Sunlight Needed for Physical and Mental Health

Sunlight deprivation has been found in a clinical study to cause profound negative change to portions of your brain associated with depression.

Further, "neurons that produce norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, which are common neurotransmitters involved in emotion, pleasure and cognition, were observed in the process of dying."





In the Northern hemisphere of the Earth, February brings deep wintertime, with short days, and greatly reduced light. For the last 30 years or so, each summer has brought warnings to stay out of the sun, practically zero tolerance for light exposure, urging hats, sunscreens, dark glasses. There also seems to be a sharp rise since then in incidence of serious diseases usually not seen in the young - soft and porous bones, depression, chronic body pain (fibromylagia and related), diabetes, and others. Sunlight seems to have several effects, one of which is helping the body produce Vitamin D. Lack of Vitamin D is now known to be directly linked to higher risk of lung cancer, Parkinsons disease, diabetes, high blood pressure. Vitamin D is available in food sources, however you can also take a prudent approach to getting the several different beneficial effects of the sun, many of which cannot not be gotten though a vitamin supplement.

Last summer Scientific American published a survey finding, "Americans are losing interest in going outdoors." As health providers, we need to see if part of that is telling people that staying out of the sun is necessary for health. We also tell kids to finish everything on their plate and sit still, two more practices, that on examination, translate into, "Practice and learn to be sedentary and overeat."

• Try to get outside every day, even if cold (within reason). Bundle up, if you have to.
• Get light in your eyes. This does not mean to stare at the sun and induce cataracts, but to get sunlight in healthy ways for the several different crucial mental and physical benefits.
• Melanoma skin cancer is not confirmed from lack of use of sun screen - NYTimes article.
  For a post on balancing needed benefits of sunlight and stopping unwanted negative effects, click Junk Food Through Your Skin?
• Click the label "sunlight" for posts that tell more of the benefits of sunlight.

Labels: cancer, children, depression, diabetes, fibromyalgia, mind, osteoporosis, spirit, sunlight

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Does Running Ruin Your Joints?

A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no evidence of accelerated rates of osteoarthritis among long-distance runners.

Further, weight-bearing exercise like running helps stave off osteoporosis by maintaining bone mineral density.



Posts showing good movement mechanics during exercise and daily life:

• Healthy Knees
• Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?
• Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Back Pain From Running
• Walking Softly Benefits Olympic Wrestler
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• Not Old for the Olympics Part I
• Most Helpful Olympic Advice So Far
• Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Runner Fixes More Pain With Straighter Push-Off
  
  

Labels: aerobic, aging, arthritis, impact, injury, osteoporosis, repetitive strain, running, walking

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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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A Reader Asks About Osteoporosis and Walking Lightly

One good question launched many answers. The post Walk Lightly - Shock Absorption for Happier Joints explained a light step prevents joint, soft tissue, and plantar fasciitis pain. In the comments, Carol asked if there were, "a connection between walking lightly and oesteopenia?" This is interesting, since osteopenia is lower than normal bone density, lack of enough pulling or tension on the bones reduces bone density, and a certain amount of vibration may help bones. The simple answer seems to be, that walking lightly should not be enough to reduce bone density, by itself.

Walking, running, and jumping lightly is good exercise to load the bones, while being better for your ankles, knees, hips, and spine than jarring with each step. The post Why So Many Aerobics Injuries? cited news accounts attributing joint pain and injury to high impact activities, with examples of popular aerobics personalities of the 1980s who now say they are too crippled to exercise. Their injuries were avoidable, but not by avoiding impact exercises. Impact activities can be done safely by not stomping down hard. Even repeated jumps from a height can be done with soft landings. Good athletes run, jump, and box with far less impact than most people walk, and have good strong bones. Exercise, done right, is crucial for your bones - Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones.

When muscles pull your bones during walking, running, and other exercise, the pulling increases bone density. Adding external weight loads bones further. That is a major way weight-bearing and weight lifting exercise increases bone density. The effect of muscles contracting to provide good shock absorption when moving also pulls on the bones,which should be good. The post Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density looked at influencing the shape of our bones by how we move.

The reader went on to comment, "I have always been very light on my feet, and now in my 50s I have found out I have low bone density. I have a cousin who shakes the house when she walks who has been told that she doesn't ever have to worry about her bone mass." Walking lightly alone should not have caused the osteopenia. Questions would be, what other exercise the reader does, and what things might be decreasing her bone density? For the cousin, "shaking the house" by itself may not be enough bone stimulus that anyone could tell her that she "doesn't ever have to worry." Has the cousin taken a bone density test and was found to be high (for whatever reason)? Then you can say there is lowered risk of fracture. Is this cousin is very heavy, which helps load bone? Does this cousin do regular exercise to increase her bone density? It is not likely to be a valid prediction that someone never has to worry about bone density just because they walk badly.

The reader went on to ask, "I went to a bones for life class and was taught to do heel bouncing to stimulate bone growth. i.e. dropping repeatedly from toes onto heels while standing in proper alignment. Do you agree with that exercise?" I did a few searches on the bones for life class and found that the class uses many exercises, not bouncing on the heels alone. Bouncing for a few minutes would not be enough to undo sedentary life style, and the various things people do that actively take away from bone density. You need to do all the other exercises. How much the shock wave of the impact may additionally load or stimulate the bone is still an open question.

There are studies looking at effects of vibration and tapping on bone building. Mechanisms have been studied from the effect on cat bones of their purring, to various machines that bang or vibrate. Some advertising for vibration machines goes as far as making claims that they will increase bone density. So far, none have been found to have as much bone building effect as muscular activity (exercise). Too much occupational vibration, like jack-hammer, helicopter and similar environments produces joint pain, injuries to the spine, eyes, ear, nervous, and other systems. That was one of the topics I was looking into when I did aviation medicine research, explained in Indiana Jones Rocket Sled. A news article that came out on last year's fitness fad of vibration plates promising weight loss and fitness building, mentioned a few of the problems with too much vibration, and, ironically had an accompanying photograph showing severely hyperlordotic (overarched) lower spine positioning by a person listed as the trainer. Hyperlordotic spine posture, by itself, damages the facet joints of the spine over time. It seems safe to say that the jolting of the vertebral joints against each other in this overly arched position would only be worsened by vibration. The post Prevent Back Surgery shows examples of overarched lower spine and why it causes so many injuries in fitness.

It would be interesting to know if low levels of vibration, through tap dancing, Flamenco dancing, pogo stick jumping, and similar activities, would change bone compared to the same amount of exercise without the impact. Some studies claim that swimmers or cyclists do not have as high bone density as runners, while others do not find that when they control for the direct muscle work applied to the area. There are even studies showing that Tai Chi, a most mild form movement with almost no foot-falls at all, can increase bone density in older people, just from the movement.

Along with walking or running, and weight lifting to build bone density, and using your muscles to stop stomping which can hurt the joints, you can prevent bone loss by avoiding things that reduce bone density:

• Smoking
• Drugs that are known to greatly increase risk of bone fracture: stomach acid drugs and steroid anti-inflammatory drugs, regular use of SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac and Paxil. Numerous medications used to treat different cancers may produce osteopenia (bone shortage) and osteoporosis in long-term cancer survivors. See Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• Lack of sunlight. Calcium cannot be absorbed or do its job without enough sunlight
  
• High consumption of meat and dairy products
• Drinking alcohol too often
  
• Lack of fruit and vegetables, and vegetable calcium sources
• Eating wheat and related grains by people with celiac
  

Osteoporosis and osteopenia cause major problems for men, not only women. More on this to come. Move, walk, lift weights, stand on your hands, and jump for fun, exercise, and bone building. You do not need to ooze around on tiptoe to avoid impact injuries. Jump and dance and stamp your feet for fun, without jarring your joints and retinas loose. Have fun.

Carol ended her comment to me with, "Thanks for your site - I've learned a lot about alignment, which has helped in many ways." Thank you Carol for writing so many helpful questions for our benefit.

Labels: aerospace, biking, facet joints, fibromyalgia, fix pain, impact, injury, osteoporosis, plantar fasciitis, sunlight, swimming

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World Vegan Day is November 1

November 1 is World Vegan Day, and all of November is celebrated as Vegan month.

Vegans are vegetarians who don't eat, and often don't wear, any products from animals. The idea is no more unusual than not wanting to hurt, wear, or eat your pets. Vegan living can be healthier, and vegan diet can fuel both endurance and strength athletes.

Vegans and vegetarians have been found to have lower body fat on average than non-vegetarians, and lower risk of diabetes. A new study by The World Cancer Research Fund making big news as "a landmark study" found that keeping slim is one of the best ways of preventing cancer, and that evidence is stronger than previously realized that eating meat, and processed meats such as ham and bacon, increase risk of colorectal cancer. The report makes 10 recommendations including getting exercise every day, drinking water rather than sugary drinks, and eating fruit, vegetables, and fiber. There is no fiber in meat, dairy, or eggs. Vegan meals can provide enough calcium to prevent osteoporosis. See Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones and Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures.

Vegans may promote farm sanctuaries and work for better ways than vivisection (hurtful testing on animals). The argument is not if you would rather that a child not get needed medicine rather than test on an animal, the quest is for neither to suffer, and find smarter, healthier ways for all. Significant examples exist of tests based on animal physiology that were ineffective or injurious when applied to humans in need.

Vegan bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams is pictured above and at right. His web site is www.VeganMusclePower.org.




In the tradition of fighting monks, Chris Price is a vegan Muay Thai and mixed martial arts fighter. His web site is http://www.veganfighter.com/


Resources:
www.americanvegan.org for information about health, ahimsa, a celebration in New York City at Candle 79 Café Saturday Nov 17, and fun events including cooking classes across the U.S.
www.VeganHolidayFestival.com
www.WorldGoVeganDays.com
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/

Recipes:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/
www.worldveganday.org has a nice summary of healthy vegan diet choices on their nutrition link.

Post link:
World Vegetarian Day October 1.

Helpful Book:
Healthy Martial Arts - Healthier training for all sports, featuring vegetarian and vegan athletes. Chapters on strength, endurance, speed, balance, nutrition, performance enhancement, injuries, building the spirit and the mind.

Labels: cancer, diabetes, endurance, green fitness, martial arts, nutrition, osteoporosis, spirit, strength, weight loss

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Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture on forensic anthropology. In general, this is the study of things you can tell from human bones in a crime setting. How old was the person? Were they male or female? How big were they? What was their probable race or ancestry?

Why was I there when my work is with the living? Two main reasons. I am the science officer for the Vidocq Society, an international forensic society. I might evaluate data, for example in an aviation disaster, whether someone might have been conscious at each point when undergoing G-forces or different temperatures and amounts of oxygen after a depressurization at various altitudes. In a scuba death, I might advise on physical changes that occur with different situations. The second reason was to learn more about bones. Bones are remarkable. Your bones know a lot about you. What was your health like? Were you active? What kind of activity did you do? When I was small, I read about an archaeological dig in ancient Rome. The bones of a girl were recovered. The account stated they could tell she carried loads too heavy for her, and was therefore (in conjunction with other evidence) probably a servant or slave. I was riveted. How could they know that? I spent years after that learning more about telling how someone moved from looking at their bones.

Throughout your entire life, when you exercise you stimulate growth of new bone cells. The physical pull of muscles thickens your bones where the muscles attach. Using your arm muscles thickens arm bones. Using your legs strengthens leg bones, and so on. This is a main mechanism of how exercise prevents osteoporosis. Without exercise, you don't stimulate enough new cells to counter the normal loss as old ones break down. Your bones thin no matter how much calcium you eat. The post Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones tells more about this. Bone demineralization is rapid and serious in astronauts in microgravity (Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder).

How you use your muscles causes them to pull differently, giving evidence about the kind of habitual motion. More interesting is that when you are active, your bones grow and shape themselves to facilitate your motion. An example of interest to readers following the posts on squatting is that people who habitually sit for normal daily life in full squat grow "squatting facets" on their lower leg bones. These are small areas on the bone that quickly grow to make squatting more comfortable. At one point, it was a debate in anthropology that squatting facets were a marker of someone of Asian ancestry, until it was found that others who squat also grow them, and that squatting facets disappear when the person adopts a Western sitting habit of chairs and no longer squats. Babies of all races can have them.

Someone who habitually slouches can change the shape of their bones, eventually deforming them. This can occur in the spine, knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, feet, toes - everywhere you pressure your bones. Changing positioning habits to healthier ones can, in many cases, reshape the bones back to healthier shape. Think of braces on your teeth. It's human bonsai. In cases of extreme dystrophies of the muscles, someone who sits without function of their trunk muscles to hold the spine upright, can eventually deform their spine until their ribs sit on their hip bones. How are you sitting right now? The recent post What Does Stretching Do? explained a bit of why stretching isn't reducing injuries. People are stretching, then exercising and going about daily life in bent over positions that rub and grind the joints and soft tissue.

You literally shape your own health. Use the articles throughout this Fitness Fixer blog to do healthy exercise in healthful positioning so that your bones will only tell good tales about you.

Labels: achilles stretch, aerospace, ankle, arm, feet, forensic, injury, leg stretch, osteoporosis, posture, scuba, sitting, squat, toes

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Healthy Mother's Day

Neolithic groups (stone age) worshiped the mother. Ancient Germans worshipped the virgin Hertha holding her child. Scandinavians worshipped virgin Disa holding her child. In ancient Egypt it was Isis with infant Osiris. In India, Devaki had Krishna (also by virgin birth). In Asia, Cybele and Deoius. Chinese holy mother Shing Moo held her child in arms. Christian missionaries to Tibet, China, and Japan found that holy mothers depicted with splendid light around their head and holding a divine child had been worshiped long before they got there.

In Rome, the goddess was Demeter, meaning Earth Mother, wearing wreathes of braided corn in her hair. In ancient Greece, Demeter was called Ceres, the great mother with baby at breast. From her name "Ceres," we get the word "cereal" (grains), "which made man different from wild animals."

In the spring in ancient Greece, celebrations were held in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. Christian Europe celebrated the spring festival of "Mother Church" who (they believed) would protect them from harm. During the 1600's, England celebrated "Mothering Sunday" on the 4th Sunday of Lent, honoring the mothers of England. All cultures worshiped the divine, the Mother, who gives life and food, compassion and love.

So. How to celebrate this Sunday on Mother's Day? I'm in favor of some goddess worship, probably involving some rocks and food and chocolates and compassion and love. Not so original, but time tested and universal:

• Visit Mom (or a Mom) and give her a massage (if she wants one). Neck, hands, feet, back. Good for circulation for giver and receiver. Touch can be healthy. Ask her stories.
• Teach her a Nice Neck Stretch
• Make her (and you) something healthy to eat. For light teas, try cinnamon, cloves, grated orange peel, or ginger in hot water.
• For a cold treat without unhealthy junk food, mash a frozen banana with crushed raw walnuts or flax seeds. Use a food grinder or get free exercise by mashing them yourself in a bowl. It will taste like creamy ice cream. Flax seeds and walnuts have been found to be effective to help bone health as vegetarian sources of omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids. Raw walnuts (as part of a general low fat and cholesterol diet) have also been found to have a beneficial effect to decrease cardiovascular disease risk, among other benefits. This treat has fiber and is non dairy, both associated with lower breast cancer risk.
• Goddess worship often is helped with chocolate. The primary chemical in chocolate is theobromine. "Theo-" means God and "broma" comes from a word meaning food. The theobromine in chocolate was named for "food of the gods." Theobromine is an antioxidant, weak diuretic, stimulant, and mood booster, opens breathing airways, and relieves coughing. Dark chocolate has more theobromine than lighter chocolate, with flavonoids and phenolics, plant substances that are good for the heart. People who get a kind of vascular headache called migraine do better not to eat chocolate. For others, get plain cocoa, unsweetened, not junked up with sugar. Add the unsweetened cocoa to the frozen mashed banana and walnuts for a healthy sweet wonderful treat that tastes better than you would expect. For exotic flavor and more health benefit, add fresh grated ginger root.
• Sit outside in the air and sun to have your tea and frozen banana. Warnings on the dangers of overtanning are important for preventing skin cancer for people who work outdoors, who over-tan for cosmetic purposes, and a few other populations. Another group to consider is those spending too little time outdoors. Sunlight exposure and the Vitamin D it makes your skin produce, is increasingly documented as crucial to bone density, healthy immune function, positive mood, sound sleep at night, relief of symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, MS, Parkinsons, polycystic ovary, diabetes, and other health issues. A nice massage and tea and chocolate outside in the sunlight could be made into a wonderful Mother's Day. Nice excuse to buy a hat.
• Make Mom (or a Mom) some homemade healthy skin lotion. Commercial products have preservatives, dyes, and chemicals. Try combinations of grape seed oil, tea tree oil (very small amount), vitamins C and E, ginger, honey, tea, fresh aloe, and fragrances from oils, fruit, flowers like lavender, or leaves like mint. (Don't wear citrus oils like lime out in the sun.)
• Help out at a woman and child shelter. Or help at a men's shelter to help the guys get back on their feet to help their own families.
• Celebrate Mother Earth - go out and pick up litter. It's good exercise. Bend right.
• Make a trip to look around a home improvement center to see about some do it yourself solar projects, even if only to replace a few lights.
• Go do gardening for your mother, or your mother Earth. Lift and bend right, reach right, carry in healthy ways.
  
• Do some cooking, shopping, vacuuming, and cleaning for Mom (or a Mom). Water their plants. It's good exercise for you and a nice thing for them.
• Be good to each other - all the children of Earth.
• Follow the advice of the unknown who said, "The most important gift a father can give his children is to love their mother."
• If that doesn't work, take the advice on the side of aspirin bottles: "Take two aspirin, and keep away from children."

Labels: arthritis, circulation, diabetes, digestion, fibromyalgia, fix pain, green fitness, holiday, massage, nutrition, osteoporosis, Parkinson, spirit, stretch, sunlight, upper back

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Fixing Fitness Myths

"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild

April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.

The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.

The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.

Feet and Ankles

Myth - You need tight shoes for support. Fact - tight shoes can deform toes and prevent healthy muscle use:
Are Your Shoes Too Tight?
and Healthy Toe Stretches.

Myth - All ankle stretches prevent sprains. Fact - Some may enhance predisposition to ankle sprains:
Unhealthy Yoga Ankles.

Myth - Following an ankle sprain, bracing must be continuous since no exercise can restore the area. Here is another way -
How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them
and
No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

Dispelling Myths of Orthotics Use:

Myth - Only orthotics can place your arches in neutral position. Fact - your own muscles can often do the same:
Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
and
Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That respiratory function only declines with age:

Do Breathing Exercises Work?

Dispelling Aging Myths - That you only get weaker with aging:

Getting Stronger is for Everyone
What I Learned at the Aging Conference
Better Balance by Christmas
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York.

Dispelling Nutrition for Exercise Myths:

That weight gain with aging is primarily lower metabolism: Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

or that Healthy eating is difficult or expensive:
What Medical Students Told Me About Nutrition.

Myth that you must eat much protein to get muscles:
Get Muscles for Christmas

Myth that acid prevention drugs are harmless:
Stomach Acid Drugs May Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Myth that food marked "Health Food" means it has to be healthy:
Is Your Health Food Unhealthy
and Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food

and the myth that it's healthy for children to eat junk food:
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery.

Myths that only gyms and weights can improve your strength:

How to get natural exercise is in Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise,
Getting Stronger Without a Gym
Exercising With A Friend - Partner Leg Press
Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness
Healthy Toe Stretches
Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener
and Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.

More to come for smart, fun, healthier ways to get exercise.

Labels: aging, ankle, arches, arm, balance, breathing, feet, fix pain, forensic, holiday, leg stretch, myths, nutrition, osteoporosis, partner exercise, shoes, sprain, strength, toes, yoga

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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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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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Getting Stronger is for Everyone

I received several e-mails from people who tried the Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener in the previous post. Readers were happy with their new-found understanding that being able to hold up their own body weight is important, empowering, healthy, and fun. They wanted to know more about the benefits.

Strength training isn't just for big guys in a gym. You need strength to lift and carry things around the house and workplace, to lift packages, children, groceries, and yourself easily rather than struggle. By increasing strength, you can do daily activities more easily, and reduce your chance of injury while doing it. Strengthening is important to reduce, even reverse, many characteristics often mistaken for aging, Becoming weak, unsteady, and slow is not aging. Are you as active as previously? It is a simple example of "use or lose."

At the ACSM New York conference on aging earlier this month, experts explained how it used to be thought that rates of protein synthesis, meaning how much protein your body uses to rebuild itself, decline with aging. However, it is not aging, but disuse. When experimental groups of people in their 70s began being active again, their rates of protein synthesis became comparable to the groups of 30-year-olds.

In my lecture at the aging conference, I told how the common perception of not being able to get up from the floor is not aging; it is the need to regain the strength and balance to do it. Part of my lecture explained how elderly and debilitated people who could not previously lift themselves out of their chairs become more mobile from daily movement that strengthens, allowing them to get up and walk again. Everyone needs the strength to lift their own body weight up from the floor, from bed, and out of chairs. With strengthening, may people who previously needed walkers and canes, sometimes even wheelchairs, could walk unaided again, and stop needing many medicines.

Using muscles is a key part of osteoporosis prevention. The pull of muscle against bone thickens the bone. The stronger a muscle, the more it can pull on the bones it attaches to when you use it. Without exercise, you lose bone no matter how much calcium you eat. Even a young person in a cast loses bone from simple disuse.

Even people who don't do activities commonly regarded as needing strength, do daily activities like carrying grocery bags, a suitcase for travel, or a squirmy child. When your arms are weak, you are more likely to lean back to carry things on front of you, shifting the weight to your lower back. You should be able to carry everything you want without leaning back or to the side, no matter whether it is a child on one hip or grocery bags carried in front in both arms, or both. You should be able to carry a shoulder bag or knapsack on your back without leaning your body forward.

Strength is important for everyone. You don't need a gym or trainer to get stronger. You don't need to change clothes. You don't need to buy equipment. Several posts of this blog have shown how to move with healthy positioning. The next post will list several ways to use that healthy positioning to strengthen your body more each day.

Labels: aging, fix pain, osteoporosis, strength, stretch

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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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What I Learned at the Aging Conference

Last weekend we were packing up to drive to the New York Chapter American College of Sports Medicine conference on aging. It was early and cold. At the corner where we parked, an elder woman waited at the bus stop. She stood straight as a penguin; her things hung over her walker. We were late getting on the highway. I had to get to the conference to give my lecture. I was already going to miss the first lecture given by an expert on metabolic changes of aging. This was an important conference where we would learn important ways to help older people.

She was standing alone. I thought that if she had family she would not be standing alone at a bus stop early in the morning. There was no telling where she needed to go. I wouldn't get all my required continuing education credits if I did not attend all of the meeting. We had to drive all the way to New York, and at this rate I was not even going to be on time for my own lecture. The answer was simple. We opened the door and asked her, "Where can we take you?"

We bundled her into the truck, and asked her name. "Dottie!" she said, pointing to a mole on her forehead. My husband held out his big hand and said, "I'm Paul." Dottie looked at Paul, nearly seven-feet tall, squashed in his seat with his long legs bowed around the steering wheel and his hair brushing the ceiling. She sang, "Tall Paul, he's my all…" and Paul replied, "Annette Funicello," recognizing the old song and singing it along with her. Dottie was on her way to religious services across town. We enjoyed lively conversation with her all the way there. We passed a Greek restaurant. Dottie said, "You won't believe this but I used to belly dance there." My own Grandmother studied belly dancing into her 90's so I believed Dottie. I said, "Belly dancing is good for the hips." Dottie winked, "Belly dancin' is good for lots of things."

We dropped Dottie off at her destination and made sure she had her hat and scarf and gloves and some of our food and a hug. We gave her our number and said, "We won't be passing by in time to take you back home. Call us to go somewhere else sometime."

We met heavy traffic getting to the Lincoln tunnel. I won't get all my continuing education credits from the conference that was supposed to teach us about how to help old people. In posts coming soon I will tell about the lecture I gave on improving musculoskeletal health for older people. Although it is a common misconception to think that ruinous losses of bone density, strength, balance, and flexibility are unavoidable with aging, it is not the case, and at any age, even advanced years, you can still get stronger, faster, more flexible, and better balance through easy daily activity. You can also improve the most important aspect of helping aging people - by helping.


Photo By J Pod

Labels: aging, balance, education, leg strength, osteoporosis, spirit, strength, stress

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Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York

The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.

In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."

Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.

Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.

My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, disc, education, fix pain, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sitting, squat, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

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Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle

Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.

• A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
• A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
• A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
• The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
• The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
• The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.

If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.

Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."

You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.

Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:

Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.

If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:

1. when bending to make the bed,
2. to pick up laundry,
3. look in the refrigerator,
4. load and unload the dishwasher,
5. to pick up your shoes,
6. open a lower cabinet,
7. lift a child or pet,
8. feed a child or pet,
9. pick up things from the floor,
10. pick up hand weights to do exercise,
11. put down weights after exercising,
12. many daily activities.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Count How Many Times You Help Or Hurt Your Body Daily
• Readers Count - Second Missed Cause of Back Pain With Golf
• How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• Better Balance by Christmas
• Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending
• Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Books:

• Learn bending, reaching, and fixing knee and back pain: Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
  
• Get built-in lifestyle exercise, fix back and knee pain, learn health and fun at the same time: Health & Fitness in Plain English THIRD edition.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, disc, fix pain, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, practice of medicine, sciatica, squat, strength, stretch, upper back

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How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending

Imagine how good your legs would look if you did 400 squats and lunges a day, and how many calories you would burn. Using your legs would strengthen them and reduce risk of both osteoporosis and arthritis. It has been found that a major predisposing factor of knee arthritis is weak thighs.

Now remember how many times a day you bend for ordinary household and work activities. It is more than you think. Some time ago I did an intensive tracking of how many times a day the average person bends. I also put my graduate students on this as a formal study. This kind of counting is a grad student specialty. Many of my other students wanted to count also.

We all found about the same thing. The average sedentary person bends an average of 100-200 times a day just getting things out of the refrigerator, dishwasher, closets, washing, and doing other little things around the house or workplace. The average nonsedentary (but still not active) person bends 200-400 times a day. The average fidgety and active person bends over 500 times a day.

Now realize how many times a day you are hurting your back and missing free exercise by bending over in unhealthy ways, as in the photo, above left. Leaning over all day is also a factor in neck pain. If you only burned half a calorie each time you bent properly, keeping your body upright, and bending knees, you would get a lot of exercise. You would not have to change clothes or go to a gym or pay a trainer. You would not have to take pills because you make your back ache. You would not have to do anything except live your life. You life is supposed to be healthy. You are not supposed to stop your life to go "do exercise." It is a sad thing to see people do squats and lunges in a gym, then bend over wrong to put their weights down, and bend wrong again to pick up their things to leave.

When you bend, keep your upper body upright. When you are bending with feet side by side (squat bend), keep both heels down and your weight back over your heels to keep your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. Don't stick your behind far out in back. In these ways, healthy bending saves your back and gives much exercise without going to a gym, and helps, not hurts, your knees. Healthy bending is life changing.

Next: Change painful to healthful bending for real daily life. Changing exercise to healthy medicine - Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, lunge, osteoporosis, posture, squat, strength, weight loss

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Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder

On Friday, a day after the shuttle Atlantis returned after 12 days at reduced gravity, one of the astronauts collapsed twice during the welcome home ceremony. The reasons are the same as what happens here on Earth.

When you stand and sit on Earth, some of your blood pools in the veins of your legs because of the pull of gravity. In space, the pull of gravity is weak so blood does not pool. Blood floats upward. Astronauts and mission control scientists refer to the upward shift of blood during space flight in a technical manner. They call it the "Fat-Face-Chicken-Legs-Effect."

Upon return to the gravity of Earth, blood is again pulled downward. More pooling than usual occurs and not enough blood may be able to get to the brain. It is not uncommon for astronauts to feel weak and dizzy.

You may notice the same venous pooling on land in several situations: Sometimes when you stand suddenly, the rush of pooling in legs briefly lowers blood supply and blood pressure to your head. You may feel light headed. When this happens you just need to bend over and get your head down. Lowering your head allows gravity to restore blood, relieving dizziness. Extreme pooling has caused occasional cases of fainting when standing suddenly, when standing long periods at attention, and when climbing out of the water, especially hot water in spas and hot tubs. Pooling has been fatal to beached whales.

In space, the human body quickly gets badly out of shape without the pull of gravity. Muscles do not have to work to pull bones and quickly weaken. Bones do not have the muscular pull they need to stay dense and lose much calcium and bone mineral. Astronauts lose bone in space no matter how much calcium they eat. The cardiovascular system does not have to work as much to pump blood. This is why astronauts must exercise so much during missions.

Here on Earth you need regular activity that contracts leg and other muscles to squeeze the vessels to keep blood moving. After sitting for long periods at work and on a plane, your feet may swell with pooling fluids. Contracting your leg muscles while sitting, and by getting up and moving around pumps blood upward, reducing pooling and your risk of clots. For daily life, you need activity to keep muscles and bones from weakening. Even if you are sick it is crucial to get up and out of bed every day to stop the huge health losses that occur. Being sedentary is so devastating to health that bed rest is used as a model in scientific studies for loss of many health benchmarks in the microgravity of space. Stand to exercise, get outside, and enjoy some fun activity every day. Smile - another way to exercise against gravity.

Gravity and activity are important for health. Thank the astronaut, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, for reminding us.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• A Reader Asks About Osteoporosis and Walking Lightly
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• Healthy Mother's Day
• Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density
• Getting Stronger is for Everyone
• Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones
• Space Walks
• Click the labels under this post for more Fitness Fixer on each topic.

Labels: aerospace, circulation, osteoporosis, strength

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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.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
  
• Human Growth Hormone
• A Reader Asks About Osteoporosis and Walking Lightly
• Getting Stronger Without a Gym
• Getting Stronger is for Everyone
• Calories Burned in Prayer
• Sunlight Needed for Physical and Mental Health
• Forensic Anthropology and Bone Density
• 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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