Is Our Fate All in Our Genes?

Well, maybe not so much as we thought, according to a report in Scientific American. So read on and learn some pretty encouraging news . . .

Dean Ornish, MD, is founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and a clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco (U.C.S.F.). He said the following:

"We found that simple changes have a powerful impact on gene expression. People say, 'Oh, it's all in my genes, what can I do?' That's what I call genetic nihilism. This may be an antidote to that. Genes may be our predisposition, but they are not our fate."


Read the full Scientific American report here.

Is Grief Counseling Useful?

This may step on some sensitive toes, but for a long time I have believed that the law of diminishing returns comes into play at some point, probably sooner rather than later, in all talk therapy. No, I'm not an expert, just a guy with an opinion formed by observation and life experience. However, I do happen to live in a place many people consider therapy central. That is, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. If nothing else, that should give me some measure of "street-cred" when it comes to the subject.

It appears my suspicions are at least partly confirmed by a report in Scientific American. You can read about their findings here or listen to a short podcast.

Post-Workout Carb/Protein Ratio

Is it really important to get that perfect carb-to-protein ratio within an hour after a workout? I must admit that I try to come close to it.

Now it seems that sports doctors are thinking the whole timing business is an exaggeration and maybe even a myth. Two Canadian doctors, athletes themselves, have studied the matter and concluded that its importance is negligible, when applied to most people. And the American College of Sports Medicine seems to concur.

The article is worth reading. Go here.

Old Golfers Never Die . . .

I am not a golfer. It’s a wonderful game that never appealed to me. In my view, Mark Twain had it right: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

But let’s give credit where credit is due. According to a study in Sweden, the death rate for golfers is 40% lower than for other people of the same sex, age and socioeconomic status. That adds up to a five year increase in life expectancy. And golfers with a low handicap are the safest.

Gray Iron is not here to argue, but I do wonder: Are the benefits of playing regularly negated if too much time is spent afterward at the 19th hole?

Read the full report in Science Daily.

Gym Grunter is Silenced

It’s a common annoyance in plenty of gyms and health clubs, obnoxious characters who make really loud grunts and groans with practically every exercise repetition. You know the type. Fortunately, those who crave that kind of attention tend to gravitate to certain gyms and are therefore avoidable. I’m grateful that I don’t hear much of it where I workout.

But it does happen. And if you've been around any gym grunters, I think you’ll enjoy this story about one such grunter who pushed someone to the limit, and the whole business ended up in court. I won’t spoil the story by telling you the outcome. Read about Gym Grunter Not Assaulted by Silencer, a Jury Rules.

An Old Friend Shares a Secret Workout

As you will see, Pat Cunneen understands the progressive resistance exercise concept. His plan follows:

Easy Exercise for People Over 70

(You do not need expensive equipment)

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5 pound potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute and then relax. Each day you will find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10 pound potato sacks, then try 50 pound potato sacks, then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100 pound potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

On the serious side, Pat, in his seventies, still competes in triathlons.

Stop the Presses!

According to Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard, in a very important way our brains may be improving with age. Excluding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Carson suggests that forgetting where you left your car keys or people's names at a party may be good not bad. Can it be so? You're probably a skeptic. I don't blame you if you are. But it's worth checking out the story, don't you think? Go to: Older Brain may Really Be a Wiser Brain. Hey, I bet you knew it all the time!

Gym Equipment Dangers Lurking

I dodged colds and the flu the past winter season. Of course summer colds happen too. But there are fewer of them going around. So how did I get so lucky?

Though not 100 percent perfect, pneumonia and flu shots offer pretty good protection. I recommend them. Colds are a different matter, and there are all kinds of myths about them. Even today, many people think you get a cold by being cold. You don’t.

You catch colds from rhinoviruses entering your body through your eyes or nose. Shake hands with someone with the virus, then rub your eye or nose with your hand . . . and welcome to seven days of congestion, sneezing, and feeling lousy.

Some people think Echinacea and other herbal stuff strengthens their immune system and will ward off the viruses? I’m a skeptic, but to each his own. Most of what I read these days (from medical people not charlatans) is that the best known cold preventative is frequent hand washing and keeping your hands off your face.

A 2006 study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found rhinoviruses on 63 percent of gym equipment at fitness centers they tested. Further, they found that disinfecting the equipment twice a day didn’t do anything to reduce the virus count. My advice is to train yourself not to touch your face between exercise sets, since most colds are transmitted through hand to nose contact. Then wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after your workout – and before touching your face. And how about those workout gloves you wear? The gym’s bugs love ‘em. They provide nice warm and sweaty conditions for viruses. Keep those babies away from your face.

Eating Out: A Stroke of Genius

The people at Wellsphere have come up with a great new service, one of those neat items that makes you wonder: “Why didn’t someone think of this before?"

Here’s the deal: Restaurant chains, for the most part, are fighting legislation that would require them to show the nutritional information of their dishes. Eventually, they may lose the battle, but you don’t have to wait for that to happen.

Wellternatives – a new free healthy eating service recommends healthy alternatives for your favorite dishes at hundreds of thousands of chain restaurants. They designed it so that anyone can use a cell phone to receive suggested ‘Wellternatives’ along with calorie and nutrition information. It’s free. It’s quick. It's fun and easy to use, and works from any cell phone! They also added Wellternatives to their website, along with complete menu listings and ratings.

I just tried it myself and it worked like a charm. I typed in “Chili’s burger” and immediately the nutrition data popped up, along with a healthier alternative on the same Chili's menu. Wow! It’s a great service. Give it a try with your cell phone by sending a text to 878787 with the word ‘diet’ followed by the name of the chain restaurant and menu item, or visit Wellernatives on the web.

Fat but Fit?

There have been recent news accounts of people being overweight (read fat) but still being fit. By fit, let's assume it means the overweight subjects had healthy cardiovascular systems and adequate muscle -- in spite of their excess. And that they were no more likely to contract heart disease, diabetes, etc., than leaner people.

You have to wonder: Just how fat were the test subjects? And exactly how fit were they? Because at some point in being overweight, it is impossible to be what any reasonable person would define as fit or healthy.

The whole "Fat but Fit" concept sounds a little goofy to me. And it may be that researchers have already found signs of it being invalid. Check it out here.

The Red Bull Express

While waiting in line at a store checkout a few days ago, I entertained myself by snooping at what the shoppers if front of me were buying. One young woman had five or six kinds of candy bars and several cans of Red Bull on the conveyor belt. I cringed at the thought of all that candy bar sugar but had no idea what was in Red Bull.

Then yesterday I read a report about Red Bull having something to do with someone's death. I got curious. What is in that stuff anyway? Here’s a description from one report: “It contains caffeine, vitamins, and sugar which, the company claims, kick-starts the body's metabolism and keeps people alert.” Well, who could object to being alert?

I also learned that many people mix Red Bull with alcohol. That RB and vodka is popular. Not sure how that combo works out on the alertness scale. It is also common, from what I read, for Red Bull drinkers to also drink lots of coffee along with it. That sounds like caffeine overkill, to say the least; still I have no idea whether Red Bull is actually responsible for anyone’s death. However, I thought back to the woman at the checkout with all her candy bars and Red Bull drinks. Imagine what that blast of sugar and caffeine must have done to her blood sugar and jangled nerves. She'd be alert alright!

France has banned Red Bull. And the European Commission (EC) challenged France's ban after manufacturers complained it was inhibiting imports. You can read about that here. I don't know enough about the ban to express an opinion. But personally, I wouldn't touch the stuff.

Smart Training for Seniors

I subscribe to several health, fitness, and bodybuilding newsletters and read as much as possible about trends in those fields. I sort through the information looking for things that might be applicable to senior fitness. Some of the material is useful but, generally speaking, much of it not suited for people over 50.

Why is that?

Generally, around age 50 (the year we all become eligible to join AARP, coincidentally), we should approach exercise and training differently than we might have 10 or 20 years earlier. Though proper training will keep us fit and strong for the years to come — at the same time our bodies will not tolerate some of the kinds of training that might have been beneficial during our 20s, 30s, or even into our 40s.

One example that comes to mind is beginning trainees who try to do too much too soon. While most resistance training exercises and cardiovascular activities may be fundamentally the same at almost any age, workout duration and intensity should be scaled back in accordance with age. I realize this probably seems almost too obvious to mention, but you might be surprised at how many beginners ignore or deny it.

And it is not only beginners who should recognize the age factor. Even many longtime trainees often continue such practices as regular all-out effort, maximum poundage, low-rep weight training. I wouldn’t suggest an exact age for modifying that sort of training. But there is no getting around the fact that 50-, 60- or 70-year old tendons and ligaments cannot handle the same stresses they could at 20 or 30. At some point, higher repetitions with more moderate weights are probably a better way to go, even for those who are in top shape and have been training for most of their adult lives.

Don’t equate this with babying yourself. Beginners should know that progressive resistance training concepts have remained the same since the time of Milo. You begin with manageable weight and repetitions and gradually add to them. Progressive cardiovascular exercise works in much the same way. A 20- or 30-year old beginner may start training and many times be at full speed and intensity in a very short period of time. At 50, or older, acceleration should be more gradual.

Overuse injuries are common and most are avoidable. Respecting your tendons and ligaments as you grow older is one way of staying out of trouble. Short warm ups before training are a small investment that pays big dividends. Replacing low-rep maximum effort movements with respectable but moderate poundage and somewhat higher repetitions means you’ll likely avoid overuse injuries and will remain fit and strong a heck of a lot longer.

Are the French Serious?

Gray Iron read this twice just to be certain it is real. The French parliament, it is reported, adopted a bill that would make it illegal for anyone to publicly incite extreme thinness. The bill soon goes to the senate. Overweight French people must be laughing.

Of course body weight extremes at either end of the scale are serious matters — but a government passing laws making it illegal to “incite" extreme thinness? Talk about Big Brother! Read the report and make comment if you wish.

Report: France may outlaw inciting thinness.

Battling Belly Fat

The evidence keeps piling up and growing stronger: Women who carry excess fat around their waists are at greater risk of dying early from cancer or heart disease than are women with smaller waistlines -- even if they are of normal weight. That's the conclusion of researchers from Harvard and the National Institutes of Health.

Previous studies have shown that the tendency to deposit fat around the waist increases the risk for health problems. The current study is to date the largest and most comprehensive of its kind and shows that accumulation of abdominal fat can increase the risk of death.

As Gray Iron Fitness readers know, the solution to excess body fat is sensible portion control eating -- not crash diets -- and regular, consistent exercise that includes both cardiovascular and resistance movement such as weight training.

Go here to read the full report from the National Institutes of Health.

Is Multi-Tasking a Good Thing?

A popular term of worship in recent years has been “multi-tasking.” It is worn by many as a badge of honor. But I believe that only jugglers are truly good at keeping several balls in the air at the same time. Most of us function more efficiently if we keep a shorter list, trying not to do too many things at once. Personal experience and observation have led me to think this way. I also believe a frenzied pace can be deadly, that constant underlying stress is a killer.

Those who doubt this argue that our minds and bodies evolved to handle stress without serious health consequences, that our cave dweller ancestors knew stress in spades. I agree that encountering a hungry saber-tooth tiger must have been enormously more stressful than you or me cramming too many appointments into a narrow time frame. The difference however with the tiger is that the immediate response to fight or run managed the cave dweller’s sudden jolt of action hormones. The adrenalin rush got used. Stress today is mostly of a different nature. It is a lower grade sort — but often unrelenting and without release. Though I’m sure we all prefer contemporary life to confronting saber-tooth tigers, the ongoing underlying tension and pressure of modern life can take its toll.

I am certainly not the first person to notice this. Surgeon Joseph McCaffrey, who has studied the affects of stress, says a lot of the stress today comes from juggling multiple tasks and trying to keep track of it all in our head. This, he says, also robs us of part of our brainpower that might otherwise be used to actually think, to create and problem solve.

He recommends writing down multiple tasks, keeping a list to be checked off as responsibilities are met. This simple act frees a part of our brain that was trying to keep track of everything in memory and can reduce stress by making the demands of modern life more manageable.

I say Amen to that. Along with regular exercise and periodic relaxation breaks, you not only improve your odds of living a happier, healthier life, in the long term you will probably accomplish more than the always busy, busy, busy multi-taskers.

Squat Thrusts

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Again from high in the Austrian Alps, daughter Jennifer demonstrates the exercise of the month, Squat Thrusts.

Squat Thrusts are a total body exercise that can really get your heart pounding and lungs gasping. Sound like torture? Nah, just a heck of a good workout. Still, if you're unfamiliar with this one, enter with some measure of caution. Senior beginners should wait until they've built a reasonable fitness base. Or do just a few reps to see what they're like. For more advanced trainees -- accept the challenge!

First, Jennifer shows a few plain vanilla Squat Thrusts (tough enough!). Then she demonstrates a few that include a push-up. Enjoy!

Hiking: An Ounce of Prevention, Part 2.

In part 1 of this post, I wrote about the young woman who was assaulted and then killed while hiking on a mountain trail in Georgia. I gave my thoughts about hiking alone and mentioned having personal knowledge of tragedies that occurred to people simply on a hike or walk.

I will briefly mention three.

1. My great aunt, a widow in her mid-eighties, was out for walk near her apartment in a nice area of San Francisco. It was mid-day when three young men attacked her for her purse. They knocked her down, kicked her repeatedly, and broke her hip. She lived for few months afterward and then died as result of her injuries.

2. A serial killer known as the Trailside Killer stalked hikers in the Bay Area’s Mt. Tamalpais State Park and at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. He would hide near popular hiking trails and attack unwary hikers. He killed one of my daughter’s high school classmates.

3. A young reporter for a newspaper I published went out for walk with her husband. A van stopped on a busy San Francisco street and at gunpoint men forced them into the vehicle. With a machete, they hacked to death Quita Hague and thought they had killed her husband. They dumped both bodies in a remote part of the city. Her murder and others they committed was the subject of the book, Zebra: The true account of the 179 days of terror in San Francisco.

Were these victims careless? Could they have fought off their attackers and survived? In the case of my great aunt, of course that is highly unlikely. With the others there is no way of knowing. It is possible to do all the right things and still lose your life. According to police authorities in Georgia, the young woman hiker nearly succeeded in fighting off her attacker.

A life lived in fear certainly is not the answer. But common sense approaches to walking, hiking, or running alone certainly make people less of a target. Being aware should be rule one. Walking down a street listening to an iPod, for example, diminishes your awareness — and it makes you look like prey. Not hiking alone in wilderness or countryside or remote parts of cities should be rule two.

Training in a practical form of self-defense always helps. That along with a strong will to prevail in an assault can put the odds of survival in your favor. A final thought: when an attacker wants to take his victim from the crime scene to somewhere else, it usually means he intends to kill the victim. Same if someone wants to tie you up. Fight like a wild animal on the spot. Those are your best odds.

Hiking: An Ounce of Prevention

A terrible headline in the paper caught my eye: “Killer Tells How Victim Fought Him.” The victim, a young woman out hiking, used her wits and martial arts training when she was attacked in the Georgia mountains. “She did everything she could to stay alive,” according to the Director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But eventually her attacker killed and decapitated her.

What does this have to do with fitness? Walking and hiking are the most common kinds of exercise that people do, and for good reason. They require little preparation and can be done almost anywhere. And yes, they are relatively safe activities; but to assume there are no dangers at all can get people in trouble, especially women.

Years ago, I wrote a travel newsletter called Creative Drifting News. I often wrote about personal wilderness hiking experiences. I did quite a bit of it and it always surprised me to see a woman hiking or backpacking alone in the Sierra high country. This occurred more often than you might think. In my newsletter, I always advised against it. Not everyone agreed with me. And I know that some people reading this now will say the chances of being attacked are so small that we shouldn’t be concerned.

All I can say to them is that I know personally of too many instances of assaults and even murders of people who were simply out for a walk in a city or hiking in the woods. I used to say to people who were concerned about bears or mountain lion attacks that it’s the creatures that walk on two legs that present the greater danger.

Please walk, and hike, and run, and swim. Do it all. But be smart about it. If you walk alone, do it where people can see you — all of the time. If you walk in unfamiliar areas of cities, or back-country anywhere, hike with friends. There is safety in numbers. And always tell people where you are going and when you expect to return.

Yes, most people you will encounter are wonderful. But also recognize that the world includes sociopaths, just as that poor young woman in Georgia found out and lost her life just as it was beginning.

Read the full story: "Killer Tells How Victim Fought Him"

In Search of a Six-Pack

It’s a myth that doesn’t die easily: "You gotta isolate those abs and go for the burn!"

You’ve heard it. We all have. The thing is, "spot reducing" does not exist — except in the fantasy world of some infomercials.

Don't fall for it.

Here are some facts:

• Fact: Fat is distributed throughout your body, with some areas storing more of it than others. Where is determined mostly by genetics.

• Fact: The first place that fat accumulates on your body is the last place it leaves as you reduce.

• Fact: Doing thousands of reps will build muscular endurance, but to reduce body fat requires taking in fewer calories than needed for present maintenance requirements.

• Fact: Exercises that strengthen underlying abdominal muscles are essential in a balanced fitness program, but assigning them special significance as "fat burners" is nonsense. That burn you feel after doing the umpteenth set of crunch/sit-up type movements is lactic acid buildup -- not fat cells miraculously melting away. As fat burners, isolation movements do very little. Let me say it again: As fat burners, isolation movements do very little.

Here's an item culled from Men's Health magazine that puts fat loss in perspective: "If your abs are covered with fat, cut 250 to 500 calories a day from your diet (or 10 to 20 percent of the calories it takes to maintain your current weight). Focus on eliminating refined carbohydrates, such as white bread and pasta. Don't bother working your abs more often [Emphasis is mine. --LF]. It takes 250,000 crunches to burn 1 pound of fat -- that's about 100 crunches a day for 7 years."

Here is a far better strategy:

• Do mostly big, compound muscle building exercises. The itsy-bitsy crunches won't get it done.

• Include some specific abs work. But forget the endless reps. Treat core exercise reps about the same as other movements.

• Include cardiovascular work. Short but intense is usually better than long, slow distance. A ratio of 2 days of short but intense intervals to 1 day of moderate distance can work well.

• Eat more often but smaller portions. Portion control is the most important element in body weight/fat reduction.

• Stop eating sugar foods and drinks and all refined carbohydrates.

• But don't go to extremes, such as eating less than 1500 calories per day. Your body may go into a “starvation mode,” meaning a slower metabolism.

• Balance your macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat). Most overweight people eat too many carbohydrates, and especially the wrong kinds. However, programs that practically eliminate all carbs, or any one of the three macronutrients, are not sustainable and may be unhealthy.

You don't need diet pills and some are dangerous.

Our Greatest Fears (for men only)

If you are reading this now you are 1) already physically fit, or 2) in the process of getting fit, or 3) you are not fit but know that you should be. Probably you are at mid-life or a senior. Most likely you are not a subscriber to Men’s Health, a magazine geared mostly to younger men. Yet much of its information and articles have relevance at any age.

The April edition of MH has a page called “On the Minds of Men.” Over 2,400 of their readers were asked the following: What scares you most about aging?

Here is how they answered:

• Feeling old physically: 32%

• Declining in mental health, 15%

• Outliving savings, 12%

• Nothing, 11%

• Being closer to death, 10%

• Seeing my loved ones go before me: 8%

• Losing looks, 8%

• Losing my sex drive, 4%

My guess is that the top three fears of mid-life men and seniors would be about the same as younger men's. Some of the other fears might move up or down as we age. But feeling old physically would still top the list.

The dictate to “Use it or lose it” becomes more relevant with each passing year.