Exercise has MANY health benefits....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-20-2010

Last week, Prevention Magazine posted an article they titled,

“17 Ways Exercise Sends Health Soaring”

Why schedule several sessions of exercise that are doable for you into your week and be sure you do each session 95% of the time or more?

For starters, since recent studies found only 5% of Americans do this.

In my opinion, besides the competing pressures on their time, most of the other 95% neither know how incredibly much exercise actually will do FOR them or even close. They also don’t know how badly they will suffer from what being sedentary and NOT exercising will otherwise do TO them.

So I thought I’d summarize their 17 points in this post.

1. Be more productive at work.

Prevention quotes a study done in the UK. People who exercise think better and get more done than people who don’t.

They also only usually take about half the sick time of people who are more sedentary.

Exercise increases blood flow to your brain, makes you less depressed, and grows new brain cells. Small wonder it improves productivity.

And, doing regular and moderate exercise, along with taking curcumin and at least 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day dramatically increases the effectiveness of your immune system. In later years, you are also far less likely to get heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. So you have fewer doctor visits to cause you to leave work.

2. Improve your learning skills

In one study noted in the Prevention article, “Exercisers who ran just two 3-minute sprints, with a 2-minute break in between, learned new words 20% faster than those who rested….” They also said that exercise tends to produce, “new growth in the areas of the brain that control multitasking, planning, and memory.”

3. Natural pain relief

It may seem surprising; but exercise lowers pain in several ways. It boosts endorphins that effectively block pain signals. It increases circulation and helps lubricate joints. And exercise also LOWERS excess inflammation. Best of all, exercise causes your body to release growth hormones that repair damage to you before it causes you pain.

Prevention’s article had this: “Healthy adults who did aerobic activity consistently had 25% less musculoskeletal pain than their couch-bound peers, says Stanford senior research scientist Bonnie Bruce, DrPH, MPH, RD.”

They also say that Tai Chi is an excellent kind of exercise for this. Tai Chi as usually done is super low impact and done in a slow and gentle manner. It also provides such strong stress relief, it lowers blood pressure better than most drugs in those who have high blood pressure.

So what pain exercise fails to turn off will bother you less. And, it also turns off pain that sedentary people get too!

4. Exercise increases your ability to engage in sex. It makes you feel better about yourself. And, you look and move better too.

Prevention’s article had this:

“A good workout practically ensures a better body image. The simple act of exercising-regardless of your weight or fitness level-can make you feel positive about how you look, possibly due to the release of feel-good hormones, finds a review of 57 studies on exercise and body image.

Working out can also boost your libido by increasing blood flow to the genitals. University of Washington research found that just one 20-minute cycling workout enhanced sexual arousal up to 169% in women. And the benefits stand the test of time: A Harvard study of swimmers found that those over age 60 were as satisfied sexually as those decades younger.”

5. Lower Dental Bills

Exercise increases circulation and lowers excess inflammation. So it’s no surprise it helps keep your gums healthy.

What you may NOT know is that gum disease, besides causing heart disease and horrible bad breath, costs a LOT of money to treat including pulling teeth that your gums become too weak to hold onto and buying false teeth to replace them.

Prevention had this:

“Flossing and brushing, it turns out, are not the only keys to a healthy smile, says Mohammad Al-Zahrani, DDS, PhD, a former associate professor at Case Western Reserve University. Exercise plays an important role, too. In his recent study, Al-Zahrani discovered that adults who did 30 minutes of moderate activity 5 or more times a week were 42% less likely to suffer from periodontitis, a gum disease that's more common as you get older. Working out may thwart periodontitis the same way it does heart disease--by lowering levels of inflammation-causing C-reactive protein in the blood.

Do this: In addition to staying active, get a twice-yearly dental cleaning (or more often if your dentist says you are at high risk for gum disease). “

6. If you need more wake up at work than you get from coffee, try going on a short walk.

Prevention’s article had this:

“University of Georgia researchers who analyzed 70 different studies concluded that moving your body increases energy and reduces fatigue. Regular exercise boosts certain fatigue-fighting brain chemicals such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which pep you up, and serotonin, a mood enhancer.

Even a brisk 10 minute walk will help.

7. Stop weight gain due to stress and anxiety.

Those things tend to cause you to gain belly fat -- which is both ugly and dangerous to your health.

Prevention’s article had this:

“Just two 40-minute workouts a week is enough to stop dangerous belly fat in its tracks, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham research. The waistline of those who worked out less expanded an average of 3 inches.”

Exercise lowers excess levels of cortisol and insulin. Both of those actions help prevent your body from adding to your belly fat.

And, because it lowers stress, exercise also cuts your cravings for comfort foods that tend to be fattening.

Note that 80 minutes of walking or working out in a week can also be done with 8 ten minute walks or four 20 minute walks. For many people, that flexibility makes it a lot easier to fit in.

Out of time today. I’ll finish the list tomorrow.

Slow aging with exercise & more....

Today's Post, Tuesday, 6-2-2009

Yesterday’s post on fat loss had this on the best kind of exercise to help you lose fat.:

“2. The most effective kinds of exercise to lose bodyfat, lose internal fat, and turn off insulin resistance have a key similarity. They may not last huge amounts of time. But they are vigorous and can be safe once you build up to it gradually and keep the high intensity per time brief.

What exercises do that?

Interval cardio, progressive strength training, playing competitive sports, jumping rope, using a mini-trampoline, quite brisk execution of martial arts moves or routines such as Tae Bo or Karate or Kung Fu all work.

And, many of these are in fact on record as being effective at losing fat and belly fat.”

Now, here’s the surprise. These kinds of exercise also help dramatically slow aging.

These exercises cause your body to release growth hormone. That triggers repairs all throughout your body. And that works best for creating these repairs, muscle growth and fat loss when you also eat enough protein.

Meanwhile, guess what happens to people who don’t do these kinds of exercises every week? The repairs don’t happen or happen as much and those people begin to age faster due to undone maintenance repairs that gradually build up.

Then there’s the new brain cells and nerves that kind of exercise causes you to grow. That keeps you mentally sharp and mentally younger. In addition, this means that you maintain better control over your muscles and maintain your muscle speed better. Athletes talk about “losing a step” as they get older. But if you do these kinds of exercises, that happens much, much less.

And this also creates increased longevity. A recent study of runners found that they outlived non-exercisers by as much as 15 or 20 years.

In addition, today I read that exercise virtually halts or reverses one part of aging in today’s email issue of TotalHealthBreakthroughs.

Here’s the actual article so you can see for yourself.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com ."


"The Fountain of Youth? Hit the Weight Room!

By Missy Hawthorne, RN, CSCS

Are you a proud member of the “baby boom” generation? Well if so, congratulations! You and 78.2 million of your closest friends make up the bulk of this country's population, and the oldest of you turned 60 just a few short years ago! Turning 50, 60 or 70 for that matter is a wonderful milestone for which you should be proud. But as proud as you may be, aging brings some physical changes we may not be quite ready for, or ready to accept.

Have you noticed fine lines around the eyes, or your pants fitting a little tighter? Do your joints ache as you climb stairs, or do you find yourself bracing your back as you stoop to pick up the morning paper? And where did your strength go? Have your muscles vanished?

These realities and many more begin to haunt us at about age 40 and can continue to worsen with aging. Is there any way to slow things down? Ah, the fountain of youth! If only we could simply take a drink!

Studies and surveys I have come across of baby boomers' attitudes indicate that most of them are trying to be very proactive and slow their physical aging process as much as possible. One of the areas in which that's really important is muscle preservation.

As we age, we lose muscle mass and muscular strength leading to impairment in some activities of daily living. This natural age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and muscle function is called sarcopenia. The level of sarcopenia will greatly affect a person's ability to live and function independently as they grow older.

Research suggests the causes of sarcopenia are related not just to inactivity, but to oxidative stress (a condition in which antioxidant levels are lower than normal), inflammation, alterations in protein turnover, and dysfunction of mitochondria (the ATP energy factory in cells).1 And believe it or not, resistance training has been shown to not only reduce some of that oxidative stress, it reverses aging of the muscles on a genetic level.

One study compared 25 active older subjects (average age 68) to 26 younger subjects (average age 24). After a thorough medical evaluation including a graded exercise test, all subjects performed a supervised resistance training program on two non-consecutive days per week for 26 weeks.

All major muscle groups were included in the workout, beginning with single-set training which started out at more moderate levels and worked up to more intense levels. At the end of 26 weeks, the subjects underwent a muscle biopsy and RNA was extracted for analysis.

The biopsies revealed that resistance training not only slowed the process of aging, but actually reversed aging in something called the transcription RNA profile of the genes. The transcription profile looked like the RNA of a much younger person after the six months of resistance training, and the mitochondrial function of the cells was much improved. These changes translated into improved muscle strength. In fact, muscular strength in the older subjects improved by 50% in 26 weeks.2

For years personal trainers and fitness professionals have touted the benefits of resistance training. Now trainers can share with their clients that it may not be as easy as sipping from a fountain, but there is one sure way to reverse the aging process-- get into the weight room!

References

1. Kravitz, Len .2009. IDEA Fitness Journal. 21-23.
2. Melov, S. 2007. Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging In Human Skeletal Muscle. Plos ONE, 2 journal.pone.com .

[Ed. Note: Melissa Hawthorne, RN, BSN, CSCS is the owner of Priority Fitness Personal Training and Wellness. She is a Master Trainer for the Resist-a-ball Company, ISCA Personal Training, Kick-boxing, and Beamfit. Melissa serves as a fitness consultant for the LaValle Metabolic Institute. ....]"

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You can also help your body with antioxidants from supplements and food.

Fruit and vegetables – particularly organic and brightly colored ones such as sweet potatoes dark green, nonstarchy vegetables, and berries -- and vitamins A, C, E, the mineral selenium, and the supplement alpha lipoic acid all give you additional antioxidant protection. So does coffee, tea, cocoa, dark chocolate, and plant based spices such as basil and many other spices.
I’ve also read that vitamin C helps prevent aging directly by keeping your “telomeres” from unraveling & it helps prevent high inflammation and the diseases that causes, about which see our next post this Thursday.

In addition, you can improve the function of your mitochondria by taking CoQ10 100 mg twice a day in addition to the improvement you get from exercising.

And, though it may work best for your heart according to studies I’ve read of instead of all of you as once thought, you can also slow aging by taking resveratrol.

Save money & live longer – avoid falls….

Today's post: Tuesday, 2-3-2009

A surprising number of older people are injured by falling down.

Of even more importance the medical bills from this damage cost millions of dollars a year; and many of the people who fall wind up with limited mobility and shorter lives.

But it’s close to 100 % preventable.

1. Preventing heart disease and cardiovascular disease prevents falls. If the circulation to your inner ear that you use to balance shuts off too much from cardiovascular disease, your sense of balance can leave you. So if you follow the practices to avoid heart disease, you also prevent falls from this cause.

2. If your bones in your legs or hips break, you can fall even if your sense of balance is still good. So if you keep your bones strong, you also prevent falls from lack of bone strength.

3. If your legs and core balance muscles are too weak, you can fail to recover from a sudden change in position even if your sense of balance is not too bad. Even a modest amount of strength training for your legs, back, and abdominal muscles will avoid you becoming that weak.

4. If you are out of practice at balancing and moving your feet to “catch yourself” if you get thrown out of balance, you can fall. Some kinds of balance practice have been shown to prevent falls.

Here are more details & solutions for these four potential problem areas.

1. Eat right and exercise regularly since a low glycemic diet with lots of vegetables and lean or plant protein and wild caught fish, omega 3 supplements, and extra virgin olive oil – and moderate amounts of red wine -- tends to keep your HDL high; your LDL and triglycerides and CRP inflammation low. So does regular exercise & NOT ingesting hydrogenated oils, refined grains, starchy foods, & avoiding excessive sugar AND drinking NO soft drinks of any kind.

The best exercise program for heart health combines some progressive strength training, some interval cardio, and some other kind of activity, such as gardening, yard work, or walking each week. Even 15 minutes a day of those kinds of exercise at home can do wonders.

That kind of exercise increases your HDL & lowers triglycerides which sharply lowers the small particle LDL that directly causes heart disease. Plus it lowers CRP inflammation and tends to prevent or turn off the insulin resistance that causes type 2 diabetes and excessively high blood sugar. Those two effects also prevent cardiovascular disease.

Get your key blood indicators tested so you know ahead of time if you are at risk and need to do better in this area.

Your HDL should be 40 or higher for sure. And well above 60 is better. Your LDL should be 129 or less and about 100 or somewhat less is better. Your triglycerides should be 150 or less for sure. And well under 100 is better. I’ve read your CRP test should be about 1.0 and not higher. And I suspect under 1.0 is better.

Similarly, your fasting blood sugar should be 99 or less and 89 or a bit less is better; & your HBA1C should be 5.8 or less. And under 5.5 is better.

Niacin; and choline; and eating berries and nuts; and grape seed extract; increase HDL. Choline is in egg yolk and wheat germ but it may be wise to eat those in moderation and take lecithin, which contains choline, or choline supplements as well. (Olive oil lowers LDL but leaves your HDL alone while high omega 6 oils such as corn and soy and canola tend to lower HDL.)

Niacin; and sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol and, for men, saw palmetto, lower LDL cholesterol.

Vitamin E and other antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C help prevent your LDL from oxidizing and keep your CRP inflammation low.

Wild caught fish, omega 3 supplements, and avoiding the fat of grain feed animals and high omega 6 oils such as corn oil helps lower triglycerides and CRP inflammation.

2. Eating right and getting the kind of exercise we just described tends to keep your bones strong. Strength training; interval cardio that uses your legs; consuming food high in calcium such as nonfat and very lowfat dairy products and beans and greens works better than calcium supplements; taking 2,000 iu or more a day of vitamin D; & NOT drinking soft drinks, particularly colas which leach out calcium due to excess phosphorous content – ALL help to keep your bones strong.

The drugs to improve weakened bones have been found to have health damaging side effects and have a death rate themselves.

So, practicing the good health habits above BEFORE your bones get weak is critical.

3. If you do some leg exercises as part of your strength training each week, your legs will be strong enough to help you avoid falls. Push ups strengthen your abdominal muscles and back in addition to your arms and chest because your abdominal muscles and back have to hold your body in a straight line while you do the push ups. Doing those plus some other abdominal exercises each week, will keep your core muscles strong.

4. For exercises that work directly on your balance, I believe in doing them where you are in a position to easily grab something solid and keeping your eyes open while you are doing them. (To do otherwise is to risk having your preventative exercises causing you to fall. So I don’t recommend that. )

An exercise I do is to stand in front of the mirror in our bathroom and do partial squats or kneebends on one leg. I’ve gotten good enough at moving my other leg, head and moving the foot I’m standing on that I can do 98 for each leg without having to catch myself even once with my hand or other leg most of the time. This also is a good strengthening exercise as well. But you can start with 3 for each leg and having to catch yourself on each one and improve from there.

If you like dancing, most kinds are excellent in giving you balance practice in a large variety of positions and using your feet well to balance yourself quickly. So that’s another good choice.

And, some senior centers are now getting in specialty balance training equipment that works. My suggestion is not to wait on using that but do something at home right away; and to do some of the at home exercises before you use it if you do get the opportunity so you do at least moderately well when you do use it.

So, if you do all four of these, your chances of falling go down a lot.

Lastly, stay inside or walk with extreme care in icy weather. Even people who are healthy in every way have been hurt by falls on icy places.

Two ways to stay mentally sharp....

Today's post: Monday, 1-19-2009

1. One way is getting regular exercise, ideally by doing some strength training, some interval cardio, and some lower key activities such as Tai Chi, gardening, walking – or even doing housework – every week.

We’ve already posted that exercise helps you to stay mentally sharp in several ways.

Regular exercise helps you to keep your blood sugar from getting too high; it directly and indirectly ensures your brain has good blood circulation; it helps you lower or overcome the effects of stress; it literally grows new brain cells; and it helps normalize your neurotransmitters enough to help keep you un-depressed and proactive.

All of this combined ensures that you retain something researchers now call “brain plasticity.”

Essentially that means that not only do you learn and think better, your brain also can be dramatically “trained” or “re-trained” even when your brain needs to rewire itself or use different parts of itself to do so.

2. Researchers are now beginning to find that certain kinds of brain exercise also can use this brain plasticity to cause you to upgrade or acquire new skills – or to regain skills grown rusty from disuse.

Even better, these brain exercises either can cause permanent improvement or long term improvement. It’s more like learning a language or relearning it than regular physical exercise. It may take a lot of work to get results. But once you do the work successfully, you apparently keep the skill as long as you continue to make some use of it.

Posit Science, see www.positscience.com , was founded by one of the most important and innovative researchers in this new field.

They seem now to have two programs.

One uses a video game to ensure you process information well, accurately, and quickly visually -- whether it’s straight ahead or off to either side or up or down. This can make you a safer driver as a younger person. And, it can enable you to continue to drive as an older person where you otherwise might not have been able to do so.

Their second program apparently has been used to restore brains of older and elderly people to mental ability levels now usually seen in people in their 30’s, 40’s, or early 50’s. That literally means you can make your brain younger in its abilities, sometimes more than 20 years younger.

Since a similar kind of exercise, learning a second or new language, sharply reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s disease, there is even reason to believe getting this training is an additional way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

But there’s more.

People who lose arms or legs or hands can still feel as if the part of them they lost is still there. (It’s called the phantom limb phenomenon.) Worse, sometimes they can have really bad and continuous pain in their phantom limb.

People also get strokes that leave them unable to speak or paralyzed on one side.

Researchers have now found that because of this brain plasticity, there are exercises people can do that will turn off the feeling from a phantom limb, including the pain in it if they have any.

And, in many cases, people who have been paralyzed or unable to talk after a stroke have been able to come close to completely overcoming paralysis or to regain speech.

There is even some chance this science will be able to turn off some addictions.

We’ll post again on brain plasticity soon.

But until then, be sure to follow our guidelines we’ve posted over the last week on how to keep your brain sharp; and be sure to do regular exercise if you don’t do anything else. Also note that doing those things will help ensure you will do well with the brain exercises if you do them.

Or, you can learn something totally new to you. Examples would be learn Tai Chi, learn to play a musical instrument, or learn a new language.

Fat Loss makes you sexier as well as better looking....

Today's post: Monday, 12-22-2008

It turns out this works BOTH ways. Excess fat de-sexes you to some degree and so does one of the causes of you gaining excess fat in the first place that also tends to cause you to add belly fat. AND, the doing the things that will take off excess fat or prevent it showing up or coming back, have been proven to make you sexier.

The article we quote today from last Friday’s Total Health breakthroughs email is written mostly for men.

But all these factors work in women too. Some work every bit as well for women as they do for men; and some work to some degree but not as strongly.

1. The hormone connection.

Excess estrogen tends to make both men and women less sexy. But it is particularly bad for men.

Similarly, testosterone tends to make people feel sexier and more interested in sex.

Men, particularly when they are young tend to have a lot of testosterone. But as they get older they tend to have less or to have sexually ineffective versions and less useful, or “free”, testosterone in their blood.

Women, particularly when they are young, also do have some testosterone. And women who have too little testosterone, tend to lose some of their interest in and enjoyment of sex.

Excess estrogen tends to cause sex and health problems in both sexes.

First, here’s the THB article with some of the key information.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

“Friday, December 19, 2008

Men: "Hormone Hell" is NOT Just for Women!

By Layne Lowery

Can men go through menopause? Absolutely! You might not know it, but estrogen dominance, or andropause, is a major health hazard for men over 40. This hormone imbalance occurs when your body builds up too much estrogen and xenoestrogens -- which are synthetic forms of the hormone.

You've probably never heard of estrogen dominance -- and your doctor would probably misdiagnose your symptoms. But this could be the reason you suffer from...

Memory loss and "senior moments"
Depression and mood swings
Sleepless nights
Unwanted weight gain-- especially belly fat
Muscles turning into flab
Low sex drive and erectile dysfunction (ED)
Enlarged prostate and other prostate problems-- and a frequent need to urinate
Hair loss
Male breasts or "man boobs"

There are three main reasons why these unpleasant symptoms of male menopause may be tormenting you: 1) aging, 2) environmental pollutants, and 3) your diet.

As you get older, your body doesn't make as much testosterone. The remaining testosterone gets weaker and easily converts to estrogen. Unfortunately, mid-life weight gain increases estrogen production because fat cells contain the aromatase enzyme, which changes testosterone into estrogen.

Another cause for hormone imbalances comes from xenoestrogens -- or toxins that imitate estrogen-- which are dumped into the environment by industrial, agricultural, and chemical companies. In his health newsletter, Dr. HingHau Tsang said these phony hormones are offshoots of products such as spermacides, detergent, plastics, plastic bottles, pesticides, herbicides, personal care products, and lacquers.

Dr. Tsang also said commercially raised beef, chicken and pork, as well as birth control pills and canned foods, contain xenoestrogens. He said massive amounts of hormones are regularly injected into beef and poultry, which can upset your natural estrogen levels.1

John R. Lee, M.D., an expert in natural progesterone therapy, thinks that significant amounts of estrogen are the main cause of prostate enlargement AND prostate cancer!2

And estrogen dominance can also lead to erectile dysfunction (ED). According to Nick Delgado, Ph.D., a leading expert on anti-aging, a number of men with ED are "at greater risk for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, or hypertension."3

So whether you call it estrogen dominance, "male menopause," or andropause -- estrogen overload is a real health hazard. And as indicated in a report titled "Manopause" by Lisa Marshall, large numbers of baby boomers are being hit with symptoms of male menopause.4

Therefore, Dr. John Morley, lead researcher of estrogen dominance in men and head of the geriatrics division at Saint Louis University Medical School, predicts that, "We are going to see an explosion of interest in it."5

What does this mean for you? Have your hormone levels checked to ensure that you don't have elevated levels of estrogen that can cause major health problems. A good naturopathic practitioner can advise you on lifestyle changes and nutritional supplements that will help keep your hormones in balance and reduce your risk of both male menopause and chronic disease.

References

1. HingHau Tsang, M.D., Dr. HingHau Tsang's Crusade on Nutrition: Newsletter #75--"Estrogen Dominance, Natural Progesterone and Men," Tsangenterprise.

2. John R. Lee, M.D., Natural Progesterone.

3. Nick Delgado, Ph.D., "Steps to Overcoming Estrogen Dominance and Slowing Symptoms of Aging," Ezine Articles.

4. Lisa Marshall, "Manopause," Natural Awakenings.

5. John R. Lee, M.D., Medical letter--"Prostate Disease and Hormones," March 2002.
[Ed. Note: Layne Lowery is the owner and operator of Health Resources ™, a manufacturer of high-quality nutritional supplements. In the health business since 1995, Layne's passion is providing affordable natural health solutions and educational tools based on the best scientific research available to empower his customers to make wise decisions on matters of personal health.]

The Hormonal Cause of Man Boobs and Facial Hair in Women.. You've Likely Never Heard Of!

It's called "estrogen dominance" and it's a silent menace that could be plaguing your body and wreaking havoc on your health. It's annoying (and often dangerous) symptoms affect both men and women. And contrary to popular belief, not only women need estrogen for healthy living.

If you're a man, the warning signs of estrogen dominance include: Enlarged prostate and frequent need to urinate, prostate problems, high PSA levels, belly fat, male breasts, muscles turning to flab and low sex drive.

If you're a woman, the warning signs of estrogen dominance include: Abnormal breast cells, hot flashes and painful menopausal symptoms, unwanted facial hair, vaginal dryness and painful intercourse, weight gain, brittle bones, dry skin and wrinkles and thinning hair and bald spots.

The good news is you can safely put an end to estrogen dominance and restore a normal hormonal balance with a remarkable phytonutrient called Di-Indole Methane. ….”

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Three key ideas are in this article.:

a) “….mid-life weight gain increases estrogen production because fat cells contain the aromatase enzyme, which changes testosterone into estrogen.“

This means that the fatter you are the more likely you are to have less testosterone and too much estrogen. The fat cells directly trigger a process that causes both problems.

I knew some of this other info. But this one I did NOT know.

So, if you want to be as sexy as your heredity and circumstances allow, this means that excess fat on your body is your enemy.

b) The other things that trigger too much estrogen tend to make you gain fat and to gain belly fat in particular. So, doing the other things that prevent excess estrogen will make you less fat all over and help you lose belly fat too.

c) The “phytonutrient called Di-Indole Methane” apparently helps prevent the compounds that trigger excess estrogen from doing so and to block the excessive conversion of testosterone to estrogen. In men, it helps boost testosterone levels and may do this in women as well.

The phytonutrient called Di-Indole Methane is available at the health food store now. There it’s called DIM. Source Naturals is a company that produces a DIM supplement that health food stores carry. And, there may be several others that I do not yet know.

But, you don’t need to get it from supplements alone. It is a phytonutrient that is found in broccoli and possibly other cruciferous vegetables as well.

Another supplement that increases testosterone release is Tribulus. Many supplement companies make it including the NOW brand that you can get in health food stores.

2. The food connection.

If you eat lots of broccoli or a moderate amount often. -- and you also eat other cruciferous vegetables regularly, particularly if you regular have some raw and some cooked, you get a good bit of cancer protection, particularly for the more aggressive sex-linked cancers from the raw ones; and you get many kinds of other health benefits as well.

This is in addition to the DIM you get by doing so!

These foods, as well as green beans, tomatoes, onions, green peas, celery, green peppers, and many other less starchy vegetables are high in fiber and nutrition and low to very low in calories.

That means they are good for you; fill you up; and do not make you fat.

In fact eating a lot of them helps allow you to eat fewer calories WITHOUT feeling less full, too hungry, or undernourished.

This is so much the case, Weight Watchers assigns them ZERO points.

So that means that eating a lot of cruciferous and other nonstarchy vegetables every week makes you sexier two ways, you’ll be less fat so you’ll have less of the aromatase that creates excess estrogen; and you’ll take in the DIM and similar phytonutrients that tend to prevent excess estrogen and increase your testosterone levels.

3. The exercise connection.

Regular exercise has been proven to improve the sex lives
of BOTH men and women.

Here’s why.:

The calories burned tend to make you less fat. The muscle you gain or don’t lose burns more calories than the fat cells you otherwise would be feeding. This makes it easier to lose fat and keep it off AND, to some degree it makes it possible to do so without getting hungry!

Progressive strength training and interval cardio do this best, partly because they cause you to burn more calories for up to several hours AFTER you stop exercising.

But they do more than that. All exercise tends to release growth hormones.
And one of the growth hormones exercise releases is testosterone! Here again, progressive strength training and interval cardio do this best.

And, it doesn’t hurt that doing these exercises makes you stronger, look better, and have more stamina so you don’t run out of gas in the middle of a sexual encounter.

So, it’s literally true being fat makes you less sexy. And doing the things that help you lose excess fat tends to make you sexier even BEFORE you lose all the fat.

They’re BOTH true.

Exercise and fat loss prevent breast cancer....

Today's post: Monday, 11-3-2008

Last week we did a post on foods and supplements that DO very likely prevent cancer, prevent prostate cancer, and/or prevent the most aggressive and dangerous form of prostate cancer.

Since then I’ve found two health news items online that show that exercise and fat loss each tend to prevent breast cancer.

Vigorous exercise helps prevent breast cancer.

One of these news reports made it very clear that regular vigorous exercise, such as progressive strength training or interval cardio do some good for women who are of normal weight in preventing breast cancer. Such regular exercise cut the incidence of breast cancer by about 10 percent.

But in women who were overweight due to being a bit too fat or more, such regular exercise cut the incidence of breast cancer by about 30 percent.

My strong suspicion is that because a lifestyle where a man or woman eats too much of the wrong kinds of food and gets no regular exercise tend to have blood sugar that’s too high and insulin resistance and insulin levels that are too high AND vigorous exercise is very effective in reversing this, women who are overweight who otherwise would have these blood sugar related problems are protected from them enough by vigorous exercise, this effect also prevents breast cancer significantly.

Normal weight women have far less of these kinds of blood sugar problems, so the protective effect of vigorous exercise is a bit less as well. But, there IS some effect. AND regular, vigorous exercise helps protect such women from becoming overweight later as well.

Eating lots of vegetables and eating an adequate supply of lean protein every day and very rarely eating much of anything else and NEVER eating junk food or drinking soft drinks also tends to prevent breast cancer.

This eating style also tends to prevent blood sugar problems and either will prevent you from becoming fat or help enable you to lose any excess fat on your body permanently.

In addition, the phytonutrients in the vegetables, particularly the raw cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, are known to help prevent all cancers and according to one study, look likely to prevent aggressive, fast growing, and dangerous cancers.

Supplements that may help prevent breast cancer.:

On Thursday last week10-30-2008, in our post that day we listed several supplements that have been tested to some degree to prevent prostate cancer. And, we listed two more that might that are derived from the cruciferous vegetables that have been shown to help prevent all cancers.

Since both prostate cancer and breast cancers are cancers of the reproductive system, I strongly suspect that all or most of these supplements tend to prevent breast cancer also.

Vitamin D helps prevent ALL cancers.

But in that article I forgot to mention a single supplement that has been found to reduce the incidence of all cancers. I addition, it’s so inexpensive, it’s fair to say it’s cheap to buy.

The evidence is that our bodies will use about 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 if its available. And, since most people today spend most of each day inside, very few people come close to getting that much – even people who take a multivitamin with the old 400 iu amount that prevents severe deficiency. That problem in the Northern Hemisphere is even worse in the winter.

This means that people who take 2,000 to 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 in addition to their other sources of it get much closer to what their bodies actually need each day.

This has been shown to optimize the immune system enough to help prevent all cancers AND prevent or help get over colds, flu, and more serious infections. In addition, taking that much vitamin D helps prevent aches and pains and autoimmune diseases.

Last but far from least, taking that much vitamin D3 tends to prevent or help reverse winter depression, SAD, in people who tend to get it in the darker winter months.

Since Carlson and other companies sell 100 capsules that each contain 1,000 iu of vitamin D3 for about $5 to $6 dollars, you can take 3,000 iu of vitamin D3 for 20 cents a day or about $6 a month.

So, by taking vitamin D3, you can help prevent breast cancer and other cancers and diseases and you’ll feel better too!

Avoiding tobacco smoke helps prevent all cancers.

Not smoking and making a special effort to avoid second hand smoke tends to help prevent all cancers including breast cancer.

Further, this is a LARGE effect. The American Cancer Society says that about a full third of all cancers are caused by exposure to tobacco smoke..

So, following ALL these good health practices can dramatically reduce your chances of getting breast cancer.

3 Health protection & improvement resources....

Today's post: Friday, 10-3-2008

1. One is reading this blog every week. But there’s more here than you might have noticed.
(Many of you have come for one specific post.)

Also try scanning our previous posts.

I. Just in our last 9 weeks of posts, 8-1 to 10-2, 2008 (August, September, and the 1st two days of October), you’ll find several posts on these topics.:

a) Fat Loss. (Losing weight so you only lose fat and keep it off.)

b) Protecting your heart and avoiding cardiovascular disease. (That also protects your brain by ensuring good circulation and avoiding strokes. It also prevents peripheral artery disease & erectile dysfuntion & many if not most cases of high blood pressure.)

c) Exercise. (Regular exercise has astounding benefits. It helps cause permanent fat loss. It prevents heart and cardiovascular disease. It increases longevity, It helps prevent type II diabetes and even cancer. And, it grows new brain cells, releases growth hormones, and improves the sex lives of BOTH men and women.)

d) Supplements. (Multiple supplement takers have better health than people who just take a multivitamin. And, people who take multivitamins have better health than people who take no supplements at all. Specific supplements can protect your heart much better than drugs, prevent cancer, protect your brain, and lower high blood sugar and high blood pressure.)

e) Eating right. (Some foods and drinks support and protect your health. Many of them from dark chocolate to organic strawberries to guacamole to pecans also taste great.

Unfortunately, some foods and drinks that have been specially engineered to taste good, be cheap to make, be profitable to provide you, and have a long shelf life such as soft drinks and packaged snacks tend to make you fat without reducing your hunger much and make you fat, cause type II diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.)

II. In that same time period, we also posted on:

Effective strategies for good health;

How to protect yourself from stress;

Ways to protect your brain;

How to lower high blood pressure without drugs;

Ways to prevent cancer;

& How some men can have better sex.
(Regular exercise improves sex for BOTH sexes also.)

Here are the other two resources.:

(Over a week or two, I virtually always find a health article, or several, that I find valuable in each of them.)

2. Early to Rise publishes a health article each day six days a week, Monday through Saturday. You can sign up for their emails at www.EarlytoRise.com . (They also post on how to make money, manage your career, invest successfully, and be effective at work. The specialize also in information marketing online & how you can do it.)

Today’s health article is on how to start strength training or restart it without making your muscles too sore.

And, the company, Early to Rise also now has a health only email that comes out every Tuesday and every Friday which you can sign up for at www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .

Today’s feature article is on how some plastics that foods and drinks are stored in can make you sick; how to avoid this; & best of all, which kinds of plastics are mostly OK and which should be totally avoided.

Tips on why & how to exercise….

Today's post: Monday, 8-18-2008

If you exercise regularly, you will weigh less than you would have if you didn’t. At any given weight, more of you will be muscle & less of you will be fat.

If you need to lose fat weight & have efforts in place to do that, doing regular exercise each week that includes strength training, will help you lose more fat & to only lose fat weight. In addition, by continuing to exercise, you will be much more likely to keep off the fat you lose.

In addition, regular exercise helps keep your blood vessels flexible & responsive.

Exercise, particularly strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, helps to keep your blood sugar down to the levels it should be.

Regular exercise also relieves stress & increases your tolerance for stress.

And, regular exercise, particularly strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, helps to increase HDL levels which reduces the amount of plaque deposited in your blood vessels.

Walking & Tai Chi are ideal low intensity exercises & can often be fit into your day in as little as ten minute time periods.

Alternating strength training & interval cardio where each session alternates vigorous effort with less challenging effort, with two days of each or three days of each every week if, can also help.

The ideal is to do some of each of these 3 kinds of exercise each week.

But it’s critical to realize that even a little bit each week of walking has been shown to give you a full 40 % of the health benefits of an ideal program.

If you need to, start there & make a strong effort to continue each week.

Here are some tips to help you begin exercising that have helped many people.

The most important three are to:

a) Decide you want to be one of the people who GETS the benefits of regular exercise.

People who do regular exercise live longer and in far better health than people who do none. Regular exercise tends to prevent or does prevent high blood pressure, obesity, senility, senior moments, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, & even cancer. It’s also been shown to reliably improve the sex life of both men and women.

It makes such a large difference, it can truly be said, if the people who don’t exercise at all knew what this was doing TO them and what regular exercise would do FOR them, almost everyone would exercise.

b) Decide what kinds of exercise you CAN do now and begin to do them every week.

For years I did cardio but no strength training because I was unable to afford to go to a gym that had heavier weights. My wife got fed up with my do-nothing attitude. She made the point that if I figured out what I could do at home with exercises that used my bodyweight such as pushups and with the dumbbell set we had at home, I’d get 100 percent more benefits than taking about exercises I could not do then.

I’ve made it to the gym since; but the exercises she got me to start doing have given me enormous benefits. Even better, this kind of exercise takes up so little space, virtually everyone can do it.

Similarly, you may not be able to do walking near your work or at home or it may be unsafe some parts of the year due to cold or heat; but if not, almost anyone can do it.

Another good way is to get a personal trainer or go to a class to learn how to strength train or do Tai Chi or other kind of exercise or physical skill. That will get you started and, once you know how, you can continue on your own.

If you can make it to gyms, the social support can help keep you going and exercising.

But regardless of what it is start immediately doing some kind of exercise regularly that you can do.

Then keep doing it. You can always improve to doing more or better exercise. But this one step, even if small, will give you a full 40 % of the benefits of an ideal exercise program.

Decide what you CAN do; & begin to do it every week.

c) On your home computer or on a logbook that you buy at a stationery store, WRITE down what exercise you do each day.

If you get into this habit, it will help you exercise consistently and keep doing it. It also can be great if you make progress that you can see in this log.

Lastly, it helps you keep up your weekly total amount of exercise. You may be forced to skip a day or only have time for half a workout. But by seeing this in your logbook, you can do a bit more on other days that week or next week and make a stronger than usual effort to exercise on other days to be sure your weekly total doesn’t drop off too much.

(It can also help quite a bit if you can do at least part of your exercises first thing in the morning. Because the more unpredictable demands of the day often happen later in the day, people who exercise in the morning are twice as likely to keep on exercising compared with people who only exercise later in the day.)

There are 3 kinds of exercise you can do.

1. One kind is any activity at all that burns calories. That can include gardening, housework, sweeping, playing ping pong, and short walks. It all counts. And, any of these you do regularly or vigorously or for long periods of time can do a lot for you.

2. Aerobic or cardio exercise builds endurance more than strength. But we now know that somewhat shorter sessions that alternate easier and much more vigorous “intervals” or “interval cardio” has three wonderful benefits over longer and unvarying cardio.

It gets you into good shape much faster and into better shape;
it’s actually far safer if you build up the much more vigorous parts gradually and do the exercise sessions regularly and ease off enough in the easier parts;
& it does MORE to build strength, protect your health, and burn unwanted fat than longer and unvarying cardio. The ideal is to do at least 3 sessions a week so that you never go longer than 2 or 3 days with none. Monday, Weds, Fri works; but so does Thurs, Sat, Sunday. Three days in a row and four days off each week is too many days off for best results; but two or three days in a row can be Ok if you get other kinds of vigorous exercise the days you aren’t doing cardio.

3. Progressive strength training where you do 6 to 12 repetitions and then increase the weight slightly when you can do 12 easily makes you a good bit stronger than doing cardio only and does a great job of burning unwanted fat.

It burns extra calories when you do it; like interval cardio; it boosts your metabolism and the number of calories your body burns for HOURS after you stop; & the increased weight the slightly large muscles it develops burn more calories at rest than the fat you would otherwise feed with the food that you eat.

If you wait a minimum of time between set, just enough to catch your breath and set up for the next set AND you put strong effort into at least some sets, you also get some cardio exercise. And, because stronger muscles can move you with less effort, strength training also builds ENDURANCE not just strength studies found.

With strength training, it’s important to give your muscles a day off between sessions to rebuild. If you want and have time, you can still do it 6 days a week by doing upper body 3 alternate days and lower body exercises the other alternate 3 days.

And, if you work hard in your sessions and do them regularly, even two days a week such as Tues, Thurs, or Mon, Weds or Weds, Saturday will build strength quite well. You do a bit better and definitely burn more calories with three. But you get more than two thirds of the benefits just doing two sessions a week. The secret is doing the two sessions almost every week or every week and working hard at each session.

Lastly, it makes exercise safer if you take reasonable precautions if you exercise outdoors or in unusually hot weather; manage your heart risks well in addition to exercising and exercise regularly to avoid causing heart problems; and if you take extra care to avoid injuries in strength training.

How to make regular exercise a habit....

Today's post: Tuesday, 6-24-2008

Regular exercise that you keep doing has a huge & almost unbelievable set of benefits.

Here are a few highlights.

If you do it, you’ll be less fat. You’ll be a lot healthier & much more likely to stay healthy. And, we now know you’ll grow new brain cells and think & remember better. Your sex life will tend to be good & stay good. And, you’ll be more resilient in the face of stress.

But if you haven’t been exercising regularly, you might find it hard to get into & keep doing.

Here are some ideas that have worked well for me & other people.

Use the ones that sound like a fit for you & consider trying some of the rest.

1. Do all or part of your exercise in the first part of the morning. And, doing that exercise or that part of your exercise at home also helps.

That’s one of the most important strategies. With very rare exceptions the unexpected demands of your day tend to happen later in the day. And, when they do, instead of derailing your exercise that day, you’ve already done some exercise that day.

In fact, one study I read about found that about 70 % of people who exercised first thing in the morning stuck with it while only 35% of the people who exercised later in the day kept exercising.

In my case, I schedule a 15 minute strength training session at home in the early morning. Saturday, Monday, & Weds I do an upper body set; Sunday, Tuesday, & Thursday I do leg exercises; & on Friday I do a 5 minute abdominal routine. Using only a relatively light dumbbells for upper body exercises & my bodyweight for leg exercises & push ups, this is not enough to build my strength a lot. But I hardly ever miss doing any of these sessions.

In contrast to that, though I schedule to go the gym to do heavier upper body exercises Monday & Weds evenings, I tend to only make about half of the Mondays as I get home late Mondays & about 80 % of the Weds evenings. The list of things that prevents me from going 100 % of the time is long.

Since I do my at home exercises & do make a special effort to go when I can, I don’t lose ground very much when I miss my evenings at the Gym. I would if I didn’t exercise at home in the early mornings also.

3. It’s great if you can do more; but it’s not necessary to be super strict with yourself about exercising a lot every week. However, even 500 calories a week gives you 40% of the health benefits of exercising an hour a day seven days a week.

Since walking or running a mile or 15 minutes of strength training with no long waits between sets tends to burn 100 calories, 500 calories a week is quite doable. (My early morning strength training at home works out to about 700 calories a week. And I make the gym often enough to average another 400 calories or so a week.)

And, since the health consequences of not doing at least that much are so bad, I suggest you be very strict with yourself about always doing 500 calories a week or more every week.

Similarly, be flexible about your exercise routine if events force you to be any given day. But be very strict with yourself about hitting this minimum each week.

4. As long as you do at least two or three days of exercise during the week, you may be able to do a good bit of your weekly exercise on weekends if you have more time then. Weekends only is not enough but exercise on Saturday, Sunday, & any two other days can be.

5. Keeping a log book also helps you to stay on track. Not everyone will be willing to do a log book that they write a brief note of the date & that day’s exercise in.

But almost everyone who knows what exercise does FOR you & not exercising does TO you & who keeps a log book will keep exercising. If you are willing to use a log book at all, I recommend it very highly.

6. If you are at all social or if you want to have heavy enough weights to do strength training well or need access to cardio equipment for interval cardio, give serious consideration to joining a gym & going as regularly as you can.

It’s nice to see the other regulars each time. And that helps me to go as often as I can. We are good examples for each other & it’s nice to see other people I know are getting health benefits.

And, I like the extra strength & muscle I have because I work out there.

In addition, if you are new to strength training, many gyms will help you learn and set up a workout plan. Plus, in many exercises, the machines are safer to use, particularly for people new to strength training, than the free weights.

7. Finally, remember these two points:

a) You may not be able to do all the exercise you’d like or do all the exercise you schedule every single day you schedule it, but almost everyone can do 500 calories a week or more.

&

b) If you do regular exercise every week, it does incredibly good things FOR you. And, if you don’t, it does all the reverse of those things TO you.