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Seven Ways to Stay Younger!

Having just returned from the Great White North and having met some “old” friends and some new ones as well I have a different perspective on “Youngness” now that I want to share with you.

But first a reminder: There is a test for your Biologic Age that is based on solid science and reproducible data. It does not involve methylation, glycosylation or protein degradation although those are all very important in the aging and youthing processes.

It is based on telomeres which I call the BS detector of aging. I don’t care how many methyl groups you ingest, how many anti-oxidants are in your diet, or what your vital capacity is, if your telomeres are getting shorter, you are aging and quite possible faster than you want!

I wrote a book about this a while back and that book has become “more true” because the research has grown.

Of course, so has the negativity around staying younger longer for reasons that escape me.

So back to my trip up North.

I met some people younger than me chronologically that are doing a lot of things that are good and right but the continue to age, degrade and not look very healthy in spite of following what is considered great advice.

Here is the bottom line: If we really knew which diet, which exercise program or which life style kept the most people young it would be suppressed by marketers and people with agendas that transcend the wellness and health of an individual.

Also, always remember the difference between slowing down the aging process and reversing it because the former involves all of the things above and the later so far, is only affected by telomeres.

Here is a list of simple life style things you can do to facilitate the former

1) Stretching: I do various types of flexibility exercises to maintain my ability to do the athletic endeavors I enjoy. I do not have a formal Yoga practice…yet. But You cannot go wrong with that.

2) Sleep: It may not matter exactly how much you sleep at night as naps during the day may improve your overall rest and capacity for regeneration but contrary to some writings of some very popular writers who try to “bio hack” their lives and the lives of others you cannot sleep2-3 hours a night routinely and be healthy. Mother Nature doesn’t role that way!! If you need help with getting a regular sleep pattern of deep restorative sleep try this.

3) Diet: I do not pontificate on diets any more very much because it seems like diets become religion for some. Bottom line: reduce your calories and reduce your insulin production. I chose to use a Ketogenic Diet or at least a carb restricted one most times to do this. When I slip I use SBSF  and believe me it nails my sugar levels and gets rid of carb cravings!

4) Exercise: 3 Things are critical: joint and soft tissue mobility, power, and endurance. All of these will help your mental attitude as well as your physical longevity. I spend 30 minutes most days on soft tissue and joint mobility. I strength train and endurance train 2-3X a week respectively. Keep in mind this is not an aesthetics program- it’s a functional one designed to keep me mobile and healthy. It is absolutely possible to “look great” with this type of program but its not the main goal. You can absolutely do better “look great” programs that will not improve or even may damage your health!

5) Meditation: Or quiet time and probably prayer as well if you prefer. The point is to turn off the conversational monkey mind and just relax, observe and get as close to the nothing box as you can. You’d be surprised how much spending time in that world improve your reality based physical one.

6) Inspiration: Personally, I find traveling to different places, reconnecting with people and meeting new ones generally inspiring and inspiriting no matter if its business, pleasure or both. We all need fairly constant inspiration so ask yourself, “What inspired me today?!”

7) Take Care of Your Telomeres!!!! All of the above are part of the slowing down the aging process and no one can promise you for sure that you can age in reverse, but judging from what I saw and the comments I got, it is very possible if you Take Care of Your Telomeres.

Stay Young and smile as much as you can!

Doc

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Fighting Gravity Morning Stiffness and Other Age Related Maladies

I had a really interesting discussion/evaluation with a patient the other day. His primary interest was stem cells and TA-65 but we got to talking about some common symptoms he was experiencing that he had questions about.

“Doc first why do I need to stretch and do the tissue mobilization stuff every morning?  I wake up stiff as a board and then within an hour I am fine.  I go to bed limber but next morning it’s like I never stretched at all!  What is that all about?”

This is a pretty common problem for both men and women starting in their 40’s and 50’s.  Most people assume that it is the “beginnings of arthritis” and in some ways they may very well be right.

But what is actually happening is that when we sleep at night we do not move very much (even if you are one who rolls around all over the bed!). Compared to the daytime our muscles are lax and our movements very limited.  Lots of people sleep in one position for well over an hour with minimal movement.  Couple this with not drinking and not keeping up with hydration and you have a recipe for fascial binding.

The fascia is something I have talked about in the past. It’s a saran wrap like wrapping that covers most muscles joints and nerves.  In many ways it’s the glue that holds the body tissues together and gives them shape.  The problem is that just like glue it can get sticky especially when the water content of the body drops and we become immobile.

In the morning most people will drink at least some water and begin to move, thus unsticking the fascia.

If you practice Yoga, Pilates, or ball work for tissue mobilization in the morning you are unsticking the fascia.

So what can you do about morning stiffness? Well drink more during the day and during the night even if you have to get up to go to the bathroom more. Next unless there is a medical reason not to add some salt to your evening meal (gasp!)  Yeah I said salt!  You can spend a lifetime popping potassium and magnesium supplements and never fix stiffness or cramps if you are too salt restricted.

Just like it’s ok to eat butter now you mark my words. Salt will gradually be reintroduced into the mainstream diet unless you are in heart failure or have salt sensitive high blood pressure.

Next you can spend some time in the morning doing one of the forms of tissue mobilization I mentioned above.

The next question that came from this guy was why certain areas of his body were tighter and harder to mobilize every morning.  A good look at this guy revealed some significant muscle asymmetries (unevenness). His lower and upper leg on the right was bigger than the left and his left ab insertions were more prominent.

When I had him lunge with his right foot forward, his right hip and pelvic crest on the right were about 4 inches higher than the left.  When he went left foot forward his left foot barely touched the ground. As fate would have it he had in the past injured both his right hip and knee playing sports. The typical logic would be to say the injury should lead to a left sided dominance in order to protect the right injured side.

The truth is gravity was the culprit. For whatever reason this man decided to manage and control gravity with his right hip far more than his left. This is what his body decided was easier, probably for most of his life.  How this stuff happens is immaterial really, the fix is the important thing,

To fix both of the above problems I recommend large doses of Omega 3  to reduce fascial stickiness and inflamed muscles. Then you just start learning to use your non dominant side more. Start with awareness of how much more you use one side in weight bearing. From there start doing exercises in front of a mirror and work for equality and straight lines in your pelvis, hips knees and lower legs.

It will take a while to fix this and at first it will seem very unnatural. But fighting gravity is one of the most important things you can do to reduce and reverse the aging process. Catch this stuff soon enough and you may just avoid joint replacements.

And don’t forget the fish oil. It’s absolutely essential while fixing the effects of gravity and stiffness!

 

 

Doc

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The Hidden Benefit of Exercise You May Be Totally Missing

A few weeks ago I wandered back to our local running club. I hadn’t been there in over 5 years mainly because I no longer consider running the main stay of my fitness routine. I still do it, just not the excess I used to (125km).

It was a lot of fun to see some old friends again. For the most part I did not see any major changes in the way they looked except there was a direct correlation between the number of miles they routinely run and how old they look.

Frankly the ones who ran long long distance regularly looked MUCH older than those who didn’t!

I can guarantee you they were not taking fish oil.

Now let me say something clearly. I DO think aerobic exercise is very important. For the most part all of the anti-aging benefits that are seen with exercise are seen with aerobic activities like running, aerobic machines etc.

But it should also be stated that your body needs to produce power and has an often hidden side of its athleticism. Anaerobic performance- also known as explosive and/or interval training constitutes at least half of your capabilities.

Because most exercise physiologists are aerobes (runners and cyclists) and because anaerobic benefits are harder to measure using standardized blood tests, this “other half” of you gets short stick.

Now you may be wondering, “When is he going to get to the fish oil stuff- he always does!”

You are right!

A recent study in the International Journal of Fitness showed that aerobic endurance athletes (soccer players), improved their anaerobic fitness levels over controls who did not take fish oil supplements.

Add this to the well-known aerobic and recovery benefits of Omega 3’s and you have yet another reason to remember to take your fish oil!

Now here is a little confession from me to you.

I stopped “playing sports” many years ago. For the past 2 decades my time has been dedicated to getting the most anti-aging and regenerative benefits I can from EVERYTHING I do. Now this may sound boring to you, but it’s not. I truly enjoy the exercise routines I do and the anti-aging benefits they give me.

But aerobic or anaerobic, I could not maintain them in the face of my busy schedule, fraught with traveling and long hours of research without fish oil.

It’s great to see the other side of fitness and to see that it is beginning to move out of the gym and into the lab. It’s also great to see how much Omega 3’s contribute to maintaining all sides of our physical ability.

Here’s to speed, power and endurance getting better every year!

Doc

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Strength Vs. Endurance- Which is Better?!

Ok taking a break from the nutrition and supplements to give you some free advice on your workouts.

I am not sure if you’ve noticed how the exercise prescription keeps evolving but it kinda parallels the drug recommendations e.g. more and more and more!

The current recommendation is for 50 minutes 5 X a week which effectively puts it out of the range of most of the population! Not to say that this recommendation is not to be followed if possible, but I can tell you that unless you are retired its not going to be easy for you to do this.

This recommendation also does not take into account recovery factors. If you are 80 and walking at 2 miles per hour for an hour is enough to get your heart rate to 70+ % of where it should be, the wear and tear on your body is going to be a lot less than if you are 35 and need to run 7 miles an hour for an hour.

While its safe to say at 80 your recovery demands are going to still be there its quite different from the joint trauma point of view.

What happens if you do 2 really hard workouts a week for strength and 2 for endurance- does that count?!

The answer is yes it does.

As a matter of fact rather than slavishly following the popular 10,000 steps a day rule, the arbitrary but popular recommendation of several internet gurus I would suggest you monitor your performance. If you are slowly but surely improving in your capacity to exercise- both in strength and endurance, you get “credit” and it counts!

Now, a lot of people ask about the so called “strength endurance” routines which often breaks down into some kind of circuit exercise ala PX 90, Ruthless etc etc.

I think these are great compromises and work well if weight loss is your main goal. I love the motion and movement based activities and the potential stretch benefits they give. Since we move as beings these strike me as a nice natural compromise.

But understand you will get neither as strong nor as cardiovascularly fit as with dedicated workouts.

In spite of what some of the still circulating literature suggests, you will not run faster 10K’s than 10 K runners who train in that distance by doing a circuit for 6 weeks.

You may look better and feel better than those very same runners but trust me you will not be running faster than they are or even than you would if you trained for this type of thing.

So once again it all boils down to my now famous “It Depends” answer to the what is the best form of exercise.

We should add “for you” at the end of the sentence. Train for what YOU want!

There is no question in my mind that strength and flexibility is the most useful thing for us as we age.

I cannot help but think of my friend and mentor Matt Furey.

Well into his 50’s Matt remains fast powerful and flexible and of course youthful. Combat Conditioning for instance is NOT yesterday’s news even though its over 10 years old now. This type of exercise will spank you if you are not prepared for it. If you haven’t seen what Matt is up to these days go have a look.

I will also mention to you that I am working on some specific programs with my friend and strength master Kyle Newell so stay tuned for a January launch date on that.

In the meantime remember: your body will adapt to what you give it in graduated routine fashion.

Lately I have been running longer and longer distances again with an eye towards another Canadian Death Race when I turn 60 soon. This time around I have given myself several years instead of a few months like I did when I turned 50!

That is the difference a decade can make and I respect and acknowledge the need for more recovery and better soft tissue management.

After all I want to be strong potent and still running at 90!

How about you?

Start with what you want from your body and if it’s a compromise, then that is fine. Just make a decision and stick to it until you feel your results are as good as you can get, then and only then should your change up your routine.

Doc

 

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Does HIIT Hit the Mark for Aging?!

High Intensity Interval Training has been the subject of much research and debate over the past decade or so.  (I will abbreviate it as HIIT from now on).

I have to credit my friend Phil Campbell for bringing back the concept to modern eyes a decade or more ago with his books Ready Set Go!,  The Sprint 8 Protocol, and most recently How to Increase Growth Hormone Naturally– all available on Amazon.  There is even a cameo appearance by yours truly in the second book listed above.  They are great resources and good reads and if you don’t have them I’d suggest you visit Amazon or your local book seller and pick up a copy of any or all of them!

HIIT was actually originated in Hitler’s Germany in preparation for the 1936 Olympics.  It is credited to Hans Reindell a physiologist and Woldemar Gersheler a coach. While it did not stop Jesse Owens from shaming the Reich, it did get German athletes a lot of 2nd and 3rd place finishes.

The history got lost in post war translation and it simply became known as “wind sprints” when I was back in junior high. WE hated it then because it made you feel, well, like you’d want to vomit. Still there is no denying it was the fastest and most effective way to build “wind” or aerobic capacity.

Phil made it popular again and like most neo pioneers has never gotten much credit for it.  Since Phil reintroduced it, it has made the rounds for all kinds of things.  The first bash was back in the late 90’s when it was the darling of all trainers for the sole purpose of weight loss.  All kinds or exorbitant amounts of calorie burn were being ascribed to it and many books and articles touted “after burn”*, the immediate metabolic consequences of HIIT, as burning hundreds and hundreds of extra calories per day.

Then reality and measurement set in and it was found that realistically you could burn about 100 extra calories on the days that you performed your HIIT intervals. People started to notice that the athletes featured in the “Get Ripped with Interval Training” Videos were all in their early 20’s and high level to begin with. Can you say “Tabata”?!

Another predictable and funny thing started to happen. Middle aged and older people desperately trying to combat Father Time with HIIT started doing it and getting injured. Hint: If you have not sprinted in 30 years get Phil’s books and learn to do it the right way- the INJURY FREE way!  In 2007 I adopted a program of deep water interval training and posted some YouTube videos on it.  Now there is a whole book on that very topic.  Go figure!

For my money that is the best way to do regular interval training although if your body can tolerate it sprinting at the track is a lot of fun.  Just remember you may be a kid at heart but if you’ve got some miles on your odometer like I do, take it easy at first.

The good news is you can use your favorite fitness device like the elliptical or mine, the Airdyne bike, to get the cardio part of the workout without the joint tendon and ligament trauma! You can also do any one of a number of HIIT circuits that have become so popular these days like Insanity, Ruthless and any number of macho titles that will challenge your man and womanhood.

Injury potential aside, a new study at the prestigious Mayo clinic is the latest to look at HIIT in an area where it’s found a new home- combatting aging.

In addition to increasing the capacity of the heart, and the growth of muscle (can you say Increase Growth Hormone like Phil teaches us?!) and insulin sensitivity, HIIT delivers results in a relatively fast way.  In as little as 6 workouts that total less than 30 minutes of exercise and rest you will begin to feel the effects as your formerly difficult workouts get easier.

From the anti-aging standpoint, HIIT seems to address the dual problems of sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass) and dynopenia (loss of strength) by increasing the number of mitochondria in your muscle cells.

Recall I have called mitochondria the “cellular powerhouses” a term that has now become wide spread. They basically act like a carburetor or fuel injector and take oxygen and fuel (in this case fat) and burn it to make energy for movement and all kinds of other vital things!

Increasing mitochondrial density is definitely a reversal of the aging trend because as we get older we tend to lose more and more mitochondria.

Now for the real anti-aging question!

What does HIIT do to telomeres?

Answer: no one knows yet.  I am certain some genius researcher will either read this blog or decide on their own that it is time to take this ever-popular exercise form and subject it to telomere testing.  I wish it could be me but thanks to the events of the past year my research has ground to a halt. But rest assured I’ll be back and maybe I will get to have a crack at that very question!!!

In the meantime known this.  If you want to lengthen the biologic time clocks of your cells also known as telomeres, turning on telomerase  remains the only way to do that. All of the other modalities simply slow the loss.

Do some, do all but do SOMETHING to help keep your telomeres Young.

 

 

 

The one and only original DR Dave!

 

 

*The wild claims for “afterburn” originated in a single study out of Australia that got quoted and used as a citation by over zealous trainers the world over.  That study has since been refuted several times and it points out the dangers of using only one study to reinforce your point of view. Frankly I see this a lot among people who write books and have no scientific background. The idea that it takes several studies that show repeatedly the same thing never even enters their minds.  Next time you read a book on fitness be aware of this!!! The good news is that real exercise physiologists have proven the factual aerobic and metabolic benefits of HIIT over the past decade with many different studies.

Reference: Enhanced Protein Translation Underlies Improved Metabolic and Physical Adaptations to Different Exercise Training Modes in Young and Old Humans” Matthew M. Robinson, Surendra Dasari, Adam R. Konopka, Matthew L. Johnson, S. Manjunatha, Raul Ruiz Esponda, Rickey E. Carter, Ian R. Lanza, K. Sreekumaran Nair DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2017.02.009

 

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True Fitness and Personal Bias For My Friends Over 40 Part 2

Ok we visited the dream world and the real world in Part 1. Now let’s get to some specifics.

If you are middle aged and American, or at least “Western” you probably are overweight.  I hope you are not but this is a statistical reality.  Another statistical reality is you probably sit too much.

When we were younger, you and me, we could exercise our way into an ideal body weight.  Somewhere after 35 the equation shifts and diet becomes more and more important in achieving weight goal Nirvana.  For me it was ketogenic calorie restricted diet that taught me what I needed to know. It will soon be time for me to update that experience and share it with you.

For you it may be different but my guess is very few people actually do this so give it a try if all else has failed.

Ok now you’ve got your weight under control, let’s look at muscle systems.

When we were younger, you and me we played more.  And we played for the sake of playing, not under some structured rules that were dedicated to scores and winning.

The other day a friend of mine and I celebrated our mutual birthdays by going out to a big playing field that had once been the property of an elementary school.  It was now “administrative” so the fields were public playing property.  We brought boomerangs and aerobe discs (a kind of long distance Frisbee).  For 90 minutes we engaged in what exercise physiologists would call High Intensity Interval Training.  I called it throwing a Frisbee!

And yet the next day when I went out for my obligatory medium distance run (these days that is 5 miles) I felt what we had done the day before big time. Since it was not painful I consider it “good”.

After one day of full rest I hit the gym for some weights. The next day body weight followed by another full day of rest.

At the beginning and sometimes at the end of each day I do stretching and mobility exercises.  Yoga works fine if you prefer the specific set of things that defines Yoga- I simply chose to focus on what I know my body needs.

And there my friend is the true definition of fitness in my opinion: what your body needs!

We are after all a mix of genetic and epigenetic tendencies and gifts. Life experiences and aging shapes those gifts in certain ways and we become what we are in this moment.

Are you strong?  Are you fast?  Do you have endurance.  Can you move freely? Are you pain free or at least relatively so?

If you can answer yes to all of those things, then you are truly fit by any reasonable definition.

If not, then you have the area you should focus on and the cure for any fitness lack.

Now some specifics for you and a conundrum.

The other day on one of my runs I heard the heavy foot strikes of another runner fast approaching.

Since running can admittedly be boring at times I often “analyze” my fellow runners out there.  There is no harm in it if I a wrong since they are not paying me or listening to me for that matter.

This person was a rarity.  They were a bit heavy on foot strikes because of the timing of where in the stride they hit and stayed in ground contact. But everything else was really pretty darn good.  The cadence was good, the posture was good, the heel lift was good, and other than landing a bit too far forward of their center of mass, the whole mechanics looked much better than most.  I can’t tell you how many people I see that should not be running and are heading for an injury if they continue. In most cases the resilience of youth is all that is saving them!

This person was indeed young.  So now for the consult: what would I change.  Runners, real distance runners have a prototypical ultra-lean build.  They lack muscle mass especially upper body mass. Without being too disparaging I call it a hollow look.  Cyclists on the other hand have a more muscular physique although still quite lean.

Each of these people consider themselves fit. So we can theoretically use body habitus as a guide.  What kind of athlete do you want to look like?

I would have told the guy who passed me to drop 10 to 15 pounds.  I am certain it would have skyrocketed his running performance.

So what kind of physique would I personally aspire to?

For me it’s a gymnast.  Viola! Integrate gymnastics into your routine and you will begin after a time to take on that body habitus.  But what is gymnastics lacking?  Well they do not seem to do long slow distance exercise which from the anti-aging standpoint is the most studies and currently the most important.  Now you have the prescription: combine the two!

Ok so endurance work and body weight stuff, pull ups pushups, parallete work and standing balance postures (again Yoga is great) spaced out with specific tissue mobilization (Yamuna ball work, MAT etc.) with some endurance work and you have the perfect “middle aged” fitness workout.

Now a few caveats:

  • Most people have not done this kind of stuff in years if ever. Start slowly especially with the things that require hanging and supporting your body with shoulder strength (dips, bar hangs etc.)
  • You can and should sub out one endurance workout with a speed workout or high intensity interval training. To benefit from this, you’ll need several weeks of one day a week.  You can do more but again if you are new to it be careful not to over train.
  • Most people gravitate towards what they are good at. Skinny small muscled people tend to run; heavy boned thick muscled people tend to lift.  Before you are 40 it’s wonderful to make the most of your god given talents and body habitus as well as doing the sports you enjoy. But as you age, you should take a serious look at what you are lacking.  Skinny runners would do well to cut back their mileage and strength train 2 days a week.  Big muscular or more commonly these days fat, people should focus on endurance and cardiovascular fitness. So in a nutshell do what you are NOT good at and maybe don’t yet enjoy to develop the neglected aspects of your fitness.
  • Mobility mobility mobility! I honestly think for every hour of other fitness activity you do you should spend half as much time at least on mobility.  Some exercises like running for me require a 1 to 1 ratio.  Now you know why I don’t do 30 mile runs anymore!
  • As we age consistency becomes more and more important. The other day I had done my strength routine in the morning and a few hours later decided it was time expedient to go running.  About half way through the run I could tell the earlier effort and the unseasonable 85-degree weather were taking their toll so I cut the run short.  In doing this I probably avoided overtraining, possible injury, certain dehydration and skipping several days of running to recover.  Wisdom has taught me that showing up for the next workout is far more important than “getting my miles in” or hitting a certain weight lifted.  Show up!!!! Show up consistently so you can say it really is a habit!  Otherwise you’ll always be planning your personal fitness routine and not executing it.  You’ll always be planning and wishing you were fit instead of being it.

Experience has taught me!!!!

Now there are many things I did not cover such as changing your routines, sport specific stuff, periodization etc.  The info I have given you is an all-day everyday kind of approach.  If you want to develop specific attributes, then periodization may work better for you.

But I have found that such discussions become more and more the territory of personal trainers and exercise physiologists than aging athletes!

Your Health Secret for the Day is: Try spending the next 6 weeks doing the opposite of what you are good at!  If you are skinny and weak, do body weight, weight and band exercises. If you are strong in specific movements, try the bodyweight version of them and do some high intensity interval training on a Versa Climber or stationary bike.  Do what DOES NOT COME naturally to you for a month and a half while still doing less of what you are good at.  You may just discovery the missing link to your true fitness.

 

Live long, live well, have fun and share it!

 

Doc21

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True Fitness and Personal Bias for My Friends Over 40 Part 1

Well my friend it’s time to visit the fitness question again.   If you are familiar with my blogs in the past I have weighed in on the “best” kinds of exercises often.  The true answer to the “best “question is always “It depends on what you are trying to achieve!”

As a brief review, stuff that works for weight loss may not be the best for aesthetics. Stuff that works for endurance is not going to get you “big” and stuff that is centered on “anti-aging” is not necessarily the best for ANY of the rest of it.

So this now begs the question: what is fitness!

Rather than go into some long winded diatribe that parrots the experts in the field, I will keep it simple.

True fitness is something that allows you to do more of what you want to do with greater ease and nourishes your body in the process.

As you can see we are back to the “it depends” scenario but let me give you some practical interpretations.

A young testosterone driven male is focused on totally different things than a mother who is trying to lose “baby weight”.  One might say that endurance exercise is worthless if you can’t even bench press your body weight.  The other might say what good is all that specific strength if you can’t climb a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing.

Gee! Wouldn’t it be great if you could do both!!!

Of course you can and maybe should but let’s look a little bit closer and pick a way to decide what fitness really is, understanding that any definition is incomplete artificial and will probably change depending on what stage of life you are in and maybe even more importantly, how much time you have to spare.

But first let me tell you about a dream I had!

I dreamed I was running miles and miles along some city streets and country roads.  I am sure I was into the run for at least 20, probably 30 miles.  It was fun, in my dream- I was enjoying it.  Then reality set in.  Much like a lucid dream I started realizing this was “another me”- a dream me.  All of a sudden I realized I was carrying a heavy pack and did not know quite how to make it comfortable.  No matter I thought, this is fun!  Well then somehow my car magically appeared and I decided to put the heavy pack in the car and come back for it later.  Nice to be without this burden or so it seemed.

Then I realized I was actually pretty tired and had run enough.  “I’ll do a longer run down the road soon.”, I reasoned. Well you can probably guess that the next step in the dream was to sit in the car, turn the key and drive away!

Wow that felt nice!

I guess the point is that where reality and the dream world met I had the personal revelation that while running long distances WAS fun at one point in my life, the cost of doing it was no longer worth the reward.  I guess you could say, “Been there done that!”

What does this have to do with fitness you may ask, especially for you personally.

My point is your goals, needs, and enjoyments change. Allow that to be and be mindful of how that may impact your fitness in this current moment.

I always believed that doing what worked before was a sure fire way to get where I had been. The problem is that in spite of my many and successful efforts at staying young, my body has changed.

I tolerate sleep deprivation less.  Alcohol and carbohydrates and I do not get along any more- at all.

I need an extra day to rest and “doubles” (where I do an endurance workout and a strength workout in the same day) are generally not productive.  Viz a viz my dream, I also know that I would not be able to go from running a few miles a week to a 125K race in 8 months the way I did 8 years ago.

So once again how do we define fitness. Let’s face it most of us define it by past achievements. A long ultramarathon (yes there are short ones!) sets the bar pretty high.  A couple of true one arm pull ups sets the bar pretty high.  Benching 2 or 3 times your body weight sets the bar pretty high.

Before you look at and design your current program you need to truly ask if what you did in the past that got you into “the best shape of your life” is what you want now.

Personally I remember a moment when I was out on a 25 mile run and literally flying up the hills at the same pace I was able to handle on the flat.  That felt amazing- amazing enough that I remember it as a specific moment or vignette if you will.  But that was somewhere in training not several weeks later when I actually ran the 125K race.  Frankly the whole experience while mentally amazing was physically bad for me. The sequelae lasted several years to be frank!

What about when I was “strong”?  I honestly don’t remember how much weight was on the bar any more but it was enough to make the bar bend pretty significantly and it was way more than I weighed. But I doubt I could have done 5 pull ups and I was sore all the time.

Is that fitness?

Nowadays I am much more about the feeling good and doing things aspect of fitness. In the next blog I will get to the meat of the matter and tell you what I have learned from my adventures and misadventures.

Your health secret for the day and kinda your homework for the next installment is to answer the question, “What is it you really want from your body?” Keep in mind you can have it all- just not to the degree you probably want!

See you next time!

Doc

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Why We Get Fat and the World’s Best Diet

I am taking a short break and stepping off my telomere / fish oil soap box to revisit a topic that in the past was a big favorite: diet and obesity.

As I mentioned in my last blog my descent and resurrection from obesity is graphically detailed on the Ultra Strength Fat Furnace page.

My own journey to getting fat is actually pretty typical at least in terms of reasons why.

Those reasons are: significant and sudden decrease in activity, complete abandonment of any dietary restrictions in terms of my food choices, and finally lack of concern over how many calories I took in.  Briefly this was supposed to be an experiment to prove that Ultra Strength Fat Furnace worked and sped up weight loss.  I was going to gain 15 pounds and then hit the brakes and reverse it in a few weeks by reinstating my life style and adding the supplement I had created. I stopped all of my supplements during this time and man was it easy to pack on the pounds. The unplanned part happened when I developed and acute appendicitis and added 6 more weeks of inactivity and another 35 pounds to the weight loss tally.

A few months and 50 pounds less later I learned a couple of very important things I want to share with you about why we get fat and the world’s best diet to lose that fat.

The specific reasons I gave you above are the reason most people get fat. Once again they are:

  • Too many calories in.
  • Too few calories out.
  • Not enough physical activity.
  • The wrong choices of food.

The first 3 are undeniable and pretty much everybody knows this.  But the last one is really a sticking point.

Our diets are loaded with inflammatory food choices. By that I mean foods that tilt the balance of our immune system towards inflammation and cause havoc over time with our health.  But they also set up a kind of chain reaction where inflammation begets more inflammation and now you have a cycle that reinforces itself.  That is much harder to do once that cycle is established than it is to nip it in the bud.

At the same time our diets are loaded with carbs and sugar. Notice I am not distinguishing between simple and complex carbs anymore.  I am saying ALL carbs. Now I can hear the dieticians in the audience grumbling about my obvious “mistake” and oversight but I am very deliberate.

I think the best diet for rapid weight loss and overall health is a diet (e.g. reduced calories!) that leads to ketosis in your body.  You can call it a ketogenic diet if you like.  I think the biggest benefits are seen by the combination of ketosis and dietary energy reduction (DER). Some people would call that “calorie restriction” but I do not want to invoke all the baggage that comes with that term.  My recent sojourn to Wiaken Ranch in Joseph Oregon with OMD Dr Laurel Sander has reinforced that.  Seven days of juice (again some people would call that a “juice fast” and a daily calorie intake of about 50% my usual was easy to maintain and resulted in rapid weight loss of about 7 pounds. And it has stayed off because my appetite has stayed under control.

So if you like Carbs are the enemy. Simple carbs much more so than complex and fruits much more so than vegetables and sugared fruits and juices (ever wonder how they get cranberries to taste sweet?!).  In a month or so I will tackle a seven day water fast and let you know how that goes.

Anything that rapidly cranks up your insulin levels is a bad thing for your weight and your health. Be particularly wary of the “whole grain” agenda. There are a ton of reasons why I am not a grain fan but for our purposes today it’s because they tend to be loaded with calories even in small portions.

The things I really want to stress here are the following: Sugar is indeed addictive and sugary food choices including sweet fruits can sabotage your appetite control. You will get hungry by eating carbs in excess of 20 or so grams a day and this will make dieting miserable, exhausting and most likely, a failure.

I have always found that by day 3 or so of a really low carb ketogenic diet I have a lot of energy even with DER.

So is this the best diet in the world?  Just like my last blog the answer is “It depends”.

I think it is the best one to induce fairly rapid weight loss and long term recognition of your eating “habits”. Eating by routine instead of hunger fuels most of our “waist lines”. It will also teach you how sneaky and pervasive sugar and carbs that easily go to sugar are at getting you to lose control of food choices, portion control and your will power. Carbs and insulin are the enemy and sugars are far more addictive for some of us than we realize.

Finally it will teach you a huge lesson: most of us eat too much! Plain and simple.*

With those lessons you will gain insight into your body and how it works that will help you in ways you never dreamed of and give you a new sense of control over your life.

But as a long term diet I think its too easy to get into vitamin deficiencies if you are not careful. If you decide to do this make sure you take your supplements .

If it all seems too much for you than just go here and make it much easier .

Either way its time to take control of your weight and your life. Let’s make 2014 that year!

Doc

*I am referring to middle aged adults here because that is the “most of us” that is interested in staying younger. On a side note 10 years ago I carried 235 lbs of mostly muscle around. Nowadays its more like 195 with a similar body composition. I think being leaner as you age is just much healthier. And it will keep you from being “one of the many”. When I walk around in the company of guys my age with the huge guts, crappy posture and fat faces I feel like one of us is not human!

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Aerobic versus Intervals – The Best kind of Exercise Revisited

For the past decade I have intermittently written about the effects of exercise on health and body composition (primarily weight loss). My own descent and resurrection from Obesity is well detailed in graphic fashion. At that time I also obtained my CPT (Personal Trainer) certificate and began what would amount to a biannual sojourn to Boca Raton and the Institute of Human Performance to visit then Guru now Guru and dear friend Juan Carlos Santana.

I have learned an awful lot from Carlos and it has spurred my continued study of Exercise Physiology, something I obtained a Masters Degree in many years ago.

Along with over a decade of medical practice and another decade in supplement design all interspersed with tons of public speaking teaching normal people and doctors, I distilled one of the most common questions I get asked about exercise into the title of this blog.

“Doc what is the best kind of exercise?!”

I must get asked that 100 times a year from all kinds of people in all kinds of places.  I often give them JC’s answer: The best exercise is the one YOU do!

While this may sound like I am running from the issue it is not. JC has captured the central conundrum of exercise- We can’t get people to do enough of it regularly! Now that is a whole ‘nother lecture so I’ll save that and give my next most common answer:

It depends.

It depends very much on what you want. So then I have to go down that garden pathway with the person and find out what level of motivation, starting fitness and health and realistically what they are likely to stick with.

No mean feat.

The answer I most commonly get is…

“Doc I want to lose this excess body fat!  But I also want to have a great body be healthy and still feel attractive. I want fat loss strength and flexibility. I want to be sexy and have a high level of endurance. I want a six pack (guys) and a nice butt (girls). I don’t want to be muscle bound but I want to have muscles. I want to get rid of this belly (guys) and the muffin top (girls).  Oh yeah and I don’t want to be tired all the time. I don’t want to spend much money or invest much time either because I am super busy with all the other stuff that I have somehow decided is far more important than my health. I still need to watch my favorite TV shows and eat out 5 times a week at least. By the way will I have to diet to get to where I want? I hope not. Can’t I just exercise 20 minutes 3x a week like it says on www.MiracleBodyInFiveMinutesADay.com ?” (Not a real link!)

In other words they want everything.

Not once has anyone ever said, “I want to do the exercise that helps me age most gracefully!” And rarely does anyone say “I want to learn to move better.”

There was this guy named Hans Seyle back in the 1930’s who coined the term adaptation as it applies to the body’s response to exercise. If you keep his principle of adaptation in mind you will understand the body becomes a mirror of the stimulus you give it. Power lifters get powerful and strong. They don’t always look that aesthetically pleasing.  Body builders get less strong significantly bigger (steroids aside) and much more aesthetically pleasing as long as they don’t go overboard. Runners tend to get scrawny in weak looking but they can go forever. And so on and so forth. Ultimately and this is just my opinion Gymnasts for men and skaters for women have the best overall aesthetically pleasing looks.

The point is you become a mirror of the kind of stimulus you give your body so chose wisely and don’t expect running to make you big by itself or power lifting to make you ultra lean by itself.

When I wrote my portion of our book “The Immortality Edge” I had had a lot of exposure to people who advocated Sprint or High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).Two of the biggest pioneers were Matt Furey and Phil Campbell in that order and were among the first to fuel the fires of what would become the modern HIIT craze.

In our book we wrote that HIIT was the most efficient way to get in shape, maintain health and body weight. We also wrote about its effects on telomere length which is actually shared by Long Slow Distance (LSD).

I chose HIIT type training for the following reasons:

  1. It required only 30 min or so to get a great workout
  2. It can be done as almost zero impact in the pool
  3. It seems to be the fastest way to increase your cardiovascular fitness rapidly at least to a point.
  4. There is less of a tendency to stimulate the monstrous appetite that seems to follow really Long LSD exercise
  5. Bottom line this is a very efficient way to get in shape
  6. The contribution of EPOC Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption was supposed to be enough to add hundreds of calories to the overall calorie burn well beyond the time spent exercising. I had read some early studies that noted up to 600 calories more above and beyond whatever was burned during the exercise bout itself.

So EPOC became the buzz word for fat loss, sexy body composition and spiritual transformation and EPOC became the ‘secret’ to all good things that was defended by its faithful legion.But during my observations of how this type training affected my body I found I did not agree with the last point..  As per my usual approach of, “Gee this is pretty important since the whole premise is built on it. If I can I need to be sure that it is true or not true”, I found a simple way to do some research.

I found a device that accurately measures RMR and MR under other circumstances several years ago called Body Gem.  I initially used this device to evaluate 2 things:  The effects of exercise on me and a few willing “guinea pigs”, and the effects of what was then new, Energy X Maxx to the mix.

What I found was I did not lose weight on interval training alone.

In addition I did not have the “getting ripped effect” where body composition changed and body fat melted off me*. This was important because advocates of HIIT defended and marketed both of things like crazy.  Moreover I did not find the Effect of EPOC to be all that earth shattering.  Even with Tabata type intervals I only burned around 220 calories above resting and in me at least the level of increased metabolism lasted far less than the 24 to 36 hours that were originally touted. If you think about it in terms of weight loss and body composition you would want more calories burned than you take in and you would somehow like to shunt those calories away from muscle and into fat. Both were purported benefits of HIIT.

When I added the Energy X Maxx I was able to document on myself and several others around about 600 calories total excess burned (including the 200 from exercise) and see the effect lasting almost a full 24 hours although the level of burn fell off progressively from the time of exercise.

What I ultimately concluded was:

  1. In a well trained middle aged man trying to lose weight HIIT alone when adjusted for the progressive loss of effect over several hours probably was good for 100 calories of extra energy burned. My volunteers (all 4 of them!) had similar results.
  2. By adding a thermogenic supplement and adjusting for progressive loss of effect over time (although a 2 or 3X a day dose routine mitigated this somewhat) I could account for about 400 calories more. Again this is above and beyond the calorie burn of the HIIT session which was usually a 30 minute session with 90 to 92% heart rate for 30 second intervals repeated 8 times. That accounted for another 250 calories or so.
  3. HIIT alone was not going to help with weight loss although it was effective for weight maintenance. Adding a thermogenic definitely made weight loss easier and rather dramatic because 600 calories extra everyday for 6 weeks adds up to serious weight loss!
  4. EPOC was at least in me way overestimated even when different lengths and times of intervals were used. I started with traditional Tabata type intervals on a treadmill or stationary bike at first.
  5. To get the kind of fitness level and body I wanted I had to use more or less standard resistance training and some LSD as well. If the LSD could integrate some intervals (brutally hard to do!) it had even more benefit!
  6. Contrary to what the Gurus had written, LSD also had some EPOC, in some cases more than HIIT!

It turns out that several years after my little personal study several bona fide scientific studies were done and they showed the following.

The maximum EPOC from HIIT training was only 10% of the actual total calorie burn, was long gone after less than 6 hours, maxed out at 220 Cal which again was a spot measurement and fell of the further you went out from the actual exercise. It was long gone the same day and lasted nowhere near the purported 24 hours.

Stated another way HIIT calories come mainly from the actual bout of exercise not the EPOC- something I found to be true years earlier in my own case.

Now here is the thing. I still stand by our recommendations in the Immortality Edge because HIIT may actually work better for out of shape people to get them in shape than any other type of exercise.  It certainly works faster!  Depending on what type of HIIT you do you will get some different results. When I was doing my personal study I eventually settled on 4 minute intervals at 85% heart rate max ( and this was controlled by using a HR monitor) with anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes recovery depending on where my fitness level was.  Repeats were 6 to 8 and I did these on a Schwinn Airdyne cycle which remains my favorite low impact device.  I did my Tabata’s (30 seconds on full and 30 to 60 seconds off) with a flotation vest in deep water at the pool.

When you do the longer lower intensity intervals

It has been shown to improve your heart rate and “cardio” conditioning more than the really short super high intensity ones which develop explosive strength more.  As you go longer the contribution of aerobic (burning oxygen) metabolism goes up so this makes sense.

All HIIT had very positive benefits on metabolic parameters like insulin; blood lipids etc so from a health perspective it seems you can get the same benefits as LSD in less time.

What did I learn?

HIIT is very efficient and very useful. It is a great way to “get” in shape or get to the next level of fitness.  It has great metabolic effects. It is not, at least for me and my co-crazies, a way of losing weight or changing body composition by itself. It requires support from other forms of exercise including LSD.

So HIIT is slowly coming down off its high horse and LSD is resuming its rightful place among exercise.  This upsets a lot of people.  I can recall a Gynecologist publically ridiculing me and humiliating himself by angrily telling me I was FOS when I said we are always in the fat burning zone except when we are doing HIIT! He insisted incorrectly that you only burn fat when you hit 90% of your Heart Rate and that this was the “Fat Burning Zone”. This is what happens when people get their information from the internet and believe people who “look” credible but are themselves FOS.

HIIT burns more fat after in its EPOC phase but as we see that was way over estimated. During your HIIT session you are actually using the glycolytic (sugar burning lactate producing) pathways. The angry Gynecologist had done something I see all to commonly these days. He let an internet site or Guru make him forget his education in favor of popular public opinion. Destroying a myth is not a great way to win friends and influence people!

And what happened to all the HIIT gurus?

They are still out there quoting the old studies done with old inaccurate methodology and study design.  The courses and books touting “Get Ripped”  “Afterburn” and “Destroying the Fat Loss Dogma” are still referenced as gospel truth. The information is still quoted as factual, and their devoted legions are still angrily lashing out at me.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I get some comments on this blog that way even though I have had very positive things to say about HIIT.

In the meantime I still stand by my original answer to the question, “Doc what is the best form of exercise?”

It depends.

 

All the Best,

Dr Dave

 

*There are several well known videos and highly respected trainers who have shown wonderful transformations in their athletes by adding HIIT training and decreasing other forms of training during this time. Tabata the Japanese speed skating coach had great results with his speed skaters in competition and noted remarkable increases in their aerobic capacity. Here’s the thing. These people were all Olympic level athletes. They were already at a super human level of fitness and probably needed one tweak to their training to change their outcomes. That tweak was the metabolic boost given by HIIT but it was contingent on a couple of things: They were quite YOUNG like under 30. They were already in tremendous shape and could tolerate maximal or even “supra” maximal stimulus without whining or getting injured. Their training environment and nutrition were strictly controlled and they did not do other things like try to earn a living. And I guarantee you they did a ton of other stuff besides just HIIT, including some LSD and weight training.

When these principles were applied to even the average active young person the results were less stellar. In the middle aged about to get sick group, you know the 50 something fat  metabolic early diabetic men, the calorie burns were flat out disappointing even though they were at 85% max heart rate. They stayed kinda fat middle aged and frumpy!  But, they got healthier in a big way quick. In other words it not only depends on what YOU want but WHERE you are starting from and how far you can actually go!

 

References:

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Still not Dead!

In mid-July a ridiculous poorly designed poorly done study was published by a “reputable journal” from the National Cancer Institute.  It associated “high Omega 3 intake” with a 70% increased risk of prostate cancer. It was published by one Dr T. Brasky and his research time and derived from a sub group analysis of another study called the SELECT Trail designed to look at the effects of selenium on prostate cancer risk.

In my blog “As I lay Dying” and the subsequent blogs after it I detailed how absurd the Brasky study was. I concluded that in my opinion the negative press was absolutely a deliberate ploy in the part of these researchers to get attention.

Sadly it worked.

For a while.

I remember one irate gentleman out there who engaged me on another web site basically saying that 3 well known experts including a nationally famous Urologist and a well-known Endocrinologist said it was dangerous and “did I think I knew more about prostate cancer than they did”.

I didn’t bother to answer at that point because it was pointless but here is the answer I would have given: “No I don’t know more about prostate cancer, but I know a hell of a lot more about Omega 3’s and fish oil than those bozo’s!”

So for about 6 weeks I stood as pretty much a lone voice for fish oil.

But I predicted in due time another study, a better designed study, a study that was actually asking a question instead of selling and agenda, would come out and refute any association and support the use of fish oil as a beneficial thing in prostate cancer.

This by the way is not rocket science. The positive studies on fish oil outnumber the negative 99.9 to1.

So a recent study from UCLA was just released that showed the combination of a low fat diet along with fish oil ( which is ALL fat by the way!) may help prevent recurrent prostate cancer and decrease its growth .

One comment the only role of eating a low fat diet in this disease and other diseases in my opinion is that it limits the amount of grain fed Omega 6 rich meat these men consumed. If they ate free range grass fed I think it would be of additional help.

One way to boost the Omega 3 ratio in the blood is to consume less of its opposite, Omega 6.

Restricting Omega 6 and increasing Omega 3 are critical to cancer prevention in everything I have ever read.

Which leads me to the final statement. I think the National Cancer Institute’s allowance of Dr Brasky’s study to be published was bordering on criminal.

Worse werethe statements he allegedly made recommending people to consume more Omega 6.

That advice will in my opinion actually increase your risk of cancer.

To all the internet guru’s, internet doctors, cowardly health care providers, news anchors and “experts” who immediately jumped on the “Fish oil may increase risk of Prostate Cancer” where are you now?

Probably onto some other trending story that will boost your sales and your ratings.

 

To the guy who told me I was wrong and he was right because he had expert opinion on his side, I am waiting for your letter of apology.

I have yet to see one retraction from anyone.

To all my faithful readers, clients, customers and patients who had learned enough from me to know this whole thing was bogus I say congratulations for not being snowed by “public opinion”.

If anything, after 12 years you know I tell you the truth even when it is not popular. I don’t side with the traditional allopathic agenda. I don’t side with the Holistic or Alternative agenda. I routinely disagree with “experts” on both sides of that fence.

Me? I side with the truth. And believe me there is truth out there.

That truth is all you and me will ever need to live our best lives!

With deepest appreciation…

Dr Dave

PS Not only am I not dead, but I am growing younger as we speak!!!

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