Fred Hahn's Ideas and Insights on Exercise and Nutrition to Better Your Life

Mice Are Men?

This article titled Low -Fat Diet May Cut Prostate Cancer Risk was in today's NY Times Health section.

You know I gotta say that these are the types of articles that really get my blood boiling. They also give me a good belly laugh. Let's start with the laughter:

"Using a mouse model that closely mimics human prostate cancer, researchers fed one group of mice a diet with about 40 percent of calories coming from fat, similar to the amount found in a typical Western diet. The other group received 12 percent of their calories from fat."

A mouse model. Mice.

And they fed mice a diet that had 40% fat. An animal that isn't designed to eat much fat. Remember mad cow's disease?

OK here's the belly laugh:

"Although the data come from mice, researchers say it’s reasonable to think the finding will translate to people."

Really? I'd venture a guess and say that it's just as reasonable to think that the finding would NOT translate to people.

Who are these researchers? Are these people scientists? Let's see:

"Scientists at Jonsson Cancer Center at the University of California, Los Angeles."

Yep. They're scientists alright. Pretty crummy ones if they actually made this laughable statement. Let's see what else they said:

"Researchers say there are already known benefits to lowering or eliminating processed baked goods and fried foods from the diet."

Careful there you smarty-pants researchers.

Questions: How do they know it is the fat that is the culprit? Why couldn't it be the refined carbohydrates? Or the combination of both the fat and carbohydrate? Or simply the type of fat and not the amount? Or just the fact that the foods are processed which wreaks havoc on our systems?

Do you think that the mice would have had this problem if they were fed only almonds and avocados?

The title of the article should have been:

Mice That Are Fed Foods Consisting Of A Macro Nutrient Content That They Never Would Naturally Eat In The Wild Get Cancer.

Can you imagine a doctor saying:

"Well Mr. Smith, I know you're concerned about your hair loss. But now there's good news! Research shows that if I inject a mouse in the head with the fluid in this syringe, its hair grows much thicker. It's reasonable to assume that if it grows the hair of a mouse thicker, it will work on you too. Shall I go ahead and inject this into your skull now?"

I think you'd bolt.

Might Is Right

Today's NY Times had a nice article on the importance of strength training.

Here's a snippet from the article that I liked:

"Healthy muscles, researchers say, are  those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their  limit..."

Here's one I sort of didn't like:

"And keeping muscles fit takes effort, which means regular training with weight lifting and cardiovascular exercise..."

Regular training sounds somewhat misleading. It sounds like weight lifting is something you should do nearly everyday. Research indicates that twice weekly strength training for 15-20 minutes a pop is all you need.

By and large, cardiovascular exercises do NOT keep muscles from atrophy (weakening) and are usually orthopedicaly compromising, meaning, bad for you. Strength training all by its lonesome improves cardiovascular health and aerobic capacity.

Strength training also allows you to perform cardio or aerobic sports better and with less chance of injury. So if you enjoy these types of things,  you'll be able to keep up with them into your later years.

The concept of keeping 'fit' is an odd one. Fit for what exactly? Just becasue you are a good runner doesn't mean you can swim well. Being fit for soccer doesn't make you fit for racquet ball. 'Fit' is a catchphrase used to describe a general condition of the body when it really describes a specific condition.

The article goes on to say:

"If you don’t work your muscles, they will atrophy, especially as you grow older."

This is not entirely true. It isn't just work that strengthens muscles and keeps them from atrophy. Walking is work. Jogging is work. Badminton is work. But these activities will NOT keep muscles from weakening as we age. Remember  what was said above:

"Healthy muscles, researchers say, are  those that have been worked, stressed and pushed to their  limit..."

And they're right. Sadly, most people have no idea what this means - or takes.

This statement:

"To maintain endurance, you  should engage in activities that  pump blood to the muscles, like walking."

Sure - walking is fine. But strength training pumps blood into the muscles better than anything.  Improvements in strength lead directly to improvements in muscular and cardio endurance. So strength training once again fills the bill all by itself.

Lastly, Dr. Kramer's comments:

"The most effective way to stimulate muscles is with a system known as progressive resistance. This approach can take about three hours a week and includes days, once a week or so, when you lift weights so heavy that you can do only three to five repetitions before your muscles are too tired to lift again. Other days are devoted to moderate resistance, with weights you can lift 8 to 10 times. And then you should have some light days, with weights you can lift 12 to 15 times before your muscles tire."

Actually this is not what is meant by progressive resistance. Progressive resistance involves making weights in an exercise heavier, little by little, as time goes on.

What Dr. Kramer is describing (and wrote a book about) is known as periodization. There is absolutely no evidence to support Dr. Kramer's opinion that periodizing your weight lifting (as he describes it above) is a necessary method for building strength.

In fact, we already learned from this article - by Dr. Kramer himself - that light lifting days where you use weights so light that you can do 12-15 reps is a waste of time.

Dr. Kramer said:

"Those who do try to lift at the gym  can end up  using weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate their muscles."

Using weights that allow you to do 12-15 reps in a controlled (proper) fashion would be a fairly good definition of weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate the muscles.

All in all it's a good article praising the benefits of strength training but it also keeps some long standing myths alive.

And truth be told, strength training offers a lot more benefits than the article mentions!

Keeping Track

Keeping track of your what you eat is a critical part of achieving the fat loss as well as the muscle gains you desire.  If you don't keep track, you won't do as well as you could - that's the fact Jack.

FitDay is a free (yes I said free!) online and fairly easy to use tracking system to manage what you eat and much more. You can create goals, mark notes, etc.

Use it and lose it. (And gain it!)

One thing - I have not yet checked to see if every entry is calorically or macronutriently correct. Nor will I. So don't get hot under the collar at me if you find errors which you probably will. None of these resources are perfect.

Thanks to Neil Holland for alerting me to this neato resource.

The Three Worst Words

When strung together, the three worst words in the English language are:

You made me....

Usually these words are followed by words like: 'feel,' 'do,' 'lose,' etc.

But it's just as bad when you follow these three words with positive endings like: 'love,' 'happy,' 'understand,' etc.

No one makes you do or feel anything. Not really.

These three words should be replaced by:

I choose to...

Taking responsibility for your actions, your feelings, and your successes and failures will lead to a higher degree of accomplishment and the sustainability of such accomplishments.

"I choose to be stronger." "I choose to become leaner." "I choose to become healthy."

These are far more powerful ways of expressing your desires and making them come true.

And as a bonus thought, if your thinking about becoming stronger, leaner and healthier, stop deciding and choose.

Big difference.

Bill and Jeanie

Bill and Jeanie stopped in today for a workout (they are the ones in the middle) between big Tommy Day and myself.

They are RVers from the state of  Washington who purchased my home workout DVD (via my friends and co-authors Mike and Mary Dan Eades MD website ) which included a complimentary workout at our studio in NYC.

So they popped in and had a fantastic workout with master instructor and human being Tommy Day.

You couldn't find nicer people if you tried.

Totally made my day. 

Me and DC

My family and I took a lovely trip to Washington DC this past weekend. The weather was beautiful and we had some fascinating experiences.

Here is a pic of the beauties in front of the inn we stayed at

This was a nice B&B. Comfy beds, cool pictures of presidents, monuments, etc. All great save for the continental breakfast. If the Inn had a theme song it would be Sugar Mountain by Neil Young.

Like a jerkaholic, I failed to take pictures of the breakfast table. I apologize for this.

Allow me to describe the fare.

On the lovely linened table sat a basket of various breads and English muffins. A large pitcher of nonfat milk accompanied an even larger pitcher of OJ. Jams and jellies of all colors were available and 4 different kinds of sugars were stuffed into a crystal sugar packet holder. There was also a container of  Nutella, which is a chocolate/hazelnut spread of some sort.

Centered on the long, beautifully carved maple counter where the coffee and non dairy creamer sat, a giant bowl of bagels dominated the scene. As you moved your way past this enormous container of gluten, more breads and muffins greeted you. Past this were big, half filled, glass containers of Frosted Mini-wheats, Frosted Flakes, Frosted something else and a container of non-frosted something else with nuts and seeds in it.

This container was completely full. In front of this sat a little bowl of raisins. Also full.

And that is it. A boiled egg or piece of meat was not to be found, or even smelled cooking in the distance.

The folks who sat around the big breakfast table were from many different lands. But the largest of the folks (by far) were the Americans and in particular the ones from Connecticut. The German family were the leanest of the lot.

Fearing having to drink skim milk in our watered down B&B coffee, I brought along a pint of organic heavy cream. As we had no fridge, I sat it on the table for anyone to share.

Surprisingly the the coffee was quite good and not surprisingly, the milk available was all skim. Needless to say I scored big points with my wife for suggesting we schlep the cream.

As we ate, I watched with delight as the older German woman took my pint of cream and poured it into her cereal bowl - the cereal that had the nuts and seeds mind you. My wife who speaks German told me that their conversation at that moment was all about how little fat and how much sugar there was at the breakfast table. The older woman remarked that there is usually Speck (smoked ham) included in a continental breakfast or other meats.

Not a single American touched the cream. They seem to be repelled by it.

Perhaps the highlight was visiting the Jefferson memorial by paddle boat.

Jefferson's majestic statue is a sight to see.

But before we donned our life jackets, I saw the horror or horrors - and I couldn't believe my eyes.

A very large woman was force feeding her 1 year old a bag of Lays potato chips. I watched in horror as she shoved the nonliving substance directly into her child's mouth. (I tried to snap a picture of this for you but my wife almost bit my head off so, sorry, no pictures of this.) 

As the kid gummed and tasted it, his face contorted in pain and disgust and within seconds began to eject the now half fluid, half particle substance onto the paddle boat dock. Clearly his little body knew that such poisons must be ejected.

But it got worse.

The large woman became enraged by this denial and scolded the child for spewing out the gooey substance. After shaking her meaty finger at the poor kid in anger she began to shove yet another one into his helpless little mouth. A crime in progress.

The older kid, her daughter I presume, was also eating the chips. But it appeared that years of force feeding and scolding had made her like and enjoy the poisonous product. 

It was like I was watching a horror film or being in a bad dream where you can't move. I felt the need to do something but alas I could not. It would have made a perfect Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

What would he have done?

Remember Reminders

One BIG problem with reaching your fat loss goals is remembering that you have one.

I find it a very common happenstance for people to totally forget, after about 11 hours, that they made a goal to become lean and mean.

Reminders are wonderful things - and necessary things to use. Post-its can be your best friend by sticking them on your bathroom window, fridge door, vanity mirror, front door, above the toilet paper dispenser, with phrases like:

"I am in the process of becoming lean and healthy." (Don't say things like "I am lean and healthy!" if you are not yet. It will deflate your ability to achieve your goals.)

" I have a powerful goal to live longer stronger!" (Make sure your goal is crystal clear.)

"I can and will achieve my goal of _______."

"It's hard but rewarding and I am doing it!"

Be creative. Write things that speak you your inner self. Be bold but most of all be honest.

Avoid ridiculous lofty goals like "I will lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks for my wedding." 5-10 pounds in this time frame is more like it.

Above all, help your brain to remember your goals by setting these reminders all over the place. Memory fades with time and unlike the memory of your first kiss, your fat loss goals won't last long.

"To Be Weak Is Miserable" - Milton

Shakespeare said it in a more positive tone:

"O! 'Tis excellent to have a giants strength."

Top ten reasons to strength train:

1. Maintain and increase muscle tone, muscle mass
2. Increase bone density
3. Improve hormonal tone
4. Enhance joint flexibility
5. Decrease body fat
6. Strengthen the cardiovascular system
7. Improves mood, sleep and digestion
8. Control and regulate blood sugar
9. Ease arthritis pain

And for number 10, drum roll please:

     10. Makes you look and feel sexy.

What - you gonna argue with Will?

And all of the above  can be yours for the one low, low price of 30 minutes of your time per week.

Good and Bad Cholesterol - No Such Thing!

I was reading one of my many books on cholesterol and it really hit me how wrong - dead wrong the concept of good and bad cholesterol is.

I am in now way the first person to say this by any stretch of the imagination. However I feel that for the sake of my clients and others who read this blog who have fallen prey to this myth and are ingesting liver damaging and muscle wasting drugs called statins I must shout this out loudly:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOOD AND BAD CHOLESTEROL.

The concept is a marketing ploy used successfully by drug companies to get you dependent on their expensive products.

And yes - doctors are just as easily persuaded by the marketing and are surprisingly unaware of the science on the issue. Shockingly unaware I should say.

Cholesterol is just cholesterol. Again this ain't my idea - it's fact.

LDL or the 'bad cholesterol' isn't even cholesterol - its a protein. Yes a protein. And the job of this protein it to transport cholesterol to tissues to regenerate more healthy cells and repair damaged ones. Indeed LDL is a taxi cab that gives cholesterol a ride in order to make more healthy cells so that you (and all other living things for that matter) can continue living healthfully. 

HDL or the 'good cholesterol' isn't cholesterol either - its a protein too. And its job it to take cholesterol back to your liver to essentially recycle it for reuse as cholesterol is an expensive molecule for your liver to produce. HDL's job is NOT to remove cholesterol from your body or gobble it up and destroy it.

So let's think about this for a sec - if you decrease your LDL what exactly are you doing? You are in essence decreasing your bodies ability to create new, healthy cells.

Same goes for decreasing HDL. Not good. Bad, in fact.

Now, LDL proteins have essentially 2 sizes - small and large. The small particles are the ones that can get stuck inside the nooks and crannies or gaps (called the gap junction) of the vessel walls. When they get stuck they oxidize and become rancid as all non moving fats will do. Diet regulate the size of these particles. Small LDL particles, it appears, are created by a poor diet specifically ingesting foods high in sugar.

So if you think that slice of Wonder whole wheat bread or that bowl of Quaker oatmeal (sugar) is doing you and your heart some good, think again. Its just more propaganda that we've all fallen for. Glucose is an extremely inflammatory substance and is far more likely to cause heart disease than our friend cholesterol.

The large LDL particles are the ones that won't get stuck and the ones we want plenty of. Eating healthfully assures this.

Statins tend to decrease both HDL and the number of large LDL particles and increase the number of small particles. This is shown is research.

What this all means is, cholesterol lowering drugs are then the real demons - they are the destroyers of our health not cholesterol.

Cholesterol is our friend.

Fast or Slow - What's the Deal?

Justin is understandably miffed by all of the talk and misinformation spouted by fitness experts who falsely accuse slow training as useless for athletics. These folks contend that by training slowly with weights you will teach your muscles to move slowly and become slow.

I find this very funny for several reasons. But the one that cracks me up the most is its converse - if training slow makes you slow does training fast make you only fast? Does this mean that when you engage in an athletic endeavor that requires a slow and steady effort all you will be able to do is flail and fling your limbs about?

This would be very funny in the decent into an iron cross on the still rings (Doink, snap!), in a bowling match (whip, flingggg!) or in mountain climbing ("grab, grab, grab, grab, ahhhhhhh....")

Here is what the fast advocates mistake (and bear in mind that they criticize slow rep training without ever having tried it for any lengthy period of time and without EVER experiencing the resulting fictitious sloth like movements caused by such) - they mistake fast twitch fiber and slow twitch fiber characteristics.

Muscles fibers are a mixed bag of force producing engines.

We have all sorts of fibers but they are mostly characterized by 1. Slow twitch 2. Medium twitch 3. Fast twitch. There are all sorts of sub-characteristics but for now we'll stick to these.

OK here is the mistake - these terms fast, slow and medium refer to the fibers fatigue characteristics NOT to their ability to produce force.

IOW if a person had all red oxygen rich slow twitch fibers in her elbow flexors (biceps) she could still bend her elbow rapidly and she could do so for long periods of time. However, her ability to produce a muscular looking arm would be negligible. Her ultimate strength would also be limited as it is the white, non-oxidative, fast twitch fibers which are most responsible for strength.

And stronger muscles can make a limb move faster than it did before all other factors being equal.

Someone who has predominately fast twitch fibers will be able to move fast too and because these are the fibers most responsible for strength they will be the people who usually excel in the sports which require great speed or quickness. However, these rare folks will lack endurance comparatively. And when these folks strength train they become VERY muscular.

These fibers are recruited in an orderly fashion, slow to fast. This is an accepted tenant of exercise physiology. So when you weight train, the speed you lift has nothing to do with the fibers recruited - you will always invoke the slow twitch first, medium second and fast twitch dead last hence the importance to perform a set to deep fatigue.

Performing your reps slowly using a weight load that will render deep fatigue in ~30-90 seconds will call ALL of the fibers into play. Over time you will become stronger and stronger means faster IF you practice the sport you wish to be better at at the same time.

Training quickly with weights will also, if taken to fatigue, call upon all the fibers and make you stronger.

But training with weights quickly is a potentially dangerous game and there appears to be some physiological issues with this type of training that brings about lesser results.

Dr. John Atha, who taught at the University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire, England in the department of Human Sciences wrote a paper called Strengthening Muscle which was published in Exercise and Sports Science Vol. 9, 1981. He scoured over all of the research to date on strength training techniques and had this to say on speed training:

"The balance of evidence, therefore, seems to weigh against fast-speed training as a superior method of loading.

"Second, the loading in fast movements is not a function of speed, but the effort to overcome inertia and accelerate the load. Once the required speed has been achieved, no further force is invoked. Indeed the accelerating force must soon give way to a counter force in order to decelerate and bring the fast moving load to rest. Thus the period of acceleration and hence the period of elevated loading can last for only the first part of the movement."

"Hay, Andrews and Vaughan (1980) plotted the resultant torque for the elbow for three subjects who exercised with arm curls at a slow, moderate and fast speeds and this plot showed this pattern quite clearly revealing how the torque produced by the fastest movement changed steadily from the highest initially to the lowest finally, with this changeover occurring about halfway through the movement. As fast movements are over quickly anyway, the period of elevated load intensity and hence the purportedly enhanced training stimulus must be regarded as a transient. The stimulus thus lasts too brief a period to elicit the desired strengthening response unless the load is made so heavy that a fast lift is impossible."

"In summary, rapidly accelerating a given load to achieve a fast movement increases the effective loading on a muscle but only for the brief period of acceleration. Thereafter, the loading is greatly reduced."

Feel free to comment!