Exercise is the Best Medicine Part 2 of 2

(Paraphrased from Mercola.com)

Obviously, I am biased towards exercise and appropriate exercise prescription. I think this in one area we can all be better (myself included) so when I saw this article I wanted to share it with everyone. This sums up a lot of what we feel and gives you a good background for why exercise should always in the discussion for how to treat every illness. Last week we talked about the importance of exercise, now we will talk about how to do exercise correctly

"Exercise is the best preventive drug we have, and everybody needs to take that medicine."

Jordan Metzl – Sports Medicine Physician Hospital for Special Surgery New York, New York

For Optimal Benefits, Make Sure You're Exercising Correctly

We have often equated exercise to a drug from the perspective that they both need to be wisely prescribed in order to optimize your health. Simply doing random exercises for the sake of "exercising" will not achieve the benefits you seek. In fact it could cause serious injury, especially if you engage in strength training with poor form and no coaching. In terms of "dosage," it's important to note the changes in recommendations that have taken place over the past few years. While conventional aerobic exercise was long considered the "gold standard" of a good workout, research has refuted such notions.

Instead, high-intensity interval training (which requires but a fraction of the time compared to conventional cardio) has been shown to be FAR more efficient and effective, compared to longer, slower cardio workouts. In fact, exercises such as long distance running have been shown to be among the worst forms of exercise, in terms of health benefits.

The reason for this is quite simple. High intensity interval training (HIIT) mimics the movements of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which included short bursts of highintensity activities, but not long-distance running. This, researchers say, is what your body is hard-wired for. Basically, by exercising in short bursts, followed by periods of recovery, you recreate exactly what your body needs for optimum health. Twice-weekly sessions, which require no more than 20 minutes from start to finish, can help you: 

Lower your body fat  '

Improve your muscle tone 

Boost your energy and libido 

Improve athletic speed and performance 

Naturally increase your body's production of human growth hormone (HGH)—a synergistic, foundational biochemical underpinning that promotes health and longevity. Conventional cardio will NOT boost your HGH level

The Importance of Non-Exercise Movement

Next, let's address the issue of non-exercise movement. We like to call this intermittent movement. This is the latest area of physical activity that's gaining a lot of attention, and for good reason. Studies have repeatedly found strong correlations between prolonged sitting or inactivity and reduced life expectancy—even if you exercise regularly!

It appears that temporary vigorous exercise simply cannot compensate for the damage incurred by prolonged daily sitting. For example, a recent analysis4 of 18 studies, found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least. An earlier study5 that highlighted much of the recent evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, also found that total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other prevalent chronic health problems—even if you exercise regularly.

The answer, fortunately, is quite simple. You simply need to make sure you move your body more often. Simply standing up from a seated position has been found particularly effective at counteracting the ill effects of sitting. This is something I seek to do every 15 minutes while I am sitting. I set a timer to remind me. When the timer rings I get up and do some simple hamstring or chest stretches for a minute or two. I am testing a variety of different ones and hope to report on them later this year.

Dr. Joan Vernikos, 6 former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals, reveals why standing up is such an effective remedy—it's because when you stand up, your body acts against gravity. Sitting actually simulates a low-gravity type environment for your body, and your body deteriorates at a far more rapid pace in anti-gravity situations... Hence, the remedy is to continuously engage in physical movements, as thisincreases the forces of gravity on your body. Simple everyday activities such as housecleaning, cooking, gardening, hanging clothes to dry, bending over to pick up a stray sock, reaching for an item on a high shelf, all fall within the spectrum of movements you would ideally engage in—more or less continuously—from morning until night.

Variety Is the Spice of Life and the Key to Optimal Health

In short, one of the keys to optimal health is to remain as active as you can, all day long. Whenever you have a chance to move and stretch your body in the course of going about your day—do it! That said, there's no doubt that an ideal fitness regimen requires a little more effort. Fortunately, you can accomplish the bulk of it through high intensity exercises, which require a minimal time investment—as little as 20 minutes, two to three times a week. As a general rule, I recommend incorporating a wide variety of exercises, including the following:

1. Stand Up Every 15 Minutes. While not intuitively obvious, emerging evidence clearly shows that even highly fit people who exceed the expert exercise recommendations are headed for premature death if they sit for long periods of time.

2. Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods.

3. Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you're really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also "up" the intensity by slowing it down the rate of the reps

4. Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury, and help you gain greater balance and stability.

Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls "Modern Moveology," which consists of a catalog of exercises. Postural exercises such as those taught in Foundation Training are critical not just for properly supporting your frame during daily activities; they also retrain your body so you can safely perform high-intensity exercises without risking injury. Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

5. Stretching: Holding the stretch for one minute, making sure you stretch to about 40-50% of the muscle’s capacity (a light stretch), and always looking for the muscle stretch to diminish after the one minute hold are key items to remember. You can also use devices like the Power Plate, Foam Roll, and massage sticks to help you stretch.

Hope this helps you reach your exercise goals and gives you more incentive to spend some time today moving and exercising.

**Remember to

1. Always plan ahead for what you are going to eat

2. Obtain adequate amounts of protein

3. Work on Flexibility

4. Supplement your diet with a fish oil and multi-vitamin

Let me know if I can help. Email me at architechsports@gmail.com

God Bless, Alan Tyson Physical Therapist, Athletic Trainer, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

Exercise is the Best Medicine Part 1 of 2

(Paraphrased from Mercola.com)

Obviously, I am biased towards exercise and appropriate exercise prescription. I think this in one area we can all be better (myself included) so when I saw this article I wanted to share it with everyone. This sums up a lot of what we feel and gives you a good background for why exercise should always be in the discussion for how to treat every illness.

One of the key health benefits of exercise is that it helps normalize your glucose (blood sugar level), insulin, and leptin (appetite suppressant) levels by optimizing insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity. This is perhaps the most important factor for optimizing your overall health and preventing chronic disease, and may explain why exercise is such a potent preventive medicine.

In fact, researchers recently suggested that exercise is "the best preventive drug" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.1 According to Jordan Metzl, a sports-medicine physician at New York City's Hospital for Special Surgery and author of The Exercise Cure:

"Exercise is the best preventive drug we have, and everybody needs to take that medicine."

And, as stated by Dr. Timothy Church, 2director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge:

"Exercise strengthens the entire human machine — the heart, the brain, the blood vessels, the bones, the muscles. The most important thing you can do for your longterm health is lead an active life."

Non-Exercise Movement Is Equally, if Not More, Important for Health

Unfortunately, many fail to get sufficient amounts of exercise. Worse yet, a majority of people may still endanger their health simply by sitting too much. Compelling evidence actually suggests that even if you exercise regularly, prolonged sitting is itself a risk factor for chronic disease and reduced lifespan...

Overall, federal data suggest only 21 percent of American adults meet the government recommendation to engage in two and half hours' worth of aerobic and musclestrengthening exercise each week, so there's clearly a lot of room for improvement. Ideally though, you'll want to exercise regularly AND frequently interrupt your sitting in order to optimize your health and longevity. Let’s review the reasons for this below.

Exercise Benefits Found to Be EQUAL to Drugs for Heart Disease and Diabetes

A recent meta-review conducted by researchers at Harvard and Stanford3compared the effectiveness of exercise versus drug interventions on mortality outcomes for diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke. After reviewing 305 randomized controlled trials, which included nearly 339,300 people, they found "no statistically detectable differences" between physical activity and medications for pre-diabetes and heart disease.

This is a potent reminder of the power of simple lifestyle changes, as well as the shortcomings of the drug paradigm!

Besides optimizing insulin/leptin receptor sensitivity, other beneficial biochemical changes also occur during exercise, including alterations in more than 20 different metabolites involved in fat burning and metabolism, among other things. As stated by Dr. Church, exercise indeed affects your entire body—from head to toe—in beneficial ways. This includes changes in your: 

Muscles, which use glucose and ATP for contraction and movement. Tiny tears in your muscles make them grow bigger and stronger as they heal. Gaining more muscle through resistance exercises has many benefits, from losing excess fat to maintaining healthy bone mass and preventing age-related muscle loss as you age. The intensity of your resistance training can achieve a number of beneficial changes on the molecular, enzymatic, hormonal, and chemical level in your body. 

Lungs. As your muscles call for more oxygen, your breathing rate increases. The higher your VO2 max—your maximum capacity of oxygen use—the fitter you are. 

Heart. Your heart rate increases with physical activity to supply more oxygenated blood to your muscles. The fitter you are, the more efficiently your heart can do this, allowing you to work out longer and harder. Your blood pressure will also decrease as a result of new blood vessels forming. 

Brain. The increased blood flow also benefits your brain, allowing it to almost immediately function better. Exercising regularly also promotes the growth of new brain cells, boosting your capacity for memory and learning. A number of neurotransmitters are also triggered, such as endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, and GABA. Some of these are well-known for their role in mood control. Exercise, in fact, is one of the most effective prevention and treatment strategies for depression. 

Joints and Bones. Exercise can place as much as five or six times more than your body weight on them. Weight-bearing exercise is one of the most effective remedies against osteoporosis, as your bones are very porous and soft, and as you get older, your bones can easily become less dense and hence, more brittle -- especially if you are inactive.

Next week we will discuss the optimal ways to exercise – Stay Tuned…..

**Remember to

1. Always plan ahead for what you are going to eat

2. Obtain adequate amounts of protein

3. Work on Flexibility

4. Supplement your diet with a fish oil and multi-vitamin

Let me know if I can help. Email me at architechsports@gmail.com

God Bless,

Alan Tyson, Physical Therapist, Athletic Trainer, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

The Best Habit to Start for Your Overall Health

Besides sharing time with family and friends over food, the primary ingredient of the American Thanksgiving holiday is gratitude. While it’s certainly good to have an annual holiday to remind us to express gratitude, there’s much to be said for the benefits of cultivating the spirit of thankfulness year-round.

People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals. Scientists have even noted that gratitude is associated with improved health.

In the 2011 Harvard Mental Health Letter it is suggested that expressing thanks may be one of the simplest ways to feel better:

"The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible.

With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves.

As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.

...People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. They can apply it to the past (retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements of childhood or past blessings), the present (not taking good fortune for granted as it comes), and the future (maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude).

Regardless of the inherent or current level of someone's gratitude, it's a quality that individuals can successfully cultivate further."

Gratitude—It Does a Body Good

Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, head of biologic psychology at Duke University Medical Center once stated that: "If [thankfulness] were a drug, it would be the world's bestselling product with a health maintenance indication for every major organ system. One way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you're grateful for each day. In one study, people who kept a gratitude journal reported exercising more, and they had fewer visits to the doctor compared to those who focused on sources of aggravation.

Numerous studies have shown that gratitude can produce a number of measurable effects on a number of systems in your body, including:

Mood neurotransmitters (serotonin and norepinephrine)

Inflammatory and immune systems (cytokines)

Reproductive hormones (testosterone)

Stress hormones (cortisol)

Social bonding hormones (oxytocin)

Blood pressure and cardiac and EEG rhythms

Cognitive and pleasure related neurotransmitters (dopamine)

Blood sugar

Ways to Cultivate Gratitude

Cultivating a sense of gratitude will help you refocus your attention toward what's good and right in your life, rather than dwelling on the negatives and all the things you may feel are lacking.

And, like a muscle, this mental state can be strengthened with practice. Besides keeping a daily gratitude journal, other ways to cultivate a sense of gratitude include: 

Write thank you notes: Whether in response to a gift or kind act, or simply as a show of gratitude for someone being in your life, getting into the habit of writing thank-you letters can help you express gratitude in addition to simply feeling it inside. 

Count your blessings: Once a week, reflect on events for which you are grateful, and write them down. As you do, feel the sensations of happiness and thankfulness you felt at the time it happened, going over it again in your mind. 

Pray: Expressing thanks during your prayers is another way to cultivate gratitude. 

Mindfulness meditation: Practicing "mindfulness" means that you're actively paying attention to the moment you're in right now. Focus on something that you're grateful for, such as a pleasant smell, a cool breeze, or a lovely memory.

Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude

Three years ago, the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California,in collaboration with the University of California, launched a project called "Cultivating Gratitude in a Consumerist Society." This $5.6 million project aims to: 

Expand the scientific database of gratitude, particularly in the key areas of human health, personal and relational well-being, and developmental science; 

Promote evidence-based practices of gratitude in medical, educational, and organizational settings and in schools, workplaces, homes and communities, and in so doing… 

Engage the public in a larger cultural conversation about the role of gratitude in civil society.

In 2012, 14 winning research projects were announced, with topics covering everything from the neuroscience of gratitude, to the role of gratitude for the prevention of bullying. The organization has a number of resources you can peruse at your leisure, including The Science of Happiness blog and newsletter, and a Digital Gratitude Journal, where you can record and share the things you're grateful for. Scientists are also permitted to use the data to explore "causes, effects, and meaning of gratitude." For example, previous research has shown that employees whose managers say "thank you" feel greater motivation at work, and work harder than peers who do not hear those "magic words."

Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude as Part of a Healthy Lifestyle

Starting each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for is one way to put your mind on the right track. Also, remember that your future depends largely on the thoughts you think today. So each moment of every day is an opportunity to turn your thinking around, thereby helping or hindering your ability to think and feel more positively in the very next moment.

Most experts agree that there are no shortcuts to happiness. Even generally happy people do not experience joy 24 hours a day. But a happy person can have a bad day and still find pleasure in the small things in life.

Be thankful for what you have. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, remember the 1,000 reasons you have to smile. Face your past without regret; prepare for the future without fear; focus on what's good right now, in the present moment, and practice gratitude. Remember to say "thank you"—to yourself, the Universe, and others. It's wonderful to see a person smile, and even more wonderful knowing that you are the reason behind it!

**Remember to

1. Always plan ahead for what you are going to eat

2. Obtain adequate amounts of protein

3. Work on Flexibility

4. Supplement your diet with a fish oil and multi-vitamin

Let me know if I can help. Email me at architechsports@gmail.com

God Bless,

Alan Tyson Physical Therapist, Athletic Trainer, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist

Sources and References for this Article :

Harvard Mental Health Letter November 2011 

ABC News November 23, 2011 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2003: 84(2); 377-389 (PDF) 

Harvard Mental Health Letter November 2011 

ABC News November 23, 2011 

Greater Good Science Center 

Greater Good Blog and Newsletter 

Digital Gratitude Journal 

Mark’s Daily Apple, The Benefits of Giving Thanks 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology February 2003;84(2):377-89