because we can be more certain that what we see is a result of the intervention and not something else.

Protein causes cancer?

One of the most popular works on protein and its supposed negative effects is the China Study. This research is actually very important research and will go a long way towards helping us understand nutrition.

Where we believe it goes wrong is its assumptions. Just like the fat studies in the ‘80s, this research is being interpreted as proof protein causes cancer and should be avoided. This is a big mistake.

The China Study was based on two lines of research, one on animals and the other a population study. The animals were essentially poisoned (with aflatoxin) and then given a low or high protein diet.

Cancers were increased in the

protein fed group.

Does this show protein is a cause of cancer? Would a high carb or high fat diet compared to a low fat or low carb diet show the same thing? Given cancer is a fast growing tissue, wouldn’t any extra nutrition increase cancer in a susceptible animal? In other words, this proves nothing and many questions remain.

The population studies showed Chinese consuming higher protein diets got more of certain types of cancer compared to those eating less protein. Is this because of the protein? Could it be that in China much of the protein sources are high in nitrates and other preservatives?

In looking at the research you can find certain types of cancer are more prevalent in higher protein eaters. Other types of cancers are more common in those who eat less protein. If we are to blame higher incidence of some cancers on protein consumption, then we must blame higher rates of other cancers on low protein intake. In reality, neither of these assumptions makes much sense.

It may be surprising to know that some data shows a low protein diet is associated with an increased risk of cancer. That is right; in the very research used by the author it can be clearly shown that higher protein diets are protective against the initiation of cancer.

It also may be surprising to learn that another study, by researchers involved in the China Study, also contradicts the fact that there is any difference between animal and plant proteins when the proteins are complete.

This is not to refute the importance of the work highlighted in the China Study; it’s simply to say there is much more to this story, and the associations of protein and cancer are not at all clear. However, the association with obesity and cancer is very clear.

Protein, obesity, cancer and everything else Here is the most important consideration. Obesity is the single biggest heath challenge in human history and drastically increases the risk of the major killers: heart disease, stroke and cancer. In fact, the best way to increase your chances of getting sick, becoming dysfunctional in old age and dying an early death is to get and stay fat.

Here is where protein comes in.

Feed your heart with fiber Soluble fiber, vitamins and minerals found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains reduce total and LDL (bad) cholesterol. The typical American diet provides us with approximately 11 grams of fiber a day, whereas the American Dietetic Association recommends 20-35 grams daily.

Get into the habit of starting your day with a nice warm bowl of oatmeal. Oats are very nutritious and wholegrain filled, with betaglucan, a soluble fiber that soaks up cholesterol and pushes it through the digestive system so that it’s not absorbed.

Oats also contain an antioxidant that counteracts the destructive and atherosclerosisinducing damage of unstable free radicals.

Choose an orange for an afternoon snack and incorporate green smoothies containing water, kale, bananas, walnuts and a sweetener such as Stevia or raw honey.

Eating one large salad a day is also a great way of ensuring adequate fiber intake.

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new take on protein.

The protein crusaders have arrived, and they are every bit as fanatical and misinformed as their fat phobic and carb avoiding counterparts. But before you can understand where things are headed and why they are wrong, it will help to know where we have been.

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Clean Nutrition Report Of all the macronutrients, it’s not only the most filling, it’s also the most likely to control cravings and balance blood sugar levels. In short, it’s perhaps the greatest antiobesity weapon we have.

As shown in a recent study, substituting protein calories for fat and carb calories aids not only weight loss, but also more importantly fat loss. Dieters who ate more protein had reduced insulin levels, less hunger, decreased food cravings and were able to maintain their muscle mass, resulting in less rebound weight gain.

In a study published online, protein intake, and specifically branched chain amino acids (BCAA), were shown to increase longevity. Much of this effect is based on protein’s ability to detoxify the human body, aid weight loss and fat loss, help maintain muscle mass and bolster antioxidant defenses.

Another study on protein and its effect on the acid base balance of the body and bone density calls into questions old beliefs and biases. The study was published in Nutrition Journal (Vol. 9 # 72). Participants receiving a high protein meal replacement twice daily were compared to those who were fed a non-protein meal replacement.

Each group was followed for 12 months.

The researchers wanted to look at bone density as well as liver and kidney function.

What they found was no difference at all in any markers. This was despite a level of protein many claim is detrimental.

It’s interesting to note how persistent these negative views on protein are. The issue should have been put to rest in a review article in the Sports Nutrition Review Journal.

The title of the study was High protein weight loss diets and purported negative effects: where is the evidence?

The research in this study showed there is no evidence that higher protein diets have any adverse effects on liver, kidney or bone health. Given the fact protein can decrease the need to overeat and help balance blood sugar, it may actually be preventative for illnesses affecting these organs. The number one cause of disease for liver and kidney is diabetes, a disease of excess sugar more than of excess protein.

Final thoughts The protein story is far from over, but for serious exercise enthusiasts and exercise professionals, it’s more important than ever to watch this trend. The same overzealous scapegoat mentality that dogged fat and carbs is now descending on protein.

It’s important to educate fat loss seekers and fitness enthusiasts on the benefits of protein. Many of the claims being made, even by prominent researchers, are misinformed at best and inaccurate at worst.

Perhaps with a little common sense and selfeducation we can avoid another nutrition blunder that simply leads us further into the obesity abyss. Z

IS HYDROLYZED PROTEIN HEALTHY? Casey Adams Proteins are composed of very long chains of amino acids. Sometimes hundreds and even thousands of amino acids can make up a typical protein. The body’s enzymes break apart these chains through an enzyme reaction called proteolysis.

Proteolysis breaks down proteins into amino acids and small groups of amino acids called polypeptides. This is also called cleaving. As enzymes break off these polypeptides or individual amino acids from proteins, they replace the protein linkages with water molecules to stabilize the peptide or amino acid. This process is called enzymatic hydrolysis.

Breaking away the peptides or amino acids allows the body to utilize the amino acid or polypeptide to make new proteins within the body.

The body assembles its own proteins from these amino acids and polypeptides.

The body’s protein assembly is programmed

by DNA and RNA. For this reason, the body

must recognize the polypeptide combinations. Strange polypeptide combinations can burden the body, especially if the body does not have the enzymes to break those peptides further apart to extract their amino acids.

While some enzymes can break apart multiple proteins and polypeptides, some proteins, such as gliadins (gluten-type proteins), require special enzymes to be properly broken down into body-friendly peptides and aminos. Protein cleaving enzymes are called proteases.

Food manufacturers can synthetically break down proteins by extrusion, heating and blending with a variety of processing aids, including commercial enzymes. These synthetic processes break apart the peptides in the proteins and, as water is integrated into the process, hydrolysis results. This produces a food with hydrolyzed proteins.

These hydrolyzed proteins will contain a number of peptides that may be useful to the body, but they may also not be useful. Some may even be rejected by the body’s immune system, causing food intolerance or even

And let’s not forget the most important food for infants, breast milk.

So just what is this glycemic index?

The glycemic index of foods refers to their ranking, according to how quickly or slowly their consumption affects blood sugar levels. High-glycemic index (H-GI) foods cause a quick reaction because they break down rapidly during digestion.

Blood sugar (glucose) levels rise promptly after you eat these foods. H-GI foods are sometimes referred to as “quick-acting” carbs, or “simple” carbs.

adolescence to see the long-term effects of these types of formulations. While hydrolyzed formula may be helpful to infants who are otherwise allergic to cow’s milk, there are plenty of other healthy feeding options available for children, such as almond milk and rice milk — and let’s not forget the most important food for infants, breast milk.

Today many of our processed foods are supplemented with hydrolyzed soy proteins. These are often added to increase the protein content of the food. Again, these are hydrolyzed using enzymes that may produce unnatural combinations of peptides. The enzymes used may also cause issues when this type of soy is eaten.

While there is little absolute proof, it is possible that hydrolyzed soy has resulted in people becoming intolerant to soy in the same way the research has shown for hydrolyzed wheat proteins.

To be fair, a number of studies have shown that people who are allergic or intolerant to soy can eat

hydrolyzed soy protein. This also goes for fermented soy products. In both cases, the sensitive proteins have been broken down by hydrolysis, just as described above with infant formula.

Naturally processed soy — such as tempeh or tofu — has been naturally cultured and fermented with nature’s probiotic organisms, and will not have these issues.

These foods are prepared using traditional methods, and we can see the positive results of these kinds of soy foods in the epidemiological research over the past 2 decades that have shown that people who eat naturally cultured soy products such as tofu and tempeh have significantly lower rates of heart disease and colon cancer.

The issue here is that to be on the safe side, we should carefully abide by nature’s laws when it comes to how we process foods.

Using unnatural means to break down and break apart nutrients produces foods that can lead to food sensitivities and even food allergies. Z

A classic example is orange juice, though some GI listings report the value for juices to be moderate rather than high. The more concentrated the juice, the higher the GI.

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food allergies.

French laboratory researchers have found that hydrolyzed wheat proteins from skin conditioners produced skin sensitivity.

Eventually this sensitivity crossed over to becoming allergic to wheat proteins. In other words, hydrolyzed wheat proteins in skin treatments are not always readily accepted by the immune system.

Once the body becomes sensitive to some hydrolyzed wheat proteins, this sensitivity can cross over to the same sensitivity to those proteins in wheat foods.

Researchers from France’s Center for Research in Grignon tested nine women who had skin contact sensitivity to cosmetics containing hydrolyzed wheat proteins. Six were found to react with either skin hives or anaphylaxis to different products (including foods) containing hydrolyzed wheat proteins.

The whole group was also found to have allergies to wheat flour or gluten-type proteins.

Eventually, they became sensitive to unmodified grain proteins.

Spanish researchers found that enzymatic hydrolysis of lentils and chickpeas produced allergens for four out of five allergic patients in their research.

The commercial enzymes used by many food manufacturers to hydrolyze proteins may also stimulate allergic responses. Danish researchers tested 19 commercially available enzymes typically used in the food industry on 400 adults with allergies. It was found that many of the enzymes produced histamine allergic responses among the patients.

Hydrolyzing proteins through manufacturing processes creates molecules that the immune system may not recognize. Once the immune system launches an immune response to the molecule, it will remember the molecule as an allergen, even if they are part of foods once accepted by the body.

At the same time, research has shown that hydrolyzed formulas can be a viable alternative to cow’s milk formulas for infants allergic to cow’s milk. In a number of studies by various medical universities, these hydrolyzed formulas appear to be safe for children.

Hydrolyzed formulations have included cow’s milk, soy milk, rice milk and others. In most cases, however, the studies have not followed the children into

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Clean Nutrition Report

WHY WE CRAVE BAD FOOD Jill Coleman In an effort to begin to curb and prevent cravings, it is important to first understand the pathology of how cravings develop. They manifest differently for everyone, from preferential foods to specific tastes or textures and even times of

day. Some people grab salty, crunchy options while others crave fatty foods, while still others pine for sweets, chocolate, alcohol or stimulants like coffee.

The differences in what people crave is not coincidence; it is based on chemical messengers and brain neurohormones, or neurotransmitters. Frequently, physicians will give these chemicals to patients for

depression, anxiety, mood disorders, etc., either directly or though a manipulation such as an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) drug.

At any one time, there can be sufficiency, deficiency or dominancy of each neurotransmitter unique to the individual, and often, specific cravings can denote neurotransmitter status.

Dopamine One of the stimulating neurotransmitters, dopamine, energizes and motivates, helping us focus and allowing us to experience pleasure. People with healthy dopamine status tend to be focused, hardworking overachievers who can seemingly eat whatever they want and not put on much weight.

However, dopamine insufficiency or dominancy may lead to excessive cravings. Low status is usually indicated by an inability to focus, low energy and general apathy. People who have low dopamine-signaling may crave foods that help bring their energy up and stimulate them. Thus, common cravings include sweets, coffee, soda and chocolate to facilitate brain stimulation.

On the other hand, people with excessive dopamine-signaling will crave similar foods to augment their already heightened mental stimulation.

The danger comes in when the use of these stimulants is shortlived, overindulged and may eventually lead to excessive stimulation of dopamine-signaling that over time can weaken, creating a cycle of increased cravings to get the same effect.

Acetylcholine Acetylcholine, also a stimulating chemical, is involved in the brain’s speed with which it processes information, like recalling memories, times, places, people and numbers as well as problem solving and the ability to resist brain fatigue. Low acetylcholine

output may manifest in forgetfulness, brain fog and slow mental processing.

People with low acetylcholinesignaling will often crave fatty foods since fat is a rich source of choline, one of the building blocks of acetylcholine. Common cravings can be junk foods like fried foods, pizza, burgers, cheesecake and ice cream, or even healthier fats contained in nuts, avocado and eggs.

Serotonin One of the relaxing chemicals in the brain, serotonin is considered a neurotransmitter that impacts how we feel about the world and ourselves. People with sufficient serotonin levels experience happiness with themselves and their surroundings, appreciation, confidence and a general sense of wellbeing and contentment.

Low serotonin may disrupt selfperception and happiness, leading to depression, low self-esteem and sleep disturbances. People with low serotonin often crave starchy, salty foods like bread, pasta, chips and pretzels. They often feel unsatisfied if starch is not part of the meal and struggle more than others if they attempt a low carbohydrate diet.

The depression that can manifest may result in becoming overweight, having insatiable cravings for carbs, and many times a general pessimistic attitude.

GABA. GABA is another relaxing brain chemical, giving us the ability to unwind, relax, destress and sleep soundly. Sufficient GABA types rarely feel anxious and usually feel little need to overindulge in general.

Low GABA-signaling manifests in an inability to relax. These people may often suffer from anxiety, stress, sleep disturbances, irritable bowel syndrome and headaches.

In terms of cravings, low GABA individuals don’t tend to crave a specific taste, but instead desire a high volume of food that they will tend to eat quickly. People low in GABA frequently seek out starch but are mostly content eating anything as long as there is a lot of it to fill them up. Low GABA people are emotional eaters in the truest sense of the word.

Addressing brain chemistry to curb cravings Once a potential deficiency is identified, usually through the use

of questionnaires or personality and behavioral evaluations, it is possible to use food and supplementation safely to augment the biosynthesis of specific neurotransmitters.

The key is to naturally increase the amount of neurotransmitters being produced, rather than give them synthetically, which can eventually down-regulate natural synthesis.

All neurotransmitters are synthesized via amino acid precursor molecules; many of which can be given in supplemental form or found naturally in foods.

For low dopamine, the amino acid tyrosine in supplemental form works well, as does an adequate intake of protein from lean meats.

Unsweetened or raw cocoa powder boosts dopamine production too.

Try 1-2 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder (baking cocoa) in hot water, using a natural sweetener like Stevia to sweeten.

For low acetylcholine, supplementation with its precursor lecithin has shown promise, as does making sure the diet is full of healthy fats like fish oil, egg yolks, olives, nuts and avocado to prevent cravings for fatty junk foods.

For low serotonin, its amino acid precursors tryptophan, 5-HTP or SAM-e are good options.

Consume foods rich in tryptophan like cocoa as well as animal proteins like turkey, pork, duck and chicken.

For low GABA, amino acids Lglutamine, theanine, leucine, and taurine work on GABA biosynthesis. Foods like shell fish, broccoli, brown rice and bananas contain high amounts of these amino acids too.

Final thoughts Your brain chemistry profile is not fixed; it is always changing.

Neurohormone synthesis can be up-regulated or down-regulated based on nutrition and behaviors.

Coffee, sugar, salt and environmental toxins can all impact neurotransmitter function, as can stress, intense exercise, emotional trauma and genetic predispositions.

However, a little introspection about how you function in the world and how you interact with food reveals potential brain chemistry insufficiencies. But now you know how to manipulate diet, supplementation and behavioral changes to address and eventually correct them. Z

Food allergies explained The most common food allergies involve wheat, milk, eggs and peanuts. However, there are other unlikely foods that may cause allergic reactions.

Limes, for example, contain limonene, a zesty compound that gives many people watery eyes and a burning sensation in the nose.

The grains and additives found in certain liquors can cause rashes and stuffy noses. Grain-free liquors are a better bet.

Potato vodka, rum and tequila are grain-free.

Drinks with carbonation are also more likely to evoke an allergic reaction.

If you think you may have a food allergy, eliminate the potential culprit for one week.

On the eighth day, introduce the food by eating it a handful of times to see if you have common symptoms.

These range from headaches, fatigue, bloating and gas to skin rashes, increased mucus and heartburn.

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Four neurotransmitters The four neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, GABA and acetylcholine interact constantly to produce outward effects such as a mood, personality, energy status and even the ability (or not) to burn fat.

As part of the autonomic nervous system, the neurotransmitters act to regulate both the stimulating (dopamine and acetylcholine) and relaxing (serotonin and GABA) sides of the sympathic and parasympathic nervous system, respectively.

For fat loss, it is important to understand that status of each of the four brain chemicals can impact your fat burning ability and likelihood of indulging in strong cravings.

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Clean Nutrition Report

THE GMO GAMES GOON Thomas Hammer

The GMO games continued, with legislation in Virginia on the table which would have require foods containing GMOs to be labeled by 2016. The bill was been passed by both the House and the Senate. It awaited amendments by the Senate, and then would be off to the governor to be signed into law.

Virginia was not the only place where GMO gains were being made, Chipotle Mexican Grill made the decision to go GMO-free in their full food line by the end of 2014.

Chipotle features locally farmed organic produce instead of the standard GMO fare that its competitors put in their food.

Chipotle is showing it’s serious about fresh and natural ingredients for its customers.

The Oregon Cherry Growers has come out with certified GMO-free maraschino cherries, independently verified by the NonGMO Project. The Non-GMO Project is the only third-party verification and labeling organization in North America.

Having the Oregon Cherry Growers onboard the GMO-free side is a big deal, as it is 1 of the largest sweet cherry processors in the world.

Hawaii was noted in the media as being ground zero for both the GMO engineering laboratory and a growing ground-swell against GMOs. It turns out that all of the major GMO producers have a footprint in Hawaii, constantly working on new varieties and trying to genetically engineer an ever-growing portfolio of GMO seeds.

However, a law was enacted to create a buffer zone around GMO crops. In 1 county signatures were being collected to

temporarily ban GMO crops.

The blowback against GMOs has flushed several of the main players out into the open, as they sued the county in an attempt to shut down the law. The main crop being worked on is corn, which makes up approximately 95 percent of the research effort.

In British Columbia, the Okanagan Specialty Fruits company has come out with a fruit that is really special — an apple that won’t turn brown. Cut most apples and they soon start to brown on the inside.

Not this genetically modified version — it stays the same all the time.

This new version of the apple was created when the company doubled up on some of the genes in it, inserting extra copies of specific genes to shut down the browning effect.

Overseas, China is continuing to refuse to take GMO corn from the U.S., incurring a $3 billion loss for the U.S. agricultural industry.

From November 2013 until now, China has turned away close to 1.5 million metric tons of corn from the U.S. This is really hitting Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and other GMO producers right where it may get their attention, in the pocketbook.

In fact China’s rejections were a major factor in Cargill’s 28 percent drop in earnings in the most recent quarter.

Unfortunately China seems to be wiser on the GMO corn issue than the United States, as GMO producers plan to roll out yet another deviant variant, Agrisure Duracade, which is currently being planted for the first time right now. Z

How not to be its next victim Dr. David Ryan

One in 400 women will develop breast cancer, but 1 in 3 will die from heart disease. That’s 1 female dying every minute from the effects of heart disease. Such tragic outcomes occur since women often have different symptoms compared to men.

Women who are experiencing a heart attack have common symptoms of dyspnea (shortness of breath), nausea/vomiting and back or jaw pain. Heart disease is so deadly that more women will die from it directly than from all forms of cancer.

There are many causes of heart disease: congenital, lack of exercise, poor dietary choices, inappropriate use of hormonal birth control and other stressful factors leading to atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in the arteries).

Another issue is that some doctors today still don’t take the possibility of severe heart disease in a woman as seriously as they do in male patients.

A woman must also realize that just because the mirror reflects back an image that looks great, doesn’t mean that inside, the coronary arteries are clean. Sixty-seven percent of all women who die from coronary heart disease have no previous symptoms.

Clogged arteries can also cause a TIA (transient ischemic attack or mini-stroke) or stroke, in that a fragment of plaque breaks off and travels to the brain, blocking off oxygen to a specific part. If the clot occurs in the heart, of course, it’s a heart attack or myocardial infarction.

Learn the word fast when spotting a stroke Any of these symptoms alone or together need to be immediately brought to professional attention.

Quick professional intervention is the key to minimizing new and more critical symptoms.

A combination of medications, diet control, exercise and other therapies is necessary to reverse the

Another reason to eat Brussels sprouts Broccoli, cabbage, kale, watercress, mustard greens, cabbage, bok choy and Brussels sprouts are all members of the cancer preventative Brassica family. Studies show these vegetables to be especially helpful in preventing cancers of the bladder, lung, gastrointestinal tract, prostate and breast.

Glucosinolates are the compounds that make these vegetables so special. When the superfood is chewed, these substances are broken down by enzymes called myrosinases to form new compounds called isothiocyanates which detoxify cancercausing substances in the body.

neurological deficits.

In terms of nutrition, simple steps include eating more vegetables, fruits and reducing red meat consumption, but maintaining higher protein intake. This can be done by using lean protein sources, eating more fiber, eating les sugar, choosing more omega-3 sources and avoiding omega-6.

Another healthy option is to add coconut or flax seed oil (medium chain triglycerides) to your foods.

Buying fewer canned or boxed foods and learning to dedicate more time to preparing healthier foods can be the greatest single positive step at preventing female heart disease.

If you’re sedentary, know that a brisk 20 minute daily walk can reduce the risk of heart disease by 75 percent.

A necessary point about the extreme overuse of anti-cholesterol medications (statins): the proper protocol for physicians is to attempt serious trials of diet and exercise

and note cholesterol blood levels prior to dispensing a prescription for statins. However, this approach is doomed for failure since medical schools do not teach nutrition or exercise as part of their curriculum.

Anti-cholesterol medications are designed to keep LDL levels low and HDL levels high. Diet, exercise, proper rest, hormonal reassessment, smoking cessation, weight loss, stress control and other simple factors can help reduce any woman’s risk of developing heart disease.

Many anti-cholesterol medications have been linked to serious side effects. In clinical trials, Crestor has been clearly shown to have fewer musculoskeletal side effects than other drugs.

Statins do nothing to control your dietary intake of cholesterol.

Using fish oil, vitamin D3, half a cup of oatmeal and non-flush niacin are often more effective at reducing dietary cholesterol. Never take drugs or supplements to make up for poor dietary choices. Z

Brussels sprouts also aid in the detoxification of HCAs (heterocyclic amines) — compounds formed when red meat is cooked — especially fried or burned — that increase the risk of colon cancer.

Brussels sprouts contain the most folate of all the cruciferous vegetables and are therefore beneficial for pregnant women.

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HEART DISEASE

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Clean Nutrition Report

Whatever allows you to shut off your mind and just be, will do you a world of good. Sixty-six year old Joseph Grassadonia getting his daily dose of a healing diet.

—Sunset Beach, Hawaii

THE HEALING DIET Aimee Hughes There are over a hundred diseases that are caused by or involve inflammation. These include heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and certain types of cancer. The most common cancers all have 1 thing in common: inflammation.

Research has shown that most precancerous and cancerous cells show signs of inflammation. There is also evidence that the longer inflammation is present, the higher the risk of getting an associated cancer.

Researchers have also identified inflammation as a significant factor in the development of solid tumor malignancies. There are chronic inflammatory conditions that do not have an established cause, infections being ruled out.

This in turn suggests that the process of inflammation provides the prerequisite environment for the development of malignancy.

While we now have the knowledge that inflammation is understood to be a lead player in many degenerative diseases which cut our lives short, we also have the knowledge to take preventative measures in order to avoid these miseries. First of all, we can have our CRP levels checked. CRP refers to the C-reactive protein which measures inflammation in the blood. If you smoke, have high blood pressure, are overweight and don’t exercise, there is a good chance your CRP levels are high. In

order to lower these levels, we must of course refrain from smoking, reduce stress, have a healthy exercise routine and follow an anti-inflammation diet.

Diet, without question, influences inflammation. The food choices we make can determine whether we are in a proinflammatory state or an anti-inflammatory one. Following an anti-inflammatory diet is simple. The principles include eating a wellbalanced diet with a variety of wholesome foods, refraining from saturated fats, processed and refined foods, and eating lots of organic fruits, vegetables and whole grains, as well as 1 good source of omega-3 fatty acids each day.

Omega-3 fatty acids not only decrease inflammation, but they also help prevent irregular heartbeats, reduce plaque in artery walls, and decrease blood clotting, blood fats and blood pressure. They also help reduce the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

There are 3 omega-3 fatty acids: EPA, DHA and ALA. EPA and DHA are derived from marine mammals, while ALA is derived from plant oils. Foods containing ALA are flax oil, flaxseeds, walnuts, walnut oil, canola oil, omega-3 enriched eggs, Atlantic salmon, and sardines canned in oil.

Foods with EPA are herring, salmon, mackerel, bluefin tuna, shark and sea bass.

Lastly, DHA is found in salmon, tuna, herring, bass, mackerel, sardines, shark and

omega-3 enriched eggs.

Water is an essential component of reducing inflammation. Drink 6-8 glasses of pure water a day. If you have trouble drinking water, try adding lemon or see if sparkling water with lime or lemon or even cucumber tastes better.

Moderate exercise will induce a powerful anti-inflammatory response while rejuvenating the body and relieving stress.

Stress is a significant cause of inflammation.

When we are under significant stress, due to bodily injury, chronic disease, lack of sleep or chronic anxiety, the body produces cortisol in an attempt to shut off the production of pro-inflammatory eicosanoids.

Cortisol acts as an effective response to short-term stress.

If however, the body has high levels of stress and inflammation on a long-term basis, cortisol levels will be chronically high too. High cortisol levels are linked to all kinds of stressors, including: excess caffeine in the diet, being overweight, low blood sugar from a low-carbohydrate diet, skipping meals and stuffing yourself at meals. High cortisol levels will predispose you to a host of illnesses, including cancer.

Meditation is an excellent way to reduce cortisol levels. Actually, any activity that allows you to focus on breathing techniques and alleviate the mind of troubling thoughts will have a positive effect. Yoga, massage, biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation,

Supplements The best way to obtain all of your daily vitamins, minerals and micronutrients is by eating fresh foods with lots of fruits and vegetables. The following supplements may be added to the diet to decrease inflammation: Vitamin C: 200 mg a day Vitamin E: 400 IU of natural mixed tocopherols Selenium: 200 micrograms of an organic (yeast bound) form Mixed carotenoids: 10,00015,000 IU daily Daily multivitaminmultimineral supplement: Should provide at least 400 micrograms of folic acid and at least 1,000 IU of vitamin D. They should contain no iron and no preformed vitamin A. Calcium citrate: Women need 1,200-1,500 mg daily, while men should get no more than 1,200 mg a day.

Fish oils: If you take only one supplement for your entire life, take this one. It is the number one antiinflammatory supplement you can take.

Turmeric: The Indian spice contains curcumin, a potent phytochemical. Turmeric can be used as often as you like in cooking, but taking a supplement will ensure greater inflammation relief.

Ginger: Contains phytochemicals called xanthines, which inhibit both the cycooxygenase (COX) enzymes, that make pro-inflammatory prostaglandins, and also the lipooxygenase (LOX) enzymes, which make pro-inflammatory leukotrienes.

Use fresh ginger in cooking as much as possible or take a capsule.

Aloe vera: Taking aloe orally will reduce inflammation in the digestive tract. Ingest one tablespoon of organic aloe daily.

Add CoEnzyme Q-10: 60 to 100 mg of a softgel form with a large meal.

Sesame oil: 1-2 teaspoons a day.

Extra virgin olive oil: Contains a phytochemical called hydroxytyrosol. This compound appears to inhibit the enzymes that produce pro-inflammatory eicosanoids, just as aspirin does (without the negative side effects).

Take 2-3 teaspoons a day. Z

THERMIC EFFECT OF FOOD Foundational concept to fat loss Lindsay Kent Trainers can usually get their clients to work out. However, having them make important shifts in their nutritional regime, including what they are eating, how often, and how this will impact their goals is a trainer’s biggest challenge.

One of the most common habits that seems to terrify clients is the notion of eating more to lose.

Somewhere along the way, they learned that starvation and “metabolism hibernation” equal safe and effective body composition changes.

Explaining the “why” behind eating every few hours to stabilize blood sugars and create homeostasis, while also specifically pairing your macronutrients, is imperative in order to reassure your clients that there is a method behind the madness of exercise and nutritional programming.

Today, clients are inundated with all types of advice on how much to eat, when to eat and what to eat, without any real explanation or reasoning behind it.

TEF factor The thermic effect of food (TEF) factor, is the guiding principle behind eating every couple of hours to keep your metabolically active tissues and organs functioning, and understanding the calorie cost of your food choices.

The thermic effect of food is the caloric cost of processing and digesting the macronutrients in your diet. It states that some foods require higher levels of energy to process, which, in turn, increases the levels of caloric expenditure

and will create a heightened metabolic effect.

Macronutrient costs Each macronutrient (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) have their own unique “cost” of energy. Digesting fats takes only zero to three percent of total calories consumed, which is a small amount and potentially an undesirable cost.

Carbohydrates require 10 to 20 percent and proteins require a whopping 20 to 30 percent of total calories consumed. Therefore, having proteins as a cornerstone of your diet will keep the TEF factor high and metabolism busy.

So, make sure the “cost” of each of your meals is significant and that you eat every few hours. This can result in up to five or six feedings a day to keep the metabolism active.

Individualization Pairing certain foods in certain amounts together, as per your activity levels and lifestyle, is important. As activity levels and metabolic function change, each person’s TEF factor, caloric expenditure and requirements will vary and change, as well. Constant tweaking and adjusting should be a necessary part of your lifestyle.

A certain amount of calories is needed not only to keep your metabolism humming, but also to keep blood and oxygen flow to the brain and muscles sufficient and to allow for necessary functions, such as breathing, digestion and optimal brain functioning.

By understanding this concept of the thermic effect of food and keeping the energy and metabolism cost high through the proper pairing and portions of your macronutrients along with proper nutrient timing strategies, you can maximize your metabolism and create a firestorm of energy. Z

Grapefruit and weight loss An excellent source of vitamin C, grapefruits help build the immune system and act as a cold fighter. Grapefruit is also rich in lycopene which boasts a natural talent for fighting free radicals.

A study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food supports the belief that grapefruit is useful in losing weight.

Dr. Ken Fujioka from Scripps Clinic in San Diego conducted a 12 week study of 100 obese men and women. He found that consuming one-half grapefruit before meals resulted in an average weight loss of 3.6 pounds, with some participants losing up to 10 pounds.

Those who ate grapefruit had much lower levels of insulin in their blood, which the researchers speculate resulted in the weight loss. The smaller the amount of insulin in the blood after a meal, the more efficiently the body uses food for energy rather than storing it as fat.

The researchers also speculated that a natural plant compound in grapefruit, not the fiber content, was responsible for the weight loss, because those who consumed grapefruit juice also lost weight despite the lack of fiber.

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exercise, gardening, sitting in a hot tub for 20 minutes — whatever allows you to shut off your mind and just be, will do a world of good in preventing and/or relieving chronic inflammation.

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Clean Nutrition Report

FOODS THAT HEAL Thomas Hammer

Food does 1 of 2 things — it either builds the body up or tears it down. Food is not created equal — there is definitely a difference in the effect on the body depending upon the type of food you choose to put into your body. The “garbage in, garbage out” moniker of the computer world applies just as well to dietary choices. Eat junk food too frequently and your body starts to turn into junk.

The flip side of that coin is that quality food does substantially enhance your body.

The key is getting the right food and avoiding the bad. And when it comes to food choices, none are better than the foods that heal. These foods provide a multiple of quality nutrients that help your body recover from workouts, illness and more.

Eating these foods frequently is a wise idea.

So let’s start with the ABCs of healthy foods.

Carrots Carrots are well-known for their benefits to the eyes due to the high betacarotene content. Carrots, however, have other benefits as well. For example, their alphacarotene has been shown to lower lung cancer occurrence when taken in high amounts.

As with broccoli, cooking enhances the nutritional aspect of carrots because more nutrients are broken down into more assimilated elements for the body. Carrots are high in fiber, as well as potassium, and have some vitamin C content. They also contain falcarinol, which might help prevent cancer. Carrot juice is a great postworkout pickup due to its fast assimilation.

Apples One of the oldest adages is: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples have the distinction of being a healthy choice that is also delicious. They are beneficial for the heart and a great fiber source (5 grams each), including both soluble and insoluble

fiber. The manner in which apples help the heart is through their pectin content, which helps prevent the buildup of cholesterol in the lining of blood vessel walls. This in turn reduces atherosclerosis and heart disease.

Apples also have a mix of vitamins and minerals in their makeup. And that makeup includes the skin. Some people peel the fruit, but much of the nutrition resides in the skin. Apples are better than applesauce, which is better than apple juice, which is better than an apple-flavored drink: the more natural form you take your apple in, the better.

Broccoli Broccoli is one of the most powerful food choices you can make. It is loaded with vitamin A in its raw state, and interestingly, contains even more when cooked. A cup of cooked broccoli has as much calcium as half a glass of milk. Those who are avoiding milk products can increase calcium by boosting intake of broccoli and spinach. Broccoli is also rich in potassium,

Onions The onion is a great food for adding flavor and heartiness to anything from an omelet to a casserole to a sandwich, soup or stew. And the humble onion is bursting with healthy nutrition. Onions contain sulfides which may lower blood lipids and blood pressure. Onions also contain flavonoids, which act as protection against cardiovascular disease. They are beneficial for the stomach as well — a study of older Dutch men and women showed that those who ate the most onions had one-half the level of stomach cancer compared to those who ate no onions.

And it turns out that onions are antai-clotting agents. They have anti-microbial properties and are a powerful agent against bad bacteria.

Onions are high in vitamin C, potassium, vitamin B6, manganese and fiber. An interesting element to the onion is that the stronger its odor, the more phytochemicals it has.

Helping your body heal can be as basic as ABC when you frequently eat fare such as apples, broccoli, carrots and onions. Insert these choices into your diet on a consistent basis and help your body recover as well as avoid future problems. Z

Top nut

Lapping crystallized rock salt from boiling salt water to dry in a basket. —Thailand

WHAT’S ON YOUR TABLE? Darrel Hitt What type of salt do you typically eat? It isn’t as simple a question as you may think. The choice of salt is broader than just salt with iodine or without iodine. Actually, there are several options when it comes to salt.

Most people use the standard type of salt. This is actually a man-altered product, having some elements removed. Another option is sea salt. Finally, there is a third alternative, kosher salt.

Salt is an important element because it is included in virtually every meal you eat. Salt aids your body in its various functions.

The salt that most people put on their food is not a true natural salt.

This product, which some people call “table salt,” has had most of its nutrients removed and typically has anti-caking agents added. “Table salt” is chemically treated and the end result is a mix of sodium and chloride.

This may be 1 of the reasons that high levels of this product cause problems such as high blood pressure and issues with the kidneys and heart.

Sea salt Sea salt is evaporated from actual sea water; it is natural and better for you than is table salt. It’s coarser but has plenty of nutrients in that coarse structure, such as magnesium, sulfur, iron and more.

Kosher salt The first thing you notice about kosher salt is its size — it has a much larger grain size than does table or sea salt. The size is requisite for its use in treating other foods. The size helps prevent it from dissolving quickly.

Kosher salt is similar in its makeup to table salt, but it does not contain the iodine that some table salts do. Kosher works well in some foods but not in others, particularly in some baked foods.

Iodine One element that lies at the heart of the salt choice issue is iodine. Salt producers started adding iodine into salt several decades ago to help prevent goiter. You can get table salt with or without iodine. Kosher salt and sea salt do not have iodine added. Nevertheless, sea salt, with its natural advantage, is the best choice for the body. Z

Walnuts are top nut when it comes to the healthiest nut. The problem is that for many people, walnuts just aren’t palatable.

But there are ways to include walnuts in your diet in a tasty way.

They don’t have to be eaten straight.

Chop walnuts up and add them to any salad.

Add them to rice. If you like to bake bread, add chopped walnuts into the batter.

In fact, you can enhance the experience of enjoying beef (grass-fed is highly preferable over grainfed) by adding chopped walnuts into the meat before cooking it. Who’d ever think that walnuts can flavor up meat? But they do. Try it!

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iron and vitamin C. It is low in fat and calories (3/4 a cup has only 33 calories) and high in fiber. Broccoli is one of the few foods with a lot of chromium, which acts as an insulin regulator, helping fight diabetes.

The National Cancer Institute notes that broccoli, as a cruciferous vegetable, may be a prime player in preventing various types of cancer.

And when it comes to healing, one of the key elements in broccoli is its ability to detoxify the body. Broccoli also has the helpful result of lowering cholesterol levels. Broccoli’s many benefits add up to make it a superstar in the food world, and a top healing agent.

If you add only these three foods to your diet each week, you will greatly enhance your nutrition. Of course it is smart to eat a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, but these three ABCs add a wide swath of health benefits. Foods that are deep in color contain rich sources of nutrients, and these three provide red, green and orange to your diet.

And adding one more color — white — will bring even more health benefits. The additional food choice?

Onions.

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Smart Training

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Let’s face it guys, your butt is just as sexy as your abs and your biceps.

Most guys tend to concentrate mostly on their abs and their biceps and forget about their butts. But let’s face it, your butt is just as sexy as your abs and your biceps. And, oh, by the way, these workouts are just a great for the ladies.

Squats: stand up straight with your feet about shoulder-width apart and toes pointing forward. While keeping your head up, your back straight and without letting your knees extend over your toes, squad until your thighs are almost parallel with the ground. Slowly stand back up again concentrating on using your buttocks, thighs and hips instead of your legs. Repeat.

To increase the intensity, hold a kettlebell.

Glute kickbacks: get down on all fours with your head slightly raised. Lift 1 leg so your foot is above you and your thigh is parallel to the ground. Hold, squeezing your buttock muscles, then repeat with your other leg.

Step ups are a great butt-firming activity: repeatedly step up onto a raised platform alternating your legs while concentrating on using both your legs and your buttocks to push up. To increase the intensity, hold a dumbbell in each hand.

Choosing to take stairs instead of elevators will also do the trick.

Lunges: from a standing position lunge forward with 1 leg while lowering your back knee to the floor. Keep your torso straight, your abs tight and your front heel on the ground. Push back up using your front heel without locking your knees at the top of the move, then repeat. Holding a dumbbell in each hand will increase intensity.

Buttock squeeze: these are easy and can be done anywhere (but don’t get caught).

Standing up straight, squeeze those buttocks as hard as you can and hold for as long as you can — without cramping up. Relax and repeat.

Leg abductions: stand up straight with your legs hip-width apart and your toes facing forward. Holding onto a stable surface for balance, slowly raise 1 leg out to the side and as high as you can. Hold the pose steady for a few moments while squeezing your buttock muscles. Lower and repeat with the other leg. This one can also be performed lying on your side on the ground.

Pelvic lifts: lie on your back the ground with your knees bent, your arms at your sides and hands flat on the ground. Slowly lift your buttocks up squeezing those muscles until your back is straight but not arched. Hold for a moment then slowly lower yourself back to the ground and repeat. Z

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BUTT EXERCISES FOR GUYS

Demetrius Roberts

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Training considerations for new lifters Dara Cox

Whether you are starting an exercise program for the first time in your life or are a reformed cardio bunny who has decided to abandon the elliptical for the weight room, there are a few things you need to know about strength training in order to set yourself up for both short and long term success. Since the body goes through many different adaptations during the first 12 weeks of a new training program, let’s look at the common mistakes made in the different training phases.

Week 1-4 Within the first few weeks of a new strength training program, your body is rapidly adapting to this new stressor by changing your internal environment. Your heart will start to get stronger in order to more efficiently pump blood to the working muscles. Your brain and nervous system start to learn the movements of your exercises and performing them gets easier. The quantity and distribution of certain hormones and neurotransmitters will change in order to allow the body to rebuild muscle tissue, strengthen bone and overall prepare your nervous system to respond to this new stimulus. This all has to happen before you actually even start to add any new muscle tissue or burn off any extra body fat.

The most common mistakes made during this period are training too hard, too often, and with exercises that are too advanced or complicated. This leads to overtraining, excessive soreness and overall frustration. We can avoid this by starting with simple exercises based on the foundational movement patterns of pushing, pulling and squatting and keeping the intensity moderate until mastery of these movements is achieved. A good way to monitor intensity during these first few weeks is to always feel like you could do a few more reps, but purposely holding back. Focus on form and be sure to give enough rest time between training days to allow the muscles and the nervous system time to adapt. 24-48 hours between sessions that train the same muscles is usually sufficient.

Week 5-8 After the initial adaptations are made, the body can now focus on getting stronger by laying down new muscle tissue. Usually by this time the new lifter has increased confidence with the foundational movement patterns and should be feeling much stronger. This increased strength can be deceiving though, as it is mostly the result of physiological changes and not due to increased

muscle mass just yet. During this time the metabolism should start to increase and lead to increased hunger, a sign that visible physical changes will start to happen soon, if the diet is adequate.

The most common mistakes made during this period are moving to more complicated exercises too soon and not eating to support muscle and strength gains. Since the new lifter may be feeling stronger with the foundational movements, they may try a more complicated move before they are ready and cause an injury. Instead, for the next 3-4 weeks the focus should be on building strength in those foundational movements. This may feel a little boring, but it’s necessary to avoid injuries and set yourself up for long term success. Each workout, try to lift a little more weight or do an extra rep or 2. In order to maximize your success in this part of your program and beyond, it’s very important that your diet is adequate to support your goals. The specifics of this is beyond the scope of this article, but most people eat too little when trying to build muscle and this seriously hinders their progress.

Week 9-12 This is the period when you should start to see visible changes, if you have been consistent with your training and diet to this point. You may have gained a couple of pounds of muscle and should be feeling quite a bit stronger. Your energy should be up and you should be sleeping better. A small amount of weight loss is possible, if that is part of your goal. You may even start to see some muscle definition if your body fat level is low enough. As long as you don’t have any imbalances or other physical issues holding you back, this is the time to increase intensity and really challenge yourself.

The most common mistakes made during this period are decreasing consistency with workouts, plateauing with your effort or getting bored and shifting to a completely different type of training. This is the time when your body is primed to make real changes, so take advantage of this, increase the intensity of your training by adding more weight and pushing yourself harder during your workouts. If you find yourself getting bored and wanting to try something else because you feel it’s not working, rest assured that it is! Now is the time to try a more complicated variation of an exercise to keep things interesting if you feel you need to. You can also introduce a new exercise or 2, but try not to completely change the type of training you have been doing. Stick it out for just a few more weeks and you will have built a solid foundation of strength and fitness from which you can grow and progress for many years to come! Z

Sprinting Sprinting is the foundation of high intensity interval training, improving the size, strength, speed and power of your legs.

Sprinting is great for developing endurance, but also for developing lean muscle mass.

Muscles have a higher viscosity when they’re not in motion, so for such an intense and brief activity, it makes sense to warm-up your muscles beforehand to reduce the viscosity and the odds of injury.

Sprinting is a fundamental skill that supports a multitude of other activities. If you know how to sprint properly, you’re more likely to enjoy a wide range of sports and activities.

Here are some basic elements of correct sprinting technique: Hold your torso straight and vertical.

Hold your head still, but relax your face and Bend your elbows at 90 degrees.

Pump your arms so your hands travel from hip to lip, and keep your arms close to your sides.

As you pump your arms, keep your shoulders steady but relaxed.

With each stride, lift your drive knee high and straighten your back leg completely to deliver full power.

At the start, keep your strides short and quick, lengthening as you gain speed and momentum.

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THEFIRST 12 WEEKS

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BUILDING A SECOND GEAR Terrance Black Most people function in 1 of 2 gears — low or high. Low gear training is equated to endurance work such as jogging long distance. Others might employ a high gear, where weights are commonly used for a brief set of intense work.

There is, however, another gear that many people are unaware of. By training in this second gear, you can take the body beyond its current conditioning.

Building a second gear into one’s program is possible because the body adapts to the training forced upon it. Yes, you have a certain genetic makeup that makes you better in some areas than others, but everyone can notably upgrade the body from its current condition.

A second gear is important because not everything in life is quick-gear related (the 10-15 seconds of a weight set, for example) or endurance based (the 30-60 minutes of a long run or bike ride).

Second gear resides in the area of 20 seconds to 2 minutes. This crucial region is often overlooked in many training programs.

Building and testing One of the best ways to build a second gear is to test that second gear with an exercise that puts you right in the specific second gear range. The ultimate tool is the 400 meter run.

A warning — if you haven’t run the 400 meters in some time, or have never pushed your body at full speed for this distance, then ease into this range. For some people, sprinting 100 meters is tough enough, let alone a 400 meter distance (400 meters = 1 lap around most outdoor tracks).

Start off with a 200 meter run at a good clip, and then gradually work up to the 400 meter range. Also incrementally increase exertion level. Initially run the 400 meters at 70 percent maximum rate, and build up from there until you’re getting in an all-out run.

Time How do you know your giving maximum effort? One is perceived exertion. You can tell when your going hard and when your are coasting. The 400 meter sprint is just that — a sprint, not coasting.

Another tool is a stopwatch, which will ensure that you’re pushing speed as hard as possible. Time yourself on the first 400 meter run. After you have several 400 meter runs under your belt, your time should improve noticeably. As time improves, add a second 400 meter.

You should warm up well before a hard 400 meter run. Start with a few shorter sprints at lower exertion, and include some brief stretching. Z

PULL-UPS

HACK SQUATS

POWER JUMPS

LUNGES

SQUATS

EXPLOSIVE ROWING

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rowing. The best work comes from involving the biggest muscles, which these combinations all do.

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Weights Start with a set of bench press’. Once you finish, immediately do a second exercise such as the explosive push-up with no rest between sets, and with proper form.

The difference in this type of superset is that you allow slightly longer rests between each superset than usual. Typically the rest time is a half minute to a minute; for the second gear training, allow twice that time to recuperate.

The target here is not the time between supersets, but how much intensity you can put into a sustained effort during the supersets.

Slightly longer rest enables more intensity to be generated for each superset. Allow for an almost full recovery prior to the second, hard, intense-as-possible superset.

Other supersets can include squats and lunges, squats and hack squats, lunges and power jumps, as well as pull-ups and explosive

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HARD CORE AB WORKOUT Natasha Linton

For a stomach that will make you want to stare at yourself in the mirror all day requires an exercise program focused on fat loss by way of a combination of total body exercises.

These exercises increase metabolic demand, leading to guaranteed fat loss. For continued success and to ensure that you never reach a training plateau, planned changes are necessary — meaning your ab routine must change often.

Also, intensity matters, so go ahead and create challenging workouts by going harder at each session. More intense workouts lead to more calories burned.

Before we get into the hard core ab workout, it’s important to understand what it actually takes to create an awesome looking midsection. Thus, among the most common mistakes in the gym is when fitness enthusiasts, especially overweight fitness enthusiasts, perform hundreds of crunches a day in hopes of seeing jaw dropping results. This is wasting precious time.

A good intense ab workout doesn’t require you to spend hours upon hours in the gym. A unique ab workout based on short burst training gets results in less than an hour. Compared to longer, less intense workouts, the body continues to burn fat for days after a shorter and more intense session.

Skip the crunches and ab machines and forget about those gadgets shown on infomercials; total body exercises are much more beneficial, intense and can be done at home.

Here are four dynamic exercises Perform 3 rounds in a circuit fashion without any rest until the end of the circuit for 30 seconds. Warm up with stretches before hand and afterward. When stretching, spend time on the muscles that need the stretch the most.

Mountain climbers for legs and overall conditioning: (pictured above) bend down with your hands in front of your feet on ground, extend to push-up position and kick 1 leg back while keeping on your toes. Support your body with hands and bent leg. Keep your head in line with body and your stomach. Keep stomach contracted.

Bring your right knee to your chest and back to the starting position.

Alternate this movement quickly between right and left legs.

Perform quickly for 30 seconds.

Spiderman push-ups for abs, shoulders and arms: start in the up part of the pushup position. As you lower yourself to the ground lift your right foot up and bring the knee toward your head. Rotate shoulders looking at your right knee. Put your foot back down and rotate body back to facing forward. Repeat on the left side. Perform 8 on each side.

Planks for abs and back: hold for 20-30 seconds. Lie face down with your forearms and palms flat on ground. Rise up onto toes and rest on your elbows. Keep your back flat and contract your abs to keep from raising your butt in the air.

Renegade row for abs, back, arms, shoulders: begin in the up position of the push-up holding onto dumbbells. Keep your head up and face forward. Perform a push-up and then perform a row with one hand by raising your elbow up. Place your hand back down and perform a push-up. Perform another row with your other elbow; then the push-up. Z

Gabriel Bates

Lorraine Page The kettlebell swing is a phenomenal strength-building exercise. However, proper form and technique is essential for avoiding injury.

One key consideration to remember is that you’re not using your arms to lift or swing the weight. The power of the movement comes from your lower body, specifically your glutes and hamstrings.

Using your arms to move the kettlebell can damage your rotator cuff, and raises your risk for other shoulder injuries.

Kettlebell routines throw off your center of gravity, forcing you to use multiple muscle groups, including your core, to maintain your balance.

This is part of why it’'s such an effective whole-body exercise.

Have you ever thought of supersetting some back routines? The first set will be seated rows on a pulley apparatus. Use any attachment, whichever one you usually use.

Set the weight for an 8-rep max.

But before you begin, set up the pull-down station so that it’s ready and waiting for you.

Attach the rope to the pull-down station, preferably a station that has no seat before it, because the routine here is to sit on the floor.

Set the weight for what you think will be a 15rep max — taking into consideration that you will be coming off of the 8-rep max. This may take several trials before you figure out the weight.

Immediately after you complete the seated rows, grab the rope just above the knobs and sit on the floor, legs bent, and lean back. Now begin pulling the rope. Don’t sloppily yank at it.

Doing pull-downs with the rope will challenge your grip and wrists. Ultimately, you want the weight to be heavy enough to make 15 superset reps extremely difficult. Rest 2 minutes, then repeat the superset 2 more times. Z

Standing with a kettlebell between your feet, squat and grip it with both hands, your palms facing you and your thumbs wrapped loosely around the handle. Then stand, holding onto the weight, keeping your arms loose while retracting your shoulder blades and engaging your core. Bend at your knees shifting your body weight onto your heels and lower your buttocks back and down toward. Driving through your heels, explode through your hips, sending that weight swinging upward from your quads to chest height, ending with your arms fully extended. Achieving this arms-extended position requires that you tighten your core while squeezing your buttocks. As the kettlebell begins to descend, let the weight do the riding back between your legs, and as it makes the transition from backward to forward, drive through the heel and hips again. Z

Burpee Stand with your legs shoulder width apart.

Drop down so your hands are on the floor.

Kick your legs back and do a push-up.

Then jump so your feet are under your hips, then jump again so you’re standing. One more jump, and you’re off the floor with your hands over your head.

Repeat.

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THE KETTLEBELL SWING

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SUPERSET BACK ROUTINE

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Smart training Turkish get-up The Turkish get-up is a hybrid core movement in which you start by lying flat on the ground holding a kettlebell over your head, then standing up keeping the weight there.

RADICAL WAYS TO INCREASE STRENGTH Gabriel Bates If increasing brute muscle power is your primary goal, you can achieve this with conventional forms of strength training. But maybe it’s time to try some stranger, completely new kinds of strength training that engage many muscle groups at once.

Pull-up motions In real life, you may 1 day need to rely upon the pull-up motion (e.g., pulling yourself up into a tree to escape the snarling pitbull). But it’s not likely you’ll have a perfectly cylindrical surface of rubber or smooth metal to grasp and pull up on. Chances are, the surface will be less accommodating and you won’t be able to wrap your entire hands around it. So the best way to really hone pull-up prowess is to do pull-ups on a climbing wall, grabbing onto the various holds, letting your legs just hang. Your hands will not be perfectly aligned, as on a standard pull-up bar. One will be higher than the other. And the holds come in varying shapes, challenging grip strength.

You needn’t climb too high off the floor to do these exercises. Climbing gym walls are studded with many hand-holds close enough to the floor that you would not need a harness and rope.

If you’re not strong enough to do pullups, then get in a harness, find a partner, and select a climbing route with big handholds (or a rating system of 5.7 or below; ratings are usually at the start of the route.).

But instead of climbing with both hands, hold one hand behind your back and use only 1 hand to ascend. Climb the route a second time using only the other hand.

If you don’t have access to a climbing wall, then at your gym, do pull-ups by grasping the bar with just three fingers. If that’s doable, progress to two-fingered pull-ups.

Farmer’s walks and farmer’s trots Grab 2 heavy dumbbells (about 45 pounds each for very strong females; and perhaps 70 or more pounds for strong males, beginners can start light) and simply walk around with them. Try walking up and down a staircase; each step should be challenging. Pay close attention to your feet to make sure they’re stable on the steps. Slowly trot-shuffle about the gym with the dumbbells. A variation would be to hold barbells in each hand so that the bars are parallel to the floor and to each other.

Parallel bar dips a new way Rather than bounce up and down with these because they’ve gotten so easy, add a new twist. See if you can dip while keeping your legs extended out before yourself, parallel to the floor and straight. How many dips can you do while in this position? First make sure you can maintain just the leg lift position for 30 seconds. The next progression will be to hang from a bar and suspend your legs out in

These exercises are not for novices You should already have good core conditioning and strength for these nontraditional routines.

Static dumbbell military press If you normally do dumbbell military presses while seated, add a slightly new twist to your routine. When you bring the weights down to near your shoulders, hold them there for a 3-count before pushing them back up.

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Zercher squats This movement develops extreme hip and leg strength as well as stressing your core. Cradling a barbell in the crook of your arms with your hands interlocked, squat deep then stand back up. Zercher squats benefit over traditional squats in that it gets your entire upper body involved and the deep-knee portion of it taps into muscle fibers that conventional squats miss.

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front for 30 seconds. If you can do parallel bar dips, your ready to try this compound exercise.

Conventional training can be used to supplement these non-traditional exercises to minimize injury. For instance, the common “bridge” position, often done in yoga classes, can help prepare your body for the Turkish get-up. So can dumbbell shoulder presses while seated on a stability ball.

There are risks involved with all forms of physical activity. However, the primary goal of most sound training programs is to prevent injuries. Always begin with loads you can handle. What’s great about these compound movements is that the strength yield is extremely high, and stimulates muscular growth throughout the body.” Z

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Smart Training

THE WHATAND WHY OF DEEP SQUATTING Arthur Remington Deep squatting — it sounds like something from a medieval torture chamber, doesn’t it?

And in reality, it can feel that way sometimes.

Deep squatting, however, lies at the very heart of total conditioning and should be a centerpiece in all productive training. Learn to squat right and you have a tool that will keep you in top condition.

Why squat?

For substantiating the claims about squatting, look no further than 2 top trainers and their thoughts on the squat.

Harvey Newton, USA Weightlifting Hall of Fame member and former Olympic team weightlifting coach, says that the squat is foundational for every functional athletic movement in sports. And

Boyd Epley, 1 of the top trainers ever, points out that “the squat is the best exercise to develop lean body mass.”

Depth of squat Not only is it important to squat, it is also important to squat deep.

A full range builds the muscle fully. And with the depth, the hip/pelvis gets the right tilt. A partial squat doesn’t set the hip/pelvis region up right, and over time can cause some muscle/bone/ attachment issues in this area. That is, at the bottom of a deep squat, the hips posteriorly rotate — something they are prevented from doing with shallow squats.

Not many people squat anymore, and the people who do don’t always get it right. They often use a shorter range of motion. There is some benefit in all squatting, but the deeper the squat, the better the effect on strength, muscle size, athletic capability and metabolism.

You need to learn to squat deep, right out of the gate.

Stationary bike seating Do you always set the seat at the same notch? Try something different from now on.

For the first five minutes of your stationary bike session, set the seat as close up as possible so that your legs are as bent as possible without your knees striking the handlebars. Pedal at a challenging pace and resistance. This will work your knees in a unique way.

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Powerlifting guidelines Although many of you short-stroke their squat range, it is important to go deep. In fact, there are specific guidelines for squatting depth in a powerlifting competition.

Your squat will fail to qualify in a meet if you don’t squat down far enough. What’s the right depth? The right depth lies at a point where the hips and top surface of the legs are lower than the joint of the knee, according to powerlifting meet standards. That is, the back part of your leg has to be lower than the upper part.

A shallow squat in a powerlifting competition is considered an incomplete squat, a failure. Unfortunately many of you only shallow squat and fail to really go deep. However, it is vital and needs to be ingrained into your squatting approach.

Shallow squats don’t fully involve your hamstrings, don’t fully involve your hips, don’t challenge your muscular system as much, and can put more, not less, pressure on the anterior cruciate ligament. You need to start squatting deep.

Start light Don’t assume that you can use as much weight initially with deep squatting as you have been using with a shallow squat. Lighten up the barbell quite a bit and become accustomed to the full range, deep squat with a minimal load initially.

Take a few workouts to get used to the lower point of the deep squat, and then gradually start adding heavier weight. As you become comfortable, crank up the weight because the weight is the other factor that makes the squat such a transforming exercise.

As you get into deep squatting for the first time, always be aware of where your thighs are — make sure that they go at least as deep enough to hit powerlifting rule qualification depth. Do this as a minimum for every repetition.

How many repetitions? How many sets for deep squatting? Deep squat with shorter repetition, heavier sets and squat deep for higher repetitions with lighter sets. The 1 common denominator is the depth — get deep. From there you can go with whatever rep and set scheme you want.

Squatting deep takes a commitment — it’s as tough mentally as it is physically. A real commitment has to be made to go deep from this point out. Squatting deeper is nasty — it is tough to take a heavy load that low and come back up. But doing this again and again is what builds incredible strength and muscularity in the body. It not only builds up thighs, but has an effect on the entire body; bones, muscles, metabolism, ligaments and more.

Squats transform, and deep squats transform deeply. Z

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Hamstrings One factor is that the deeper your squat, the more hamstring involvement. Shallow squatting translates into very little hamstring participation.

Getting the hamstrings involved is important (through a deeper squat position) because they actually take some of the strain off of the anterior cruciate ligament. Squatting deep is better for not only building muscle, but also for the reaction of the whole leg region.

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Smart training

POWER TRAINING

BUILDING BIGGER, STRONGER MUSCLES THROUGH PERFORMANCE-BASED CONDITIONING Dwayne Hines II The average person who is put on a weight training routine is usually set up with some variation of a body-building-style routine.

That translates into something in the manner of 3 sets of 8-10 repetitions for a couple of exercises for each major muscle group area.

Additionally, with this style of training, the muscle group routines are usually set up in which 2-3 areas are trained together, allowing for more concentrated activity on individual muscles. This approach to training works well and many have made significant gains in their physique utilizing it.

Bodybuilding-style training, however, is not the only manner in which to attack the muscles.

Consider putting yourself through another style of weight work — power training.

Powerlifting is a competitive sport-type of weight lifting, but it also provides a great way to build the human body.

Powerlifters are some of the strongest people on earth, and most of the athletes in the “World’s Strongest Men / Women” competitions come from the powerlifting arena. A power-lifting cycle can help you increase your strength levels as well as introduce you to another approach to moving the weights that will challenge you in a new manner.

There are very distinct differences between the powerlifting approach to weight training and bodybuilding-style workouts. Bodybuilding-style training is all about pumping up the muscles. The chief aim is making the muscles bigger.

With powerlifting, the emphasis shifts. The central goal in powerlifting is not pumping up the muscles, but on lifting as much weight as possible. The competitive lifts are the bench press, squat, and deadlift. Some collateral training is also included in a power program. When the goal is to lift heavier weights, the body becomes much more powerful — hence the name.

Lower reps, heavier weight Some of the most noticeable differences between powerlifting and standard bodybuilding-style training are that powerlifters use a much lower repetition range, heavier weight, and they take more time between sets. The longer interval between sets for the powerlifter allows time for more mental preparation as well as rest to handle the heavier weight load.

And powerlifters do lift much more weight — they are the record holders for the heaviest lifts. Powerlifters also focus on fewer exercises but employ more sets. The exercises that powerlifters target are the compound movements that work multiple muscle groups in 1 movement. They rarely perform isolation movements.

Power gains Helping build up your power base will greatly benefit your body in both the short and long term. The best introductory cycle is basic in design but challenging with the workload. Instead of repetition after repetition, you direct energy into minimal reps with a maximum load.

For the best gains from the training, perform 3 power sessions per week. Build the training sessions around the squat, bench press, and deadlift, with a few supporting movements. That is, make the primary exercise for each workout 1 of the “big 3.”

The squat-centric workout would include 5-7 sets of squats, with a couple of sets of stiff-leg deadlifts at the end. However, initially, perform only 2-3 sets of the squat, then gradually build up to the 5-7 set range. Start with a repetition range of 5-7 reps, and finish the routine with incrementally heavier weights and a 2-3 repetition target. The repetition range for the stiff-leg deadlift can be higher, performing 8 repetitions per set.

The bench press-centric workout features a similar approach, with 5-7 sets of the bench press in the 5-7 repetition range, dropping down to 2-3 repetitions on the latter sets with heavier weight. As a supplemental exercise, perform 2-3 sets of the close-grip bench press for 5-7 repetitions.

The third workout features the deadlift as the main exercise.

The deadlift is performed for 3-5 sets of 5-7 repetitions, and once again dropping down to 2-3 repetitions on the final sets. The deadlift allows the human body to move the most weight, so a slightly lower amount of sets is employed here due to the super stressful load on the body. After you have completed the deadlift sets, wrap up the workout with 3 sets of close-grip chin-ups with as many reps as you can, performed with a reverse (palms facing in) grip. This will allow the back some stretching as well as further muscle stimulation.

As you may have noticed, the power workout has a minimal amount of exercises. Don’t panic because your are not hitting every single muscle group in this workout. Remember, this is just a cycle and help you understand the valuable concept of the collateral effects of the power exercises. That is, the squat translates into much more than just a thigh exercise — it works more than half of the body’s muscle mass. Yes, do some calf and waist work if you really want to, but keep the total workout package minimal in exercise range and maximized in intensity output.

A longer workout (consisting of tons of exercises and sets) cannot be intense throughout since the body has only a limited amount of energy output available for each workout. Instead, the power workout puts all of that energy to work on a few key exercises. Put yourself through a power training cycle and build a real power base into your body. Z

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Frank Zane, M.A. 3-Time Mr. Olympia

Day 1 Upper body

My bodybuilding goal for the last 50 plus years has been to reach a physical peak for that year, sometime in the late autumn. I go all-out in training and dieting to do this for a few months, and after the peak is reached, a feeling of tiredness sets in and more rest is needed.

Injuries accrued over the years have flared up from hard training and need a rest and therapy to heal. What’s often mandated is a layoff.

2007 was no exception. I took my photos, my legs were better than ever — I’ve learned with a minimum of work, not more than 15 sets of thigh and calf work combined and done once a week, gave maximum results. My legs still look good even after a month of no weight training. I’ve been allowing time and therapy for a hip injury to heal.

But now I’m getting the urge to get back into it. What I’ve learned from layoffs is that you are sore anyway from not training, just not as much.

So initial workouts should produce a level of soreness that is tolerable from the start. Stick with this program as long as you get results from it. You can always do more, but not too soon.

This two-way split routine is done twice a week. You might work your upper body on Tuesdays and legs on Saturdays. You need to allow at least 2 days between workouts, so to arrange 2 specific days each week, you’ll find yourself training, then resting 2 days, then training and resting 3 days. You use a weight that permits you to do 15 reps on each exercise.

(See below) After you get used to this 2-day-a-week routine, you can do the program every other day, in other words, train your upper body 1 day, rest the next day, train legs and abs next day, rest, repeat. Or, you can simply train 3 days a week by doing the program every other day, alternating workouts with a day of rest in between. When 1 set per exercise becomes too easy and you don’t experience a little soreness the day after the workout, move up to 2 sets per exercise. It works for me. Z

> Front pull-down with neutral grip > Low cable row > 20-degree incline bench press > Decline dumbbell press > Dip > Press-down > Rear delt machine (or bentover DB lateral raise) > One-arm curl > Preacher cable curl > Reverse curl with EZ bar > BB wrist curl > Leg raise, do a total of 100 reps; e.g., 4 sets of 25

Day 2 Abs, thighs and calves > Abs: work up to 3 sets of 30 reps on each > Incline leg raise > Crunches > Seated twist, do sets of 15 to 20 reps > One-legged extension > Two-legged extension > Leg curl > Squat with upper body in erect position > Donkey calf raise > Seated calf raise > Stationary bike and/or treadmill I like to do 12 minutes on each, 1 after the other.

Tire workout If all you had was a tire to use for training, what kind of exercises could you come up with?

How about doing broad jumps over the tire? To make this more challenging, add a vertical component. Or you can add a speed component: how many times can you broad jump over it in 1 minute?

Be creative: do backward broad jumps and side to side jumps over the tire, then drop down and do push-ups with your hands or feet on the tire.

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REBOUNDING AFTER TAKING TIME OFF

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Are You Fit Enough?

WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION? THE JANET BARRY STORY Sherry Ballou Hanson “It’s not the obstacle that defines you, it is how you overcome the obstacle,” says 27-year-old Janet Barry of Charlotte, North Carolina. She should know. Back in her high school days in Lenox, Massachusetts, she played soccer and ran track. Her first love was soccer, but not many scouts come to small towns for recruiting purposes. Barry was a competitor on a state championship cross-country ski team and was a 4-time individual state champion. Her good times and her strength translated onto the track and at the state track meet in her sophomore year she placed well in the 800m. The college recruiting letters came flooding in.

Faced with the decision on whether to choose a division 3 school to play soccer and enjoy herself, or to run for a division 1 school and try and be the best she could be, Barry stepped up to the challenge of division 1 running. The transition from running small town track where her mother coached the team, to an elite setting where the other girls came in running higher mileage and running year-round proved immensely difficult, especially for a scholarship student, from whom big things were expected. Barry did not back down from the challenge and ran her heart out.

The pressure was enormous to live up to what is expected of a scholarship athlete in college, pressure on the athlete, pressure on the coach for his team to perform. Gone was any notion of a tailored program to bring Barry up to elite level performance; she was immediately expected to perform at a high level. She ran to the point that she developed 2 herniated disks in her back, which MRIs clearly indicated, and had to stop running. Told she might never run again and that she would need surgery, Barry faced down all of that. “I refused to accept that my running career was over. I was also intent on avoiding surgery or any quick fixes to my back.”

So, without the strong support and camaraderie of team members behind her

anymore, she chose physical therapy. Barry was fortunate to find a therapist who showed her the specific exercises and stretches she would need to do, and provided letters to doctors that would insure she would not be pressured to get back on the track too soon. It worked. “Not only was I able to run again, but I made it on the regional cross-country team the following season and competed in that sport all 4 years of college.”

Division 1 competition is tough though, and by the time Barry graduated from college she was burned out and ready for a change. Enter obstacle course racing.

Obstacle course racing is trending now, but back in 2015 when Janet Barry heard about it, she knew nothing about it, just that it sounded like something she wanted to try.

Obstacle course racing is the Spartan Racing series of obstacle course races, the championship series consisting of 5 events.

Think boot camp if you want to picture these grueling competitions. The Spartan Race has 3 levels: sprint at the 3-plus mile length, Super at 8-plus miles, and Beast at 13 miles or more. And what are you doing for fun over these courses? Crawling through mud, climbing greased walls, tractor-pulling, stump-skipping, jumping

tractor-pull? 30 burpees; you get the picture here. This is not a sport for the faint of heart.

Obviously, this in an activity one has to practice, so Barry’s belief in practice making perfect doesn’t work as well on game day since there are few opportunities to practice this event. We all have our strengths and Barry’s running talent and experience serve her well when moving from obstacle to obstacle, which helps account for her early success in obstacle course racing. Strength training and experience with event specifics like the twister, the greased wall-climb and heavy lifting obstacles are the areas where she has to work harder.

Janet Barry entered her first Spartan Race in 2015 in Washington DC. To see what obstacle course racing was all about. At the end of this race she was bleeding, cold and exhausted. “I told myself I would never do another obstacle course racing race again.” And how many times has each of us said these words at some point during our athletic endeavors?

However, never one to back away from obstacles along the road in life, she soon was back at it, entering the fiendish elite heat at the Washington DC Sprint event. “I had no expectations and I knew I couldn’t pass 5 of the obstacles. I led at the start of the race and I

Adventure run conditioning Adventure running offers various obstacles such as tire flipping, rail walking, cargo net climbing, significant hills, 10-15 foot walls, fire jumps, mud pits, abandoned cars, a sea of old tires, monkey bars, zip lines, trampolines, hay bales and various stations requiring physical effort other than simple running.

Some adventure runs go on for days and include navigating through jungle terrain.

ULTRA-MARATHON TRAINING Marathons are the ultimate goal for many runners, but there’s a core group of runners who believe the marathon isn’t long enough.

They feel the need to go longer, sometimes a lot longer.

These are different runners, not your average 6 mile weekend warriors.

And although they are fiercely competitive, the camaraderie of ultra-marathoners is legendary. The support for fellow runners during an ultra extends further than any other running event.

What is an ultra-marathon?

A marathon is 26 miles, 385 yards long. An ultra-marathon is categorized as any event that’s longer, typically 30 miles, 50 miles and 100 miles.

There are other distances, but those are the most popular. There are also timed events: 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours and even multi-

enough to complete both ultramarathon training and the race itself.

You’ll also need to adapt to the concept of taking in nutrition while Why do an ultra-marathon?

For some, it’s the challenge of going training for the ultra-marathon and during the actual race. Simple even longer. For others, it’s the energy gels and electrolyte challenge of discovering personal limitations and then breaking them, replacement drinks won’t cut it when you’re running for a length of and for others, they have mastered the marathon and need bigger, more anywhere from 5 to 24 hours or more. challenging events.

Before you begin training, you Whatever your reason for need to have at least 3 consistent embarking on this grueling years of running experience. You challenge, you’re certain to learn 2 should also have completed at least things about yourself: your level of 3 marathons. Marathon finishing commitment to running, and your times aren’t as important as the personal limits both mentally and completion of the training regime physically. and event.

Next, select a race and set a How to train for an personal goal. Your goal may be just ultra-marathon finishing the distance, completing Just about anyone can finish a the distance within a certain time, marathon. Finishing an ultraor racing to finish in the top 10. marathon isn’t as certain. Besides Unless you’re a very experienced the planning, training and marathoner, your goal should be commitment, you must be just to finish. Z physically and mentally strong day-races. Some are run on roads, others on trails, and some (mainly timed events) on a track.

Basic calisthenics including jumping jacks, push-ups, deep knee bends, sit-ups and other simple body weight movements are an excellent way to condition for any adventure run.

Begin by running followed by 10 jumping jacks, 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, 10 pull-ups and 10 arm curls using bags of sand. Take no rest going from 1 exercise to the other. Each day try to add 3 additional repetitions.

Whenever possible it’s always best to simulate the activities that will be available as part of the adventure challenge.

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more. And what are you doing for fun over these courses? Crawling through mud, climbing greased walls, tractor-pulling, stumpskipping, jumping through fire and more. Barry has her preferences of course. “I love the trail running,” she says, citing her quickness on the trails, as it combines her agility from her soccer days with her running talent. The twister ranks last on her list of fun and games. “Picture sideways monkey bars, but a thinner bar and those bars rotate.” On top of the obstacles to be overcome are the penalties. For every obstacle failed the participant has to do 30 burpees.

So if you fail the greased wall, down and do 30 burpees. Flunk the

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Are you fit enough? remember thinking ‘is this really happening?

Am I leading the race right now?’”

Her lead did not last long as she entered the obstacles she had not trained for; however, Barry finished 5th and qualified for the world championships in obstacle course racing, a series of 5 events. It dawned on her that if she could qualify for the worlds and still miss 5 obstacles, what might she accomplish if she actually trained for strength and for the obstacles themselves? Not knowing much about strength training outside of what she did during track and cross-country, she began adding more strength training to her workouts, still working on her own with dumbbells and lunges.

When asked what appeals to her about the Spartan Races, Janet Barry has a theory.

She thinks that obstacle course racing goes back to our early human experiences and how we were meant to live and to move. For example, throwing a spear into a hay bale, an obstacle course racing obstacle, resembles hunting; our early human ancestors had to master hunting or starve to death. The monkey bar obstacle is like how monkeys and apes swing from branches.

“Obstacle course racing is the fastest growing sport right now and it leaves people feeling hungry for more, and addicted to racing and training and I think it all ties back to primal needs/times — what we crave as humans.”

In her 1st year as an obstacle course racer, Barry won the Elite Women’s category of the Spartan Race, a beast of an event involving fire-jumping, mud-crawling, tractor-pulling, stump-jumping and climbing the famed greased wall. She immediately caught the eye of several sponsors and entered the 2016 season as a sponsored racer!

2016 was another banner year for Janet Barry, with multiple podium finishes and a 9th-place finish at the USA championship race. There are always more obstacles in Barry’s life, and in spite of ending the season in the top 15 Spartan Racers in the country, she just missed making the Reebok Spartan Pro Team she was aiming for as she moved into the 2017 season. Barry took 2 first place finishes, placed 13th in the first USA championship race and 9th in the second one. And then came West Virginia.

Barry was running well in 6th place at this USA championship race, feeling comfortable and picking up speed as she approached the 10-mile mark. “I knew this was my breakthrough race. I was moving up to the top 5 position for NBC Sports podium, when at the 10-mile mark my plantar fascia tore. I screamed in pain and just utter frustration.”

Words can’t describe the devastation Barry felt after the months of hard work. “You can taste the NBC podium and you know it is within your grasp and it slips away in seconds.” Earlier in the race she had passed 1 of the sport elites, Faye Stenning, 1 of the top

5 in the world. Stenning was struggling at that point and Barry encouraged her to go on.

“This is your breakthrough race,” Stenning said to Barry, “it’s happening, don’t let it slip away.” So when Stenning came along again and saw what had happened to Barry, she doubled back and hugged her. “I will never forget her turning around in a championship race to give me a hug.”

She was not sure what to do at this point.

She had now fallen into 8th place and it seemed the smartest move might be to get off the course and not injure my foot further.

There was no medic in sight, however, so she just kept moving along at probably 20 minutes a mile. Fifteen minutes later she was still in 8th position for overall females and 5th place American woman, as no other woman had passed her. True to form Barry continued at her hobbling pace and finished the event in 8th place.

This race ended up being a season ender and Barry accepted what had happened and determined to enjoy her accomplishment of being 1 of the top 10 placements. She enjoyed the time with her fellow Spartan athletes.

Over September and October, she took the time to analyze what went wrong in her training to cause the injury and came back to overtraining. She had been coaching herself for 2 years, always guessing at what she should be doing and the result, she feels, was overtraining.

“It is not the obstacle that defines you; it is how you overcome the obstacle.” Moving into 2018, she is working with a coach and

working up a training plan built around each of her races for the season. “I feel confident in what I am capable of and I also believe I now have the tools in place to avoid overtraining, train smarter, and place higher than I ever have.”

Asked what are a few lessons learned from her experiences years ago in college and her recent endeavors in the world of Spartan Racing, Janet Barry has this to say. “Trust yourself, trust your body and your mind.” She believes that if she had listened to those who did not believe in her ability to recover and thrown in the towel, she might never have gotten to the root of the problem and would still be in pain today. She would definitely not be where she is today, poised for her best year ever in Spartan Racing.

“What makes a champion is not only overcoming an obstacle, but using each obstacle/setback as an opportunity to come back stronger.” Barry talks about maintaining a balance in life between having a social life, other interests besides your sport, time with family and giving back to others as she can.

Barry is trying to do more in the area of giving back, inspiring others to excel. “I have always lived by the quote ‘To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.’” One of her dreams is to inspire others through a program of her own making, or to go out and speak to groups to help inspire people in their own dreams.

Lastly, “Never give up.” Janet Barry believed she could grow up to be a professional athlete, and so she did. Z

WINNING YOUR NEXT MARATHON David Dack A ccording to a report published in the International Journal of Sport Physiology and Performance, there is no such thing as an ideal marathon training program.

Luckily, there are some universal marathon success principles that can help you win your upcoming race.

Build slowly The golden keys to injury-free marathon training are a slow start and a gradual improvement. Stick with the 10 percent rule when increasing weekly mileage. You should also lengthen your long runs by 2 to 3 miles for 2 or 3 weeks, then reduce the mileage down for recovery.

An example of an 8 week cycle of training in terms of miles would be built like this: 18, 20, 22, 18; then the fourth week would be a recovery week, followed by 24, 26, 28 and 22 miles.

Train smart To perform your best on your next (or first) marathon, you won’t need to run hard 7 days a week. Instead, training 3 or 4 times a week will help unlock your full marathon potential.

According to a study conducted at the University of Northern Iowa, runners exercising 4 times a week performed just as well as those training 7 days a week, while also running 20 percent more miles.

Do your long runs Long runs are the backbone of marathon training success. Their main function is to help you get used to spending time on your feet for 2, 3, 4 or more hours, without succumbing to discomfort and fatigue.

Therefore, the newer you are to long distance training, the more important your long runs are.

According to most experts, 2 and a half to 3 hours seem to be the most beneficial amount of time, but you can aim for more and add in short walks for recovery.

Practice marathon pace Pace runs help you get used to the feeling of your goal pace. The key to unlocking your full marathon potential is adding progressive marathon-pace long runs to your program.

For example, start off with a 2 mile warm-up, then do 4 miles at marathon-pace plus 40 seconds, 4 more at marathon-pace plus 20 seconds and your final 4 at marathon-pace. On each of these

runs, make sure to end the workout with a proper cool-down.

Taper for 2 to 3 weeks A proper tapering phase, even if you hate it, is vital for improving your marathon performance. So what’s the ideal tapering strategy?

According to most experts, cutting back by 10 to 40 percent for the 3 weeks before the big day is the ideal recipe.

Follow this simple 3-week taper phase: 3 weeks before the event, aim for about 80 percent of your usual weekly mileage. You might also want to substitute 1 of your intense workouts, such as hill intervals, for an easy run. Then, 2 weeks prior, shoot for 60 percent of your training volume.

During the last week, aim for 30 to 40 percent of your usual weekly mileage. The day before your race, you need to take a full recovery.

Static environment The week before your race, eat, sleep and train exactly the way you plan on implementing these elements the day before and the day of your race. This way, you know how your body will react to the food you eat before and after, and exactly what rituals you need to stick to for ultimate success. Z

Ultimate Frisbee combines the activities of Frisbee, football and rugby. Teams work together to attempt to forward the disc by throwing it to teammates. It’s forwarded until the disc enters the end zone.

Conditioning requires basic fitness and obvious skill at throwing and catching a Frisbee.

General running for distance training less than a mile will suffice.

Moving requires flexibility and stamina.

Begin by running to warm up and follow with some basic stretches and do plenty of jumping jacks. Draw a line on the ground and jump back and forth across it 30 times.

Practice running 10 yards quickly and repeat 10 times.

Use a 5 pound weight and practice taking it from the ground between your feet and lifting it over your head 20 times. Move quickly to a bent-kneed sit-up position and perform it for 25 times. Run another set of 10 yards 10 more times.

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Ultimate Frisbee fitness

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Are you fit enough?

MUD RACING David Dack Whether it’s the Spartan Death Race, the Tough Mudder or the Ultra Beast, mud racing events are gathering steam like no other event. The fitness craze around mud runs has been relatively new to the competitive arena, but this type of physical challenge has actually been around for a millennia.

In fact, mud racing can be traced back to at least the early Greek and Roman times, demonstrating itself in historical events such as the Olympic Games.

The dirt on these events Mud runs are an obstacle course infused with a swampy and grueling terrain of a 3 mile race or longer. They’re the perfect combination of mental prowess and physical exertion; the go-to event for every athlete — not just runners — who seek to test out their fitness skills in a high-pressure

environment.

So, who in their sane mind would opt for a challenge put together by the military’s special forces? As it turns out, in 2011, about 1 million people registered to participate in obstacle racing events in the United States alone.

For instance, the number of Tough Mudder participants has increased from 50,000 in 2010 to over 150,000 in 2011, and it’s expected to reach up to 400,000 participants in just this event worldwide.

If you’re looking to participate in a mud run event, here are some of the best guidelines and super effective tips that will help you get the most out of this racing experience.

Pick the right race Before booking a mud run event, make sure you’re properly prepared with both your pre- and race day preparation.

Many mud races have 90 percent or more of a finish rate. However, if you’re a

newcomer to endurance sports or haven’t been training regularly, you need to first get a focused and consistent training regime in place.

Know the risks Mud racing is no easy walk in the park.

Expect discomfort, possible pain and/or disease and infection (muddy waters are not that clean!), hyperthermia and other health related troubles. It’s always better to know what you’re getting into for both physical and mental preparation and learn how to play it safe.

Pick the right distance Most mud runs are 3 miles but they can stretch up to 6, half-marathons and even more with varying degrees of obstacle difficulties. Therefore, you need to choose a distance that fits your fitness level and have realistic expectations. Otherwise expect to be overwhelmed and under-prepared by the arduous course.

The training plan To compete in mud racing, you’ll need a balance of strength (to get through the obstacles), stamina (to endure the terrain) and mobility (to stay injury free). Therefore, training for events of this nature differs greatly from conventional approaches to fitness.

Unlike training for marathons and long distance events which focus solely on cardiovascular endurance, the ideal mud racing plan touches on every aspect of functional movement.

For instance, most presume that athletes with a running background excel at this type of event. Wrong. Road runners often score low on upper body strength, so an event like this requires an entirely different training regime.

Likewise, strength athletes such as power lifters, wrestlers and muscle builders often lack the endurance and cardiovascular power required to lead the pack. In order to race competitively in mud runs events, you need to be a well-rounded athlete.

You’ll need all the major components of fitness and performance including strength, speed, stamina, mobility and flexibility.

Building strength To build total body strength, you need to work on strengthening all key muscle groups in order to undertake the muddy terrain. Total-body, functional exercises, as opposed to concentrated, isometric movements are the way to go for boosting strength while increasing mobility and endurance. Functional fitness programs are ideal for this type of event.

The movements Movements to focus on for boosting total-body strength include squats, pull-ups, pushups, bear crawls, burpees with a jump and spider lunges.

These movements recruit more muscles, leading to greater fitness gains.

A workout that incorporates these moves and would prepare you for a mud event would include 10 to 15 military-style push-ups, a bear crawl for 20 to 25 yards, 10 to 15 full squats, 10 to 12 plyometric burpees and 20 spider lunges.

Repeat the circuit 3 to 4 times depending on your fitness level and training goals. Always remember to start the workout with a decent warm-up and end it with the right cool-down.

Build endurance When it comes to building stamina, think hill interval running. Also known as hill sprints, this form of high intensity interval training can boost one’s endurance level while also providing the trainee with speed and power.

Hill sprints are the perfect marriage between track sprints and leg squats. They recruit fast-twitch muscle fibers that improve speed and leg drive, which ultimately help a trainee to run faster and further with less effort.

By starting with a moderately paced 5 to 10 minute warm-up on a flat terrain, you will circulate your blood and raise your body temperature, helping to prevent injury and fatigue.

Train on a hill equal to a gradient of 4 to 8 percent. Take the first sprint at 80 to 90 percent of maximum working effort, then take a rest of 60 seconds, slowing down to walking pace.

Repeat the above work and rest cycle 4 to 6 times, improving on speed and power with each new workout. End the training session with a slow jog for 5 to 10 minutes as a cool-down, and foam roll or stretch after.

Race day rules Mud race clothing is up to the competitor, although the fewer the clothes, the less weighted down the participant will be. In fact, it’s better for men to go shirtless if possible. A shirt will get soaked with mud and water, and can potentially chafe your skin.

Race with something light and tight. Think swimwear. This type of clothing dries faster and grants more mobility to tackle the race with ease.

We’ve all heard that slow and steady wins the race, and this is just the case in these types of events. Going full throttle from the start-line will only leave you prematurely fatigued and burnt-out.

Instead, get a good start and gradually build tempo and speed in order to ensure that you can finish the race.

Handling the obstacles Learning how to overcome the obstacle properly can both help you in terms of performance and safety. The best way to approach these obstacles is to be prepared in advance.

Some of the most common obstacles and how to overcome them include events such as the mud pits, which require speed and power, climbing under barbed wire, which is best approached with a sideways roll or military crawl, and tunnels, which are best suited for the bear crawl.

Toughening up The above guidelines can help you turn your mud run experience into a true success, but learning how to harness your mental willpower and determination is key for an event such as this. Prepare properly, train safe and enjoy the journey! Z

Sotts press Clean a barbell off the floor, raise it above your head, squat deep and then while maintaining this full squat position, press the barbell overhead for reps military style. Before rising back up, place barbell against top of your back and stand, then reverse the opening motion.

Exquisite squat form and healthy rotator cuffs are mandatory for this exercise, called the Sotts press.

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Consider the cost Mud racing prices vary by location and level of competitiveness.

However, the earlier you commit, the better price you will receive. Most races vary from $50 to upward of $200.

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Are you fit enough?

PARKOUR FITNESS Dr. Case Adams

The development in France of parkour revolved around a combination of gymnastic abilities with the utilization of obstacles over or through which a person exercises talents of motion.

Parkour is thus a combination of vaulting, jumping and acrobatic motion, namely moving through an urban landscape with a series of jumps, leaps and wall climbs. Parkour can become a part of practically any cross-training regimen.

Advantages of parkour One of the main fitness advantages is the level of strength and agility required by containing a jump or leap while maintaining muscle and joint stability.

This stresses the muscle’s range of motion and requires a deeper response in order to stabilize form through a leap and soften a landing as the motion is completed.

This also stresses the body’s ligaments and tendons and greater core strength.

For example, a jump from a height will require not just the correct landing but several new motions following the landing.

These will typically include a soft roll, which will stutter several quick but orchestrated motions that translate the blow from 1 spot, such as the feet, through several tissues including the deltoids, glutes and heels.

Parkour is a natural form of high intensity interval training. Because a parkour workout will involve an intense feat followed by some relaxation before another feat is attempted, there is an immediate and intense stress on the body.

Techniques and training for parkour Simply heading to the streets to leap over obstacles and jump off of heights will likely result in injury.

Beginners should start in a gym with vaulting tables, vault blocks, beams and beam trainers, parallel bars, spring boards, ring sets and chin-up bars, plus mats and thick padding. The basics must be learned and with supervision for balancing, jumping, vaulting, leaping, landing, twisting and climbing.

Balancing is achieved by using a balance ball. Standing on the ball with 1 foot is a great way to develop balance. Try balancing on 1 foot for as long as possible.

Jumping such as jump rope or jumping jacks can be practiced on any soft surface.

Higher jumps can be done from the squat position. Graduate to harder surfaces if you plan to go urban. Aerobic steppers with added risers, and plyometric stools, can be used for more height.

In time you can go to a horse vault, first jumping from a sitting position and then jumping from a standing position. Start with

mats and graduate to hard gym floors with each height step. As you practice, you will learn techniques of landing.

Vaulting utilizing either a platform to jump from, or the hands, will prepare a person for getting over obstacles with ease.

Vaulting platforms will put a person higher into the air, requiring a better landing. So make sure you’ve gotten your rolled landings together and use thick mats first.

Leaping is different from vaulting because leaping is accomplished outward, without a vault assist. For example, if a person jumps from on top of 1 box to another, that would be a leap.

A graduated leap practice is to find a sturdy bench, and with feet shoulder width apart, jump from the floor onto the bench with both feet. This can graduate to higher heights with proficiency.

Landing requires a combination of good shoes and mats in the beginning. As far as shoes go, toe guards are suggested.

A parkour landing from a leap or jump might look more like a military roll because of the obstacle course foundation of the sport. If one begins transferring the kinetic energy from landing into a small skip-androll as soon as landing, the force upon the feet will be minimized.

The roll can first be practiced by simply walking into the roll and then running into a skip-and-roll. Take a 10-15 feet head start at first. The roll should start with a head dip

onto the ground.

Twisting can be integrated into practically any motion, whether jumping, leaping or vaulting. For example, a twisting vault would simply mean that during the upward swing into the vault the hips are twisted to allow the body to flip to the other side or turn over during the vault.

Dipping into the twist with the head gives the twist the momentum into the turn. Because the body will often follow the direction of the head turn, we can command the twist with a head motion.

Taking it to the country before the streets After being able to do all the basic vaults, jumps, leaps, wall climbs and roll falls in the gym without any mats, the athlete is ready to go outside. It’s best to do parkour in a yard or countryside where there is grass or at least dirt to buffer landings.

Using tree stumps and logs as vaults and leaping foundations can be useful. Pulling up with tree limbs and climbing trees in general are very beneficial practices.

As one ventures onto the streets, safety should be the first priority.

Very small obstacles should be tried first, and always stay a step ahead of your ego. Z

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and crouching turn over to the shoulder blades.

This is followed by turning over with the upper back, over the lats, against the ground, while rolling bent legs over to the other side and landing up on the feet in a crouch to transfer the fall without ending up on the ground.

Climbing training is accomplished with rings, parallel bars, chin-up bars and climbing gyms.

Start with chin-ups and when you can do 8 to 10 try the rings and parallel bars. A climbing gym can be very helpful, and it’s not necessary to build prior upper body strength to use a climbing gym’s simplest routes. Climbing up routed walls is done with the feet and hands in combination.

The foot motion on an unrouted wall can be trained for by tracking up the side of a wall without using the hands, followed by a short leap or jump back to the floor. For example, a short wall climb can simply land the person back on the ground where they started.

Push off from a sturdy brick or concrete wall then work into 2 steps up the wall, with the second pushing off the wall and back

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Muscle Science

Why a woman’s primary sex hormone estrogen, is the single biggest thing that influences everything from metabolism to muscle glycogen storage to bone health.

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SEX AND EXERCISE THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT

A few minutes into your high intensity intervals, you notice your legs feel sluggish. “That’s odd,” you think, since you felt fine just a few days earlier. You shrug it off as just a bad day at the gym, and return the next week to do another interval workout. After the first sprint, you can’t believe how good your legs feel. You try another, thinking it may just be a fluke.

Again, you feel like you’re flying, like the treadmill belt can’t keep up with you!

“How can this be?” you ask yourself. “Just last week I felt so sluggish!” Overhearing your conversation with yourself, a woman on the treadmill next to you whispers as if she were describing a disease, “It’s estrogen.”

Your primary sex hormone, estrogen is the single biggest thing that differentiates you from that guy grunting during bench presses at the gym. It’s a powerful hormone, influencing everything from metabolism to muscle glycogen storage to bone health.

Indeed, estrogen is so important to bones that its deficiency, often caused by irregular or absent menstruation from a high level of training and not consuming enough calories, is the most significant risk factor for osteoporosis in active women.

While your hubby’s or boyfriend’s hormonal environment is pretty stable (don’t you hate that?!), your hormonal environment is constantly changing. The levels of estrogen and its sister hormone progesterone change continuously throughout your menstrual cycle, which occurs monthly from menarche (age 1114) until menopause (age 45-50).

Although your menstrual cycle is complicated, an easy way to think of it is that the first 2 weeks (follicular phase) begins with your period and is dominated by estrogen, and the second 2 weeks (luteal phase) begins with ovulation and is dominated by progesterone, although estrogen is also elevated in the middle of the luteal phase. The luteal phase ends with the start of your period, and the cycle starts all over again.

In general, you can expect to feel better and have better workouts during times of the month when estrogen is the dominant hormone and feel the worst during your period and when progesterone is the dominant hormone. And you may find that, while harder workouts may be more challenging during your period, easy workouts may actually improve your mood and alleviate physical symptoms associated with your period. But there’s a lot of variability between women. Keep a menstrual log to determine how your menstrual cycle affects you and your training.

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Jason R. Karp, Ph.D.

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Muscle Science

Testosterone in women Don’t want big, manly muscles? Don’t worry!

Women have up to 20 times less testosterone as men. (Before puberty, testosterone level is similar between the sexes, which is why young girls can often run and jump just as fast and as far as boys.) Your testosterone is highest around age 20 and is half as high in your 40s. If you recently met the man of your dreams, you’re in luck: research shows that falling in love increases women’s testosterone level (but it returns to your normal level after the honeymoon stage of the relationship).

As in men, testosterone in women stimulates sexual desire, increases libido, heightens arousal, and increases sexual satisfaction. It’s also important for bone strength and development of lean muscle mass and strength.

Metabolism Perhaps the most significant effect of estrogen is a shift in your metabolism during submaximal aerobic exercise to a greater reliance on fat, which spares your muscles’ limited store of carbohydrate. By sparing the amount of carbohydrate used and relying more on fat for energy, fatigue is delayed and your endurance is improved. And because your muscles use less carbohydrate during exercise, they also use less protein, since protein only provides significant energy for muscle contraction when muscle glycogen is low.

Muscular strength Since muscular strength and power are proportional to muscle size, you can’t get as strong or as powerful as your boyfriend or hubby since men typically have bigger muscles and more testosterone to make those muscles even bigger. But you can cheat the system a bit if you alter your training based on your hormones and capitalize on being a woman. Although you’re not any stronger at certain times of the month than you are at any other, your menstrual cycle can influence how you respond to your workouts. The fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone throughout your menstrual cycle alter the ability to build muscle and recover. For example, a study in International Journal of Sports Medicine found that weight training with 3 sets of 12 reps every second day during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle and once per week during the luteal phase increased maximal quadriceps strength by 32.6 percent compared to just 13.1 percent by training once every third day over the whole menstrual cycle. It seems that doing more training in the estrogen-dominant follicular phase and less training in the progesterone-dominant luteal phase leads to greater strength gains. Estrogen rocks!

Muscle glycogen Your menstrual cycle also influences your muscles’ sensitivity to storing carbohydrate as fuel. From the mid-follicular to mid-luteal phase of your cycle (day 6 to day 20), women can take advantage of the body’s increased storage of carbohydrate and consequent favorable conditions for enhanced muscular endurance during aerobic and high-intensity workouts. During the early follicular phase and late luteal phase, glycogen stores decrease and endurance wanes.

Nutrition is importance in these phases because with less carbohydrate, there’s greater protein breakdown and suppression of the immune system. Focus on consuming more immune-enhancing ingredients such as probiotics (yogurt), antioxidants (fruits, vegetables, green tea, and wheat germ), and vitamin D (tuna, eggs, fortified dairy foods, pork loin, wild salmon, and mushrooms).

Menstrual irregularities Many women who train hard and train a lot who have a low body fat percentage often experience irregular or even absent menstrual cycles, which reduces estrogen levels. Amenorrhea (0 to 3 periods per year) causes constant low levels of estrogen and progesterone. A woman with amenorrhea has about one third the estrogen concentration and about 10 to 20 percent the

progesterone concentration of a normal menstruating woman.

Some women can train a lot and never disrupt or lose their menstrual cycle, while others notice changes in their cycle with relatively little training. High training volumes, low body weight, and endurance sports like distance running increase the incidence of menstrual irregularities. Although a very low body fat percentage is desirable if you want to look good or compete in certain sports, it can negatively impact your menstrual cycle and your health.

Research shows that inadequate caloric intake to match caloric expenditure, rather than the stress of exercise, is responsible for the loss of menstrual activity and that consuming more calories to compensate for the large caloric expenditure from exercise can prevent amenorrhea.

Training around your cycle To paraphrase a well-known antiperspirant commercial, your training program is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman. The principles of strength training to increase muscle definition or aerobic training to increase endurance or sprint training to increase speed and power are the same for both sexes. The differences, however, lie in the program’s subtleties. Unlike your boyfriend’s or hubby’s training program, your training program incorporates more adjustments based on fluctuations of hormones and other female-specific conditions, like amenorrhea and pregnancy.

If you have a bad workout, don’t beat yourself up over it. There are probably female-specific reasons why you had a bad workout, including the physical influence of your menstrual cycle, the emotional influence of hormones, or the psychological stresses of motherhood. The “secret” is knowing how and when to manipulate your workouts to optimize your training and maximize your results so you can get the largest return on your investment. For example, do highintensity workouts in the lower hormone phases of your cycle, and endurance workouts when estrogen is elevated.

If you don’t feel well during your period or if you feel bloated from the rapid drop in progesterone as you transition from the luteal phase to the follicular phase, you may want to avoid challenging workouts during those few days. For example, if you have a 28-day cycle starting on Monday, and your period occurs on days 1 to 3 (Monday to Wednesday), plan your hard workout on Thursday or Friday that week. If you have 2 hard workouts planned, schedule them on Thursday and Saturday, or schedule just 1 hard workout the week of your period and 2 hard workouts during the other 3 weeks of your cycle. If your period lasts 5 days (Monday to Friday), schedule 1 hard workout the week of your period and 2 hard workouts during the other 3 weeks of your cycle.

If you want to get the most from your training, understand your cycle and make estrogen work for you. And if you train smart enough, not only will you feel better during your next interval workout, you may even be able to challenge the grunting guy on the treadmill next to you! Z

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CorePump You won’t get it until you try it

This hydraulic/mechanical machine was in the works for ten years before owner/developer Samuel Colby, President of CorePump LLC, finished fine-tuning it. “It was a real labor of love,” says Colby, “a decade of grinding on this project.” His new machine is “the holy grail of fitness” and satisfies the three pillars of fitness: cardiovascular, flexibility and strength training. Colby’s certifications are too numerous to list, but beginning at age 18 he attained certification as a personal trainer and went on from there. He is a Doctor of Naturopathy for Healthcare Professionals, as well as a USAW Sports Performance coach.

In between he earned a BS in science, a Doctor of Podiatry, did pre-med course work and served eight years as a Boatswains Mate 3rd Class Petty Officer in California with the United States Coast Guard Reserves.

Colby’s CorePump machine is not electric or battery operated and does not use weights; it is whisper quiet. You push up, you pull down, all hydraulic. You do all the work and get a complete workout. The

handle positions alone number 66 and this system has its own patent. There are six settings of Smart Resistance and four pedestal height options, all on a sturdy base.

Colby has designed 20 basic exercises and stretches to use on this machine and the whole takes up no more than four feet of space, perfect for home, office, fitness studio, chiropractic office or physical therapy center.

And Colby’s machine is made in the USA. The workout is a safe way to exhaust muscle groups without the risk of injury.

From concept to product, Colby was working to build a product that would satisfy the requirements for medical fitness certification by Noridian. Beginning in 2018, Medicare and Medicaid will begin to compensate for supervised exercise therapy (SET) for beneficiaries with intermittent claudication (IC) for the treatment of symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD). Up to 36 sessions over a twelveweek period are covered if specified conditions are met: sessions or 30-60 minutes of therapeutic exercise training for patients with PAD, in a hospital outpatient setting or physician’s office, delivered by qualified auxiliary personnel under the

www.corepump.com

direct supervision of a physician, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist who is trained on both basic and advanced life support techniques.

Use of CorePump under these conditions will be billable to a client’s insurance company, making this a natural for your practice. Your cost to purchase may be covered, and as well as the cost for a client who purchases his own. The machine is portable. Colby recently took his own machine on a camping trip in Arizona and worked out beside a lake.

“Hopefully the exercise/fitness business will again become profitable with the advent of this medical deduction,” says Colby, who put his heart and ten years of his life into developing CorePump. Health today is “the battle of the environment, your internal environment. If there is inflammation in your body, there is a problem.” The new machine causes no inflammation, no injury.

Colby still does a bit or personal training for VIPs, and certifies others in naturopathics, but his main focus these days is getting CorePump out there.

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Muscle science

HARNESSING MUSCLE JADE TETA AND KEONI TETA Have you ever chopped down a tree with an oldfashioned axe? Or played a contact sport that involved all-out effort imposed on an object that was pushing back at you (e.g., martial arts, wrestling, football)? In these types of movements you will spend periods of time in both the aerobic zone and anaerobic zone. In metabolic conditioning, the trainee moves up, gets down, explodes through a set of squats, repping out as many push-ups possible and blasting through a 1-minute sprint with little rest in between.

Metabolic exercise is about burning the maximum amount of calories — specifically fat calories — possible during a workout. It’s also about generating a metabolic ripple effect excessing postexercise oxygen consumption that will burn fat for many hours or even a few days after the workout.

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research demonstrated the impact this style of training can have over a more traditional approach. In this study 2 exercise sessions were compared. Each workout was identical in terms of amount of work completed and the volume of exercise was the same; the only difference was the order of how things were done.

In 1 workout the resistance training and cardio portions were done separately and completed 1 after another. In the other program, the resistance training was completed with the cardio component

inserted between exercise sets.

Despite the identical workload, the intermixed workout produced a 10-times greater fat loss compared to the separated workout. Surprisingly, the intermixed group also saw better gains in muscle mass and better lower body strength and endurance gains.

The mechanism Metabolic conditioning activates the 3 major energy systems; phosphagen for explosive movements lasting seconds; glycolytic, essentially anaerobic metabolism; and oxidative, essentially aerobic metabolism. In addition, it activates 2 other mechanisms responsible for post-exercise oxygen consumption, which is triggered in part by the release of stress hormones and other hormones induced by intense exercise.

This “hormonal cascade” is released under very high intensities, be it heavy weights or exhaustive sprinting or jumping. All these factors should be included and combined with shorter rest periods that are just long enough to recover and generate the same intensity again.

What many are unaware of is the powerful hormonal potential contained within muscle. These “muscle molecules” are every bit as important as the hormonal molecules just mentioned and may actually be the stimulus for their release.

Research has confirmed the ability of muscle to release signaling

molecules into the body. The purpose of these compounds is to communicate the muscle fuel requirements to the rest of the body.

Interleukin-6 Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is 1 of the signaling molecules released from muscle during exercise. With the right kind of stimulus, this compound can increase to 20-100 times over resting levels. IL-6’s job is to signal to the muscle, fat, liver and brain about how to respond to intense exercise.

Think of IL-6 as an “energy sensor.” As stored muscle sugar (glycogen) is depleted, IL-6 is released from muscle in greater and greater amounts. It leaves the muscle cell and signals fat tissue and other muscle cells to increase the burning of fat.

It also signals the liver to increase production of sugar or glucose so that intense activity can be sustained. IL-6 also stimulates the breakdown of sugar stores in the liver. IL-6 release is not correlated with muscle damage, but it is generated based on mechanical movement of muscles. The more muscle that’s moved, the more IL-6 produced.

This means compound movements are preferred over single-joint and isolated-muscle movements. The best way to burn through muscle sugar stores (glycogen) quickly is through intense movement.

Lactate is a hormone Another key hormone is lactate or lactic acid. The January 2009 Journal of Biological Chemistry described a

Putting it together You must be panting for breath during a metabolic workout, if you can talk, you’re not doing metabolic conditioning.

You must reach metabolic failure. This is a term we use to describe the need to stop because of an intense burn in the muscles, not necessarily because the weight is too heavy. This is directly related to lactate generation and how much growth hormone and testosterone you’ll generate.

Without incorporating heavy weighted movements into the workout, you’re missing it. Heavy barbell squats, bench presses and maximal deadlifts are key.

This is what we call mechanical failure and it’s all about the type II fibers. Heavy weights trigger HGH and testosterone.

If your not sweating during a workout, your body isn’t getting hot enough and you’re missing out on this heat effect.

Final words The unique hormonal response of this type of exercise is what drives the results, not calories. Second, true metabolic conditioning is individualized. Everyone’s sweet spot is a little different. This is why we believe 1size-fits-all-circuits with defined rest periods are not as effective.

In order to get the proper response, people should rest just long enough to be able to push hard a second time. This rest based approach allows tailored metabolic conditioning for all fitness levels. Z

The holy grail of fat loss and muscle development No matter how much some people exercise, visible muscle definition escapes them, and they simply cannot get the kind of defined “cuts” that they seek, nor shed that layer of subcutaneous water beneath their skin. So what gives?

Unfortunately, those elusive cuts spring up only after a variety of factors is in place, including optimal body composition, correct training and balanced, hypoallergenic nutrition for fat loss.

What many people miss is that the appearance of toned muscle is more of a result of diet than exercise. Even for someone whose body fat percentage is normal or even low, the foods they eat may be preventing them from seeing any chisel or cuts.

First and foremost, visible definition will not occur without a low enough body fat percentage. For women, this will most likely be below 20 percent, and for men, below 15 percent.

Reducing overall body fat through consistent fat loss exercise and correct nutrition will help get your physique in the ballpark where visible muscle separation and tone are possible, but from there, it’s all about the details.

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Interleukin-15 Interleukin-15 (IL-15) is another muscle molecule. It has the unique action of stimulating muscle growth while increasing fat loss, specifically belly fat loss. IL-15 is released from muscle and travels to other muscle cells and fat tissue, sending a signal to burn fat and build muscle.

Harnessing IL-15 should be a chief goal of anyone wanting to change body composition. IL-15 release is generated through the action of type II muscle fibers specifically. These fibers are activated during explosive movements.

Many trainers frown on mixing heavy weight training with high fatiguing protocols, but based on the science of IL-6, IL-15 and lactate, the integration of these techniques would be very beneficial.

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lactate receptor called GPR81, confirming its hormonelike action. Other studies have shown lactate can directly stimulate release of testosterone and HGH. The major signal sent by lactate during exercise is an “adaptation signal.” Lactate has 3 major functions; an alternate fuel source, increase in mitochondrial generation (the energy factories in cells); and to stimulate release of growth promoting hormones.

As an alternate fuel source, lactate can make significant contributions to energy use during high intensity exercise. Lactate production is also highly correlated with a much larger post-exercise oxygen consumption. Finally, because it’s coupled so strongly to HGH and testosterone, lactate has a key role in muscle maintenance and fat loss.

There are a wide range of burnout techniques to effectively generate a large lactate response. Pulses, 1half reps, holding reps, fast reps, slow reps and squeezing reps can all induce the intense muscle burn so strongly correlated with lactate.

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THE SCIENCE OF GROWTH HORMONE Jason Miller Why do athletes and bodybuilders take growth hormone? What are the myths regarding growth hormone and its effects on muscle size and strength?

What other functions does growth hormone fulfill and how can we naturally increase circulating growth hormone concentrations?

Before an understanding of the effects of growth hormone can be appreciated, an acknowledgement of the many forms of this hormone must be made. Most of the research has focused only on the 22kiladalton form or size of growth hormone.

Limitations in the study of other forms of growth hormone are due to the differing concentrations, origins and mechanisms of each molecule.

However, the data is much clearer on the multiple effects of the frequently studied 22kiladalton sized molecule, released in a pulsatile manner from the anterior pituitary.

Release of growth hormone is usually during sleep and after a specific structure of exercise.

One effect on tissue of the 22kiladalton molecule, or just growth hormone for the purpose of this article, is to promote collagen or connective tissue growth — thus the use of exogenous sources of growth hormone in athletes. Basically many athletes take growth hormone to keep their bodies together.

Some athletes or bodybuilders who abuse steroids also stack growth hormone to increase strength of connective tissue along with muscle size and strength from the testosterone abuse. The idea is that as muscles grow, connective tissue will grow also, preventing injuries from rapid hypertrophy.

However, while connective tissue growth is promoted with growth hormone, contrary to the popular myth, muscle size and strength are not. Certainly a growth in connective tissue could increase biceps diameter, for example, but contractile proteins would not grow if growth hormone was the only stimulus.

Because the contractile proteins are not increased in the muscle, the strength of the muscle is not elevated as a result of growth hormone.

In addition to increases in connective tissue, growth hormone is responsible for mobilization of fat from fat cells to be used in energy production. Therefore, growth hormone also aids in leaning out trainees.

In combination with promotion of

connective tissue growth, growth hormone is a valuable hormone to elevate, especially in the general preparatory phases in athletes, or in individuals wanting to lean out and prepare for greater training loads later in a training cycle.

Elevating growth hormone How can growth hormone be elevated naturally? The natural concentrations change significantly with certain types of training.

In the classic 1990 study of resistance training and growth hormone, Dr. William Kraemer observed that the hormone responds to moderate to high volume strength training (intensity = 10 RM) with short rest periods (1 minute or less). Resistance training schemes that frequently employ such a structure usually fall under the bodybuilding category.

The finding that bodybuilding promotes growth hormone probably does not come as a shock. However, for those interested in gaining strength and changing body composition for sport, realize that engaging in a cycle or 2 (4 weeks or so) of bodybuilding is invaluable.

Usually in sports training bodybuilding may be done for a short period of time with only skeletal muscle hypertrophy as a goal.

But for younger athletes in particular, the need for bodybuilding using a total body approach not only improves muscle size and strength, but allows for important modifications to connective tissue mediated through growth hormone.

Far too frequently, trainees engage in heavy loading in sports specific exercises such as the power clean before the technique and

connective tissue are ready for such training.

The result is frequently soft tissue injury.

Another myth that has persisted about growth hormone was that women gained strength through this chemical. That idea came from the greater basal concentrations of growth hormone in women than in men, and the need to explain strength gains in women where testosterone concentrations are low.

However, the higher growth hormone concentrations in women compared to men are mostly as a result of the presence of higher estradiol concentrations. The hormone estradiol is moderately associated with growth hormone concentrations, and women have more circulating estradiol than men.

Unlike gender there are controllable factors that can influence growth hormone concentrations, such as sleep. Delaying onset of sleep or compromising its quality can reduce amplitude of growth hormone release during sleep (Journal of Clinical Investigation, 1969).

While growth hormone has profound effects on connective tissue and body composition, it cannot enhance contractile properties of muscle. Because of the positive effects of growth hormone on connective tissue, trainers should ensure that athletes in particular engage in a cycle of bodybuilding in order to properly prepare for greater loading challenges.

To enhance endogenous release of growth hormone, moderate to high volume (30-80 reps per exercise, 4-10 exercises), short rest interval (< 2 min.) training should be performed. Quality sleep should also be incorporated. Z

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WATCH ROMANTIC MOVIES Not only will they put you in a romantic frame of mind, but thy also can affect hormone levels in your body.

Levels of progesterone, a hormone that promotes bonding and relaxation, can increase in both partners while watching a romantic movie.

GET MORE BURN FROM YOUR WORKOUT Building muscle mass: adding weight training twice a week to your exercise program will increase your muscle mass, boost your resting metabolism and make your body burn more calories. Weight training can include hand weights, weight machines and calisthenics like push-ups and crunches. Strength training will make you burn more calories even while you sleep.

Get plenty of cardiovascular exercise: the biggest burn comes from cardiovascular exercise. That means the revolving staircase, inline skating, tennis, or aerobics classes at a gym, anything that gets your heart rate up.

Focus on frequency, duration and intensity: as long as you step up your exercise program from what you’re doing now, you’re going to see faster results. Increase the amount of exercise, the length of time of your workouts and the intensity, and you’ll definitely see progress.

Don’t do what you don’t like: if you don’t like what you’re doing, you’re going to end up dropping out. Find a form of exercise you’ll like to do.

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HOW FAT ARE YOU? It isn’t always how much you weigh that matters, but how much of that weight is body fat. Increased body fat has been linked to serious health concerns — and the problem is growing. Studies are showing that reducing body fat can help cut your risk of diseases that include type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and osteoarthritis.

IF YOU’RE FLYING, SKIP THE AIRLINE TAP WATER The Environmental Protection Agency recently tested tap water quality on 158 domestic and international flights and found that about 12 percent of them did not meet health standards. Consider sticking to bottled water or canned drinks without the in-flight ice.

BRISK WALKING MAY HELP KEEP YOUR MEMORY STRONG AS YOU AGE Regular 2-mile-per-day walkers often have much lower rates of dementia than people who walk less than that or not at all. In addition to mental health benefits, walking also boosts cardiovascular health.

DON’T SKIP THE DINNER SALAD People who start their dinners with a low-calorie green salad eat less overall at meals. Just keep the salad to about 100 calories by using small amounts of dressing and skipping the cheese and croutons.

CRUNCHES WILL FLATTEN YOUR STOMACH? Crunches are great for improving posture and strengthening muscles, but they’ll do little to getting rid of fat covering those muscles. To do that, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn and lift weights — heavy weights.

DIET TIP Eat slowly. You’ll enjoy food more, you’ll feel more satisfied and your body can honestly tell you when you’re full. If you eat too fast your body doesn’t have time to send you the message that you’re full, and you end up overeating.

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Consumers are looking for support not only to lose weight but maintaining that weight loss. How can people curb appetite, carbohydrate cravings and lose weight? Sherry Using common sense about portion sizes is the first step toward a healthier diet. Also limit the intake of starchy foods (white rice, white bread, pasta); choose carbohydrates with a low glycemic index (whole grains); increase fiber intake to 25-35 grams per day (cabbage, strawberries, beans and bran are good fiber sources); eat plenty of protein. Aim for 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, per day.

ONE WAY TO TONE YOUR INNER AND OUTER THIGHS Fasten an exercise cable to your ankle and holding a stable surface for support. Using just enough weight to feel a stretch without straining, pull your foot up to your other foot, hold for a second, then return to the starting position. When you’ve completed 30 with each leg, reverse the process by pulling your foot away from the other foot. These exercises involve all the adductors and abductors, and are excellent for toning your inner thighs and butt.

GET OUT! Central heating, open fires, poor ventilation and stress all cause havoc with your body. You can become listless, droopy-eyed, tired and look sluggish.

Combat this by getting outdoors more: a game of catch or Frisbee or pedaling your bike fiercely around the block a few times.

Ten minutes will do the trick, and you’ll sleep better, too.

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$33 BILLION A YEAR SPENT ON WEIGHT LOSS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ACCORDING TO AC NEILSEN

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THE TRADITIONAL SQUAT

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The squat works the entire body.

Start with a fairly light barbell on your shoulders. As you prepare to squat, keep your chest high and take a deep breath. Then, take another deep breath and descend until your thighs are parallel to floor. Pause, don’t bounce. Exhale as you straighten into the start position.

Your feet should remain flat on the floor, your head slightly tilted upward and your back straight.

YOUR BATHROOM SCALE MAY NOT BE THE BEST WAY TO ASSESS YOUR HEART HEALTH Folks who are fit but overweight can have healthier hearts than those who are thin and out of shape. Getting 30 minutes of physical activity regularly can help lower your blood pressure, reduce your cholesterol and boost your cardiovascular health.

NO TIME TO WORK OUT? Short, frequent mini-workouts throughout the day may lower your risk od strokes as well as 1 long exercise session. Exercise reduces the spike in blood fats that occurs after consuming a high-fat meal. If you can’t make it to the gym, try taking short walks with hand weights throughout the day.

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT JUMPING ROPE? Jumping rope will burn a substantial amount of calories in a relatively short period of time — more than 23 calories per minute! Compare that to stationary biking at 10 mph (6 calories per minute), or brisk walking 4 mph (7 calories per minute). If your fitness goals include losing weight, include jumping rope to your weekly routine 2-3 times per week, building up from 100 rotations to 5-minute intervals.

Jumping rope burns fat throughout your entire body and works both your upper and lower body simultaneously, for better muscle tone and definition all over. In addition, it has a positive effect on your performance in whatever sports or activities you enjoy. Specifically you’ll be able to move faster and with better coordination, balance and agility. Jumping rope frees you from expensive equipment. Once you start, you won’t want to stop!

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FACT

FEELING FULL? Never allowing yourself to become full when you eat may lower bone mineral content over time. This doesn’t mean stuff yourself silly, but you don’t have to habitually go hungry to stay in good health.

NAPPING AFTER EXERCISE If you work out hard, either in the gym or on the field, and nap afterward, you won’t “undo” your exercise as many gym-rats fear, your muscles, bones and heart have already experienced the positive effects of the workout. But falling asleep may not be such a good idea. If you’re drowsy, splash cold water on your face for several minutes, then take a brisk walk around the block. Excessive napping can become a bad habit; you’ll awaken groggy and not rejuvenated.

IF THE LACK OF DAYLIGHT DEPRESSES YOU, CONSIDER STEPPING OUTSIDE. Light therapy is an effective treatment for this type of depression, a disorder that some people who work inside without windows all day experience. Just by stepping out into the daylight for 10 minutes could be enough to alleviate your depression.

AEROBICS WILL HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT Metabolism speeds up during a workout, and for a little while after. Although you’ll burn some calories doing aerobics, adding strength training to build calorie-burning muscle will magnify your metabolic benefits.

DIET TIP Don’t skip breakfast.

Skipping breakfast gives you the munchies later on and slows your metabolism down. Start the day with yogurt and fruit or whole-grain cereal with low-fat milk.

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10 MUSCLE FACTS 1: you have all the muscle fibers you will ever have at birth. Once damaged they can’t be replaced. 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger has just about as many muscle fibers as you do. They’re just thicker. 3: a single muscle cell of the sartorius muscle in the thigh can be more than 12 inches long. 4: there are more than 600 voluntary muscles in the body. 5: the strongest muscle of the body is the masseter muscle used for chewing. 6: your hand contains 20 different muscles. 7: if all your muscles could pull in 1 direction you could create a force of 25 tons. 8: muscles account for 40 percent of your body weight. 9: it takes 17 muscles in your face to smile, but it takes 43 muscles to frown. 10: you take 5 million steps per year.

NATION’S NO.1 NONFATAL HEALTH PROBLEM? Back problems. Most back problems are triggered by non-neutral spinal alignment during everyday activities, in combination with a loss of muscle tone which may be the result of lack of exercise. Prescription: stretching and regular exercise.

Think about it: the gym is full of people just like you who breathe heavily with their mouths open. That’s a lot of breath for other people to be inhaling, and they don’t have a choice because they can’t just quit their routine. So before you venture out onto the gym floor to sweat, huff and puff, spend a few minutes brushing your teeth and then rinsing with mouthwash.

Did you know that a person’s bad breath can cause a stink within an 8foot radius of that person? And wherever that person goes in the gym, that 8-foot radius of bad breath odor follows. If you use a gym bag, add to it a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a travel-size bottle of germ-killing mouthwash. If you don’t use a gym bag, then still bring with you these items unless you leave for the health club from home. In that case, scrub your teeth hard before leaving your house. And don’t assume that chewing mint gum will do the trick.

WORK YOUR STRETCH Some stretches may feel uncomfortable initially, but try to stay in them, even if only for a short while. As long as you feel no pain, you should not be in danger of injuring yourself. Don’t bounce your stretch. Breathe calmly and regularly through your nose.

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BRUSH BEFORE HITTING THE GYM

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SOMETHING YOU DO FOR YOUR HEART MAY ALSO HELP REV UP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM

VARIATIONS ON THE CLASSIC PUSH-UPS This basic exercise has been around since before Nautilus or Nike or even gyms. It’s excellent for developing the pecs and triceps. You can do it anywhere and in many different ways. >Lie face down, hands forward, flat on the floor, slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Keep your stomach firm and body straight. This can be performed either from your toes or from your knees. >Elevate your feet and focus on your upper pecs. >Elevate your torso and focus on your lower pecs. >Push up from a stability ball with your feet on the floor or elevated (you’ll need a spotter for this one). >Wear a weighted vest or backpack or have someone set a plate on your back. >Support your body on your knuckles. >Try to clap your hands together between each push-up. >Push off the floor as hard as you can while rising so that you propel your body into the air. >Support your body entirely on your fingertips which will give you a greater resistance and thus more benefits.

Working out regularly appears to supercharge your immune system. Fit older men often display more robust immune response than their out-ofshape peers. Hit the gym, go rock climbing, play your favorite sport a few times each week to meet your minimum exercise requirements.

Sipping certain beverages could increase your risk of kidney stones Caffeine may cause calcium loss and increase the risk of developing kidney stones, particularly in people with a history of this problem. Limit your caffeine intake; try cutting back on coffee, tea, cola, chocolate and coffee-flavored ice cream.

BRISK WALKING STRESSED? Consider boosting your body’s defenses with vegetable soup rich in vitamin C. The harmful aspects of physiological stress can be eased simply with a daily meal of vegetable soup rich in vitamin C. C lowers the blood levels of molecules associated with stress. Just make sure the sodium content isn’t too high.

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THINK ABOUT THIS One can of soft drink has 9 teaspoons of sugar!

Make a habit of briskly walking wherever you go: parking lots, grocery store aisles, malls, inside building corridors — anywhere in which your feet are taking you from point A to point B. Sadly, most people move at a very leisurely pace. But if you’re not examining merchandise or pausing to read prices, then keep your pace fired up, and that includes when you’re pushing a shopping cart.

The health benefits will truly add up.

WALKING 70,000 MILES Between birth and old age, you’ll walk about 70,000 miles. With that in mind, don’t wear just any shoes when you fitness walk, wear shoes specially designed for walking and optimal arch support.

DIET TIP Eat several servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Keep veggies in the fridge.

They’re easy and quick to fix, and rich in nutrients. Take them to work for a quick lunch you can heat in the microwave.

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DO VERSA GRIPPS USA OUTPERFORM GLOVES? Anyone who lifts weights knows that grip strength is the weak link in the whole routine. Whether you perform too many repetitions with lighter weights, or fail because you are using too heavy a weight, an unsupported or unprotected grip can result in having to cut the routine short, or even dropping the bar.

New design Gloves, lifting straps, wrist-supports and hooks have been around a while and all have their limitations. The Versa Gripps USA product is proudly made in the USA, in Sorrento, Maine to be exact, and takes the place of other products because they provide the support needed for all pulling and pushing motions used in lifting weights. This product has a built-in arch support to help prevent carpal tunnel injury, patent pending. They have a quick-release feature, making it easy to release the bar when necessary, and a funnel shape that allows the weight to rest at the base of the hand.

The science What is the science behind Versa Gripps USA? They allow the lifter to concentrate on the larger muscle groups and not worry about the grip and they are flexible, actually standing up in front of your hand. One concern of lifters is bacteria on the equipment. Versa Gripps USA are made of a material that is ruggedly reinforced and anti-bacterial and

anti-microbial. The design allows the hand to breathe, where other designs encase the whole hand and become a breeding ground for bacteria.

Versa Gripps USA eliminates the slipping often encountered when using other weight lifting support products. The high-quality materials used are exclusive to this product and help to lock your grip in place During lifting, the product is ergonomically designed to protect hands and wrists.

Preferred by professionals There is a group of small finger flexor muscles in your forearm that comprises the grip. These muscles are connected to your fingers by the tendons that pass through the wrist. Nerves and arteries also pass through the wrist. In order to have maximum development and isolation of the larger muscles required in lifting, the grip and hands need support and protection. “I absolutely love my Versa Gripps USA and would never even consider training without them! They are comfortable, easy to use, and quite simply … they work!” says Dr. Clay Hyght, Doctor of chiropractic medicine and Host of The Doctor Clay Show.

Versa Gripps USA was featured at the 2017 Mr. Olympia competition in Las Vegas, and inventor Michael Parker was present for the event. Numerous fitness professionals and top athletes also took part in the weekend, making this a super appearance for the product.

For more detail on the product and to see close-up photos, visit www.versagripps.com

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GYMS AREN’T LIBRARIES

TOE RAISES FOR IMPRESSIVE LOOKING CALVES Start out simply standing on the ground flatfooted with your toes pointing straight ahead. Hold onto something for balance and slowly raise up as high as you can on your toes. Lower yourself and repeat. High repetitions are best here, try to work up to at least 25. Then add sets.

To make this a little tougher as you progress, do them 1 leg at a time. You can also turn your feet in and out in order to work different parts of your calves. A set of 25 reps with your feet pointing forward, then out, then in, would give you a nice workout.

For an even tougher workout, and to really make those calves grow, place your toes on the edge of stairs and lower your heels as far as possible. Then raise up on your toes as high as you can, and repeat. 25 reps is what you’ll be shooting for. This should really make your calves burn.

Start out slow. Don’t do too many reps at 1 time in the beginning or you won’t be walking the next day.

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Ever hear of that saying, “walk off the pounds”? Well, some people think they can read off the pounds. It’s amazing how many people will become engrossed in reading material while using cardio equipment.

Certainly, it’s nice to read something during the warm-up, cool-down, or recovery interval. But reading on a regular basis throughout the entire cardio session will undermine your efforts. Pushing yourself at an intense level can’t be done while reading.

To achieve a truly intense level of exertion, you must focus on your breathing, your rhythm, and the main muscles being worked.

How can you do this while looking at who’s wearing what in Hollywood or reading about the latest politician’s love affair?

Get in the habit of setting aside your reading material after a 5- to 10-minute warm-up. You’ll be surprised at how fast time will fly when you’re focused 100 percent on the fire inside your chest and throat from heavy breathing, and the flames igniting in your legs as they sprint on the treadmill, pedal with fury on the bike or elliptical, or climb like mad on the revolving staircase.

NEED TO FOCUS? EAT! Hypoglycemia, a low blood sugar condition that can develop when a person doesn’t eat enough, may shorten attention span temporarily.

People experiencing hypoglycemia could have shorter attention spans and process information more slowly than they do when their blood sugar levels are normal.

THE BARBELL SQUAT The most versatile strength training routine is the barbell squat. Muscle groups involved are quads, hams, glutes, abs and lower back.

Don’t avoid this powerful training tool.

USE YOUR BRAIN Using your brain burns calories. So next time you feel like watching television, swap CNN for a notebook and do some creative writing. Fucus requires more brain power than mindless television viewing.

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS MAY BE TELLING YOU SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR HEALTH Insomnia may be a symptom of an underlying chronic disease. Heart disease, depression and pain all can contribute to sleepless nights. It’s important to get 6 to 8 hours of sleep every night. If your not, you should consider seeing a doctor.

WATER DOWN YOUR NEXT HEADACHE Many people take aspirin with water for a headache.

The headache soon fades.

But not necessarily from the aspirin — more likely from the water. Often, headaches are caused by dehydration, even though you may not be thirsty. For your next headache, hold the aspirin and gulp the water.

Aerobic training improves the condition and efficiency of your breathing muscles so that your body can utilize more lung capacity during exercise.

EXERCISE IN THE MORNING You’ll be more apt to stick with your exercise program if you do it first thing in the morning. If you decide to exercise at lunch or after work you’ll have too much time to come up with excuses to get out of it.

DON’T GO EXERCISE CRAZY Being a fitness junkie is probably less healthy for you than not exercising regularly. Exercise but don’t be obsessive.

It’s the 80/20 thing — if you’re good for 80 percent of the time, you can be bad for the other 20 percent.

OLIVE OIL FOR YOUR HEART The monounsaturated fats in olive oil help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease because of their effect on cholesterol levels. Use olive oil instead of saturated fatladen cooking fats like butter.

2 EXERCISES FOR STRONG ANKLES To strengthen the ligaments in your ankles, 1 stand on the balls of your feet. Point your feet inward at a 30- to 45-degree angle, depending on how flexible your ankle joints are. Now, walk forward for a minute or 2, maintaining this positioning, then walk backward for a minute or 2.

Repeat. Expect some fatigue on the outside of your hips.

Neurological improvements can be 2 made by doing this exercise with your eyes closed. Stand in a doorway, balancing yourself on 1 foot. This may be difficult to begin with, but gradually work up until you can stand without bracing yourself on the doorway for 45 seconds on each foot.

This exercise improves the nerve signals from your feet to the brain and will help you to quickly recover and straighten your foot when you step on uneven surfaces, another factor that can help prevent sprains.

Think about this: it costs approximately $100,000 to have a heart or a lung transplant.

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Prolonged stress decreases blood levels of the stress-busting hormone DHEA, making it hard for the body to handle additional stress.

People with high levels of DHEA are less affected when confronted with stressful situations.

Prepare yourself for potential stress by exercising and relaxing regularly.

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STRESS CAN SUPPRESS YOUR HEALTH

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TOP10 FITNESS TRENDS FOR 2018 Sherry Ballou Hanson The American College of Sports Medicine has once again come out with their list of the top fitness trends for the coming year and this year they surveyed more than 4,000 fitness professionals.

Now in its twelfth year, the survey helps fitness and health professionals plan programming and make crucial business decisions. Partnering this year with the Coalition for the Registration of Exercise Professionals, the number of professionals participating doubled from previous years, and 2018 promises a few surprises.

HIIT, consistently ranked in the top 3 since 2014, has moved up to number 1, replacing wearable technology which is at number 3 for 2018. The real surprise is group training coming in at number 2.

Their wide appeal certainly has to do with the fact that fitness classes can accommodate clients whose fitness levels and skills vary. The class setting is less expensive and also appeals to those who like to work out with others.

The 10 trends identified here reflect strong consumer interest, specifically in the areas of high intensity exercise and in group settings, which is not surprising. HIIT takes less time for today’s busy clients, and group workouts appeal to those who are energized in a class environment.

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is popular with clients on the go. The workout involves short bursts of activity alternated with short rest and recovery periods. The workout is usually completed in 30 minutes.

Group training. Teaching, leading and motivating in a class setting. No wonder this kind of workout has moved up the list in popularity. The client shows up and trainers do all the work, well not quite. But life is busy and stressful sometimes, and here is a setting that does not require technical expertise, gadgets or expensive machines.

Wearable Technology. Activity trackers, smart watches, heart rate monitors and GPS tracking devices continue to fascinate a rapidly growing segment of the population. Just by utilizing functions on their smart phones they can count steps taken, add up calories burned, check heart rate or blood pressure without missing a

step. Use of these devices is here to stay.

Body Weight Training. Think of the old days; push-ups and pull-ups, i.e., using one’s own body as the principal tool. Minimal equipment makes this type of workout affordable. Think seniors on fixed incomes and others without much disposable income. The simplicity of working out with a minimum of fuss appeals to many people; fewer exercise machines to balance, fewer programs to dial in.

Strength Training. This is a core part of any exercise program, along with aerobic exercise and flexibility. Folks at all levels of fitness and of both genders require strength training. Your 20 and 30something clients are working with heavier weights and doing faster intervals than older clients, but all are working toward staying strong and healthy for life.

Educated and experienced fitness professionals. It’s important that individuals choose professionals certified through programs accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies, such as those offered by ACSM which is one of the largest and most prestigious fitness-certification organizations in the world.

Yoga. It’s not for nothing that this ancient tradition has been around for thousands of years. The specific body postures and moves promote both health and relaxation. Power yoga, Yogalates, Bikram, Ashtanga and other forms of the activity are popular, especially with clients who no longer tolerate high-intensity exercise.

Personal training. More students are majoring in kinesiology with an eye toward a career in personal training, making education and certification in this field increasingly important. More welltrained instructors available means more fitness facilities will look for the best. Keep up your credentials.

Fitness programs for older adults. The boomers are aging and many are retiring. This segment of the population has more discretionary income than younger people. Many health and fitness professionals are creating age-appropriate exercise programs to keep these clients active and healthy.

Functional fitness. Strength training to improve balance and ease of daily living activities is a new trend closely related to working with older adults. Z

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