Anyone else workout in here?

I feel stiffness in my body and that becomes a drawback in my gym training.

Any suggestions what can be done? Much appreciated.

 

No obvious medical problems, I'm 150lbs and 5'10. I don't smoke (nor do I work in a smoky environment) and I do a fair bit of walking to and from work. However, my lung capacity is very low, I score crap on the bleep test and consequently I tend to reach a plateau with cardio very quickly and consequently drop out.

Currently I work out on a rowing machine 3 times a weak at a relatively high resistance level (8/10). However, 2km @ 12km/h seems to be my max and I can only manage that once a week (the session afterwards is usually a disaster). Any ideas on how I can break through this barrier and/or be more consistant?

 

I have the same problem. Stop going to a gym full of hotties.

 

I started with the Emu oil a few days back, got some relief, got a magnetic knee brace two days ago, further relief. Thanks for the heads up on the Emu oil. I have not gotten the foam for the exercises, will get to that eventually.

 

Eating According to Your Genome
The emerging field of nutrigenomics is starting to yield some DNA-based diet tips,
says nutrition scientist Jose Ordovas.
By Emily Singer, MIT Technology Review, Wednesday, January 31, 2007

If you knew that you were especially susceptible to heart disease when you gained weight, would it increase your motivation to diet? How much would you be willing to pay to find out if you are one of the lucky people who can eat as much fat as you want and not have an increased risk of heart disease? Such tests are the goal of nutrigenomics, which seeks to identify the links between nutrition and disease based on an individual's genome (See "Your Genomic Diet", August 2005).

While the field is still too young to offer personal dietary advice for the average consumer, research has uncovered links among genes, diet, and heart disease. Jose Ordovas, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at Tufts University, has spent years studying the link between metabolism of dietary fats and risk of cardiovascular disease. After analyzing data from the Framingham Heart Study, a large-scale study that has traced the health of some 5,000 people since 1948, his team has found that certain genetic variants can protect people from diet-induced cardiovascular disease--or put them at increased risk. Ordovas spoke with Technology Review about his research and the future of the field.

TR: Why is nutrigenomics important?

JO: Everybody knows that some people can smoke and live a long life or eat little and still gain weight. But we don't know in advance who these people are. If we did know, these people could be educated to try to avoid the health concerns that could hit later in life. [Nutrigenomics] offers the potential to understand the relationship between food and our health on an individual level.

TR: You have found a striking link between genetic variations in a gene known as apolipoprotein E, or APOE, and risk factors for heart disease, but only under certain dietary conditions.

JO: People with a certain variation, known as APOE e4, are born with a predisposition to heart disease. For these people, a high-fat diet, smoking, or a high BMI [body-mass index] is very bad. For example, they have higher blood glucose levels, a risk factor for heart disease, but only if they have a body-mass index over 30, which is considered obese.

But these people also respond much better to a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. So they are the ones who should really follow dietary guidelines. If you want to select people for behavior modification, these are the people to start with.

TR: Can people get tested for their APOE variant?

JO: That's a tricky situation. If you have the APOE e4 variant, you're at increased risk for heart disease, which you can do something about. But you also have a higher risk for dementia, which we don't know if you can do anything about. So there are legal and ethical issues associated with testing.

TR: One of the current nutrition debates is over the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids--different studies have produced conflicting results regarding omega-3's ability to protect against heart disease. Can nutrigenomics help sort this out?

O: We have found that some people are more susceptible to the negative effects of omega-6 [a related fatty acid] than others. Those with a certain variant in the apolipoprotein A, or APOA, gene show a rise in triglycerides, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, when they eat a diet high in omega-6. In these cases, the protective effect of omega-3 may be overwhelmed by overconsumption of omega-6.

This allele is much more common in Asia, and those who have it are more susceptible to the effect of omega-6 consumption. That may explain the rising rates of cardiovascular disease in Asian populations.

TR: What are the major hurdles in identifying how our genes affect our body's response to food?

JO: There are so many combinations of genes and environmental factors, you need huge populations to study. Most studies in the field are underpowered. We've done studies with 5,000 people, but that's just not enough. We need to do studies on the order of 100,000 people to take into account all the different factors.

We also need better statistical tools. Currently, we are borrowing analysis tools from situations that are much simpler, such as Medelian genetics, where a single gene leads to a certain phenotype. But applying those methods to huge networks of interactions is just not feasible.

TR: Is the nutrigenomics community using new genetic tools, such as the large gene chips that can detect 500,000 genetic variations in a single experiment?

JO: Yes, those chips do help to accumulate data. But because we need to run thousands of subjects, the cost is still prohibitive.

TR: A few consumer nutrigenomics tests are already on the market. What do you think of them?

JO: These tests may point people in the right direction, but they are not by far a final answer. Their worth also depends on the feedback the consumer gets. If the test is accompanied by prudent recommendations on diet and does not make snake-oil promises, then they probably don't have much potential to harm. And they may even have some benefit. One study found that people who took the test and went to a dietician did better than people who just went to a dietician. I think it's the placebo effect. People will pay better attention because they feel they are getting advice that is just for them.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18122/

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/14663/

 

Here is my 2 cents....
Buy yourself a EMS unit if you have joint pains...It'll reduce the swelling, work out the little supporting muscles and ease the pain. Of course ask your MD first and maybe a sports medicine specialist. I use one on my knee's and now my shoulder. It's been VERY beneficial.

 

A Healthy Mix of Rest and Motion

By PETER JARET, New York Times, Published: May 3, 2007

SOME gymgoers are tortoises. They prefer to take their sweet time, leisurely pedaling or ambling along on a treadmill. Others are hares, impatiently racing through miles at high intensity.

Each approach offers similar health benefits: lower risk of heart disease, protection against Type 2 diabetes, and weight loss.

But new findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to be both tortoise and hare — alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.

Weight watchers, prediabetics and those who simply want to increase their fitness all stand to gain.

This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.

But new evidence suggests that a workout with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and raise the body’s potential to burn fat.

Best of all, the benefits become evident in a matter of weeks.

“There’s definitely renewed interest in interval training,” said Ed Coyle, the director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.

A 2005 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that after just two weeks of interval training, six of the eight college-age men and women doubled their endurance, or the amount of time they could ride a bicycle at moderate intensity before exhaustion.

Eight volunteers in a control group, who did not do any interval training, showed no improvement in endurance.

Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, had the exercisers sprint for 30 seconds, then either stop or pedal gently for four minutes.

Such a stark improvement in endurance after 15 minutes of intense cycling spread over two weeks was all the more surprising because the volunteers were already reasonably fit. They jogged, biked or did aerobic exercise two to three times a week.

Doing bursts of hard exercise not only improves cardiovascular fitness but also the body’s ability to burn fat, even during low- or moderate-intensity workouts, according to a study published this month, also in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Eight women in their early 20s cycled for 10 sets of four minutes of hard riding, followed by two minutes of rest. Over two weeks, they completed seven interval workouts.

After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent, said Jason L. Talanian, the lead author of the study and an exercise scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Cardiovascular fitness — the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles — improved by 13 percent.

It didn’t matter how fit the subjects were before. Borderline sedentary subjects and the college athletes had similar increases in fitness and fat burning. “Even when interval training was added on top of other exercise they were doing, they still saw a significant improvement,” Mr. Talanian said.

That said, this was a small study that lacked a control group, so more research would be needed to confirm that interval training was responsible.

Interval training isn’t for everyone. “Pushing your heart rate up very high with intensive interval training can put a strain on the cardiovascular system, provoking a heart attack or stroke in people at risk,” said Walter R. Thompson, professor of exercise science at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

For anyone with heart disease or high blood pressure — or who has joint problems such as arthritis or is older than 60 — experts say to consult a doctor before starting interval training.

Still, anyone in good health might consider doing interval training once or twice a week. Joggers can alternate walking and sprints. Swimmers can complete a couple of fast laps, then four more slowly.

There is no single accepted formula for the ratio between hard work and a moderate pace or resting. In fact, many coaches recommend varying the duration of activity and rest.

But some guidelines apply. The high-intensity phase should be long and strenuous enough that a person is out of breath — typically one to four minutes of exercise at 80 to 85 percent of their maximum heart rate. Recovery periods should not last long enough for their pulse to return to its resting rate.

Also people should remember to adequately warm up before the first interval. Coaches advise that, ideally, people should not do interval work on consecutive days. More than 24 hours between such taxing sessions will allow the body to recover and help them avoid burnout.

What is so special about interval training? One advantage is that it allows exercisers to spend more time doing high-intensity activity than they could in a single sustained effort. “The rest period in interval training gives the body time to remove some of the waste products of working muscles,” said Barry A. Franklin, the director of the cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

To go hard, the body must use new muscle fibers. Once these recent recruits are trained, they are available to burn fuel even during easy-does-it workouts. “Any form of exercise that recruits new muscle fibers is going to enhance the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and fat,” Dr. Coyle said.

Interval training also stimulates change in mitochondria, where fuel is converted to energy, causing them to burn fat first — even during low- and moderate-intensity workouts, Mr. Talanian said.

Improved fat burning means endurance athletes can go further before tapping into carbohydrate stores. It is also welcome news to anyone trying to lose weight or avoid gaining it.

Unfortunately, many people aren’t active enough to keep muscles healthy. At the sedentary extreme, one result can be what Dr. Coyle calls “metabolic stalling” — carbohydrates in the form of blood glucose and fat particles in the form of triglycerides sit in the blood. That, he suspects, could be a contributing factor to metabolic syndrome, the combination of obesity, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and elevated triglycerides that increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

By recruiting new muscle fibers and increasing the body’s ability to use fuel, interval training could potentially lower the risk of metabolic syndrome.

Interval training does amount to hard work, but the sessions can be short. Best of all, a workout that combines tortoise and hare leaves little time for boredom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/f...60f4315ac1ff1a60&ex=1178337600&pagewanted=all

 

This undated MRI scan image released by Imperial College, London, provides a detailed look at where fat is stored internally in the human body. The image is of an average-sized man who is 1.9 meters (6'2") tall, weighs 79 kilograms (174 pounds) and has a normal index of 21.7. Internal fat is shown as yellow, external fat is green and muscles are red. Some doctors now think that the internal fat surrounding vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas - invisible to the naked eye - could be as dangerous as the more obvious external fat that bulges underneath the skin. (AP Photo, Imperial College, London, HO)


DIET: Thin people may be fat inside
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer, Thu May 10

If it really is what's on the inside that counts, then a lot of thin people might be in trouble. Some doctors now think that the internal fat surrounding vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas — invisible to the naked eye — could be as dangerous as the more obvious external fat that bulges underneath the skin.

"Being thin doesn't automatically mean you're not fat," said Dr. Jimmy Bell, a professor of molecular imaging at Imperial College, London. Since 1994, Bell and his team have scanned nearly 800 people with MRI machines to create "fat maps" showing where people store fat.

According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. "The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined," said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain's Medical Research Council.

Without a clear warning signal — like a rounder middle — doctors worry that thin people may be lulled into falsely assuming that because they're not overweight, they're healthy.

"Just because someone is lean doesn't make them immune to diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease," said Dr. Louis Teichholz, chief of cardiology at Hackensack Hospital in New Jersey, who was not involved in Bell's research.

Even people with normal Body Mass Index scores — a standard obesity measure that divides your weight by the square of your height — can have surprising levels of fat deposits inside.

Of the women scanned by Bell and his colleagues, as many as 45 percent of those with normal BMI scores (20 to 25) actually had excessive levels of internal fat. Among men, the percentage was nearly 60 percent.

Relating the news to what Bell calls "TOFIs" — people who are "thin outside, fat inside" — is rarely uneventful. "The thinner people are, the bigger the surprise," he said, adding the researchers even found TOFIs among people who are professional models.

According to Bell, people who are fat on the inside are essentially on the threshold of being obese. They eat too many fatty, sugary foods — and exercise too little to work it off — but they are not eating enough to actually be fat. Scientists believe we naturally accumulate fat around the belly first, but at some point, the body may start storing it elsewhere.

Still, most experts believe that being of normal weight is an indicator of good health, and that BMI is a reliable measurement.

"BMI won't give you the exact indication of where fat is, but it's a useful clinical tool," said Dr. Toni Steer, a nutritionist at Britain's Medical Research Council.

Doctors are unsure about the exact dangers of internal fat, but some suspect it contributes to the risk of heart disease and diabetes. They theorize that internal fat disrupts the body's communication systems. The fat enveloping internal organs might be sending the body mistaken chemical signals to store fat inside organs like the liver or pancreas. This could ultimately lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or heart disease.

Experts have long known that fat, active people can be healthier than their skinny, inactive counterparts. "Normal-weight persons who are sedentary and unfit are at much higher risk for mortality than obese persons who are active and fit," said Dr. Steven Blair, an obesity expert at the University of South Carolina.

For example, despite their ripples of fat, super-sized Sumo wrestlers probably have a better metabolic profile than some of their slim, sedentary spectators, Bell said. That's because the wrestlers' fat is primarily stored under the skin, not streaking throughout their vital organs and muscles.

The good news is that internal fat can be easily burned off through exercise or even by improving your diet. "Even if you don't see it on your bathroom scale, caloric restriction and physical exercise have an aggressive effect on visceral fat," said Dr. Bob Ross, an obesity expert at Queen's University in Canada.

Because many factors contribute to heart disease, Teichholz says it's difficult to determine the precise danger of internal fat — though it certainly doesn't help.

"Obesity is a risk factor, but it's lower down on the totem pole of risk factors," he said, explaining that whether or not people smoke, their family histories and blood pressure and cholesterol rates are more important determinants than both external and internal fat.

When it comes to being fit, experts say there is no short-cut. "If you just want to look thin, then maybe dieting is enough," Bell said. "But if you want to actually be healthy, then exercise has to be an important component of your lifestyle."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070510/ap_on_he_me/thin_fat_people;_ylt=AshP5xczI6u0vstUUeBqqtqs0NUE

http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/av.htm

 

I wrote an essay about this in my freshmen composition class.. My professor made me read it, in it's entirety, to the class..

Thanks for posting the article.. This opens up a whole new can of worms..

 

Who drinks tap water these days? I CERTAINLy don't here in st. pete, FL... Most of us drink slightly acidic water.. When water is thoroughly filtered it is slightly acidic.. We need alkaline foods and fluids to help rid ourselves of acidity..

The way your body rids itself of acids is that once your stomach senses an alkaline pH level in your stomach it secrets acid.. If all we're doing is eating acidic foods it never rids itself of these acids and thus gets overly acidic and suffers from chronic sickness..

It takes around 30 glasses of water to neutralize the acidity of one soda....

Food for thought..