Muscles and protein

Many body builders and weight lifters are overly concerned about what they eat and what food supplements they take. If you want to grow larger and stronger muscles, you should concentrate on lifting weights, but you can help muscles grow larger by understanding how what you eat affects how you recover from hard exercise. Just exercising will not make you strong and it will not help you to grow large muscles. If exercise made you strong, marathon runners would have the largest muscles. The only stimulus to make muscles larger and stronger is to stretch them while they contract. When you lift a heavy weight, your muscles start to stretch before they start to contract. This tears the muscle and causes soreness on the next day and beyond. If you...

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Fructose is Not Better than Other Sugars

Fructose is processed differently in the body than the far more common sugar, glucose. Glucose causes the pancreas to release insulin which drives sugar from the bloodstream into cells. Glucose causes fat cells to release leptin that makes you feel full so you eat less; it also prevents the stomach from releasing ghrelin that makes you hungry. On the other hand, fructose does not cause fat cells to release leptin and does not suppress ghrelin. This means that fructose increases hunger to make you eat more. Furthermore, the liver converts fructose far more readily to a fat called triglyceride, than it does with glucose. High triglyceride levels raise blood levels of the bad LDL cholesterol and lower blood levels of the good HDL cholesterol,...

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Swollen feet and ankles

Your leg muscles function as a second heart to pump fluid from your legs to your heart. When your leg muscles relax, the veins near them fill up with blood. When your leg muscles contract, they compress the veins and squeeze blood up toward your heart. When you stand still, your heart has to work very hard to pump blood against gravity from your feet to your heart. When your feet are above your heart, gravity works with you to help blood and fluid return to the heart. Eight hours of standing or sitting causes your feet to swell up to more than 110 percent of their size. This can make your shoes feel tight and your feet hurt.The best way to prevent swelling is to elevate your feet. The next best way is to move your feet and toes frequently while...

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Back Pain? Choose the Right Exercise

Runners who develop back pain often ask me if they can continue running. People with back pain need to exercise as much as everyone else, but they should not do any exercise that causes pain. The bones of your spine are located one on top of the other, separated by pads called discs. Bones are much harder than discs, so when spinal bones are compressed and move closer together, they can flatten the discs like pancakes. Since the discs are then shorter, they have to go somewhere else, so they widen and press on the nerves near them, causing pain. This is called a herniated disc. Anything that presses the bones closer together squashes the disc further and usually makes it hurt more. During running, the force of the foot striking the ground...

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Why the DASH diet lowers blood pressure

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have shown why the DASH diet lowers high blood pressure to normal in more than 80 percent of people with high blood pressure. On the DASH diet you eat lots of leafy green vegetables that are rich sources of nitrites, common salts that your bloodstream, can be converted to nitric oxide which opens blood vessels.This means that nitrites could be a new treatment for high blood pressure, heart attacks, sickle cell disease, and blocked arteries leading the heart, brain and legs. Hemoglobin is the red pigment in red blood cells that carries oxygen in your bloodstream. When hemoglobin releases oxygen, it converts nitrites to nitric oxide, to widen blood vessels. Blood nitrite levels are low in patients...

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Blood Pressure Drugs Can Interfere with Exercise

The beta blocker drugs used to treat blood pressure and heart problems can markedly impair your ability to exercise, according to a study from Switzerland. How hard you can exercise is limited by the ability of your heart to pump blood from your lungs to your exercising muscles. Beta blockers markedly reduce blood flow and oxygen supply to muscles. Beta blocker brand names include Toprol, Inderal, Blocadron, Coreg, Inopran, Levatol, Pindolol, Sectral, Tenormin, Timolol Trandate, Zebeta and Bisoprol.Beta blockers are prescribed to treat people who have had heart attacks, heart pain, heart failure, rapid heart beat and atrial fibrillation. However, even though many physicians prescribe beta blockers to treat high blood pressure, there is no data...

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How to Jump Higher

When former NBA player Kent Benson arrived at the University of Indiana he could jump only nine inches off the ground. That's an embarrassing jump for a seven-foot All- American. One year later, he was able to jump three times that high because he had a good coach.How high you can jump is determined by the force that you can exert when you contract your leg muscles against gravity. so strengthening your muscles will help you to jump higher. However, you must exercise your muscles against resistance in the same way that you use them when you jump. You can bend your knees and hips and straighten them by performing leg presses up while lying on your back, sideways while sitting in a chair, or down against the ground when you squat in the upright...

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High cholesterol lowers testosterone

Men with high cholesterol or high blood pressure have lower blood levels of the male hormone, testosterone, than men with normal blood pressure.How can this be? The male hormone, testosterone, was thought to raise cholesterol and increase risk for heart attacks. But this applied only to the methyl testosterone taken by some athletes, not the testosterone produced by the body. Having high cholesterol, pre-diabetes or high blood pressure causes hardening of the arteries, which decreases blood flow to the testicles to damage the testicles and lower testosterone. High blood pressure and high cholesterol lower testosterone, so men with low testosterone are at increased risk for heart attacks. That means that every impotent man should have blood...

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Who is Pre-Diabetic?

You can tell if you are at high risk for diabetes if you store fat primarily in your belly. Pinch your belly; if you can pinch an inch, you are at increased risk and should get a blood test called HBA1C. Having high blood levels of triglycerides and low levels of the good HDL cholesterol that helps prevent heart attacks also increases your risk for diabetes. When you eat sugar or flour, your blood sugar rises too high. This causes your pancreas to release insulin that converts sugar to triglycerides, which are poured into your bloodstream. Then the good HDL cholesterol tries to remove triglycerides by carrying them back into the liver, so having high blood levels of triglycerides and low blood levels of the good HDL cholesterol are both individual...

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How to Interpret your Cholesterol Numbers

Doctors no longer predict your chances of suffering a heart attack by how high your total cholesterol is. The current guidelines recommend that everyone should have a blood level of the bad LDL cholesterol below 100. If you live in Canada, divide the American number by 40. That means that Canadians must have their bad LDL cholestrol levels below 2.5. If you have had a heart attack, you should try to get your bad LDL cholesterol below 70 (Canadian value below 1.75).You can remember that HDL is the good cholesterol by thinking "H is for healthy"; and that LDL cholesterol is bad because "L is for lousy". The good HDL cholesterol carries cholesterol from your bloodstream to your liver where it can be removed from your body. The bad LDL cholesterol...

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Colon Cleansers Can Block Nutrient Absorption

Regular use of colon cleansers or laxatives can harm you by blocking the absorption of nutrients from your colon into your bloodstream. There are two absorption systems in the digestive tract. First the food that you eat passes from your stomach to your upper intestines, where secretions from your stomach, liver, intestines and pancreas break down carbohydrates, fats and proteins into their building blocks. Only these building blocks -- basic sugars, amino acids, fatty acids and glycerol -- are absorbed from your intestines into your bloodstream. The food that is not broken down cannot be absorbed so it passes to your colon. Bacteria in your colon convert undigested starches into short chain fatty acids that heal ulcers, prevent colon cancer...

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Salt Not the Major Cause of Blood Pressure Rising with Age

Blood pressure often rises with aging. Contrary to what many doctors think, salt, obesity and alcohol have little to do with this rise. High blood pressure is associated with heart attacks, strokes, aging and death. Recent research shows that high blood pressure associated with aging is probably caused by damage to the arteries leading to the kidneys. Obesity, excess salt and alcohol cause reversible high blood pressure. Taking a large amount of salt can cause your body to retain fluid, enlarge blood volume and raise blood pressure temporarily, but blood pressure returns to normal soon afterwards. For most people, taking in a lot of salt does not raise blood pressure. Drinking alcohol raises blood pressure only for a short time. Obesity is...

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Food Combining Theories Should be Ignored

Books and programs on food combining have been on and off the best-seller lists for years. They should be in the fiction section. The authors claim that eating protein and carbohydrates, or fat and carbohydrates together causes problems because they require different enzymes for digestion, and either acid or alkaline conditions. They give you elaborate lists of foods that you can or cannot eat at the same meal. If any of this were true, the human race would be extinct. Few foods are "pure" protein, carbohydrate or fat. Your digestive system has evolved to deal with mixed foods, and the enzymes secreted by your pancreas can digest them all in any combination. Your stomach is strongly acidic, no matter what food you eat. Stomach acid is much...

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Fatigue Causes Inefficient Form

Most experienced runners can tell when other runners are in shape just by watching them run. They look for efficiency, a measure of how much energy is lost by wasteful movements during running. You run with your legs and all of your other movements are used just to balance your body. The main reason you don’t fall when you are walking or running is that your brain constructs a "center of gravity", a point around which all movements on one side are balanced by equal movements on the other side. For example, when your right leg goes forward, your left arm goes forward and your right arm goes backward. You do this without thinking and your movements are automatically calculated in your brain.A study from The Hospital of Laval in France shows that...

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Popular Diets Compared: Keeping Weight Off is Hardest

A major study comparing four popular diets tells the sad story that even when they are paid to eat less, people lose no more than 10 pounds in a year (JAMA, March 6, 2007.) Even sadder is the news that most of them will regain the weight as soon as they go off their diet. At some time in their lives, most North Americans have lost more than ten percent of their weight and many have kept it off for at least one year. However, almost all regain the weight they lose, and frequently add even more pounds in the process. It is extremely uncommon for a person to lose more than 20 pounds and keep it off for the rest of his or her life. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to make major, permanent lifestyle changes. Start an exercise...

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Osteoporosis Linked to Vitamin D Deficiency

Vitamin D deficiency is being recognized as a growing problem in people who are at risk for osteoporosis. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, over 60 million Americans, 41 million of them women, will have either osteoporosis or low bone mass by the year 2020. Vitamin D deficiency also appears to be linked to certain cancers, periodontal disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis (Nutrition Action, November 2007). If you take calcium supplements, you should probably also take vitamin D, unless you are getting plenty of sunshine. Calcium uses up vitamin D, so if you are taking calcium in pills you should probably also take a vitamin D supplement. If you are not sure that you are getting enough vitamin D from sunlight...

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Diabetics Should Avoid Coffee

A survey reported in JAMA (July 6, 2005) showed that drinking coffee reduces risk for developing type II diabetes, but two other studies suggest that once you have diabetes, drinking coffee may be unwise. Canadian researchers writing in Diabetes Care (March 2005) showed that caffeine significantly reduced insulin sensitivity. In the July 2005 issue of the same journal, scientists from Duke University Medical Center reported that drinking coffee could upset a diabetic’s ability to metabolize sugar.Blood sugar levels are supposed to rise after you eat. To keep your blood sugar levels from rising too high, your pancreas releases insulin. The researchers found that taking caffeine causes blood sugar and insulin levels to rise even higher after...

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Cholesterol in Foods Less Significant Than Total Calories

Your blood cholesterol level is influenced far more by how many calories and how much saturated and partially hydrogenated fat you eat, than by how much cholesterol is in your food. Cholesterol is found only in foods from animals, such as meat, fish, chicken, dairy products and eggs. It is not found in plants. More than 80 percent of the cholesterol in your body is made by your liver. Less than 20 percent comes from the food that you eat. When you eat more cholesterol, your liver makes less. Your liver makes cholesterol from saturated fats, which are found in most foods but are concentrated in meat, poultry and whole-milk dairy products. The saturated fat is broken down by your liver into acetone units. If you are not taking in too many calories,...

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