Supplements

Oct

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Supplements | Add Comment

MSNBC has an article up on a new study that shows a daily aspirin can significantly cut your chances of developing colon cancer. That is great news since colon cancer is the #2 cause of cancer deaths. People that are sensitive to aspirin do need to be careful since it is not risk free. But, for many people, this is a very cheap and safe thing to add to your daily regimen.

LONDON â€” A low dose of aspirin may reduce colon cancer cases by a quarter and deaths by a third, a new study found.

But experts say aspirin’s side effects of bleeding and stomach problems are too worrying for people who aren’t at high risk of the disease to start taking the drug for that reason alone.

Previous studies have found a daily dose of at least 500 milligrams of aspirin could prevent colon cancer, but the adverse effects of such a high dose outweighed the benefits. Now, researchers say a low dose, equivalent to a baby or regular aspirin, also appears to work.

European researchers looked at the 20-year results of four trials with more than 14,000 people that were originally done to study aspirin’s use in preventing strokes. They found people taking baby or regular aspirin pills daily for about six years reduced their colon cancer risk by 24 percent and that deaths from the disease dropped by 35 percent. That was compared to those who took a dummy pill or nothing. There seemed to be no advantage to taking more aspirin than a baby-sized dose.

Oct

OTC Pain Meds can be dangerous to athletes

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

This is a good reminder to be careful of what you take and how much you take. There are no completely safe pain meds (ibuprofen, Aleve, etc.) I suffer from chronic back pain from an injury many years ago so I take Aleve daily but I am very careful to not take more than the recommended daily dose. If you have questions on what you can take and how much, ask a doctor. Self-medicating can be very dangerous because as the article explains, there are always other factors. Be careful- From MSNBC:

When used properly, over-the-counter pain medications can be a godsend. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) can tame many pains. And non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, aspirin, and naproxen can reduce pain and swelling in the first few days following an acute injury like an ankle sprain. The trouble comes, doctors say, when people, like Ehret, misuse these drugs. “A couple of ibuprofens really helped, so I figured more was better,” Ehret says. Indeed, many runners treat anti-inflammatory drugs like “vitamin I,” says pharmacologist Joe Graedon, co-author of The People’s PharmacyÂ book series. “They think, I’m putting my body through a lot, so I’ll just dose up on ibuprofen, without appreciating how potentially dangerous this drug can be.”

…Runners may think that as long as they don’t go overboard like Ehret, they’ll be safe. But experts say the benefits of popping even one pill before a 10K don’t outweigh the risks. NSAIDs inhibit prostaglandins, hormones that help normalize blood flow to the kidneys. Mix an NSAID with physical exertion and dehydration, and you can overwhelm your kidneys.

What’s more, NSAIDs can bump up your blood pressure, and when you add this to the natural rise that occurs when you exercise, “suddenly you have two things increasing your blood pressure,” Graedon says. If you already have high blood pressure, “you could have a mini stroke or a heart attack,” he says. NSAIDs also block an enzyme called cyclooxygenase (COX) that normally protects the heart, and this might explain why many NSAIDs, including ibuprofen, may raise the risk of heart attack.

Some forms of COX also protect the stomach lining from digestive acids, so when an NSAID blocks this enzyme, you may experience nausea, diarrhea, intestinal bleeding, and cramps. When used during a marathon or ultra, NSAIDs also seem to boost the risk of hyponatremia, an electrolyte imbalance that can cause the brain to swell.

Sep

Milk- great for after training recovery

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

Got Milk?

An article over at MSNBC corroborates what a lot of athletes already know- milk is a great cheap post training supplement. The high dollar drinks are simply taking what is already in milk and selling it to you at a higher price. Granted, they often have higher levels of protein per ounce, but still, they are usually 10x more expensive than milk. So, get in the habit of drinking a glass of low fat milk after you get done at the gym to replenish nutrients and protein and your body will love you for it.

…

In a study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism in June, researchers found people who drank milk after training were able to exercise longer in their next session than people who had sports drinks or water.

“It’s the form of the carbohydrate and the nutrients in milk that is most important,” said Emma Cockburn, a lecturer in sports coaching at Northumbria University in northeast England who led the study, which was partially paid for by the dairy industry.

Cockburn advised athletes to drink milk immediately after working out. “The damage caused by exercise leads to a breakdown of the protein structures in your muscles, but that doesn’t happen until 24 to 48 hours later,” she said. If athletes drink milk right after training, then by the time it is digested, the milk’s nutrients are ready to be absorbed by the muscles that have been hurt.

…Milk also may help athletes shed fat and build muscle. In a small Canadian study, experts found women who drank milk after lifting weights gained about 4.4 pounds (2 kilos) of muscle and lost about the same amount of body fat. Women who drank sports drinks put on about 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilos) of muscle but didn’t lose any body fat.

“It may be that some of the components of milk â€” the protein, the vitamin D and the calcium â€” act in a synergistic fashion to promote fat loss,” said Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University who led the research. Phillips has advised the Canadian Olympic Association about milk and the dairy industry paid for part of his research.

Aug

Effects of Even Brief Overeating Hard to Overcome

This is a very interesting study- It basically shows that overeating and lack of exercise have long term effects even after people clean up their diet and resume exercising. Psychologically, it becomes easier to see why many people seem to struggle with permanent weight loss. In the US where practically everyone overeats significantly, you can see what a problem this creates. I suspect that once people get used to overeating, it is very hard for them to ever return to a diet that actually allows them to lose all the weight they have gained.

The article doesn’t say what kind of exercise the people engaged in but my experience is that high intensity resistance weight training does exactly the opposite of what this experiment showed and physiologically changes a persons metabolism.

…

The effects of a sedentary, gluttonous lifestyle are hard to shake, even after the person has become an upstanding, healthy individual, a new Swedish study suggests.

Researchers found that even a short period of overeating and a lack of exercise can have lasting effects on a person’s physiology and make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.

Eighteen healthy people of normal weight were given the arduous task of limiting their physical activity (to no more than 5,000 steps a day) and increasing their food intake for four weeks. The participants in this so-called intervention group ate 70 percent more food, for a total of about 5,753 calories a day, over the study period.

However, one year after the study period, those individuals still had more body fat than they did at the study’s start.

Aug

5 Salads that are worse than a Whopper

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

Good Salad

Salad sounds so healthy… but really, it all depends on what is on the salad. If it is lettuce, bacon and ranch dressing, you might as well get the Whopper. Pretty much any creamy dressing is going to be extremely high in fat and sodium- and BTW, no one uses one serving of dressing on a salad. Most people use 3 or 4 servings. The general rule of thumb is that if it is creamy, it is because it is made from fat. This just shows how important it is to check the nutritional info on the restaurants website because their marketing dept has been working overtime to convince people that their offerings are healthy. So, with that in mind, here is the worst salad you can buy at a chain restaurant in America-

…

T.G.I. Friday’s Santa Fe Chopped Salad
1,800 calories
Calorie equivalent: Burger King Double Whopper, Medium Fries and Small Chocolate Shake (1,800 calories)

This is the worst salad in America. T.G.I. Friday’s doesn’t reveal full nutritional information, so we don’t know how much salt or fat this monstrous dish packs. Here’s a hint: Never, ever order a Mexican-themed salad, no matter where you’re eating. As in this case, they’re usually huge dishes of heavy burrito toppings on a bed of lettuce leaves. The only salad you’re safe to order at Friday’s is the Cobb.

Check out the other “bad salads” here-

Aug

Would you like Lipitor with your burger?

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Supplements, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | Add Comment

Giant Burger...

Here is a crazy concept… hand out free anti-cholesterol statin drugs with high fat fast foods. I guess the idea is that since you won’t get people to quit eating unhealthy food, you might as well give them the magic pill to partially counteract the effects. At that point, why don’t they just mix it into the hamburgers. The idea of encouraging people to eat unhealthy foods by lowering the risk with drugs just seems crazy to me. If you have to take a drug to keep something you eat from killing you, it seems like common sense would tell you not to eat it. But as the saying goes- “common sense is not all that common”. From MSNBC-

…

Fast food outlets should hand out free cholesterol-lowering statin drugs to their customers to “neutralize” the heart risks of eating fatty foods like burgers and fries, British scientists suggested on Thursday.

But a few experts say you might want to ask your server to hold the statin at this point.

In a study published in the American Journal of Cardiology, scientists from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London calculated that the reduction in heart disease risk offered by a statin could offset the increase in risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

“Statins don’t cut out all of the unhealthy effects of a burger and fries. It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether. But we’ve worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a heart attack, taking a statin can reduce your risk to more or less the same degree as a fast food meal increases it,” said Dr. Darrel Francis, who led the research team.

…”Although no substitute for systematic lifestyle improvements, including healthy diet, regular exercise, weight loss, and smoking cessation, complimentary statin packets would add, at little cost, one positive choice to a panoply of negative ones,” the scientists write in their paper.

Jul

Natural Cures for Depression, Insomnia and others

It is well know that many of our modern ailments are self-inflicted and caused by the high stress culture we live in. Add in poor diet and lack of exercise and you have the perfect storm. But many of those symptoms can be alleviated with natural remedies.

Take for instance depression. New studies show that massage therapy is equally effective as anti-depressants at relieving symptoms. There is little doubt that acupuncture is a very effective way to treat certain types of chronic pain without taking drugs. Green tea and cocoa are both excellent helping with arthritis and hypertension.

You can read the whole article over at MSNBC-

Jul

Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables is Declining

Carrots

Studies have shown that the push to grow fruits and vegetables faster and bigger has resulted in a large decline in their nutritional value. I think you also notice it in the taste. Naturally grown products are much higher in vitamins, minerals and all of the other beneficial elements. So look for a farmers market where things are locally grown. That doesn’t guarantee they are natural, but they are probably better than the stuff that is shipped in from hundreds of miles away that weren’t even ripe when picked. Best idea yet… plant your own garden and take control of what fertilizers and pesticides are used. You can read the whole article here-

…

It’s happening to crops in the United States, too. In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on? Davis believes it’s due to the farming industry’s desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth â€” selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers â€” decrease produce’s ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

…Bigger isn’t better, so skip the huge tomatoes and giant peppers. “Plants have a finite amount of nutrients they can pass on to their fruit, so if the produce is smaller, then its level of nutrients will be more concentrated,” says Davis.

Seek out heirloom varieties like Brandywine tomatoes, Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, Golden Bantam corn, or Jenny Lind melon. Plants that were bred prior to World War II are naturally hardier because they were established â€” and thrived â€” before the development of modern fertilizers and pesticides.

Jun

Foods that help prevent skin cancer and sun damage

Grilled fish

There is a good article by SELF magazine over at MSNBC which lists several foods that have natural anti-cancer and sun damaging compounds. They list them by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and give a variety of choices that help the body fight of the damage from the sun’s rays. But basically, the secret is anti-oxidants which are found in fruits and vegetables and Omega 3’s which are most abundant in fish. So, eating a diet that is heavy in fruits, vegetables and fish can have a very positive effect on your body. But you already knew that didn’t you?

…

A Mediterranean diet that includes fish packed with inflammation-fighting omega-3 fatty acids â€” as well as citrus, fresh herbs and veggies rife with polyphenols â€” may slash your melanoma risk in half, the International Journal of Epidemiology reports. These compounds scour the body for potentially cancerous cells and help reverse some DNA defects early on.

Jun

Calcium Intake is Crucial to Good Health

Got Calcium?

A study done in Sweden shows that Calcium is a very important mineral for many things- not just strong bones. Making sure you get enough calcium is really pretty easy. All foods list calcium on the nutrition label so you just keep track for a few days as you eat. If you are not getting enough, adjust your diet to include more calcium rich foods. Of course, the best natural source is dairy products but if you have problems with diary, you can always take a supplement. But I would try to stick to natural sources if possible since they are generally absorbed better by your body.

…

Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements.

The top calcium consumers had a 25 percent lower risk of dying from any cause and a 23 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease during follow-up relative to men that had the least amount of calcium in their diet. Calcium intake didn’t significantly influence the risk of dying from cancer.

Men in the top third based on their calcium intake were getting nearly 2,000 milligrams a day, on average, compared to about 1,000 milligrams for men in the bottom third. The US Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium intake is 1,000 milligrams for men 19 to 50 years old and 1,200 milligrams for men 50 and over.

Calcium could influence mortality risk in many ways, they note, for example by reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar levels. For the men in the study, the main sources of calcium in the diet were milk and milk products and cereal products.

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