Prescription Acid-Reducing Drugs Produce Heartburn and Dependency

In a study of acid-suppression drugs, healthy adults with no previous symptoms developed

"heartburn, acid regurgitation and dyspepsia" after a course of the drugs. Forty percent of 120 volunteers taking anti-heartburn drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) had a rebound increase in gastric acid secretion, resulting in acid levels above their starting levels.


Gastroenterology is the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. A comment appearing in the Journal stated, "Evidence that proton-pump inhibitor therapy induces the symptoms it is used to treat." Gastroenterology. 2009 Jul;137(1):80-7, 87. McColl KE, Gillen D.

PPI drugs for gastrointestinal symptoms is widely prescribed. Study authors stated, "This might lead to PPI dependency and thus have important implications."

In the previous Thank You to Grand Rounds, I noted that several prescriptions drugs are known to cause the problem of increased symptoms, rebound, or the original problem - Thank You Grand Rounds 5.50, Medicine & Technology.

It is becoming known that these drugs also do not target the source of the problem, so may not be needed. It does not seem necessary to start a course of drugs that perpetuates your symptoms. The Fitness Fixer article Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures explains more.


Related Fitness Fixer:

• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones
• Common, Missed Cause of MusculoSkeletal Pain - Your Drugs
• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others
• Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density

Unrelated Random Fitness Fixer:

• Married 63 Years With Good Balance

Labels: digestion, drugs, fix pain, injury

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Common, Missed Cause of MusculoSkeletal Pain - Your Drugs

Three years ago, I started a series of Fitness Fixer posts about the extensive phenomenon of muscle, joint, and body pain occurring from common prescription drugs. The editors at that time asked me to defer writing about it. I have been watching the medical reports grow, substantiating the numbers and secondary problems of chronic pain from common medicines. This is a short summary, with more coming this summer.

Major side effects of body and muscle pain from common prescription drugs are not rare as once thought. Misdiagnosis of this pain is common. Unnecessary treatments, surgeries, and more drugs are often given. Exercises and stretches do not stop body pain from drugs:

• Statin drugs for cholesterol are a frequent cause of muscle and joint pain, and sometimes, numbness or tingling in the fingers or toes
• Common prescription drugs for anxiety and depression. Even though this class of medicines may be prescribed for nerve pain, they can cause nerve and muscle pain as side effects
• Ritalin (methylphenidate hydrochloride) and related drugs
  
• Some prescription allergy medicines such as Allegra (Fexofenadine)
• Prescription acid prevention medicines called PPIs - proton pump inhibitors (Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, Zoton, Inhibitol, and others). PPIs have also been shown to greatly increase risk of hip fracture
• Erectile enhancing drugs
• The calcium channel-blocker drug verapamil
• The antibiotics erythromycin and clarithromycin
• Some HIV medications
• Prescription medicine for constipation like Zelnorm (Tegaserod), irritable bowel, and others digestive complaints.
• Migraine and headache prescriptions
• Medicines for fibromyalgia
• Even many medicines for pain, sadly have pain both as direct side effects and rebound pain, increasing drug dependence and pain cycles
• There are several more prescription drugs that cause more problems than they relieve. List your additions in the comments below.
  

Often the need for the original medicine can be stopped with simple healthy changes. Motivated people can address and change the original problem, making their life better and more active than before instead of paying for more medicines and the problems that come with them.

Two of my books teach how to fix pain and mention specific drugs and what to look for:

• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery. Each chapter on each kind of pain gives a list of drugs that are known to cause pain.
• Health & Fitness THIRD ed - How to Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest of Your Life. Several chapters include drug information pertinent to the condition covered, plus several chapters on general health, offering many ways to avoid needing the original medications.
• Click the link www.DrBookspan.com/books.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others
• Human Growth Hormone
• Doctor Fakes Benefits in 21 Pain Pill Studies

Labels: arthritis, blood pressure, digestion, dizziness, drugs, fibromyalgia, fix pain, headache/migraine, practice of medicine

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How Effective Are Medical Treatments For Back Pain?

Many well-known conventional treatments for injured athletes and military personnel came from ways to keep wounded combatants able to continue fire, not to maximize their long-term survival or later health.

Years of my career laboratory research was improving physical training for athletes and military, and developing injury protocols that were healthy, not just a remedy for the moment. I also found that much good sports medicine for athletic motion was never applied to the more common body motions needed all day. Not only can the athletes benefit, but everyone else. Many patients and readers have success using my improved non-surgical methods, and write us their stories (click for reader stories). Many more have success without writing about it. Other readers asked about various medical (surgical/drug) treatments, and why don't I use them.

Thank you to my colleague Fabrice Czarnecki. M.D. emergency room physician, for sending me a report, recently published in a prestigious medical journal. The work was a systematic review of the "benefits and harms of nonsurgical interventional therapies for low back and radicular pain."

The medical methods they looked at were local injections, botulinum toxin injection, prolotherapy, epidural steroid injection, facet joint injection, therapeutic medial branch block, sacroiliac joint injection, intradiscal steroid injection, chemonucleolysis, radiofrequency denervation, intradiscal electrothermal therapy, percutaneous intradiscal radiofrequency thermocoagulation, Coblation nucleoplasty, and spinal cord stimulation.

Their results: "For sciatica or prolapsed lumbar disc with radiculopathy, we found good evidence that chemonucleolysis is moderately superior to placebo injection but inferior to surgery, and fair evidence that epidural steroid injection is moderately effective for short-term (but not long-term) symptom relief. We found fair evidence that spinal cord stimulation is moderately effective for failed back surgery syndrome with persistent radiculopathy, though device-related complications are common. We found good or fair evidence that prolotherapy, facet joint injection, intradiscal steroid injection, and percutaneous intradiscal radiofrequency thermocoagulation are not effective. Insufficient evidence exists to reliably evaluate other interventional therapies.

What does all that mean? They summed it up in their conclusions: "Few nonsurgical interventional therapies for low back pain have been shown to be effective in randomized, placebo-controlled trials."


Medical reports on these methods (as well as general strengthening exercises) frequently show what is called a scattershot success - meaning if you try it on hundreds of people, it's bound to hit a few of them. Often these hits (moderate improvements) are about the same as chance or as time passing and the person heals on their own over the weeks of the treatment and recovery. Use those medical treatments if you believe in them and prefer them.

I prefer a direct approach:

1. Instead of shots to anesthetize the area, or surgery to remove or fuse an area, retrain movement to be healthy so that you no longer injure the area and it can heal.
2. Instead of medicines to mask the damage you cause, stop the damage.
3. Stopping damage does not mean stopping movement, activity or fun. Use healthy body mechanics to become able to do more than before.

Continue Activities You Love

• Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
• When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"

Notice Damaging Body Mechanics

• Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?
• Prevent Back Surgery
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• What Does It Look Like to Not Use Abdominal Muscles?
• Simulation Suit To Feel the Pain of Osteoarthritis
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Fixing Damage Without Surgeries, Injections, or Drugs

• Innovation in Abdominal Muscles
• Surgery for Knee Arthritis, Meniscus, Unnecessary
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed
• Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Surgery Unnecessary
• Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others
• Doctor Fakes Benefits in 21 Pain Pill Studies
  
  
  Coming next - Common, Missed Cause of MusculoSkeletal Pain - Your Drugs.
  
  
  
  ---
  Questions come in by hundreds. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
  Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
  See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
  

Labels: drugs, fix pain, lower back, military fitness, surgery

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Neutropeptide Y Generation for Healthier Stress Response

Yesterday's article, Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian, told some of my career work to improve and strengthen human ability. Today, a study from Fort Bragg on Green Berets.

A study of soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, found that Special Forces soldiers produced more of a molecule called Neuropeptide Y in their blood than regular soldiers. Neuropeptide Y is generated by the body to calm the brain in times of extreme stress.

The Special Forces soldiers mobilized more neuropeptide Y than ordinary soldiers, and were able to sustain it for longer periods. It was concluded that higher levels make them more resilient to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the average soldier. Neuropeptide Y returned to normal levels within 24 hours in the Special Forces subjects, but dipped below normal in the control subjects of regular soldiers.

Army Special Forces personnel are also known as Green Berets. It is not known whether the Green Berets' better ability to generate the peptide and endure trauma was something they came in with, which made them more likely to pursue becoming a Green Beret, or had been acquired or enhanced through training. The researchers said, "If we could bottle this, or if we could train people to mobilize their own neuropeptide Y, that would be primary prevention for PTSD - a very exciting approach."

Labels: drugs, military fitness, performance enhancing modality

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Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian

When I worked as a military research scientist, strong brave men got hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me.

I measured what humans can do, physically and mentally, and how to make them better at it. I tested pilots undergoing acceleration to see what determined susceptibility or resilience to blackouts and other g-force effects. I tested combat swimmers to see what makes them swim faster, farther. I worked on modalities to prevent astronauts' bones from de-mineralizing, because without the pull of gravity, muscles do not make the bones retain calcium. After weeks in space, astronauts return with the equivalent of years of bone loss. I worked on countermeasures. I tested ground troops to see how much they could carry and why.

My work trains the person, making him self-contained and able to withstand harsh conditions without special clothing, tools, or pills. Another department works with garments that help resistance against temperature, weaponry, and other effects. Another group are the 'gadget guys' making yet more things I have to make the guys able to carry around. Another department is pharma-chemicals - what drugs they could develop and administer to block need for sleep and food, heighten focus, or increase strength or speed. Some heart drugs are long-known and used for steadying the marksman's hand by decreasing the contractile pulse of the heart.

Click the labels under this article for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. I have written several posts, with more to come, on my work to "extend the human envelope."

Look for tomorrow's post for one of the things the pharmaceutical groups work on - Neutropeptide Y Generation for Healthier Stress Response.

Labels: aerospace, drugs, g-force, military fitness, performance enhancing modality, stress, swimming, tests of fitness/health

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Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Muscle Soreness Rub

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - by special request of martial arts students starting my summer semester university class this Tuesday - Make a quick soreness relief rub at home:

Labels: arthritis, drugs, fast fitness, green fitness, martial arts, soreness

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Doctor Fakes Benefits in 21 Pain Pill Studies

A news report published in several publications including The Wall Street Journal stated that anesthesiologist Scott S. Reuben faked data so that it would seem that benefits occurred from painkillers like Vioxx and Celebrex. The studies had been published in several anesthesiology journals between 1996 and 2008.

Dr. Reuben had been a paid speaker for Pfizer, a powerful pharmaceutical company, and Pfizer paid for some of the research.

The journal Anesthesiology has retracted three of Dr. Reuben's articles. The journal Anesthesia & Analgesia has retracted 10 of Dr. Reuben's studies and posted a list of 11 of his studies published in other journals.

Jacques E. Chelly, head of acute interventional postoperative pain service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that the situation has prompted his hospital to review the protocols it uses to treat patients for pain, because Dr. Reuben's work was so influential in establishing them.

Editor James C. Eisenach warned in an editorial in the journal Anesthesiology, stating:

"these retractions clearly raise the possibility that we might be heading in wrong directions or toward blind ends in attempts to improve pain therapy."

Other Problematic Drugs. Vioxx and Celebrex are not the only highly prescribed drugs that have been found less effective than advertised. Several major drugs prescribed for pain/fibromyalgia and headache were later ordered by the FDA to carry a Suicide Risk Warning:

• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others

Where Does Some of the Information in Medical Books Come From?

• Fitness Myths - How Many Legs Does a Dog Have If You Call the Tail a Leg?
• Can We Teach Young Doctors to Be Healthy?
  
• What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition

Healthy Ways To Stop Sources of Pain. Specific well-known medications and surgeries have found to be no more effective than less expensive and disruptive methods:

• Prevent Back Surgery
• Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
• Studies Say Back Surgery Not Needed
• Surgery for Knee Arthritis, Meniscus, Unnecessary
• Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Surgery Unnecessary
• What Works Better Than Knee Surgery?
• Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?

Labels: drugs, fix pain, practice of medicine, surgery

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FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others

The FDA issued a public health alert today based on their review of 199 clinical trials. Specific drugs for epilepsy and psychiatric disorders are often prescribed to patients with migraine, back and body pain. The FDA review was released last January, and showed that patients taking those drugs had "almost twice the risk of suicidal behavior or thoughts than patients taking a placebo."

One of the drugs on the warning list is Neurontin (Gabapentin). Patients with back and various nerve and diabetic pain are commonly prescribed this drug. More drugs on the list are frequently prescribed for fibromyalgia and other pain: Lyrica (Pregabalin), Topamax (Topiramate), Celontin (Methosuximide), Felbatol (Felbamate), Zarontin (Ethosuximide) and others.

Here is a list of the medications required to add the warning:

* Carbamazepine (marketed as Carbatrol, Equetro, Tegretol, Tegretol XR)
* Clonazepam (marketed as Klonopin)
* Clorazepate (marketed as Tranxene)
* Divalproex sodium (marketed as Depakote, Depakote ER, Depakene)
* Ethosuximide (marketed as Zarontin)
* Ethotoin (marketed as Peganone)
* Felbamate (marketed as Felbatol)
* Gabapentin (marketed as Neurontin)
* Lamotrigine (marketed as Lamictal)
* Lacosamide (marketed as Vimpat)
* Levetiracetam (marketed as Keppra)
* Mephenytoin (marketed as Mesantoin)
* Methosuximide (marketed as Celontin)
* Oxcarbazepine (marketed as Trileptal)
* Phenytoin (marketed as Dilantin Suspension)
* Pregabalin (marketed as Lyrica)
* Primidone (marketed as Mysoline)
* Tiagabine (marketed as Gabitril)
* Topiramate (marketed as Topamax)
* Trimethadione (marketed as Tridione)
* Zonisamide (marketed as Zonegran)
Some of these drugs are also sold generically.

I will be covering migraine and other headache in the future. Instead of drugs to mask back pain, neck pain and various musculoskeletal and nerve pain, fixing the cause is healthier than drugs. By no longer injuring the area, the pain will stop and the area can heal. It is not matter of choosing between pain and often worse problems from the treatment.

To stop common causes of pain, and the need for drugs, start with these:

• Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• The Cause of Disc and Back Pain
• Fix Disc Pain Without Surgery
• How Much Inward Curve Space Should There Be In The Lower Back?
• Fast Fitness - Prevent Back Pain When Rowing
• Fix Scoliosis and Arthritis Pain, Fix New Orleans
• Prevent Knee Pain When Rowing
• Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Prevent Back Surgery
• Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain
• Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
• Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too
• Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part I
  
• Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part II
• Cauda Equina - Result Not Cause
• Healthy Mother's Day
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
  
  

Also recommended, available from my BOOKS page - www.DrBookspan.com/books:

• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
• Health&Fitness - How To Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest of Your Life. THIRD edition.
• The Ab Revolution - No More Crunches No More Back Pain THIRD edition.

Labels: diabetes, drugs, fibromyalgia, fix pain, headache/migraine, injury, lower back, practice of medicine, stenosis, upper back

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Fast Fitness Halloween

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Encourage health, not disease on Halloween.

Instead of junk candy, what about:

1. Give "Pledge to be Drug Free" stickers. If you don't have preprinted stickers, easily make some with blank stickers or labels, colored markers, and help of children (yours or neighbors).


2. Give small toys, available inexpensively in bulk. One choice is small blocks of modeling clay with a list of suggestions what kids can make - sculpt your dream profession, favorite person, flower... Toy, office, and hobby stores sell pre-packaged boxes of small cans of clay at economical prices. (Use some to make your high tech balance trainer.).


3. If you don't distribute treats this year (or any year) put a sign on your gate or door to Trick or Treaters with a healthy message - "Be drug free," "Always say 'please and thank you,'" "Please look both ways before you cross the street," or other good message.

If nothing else, not giving junk candy may cut down on visitors to your house :-)


If you are dressed as something scary, show kids that even scary things act well and do good. Try healthy Halloween games to teach manners, such as, "You've Been Boo'd" with a good deed. In this game, you say something nice to someone or let someone in line ahead of you, tell them they have been "boo'd" and they are next to pass it on.


More Healthy Halloween choices:

• Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
• Is Your Health Food Unhealthful
• Mischief is Not Good Exercise - Halloween Ahimsa
• Happy Birthday Happy Halloween

Labels: children, drugs, fast fitness, holiday

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Not Old for the Olympics Part II

Yesterday's post, Not Old for the Olympics Part I, told of athletes competing in the highest level athletic events over many years as they get older. The ability to keep physical skills by training is not new or unusual. To keep physical skills, you must continue to use and practice them.

One of my students, Leslie, was featured doing 30 pushups in the March post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady?


Leslie can now do 40 pushups easily, and says her goal is 45 for her 68th birthday this October. I didn't have a camera with me to record her 40 pushups last week in class before posting this post, but will try when I get back from the Wilderness Medicine conference.

Leslie says she wants me to tell all of you that she could not do any pushups when she started working with me. She says it was my training in functional daily movement that made the difference, instead of doing artificial exercises in "sets and reps" for isolated body parts. She says the last 5 of the 45 pushups are hard, but she perseveres and keeps smiling, knowing discipline needs training. Bookmark her movie so you can do your 30 pushups every day with her.

When Dara Torres made the news by qualifying for the Beijing Olympics, the first comments by the masses included that performance enhancement drugs were probably needed. Torres employs a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers who moved to Florida to stretch her daily, two masseuses, a chiropractor, a nanny, and household help, with costs estimated at least $100,000 per year, plus the support of family, friends, and good sponsors. You don't win an Olympics alone, but it does not require drugs to get better over years of training. Torres trains hard, and has a team of trainers and people who stretch her, using many of the conventional moves that "work" at the price of her 13 surgeries for injuries.

There are people who state that it is unfair and unethical to use performance-enhancing drugs, but they wear or allow a one thousand dollar engineered bathing suit like the new Speedo LZR. When I was competing, swim goggles were considered an unfair advantage. Mark Spitz won his record setting medals without even wearing goggles. When I was competing, it was considered unfair for an American athlete to earn any money from athletics. No sponsors were allowed. Athletes swept floors to earn money to compete. Today they are not only sponsored and advertised, pro athletes arrive at events with chauffeurs from their villas.

Is it fair to be taller, a trait which favors speed in swimming? Some who say performance-enhancing drugs are wrong will eat engineered food, and use expensive altitude chambers and other training devices. Is it fair to other competitors when one swimmer has a rich family who gives up all to support their dreams? It is considered unfair doping to use certain steroids to hasten healing of internal injuries and soreness from intensive training, but not if you use them to heal skin erosions from the same hard training. Drugs are vilified in some sports, glorified in others, and routinely used in the business and military world for increased concentration and competitiveness, and reduction of hunger and fatigue.

Debate continues about ethics. Two truths are important to remember - Performance enhancing drugs are not necessary to win or to achieve the highest goals of competition. There are women swimmers today who without any drugs are breaking records of men swimmers of the 70's who used steroids. Performance drugs are not healthy. The purpose of athletics is not just to mindlessly best the person next to you. A higher view is the beauty of clean healthy athletics.

Related Fitness Fixer on exercise and aging, and enhancing drugs:

• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• Human Growth Hormone
• Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise
• Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

Labels: aging, drugs, Olympics, performance enhancing modality, swimming

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Tour De France 2008 and Increasing Aerobic Capacity

The Tour de France is a 23-day bicycle race. This year it runs from July 5 to 27, 2008. It is a stage race, broken into individual races, from one town to another. The number of stages has varied over years since the tour began in 1903. Course distance runs approximately 3,000 km (1,864 mi) through most of France and often through one or more adjoining countries.

Some of the essence of "le Tour" was incorporated in the synthpop song "Tour de France," a 1983 hit single by the German group Kraftwerk. They put the motto of France in krautrock (krautrock is considered a fun and positive term by enthusiasts): Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for liberty, equality, good company - which is the point of much of the race.

The Tour de France is a difficult event. Even with light bicycles designed for each stage, it is still grueling. Athletes must train for exceptional aerobic ability.

Cardiovascular endurance, also called aerobic capacity, determines how long you can continue activity at your chosen pace. When you exercise, your body needs more oxygen, so your cells extract more of the oxygen your blood provides. Aerobically fit people can extract more oxygen when exercising, and so, can do more exercise. Average exercise needs about 10 times more oxygen supplied to your active tissues, than at rest. Heavy exercise can increase need to around twenty times. If you do not have high enough capacity from training, you will be too out of breath to continue. World-class athletes have been recorded to reach over 30 times their resting rate.

With regular endurance activities, such as biking, running, swimming, your body makes many changes that improve function. You increase blood volume, the number of oxygen-carrying blood cells, expand the network of blood vessels, reduce incidence of vessels clogged with fatty deposits, increase number of cellular organelles and enzymes your body uses to process oxygen into energy, and other physical improvements, to be covered in future posts.

Breathing in more oxygen won't increase your ability to extract more oxygen. For that you need training. When your body senses it needs more oxygen than it is getting - during hard aerobic exercise or exposure to altitude - the kidneys secretes a natural human hormone called erythropoietin (EPO). EPO stimulates the bone marrow to make more red blood cells. Everyone can do this on their own through regular aerobic training. When some people want more EPO, they may try blood transfusions, called Transfusion Doping, an illegal procedure to increase maximum oxygen carrying ability. They may also inject various kinds of synthetic human erythropoietin. Whether having the money and access to these substances is fair play is topic of many debates in sports ethics. More important is that they are not healthy. Blood can thicken and cell count increases to a dangerous level leading to cardiac problems. Deaths have occurred in young athletes from blood doping practices. There have been experiments with artificial oxygen carriers based on recombinant, bovine (cow), and human hemoglobin or perfluorocarbons. These substances have potentially lethal side effects including renal toxicity, increased blood pressure, and immune depression. Champions don't need them. You don't need them.

Posts to come will cover more on performance enhancement, drugs, supplements, Le Tour and other bike races, The Olympics and other events. Posts on supplements and performance enhancing drugs:

• Human Growth Hormone
• Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training
• Get Muscles for Christmas

Books that cover aerobic training and performance enhancement are Health & Fitness THIRD edition (good for general populations) and Healthy Martial Arts (more for athletes of body and mind).

Labels: aerobic, altitude, biking, drugs, endurance, performance enhancing modality, Tour De France

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Technical Difficulties

Articles intended for yesterday and today could not be posted. Blogger is having technical difficulties. No photos or graphics are uploading to Fitness Fixer. The scheduled posts that describe healthy use of kettlebell weights would not be as fun or understandable without seeing the photos. They will come, hopefully soon. Until then, try this remarkable site www.bonkersinstitute.org.

Bonkers Institute was sent to me by reader Dr. Ern Campbell, a good man, who runs the immense resource of the Scubadoc diving medicine site and forum, scuba-doc.com. I am one of the site's diving medicine advisors.

The Bonkers Institute site, on the surface, seems to be funny stories. Look closely to realize how they intelligently expose critical topics. From their "about" page, they explain that they bring to light "shameless disease mongering and unprecedented pharmaceutical profiteering."

"...Our mission is to expose fraudulent medical pseudoscience wherever it is found… We march into the field of battle armed with a powerful weapon: our sense of humor. Fighting pseudoscience with pseudoscience…"

read on -

Labels: drugs, education, mind, scuba

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Junk Food Through Your Skin?

We live part of each year in Asia. For a few months, I was posting articles for you from various villages. The town shower of one is pictured at right - not the hut, the outdoor green post with hose. Imagine what the Internet café was like.

On the flights over, our only bag was lost. US transportation security required us to check our sole knapsack, since it had a small gift for friends containing liquid. It never reappeared. We don't need "things" and it was just as easy to make our own soap, comb, and toothbrushes as carry them.

In Western stores, I am astonished by the number of "personal care items." Not just shelves full, but aisles. Each promising better hair, skin, nails, and other parts, but with ingredients that are not healthy for your body, produced in ways that pollute the world, and packaged in plastics that are unhealthy to produce, pollute when discarded, and which apparently leak chemicals into the product that can be absorbed through your skin - see Green Water. A study commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association found that even shampoos, body washes, and lotions labeled "natural" and "organic" can contain unhealthful, even carcinogenic compounds.

I feel high maintenance just carrying a toothbrush. Then we arrived without even that. What freedom.

We made simple hand sanitizer from coarse salt, rubbed between the palms.


For body, face, and hair, we picked aloe leaves, squeezed out the gel inside, and rubbed directly on - see Fast Fitness - Aloe Inside and Out. It dries non-sticky, and makes your hair shiny, clean, and healthy. We used the rest of the gel in food and drink for healthy digestion.

Bamboo is easily made into cooking pots (photo above left). We also visit our favorite bean sprout PadThai restaurant - an outdoor wok on wheels run by a friend. Paul is always popular when we travel (photo at right). The others are not sitting; Paul is really that tall, and has to duck those umbrellas, doorways, and ceilings.

Baking soda and salt makes clean toothpaste. Even without them, a short branch called a neem stick with one end mashed until fibrous, makes a soft, effective bristled toothbrush. Neem extract is said to be a good antiseptic, and effective against various health ills and germs.

After a long day at work and after hard training, instead of hand lotion, you can rub sesame or other light healthy cooking oil onto your hands and feet. You can scent it with mint leaves, citrus peels, spices, and flowers. More ideas in Healthy Mother's Day.

I don't use sunblock, even in the tropics. I do use something to stop some of the unwanted effects of too much sun, but I do not want to block the Vitamin D and other helpful effects of sunlight. Vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis (thin, brittle bones) and osteomalacia (rubbery, demineralized bones). Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased risk of a few types of cancer, including lung cancer. Studies find that people with low blood levels of vitamin D were more likely to have high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cystic ovary, and type 2 diabetes. Another study found that a number of patients with aches and weakness were vitamin D deficient and concluded, "A lot of 'fibromyalgia' may be D deficiency."

Instead of blocking or deflecting UV rays using chemical sunblocks that may contain chemicals that I am not sure are healthy, I mix my own, that I hope stops the oxidizing effects and makes my own body better able to stop skin cancer mechanisms. I mash together fresh coconut pulp, green tea, vegetable sprouts, mashed turmeric root, and aloe gel.

A study by Johns Hopkins researchers, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (October 30, 2007, vol. 104, no. 44, 17500-17505) found that rubbing an extract made from broccoli sprouts on your skin may help prevent skin cancer from high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Broccoli, and the sprouts in particular, contain a chemical called sulphoraphane, which is found to activate cancer-fighting enzymes in your own cells throughout your body, not only skin cells.

Instead of chemical anti-mosquito products, we try various things. Marigold flowers rubbed on the skin seem to work for us. I don't seem to be "sweet," and mosquitoes often ignore me while going after Paul. We have heard various theories from locals. One is that he eats sweet rice while I eat more garlic. Various grasses rubbed on the skin also work well for us. There are vines growing in Thailand with beautiful purple flowers. When you rub them on wet hair, it leaves your hair soft and shiny and sweet smelling, but the bugs do not like it. There are other vines that, when mashed with water made effective gentle soap and mosquito control combined.

In Asia, martial arts training is often more rigorous and disciplined than is common in the states. After hard evenings of training, I would sit by a candle made from oil and tightly wrapped bamboo leaves, and rub salt and oil into my, and Paul's, tired feet. Bliss.

• You can exercise for your health. Why undo that by eating junk food - Is Your Health Food Unhealthful
• or by adding junk food to your brain through thinking unhealthful thoughts - Healthier Heart
• or with junk food directly through your skin.

The biggest worry for Paul is just ducking the doorways.

Labels: cancer, diabetes, digestion, drugs, fibromyalgia, fix pain, green fitness, nutrition, osteoporosis, sunlight

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Sinus and Head Colds

Several readers asked what else they can do for painful head and sinus congestion, because after two+ weeks of medicines and doctor visits, they were no better, or were worse. Common treatments do not work as claimed, including decongestants and sprays, and can cause sinus pain to continue and recur.

What Are Sinuses?
The sinuses in your head are eight spaces in your skull behind your eyes and nose. They produce mucus, and that is good. Mucus produces antiseptics, and traps and filters germs and particles that you don't want to pass into your respiratory system and the rest of your body. Sinusitis occurs when one or more of your sinus cavities become inflamed.

Inflamed by Inhaling Things
Sinuses can become inflamed without any germs causing it, for example from inhaling particles, allergens, or liquids up the nose. If you have ever "gotten water up your nose" in a pool, you have felt the results. The practice of irrigating the nose and sinuses with salt-water sprays is often prescribed for sinus congestion, and even for preventive "maintenance," but it removes important protective mucus layers and natural disease-fighting compounds, and is irritating in itself. Some people regularly spray the sinuses using a variety of squeeze bottles, or a device called a neti pot. It is an unnecessary practice, and does not prevent the underlying cause of sinus pain. It sets up an addictive cycle of rebound congestion and irritation, and increased risk of infections and discomfort to follow.

Another contributor to rebound congestion is regular use of camphor inhalers. Sniffing camphor is a widespread practice throughout Asia, where decorative camphor containers shaped to fit the nose are sold in most grocery, pharmacy, and convenience stores. Camphor irritates mucus membranes causing a cycle of irritation, more camphor inhalation, and more congestion. Some people develop a habit of inhaling camphor, thinking it is for their congestion, not realizing they have a substance inhalation addiction called "huffing."

Decongestants
Decongestants are a big money item in drug store sales. They are not the best treatment for sinus pain and congestion. You are already too clogged up. You do not want more "drying out." The clogged areas would do better becoming more dilute by drinking hot liquids, not by becoming more gummy and concentrated with the "drying out" of a decongestant. After the decongestant wears off, a rebound can occur of more congestion. Taking more decongestant perpetuates a negative cycle, and can raise blood pressure. Cough syrups and pills that contain dexomethorphan (DXM) to block coughing are not as effective for coughs as hoped, but are popularly abused by kids looking for a cheap, easily available "high" ("rhobotripping") with unhealthy physical and psychoactive effects.

Infections and Antibiotics
Sometimes sinuses fill with bacterial or viral fluid. Antibiotic do not help against sinusitis, even the kinds colonized by bacteria. Antibiotics can kill your body's good "bugs" or weaken them, leaving you susceptible to stronger bad bugs, who learn how to live and multiply in your body. Antibiotics taken orally reduce the needed numbers of beneficial flora that normally live in your GI tract. The nutritional and immunogenic products that they normally make in your body are not made, and the organisms responsible for several illnesses can rapidly reproduce and get out of control. An example is antibiotic-associated Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) colitis, an infection of the colon that occurs primarily among patients exposed to antibiotics. More than three million C. difficile infections occur in hospitals in the U.S. each year. He number is growing. An estimated 20,000 C. difficile infections occur each year in the U.S. outside the hospital - directly caused by taking antibiotics.

Healthier Ways to Decongest and Sooth:

• Hot steamy showers and baths.
• Hot facial compresses.
• No need for fancy vaporizers with chemicals (more camphor or other irritants to inhale). Put on a kettle or any pot of water and heat until steaming. Stand at a distance where you feel the warm steam, without standing close enough for any chance of burns. No need to bend over as in the photo at right. Stand in healthy comfortable position for your back and neck.
• Eat spicy foods that you like, such as wasabi or chili peppers.
• Drink hot peppermint tea, or other warm, aromatic teas with lemon.
• Reduce irritating particles (rugs, cats, junk piles, cigarettes, or whatever concentrates trigger irritants).
• A walk outdoors in fresh air and sunshine helps clear breathing and pain.
• Do any fun exercise to heat your body. Increasing body temperature loosens clogging secretions and generates heat shock proteins that have been found to be pretty good for you. The post Exercise and Cancer touches on the basics of heat shock proteins.
• The post Fast Fitness - Quick Warm Up gives a quick method to increase body temperature to warm up.
• The post Regular Exercise Reduces Cold and Flu Incidence lists good practices to lower risk and increase resistance to infectious diseases.

More information on preventing and resolving sinus problems, things to know about antibiotic use, and other infectious topics are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: breathing, children, colds/flu/infectious, drugs, heat, neck, nutrition, smoking, warmup

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Fixing Leg Numbness, Back Pain, Flank Pain, Knee Pain, Nerve Pain, Three Unhealthy Surgeries, Part II

In Part I of this post on Monday, photographer Bernie tells of fixing years of pain that doctors told him only surgery would fix, even after three surgeries. Here is a look "behind the scenes."

10 March 2005, Bernie e-mailed me:

"I've had this persistent paresthesias for 4+ years. I just learned about you yesterday. Where are your back & spine classes held. Tomorrow, I'm having lumbar myelogram & CT at (top name deleted here) Hospital. Before I consider anything else, I want to learn about your methods."

I wrote back with class information. I had two classes coming up. One was the next month. The second would be in early May and only a few blocks from where he lived. I told how we work to see change in pain right in class. I asked him to let me know the test results and that I hoped to see him in class.

20 March 2005 he wrote back:

"Thanks for asking, I never expected you to keep in touch. The myelogram and CT showed moderate central spinal stenosis at L4-L5. Severe facet joint arthropy & hypertrophy of ligamentum flaxa causing compression of the lateral recesses stenosis of L5 on both sides, kinking of L5 nerve root sleeves on both sides. I have a copy of the xray, showing the "hourglass" at L4-L5

"(name deleted) is the attending, 3-B Orthopaedics. He said the next step is surgery, by ( ), at ( ) Hosp. I asked if strengthening of my upper body would help support my spine. He said "try it" so I'll be at physical therapy next week to start.

"I have a commitment for the weekend of April 2-3 so can't attend that class, much as I'd like to. Since I live at (close to) your class at Temple CC is my best chance of attending. Cordially, Bernie Cleff"

I checked back in to make sure he was signed up for the May class and to ask what he was doing in Physical therapy. He wrote:

29March 2005
"The phys therapy that I'm getting concentrates on my core muscles. Thanks for getting in touch...very kind of you."

I wrote back saying that conventional core exercises were not the best thing. Usually they are forward bending actions that will further compress the discs, the nerves, and also do not retrain the abdominal muscles in the way they work when you go about daily life. Strengthening does not automatically support the spine. I wanted to make sure that he had my Ab Revolution book, which was then out in a training manual version. He said he had it with him for PT. (I found out two years later that they had the book, but they were not using it, and were doing traditional forward bending abdominal exercises.)

10 May 2005, the day after the Fix Your Own Back Pain workshop was held, Bernie wrote me,

"Hello, I did sign-up for your class at TUCC on Monday 5/9, but I was too tired to attend. On top of that, I am scheduled for spine surgery at ( ) on Wed 5/11/05, with ( ). After having 2 epidurals and physical therapy I decided to go for the surgery. My nerve that is pinched is in the shape of an hourglass (at L4- L5) and (the doctors told him) that no body position or exercise changes are going to help at this time. Both legs are numb and I am walking like a drunk. It is kind of you to keep in touch. I hope to meet you at your fall class."

Days later, Bernie had the surgery. He tells about it, and his next two years, in Part I of this story. The doctors all considered his surgery a "complete success." They said the surgery went completely according to plan, with no complications. His recovery was in line with expected results. The fact that his pain returned, was worse, and complicated by limited movement from his plates and screws and other surgical hardware not a factor to them. They felt the limited movement was beneficial and a goal of the surgery. The commonly held idea is to stop motion in the area to stop the pain.

In late October of 2007 arrived to teach the Fix Your Own Back and Neck Pain Workshop. I had 16 people waiting for me. One was Mr. Bernie Cleff, a funny white-haired muscular man of 80, who was in much pain.

We had a fun, energetic class. One of the students was a young man from India. He sat unsmiling as I mentioned various yoga poses that can injure discs in the neck. I tried to ease the class explaining that I am not against all yoga, and studied years to become a teacher myself. He sat unsmiling. We did three specific techniques to stop the neck pain process and a beautiful smile radiated from the young man from India. He had three herniated discs in his neck, most likely from his yoga practice of the specific moves I had mentioned, together with sitting badly at a computer for his work. He already knew those yoga moves hurt his neck. He had just been worried the pain would never stop. When it did, right there in class, he smiled.

Another of the students was a golf pro. Who I consulted with afterward to test out my work on lower back pain and golf. More on this to come.

Mr. Cleff did great in the first class. This class was done over two weeks. I gave the class things to try over the week before the second and last class.

Oct 25 2007 he wrote me:

"Today (Thursday) is my class day at The Clay Studio, working over the wheel for 5 hours. I felt good with very little noticeable pain. Usually after walking the 5 blocks from my home to the studio both my legs would tingle badly and I would stop to rest halfway. Not today. When I told my classmates about you phoning me to ask how I was doing with your exercises & stretching, they could not get over your caring. None of us had ever had a Dr. call to check-up. You are one hellova person and I'm thankful that I've met you.

"I've had my spine problems with the pinched nerves for a long time - roughly 4-5 years- and I'm slowly getting better since you came into my life. There is no other way to say it. Thanks Jolie."

He was improved in one class, and he felt that he was "slowly" getting better. I like an empowered student who does not want to dawdle to get better. The day after the second of the two sessions, Bernie wrote:

28 Oct 2007

"Last night, I walked about 7 blocks to restaurant AQUA (great value, low cost & delicious) and back home another 7 blocks.

"Upper back extension causes no pain, lower back does. I can do plank on elbows, holding for 60 seconds now, no pain.

"If you want to make photos of a geriatric doing your things, it's OK with me. as you've seen, I'm not bashful or delicate. I will work at getting better, my daughter is getting married January 5 and I want to be able to dance with her and my wife."

Bernie went back to his doctors about the small amount of pain remaining. They told him he should have more surgery, and gave him prescriptions. He wrote to ask me:

"On Nov. 2 I have a follow up with the spine surgeon (same guy) and on Nov 14 a consult with a Neurologist ( ). Do you have any suggestions about a pain med FENTANYL ,which was suggested by a doc at the V.A."

I wrote back that Fentanyl is a surgical grade narcotic. It is used "off-label" for back pain and there have been deaths. I asked him to tell me more about what hurt, and when, so we could stop it without any harmful medicine, and also what the neurologist said.

14 Nov 2007 he wrote:

"I had an office visit with the neurologist at ( ), he said my twisted nerve at L5 will never get better and I will always have pain."

They told him to have another spine surgery and take the Fentanyl. (Then why did they put him though all that surgery?)

He wrote:

"Hello, I still have some tingling in both knees...but much better than 2 weeks ago! There has always been pain in my left flank between spine & hip, never told you because the knees were my greatest problem… The lower back pain persists, but only left side. When I do the trap stretch leaning to left--puts much pressure on that pain. Leaning to the right feels like a good stretch. Any additional suggestions?"

I found that that he was still doing "their" exercises. Conventional exercises of bending forward to stretch the hamstrings are often prescribed for back pain. The assumption is that tight hamstrings have (something) to do with back pain. However, bending forward is one major contributor of this kind of back pain. I changed how he stretched his hamstrings to one of the ways we did in class.

He was also continuing to overarch his lower back when walking, which was a large source of the tingling pain. When he used the Trapezius stretch, he was also overarching, which makes pain when bending to that side. This kind of pain is often confused for spinal stenosis. One classic sign of stenosis is pain when bending toward one side. But the narrowing is not true stenosis, but just overarching which narrows and pinches the area. For someone who has stenosis, not pinching the area further with overarching is frequently enough to stop pain.

What was complicating everything was his surgeries. They were considered "completely successful." The two knee replacements were "completely rehabbed" meaning he could bend his knees enough to sit in a chair. He could no longer stretch the front of his hip enough to prevent the kind of tightness that encourages standing and moving in overarched position. The back surgery put a plate in his back to prevent much movement. That meant that even small overarching movements were enough to pressure the newly immovable area. The back hurt, and the tight back and hip were compressing nerves going down both legs.

He wrote two mails:

"Jolie You hit on the spot. I will keep at it gently."

and

"Jolie, a quick note to tell you today I walked 12 blocks, stopping to stretch hamstrings.. often on steps or fireplug....as you suggested...also lunge stretch. I will dance at my daughter's wedding. Much thanks.

"There will not ever be more surgery on my body."

For the flank pain, he had been for many tests, and was even scheduled for a kidney evaluation. The muscles in the area were so tight, that I biked over to his home to do a sports medicine technique to stretch it out for him, and checked his other stretches. I went over how to stretch the front of the hip without overarching his lower back. His sweet funny wife made me lunch. We got some fun photos of things as gifts for you, of fun stretches and activities.

He wrote

"I've had x-rays, MRI, bloodwork, surgery, injections, no Dr. had any solution.
YOU HAD THE ANSWER. No wonder so many people have thanked you."

He did the work and gave me the credit. That's a good man.

Next - Bernie dances at his daughter's wedding in Cauda Equina - Result Not Cause.

Labels: drugs, facet joints, fix pain, hamstring, impingement, injury, knee, lordosis, lower back, neck, practice of medicine, readers inspiring story, side, stenosis, stretch, surgery, yoga

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Green Water

Commercially bottled water may not be a healthy fitness drink, from the container it comes in to the water inside.

The water may be no healthier than tap water, the plastic containers may leach chemicals into the water they hold, and the bottling, transport, and disposal all seriously weaken environmental fitness, and ultimately your own.


The Cornell Daily Sun made a nice summary of the information:

• CNN news reports that Aquafina and Dasani are no different than tap water
• Plastic water bottle manufacturing process, requires 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a year
• 13,700 18-wheelers are used per week to transport one billion bottles of water across the world.
• Bottled water undergoes eight tests under Environmental Protection Agency requirements. Tap water must undergo 22 different tests (tests in countries like Great Britain and Canada are more stringent).

The Journal of Queen's University (Ontario) adds:

• One kilogram of plastic bottles requires 17.5 kilograms of water to be used in the production process. You're putting more water into it than you're getting out.
• Bottling and shipping water produced more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2006.
• Tap water is a safe and economical alternative to plastic bottles.

Both articles, plus others, advocate avoiding commercially bottled water and re-filling your own plastic or Nalgene bottles with simple tap water. I add two things:

1. Use non-plastic bottles. Small glass bottles have been working for me and my students. For more safety, wrap them in protective neoprene sleeves, available easily in many places, including "dollar" stores. Some students have come in with stainless steel bottles from old army supply. We discourage aluminum bottles until we know if there is possibility of the aluminum leaching into the water and if that may affect health.


2. Get a water filter for your tap water. There is work showing the water supply increasingly contains medical drugs excreted by the users and other chemicals that constitute a "body burden" of compounds with potential health effects. Future posts will explain those topics.

One of my students, Lily, who brings me a wonderful quick-bean recipe in thoughtful glass jars, adds this site for more eco-health through Deforesting Your Mailbox of catalogs.

Click this Friday Fast Fitness for recipes for Healthier Fitness Water. Readers, send your ideas for healthy, convenient water and photos of your inventive, fun containers.

Labels: drugs, green fitness, nutrition, performance enhancing modality

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Altitude Sickness, Viagra, and Bubbles on Flights

The previous post Altitude Sickness During Flights told how certain symptoms occurring during air travel are from exposure to altitude.

If a craft were not pressurized, air pressure inside would be equivalent to air pressure outside. At high altitude, there would not be enough air pressure inside the craft for crew to be functional enough to fly. Crew in unpressurized craft wear oxygen-delivery equipment. This was one of my areas of study with the Navy.

Passenger planes are pressurized. The inside is kept at higher pressure than actual flight altitude (equivalent to lower altitude). The pressure inside is still not as much as at sea level. Keeping that much air pressure inside would create extreme metal fatigue on the craft and huge fuel costs. Regular passenger aircraft keep interior pressure equivalent to mild altitude exposure.

In the last few years, Viagra (sildenafil citrate) has been tested by various groups, including the military, as intervention against altitude sickness. Recently, it was also found that the drug reduced symptoms, thought to be jet lag, after flights. My guess is that it was effective for symptoms from flights because of the same properties that may help reduce symptoms, in some, of altitude sickness.

Another component that I discovered many years ago in my work in altitude sickness, was a bubble component - an altogether new dimension to the altitude sickness puzzle. Decompression sickness bubbles can form in the body when coming up after a scuba dive. I found the same kind of bubbles can form in your body when going to elevations encountered in aircraft and mountain travel, with no prior scuba diving. More of this in future posts.

Decompression sickness is also an issue when going into space during extra-vehicular activities. Click Space Walks.

Altitude sickness in flight is different from (or in addition to) the motion sickness of flight motion, or being stiff after not moving enough during long flights. The post Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting covers some exercises and stretches to relieve those problems.

Altitude exposure is not always a bad thing - certain athletes use altitude training to expose their body to conditions that make it work harder and develop greater oxygen carrying capacity. Future posts will cover different kinds of athletic training at altitude, and training to perform better physically at altitude. Click the labels under this post for more on each topic.

Labels: aerospace, altitude, drugs, injury, military fitness, scuba

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Independence Day for Fitness

Today is Independence Day in the United States. The Declaration of Independence was drafted in June of 1776. Signing began by July. The paper itself didn't grant independence - work continued until independence came a few years later. After getting the idea to do something, the next thing is to take action. Here are ideas for a life free from things that are unhealthy - pain, unhealthful food, and exercises that reinforce bad habits:

Freedom from junk food:

Instead of soda, put a red sweet pepper in a food grinder. Cut about an inch of fresh ginger root and add through the grinder. In about 30 seconds preparation time you will have a sweet, cool, red, slushy drink with an exotic tang of ginger. Healthy and good tasting.

Instead of refined sugar sports drinks, put a peeled whole cucumber into the food grinder or low speed blender with a whole kiwi fruit. It will make a sweet, cool, slushy, green drink.

Instead of processed peanut butter and refined sugar jelly, put fresh raw nuts and apple slices into a grinder, mill, or chopper. In less than a minute of preparation time, you have a sweet nut butter that you can spread on fruit slices, carrots, and other good foods. Try walnuts, almonds, other fresh raw nuts, and experiment with different fruit combination to make different sweet creamy fresh nut butters.

For more recipes, Healthy Martial Arts has an entire chapter on nutrition.

Freedom from overeating

Just as you can't go through red lights every time you just feel like it, or hit someone any time you just feel like it, you don't just eat anything you feel like it at any time. That is unhealthy. Some people say any denial is unhealthy. That is like saying you can just wet your pants when you feel like it. Self-control is cleaner in body and spirit:
Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery

Freedom from unhealthy drugs and medicines:

Masses of products crowding store shelves claim to fix this and cure that. Millions of dollars are spent. The products seem dazzling, but much is hype and many produce unhealthy effects. Then more dollars are spent on more pills and products for the new problems caused by the medicines. Many prescribed medicines cause new problems that can be avoided. Stop the cycle and save yourself time, money, and unhappiness. If it is not healthy, it is not health care:
Teen Dies After Using Muscle Soreness Rub
Human Growth Hormone
Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?
Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Freedom from physical pain and injuries:

At the Special Operations Medical Association conference two years ago, it was released that 62% of our American injuries in Iraq are "Disease Non-Battle Injuries"(DNBI) - not from combat or supporting operations, but occurring in the gym. At the ACSM conference last month, a research study reported that their American military units had 17% DNBI injuries. I asked them how they kept their numbers so low. They replied that the number was for evacuations - injuries so serious they required removal from the base. Some of the most common exercise and stretching practices are not healthy. It is not that they are not good for some people or that they are overuse or done "wrong" - they are inherently bad movements. The same high injury rate is happening to fitness and yoga and Pilates instructors and students. I wrote about this in Welcome to the Fitness Fixer. Here are some specifics on why and what to do instead:
Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
The Stretch You Need The Least
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Safer Overhead Military Press
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Freedom from neck pain:

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Nice Neck Stretch
Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Freedom from mental pain:

Healthier Heart
Exercise Your Sense of Humor
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?

Freedom from crunches:

Abdominal crunches are a popular exercise, but they are not healthy. This is new and different information, I know. Crunches "work" your abdominal muscles, but not in a healthful or beneficial way, whether done sitting or standing or using a machine. Crunches also train rounded bad posture that you know is unneeded and unhealthy when sitting or standing that way in real life.

The idea that strengthening the abdominal muscles stops back pain is a myth. Many muscular people have pain. They do their crunches, then stand and move in the overly-arched spinal posture that is the hallmark sign that the abs are not even being used, and which creates one major kind of chronic pain: Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Crunches do not automatically make you use your abdominal muscles to position your spine to support your back. You do that on your own: What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

Neutral spine has a small inward curve to the lower spine, just not a large one:
What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

The simple act of standing and doing all your activities and exercise without letting your lower spine overly arch, and instead keeping neutral spine, uses more abdominal muscle involvement than doing crunches: Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.

Functional abdominal exercises use no forward bending: Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think

The book No More Crunches No More Back Pain The Ab Revolution explains a healthier better way to use and exercise your abs (114 illustrations 124 pages). I have a number of copies of the new 3rd edition expanded to give to military personnel as gifts. Contact me to send one (free) to someone you know, to keep our guys healthy.

Independence is Healthy:
This post included links to a few past posts about being free of unhealthy things. Click the labels below each post for more related posts. Keep the things you do, eat, and think healthy. If a medicine is not healthy, it is not health care. If an exercise trains injurious body mechanics, use the time for healthier exercises that are more fun. There are better, healthier ways. Be free.

Labels: abdominal muscles, drugs, fix pain, holiday, injury, military fitness, neck, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, spirit, stress, upper back, weight loss

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Teen Dies After Using Muscle Soreness Rub

A New York teen cross-country runner is reported to have died after using large quantities of a muscle soreness rub. According to various news stories, the medical examiner concluded she died after using too much Bengay cream containing methyl salicylate.

Methyl salicylate is a natural oil of wintergreen (betula oil) found in plants. It is used in many muscle rubs and creams to dilate blood vessels to bring blood to the area and redden the skin.

Deaths are rare, but salicylate poisoning is not rare or unknown. Poisonings using medicated oils account for "48% of acute salicylate poisoning cases treated in the general medical ward of the Prince of Wales Hospital" in Hong Kong (Vet Hum Toxicol. 1996 Apr;38(2):133-4.) Another study comparing severe salicylate poisoning from aspirin or topical oils found that the oils pose "the threat of severe, rapid-onset salicylate poisoning" because of the concentrated form and lipid solubility of the methyl salicylate in the rubs (Postgrad Med J. 1996 Feb;72(844):109-12.)

Some muscle rubs and balms contain other toxic ingredients, such as turpentine oil and camphor. The various preparations all "work" in various ways to relieve pain or mask it. I will cover more about the different soreness creams and preparations from around the world, their ingredients, and how they work in posts to come. The book Healthy Martial Arts covers ingredients in detail, how they work, and more on soreness and training.

Soreness in the muscles is common and normal after energetic activity. Muscle soreness does not just occur in the out-of-shape. However, your joints should not be sore after workouts.

If your joints (not muscles) are sore after activity, you may be using body mechanics that put joints in positions that grind or rub. You may also be shifting weight off your muscles onto your joints to make the exercise easier. Your joints should not be sore, hot, or swollen after any activity.

Here are a few ideas to avoid joint pain during or following activity:

To reduce knee joint stress during daily good bending (half-squat):
Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle

Reduce knee joint stress in full squat:
Achilles Stretch in the Bathroom

Reduce knee joint stress when running, walking, jumping:
Healthy Knees

Reduce lower spine stress when reaching, running, walking:
Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
the post tells why and has links to show how to restore the spine to neutral to stop the pain then and there,
and Change Daily Reaching to Get Ab Exercise and Stop Back and Shoulder Pain

Reduce lower spine stress when sitting and bending:
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix

Reduce upper back and neck pain:
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Shoulder and rotator cuff:
Safer Overhead Military Press
and Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too

Click the labels under each post to show all posts on that topic.
Sincere wishes to the family of this young girl.

Labels: drugs, fix pain, injury, performance enhancing modality, soreness

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Blood Hero

The previous post mentioned I am writing from the meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Yesterday the ACSM ran a blood drive at the conference center. At a blood drive, volunteers donate a small amount of (their own) blood; only a pint. Giving blood is a helpful simple thing to do. Your body will quickly make more and replace the small amount you give.

You can give as often as every two months. Seventy-nine-year-old Lillian Bloodworth from Florida has given 160 times, spread over 40 years. Just giving one time in your life still makes you a hero. The single pint you give can be used to save several sick, even dying, people of any age.

Before donating, donors are screened through questions to make sure they have not engaged in practices that make them more likely to have diseases spread through blood. These practices can be sexual, injecting drugs for recreation or bodybuilding, even receiving tattoos or piercings. A small blood screening is done to assure that you have enough blood iron to make donation safe for you. Then you lie down comfortably while they take the blood from a vein in the inside of your elbow. A good phlebotomist (venipuncturist, blood donation taker) makes the process painless.

A common topic in sports medicine is low iron. Medical texts devote much attention to populations with lowered iron levels, considering it a bad thing. Just as important to consider is high blood iron level, which is one intriguing risk factor for cardiovascular disease. High iron levels have also been associated with unusual fatigue, and perhaps cancer. One, of many, reasons to cut back (or eliminate) red meat is high iron content. Conversely, premenopausal women who lose small monthly amounts of iron, and vegetarians and athletes have lower incidence of heart disease than the rest of the population. One of the factors is that these populations often maintain lower iron levels.

High iron is not only an issue with extreme levels, or a genetic disorder of iron metabolism, such as hemachromatosis. Raised iron level from dietary sources may raise cardiac risk, particularly in men who don't have the benefit of monthly blood loss. Understandably, people with iron levels that are too low are turned away from blood donation. Other people donate to benefit their own health by lowering blood iron.

Either way, it can be healthy and kind to donate blood.

Need for blood donations rises in the summer. More info on Red Cross blood donation.

Labels: cancer, drugs, nutrition, spirit

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Muay Thai Monks on Horseback

E-mails have come in since I posted that we were on our way to the Monks on Horseback in the northern Thai mountains. Readers wanted to hear about our stay.

We live in Asia part of each year. We traveled north to visit our friends and teachers who are relatives and former teachers of the Phra (monk) Kru Ba Neua Chai who heads the monastery. Our friends live in the village of Baan Mai Kom, not far from there, close to the Burmese border. We took the bus north to there. There is no station - the driver dropped us on the road after dark, and we walked into the cool night to the mountain.

Nearby in Myanmar (Burma), drug traffickers from ethnic and government groups move vast amounts of opium and heroin, and more recently, methamphetamine, into Thailand for local and world distribution. For generations they have torn through villages, murdering adults and forcibly recruiting children into their militias. Drug use in the area further damages and destabilizes families and lives through drug illnesses, kidnapping, prostitution, and land control.

Drug wars, shooting, bombings, terror, international involvement and dollars have not stopped the destruction. The Thai monarchy, caring for the welfare of all involved, started a program for poppy growers to have income from other crops and industries beside opium. Thai soldiers in the region asked local monks to combat the drug menace by taking dharma (duty to behave righteously) to the hilltribe villagers. One monk was Kru Ba, a former soldier and Muay Thai (Thailand style martial arts) champion, known to boxing fans as Samerchai, and graduate of Ramkamhaeng University in Bangkok. To serve his land better, he became a monk. Another Thai man who wanted to do good gave the monastery a horse. Kru Ba took in more horses and orphaned hilltribe boys, and ordained the boys as nen (novice monks). Many of the nen had seen their families murdered by drug guerillas. Kru Ba taught the nen discipline, calisthenics, caring for the horses and other living things, the life of doing and saying good, and Muay Thai martial arts.

Soon more fully ordained monks and nuns became part of the monastery. Then Kru Ba started new monasteries. Today he has 10 monasteries in the northern hills. Except during periods when monks observe certain restrictions, they train Muay Thai outdoors, in the jungle, or in their thatched boxing ring each early morning and night.

Khru Ba and the monks and nen ride through local areas to show traffickers and locals they can stop contributing to drug addiction. Khru Ba says, "When we meet the Wa (one ethnic group involved), I try to engage them in dialogue, 'Why do you do this?' I ask them. 'How would you feel if these drugs were being consumed by your own sons and daughters?'"

On occasion, Kru Ba has used his Muay Thai to protect his nen and the monastery. As daily training, they incorporate the discipline of doing good into the physical discipline of their training. Kru Ba says, "Boxing for me is something which frees the body and releases the soul from barbarianism. When I box I use every single part of my body and my mind. Buddhism teaches you not to harm or take advantage of people which some may find to be in direct opposition to an aggressive looking sport like boxing. For me, boxing helps me to become a better Buddhist. I learn to control my emotions. I find beauty and peace and stillness in boxing. I get rid of my animal instincts and control them to the point that they become beautiful, an art form for sport, for education, for the discovery of truth. The word "Thai" means freedom and when I practice Muay Thai I feel free - free from my emotions, from anger."

A documentary made on the lives of Kru Ba and the nen has been called, "a heroic undertaking to create a better world." See more on www.BuddhasLostChildren.com. I will post more in the future about our part there.



Book:

• Healthy Martial Arts - www.DrBookspan.com/books

Labels: drugs, martial arts, movie/media fitness, spirit, stress

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Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise

Even before Actor Sylvester Stallone made news this week for stating he used the performance-enhancing drug growth hormone, I was preparing a post about him. His movie Rocky IV was on television. Not long after this movie came out in late 1985, I saw it in the theater when I moved to the U.S. to study another graduate exercise physiology degree. It was the first Rocky movie I saw. I loved it for poking fun at exercise science, all the artificial movement used for training popularized in the 80s, and at my own Soviet Russian heritage (and our interactions with Americans). In the movie, the supposed stereotypes were personally familiar - Russians were stunningly physiqued, disciplined, straight-postured, stern, and humor-challenged. The Americans were comically rude, indulgent, hostile to foreigners, and flamboyant.

Dolph Lundgren (born Hans Lundgren in Sweden) played Soviet boxer Ivan Drago. The movie spotlights Drago and Rocky's training for their epic match in Russia. Drago has teams of lab-coated trainers pushing him on dozens of beeping machines with blinky lights, and hints of performance enhancing drugs. He runs on motorized treadmills and uses shiny equipment to simulate activity. Rocky runs through deep Russian country snow and clambers up freezing mountain slopes. He rescues horse carts stuck in ditches, heaves rocks, and chops wood. These activities train his muscles and outlook in the real ways he needs for fighting, while Drago is made to simulate movement in artificial conditions that did not directly prepare him, and lead to his on-screen loss of confidence and the match itself.

In real life, Lundgren knows real training. He was a full-contact karate champion, and looks it. He holds a 3rd Degree Black Belt in Kyokushin Karate. Lundgren also has a master's degree in chemical engineering and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a Fulbright Scholarship. Mind and body.

I received an e-mail asking why the previous post was named Human Growth Hormone even though the injectable form is not human growth hormone (made from humans), but synthetic which has a different name. Human growth hormone for medical use was originally extracted from human pituitary glands (from cadavers), and abbreviated "hGH." By 1985, concerns about transmitting incurable fatal brain diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease led to replacing pituitary-derived hGH with synthetic growth hormone. Human growth hormone (hGH) is no longer used in medicine or sport doping. Instead, biosynthetic human growth hormone is used, called recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH), somatropin, somatotropin, or somatotrophin, to remind of the pituitary cells called somatotrophs where the human form is made. If products are marked "HGH" they would contain no growth hormone (and you would not want them to). Also know that the underground market of performance enhancing drugs is known for having many fake (counterfeit) drugs for sale, including fake growth hormone.

The post was named Human Growth Hormone because the point was that you can make your own Human Growth Hormone in your own body, safely, easily, and cheaply. You can be younger, leaner, and stronger without injections, through the three main things that stimulate human growth hormone - healthy exercise, sleep, and eating right, described throughout this Fitness Fixer blog.

Rocky IV was one of the highest-grossing sports movies ever. At the end, Rocky spoke to the crowd, saying that fighting in the ring was better than war between countries, and stressed respect over animosity. Remember to use the message of real training through real activity, not artificial movements in a gym. The crowd, including Politburo, stood and cheered when he declared, "If I can change and you can change, then everybody can change!"


Related Fitness Fixer:

• Rocky Movie Computer Fight Simulation
• Human Growth Hormone
• Common, Missed Cause of MusculoSkeletal Pain - Your Drugs
  
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• Rocky IV and Head Injury
  
• Get Muscles for Christmas
• Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique
  

Fun U.S. /Soviet Technology Observations:

• Space Walks
• Indiana Jones Rocket Sled

Book:

• Effective, fun exercise, stretch, and improvement for body and mind, performance enhancing foods and drugs, avoiding injuries: Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: drugs, martial arts, movie/media fitness, performance enhancing modality

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Human Growth Hormone

Actor Sylvester Stallone made news this week for being found with the drug Jintropin. Jintropin is a brand name for the drug growth hormone (GH).

Growth hormone is naturally made in the pituitary gland of your brain. It does several things, including stimulating protein to make muscle. Various bodybuilders and athletes get injections of synthetic growth hormone hoping to get bigger. Actors and models use growth hormone injections to look more muscular and lean, and some cosmetic procedure doctors promote it as a drug against various signs of aging. Growth hormone use is not yet detectable by drug testing.

In children, one function of growth hormone is to stimulate bone lengthening. When the pituitary doesn't produce enough, children don't grow enough, causing one form of dwarfism. Occasionally, with too much, a child can grow to a giant. An adult taking growth hormone will not increase long bone length, so cannot get taller. Instead the forehead, hands, feet, and jaw may elongate.

Growth hormone "doping" is expensive, and must be done for a long time before results occur. For bigger results, some bodybuilders and athletes combine, or "stack," growth hormones with anabolic steroids (body building hormones). Some users add the dangerous practice of injecting insulin in combination with growth hormone (and/or steroids) for bigger muscles, more veins showing, and the appearance of exceptionally thin skin, looking as if shrink-wrapped over the muscle (believed a desirable look by some). Insulin doping can cause serious, long-term illnesses.

Growth hormone use does not seem to cause the serious health problems produced by steroids (as far as known). Problems from GH can include joint pain, wrist pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, joint swelling, facial swelling, facial elongation, and increased blood pressure. Using large doses can decrease thyroid function and increase risk of diabetes. Sadly, users may think these are signs of aging, so they take more growth hormone believing it will stop this "aging." If the user already has cancer, it can increase growth of the tumor. Growth is what this hormone does. There is no need for too much of it.

Growth hormone is naturally produced in your body all your life. Older people produce less growth hormone, but they still produce it. Some advertising for GH tries to persuade that older people are somehow at a disadvantage without a lot. Remember that older people (above the age range of puberty) need less because they are not growing, although they still need enough for strength and tissue repair.

Aging alone is not what makes you not have enough growth hormone. Four main practices reduce your body's levels:

• Lack of exercise. That makes sense, because without exercise your muscles, bones, and other tissues have no reason to rebuild; you aren't using them, after all.
• High blood sugar from dietary sources - such as eating too much and eating junk food.
• Already high levels. Your body reduces its growth hormone levels if it already has too much. Growth hormone stimulates your liver and other tissues to secrete "insulin-like growth factor-I" (IGF-I), which is the real factor behind most of the effects of growth hormone. Having high blood levels of IGF-I decreases secretion of growth hormone as a normal regulatory function.
• Anti-inflammatory and immune-suppressive medicines called glucocorticoids (such as prednisone, dexamethasone, and hydrocortisone). Ongoing dosage with these can lead to osteoporosis, muscle weakness, delayed wound healing, and increased infection risk. This should be kept in mind by people taking them for injuries and pain.
  

How do you get more natural growth hormone in healthy amounts without side effects? Three main agents stimulate GH secretion:

• Exercise. Getting exercise in healthful ways, described throughout Fitness Fixer blog posts, boosts GH at all ages.
• Deep sleep. With good exercise, you will sleep well at night too.
• Low levels of sugar in your blood. It is shown that both high fat and high refined-sugar diets increase blood sugar. It is not rocket science to eat less junk and more fruit and vegetables to be healthier and to lower high blood sugar.

Related Fitness Fixer:
There is more to growth, metabolizing fat, or building muscle than taking hormones. Click these posts on safe "natural" training for a healthy muscular body:

• Get Muscles for Christmas
• Getting Stronger Without a Gym

Books:

• My book Healthy Martial Arts has a chapter on performance enhancing foods and substances, good and bad, and chapters on effective fun exercise, stretch, and improvement for body and mind. Not just for martial artists, it is for everyone who wants to move in healthier ways.
• Health & Fitness THIRD ed (How to Be Healthy Happy and Fit for the Rest of your Life) covers easy ways to have healthier fun, nutrition, health, and functional movement during ordinary daily life, and avoid pain without drugs or surgery.

Coming Next: Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise.

Labels: drugs, fix pain, martial arts, nutrition, osteoporosis, performance enhancing modality, stretch

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When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?

We're just back from teaching the medical school elective in wilderness medicine. Each year I teach there, working over my birthday. Same food as last year. But the creek was thinly iced - good for ice swimming.

Before lecturing, I worried that my information on health - stand up straight, eat right, exercise, "and all that," would be so known and obvious to the bright young medical students that it would bore them. Instead, it was called, "Out of the box." When did health become out of the box?

I spent years of my career in a lab as a serious, intensely number-checking research scientist. I worked to ensure that we knew what truly worked, and what was hype, unrelated, or just wrong. I made certain that what I discovered and developed for patients was squarely right, practical, and in the best interest of the patient (and fun too, which is health). All I pursued was The Truth. Matt Cartmill once said, "As a youth I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life. So I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet women."

Why is bypass surgery, angioplasty, stents, obesity, diabetes, and medications with uncomfortable, unhealthful side effects considered normal, while eating a vegetarian diet is labeled wacky and extreme when it is medically documented to stop and prevent heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other prevalent conditions that rob people of joy in life?

In my diving medicine lectures, I wanted students to see how the information worked and how it relates to many things in and out of diving, not just dictate lists of conditions to memorize. I showed slides, asking them to identify why an accident would happen on the way down versus up and why. I told them that if they understood, they would not have to memorize. I just wanted them to think. As my father once enlightened me, "Jolie, you're asking a lot!"

In the orthopedic lectures, I taught the same principles I tell in this Fitness Fixer blog of gaining great physical improvements without making pain and injury in the first place. After one of my lectures, students scattered for personal time, while a few stayed in the lecture hall, bent over laptops. They sat hunched, rubbing sore shoulders. Eventually one nudged the other, "Get the doc, she's right here." After some indecision, one student asked me to give him stretches to fix the pain of working at the computer. I told him you can sit and work without getting pain in the first place, and why didn't I show him that, instead of a stretch as an "antidote." He protested that the computer made his neck hurt. I agreed that the way he was sitting would do that, and repeated that you can easily sit and work in a way that doesn't cause the pain in the first place. More protests came, that as students they had to work on the computer long hours.

Medicine is not supposed to consist of allowing bad things to happen so that you can do a cool procedure to try to reverse it. Readers, do you want to try what I showed him and get a free house-call right now?

• I moved his chair in close to the table where he was working. Move yours in close now.
• Standing behind him with my hands on his shoulders, I gently pulled his upper body up and back to rest against the chair back. At home you can feel me guide your shoulders and upper body back.
• Next, keep the chin gently in, not jutting forward.
• We moved his computer back from the front edge of the table to make room to rest his forearms while using the keyboard. If you use a "below-desk" keyboard tray, it is often better to move the keyboard back to the desk. Don't crane your wrists, making a new problem. Relax and breathe.
• I told them that at my own desks, I raise computer on a shelf, block, or book about 10 inches higher than desk level, and use a cheap external keyboard. Even without these helpful changes, you don't have to round forward over a laptop.
• The seat back of the lecture chairs were concave - shaped to curve like the letter "C" so that you sat rounded forward. This is a common problem in many chairs, even some called ergonomic chairs. Another of the students mentioned he had a commercial lumbar roll at home. It was expensive and he didn't use it much because it was uncomfortable. I showed them how to use a small soft roll, which can be your gloves or light sweater, nothing fancy or expensive. Nestle it in the small inward curve of the lower back, then press your upper back, not lower back, against the chair back so that you can sit straight and lean back, instead of rounding forward. Pressing the lower back against the lumbar roll is a common way to make it useless and uncomfortable.

It turned out that most of the young, active, outdoorsy, academically talented medical students had muscle and joint pain. So did many of the top ranked physician faculty. Several told me they thought their pain was normal from their activities, from studying, their fallen arches, or body structure. They regularly took anti-inflammatory medicines and thought they needed special shoes.

You probably heard not to slouch since you were a child. That easy medicine hasn't changed. You heard to eat vegetables for health and an apple a day to keep the doctor away. I think only a few of the medical students I was teaching caught on, and will help others with what they learned. It can be so easy. As for the rest? Who is the one who is out of the box?


Are you doing unhealthy sitting without realizing it, during work, play, and exercise?:

Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch.

How to use your own muscles for healthy foot and ankle mechanics to prevent pain:

• Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
• Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?

It's not the backpacks, but mostly how you carry them that makes or stops back pain:

• Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
• Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain
  
  

Labels: arches, blood pressure, drugs, education, fix pain, nutrition, practice of medicine, sitting, upper back

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Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

A study from the University of Pennsylvania reported in the BBC News found that taking a class of drugs that reduce stomach acid, called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), for at least a year increased risk of hip fracture by 44%. Taking the drugs for longer periods further increased risk. Proton pump inhibitors include Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, Zoton, Inhibitol, and others.

The study needs more work and questions remain, but this is not a surprising finding. The common practice of using proton pump inhibitors, as well as ordinary antacids, has long been identified in accepted studies to reduce calcium absorption.

Taking acid-reducing medicines contributes to other problems as well. You need stomach acid for health. Stomach acid is necessary to kill unhealthy germs and food-borne infection. Low stomach acid allows infectious organisms to grow in your system. Acid suppression is a known risk factor for traveler's diarrhea and other gastrointestinal illnesses. Although acid suppression is commonly used to treat ulcers, the resulting lack of stomach acid encourages overcolonization of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori that is associated with ulcers. H. pylori is not all bad, and has important functions in your system. But using acid suppression with H. pylori colonization present seems to be linked with an increase in the progression to gastric cancer.

What can you use for your stomach instead of acid-reducing medicines?

• Pain, reflux, and constant burping are often a sign of low acid, not high acid. Drink a little apple cider vinegar in water and sprinkle balsamic vinegar, wine vinegar, or other vinegar that you prefer in your food.
• Clinical trials indicate that the "good" yeasts and bacteria called probiotics in fermented food like sauerkraut and kimchi help control several diseases, such as reflux, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel.
• Cabbage has been found in studies to be an effective antibacterial for stomach ulcers associated with Helicobacter pylori.
• Broccoli sprouts have been found to specifically control H. pylori.
• It is established in scientific studies in standard Western medicine that several spices have bacteria-inhibiting properties. Seasoning food with raw crushed garlic, onions, and fresh ginger root may inhibit strains of Helicobacter, E. coli, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus, without harming beneficial digestive bacteria.
• Garlic, allspice, and oregano have been found to have action against "bad" bacteria, followed by thyme, cinnamon, tarragon, and cumin.
• Capsicum, such as chilies and other hot peppers, have moderate antimicrobial action. White and black pepper, ginger, anise seed, celery seed, and lemon and lime juice follow.
• Researchers at the University of Kansas found garlic, cloves, cinnamon, oregano, and sage kill E. coli.
• Use ginger root to sooth stomach pain, rather than medicines.

To reduce risk of osteoporosis:

• Stop smoking.
• Avoid drinking large amounts of alcohol.
• Stop drinking colas. The high phosphorus content in both regular and diet colas are not good for your bones.
• Avoid agents that reduce calcium absorption, such as antacids, and eating animal protein
• Don't crash diet. Rapid weight loss is shown to lower hip bone density.
• Check for wheat intolerance. People with Celiac, which is an autoimmune reaction to the protein in wheat, have higher rates of osteoporosis.
• Read the post Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones.
• Avoid inactivity.

To build bone, stay active. Sedentary people lose bone even if they supplement with calcium. Exercise is the stimulus for bones to use the calcium. Get outside in the sunlight (sanely) for the several benefits of sublight not available in pills and supplements. Get fun movement and exercise outside, at least a little every day.

To build bone in your upper back and wrist (two of the three principal sites of osteoporosis):

• Do the plank exercise described in Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain.
• Do the Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener.

To keep your hipbones dense and your hip joints mobile:

• Use the squat many times every day, described in the post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending.
• Try the Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.
• Use the Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance.

People with muscle and joint pain are frequently put on over-the-counter or prescription anti-inflammatory medicines. Several of these hurt the stomach lining. Acid-reducing medicines are often added to try to counter this problem. Along with the problems that acid suppression medicines can produce, a common, under-recognized side effect of acid suppression medicines is achy muscles and joints.

If stopping pain and helping your bones are New Year's Resolutions, reduce or stop the need for taking anti-inflammatories for joint pain by learning the healthy joint mechanics given throughout this blog. Often when people stop taking both their anti-inflammatories and stomach acid medicine, they feel better than when they were taking both together. You can stop your pain without medicine, then stop the need for the medicines so that your stomach, and your joints, can heal.

Related:

• Nutrition for stomach, bones, and health for everyone, in the book Healthy Martial Arts.
• Click labels under this post for more on each topic.
  

Labels: celiac, drugs, fix pain, nutrition, osteoporosis, smoking

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Get Muscles for Christmas

Readers have been e-mailing me to ask what supplements to buy for holiday presents to get muscular and slim. This post will cover a bit about protein supplements for exercising.

Advertising for protein supplement products wants you to believe that eating more protein builds muscle and causes you to lose more fat. Neither is true. When you exercise more, you use a small amount more protein than when you are not exercising. It takes very little protein to build more muscle. Most of the rest of muscle weight is water. Drinking extra water also will not build more muscle. All you need to do is healthy exercise. On an average Western diet, you do not use all the protein you eat, even when exercising hard and lifting weights. You break down unused protein, excrete the byproducts, and store the extra calories eaten as fat.

Protein supplements made with whey, dairy, and unfermented soy are a major cause of a bloated uncomfortable gastrointestinal tract. (Unfermented soy also is also increasingly being found unhealthy, and recommended to be limited.) Many protein supplements have sweeteners like sorbital and corn syrup, which produce more painful gas. More serious, high protein diets contribute to several major health problems. Eating high protein is long known to be a contributing factor in reduced bone density and osteoporosis. Animal protein, including the animal protein in dairy, increases urinary calcium loss. New studies are showing that high protein diets may increase risk of cancer and shorten life span.

In a study, published in the Nov. 29 issue of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers found that eating diets of low carbohydrate and high protein was associated with "increased mortality and risk of cancer." Another study, published in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, concluded that a low-protein diet may protect against certain cancers. lead author Dr. Luigi Fontana stated that if people ate more whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables and far fewer animal products, they would be healthier.

Good quality protein is available without meat, dairy, or supplement powders. Try oats, brown rice, beans, lentils, sesame seeds, nuts, chickpeas, muesli, peas, seaweed, kelp, brewers yeast, hummus, tahini, and spirulina. These have protein, antioxidants, many nutrients, and fiber. It is not true that you need to carefully mix specific foods in each meal to get complete proteins from vegetables, grains, and legumes. Proteins combine on their own in the body over the day of eating a variety. It is another food myth that you must avoid eating protein with starch (carbohydrate), or not eat one food group in combination with others. Nutrients usually work better together.

You can build much strength and muscle without eating any supplements or high protein diets. I will post more about "fitness" supplements. In short, save your money. Just do honest exercise in healthy ways. You will be healthier and wiser and look great. Take the money you save and make a real gift of the season by donating to impoverished areas or going to a shut-in neighbor and doing their vacuuming. That is the spirit of the season and fitness as a lifestyle together.

Photo model - Paul Plevakas, vegetarian athlete, who uses the natural exercise in my books and on this blog. This copyright photo is on the cover of the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: cancer, drugs, fix pain, nutrition, osteoporosis, performance enhancing modality, strength

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Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?

Most people know junk food when they see it at Halloween, coming next week. Would you recognize it in disguise now? In gyms and fitness centers, I see people buying expensive exercise foods and drinks advertised for "health" and "energy" that are not healthful. Here are four things to check, with more in coming posts:

Many "energy" and workout foods are high calorie. The sport science definition of calories is energy. That does not mean calories make you energetic. If you are calorie deficient you will feel weaker. More calories than you need will not make you stronger or able to exercise more. A 400 calorie workout then eating a 200 calorie sports bar and a 200 calorie energy drink plus regular meals will result in weight gain not loss.

Next, many bars and drinks are little more than unhealthful candy - refined sugar, fillers, dyes, hydrolyzed proteins, unhealthy fats, and some synthetic vitamins. Eating them does not make you healthy just because they have the words "natural," "healthy," "vitamins," or "exercise" on the label. You would get more vitamins and health from eating a pear and some walnuts. Some that are labelled "low-carb" are high in unhealthy transfat and hydrogenated fat. Many products labelled "low-fat" or "no-fat" have much junk refined sugar. Junk fats and sugars damage your health over the long term. There is nothing you need to eat that has high fructose corn syrup. Both junk food and "health food" low carbohydrate products can have sugar substitutes like sorbital that can make you bloated and gassy.

Third, many powders, drinks, and bars have unfermented soy, which does not have the benefits of fermented soy, and in large amounts can slow the thyroid and may have estrogen-promoting qualities. People with tendency to estrogen-dependent tumors like fibroids, cystic ovary, and endometriosis probably want to avoid these products.

Fourth, watch for stimulants in exercise foods, often caffeine, guarana, ephedra, ginseng, ma huang and others. You don't need them to exercise or lose weight. Many exercisers take them, plus energy pills, diet pills, and their usual coffee and espresso. A cycle starts of needing them to avoid feeling weary and headachy. Nervousness, anxiety, inability to concentrate by day and sleep at night, and irregular heart beats can occur. Then over-the-counter or prescription medicines to try to stop those effects? That's not health.

Make healthier, less expensive sports drinks by putting an apple, banana, grapes, or other fruit, with nuts, a green pepper, and clean water in a blender, grinder, food processor, mixer, or just mash them in a bowl. Add any combination of unsweetened cocoa powder, cinnamon, cloves, ginger root, sesame seeds, and healthy items for flavor. When baking Halloween treats, there is no need to add any sugar. Use mashed fruit. Instead of shortening, use a cooked sweet potato and ground flax seeds or walnuts. Instead of icing, mash apples (no cooking needed) for a topping as sweet as any sugar or syrup, and a better habit for the long run. Get more ideas on our food blogger's Candy Free Halloween Treats (and Tricks) and on The NYTimes opinion page today for commentary on making the change to healthier food thinking.

Exercise your brain and be able to spot foods marketed for health and exercise that are unhealthy foods in disguise.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Healthy Mothers Day
• Junk Food Through Your Skin?
• Healthy Youth Parties - Fun Exercise, No Junk Food
• Fast Fitness - Homemade Sports Food
• Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• See an entire chapter on making good tasting, easy health food for exercise and a chapter on performance enhancing supplements, drugs, and food in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: drugs, holiday, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, practice of medicine, weight loss

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Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

Many false claims are made about metabolism.

Metabolism as you get older is not the culprit with much weight gain. Think of all the people who are eating more than in past years, exercising less, doing less, sitting around more, and eating junk food and soda. They gain weight and say the reason is that their metabolism slowed because they got older.

That fact that you burn fewer calories when you decrease activity can be twisted by clever product advertising as "slower metabolism." Don't fall for it. Find fun, healthy things you like to do and start them again to get the increase in metabolic calorie burning that comes with activity.

Don't fall for pills and supplements advertised to increase metabolism and therefore promote weight loss. Some contain stimulating compounds that increase heart rate or other functions. That is not helpful or healthy for your body. Many people feel stimulated and happy on these products, and don't notice the nervousness, anxiety, inability to focus, moodiness, difficulty falling asleep at night, and depression that also often occurs. A more serious cycle starts when people take other drugs to try to stop these symptoms. Then more drugs when the first drugs upset their stomach. Exercise will improve mood and increase your metabolism for weight loss more safely without the negative effects of stimulants and medicines.

Several devices, pills, and patches claim to burn calories or fat while you sleep or watch television. They can claim that because you always burn calories and fat when you sleep or watch television. That is how you stay alive. It is not because of the pill or the machine.

Eating food raises metabolism. The increase comes because your body has to do something extra – digestion. You still gain calories from the food and can gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn. Watch out for advertising that exploits the fact of the "thermogenic" (heat producing or calorie burning) effect of food. The effect is small compared to the calories you have eaten.

Some devices and pills claim to increase metabolism even after exercise ends. They can claim that because all exercise does that - with or without the device or pill. Exercise raises metabolic levels. It takes time after stopping exercise to return to resting level.

Live a healthy active life. Get outside and play. Move, bend properly (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix), and stretch as part of your everyday life (What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"). Get up now and walk away from the computer to take a break, breathe, stretch arms overhead, move, look up at the sky, and smile. The average amount of money spent on diet products that don't work is saddening. Every time you want to spend on them, put the money in a jar and go do something active instead, even if it is just dusting or gardening. Lift weights, including your own body, to regain the muscle you need for metabolic rate (How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending). Muscle loss from sitting around is often confused with aging. You will burn some calories, keep your joints moving, feel better, and save enough to give to the poor with enough left for a vacation.

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Labels: aging, drugs, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, weight loss

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Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones

A study making recent news concluded that taking calcium supplements does not do much to reduce bone fractures in childhood or later life. The study did not cover all reasons, but it does not stand alone. Studies over many years show that bone density depends on more than eating calcium. Calcium loss occurs through smoking, drinking too much alcohol and soda, lack of exercise, and eating animal protein. A young person can thin their bones through bad habits to the equivalent of an elderly person.

Bone density when you are older depends on what you are doing now. Sedentary lifestyle is a major risk for osteoporosis and fractures. Exercise thickens bones from the muscles pulling on them. Without exercise, you can lose bone density no matter how much calcium you eat. Without exercise, you "pee" the calcium you eat back out. You need to give calcium a reason to stick on your bones.

Even if you are a young man you need to build bone now. Osteoporotic hip and spine fractures are a major cause of illness and death for both women and men. One in eight men over age 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture, greater than his risk of prostate cancer. The death rate in the year following a hip fracture is nearly twice as high for men as for women.

Research in elder populations shows ability to increase bone density with exercise. Weightlifting is often mentioned as needed. People think they need to go to a gym or buy hand weights for home use. Weightlifting includes lifting groceries, children, and packages around the house. Weight-resisting activity includes moving, pulling, and lifting your own body weight. You can load your upper leg at the hip, a major site of osteoporosis, by bending right using your legs for all the many times you need to bend every day. Go to Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix for tips. Future posts will show more bone building exercise from daily activities.

Several vitamins and minerals in fruit and vegetables help bone density. Calcium also needs vitamin D to work. Sunlight is an often forgotten source. Sunlight is necessary for your immune system, bones, mood, and overall health. There are some who say there is no safe sun exposure. Balance your time of exposure to reduce risk of cataracts and skin cancer. Get out of your chair and get outside in the sunshine for exercise every day.

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• Click labels below this post for all Fitness Fixer article on those topics.

Labels: aging, cancer, drugs, hip, nutrition, osteoporosis, practice of medicine, smoking, squat, strength

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