Ahwatukee StrengthLab Personal Training 480-612-7726

The most common reason why we may be suffering from low energy is dehydration, so remember to drink plenty of water daily. Low blood sugar will cause low energy as well, so consuming whole foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins, raw nuts and legumes, will help to sustain higher energy levels throughout the day. Too little sleep, too much stress, a malfunctioning thyroid gland (for a select few) and even depression can be culprits as well. The abuse of caffeine and so called “energy” drinks are prevalent instigators too.

Vitamin B supplements* are frequently taken orally or even injected, but unless we are deficient in these vitamins, which the vast majority of us are not, they have no effect; B vitamins are abundant in the foods that we consume as well. People frequently cite a boost of energy when this supplement is consumed but this is nothing more than the placebo effect. Eat better and skip the supplements…

List of B vitamins*

• Vitamin B₁ (aka thiamine)
• Vitamin B₂ (aka riboflavin)
• Vitamin B₃ (aka niacin or niacinamide)
• Vitamin B₅ (aka pantothenic acid)
• Vitamin B₆ (aka pyridoxine, pyridoxal, or pyridoxamine, or pyridoxine hydrochloride)
• Vitamin B₇ (aka biotin)
• Vitamin B₉ (aka folic acid)
• Vitamin B₁₂ (aka various cobalamins; commonly cyanocobalamin in vitamin supplements)

People who are normal weight but carry extra fat around their belly have a higher risk of dying from heart disease than merely obese people.

The findings add to a growing body of credible research that visceral fat (fat around the organs of the abdomen) is a major risk factor for disease and premature death.

Article From MSNBC (8-27-12)

Among women who have been treated for breast cancer, heavier women are more likely to have their disease come back and more likely to die of cancer as well.

That could be because certain hormones that are linked to body weight may also fuel tumor growth in the most common form of the disease, known as estrogen receptor-positive cancer.

Previous studies have tied obesity to a higher chance of getting breast cancer – and worse outcomes in women who have already been diagnosed.

But these findings make the post-diagnosis picture clearer, said lead researcher Dr. Joseph Sparano, associate chairman of medical oncology at the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care in the Bronx, New York.

“Obesity seemed to carry a higher risk of breast cancer recurrence and death – even in women who were healthy at the time that they were diagnosed, and despite the fact that they received the best available chemotherapy and hormone therapy,” he said.

Data for the new study came from trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of women with stage I, II and III breast cancer who were given standardized treatment, with drug doses adjusted based on weight.

Out of close to 5,000 women treated for cancer, about one-third were obese and another one-third were overweight.

Sparano and his colleagues found that compared to women of normal weight, obese women were 40 percent more likely to have a breast cancer recurrence over the study period and 69 percent more likely to die from breast cancer or any other cause.

Even among overweight but not obese women, there was also a general trend toward a higher risk of recurrence and death with increasing weight, according to findings published Monday in the journal Cancer.

The link was especially strong for women with estrogen receptor positive cancer, which accounts for two-thirds of breast cancers.

But weight wasn’t clearly linked to breast cancer outcomes for women with other types of cancer not dependent on estrogen for growth.

ESTROGEN, INSULIN, OR SOMETHING ELSE?

Although the new study can’t prove that extra weight and fat have a direct impact on certain breast cancers, Sparano said that was “biologically plausible.”

“There may be factors that are fueling the growth of the estrogen receptor positive tumors,” he said – such as estrogen itself. Women carrying extra fat have been shown to make more estrogen.

In addition, Sparano added, “Insulin levels are known to be higher in patients who are obese because they develop insulin resistance… (and) insulin can stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells.”

Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli, head of medical oncology at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said it’s possible that anti-estrogen drugs such as tamoxifen can’t do enough to overcome the extra-high estrogen levels in obese women.

“Maybe obese women require much longer treatment because their risk of recurrence remains over time,” Cristofanilli, who has studied the link between weight and breast cancer outcomes but wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

According to the NCI, one in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point, but the risks vary greatly over the course of a woman’s life.

“The highest priority is just getting through the chemotherapy if chemotherapy is necessary and taking their endocrine therapy,” Sparano told Reuters Health.

“But for those who are obese or overweight, there may be additional benefits that one can achieve through diet and through weight reduction that may produce a reduction in the risk of recurrence that’s just as significant as the reduction that they get from the standard therapies,” he said.

Cristofanilli agreed on the benefits of weight loss and said “it’s never too late” for women to become healthier through diet and other lifestyle changes, even after a cancer diagnosis.

Location: The Scottsdale Silverado Golf Course  

Date: Saturday, September 1 at 6am 

Reprinted From The Economist Jan 21st, 2012

Exercise and Longevity – Worth All the Sweat?

One sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment. There are, sadly, no panaceas. But some things come close, and exercise is one of them. As doctors never tire of reminding people, exercise protects against a host of illnesses, from heart attacks and dementia to diabetes and infection.

How it does so, however, remains surprisingly mysterious. But a paper just published in Nature by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre and her colleagues sheds some light on the matter.

Dr Levine and her team were testing a theory that exercise works its magic, at least in part, by promoting autophagy. This process, whose name is derived from the Greek for “self-eating”, is a mechanism by which surplus, worn-out or malformed proteins and other cellular components are broken up for scrap and recycled.

To carry out the test, Dr Levine turned to those stalwarts of medical research, genetically modified mice. Her first batch of rodents were tweaked so that their autophagosomes—structures that form around components which have been marked for recycling—glowed green. After these mice had spent half an hour on a treadmill, she found that the number of autophagosomes in their muscles had increased, and it went on increasing until they had been running for 80 minutes.

To find out what, if anything, this exercise-boosted autophagy was doing for mice, the team engineered a second strain that was unable to respond this way. Exercise, in other words, failed to stimulate their recycling mechanism. When this second group of modified mice were tested alongside ordinary ones, they showed less endurance and had less ability to take up sugar from their bloodstreams.

There were longer-term effects, too. In mice, as in people, regular exercise helps prevent diabetes. But when the team fed their second group of modified mice a diet designed to induce diabetes, they found that exercise gave no protection at all.

Dr Levine and her team reckon their results suggest that manipulating autophagy may offer a new approach to treating diabetes. And their research is also suggestive in other ways. Autophagy is a hot topic in medicine, as biologists have come to realise that it helps protect the body from all kinds of ailments.

The virtues of recycling

Autophagy is an ancient mechanism, shared by all eukaryotic organisms (those which, unlike bacteria, keep their DNA in a membrane-bound nucleus within their cells). It probably arose as an adaptation to scarcity of nutrients. Critters that can recycle parts of themselves for fuel are better able to cope with lean times than those that cannot. But over the past couple of decades, autophagy has also been shown to be involved in things as diverse as fighting bacterial infections and slowing the onset of neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.

Most intriguingly of all, it seems that it can slow the process of ageing. Biologists have known for decades that feeding animals near-starvation diets can boost their lifespans dramatically. Dr Levine was a member of the team which showed that an increased level of autophagy, brought on by the stress of living in a constant state of near-starvation, was the mechanism responsible for this life extension.

The theory is that what are being disposed of in particular are worn-out mitochondria. These structures are a cell’s power-packs. They are where glucose and oxygen react together to release energy. Such reactions, though, often create damaging oxygen-rich molecules called free radicals, which are thought to be one of the driving forces of ageing. Getting rid of wonky mitochondria would reduce free-radical production and might thus slow down ageing.

A few anti-ageing zealots already subsist on near-starvation diets, but Dr Levine’s results suggest a similar effect might be gained in a much more agreeable way, via vigorous exercise. The team’s next step is to test whether boosted autophagy can indeed explain the life-extending effects of exercise. That will take a while. Even in animals as short-lived as mice, she points out, studying ageing is a long-winded process. But she is sufficiently confident about the outcome that she has, in the meantime, bought herself a treadmill.

Many consider wealth something to admire and fervently pursue, however those who fervently pursue it are rarely worth admiring.

There are some who would certainly disagree, but I believe confidence and pride are signs of a healthy individual – not an egotist. Arrogance, on the other hand, begins with the strengths of confidence and pride but ends abruptly within a state of selfishness.

The poem below is by Ogden Nash.

 “Ode to the Indispensable Man”

Sometime when you’re feeling important,

Sometime when your ego’s in bloom,

Sometime when you take it for granted,

That you’re the best qualified in the room.

Sometime when you feel that your going,

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions,

And see how it humbles your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining,

Is the measure of how you’ll be missed.

You may splash all you please when you enter,

You can stir up the water galore,

But stop and you’ll find in a minute,

That it looks quite the same as before.

The moral in this quaint example,

Is to do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,

There’s no indispensable man.

Being unhappy most frequently stems from wanting things that we simply don’t have. However, the majority of these things that we want are entirely unnecessary, so unhappiness is generally a choice that we make and a choice that is just as easily reversed.

We all have wants and desires, that’s a human trait that not one of us was born without… it’s just some of us are simply more willing to pay the price required to get to them.

The final score for amatuers shouldn’t be about winning – that’s a trite measure of success meant for those who get paid to win. Diligent preparation and focused execution during the event are integral of course, but the final score should encompass all the responsibilites that we are required to face outside the event as well. If we fail those other primary responsibilities, then we fail to win by any definition.

Regardless of age we should always be progessing – making steady improvements in ourselves. Personal improvements frequently come in baby-steps and they’re often taken by the inch with due diligence.

The alternative to progess is a downward slide… and it comes much easier than progress. A lot of ground can be quickly lost when progess is no longer our goal.

A significant portion of our food digestion uses “healthy bacteria” to breakdown the organic matter that we consume within our intestines. Probiotics, which are live healthy bacteria that aid in our digestion, are a part of this process.

However, there’s little scientific evidence that consuming probiotics through food or supplements has any health effect on an already healthy digestive tract which the majority of us already possess and an unhealthy digestive tract will not be corrected by their use either.

Important to note: 

A healthy digestive system is more dependent upon natural vegetables, fruits and whole grains than a smattering of probiotics. Moreover, processed food and artificial ingredients will quickly imbalance the most healthful digestive system.

So, skip the intentional consumption of probiotics and eat better…

Learning to live amid plenty is now the challenge for many while learning to live with scarcity is no longer the problem. For example, it’s astounding that too little food and too much food can frequently have the same dire results. The modern challenge is in knowing when enough is enough and to consider others just a bit more and perhaps, ourselves… just a bit less.

New at StrengthLab!

http://www.woodway.com/home/desmo_home.html

Pushing too hard or too fast simply leads to injury, illness, burnout or quitting. It takes years of persistence and dedication to develop and then top-off personally high fitness levels. The slow route to fitness… will not only get you there more complete and well rounded, it will counterintuitively get you there faster.

Blenders have an unintended consequence for the majority us; the processing of more calories than we require. Although nutritious ingredients are frequently promoted, a blender simply acts as a food compactor – think trash compactor – condensing our food and its calories into a smaller and smaller space. Inevitably, we consume more calories to feel satisfied or full because our food lacks volume. Unless your goal is to gain weight, these fancy machines should be used intelligently or restricted altogether. Eat whole vegetables and fruits instead – as intended – not processed by overly-hyped blending machines.

See you there!

Race #5 – August 12, 2012
South Mountain Park
Phoenix, AZ – 6:30 a.m.

http://arizonaroadracers.com/summerseries/

The daily demands and responsibilities that we have placed upon us, coupled with our genetic capacity to handle these variables, make us all experiments of one. To get things right and to keep things right, is an ever changing coordination between what works and doesn’t work in our lives. What worked before, may not work again and what works for some, may not work for you. We are experiments of one… so enjoy the process of trial and error and keep working to get things right.

Athletes are taping their problematic areas more and more with brightly colored tape known as “Kinesio Tape.”  This type of tape is nothing more than a less rigid traditional sports tape, albeit with fancy colors, and it’s being used in ways that are not supported by any science. However, it’s important to keep in mind, that professional athletes and olympians have sponsors and they frequently wear this kinesio tape in order to influence you and your purse strings. Needless to say, many sponsored athletes wear this tape on their body when they have no problems at all…

The need for instant-gratification within our culture is why the majority of us fail to reach our personal goals. We’re simply not diligent enough in our daily efforts to stay the course. If we can buy it or have it given to us, generally speaking, it carries very little depth of achievement.

Being mentally tough is a compliment and it’s best defined by being focused on the singular task at hand without being distracted for long by outside forces unrelated to our chosen objective. From critical opinions that may oppose us, to physical obstacles that may stand in our way, we stay focused and move forward until the goal is met. Whether exhibited in the office, a sporting event or through a life changing experience, mental toughness is exercised best when we stay focused on the task at hand.

New at StrengthLab!

http://www.woodway.com/endurance/curve_endurance.html