New Fitness Fixer Index

By the time this post comes out, we hope to be making our way across Colorado. We are on our way to teach Fun Workshops in Colorado in July.

I won't have e-mail access to get or reply to comments for the next two weeks. Enjoy the posts that will come over the next weeks, and click the links in the posts for more. With close to 400 Fitness Fixer posts already on-line, your questions may already be here in the posts and the many comments. At any time I may be writing replies to comments that regularly come in on any of the posts.

David from Belgium is a talented computer programmer who donated his time to fix my new Fitness Fixer Index. Keep your browser window wide for best results, and check back often for updates.

Paul and I will be backpacking until reaching the conference in Snowmass Colorado. A reader asked (for some reason) if I use rolling luggage. Gee, no. I wear a backpack I got at a garage sale for $15. Sometimes Paul and I share one pack, since beyond a spare t-shirt and jeans and one shared comb, there isn't much more we need, and food takes up most of the bag space and weight. We don't carry a tent and I don't usually use a ground cloth. I am happy enough on the ground. Paul is so tall that one pair of size 17 sneakers and 38" inseam jeans take up most of the pack. The rest of the time, Paul carries what we call the neutron knapsack. In his giant hands, he rolls and compresses a pair of jeans and some t-shirts into molecule size to fit in a regular small pack.

Some ideas on making simple personal care items like toothpaste, hair care, and sunblock for travel:

• Junk Food Through Your Skin?

For pain prevention carrying backpacks:

• Prevent Neck Pain and Get Upper Back Exercise Carrying Backpacks
• Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain
• Carrying Schoolbooks Is Not the Cause of Back Pain.

Ankle and foot health for hiking and daily life:

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

Click and bookmark the new Fitness Fixer Index.

Labels: education

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Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel

For the next 2 weeks we will be away attending the annual meeting of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS). The post Exercise and Medicine Underwater and at High Pressure tells about the UHMS, the fun people, and the meeting. My friends and colleagues who attend are scientists and flight surgeons, SEAL team captains and commercial divers, submarine and aircraft personnel from navies of many countries. As we like to joke, the rest have paying jobs.

I won't have computer access to see comments. Healthline will be changing format for answering reader comments and requests. Before you write with questions, check the hundreds of Fitness Fixer posts already here and all the replies already given to comments. If you still want more, click this post which gives a list of labels. Clicking a label will give all posts on that topic.

Posts to come while we away will cover swimming and other topics. Here are posts that cover some of the subjects we study at the meeting:

• Does Hyperbaric Treatment Help Muscle Injuries?
• Does Hyperbaric Treatment Heal Sprains?
• Does Hyperbaric Oxygen Help Exercise Ability?
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Hyperbarics for Diabetic Foot Injury
• Respiratory Muscle Training for Swimming, Diving, and Running
• Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder
  
• Altitude Sickness on Flights
• Altitude Sickness, Viagra, and Bubbles on Flights

I am a career researcher in human performance in extremes of environment. That means extremes of heat, cold, altitude, exercise, injury, submersion, crimes (forensics) breathing different gases at different pressures (hyperbarics, see above), different g-forces, sometimes all at once. Many years of my work was spent on immersion physiology. If you are interested in scuba, diving medicine, clinical hyperbarics, wound healing in a hyperbaric environment, check my books page and scroll down toward the bottom for three books on these topics.

Labels: education

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Mr. America Urges Goodness and Responsibility

Mr. Jim Morris is the 1973 AAU Mr. America and 1996 Mr. Olympia Masters Over 60. He is now 72. Mr. Morris is a vegan bodybuilder who reminds people that body building involves selflessly looking outward to do good, rather than focusing only on appearance and commercialism. He urges real nutrition through healthy food, rather than artificial chemically produced supplements, and healthy movement rather than harming yourself to gain physical looks or heavier lifts.

Mr. Morris looked over my Ab Revolution book, and wrote to me that he wanted to order several copies for his clients. He wrote, "You are the first person I know of to finally get it right."

Later, after reading Health and Fitness in Plain English he wrote, "I have a copy of "Health and Fitness in Plain English" I just received and every page I open to, I say, 'I wish I said that,' and then add, 'I have been saying it for years.' Glad someone finally put it all into print and in one volume. Thanks, Jim Morris."

• Mr. Morris' web site - gymmorris.com
• Posts with vegan and vegetarian information - World Vegan Day is November 1 and World Vegetarian Day.

Labels: abdominal muscles, aging, education, nutrition, readers inspiring story, spirit, strength

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Fun Workshops in Colorado in July

In July, I will teach three workshops at the annual conference of the Wilderness Medical Society in Snowmass, Colorado. The conference is open to all who want to learn.

1. Prevent and Fix Injuries
   Fast moving, jam packed, hands-on workshop to prevent and rehab sprains, bad arches, knee, disc, shoulder, upper back, lower back, SI joint, and mystery back pain.
   Same class offered twice (one session each): Sunday July 27, 2008, 3-5pm or Tuesday July 29 3-5pm.
   
   
2. Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier: Why Well Known Stretches Aren’t Stopping Injury and What to Do Instead.
   Come relieve conference aches on the spot, and take home effective techniques.
   Same class offered twice: Sunday July 27 2008 1-3pm, and Tues July 29th 1-3pm.
   
   
3. Functional Core Training for the Outback
   No crunches or forward bending that pressures discs. Learn fun, quick techniques to straighten posture, fix lower back pain from hiking and backpacks, and functionally strengthen, from simple moves to the toughest you can get. Bring a backpack (optional backpack training).
   Same class offered twice: Saturday July 26 2008 10am-12pm, and Monday July 28 10am-12pm.

You don't need to attend the whole conference to take the workshops, although the conference and the people who run the WMS and come to the meetings are fun and interesting.

For brochure, schedule and conference details click Wilderness Medical Society 25th Anniversary and Annual Meeting, e-mail wms@wms.org, or call WMS at 801-990-2988. More class information is on my web site class page.

Labels: education

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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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Replies to Medical Questions

Dr. Auerbach of the Wilderness Medicine blog wrote an important post for the many requests we get for personalized medical replies. It was so well said, I echo it here for readers of Fitness Fixer:

A fair number of comments from readers of this blog come in the form of clinical questions, in which someone asks for a response to a personal medical question. While I would like to be able to answer most of these, it is difficult to do that without more complete information, and in the absence of being able to examine the patient(s).

When a question or comment raises an issue or point of interest that is important for everyone, then I will try to address the topic in a separate post, rather than as an isolated answer to a question. In this way, more people can benefit.

Thanks for being a reader, and for your understanding.

Labels: education, fix pain

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Voting Is This Week - Healthline for Webby Award

Healthline has been nominated for Best Health Website for 2008. The "Webby" Awards are called the "Oscars of the Internet." Readers decide winners through on-line voting. Voting is only open until the end of April. Healthline has asked us (the Health Expert columnists) to mention it. Here is what and how:

To win the People's Voice Webby, cast your vote for your favorite health site (hopefully Healthline):

1. Go to People's Voice Webby Awards http://peoplesvoice.webbyawards.com/
2. You need to register. Registration is free.
3. Once logged in as a registered member, choose Healthline from the drop down menu "Select a nominee" at the top right hand side of the page.

Voting is only open until the end of April. Vote now while you are thinking about it.

Webby Award winners will be announced May 6, 2008, and honored at The 12th Annual Webby Awards in New York City on June 10th.

According to Wikipedia, the Webbys are famous for limiting recipients to five word speeches. In 2006 Cute Overload said, "Not bad for posting kittens" and TripAdvisor said, "Because some hotels really suck." At the 2007 awards, David Bowie's speech was, "I only get five words?

What should be ours?

Labels: education

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Non-Plastic Non-Aluminum Sports and Fitness Food Carriers

Readers were excited by the post Green Water which tells some of why the fitness craze of bottled water isn't healthy or necessary. You don't need that much water, and the containers are unhealthy in themselves in many ways. My student Lily found a site for us - KleanKanteen.com with stainless steel containers. This is an alternative to aluminum containers.

See what you can do to reduce litter and unhealthful packaging. It's cleaner for your spirit and the world. For travel, lunch, healthy things to eat after work and exercise, I pack everyone food wrapped in grape and banana leaves, and make edible little transportation boxes easily out of large leafy greens, sealed with a toothpick or just folded.

See Lily demonstrate healthier hip positioning for lunges and anterior hip stretch in the post Lunges and Beans, and see her quick healthy good tasting recipe for beans.

Labels: education, nutrition

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Health & Fitness Third Edition at Last

The long-awaited new third edition is now available of the sold out book Health & Fitness in Plain English - How to Be Healthy, Happy, and Fit For The Rest Of Your Life. I have been working on it for years.

The third edition has important changes and additions. The new third edition has a front cover photo of three people playing at the beach. Includes:

• Exercise - Abs, stretching, weights, improving balance, functional lifestyle exercise, healthy body mechanics, how to get started, exercising with your children and family, what works & doesn't for healthier brain, spirit, and body.
• Health - Heart, cholesterol, diabetes, digestion, osteoporosis, body fat tests, weight loss, mental and emotional health.
• Nutrition - Vitamins, health foods, diets, supplements, drugs, healthy eating, performance enhancing food and products both good and bad, getting started changing nutrition habits to healthy ones.
• Reduce Pain & Injury - Full chapters on back and neck pain, leg cramps, and headaches. Shorter sections on knee pain, shoulder, and ankle sprains.
• Fun Facts and an A-Z GLOSSARY

If you recently got an earlier edition, see if you can return it for the new third edition. The third edition is the book to get if you want to learn healthier ways to exercise your body and spirit, learn functional movement, have better health of your heart, bones, and other systems, and fix neck or back pain. Functional movement is how your muscles really work during actual movement, instead of doing artificial repetitions of isolated movement using equipment.

Click here to see new third edition through amazon.com
Click here to see it through my web site.

enjoy.

Labels: education

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Next Workshops on Healthier Stretching and Fixing Neck and Back Pain

I will hold 2 different fun, fast moving workshops this March and April.

1. "Fix Your Own Back Pain - Medical Breakthroughs in Non-Surgical Treatment" will be given at two locations, one in downtown (center city) Philadelphia, and one in a northern suburb.
2. Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier will be given at the suburban location along with the fix pain workshop.
   

Both workshops are a combination of fun and fast-moving audiovisual lecture and non-strenuous physical practice.

The "Fix Your Own Back Pain" workshop in Center City Philadelphia is one class divided over two sessions. It will be held at Temple Center City Campus on two Saturdays, March 29 and April 5, 2008, 9 am-11:30 am.

Saturday April 12, 2008, I will run both workshops in one jam-packed Saturday at the Ambler/Ft.Washington Pennsylvania campus of Temple University. You can learn how to fix your pain from 9 am-2 pm, then continue on with the stretching workshop from 2:30-4:30 pm, the same day. For this big one day double workshop, we already have two people registered from India, two from England, and more from California, Massachusetts, and several of the United States.

In the Fix Pain workshop, I show how to stop the causes of the pain, not just do a bunch of exercises or treatments for symptoms. We practice how to fix the source of neck pain, upper and lower back pain, certain hip pain, disc herniation or bulging, impingement, sciatica, SI joint pain, and more. The workshops are suitable for the out-of-shape as well as the athlete. Wear comfortable ordinary clothing. If you have to change your clothes to fix pain, how are you supposed to have an ongoing normal life without pain?

Classes are cheaper (and safer) than your Vioxx.

Full info on my web site www.DrBookspan.com/classes.

Labels: education

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Can We Teach Young Doctors to Be Healthy?

We have been traveling for the past 2 months in Asia and are on the way to the chilly Smokey Mountains of Tennessee USA to teach medical students for a week during their rotation elective in Wilderness Medicine. This is the third year I will teach there.

I will teach the entire curriculum of diving medicine and physiology, plus a workshop on why commonly prescribed stretches are not healthful, and what to do instead. Several members of the Knox County Sheriff's Office from Knoxville TN have requested to attend my lectures, and several readers made the effort to find the class information on my web site and make arrangements to travel to the camp to attend.

As a physiologist, I design the techniques that physicians use. I spent many years as a military and university researcher in environmental physiology, which is how the body functions in the heat and cold, at altitude and underwater, breathing different mixtures of gases, doing different forms and intensities of exercise. It's important to understand why things work. If you don't understand, then you can't think for yourself, and all you can do is repeat the mistakes of the generation before you, who also were just repeating what they learned in a book from teachers who just were repeating what they had heard.

This problem occurs with some of the exercises and stretches given as physical therapy. An introduction to the problem is in the post What Does Stretching Do? In the past two years teaching at the camp, we encountered young students who were not interested to change bad stretches, and made a point of showing me after my lectures that they will keep doing their rounded bent forward toe touches, since "everyone knows" that is how it is done. However, Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch.

The problem occurs with nutrition. The medical school food at the wilderness camp is not healthy, and students have defended eating candy and junk food as reasonable, even saying that what they eat is not unhealthful - What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition and When Did Health Become Thinking Out Of The Box?

The problem can occur with medical treatments that are in the books, even though wrong. In my diving physiology lectures, I try to show that if you understand the physiology, you will know why certain treatments do not work or are not needed. Immersion in water, for example, creates many interesting effects such as distributing blood volume more out of the limbs to the body. This is similar to the effect that occurs in space, described in Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder. Recently, during our travels, Paul wound up in the hospital with a swollen leg. The doctor who was Chief of Medicine of the hospital, announced that the treatment was bed rest. Paul was told he must lie flat in bed for at least three to fours days with the leg elevated to drain the fluid. We understand that bed rest is often listed in books as a treatment for this, but it is wrong. I asked the doctor if going in the water could help. The doctor said that standing in the water meant the leg would be "hanging down" and the leg needed to be elevated to drain. If you understand immersion, then you know why immersion can more effectively treat limb edema and water retention than medicines and lying in bed. Extended bed rest is unhealthy, and reduces muscle and bone health so much that it is used to study the damage to the body from floating around during space travel. We escaped the medical care and went into the water. I will post more on immersion, edema, and health soon.

I will not have Internet access for the next week to read or reply to comments. Enjoy the posts. Start taking and sending in fun photos of your successes using all the fun techniques.

Labels: education, injury, scuba, swimming

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Best Medical Weblog Award

Fitness Fixer is one of many medical weblogs (blogs). Each year a competition collects nominations, then opens to voting for awards.

The Fitness Fixer was nominated for three categories by readers and accepted as finalist by the competition sponsors for two:

• Best Medical Blog
• Best Clinical Sciences Blog

The semi-finalists were announced earlier this week. Fitness Fixer is not in the voting. Readers, thank you for making life happy and fit. You are already my award.

Labels: education

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New Year's Resolutions Made Easy

For all the things you look forward to doing in the New Year, here are the links for all Fitness Fixer posts so far.

The system does not yet keep a sidebar or other list of all post labels, so I made one for you as a holiday gift. You can bookmark or permalink this post to use in the future. Let me know links that need fixing, and missed labels. Any posts I add with these labels should automatically become included.

Look for labels with your New Year wishes. Click the label and all posts with that label will come up at once. Print and take with you

There will be new posts on new topics too, with new labels. A great New Year.

abdominal muscles

Achilles stretch

aerobic

aerospace

aging

altitude

ankle

arches

arm

arthritis

balance

biking

breathing

cancer

celiac

chest

children

circulation

cold

colds/flu/infectious

computer

diabetes

digestion

disc

drugs

education

elbow

endurance

exercise ball

facet joints

Fast Fitness

feet

fix pain

forensic

gait

gardening

hamstring

hand

heat

hip

hip strength

hockey

holiday

hyperbaric

iliotibial band

injury

knees

leg press

leg strength

leg stretch

lordosis/ hyperlordosis

lower back

lunge

martial arts

massage

neck

neutral spine

nutrition

orthotics

osteoporosis

Parkinson

partner exercise

performance enhancing modality

plantar fasciitis

posture

pregnancy

pronation

pulmonary edema/oedema

readers inspiring story

rowing

running

sciatica

scuba

shoes

shoulder

side

sitting

sleep

smoking

soreness

speed

spirit

sprain

squat (full squat and half squat)

strength

stress

stretch

surgery

swimming

toes

upper back

walking

warmup

weight loss

wrist

yoga

Labels: education, holiday

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Your Fitness Fixer Requests in the Works

Thank you for the many e-mails. I am sorting through the piles. Readers are sending success stories, long and short, of improving their lives and fixing injuries and the moves that produced them. They changed their mindset so that exercise is not something you change clothes and go "do" - if you can make time - but all the ways you sit, bend, reach, lift, and move all day in real life, using muscles to hold the positioning that prevents body aches and joint wear and tear, and comfortable easy movement. They are now getting fresh air, sunshine, balance, and real exercise going to work or grocery shopping on a real bike or walking on real ground, instead of driving then rushing home or to the gym to "do" exercise, illogically spending money on an artificial machine, exercise cycle, or treadmill. Instead of thinking they have to lose weight first to try things, they are using daily movement to be able to exercise for the first time without injury. They are saving money and health, eating real food instead of processed unhealthful "sports food."

Yoga instructor David from Belgium first asked about fixing knee pain and fallen arches in the comments of the post Thank You Grand Rounds 3.51. Since then, he quickly applied the posts I recommended and fixed his pain, no longer needed shoe orthotics, sent photos of new progress, asked about other injuries from yoga, changed how he teaches yoga, given his students my techniques, started making short mpeg movies for us (see the first here), and is translating my work into Dutch for his web site and students. I look forward to more collaboration. Watch for wonderful posts to come.

There have been a small number of e-mails from readers applying techniques in ways so "unclear on the concept," that some posts may turn out to be Readers Inspiring Stories of What Not To Do. All for the greater good, learning, and health.

If I can't get to everything in the comments I will make posts for you, don't worry. I read and want to get to them all. The top number of requests for posts, so far, are how to stop shoulder injury from swimming, baseball and weight lifting; low back pain from swimming, baseball, and golf; separating truth from advertising in orthotics and shoe inserts; more healthy sports food; rowing; sports drugs; hamstring injuries (often from the usual bad stretches); plantar fasciitis; knee pain from rowing, yoga, and walking; wrist pain from pushups and handstands; healthy sitting; and many requests for martial arts and self defense for body and mind. If you have other requests, let me know. Until I post each specifically, start with:

• Shoulder - use for all overhead reaching and lifting
• Lower back - learn the concept and apply to all sports
• Orthotics
• Yoga ankles
• Drugs
• Sports Food, what is good and what is not
  
• Hamstring
• Plantar fasciitis - details in comments of Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
  
• Wrists
  
• Sitting
• Knees
• Martial arts
• Spirit

Fitness has become unhealthy. Healthful natural, comfortable body movement has become foreign as more people think that exercise means artificial sets of repetitions on a machine or using equipment. How are you sitting right now reading this? Pull chin comfortably in, instead of jutting forward or down. Stand up, breathe a grateful breath, and walk away from the computer for a few minutes contemplating a new, healthy fun life of natural movement. Print out a post of something that will make your own situation happier. Lie face down on a comfortable surface, propped slightly on elbows to read it. If you can't lie comfortably that way, that signals tightness that makes daily movement unhealthy and uncomfortable. I will post about that too.

Labels: education, orthotics, readers inspiring story, weight loss

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Black Belt Hall of Fame

This week is the 20th annual Eastern USA International Black Belt Hall of Fame event. Hundreds of martial artists and instructors will attend from all over the world. Soke John Kanzler and Kim Harper work all year to prepare each event. In the best spirit of the martial arts, they make a welcoming and healthful atmosphere of friendly learning. My husband Paul and I were honored to be inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame several years ago and have had the privilege to attend each year as teachers.

Seminar teachers come from all over the world. In the past there have been fearsome Russian techniques and calm Chinese ones. This year a grandmaster from Iceland will present on the national martial art of Iceland - Glima. The post Black Belt Hall of Fame - Black Belts and Black Tie tells about some of the seminars and events. The post International Martial Arts Association Weekend tells more about the Hall of Fame and their work.

Paul and I will be teaching The Ab Revolution core training, an entirely different concept in use of core muscles from conventional ab exercises. It uses no forward bending, which reinforces bad posture and is hard on the spine, and instead retrains all body movement using the abdominal muscles the way they actually function during movement in daily life and exercise.

A friend of ours will teach a seminar of a martial art that he developed. Sean Martin has developed a style he named Kagedo-Essensu, (Shadow Essence). Kagedo is a surprisingly effective new technique that does not require specific poses and positioning to master. I am a 4th degree black belt and spent years trying to understand some of the martial arts that claim to be "the weak over the strong," but when I try them I find they only work well if you are strong, or have no injuries, or learn painstakingly exact techniques. Master Martin has synthesized a highly workable system that, so far, anyone can apply quickly. For information about learning this effective technique, contact him at Sibilxvi@hotmail.com.

Labels: education, martial arts

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Fix Back and Neck Pain Workshop

On Oct 20 and 27th 2007, Temple University Center City (TUCC) Campus in downtown Philadelphia will hold a fun, fast moving workshop, "Fix Your Own Back Pain - Medical Breakthroughs in Non-Surgical Treatment."

The class is a combination of fun and fast-moving audiovisual lecture and non-strenuous physical practice.

You will learn how to fix and prevent the causes of neck pain, back pain, sciatica, herniated and degenerating discs, stenosis, lordosis, facet pain and other problems right in class. You will learn how to not get stiff and sore in the first place:

The class will be held over two Saturdays Oct 20 and 27, 2007, each class 9am-11:30am. This is one 5 hour class divided over two sessions. Plan to attend both days.

Information about this class and others is on my web site page for CLASSES along with links to free readings. To register e-mail Kevin Wood Director, or call (215) 204-6565. The class is suitable for the out-of-shape as well as the athlete.

Labels: education, fix pain

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Fast Fitness Friday

Beginning next Friday, I hope to post a fun technique each Friday that you can read quickly and use right away in a busy healthy lifestyle. Regular full posts continue the rest of the week.

Watch for Fast Fitness.

Send healthy requests and ideas.

Labels: education, fast fitness

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The Coming Two Weeks

We leave in a few hours for Colorado and the Wilderness Medical Society Meeting.

For the next two weeks, I'll have uncertain access to Internet, mail, or messages, to read or answer comments. I stored some fun posts for you. New Healthline staffer Leigh is scheduled to put them online while we make our way 'out West' during the week before the meeting. Thank you Leigh.

With each trip out to this part of the US, we work to document and preserve various martial arts systems of Native American Indians, as much as they want us to have. Will also make our way through the Rocky Mountains.

For going off-trail, we don't carry a tent or sleeping bag, let alone a computer. Simpler. There are still things to carry. The post Healthier Backpack Carrying to Get Better Exercise and Stop Back Pain explained the role of using abdominal muscles to prevent one kind of back pain from carrying backpacks. It is not by tightening the ab muscles, but using them to position the lower spine forward enough to reduce an overly large lower back arch, and stand with neutral spine. Strengthening exercises, whether for abdominal or back muscles do not make the spine attain neutral position in place of overarching. That is why strengthening core muscles does not stop this kind of pain. You get better and more functional core exercise by preventing overarching when carrying loads than by doing crunches or exercises for any specific back muscles. When you hold neutral spine, a small inward curve remains, just not the large one with the "backside-stuck-out-in-back" tilt that damages the lower back.

The post Throw a Stronger Punch (or Push a Car or Stroller) Using This Back Pain Reduction Technique gives a quick effective way to feel how to move your hip and lower spine using your abs away from arching to neutral. This Friday's post should cover preventing upper back and neck pain when carrying backpacks.

In pretty much any terrain, we don't wear hiking boots or fancy cross-training shoes. I wear roomy, cheap (ten or fifteen dollar range), discount store sneakers (usually in tatters). A shoe should not be what holds your foot in position - it is better when your own ankle, leg, and foot muscles do that. For me, shoes are more to avoid hookworm, other parasites, tetanus, and bites. The posts
Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
and
Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?
show how to hold healthy foot and arch position, and give ideas for better gait and balance. In technical climbs, tight shoes are often worn. I'm not much of a climber, but decline tight climbing shoes for bare feet, and enjoy feeling the rocks. For daily wear, tight shoes are not healthful: See, Are Your Shoes Too Tight? My near-seven-foot-tall husband Paul does the same, in his size 17 sneakers or flip-flops (approx size 52+ European).

We don't bring "sports food," commercial hydration drinks, or energy bars and drinks. Refined sugar is not health food. Unfermented soy in many of these products is increasingly documented to promote unhealthy over-estrogenic effects for both men and women. The post Is Your Health Food Unhealthful tells hidden dangers to avoid. The posts Healthy Mother's Day and Independence Day for Fitness give a few quick, good-tasting, healthy foods and drinks to try instead. If you don't have a blender, mash ingredients by hand for arm exercise. Dehydration is important to prevent, and can be done with healthy food and drink.

We hope to arrive in Snowmass by Saturday for the toxicology symposium before the meeting. Then interesting lectures, my two workshops (come take them) and other workshops. The WMS will present the first Fellows of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine. I have been advanced to Fellow, along with Wilderness expert and Medicine for the Outdoors blogger Paul Auerbach, and others in the field. Dr. Auerbach could have easily been "grandfathered" to Fellow status for his stack of achievements, but he went through the exacting point system along with the rest of us. You set the bar high Boss, wow, thank you.

I will try to get to the conference Internet café during the meeting. For the week after, will again be outback without access. If you comment or e-mail, I may not have access to reply. Check existing replies to posts for answers already there. Look for fun posts until then. Hope to see you at the meeting.

"Utility is when you have one telephone; luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none."

Labels: ankle, education, feet, lower back, martial arts, nutrition, orthotics

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Get Fit in Colorado at the Wilderness Medical Society Meeting

Check your calendar for a healthy trip to Colorado. The Wilderness Medicine Conference and Annual Meeting will run July 21-25, 2007, in Snowmass, not far from Aspen.

I will teach two fun workshops at the meeting on July 24. You don't have to be a member of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) to attend the conference, and you don't have to attend the meeting to take my workshops, although it's a great meeting with several days of fun, interesting lectures with good people in a great location. The WMS calls it "Education, inspiration, recreation, relaxation, renewal, and community."

I'll be teaching The Ab Revolution™ Core Training method, and Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier, both on Tuesday July 24th. You can take either or both, one after the next. The Ab Revolution™ retrains your core muscles with no forward bending which promotes disc trouble, neck pain, tight posture, and other troubles. It can provide more ab exercise than conventional abdominal exercise, and shows you how to keep your spine position healthy during any ordinary daily life, even when not exercising. You'll also learn to fix one major source of back pain right there on the spot. The Stretch workshop is packed with new, fun techniques that work better, faster, and don't hurt. You will learn how to not get stiff and sore in the first place. Fitness is healthiest when it is fun movement that trains good body mechanics in the way your body needs to do real life activity.

The rest of the conference will have interesting lectures on lightning, altitude sickness, hiking and expedition injuries, diving medicine, aerospace, heat, new research, and favorite wilderness topics of parasites and diarrhea (some medical conferences have whole day seminars on diarrhea which is a serious world health issue, especially in babies and children). Healthline blogger and wilderness expert Paul Auerbach will lecture on marine envenomations. There will be workshops in photography, GPS, survival, and other fun hands-on opportunities along with my two fast-moving workshops. Snowmass is at a moderate elevation. The yearly Run for Research leaves you more breathless than usual.

Class info about both workshops is on my web site page CLASSES. To register, contact the WMS - Wilderness Medical Society by e-mail or phone (800) 627-0629. Workshops are filling up fast.

If you can't make my workshops this time, find the books with complete text and illustrations of everything we will do on my BOOKS page.

Pack a bag. Come get healthy out in some clean air and sunshine.

Labels: abdominal muscles, education, fix pain, stretch

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Exercise and Medicine Underwater and at High Pressure

For the next week, I will be at scientific meeting of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS). My colleagues attending are flight surgeons, SEAL team captains, commercial divers, submersible and submarine craft personnel from navies of many countries, and scientists from all over the world who study the science of what happens to the body when working under different pressures, temperatures, and breathing gases - at altitude, underwater, and in the specialized dry compartments to build bridges and structures deep underwater. There are also physicians, technicians, nurses, and aerospace scientists and astronauts who use hyperbaric chamber technology to prevent or treat specific non-diving conditions. Allied health workers, divers, and non-divers also attend.

Originally, we were the Undersea Medical Society (UMS). As use of high-pressure oxygen chambers to treat illnesses other than diving climbed, more sessions on how hyperbaric oxygen works (and doesn't work) were added. Wound healing increased in focus. In 1986, we became the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS). Forums, sometimes strangely heated for brainy, cool-headed scientists, are held about which conditions legitimately respond to hyperbaric oxygen treatment and which are felt not to have evidence (no matter how much we wish it would work and alleviate the suffering of the patients).

Some of the established benefits of hyperbaric oxygen and some uses that are not shown to be effective are explained in the post and comments of Does Hyperbaric Oxygen Help Exercise Ability?

The meeting will cover many interesting topics in decompression bubbles that are thought to cause (or be part of) decompression sickness, or "the bends," and mathematical and empirical models of decompression. Decompression theory and bubbles were my research area for many years along with the effects of too much oxygen on the body during exercise underwater and in dry habitats underwater. The meeting will have many sessions in clinical hyperbaric oxygen therapy for several specific conditions (abbreviated HBO, HBOT, HB02 and other), chamber equipment, and wound treatment. There will be a session of The Veterinary Hyperbaric Medicine Society. Animals get problem wounds that need help healing, too.

The national board exam for hyperbaric chamber nurse and technician will be administered. There is also a board exam for physicians in hyperbaric medicine held each fall through the American Board of Preventive Medicine & Emergency Medicine. Information and background on both exams is on the UHMS web site. I wrote the study guides for both exams. I tried to make them fun, user-friendly, and packed with understanding, not just lists of facts and equations to memorize. The guides cover the entire contents of both areas and are a nice review or compendium for anyone interested I the field. Info is on my web site books page.

I won't be staying at the fancy conference hotel but at a backpacker's hostel. Over the next week, I will try to get to Internet cafes to post on some of the interesting topics and research at the meeting - and swim and go underwater for real. That is good for a researcher in underwater exercise and medicine to do.


Here is the next post from the conference Hyperbarics for Diabetic Foot Injury.

Labels: aerospace, education, hyperbaric, injury, scuba

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American College of Sports Medicine Meeting

Hello from the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), held this year in New Orleans. The meeting is attended by thousands of researchers, physicians, allied health, trainers, educators, scientists, and others.

Sports medicine is more than studying and treating movement-related injuries, or using movement to repair injuries. It includes chronic diseases, physical challenges, nutrition, and extreme environments. The College states its goal as "Advancing health through science, education and medicine."

I'm at the conference to learn all I can from others, and present some of my research on identifying lumbar hyperlordosis (too much lower spine arching) and how it produces lower back injury. A few posts describe some work from past years:

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?
Back Pain in Pregnancy - and Why Men Can Get It
Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

and others. Click the label "neutral spine" following this post to bring up a screen with most past posts on the topic.

I will try to get to Internet cafes over the next week to post some of the interesting studies and presentations at this conference from researchers and practitioners from all over the world.

During and after the conference week, a group of ACSM members will assist the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to gut homes and prepare for rebuilding to help reconstruct New Orleans. Work is scheduled June 2 - 6, 7:30 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. Kristine Clark, Director of Sports Nutrition at Penn State U is coordinating the mobilization. To participate, e-mail or phone (814) 863-8107.

Labels: education, lordosis, neutral spine, spirit

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