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

Help For Heartburn

Dr. Norm Robillard has written a great book on how to virtually eliminate heartburn without meds or surgery. I have followed his advice inadvertently and rarely suffer from heartburn or, as it is called when chronic, GERD.

Essentially to cure your heartburn don't gulp Maalox or quit coffee. Simply remove carbs - refined carbs, grains and beans and  watch your GERD get gone. His book gives a great explanation for the how and why and it never hurts to be a brain.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Kettle-scam

Kettle bell training is a scam. No different then Pilates or the body bar.

But there's one difference - kettle bells are cool looking.

 

They look like they'll work. (Therefore they will.)

A Pilates reformer looks like a bed - or an old style torture rack - or a reformed pool table. .

The body bar? well....

Its a stick.

But what they all share in common is they offer resistance to our muscles. The question is, do they offer such as safely, as efficiently, or as effectively as possible.

It isn't the device per se - it how you use the resistance they offer. But their advocates would have you think differently.

A kettle bell will not transform you into a Russian strength athlete.

A Pilates Reformer will not give you the dancer's lean body of a Baryshnikov or Gillian Murphy.

A Body Bar will not give you...ah, forget it.

You get it.

Macs are better than PC's. But I don't know how to use a Mac very well, therefore...

Nah..that's just lazy thinking.

You've got one body and one life - be active about it.

It's a streeeeeeeeeeeetch...

Gina Kolata, the NY Times fitness expert has, over the years, amazed me with her behind the times reporting.

In her recent article on stretching ,she marvels at the lack of evidence to support it by saying:

"The truth is that after dozens of studies and years of debate, no one really knows whether stretching helps, harms, or does anything in particular for performance or injury rates."

Really? I beg to differ. Since years of debate and research have coughed up nada to support stretching for, well, anything, I think we know full well that stretching doesn't do much. This process is, in fact, HOW we know that a thing is useful or useless. And in this case the verdict is 'useless.'

But since Gina has trumpeted the benefits of stretching for years and Pooh-pooh'd people like me who have publicly and loudly stated that stretching  is unnecessary for health/fitness reasons (and perhaps only necessary of you engage in ligament lengthening sports like gymnastics, martial arts or Houdini-type escape feats), she's in too deep to escape.

She can't back out now and actually admit that stretching is and always has been useless. No, no - she must ride the fence in the direction it's going. And in the case of stretching the direction is absolutely nowhere.

But maybe, just maybe after a few more years of research, something will pop. Let's just hope it's not your joints while we wait.

The interesting thing is that fitness pros still insist on stretching even though no one derives any real benefit from it, there's no science to support it and much evidence against it. But like Mark Twain said:

"The truth is easy to kill but a lie well told is immortal."

Charles Kenny, MD an orthopod in Stockbridge MA said the following:

“If stretching was a drug, it would be recalled.”

Now them's fightin' words!

If there is no evidence that stretching prevents injuries, improves performance, enhances joint health or does anything good for that matter why in the world does the American College of Sports Medicine and every other fitness organization promote it? One wonders...

Why do physical therapists promote it? Doctors? Athletic trainers? More wonder.

From the article:

"While the stretching debate goes on, some researchers who used to believe in stretching say they have become disillusioned."

Whoa. Hold on a sec - believe in stretching? Aren't these researchers scientists? (If they're not, why are they doing research?) It's a good thing exercise physiologists don't work for NASA or Boeing or even construct toaster ovens on an assembly line. "No Jane - I believe the wires should be soldered this way."

And why is the debate still going on? Seems to me it should be as dead as a shoe by now. This reminds me of the book 'Who Moved My Cheese?'

And this one kills me:

"Her runners stretched but, Dr. Ingraham said, stretching “did not seem to do what we’d been schooled about all our lives — it did not prevent injuries.”

So for years she saw that stretching did nothing to help her athletes and yet kept doing it? Did the good doctor ever stop to think what might have been causing the injuries in the first place?

I'll quote Mark Twain one more time:

"Be careful reading health books. A misprint just might kill you."

Or hurt you or just waste your time. And in the case of stretching, no misprint at all!

The Kind and Gracious Jimmy Moore

Jimmy Moore, the creator of the fantastic Livin La Vida Low Carb blog interviewed me. An honor to be sure.

Statins and Strength

A friend sent me this research paper Download riechman_jgms_2007.pdf titled:

"Statins and Dietary and Serum Cholesterol Are Associated With Increased Lean Mass Following Resistance Training"

The conclusion of this study was that people who ate more dietary cholesterol enjoyed greater gains in muscle mass following resistance training.

They speculated that since cholesterol is involved heavily in cellular repair and production it stands to reason that if a person had too little cholesterol they might not repair damaged muscle tissue well enough.

"Cholesterol may play a role as an essential building block to repair micro tears that occur in the skeletal muscle membrane with RET (resistance training)."

Makes sense to me.

But what they also found which they were shocked at was that folks who took statins which are known to cause muscle weakness and damage also experienced greater gains in muscle mass after following a resistance training program.

"We observed greater hypertrophy in participants using certain statins. This result was unexpected considering that several studies have reported adverse effects of statins on skeletal muscle."

This is cool.

It appears that the 'damage' that statins cause without resistance training leaves the muscles weaker and smaller. BUT when you toss weight lifting into the mix, the body sees fit to repair, rebuild and upregulate the muscles damaged by both modalities. Nifty, right?

So if your statinating yourself (which I DO NOT advise) you'd be wise to hit the weights once or twice a week.

(Pfizer and Merck would be smart to suggest this to their users.)

They also found that, contrary to popular belief, people who had higher intakes of cholesterol did NOT have increased cardiovascular health risk factors. (Resistance training also decreased body fat % and blood pressure significantly.)

Resistance training sure sounds like a better 'statin' than statins themselves, no?

In sum, having a higher cholesterol intake does NOT increase cardiovascular risk factors and aids muscle growth significanlty when strength training. Strength training increases muscle mass, strength, endurance, decreases body fat, body fat percentage and blood pressure.

So, why is it that you're taking a statin again?

And if you are...

More on Cholesterol

I'm sure many of you saw this article in the Times yesterday.

The absurd part was at the end in the corrections:

"Correction: January 18, 2008: A headline in Business Day on Thursday with an article about research involving two widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs misstated the issue raised by the results. It is whether using drugs to lower cholesterol at all costs is always medically effective, or even safe; there is no question that cholesterol itself can pose dangers."

Wow. Really? No question? None at all? But what if this was in fact false? What then oh, mighty Pfizer? Do you think all these people are nuts?

Fact is ladies and gents, cholesterol is needed for just about every cell function and every cell in the body can create it.

Without cholesterol, we'd be a pool of flotsam.

It is so important, that your body produces over 80% of what we need - only 20% comes from the diet - even less. If you don't eat it your body will produce it. But if you don't eat right and force your body to produce it and because of the way you eat your body can't make enough - your in BIG trouble.

As far as I can tell from my reading on the subject cholesterol not only poses ZERO threat to the body but is as important as the air we breathe.

And the better quality the air, the healthier we will be. So too for cholesterol.

Taking statins to reduce cholesterol in our bodies is akin to removing oxygen from the air making it more difficult to breathe. Who would do that?  Pfizer that's who!

I also want to say for shame on the people who take these drugs and have not yet read these books:

The Cholesterol Myths by Uffe Ravnskov M.D. Ph.D

The Great Cholesterol Con by Malcolm Kendrick M.D.

The Protein Power Lifeplan by Michael and Mary Dan Eades M.D.