Monthly Archives: June 2016

June 30, 2016 · 12:08 am

Interval training techniques for quick fat loss – Infographic

Although weight loss was the primary focus of this blog at the outset, it has been pushed to the back burner in favor of straight forward healthy living which consists of  intelligent eating with regular exercise. However, if a person if a person finds himself overweight and wants some speedier results. Interval training just might fill the bill.

Interval training is a type of physical exercise that involves a series of low- to high-intensity exercise workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods. The high-intensity periods are typically at or close to anaerobic exercise, while the recovery periods involve activity of lower intensity. Varying the intensity of effort exercises the heart muscle, providing a cardiovascular workout, improving aerobic capacity and permitting the person to exercise for longer and/or more intense levels. According to Wikipedia.

Interval-Training-embed-large.png

Just to keep things in perspective, please check out my Page – How to lose weight – (and keep it off).

Tony

Leave a comment

Filed under high intensity interval training

Tagged as , , , ,

June 29, 2016 · 12:02 am

How exercise makes you happy – Infographic

Regular readers know how much I value the benefits of exercise. So, I was very happy to stumble upon this infographic on fresh benefits of exercise.

ExerciseHappiness_infograph_0.jpg

Please check out my Page – Important facts about your brain (and exercise benefits) to read further.

3 Comments

Filed under Exercise, exercise and brain health

Tagged as , , , ,

June 28, 2016 · 12:05 am

Exercise ideas for hot weather

As regular readers know, I feel strongly about the great outdoors, savoring the experience of it as well as exercising outdoors. Summer has made its presence known with a vengeance this year and there is a time and a place for everything.

Tips-For-Exercising-In-Hot-Weather-610x350.jpg

I have been riding my bike around sunrise lately as a method of avoiding the oppressive heat. I am 76 years old and in excellent shape, but my doctor said that she tells even her 40-year-olds not to push exercise in extreme heat. You can check out my Page – How to deal with extreme heat for lots more examples.

Meanwhile the Go4Life folks offer the following excellent suggestions for heat extremes:

 •    Walk on the treadmill, ride the stationary bike, or use the rowing machine that’s gathering dust in your bedroom or basement. Or use one at a nearby gym or fitness center.
    •    Work out with an exercise DVD. You can get a free one from Go4Life.
    •    Go bowling with friends.
    •    Join a local mall walking group.
    •    Walk around an art gallery or museum to catch a new exhibit.
    •    Check out an exercise class at your neighborhood Y.
    •    If you like dancing, take a Zumba® or salsa class.
    •    Try yoga or Tai Chi.
    •    Go to the gym and work on your strength, balance, and flexibility exercises or set up your own home gym. All you need is a sturdy chair, a towel, and some weights. Soup cans or water bottles will do if you don’t have your own set of weights.
    •    Go to an indoor pool and swim laps or try water aerobics
    •    How about a game of indoor tennis, hockey, basketball, or soccer?
    •    Go indoor ice skating or roller skating.
    •    Maybe it’s time for some heavy duty cleaning. Vacuum, mop, sweep. Dust those hard-to-reach areas.

Tony

2 Comments

Filed under Exercise, hot weather

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 27, 2016 · 11:54 am

Of cats and dogs and cliches …

I was reading this morning and ran into the cliche you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I have to tell you that this is one particularly annoying expression to me. This is another of the general negativity directed toward seniors.

By the time I retired, I had become something of an expert on markets. After 20 years spent writing about international markets for Reuters News Service I went on to write for the Investments Department of a major philanthropic organization. The final five years of my working life I actually managed the investment of $900 million in the debt market.

c2c616d5ae15f2c08c080737b4ea8d7d.jpg

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

After retiring, at the age of 60, I started writing this blog. It had nothing to do with markets or the economy. The primary focus was weight loss in the beginning, but after taking a number of courses on nutrition, anatomy, physiology, the brain, longevity and yoga, to name a few, I expanded the scope to focus on good nutrition, exercise and living past 100 while keeping our mental faculties intact.

So, I contend that you can teach an old dog, me, new tricks. I think that you need to cleanse yourself of cliches like that as they are absolutely negative and do nothing but jam a road block into your path of straight thinking.

While on the subject of negative cliches, another troubling one that springs to mind is curiosity killed the cat. I am not sure why, but I hear that one a lot. What’s wrong with being curious? Since when is curiosity a bad thing? I consider curiosity one of my best traits.

In researching the saying, it seems it started otherwise than we know it today. The original word was care not curiosity and the meaning had to do with care and worry, That is, too much worrying killed the cat. This varies from what we know today as curiosity – digging into a subject to find out more. So, it’s current usage has run totally askew from its origin. Yet it persists in this new and troublesome form.

Since many of my readers are fellow bloggers, you know how much a part that true curiosity plays in your most meaningful posts. I certainly do.

Finally, we all know how important it is to avoid cliches, not just negative ones. Nothing bogs down writing faster and glazes over the eyes of a reader more effectively than cliche-ridden sentences. So, I beg you to avoid cliches like the plague.

You got that last one, didn’t you?

Tony

5 Comments

Filed under cliches, curiosity

Tagged as , , ,

June 26, 2016 · 5:41 am

Bad to the Bone – WebMD

With apologies to George Thorogood, whose Bad to the Bone is a true rock classic, you really don’t want to be bad to your bones.

WebMD has produced a slideshow demonstrating things we do and don’t do that damage our bones. Our bones are as strong as cast iron yet remains as light as wood. Keep in mind that our bones are not all solid. The outside is solid surrounded by a few small canals. The inside, however, looks like a honeycomb.

bone-marrow.jpg

The way we strengthen our bones is with weight-bearing exercise and good diet choices. As a bike rider, I am very aware of this. My regular riding is super cardio exercise, but does nothing for my bones. Not long ago, Tour de France riders, started integrating weight lifting with their workouts as they were coming down with osteoporosis.

WebMD offers eleven examples in a slide show that is worth checking out.

Here are a few examples in case you don’t have time right now. Skip that next pitcher of Margaritas. “When you’re out with friends, one more round might sound like fun. But to keep bone loss in check, you should limit the amount of alcohol you drink. No more than one drink a day for women and two for men is recommended. Alcohol can interfere with how your body absorbs calcium.”

I have written a Page about the damage smoking does and it turns out smoking damages your bones, too. “When you regularly inhale cigarette smoke, your body can’t form new healthy bone tissue as easily. The longer you smoke, the worse it gets.
Smokers have a greater chance of breaks and take longer to heal. But if you quit, you can lower these risks and improve your bone health, though it might take several years.”

See what you can do to be good to your bones.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under bone health, bone marrow, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

June 25, 2016 · 5:19 am

Foods That Help Increase Melatonin

Sleep is one of the underappreciated aspects of good health. Please check out my Page – How important is a good night’s sleep for more.

melatonin benefits

Tony

Our Better Health

Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland situated in your brain. This chemical offers so many benefits, thanks to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Studies have shown that melatonin protects the heart from damage. It’s also proven to help ward off cancer.

However, the most popular role played by melatonin is the regulation of the circadian rhythm — your body clock. Individuals lacking in melatonin often find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. Melatonin is something that you will find on various internet articles pertaining to how to combat insomnia.

Because of the ability of melatonin to combat sleep deprivation, so many pharmaceutical companies offer the said hormone in supplement form. The downside to taking melatonin supplements is every capsule or tablet usually contains synthetic ingredients. Their intake can actually do more harm than good in the long run because of the man-made chemicals in them.

View original post 492 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under good night's sleep, melatonin, sleep

Tagged as , , ,

June 24, 2016 · 5:09 am

Observations on the aging brain – RUB

Regular readers know of my family history of Alzheimer’s and dementia so this new information from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) on  age-related brain changes caught my attention.

Learning at an advanced age makes the brain fit but age-related brain changes cannot be undone.

As a person ages, perception declines, accompanied by augmented brain activity. Learning and training may ameliorate age-related degradation of perception, but age-related brain changes cannot be undone. Rather, brain activity is enhanced even further, but for other reasons and with different outcomes. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum discovered these facts in a recent study, the results of which have now been published in Scientific Reports.

article-2542733-1AD4F5AB00000578-567_634x366

Enhanced brain activity at old age
The researchers asked test participants in different age cohorts to feel two needlepoints that were located closely to each other with the tips of their fingers. Older participants perceived two points as a single event even when they were located quite far apart, whereas younger people were still able to distinguish them as two distinct points, which is evidence for degraded tactile perception at higher age. This impaired perception experienced by older people goes hand in hand with a spatial enhancement of brain activity, which researchers generally interpret as a compensatory mechanism. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under aging, aging brain

Tagged as , , ,

June 23, 2016 · 5:06 am

Being Thin ≠ Being Healthy (Or Happy!)

This has some wonderful ideas in it. Once we refocus our minds on the positive goal of living healthy, we never need to look back at the old losing weight situation. It will no longer exist.

Tony

All About Healthy Choices

0516c425c67a7e7188462cd28730e3a02ec607-wmAs of 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Over 42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese. With an expanding population in quantity AND SIZE, it should not be surprising the weight loss business has skyrocketed. The various industries participating in addressing this growing epidemic includes:

  • The food industry

  • The exercise industry

  • The lifestyle coaching industry

  • The health care industry

I can tell you from personal experience as a physician that successful, LONG TERM healthy weight loss is best achieved by those people focusing on pursuing a healthy BALANCEDLIFESTYLE rather than focusing simply on weight loss. People need to understand that being overweight is a SYMPTOM of an underlying problem. It is the RESULT of a PROCESS that includes hormonal factors, behavioral factors, lifestyle factors and emotional factors. As everyone knows, treating symptoms doesn’t address the ROOT CAUSES

View original post 482 more words

1 Comment

Filed under good health, weight control, weight loss

Tagged as , ,

June 23, 2016 · 4:13 am

What About Back Pain?

Most people have back pain at some time or another in their lives. WebMD says, “Most people have experienced back pain sometime in their lives. The causes of back pain are numerous; some are self-inflicted due to a lifetime of bad habits. Other back pain causes include accidents, muscle strains, and sports injuries. Although the causes may be different, most often they share the same symptoms.”

Back pain is one of the most common complaints that show up in the Emergency Room, according to Alan G. Shepard, M.D., Neurologist, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, speaking to the Northwestern Memorial Healthy Transitions Program®.

“Some 60 to 90 percent of the population will experience back pain in their lifetime.

“Back pain is second only to upper respiratory infection as a cause for lost work time.

“Over 5 million people are disabled with low back pain which makes it the number one disability for workers less than 45 years old.

“The bad news is that no definitive diagnosis will be found in over 80 percent of the back pain cases.

“The good news is that over 90 percent of patients, even those with sciatica, will be better in two months regardless of the type of therapy given.

“Determining which patient with back pain is the ‘true emergency’ is one of the biggest diagnostic challenges that an emergency medicine physician can face. ”

WEbMD says to call your doctor if:

  • You feel numbness, tingling, or weakness in your groin, arms or legs; this may signal damage to the spinal cord. Seek immediate medical help.
  • The pain in your back extends downward along the back of the leg; you may be suffering from sciatica.
  • The pain increases when you cough or bend forward at the waist; this can be the sign of a herniated disc.
  • The pain is accompanied by fever, burning during urination, or frequent and/or urgent urination. You may have an infection.
  • You begin to have problems controlling your bowels or bladder; seek immediate medical help.

Tony

3 Comments

Filed under back pain

Tagged as , , , ,

June 21, 2016 · 5:39 am

8 positive stress reduction tools – Infographic

None of us escapes stress in our lives. When we deal with it positively we escape its damage and grow stronger in the bargain.

tumblr_mjv4yxZHPs1rm6smso1_1280.png.jpeg

Check out the following posts for more on stress reduction:

How to deal with a day of stress

Some super tools for handling stress

Tony

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under stress, stress reduction, Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

June 20, 2016 · 5:36 am

Exercise helps to repair muscles post injury

Must confess, I just love learning about new reasons why it is good for us to exercise.

New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that the ability of muscles to repair themselves, while impaired during the aging process, can be effectively rescued with a diligent and regular exercise routine.

14+-+1

Here’s another reason why you should hit the gym regularly as you grow older: A new report appearing online in The FASEB Journal shows that regular exercise plays a critical role in helping muscles repair themselves as quickly as possible after injury. For many mammals, including humans, the speed of muscle repair slows as they grow older, and it was once thought that complete repair could not be achieved after a certain age. This report shows, however, that after only eight weeks of exercise, old mice experienced faster muscle repair and regained more muscle mass than those of the same age that had not exercised. This is important, as it further highlights exercise’s therapeutic potential. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under aging, Exercise

Tagged as , , ,

June 19, 2016 · 12:07 am

Happy Father’s Day!

gifs-bonne-fc3aate-papa-37.jpg

Best wishes to all you fellow dads out there on our special day.

bonne-fc3aate-papa-35.gif

It’s the same in any language.

gifs-bonne-fc3aate-papa-33.gif

I lost my father to lung cancer years ago, but still benefit from his love and lessons every day.

Tony

2 Comments

Filed under Father's Day

Tagged as ,

June 18, 2016 · 5:54 am

6 tips to help you keep a walking regimen on track – Harvard

I have written more than once the words walking is the Cinderella of the exercise world, vastly unappreciated. It’s nice to see this further support from a special Harvard Health Report – Walking for Health.

“Regular walks are an incredibly popular way to exercise — and it’s easy to see why. Walking is easy and free (except for a good pair of shoes), and can be done just about anywhere. But it’s those very qualities that can also make it very tempting to skip. If your walking routine is in danger of lapsing, try one or more of these strategies to keep going.

o-VITAMINS-EXERCISE-facebook

“1. Have a backup plan. For example, if you sleep in and miss your morning walk, you’ll know that you’re going to walk during lunch instead. Or, maybe you know that dinner with friends will prevent you from taking your evening stroll, so instead you sneak in a 15-minute walk in the morning and another before you meet your friends. And keeping a pair of sneakers in your car gives you the option to squeeze in a walk whenever you have a little extra time. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Exercise, walking

Tagged as , , ,

June 17, 2016 · 12:08 am

7 things you can do to prevent a stroke – Harvard

Regardless of your age or family history, a stroke doesn’t have to be inevitable. Here are some ways to protect yourself starting today, Harvard Health Publications said.

But , what is a stroke?

A stroke is a “brain attack.”  It can happen to anyone at any time. It occurs when blood flow to an area of brain is cut off. When this happens, brain cells are deprived of oxygen and begin to die. When brain cells die during a stroke, abilities controlled by that area of the brain such as memory and muscle control are lost, according to the National Stroke Association.

Stroke by the Numbers
•    Each year nearly 800,000 people experience a new or recurrent stroke.
    •    A stroke happens every 40 seconds.
    •    Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S.
    •    Every 4 minutes someone dies from stroke.
    •    Up to 80 percent of strokes can be prevented.
    •    Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability in the U.S.

Age makes us more susceptible to having a stroke, as does having a mother, father, or other close relative who has had a stroke.

ucm_452104.jpg

You can’t reverse the years or change your family history, but there are many other stroke risk factors that you can control—provided that you’re aware of them. “Knowledge is power,” says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Acute Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. “If you know that a particular risk factor is sabotaging your health and predisposing you to a higher risk of stroke, you can take steps to alleviate the effects of that risk.”

Here are seven ways to start reining in your risks today, before a stroke has the chance to strike. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Filed under stroke

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 16, 2016 · 12:06 am

Why Seniors Tend to be Less Confident With Their Memories

Regular readers know that I have a history of Alzheimer’s and dementia on both sides of my family so I am very sensitive to information on how the brain works in seniors. I am also 78 years old so this lands right in my wheelhouse.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older people struggle to remember important details because their brains can’t resist the irrelevant “stuff” they soak up subconsciously. As a result, they tend to be less confident in their memories.

Researchers looked at brain activity from EEG sensors and saw that older participants wandered into a brief “mental time travel” when trying to recall details. This journey into their subconscious veered them into a cluttered space that was filled with both relevant and irrelevant information. This clutter led to less confidence, even when their recollections were correct. Cluttering of the brain is one reason older people are more susceptible to manipulation, the researchers say. The study appears online in the journal Neuropsychologia.

Researchers showed older adults (60 years and up) and college students a series of pictures of everyday objects while EEG sensors were connected to their heads. Each photo was accompanied by a color and scene (e.g., living room). Participants were told to focus on one and ignore the other. An hour later, they were asked if the object was new or old, and if it matched the color and the scene.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under aging, aging brain

Tagged as , , ,

June 15, 2016 · 6:15 am

20 Benefits We Get from the Sun – Infographic

With summer fast approaching and amazing heat already making itself felt, I thought it might be worthwhile to think of some of the positive benefits the sun brings to us.

Sun-Benefits-v.3.0.jpg

For my money outside exercise usually beats inside the health club, but please don’t forget that when it comes to sunshine, a little goes a long way. Check out my Page – How to deal with extreme heat for more details.

Thanks to my friends at the solarcentre for the infographic.

Tony

3 Comments

Filed under sunlight, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , ,