Lot's of news stories covering new research showing that those who have a genetic predisposition to heart disease can reduce their risk of heart disease to equal that of those who don't have the gene.
A gene called 9p21 can make those who carry it more susceptible to heart disease. Eating as little as two servings of fruit and veggies a day appears to be enough to reduce the ill-health effects of this gene to essentially nullify it's significance.
More research is needed to understand why this works, or why 9p21 can cause health problems, but the bottom line is, you guessed it; eat your fruit and veggies.
Do you have the gene? An article in WebMD quotes the study author saying 50% of the population carries one copy of the gene, while 20% carry two copies.
Raw fruits and veggies seemed to work better.
Cris LaBossiere
Strength training and mountain biking. My two favorites
Showing posts with label prevention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prevention. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Muscle Pain and Fatigue from Exercise Makes you Clumsy
This may be another one of those "Duh!" scenarios where research proves the obvious like, "study shows placing hand on hot stove causes burns".
Nevertheless, much of the time we don't make the practical application connection to things that we usually ignore, and for exercise management, fatigue is often viewed as something to conquer by pushing through it rather than resolving through rest, or perhaps by putting a piece of tape on your muscles.
DOMS; delayed onset muscle soreness.. your muscles feel stiff and sore in the days following exercise. A study in the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise (1) showed that 48 hours after training muscles with DOMS had a strength reduction of about 21%. While this has training implications (do you need to rest until you return to full strength before considering training again?), there was another interesting finding.
The study concluded, "Reflex activity in leg muscles elicited by rapid destabilizing perturbations is reduced after exercise-induced muscle soreness."
Translation, you will have less functional stability. Your ability to respond to high stability demands like playing sports will be reduced, which would increase your risk of injury.
While recovery days can include light or moderate exercise, it's not a good idea to train hard with weights, then play hard in sports the next day.
In another study, this time from the journal Gate and Posture (2), researchers found placing a piece of tape on the ankle of fatigued study subjects allowed them to maintain ankle control. When no tape was applied, fatigued subjects demonstrated "degraded postural performance", they lost balance more easily.
How does this work? Researchers suggest that local muscle fatigue impairs the ability to send relevant postural position information to the brain, and that the skin, if stimulated, can take up the communication corridor slack.
Does this mean we should keep training and simply tape up our skin to maintain coordinated movement? I wouldn't go that far. There is still muscle recovery that requires more time to recover from, and there might be a problem with masking reduced coordination as it may prompt people to train weak and unrecovered muscles, but this information can help therapists and coaches understand and design appropriate recovery protocols.
(1) Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness Alters the Response to Postura... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
(2) Degraded postural performance after muscle fatigue can be compensated by skin stimulation
Nevertheless, much of the time we don't make the practical application connection to things that we usually ignore, and for exercise management, fatigue is often viewed as something to conquer by pushing through it rather than resolving through rest, or perhaps by putting a piece of tape on your muscles.
DOMS; delayed onset muscle soreness.. your muscles feel stiff and sore in the days following exercise. A study in the journal Medicine & Science In Sports & Exercise (1) showed that 48 hours after training muscles with DOMS had a strength reduction of about 21%. While this has training implications (do you need to rest until you return to full strength before considering training again?), there was another interesting finding.
The study concluded, "Reflex activity in leg muscles elicited by rapid destabilizing perturbations is reduced after exercise-induced muscle soreness."
Translation, you will have less functional stability. Your ability to respond to high stability demands like playing sports will be reduced, which would increase your risk of injury.
While recovery days can include light or moderate exercise, it's not a good idea to train hard with weights, then play hard in sports the next day.
In another study, this time from the journal Gate and Posture (2), researchers found placing a piece of tape on the ankle of fatigued study subjects allowed them to maintain ankle control. When no tape was applied, fatigued subjects demonstrated "degraded postural performance", they lost balance more easily.
How does this work? Researchers suggest that local muscle fatigue impairs the ability to send relevant postural position information to the brain, and that the skin, if stimulated, can take up the communication corridor slack.
Does this mean we should keep training and simply tape up our skin to maintain coordinated movement? I wouldn't go that far. There is still muscle recovery that requires more time to recover from, and there might be a problem with masking reduced coordination as it may prompt people to train weak and unrecovered muscles, but this information can help therapists and coaches understand and design appropriate recovery protocols.
(1) Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness Alters the Response to Postura... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
(2) Degraded postural performance after muscle fatigue can be compensated by skin stimulation
Monday, March 14, 2011
How's Your Sleep?
CJOB's Question of the day today;
Are you having trouble adjusting to the time change?
Go to the poll to vote and see the poll results.
Sleep depravation is a big problem; we know that being sleep deprived can make you a risk on the road as judgment and reaction time are impaired.
Not getting enough sleep is also connected to weight gain; not getting enough sleep increases hormones that make you feel hungry, and decrease hormones that make you feel full, influencing you to eat more.
Lack of sleep makes you less productive at work, and decreases the positive effects of exercise.
So when it comes to our annual "spring ahead" time change where we set our clocks one hour forwards, do we suffer all the ill effects of sleep depravation from missing one hour of sleep?
Only if you are already sleep deprived. If you usually get all the restorative sleep you need (between 7.5 and 9.5 hours) then missing one hour will not cause any significant change in cognition or reaction time.
If you're like many people in the modern world though, and you regularly get only 5 to 6.5 hours of sleep, then for you knocking off another hour of sleep will take its toll.
An interesting factoid: when we take away schedules and clocks and observe natural sleep times, almost everyone will sleep for 9 to 10 hours.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead". This axiom is used to defend reducing sleep time in an effort to increase the time we have to do whatever we do when awake. We tend to dismiss the importance of sleep, feeling that sleep is an inefficient use of time. Some will even feel guilty for getting "too much" sleep as from their perspective they've wasted time that could have been spent working.
It turns out our work time is more productive when we get the right amount of sleep as we make fewer errors and have greater problem solving capacity and creative prowess.
If we are sleep deprived or have one night of terrible sleep we can't simply catch up by sleeping in the next day. It could take a week or more of healthy sleep to get us close to returning hormones to normal levels and reset our sleep clock.
Caffeine doesn't wake you up, the drug caffeine does not compensate for the health risks associated with lack of sleep, such as obesity, heart disease, and type two diabetes.
Caffeine withdrawal occurs every night a regular caffeine consumer sleeps. By the time morning comes around one will feel they really need that morning cup. Indeed, following through on the urge does make a person feel better, but this is only because of a dependance on caffeine. Cut the regular coffee intake for a couple weeks and a person will no longer experience the strong feeling of needing the java jive because there is no caffeine withdrawal that instigates the urge for more of the drug.
The old fashioned, but evidence based advice still stands:
What? Wake without an alarm? Are you nuts? I may be, but not in regards to this topic. If we get enough healthy sleep and go to bed at the right time, we'll wake up without an alarm feeling rested. We just have to go to bed early enough so the timing works out that we awake when needed.
Of course if we're not living in a cave we will need that alarm from time to time, but as much as possible if we wake without an alarm, we will have far more energy than any energy drink could ever provide us.
Interesting info from Stats Canada on sleep
Are you having trouble adjusting to the time change?
Go to the poll to vote and see the poll results.
Sleep depravation is a big problem; we know that being sleep deprived can make you a risk on the road as judgment and reaction time are impaired.
Not getting enough sleep is also connected to weight gain; not getting enough sleep increases hormones that make you feel hungry, and decrease hormones that make you feel full, influencing you to eat more.
Lack of sleep makes you less productive at work, and decreases the positive effects of exercise.
So when it comes to our annual "spring ahead" time change where we set our clocks one hour forwards, do we suffer all the ill effects of sleep depravation from missing one hour of sleep?
Only if you are already sleep deprived. If you usually get all the restorative sleep you need (between 7.5 and 9.5 hours) then missing one hour will not cause any significant change in cognition or reaction time.
If you're like many people in the modern world though, and you regularly get only 5 to 6.5 hours of sleep, then for you knocking off another hour of sleep will take its toll.
An interesting factoid: when we take away schedules and clocks and observe natural sleep times, almost everyone will sleep for 9 to 10 hours.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead". This axiom is used to defend reducing sleep time in an effort to increase the time we have to do whatever we do when awake. We tend to dismiss the importance of sleep, feeling that sleep is an inefficient use of time. Some will even feel guilty for getting "too much" sleep as from their perspective they've wasted time that could have been spent working.
It turns out our work time is more productive when we get the right amount of sleep as we make fewer errors and have greater problem solving capacity and creative prowess.
If we are sleep deprived or have one night of terrible sleep we can't simply catch up by sleeping in the next day. It could take a week or more of healthy sleep to get us close to returning hormones to normal levels and reset our sleep clock.
Caffeine doesn't wake you up, the drug caffeine does not compensate for the health risks associated with lack of sleep, such as obesity, heart disease, and type two diabetes.
Caffeine withdrawal occurs every night a regular caffeine consumer sleeps. By the time morning comes around one will feel they really need that morning cup. Indeed, following through on the urge does make a person feel better, but this is only because of a dependance on caffeine. Cut the regular coffee intake for a couple weeks and a person will no longer experience the strong feeling of needing the java jive because there is no caffeine withdrawal that instigates the urge for more of the drug.
The old fashioned, but evidence based advice still stands:
- Go to bed at about the same time every night
- Get around 8ish hours of sleep
- Wake without an alarm
What? Wake without an alarm? Are you nuts? I may be, but not in regards to this topic. If we get enough healthy sleep and go to bed at the right time, we'll wake up without an alarm feeling rested. We just have to go to bed early enough so the timing works out that we awake when needed.
Of course if we're not living in a cave we will need that alarm from time to time, but as much as possible if we wake without an alarm, we will have far more energy than any energy drink could ever provide us.
Interesting info from Stats Canada on sleep
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Just one high fat meal starts clogging arteries
I've written before about research showing that just one high fat meal can cause arteries to stiffen for a few hours after slugging down the lard. The medical folks call this artery stiffening "endothelial dysfunction".
The first thing most people think of is, "so what. I only eat high fat meals occasionally". Usually the infamous, "it's just one time" excuse is rolled out.
You've heard me address this jewel before.. yeah, it was just one time last week. And the week before. Oh, right.. that wedding last month.. nice buffet! Christmas.. huge spread this year. Office party, Superbowl party, birthday party.. you get the picture.
Then there's the "treat" thing. Yeah I know.. I like to treat myself a little now then.. I know I should cut back, but it's.. it's just a treat and I deserve a treat!
No doubt the food tastes good. But is fat gain a treat? Are high triglycerides, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure a treat? "Cris, you're a patronizing jerk!" Yeah, I hear that sometimes, or sometimes that sentiment is so strong I don't need to hear it, I can taste it. Most of the time though it's just laughed off because there isn't a strong connection with the real and immediate health risks associated with overeating.. overeating has a well established reward profile.
When I was a smoker I had the same defence when someone would say I should quit smoking.
I don't see smoking as a "treat" anymore, and the very thought of assigning cancer sticks the "treat" moniker is simply insane.
The latest research shows that one high fat meal increases inflammatory responses that lead to clogging arteries; in this case the study fed a serving consisting of two breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, and an orange juice from a fast food restaurant to willing study subjects.
The most interesting part of what was discovered was that if your waist girth was greater than 32 inches and you already had high triglycerides, you had a greater inflammatory response.
What's worrisome is that the inflammatory response that's causes here is a specific kind of lipoprotein increases and this is directly related to making fats stick to arterial walls, or "clogging arteries".
It's a self feeding mechanism.. overeating causes fat gain and rise in blood triglycerides. Having increased abdominal fat and high triglycerides increases the artery clogging effect of overeating, and every time a high fat meal is consumed, this process occurs.
Endothelial inflammation correlates with subject triglycerides and waist size following a high fat meal — AJP - Heart
Is there anything that can be done about this?
Practice disassociating reward with high fat meals.
Eating healthy is the real treat. Eat healthy, tasty meals and eat less.
We'll feel great, have more energy, and won't feel trapped by thinking we need high fat unhealthy foods to feel rewarded. Oh yeah.. and we won't have high tryglicerides, clogged arteries, or be overweight.. that's worth more than a high fat meal.. isn't it?
The first thing most people think of is, "so what. I only eat high fat meals occasionally". Usually the infamous, "it's just one time" excuse is rolled out.
You've heard me address this jewel before.. yeah, it was just one time last week. And the week before. Oh, right.. that wedding last month.. nice buffet! Christmas.. huge spread this year. Office party, Superbowl party, birthday party.. you get the picture.
Then there's the "treat" thing. Yeah I know.. I like to treat myself a little now then.. I know I should cut back, but it's.. it's just a treat and I deserve a treat!
No doubt the food tastes good. But is fat gain a treat? Are high triglycerides, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure a treat? "Cris, you're a patronizing jerk!" Yeah, I hear that sometimes, or sometimes that sentiment is so strong I don't need to hear it, I can taste it. Most of the time though it's just laughed off because there isn't a strong connection with the real and immediate health risks associated with overeating.. overeating has a well established reward profile.
When I was a smoker I had the same defence when someone would say I should quit smoking.
I don't see smoking as a "treat" anymore, and the very thought of assigning cancer sticks the "treat" moniker is simply insane.
The latest research shows that one high fat meal increases inflammatory responses that lead to clogging arteries; in this case the study fed a serving consisting of two breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, and an orange juice from a fast food restaurant to willing study subjects.
The most interesting part of what was discovered was that if your waist girth was greater than 32 inches and you already had high triglycerides, you had a greater inflammatory response.
What's worrisome is that the inflammatory response that's causes here is a specific kind of lipoprotein increases and this is directly related to making fats stick to arterial walls, or "clogging arteries".
It's a self feeding mechanism.. overeating causes fat gain and rise in blood triglycerides. Having increased abdominal fat and high triglycerides increases the artery clogging effect of overeating, and every time a high fat meal is consumed, this process occurs.
Endothelial inflammation correlates with subject triglycerides and waist size following a high fat meal — AJP - Heart
Is there anything that can be done about this?
Practice disassociating reward with high fat meals.
Eating healthy is the real treat. Eat healthy, tasty meals and eat less.
We'll feel great, have more energy, and won't feel trapped by thinking we need high fat unhealthy foods to feel rewarded. Oh yeah.. and we won't have high tryglicerides, clogged arteries, or be overweight.. that's worth more than a high fat meal.. isn't it?
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Ride The Bus, Catch a Cold
A new study from the University of Nottingham shows that if you've used pubic transport recently, there is a 6X increase in developing an acute respiratory infection.
Study subjects who had recently developed acute respiratory infection symptoms were asked to fill out questionnaires detailing bus or tram use in the 5 days preceding the onset of their symptoms.
Those who used public transport within 5 days prior to becoming symptomatic were 6 times more likely to develop acute respiratory infections.
What to do?
Not a lot. Wash your hands after getting off the bus, try not to touch too many surfaces, and don't lick the hand rails.
Study subjects who had recently developed acute respiratory infection symptoms were asked to fill out questionnaires detailing bus or tram use in the 5 days preceding the onset of their symptoms.
Those who used public transport within 5 days prior to becoming symptomatic were 6 times more likely to develop acute respiratory infections.
What to do?
Not a lot. Wash your hands after getting off the bus, try not to touch too many surfaces, and don't lick the hand rails.
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