Can Loud “Yoga Music” Be Harmful to Your Hearing?
Loud “yoga music” during your yoga class is just as harmful to hearing as is loud pounding-type hip hop or rock music during a step aerobics class. (more…)
When Being Thin in Older Age Means Poor Health Not Fitness
Thin, especially in older age, doesn’t always mean good health & fitness.
Of course, obesity in old age is a very serious problem, but “skinny muscle-less” is also a serious problem. (more…)
Is It Bad for Little Girls to Want Muscles that Can Be Flexed?
If your little girl has expressed an interest in “getting muscles,” what should you do?
First off, what you should NEVER do is take this new interest to mean that your young daughter is heading towards an eating disorder.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little girl flexing her biceps,” says Dr. Lisa Lewis, MD, a board certified pediatrician in Fort Worth, Texas, and author of “Feed the Baby Hummus, Pediatrician-Backed Secrets from Cultures Around the World.”
“Often, muscular arms are associated with boys,” continues Dr. Lewis, who also believes that “the desire for muscles should not be predictive for an eating disorder.
“Eating disorders are much more complicated than desiring strong arms.”
If a young girl wants muscles, she probably already knows she has to eat adequately to get them rather than starve herself.
Young girls who are at risk for a starvation-based eating disorder are not wanting to get muscles. They’re wanting stick arms.
Secondly, children cannot bulk up. This is medically impossible. Even little boys cannot bulk up. Bulking up requires the ability to lift very heavy weights.
Young children are not capable of lifting heavy weights. I’ve seen men easily deadlifting 225 pounds for repetitions – lanky-built men.
So even the ability to lift 225 pounds off the floor isn’t enough to bulk up an adult—who has much more muscle and testosterone than a child.
So hopefully by now, the idea that young kids can bulk up is cleared out of your head.
When I was a personal trainer at a health club, the topic of bulking up surfaced every now and then. I told women that they just don’t have enough testosterone and base muscle mass to bulk up.
Certainly, a child has even LESS base muscle and testosterone (yes, females produce testosterone).
Encourage Your Young Daughter to Get Muscles if She Expresses this Interest
Just make sure that her expectations are realistic.
Exercising with light dumbbells or tension bands will not stunt her growth.
But smoking can stunt growth. What may very well deter your daughter from one day lighting up her first cigarette is a body that’s trained and fit from strength workouts.
With obesity affecting so many children, you should feel very encouraged that your young daughter wants to “grow muscles.”
Some pediatricians are okay with children strength training as young as seven or eight years of age.
The child should be mature enough to follow directions for proper technique. This can be a fun activity for both mother and daughter.
“My training is that children should not lift weights before puberty,” says Dr. Lewis. “I agree that many sports and exercises build strong arms.
“As long as there are no negative body image messages associated with building arm muscle (comparing arms with other children, for example), I see no problem with a girl wanting to build arm muscle at any age.”
What if your daughter is only seven or eight and has expressed an interest in “getting muscles”?
Young kids already lift weights:
- They give each other piggy-back rides.
- They take out the garbage, carry grocery bags, lift up family pets, bowl and have been known to help their parents rearrange furniture.
A young child who strength trains will lower the risk of injuring herself when she helps with rearranging the furniture, shoveling snow or dragging around her suitcase for the two-week visit to her grandparents.
If your little girl actually says she wants “big” muscles, keep in mind that in her young mind, “big” probably mean something akin to the young girl’s in the image below.
Guidelines for Parents
• Consider hiring a personal trainer, particularly one with youth training experience.
• See if the local rec center offers strength training for children.
• Make sure your little girl understands that there will be no strength training two days in a row of the same muscle groups.
• Impress upon mastering form before using a resistance that’s challenging.
• Supervise at all times.
• Precede strength training sessions with five to 10 minutes of aerobics.
• Sets can consist of 12 to 15 repetitions.
• Medicine balls, pushups and pull-ups count as weight training.
• Dumbbells as light as one pound are sold, and will be more enthralling for a young girl to work with than same-weight soup cans.
• Don’t have an in-your-face coaching attitude if you’re their trainer. Your little girl wants her muscles to show, and acting militant is not necessary to achieve this goal.
Dr. Lewis has been a practicing pediatrician for 25+ years. She completed her pediatrics residency at Texas A&M University Health Science Center, Scott and White Memorial Hospital where she served as chief resident.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Just dance
Source: mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/tween-and-teen-health/in-depth/strength-training/art-20047758?pg=2
Older People Holding the Treadmill when Walking: Bad for Spine
Where did older men and women get the idea that the proper way to use a treadmill is to hold onto the bar in front and then hunch over as they pseudo-walk? (more…)
One Easy Dietary Change Helps Prevent Bathroom Runs Overnight
Is having to urinate overnight aggravating or WHAT? But a simple dietary tweak can help this problem. (more…)
Is Social Media’s Promotion of Obesity Making America Fatter?
Every week a Facebook or Instagram image of a fat or overweight woman goes viral:
The latest is an obese woman in a bikini standing beside her overweight very young daughter. (more…)
Can Cannabis Cure Multiple Sclerosis or Does It Just Relieve Symptoms?
Many patients who suffer from multiple sclerosis want to know if cannabis (marijuana) can cure this autoimmune disease, or at least, effectively treat the condition.
“Cannabis would be considered a part of symptomatic management for MS,” says Mitzi J. Williams, MD, clinical neurologist with Morehouse School of Medicine and clinical advisor for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation.
“This is distinct from disease modifying therapy which are medications that try to affect the immune system over-activity that leads to nerve damage and MS symptoms.
“There is currently no known cure for MS, but there are treatments that can slow the progress of disease and prevent relapses.
“There is limited research about cannabis and ‘cannabinoid’ compounds, that suggests that some patients may report improvement in symptoms such as pain and spasticity (cramping).
“Now that THC is legalized in some states, we hope to see more standardized research results about effectiveness in symptom treatment.”
Research is ongoing to see if the compounds in cannabis might be able to help reduce or even prevent inflammation in the brain and spinal cord.
A Study Shows Promise
A study carried out by Tel Aviv University (report appears in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology 2013 shows some promise — but the subjects were mice.
Remember, MS is an autoimmune disease in which immune cells attack the brain and spinal cord, causing the classic MS symptoms.
The immune cells of the mice responded to cannabis compounds; the cells produced fewer inflammatory molecules, namely interleukin 17.
The cannabis compounds subdued the rodents’ immune cells from spouting out the inflammatory molecules.
As a result, there was less harm to the brain and spinal cord.
Though this study has researchers intrigued, they are still quite a ways off from developing an outright cure from cannabis — or from any other substance, for that matter.
In the meantime, cannabis (CBD oil) is well-known for reducing the severity of multiple sclerosis’ symptoms.
Dr. Williams is author of “MS Made Simple: The Essential Guide to Understanding Your Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis.” She is a member of the American Academy of Neurology.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Lifestyle discover
Source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131007132253.htm
Middle Aged & Scared of Getting Alzheimer’s? Drink Tea
If you’re middle aged and keep worrying about getting Alzheimer’s one day, you should drink tea daily.
In particular, if one of your parents has or had Alzheimer’s disease, this reveals a genetic predisposition for which tea is especially useful for prevention.
Tea drinking daily can go a long way in helping prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, says a study.
Professor Feng Lei’s study, which involved 957 Chinese subjects at least 55, showed that tea drinking lowers risk of mental decline in elderly people by 50 percent.
For those with a genetic risk (APOE e4 gene carriers), the risk reduction was estimated to be up to 86 percent.
What Kind of Tea Might Help Fight Off Alzheimer’s?
It doesn’t matter. It could be black tea, green or oolong. If you find tea unpalatable, one trick is to steep the tea bag in only half a cup.
The beverage will taste stronger, but at least there will be less of it to drink. And the key is to consume the beverage every day.
“The study is a comprehensive one and proves that the bioactive compounds in tea leaves, such as catechins, theaflavins, thearubigins and L-theanine, have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant potential,” says Dr. Keith Kantor, a leading nutritionist and CEO of the Nutritional Addiction Mitigation Eating and Drinking (NAMED) program, which treats substance abuse, mental illnesses and other illnesses.
“These bioactive properties may protect the brain from vascular damage and neurodegeneration.”
Tea vs. Drugs for Alzheimer’s Prevention
Professor Lei points out in the paper that drug trials have been “high quality,” but that “effective pharmacological therapy for neurocognitive disorders remains elusive,” and that “current prevention strategies are far from satisfactory.”
The full report is in the Dec. 2016 Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging.
Dr. Kantor has a PhD in nutritional science and a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, has appeared on CNN and Fox News Channel for his expertise, and has been an advocate of natural food and healthy living for 30+ years.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
Source:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170316093412.htm
Yoga with Ganglion Cyst: Painless Solution You Won’t Believe
A ganglion cyst in the wrist will interfere with practicing yoga — but there’s an ingenious solution that will allow you to do the poses painlessly.
I’ve had a ganglion cyst in my wrist for years. I was able to do anything without it bothering me – almost everything – except pushups.
The way to get around that was to place small dumbbells on the floor and use them as pushup handles: hands on the bar portion and pushing up.
By my fifth yoga class I realized with absolute certainty that my ganglion cyst was always going to be a problem with some of the poses, especially during sequences.
Initially I thought I had hit upon the only solution: angling my hands outward at a 30 degree-or-more angle during poses such as downward dog and planks, rather than fingers straight ahead of myself.
But ultimately, this is not an efficacious solution because the angling weakens the pose, and plus, there’s still some level of discomfort with some poses.
Then it hit me: USE TINY DUMBBELLS!
• Your hands are on the bar portion of the little dumbbells instead of palms flat on the floor.
• This eliminates the pain from the ganglion cyst outright because the wrist flexion isn’t as weight-bearing.
You also need not entirely grip the dumbbells; you can just place your palm on them, fingers out, thumb tucked a bit under for security.
• Use dumbbells with a hexagonal design so that they don’t roll.
Possible Caveats
Your wrists and/or forearms will fatigue while trying to maintain a hold on the dumbbells.
I recommend using them only when without, the ganglion cyst would make the pose uncomfortable. In other words, do some poses with them and some without.
During standing poses you won’t need them, but they should be on your mat waiting for you—waiting for that next palm-to-mat pose or sequence.
When it’s time to shift into that move, your hands will go to the dumbbells.
Cool Idea: For added resistance throughout your yoga workout, hold the dumbbells for as much as possible, save for moves that require grabbing your feet and/or hands such as below.
At least try the dumbbells for wrist flexion moves that cause pain. The pain of a ganglion cyst can force a yoga practitioner to unwillingly cut back on workout frequency as well as forego moves that they’d really like to do.
Weight of the Dumbbells
Many group fitness classrooms at health clubs have a good stock of small “SPRI” dumbbells. The four-pounders should work for most yoga practitioners.
If you have small hands, try the three-pounders. Larger men will need the five-pounders.
This guideline will differ for other models of dumbbells. If the SPRI four-pounder is your size, you may need to use a five-pounder of another make.
These differences in weight correspond to the space between the dumbbell bar and the mat/floor.
It needs to be roomy enough for your fingers so that your fingers can fit between the bar and mat without causing the bells to disconnect from the mat.
Short of having a ganglion cyst surgically removed or aspirated, holding dumbbells is your best bet to avoid pain while practicing yoga.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
Weight Gain vs. Belly Fat in Menopause: Is There a Difference?
Weight gain doesn’t always mean more belly fat, and new belly fat doesn’t always mean weight gain, even in menopause.
A woman’s scale weight may stay the same, while her body composition changes over time, especially after menopause.
More visible belly fat may be the result of that undesirable change in body composition.
In 2017 The International Menopause Society released results of a study.
The researchers say that non-hormonal factors cause weight gain during menopause. A drop in estrogen shouldn’t get all the blame.
The study, led by Professor Susan Davis from the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, explains that menopause changes the way that fat is deposited in the body.
The change in fat deposition leads to disproportionately more fat in the belly.
Nevertheless, Davis points out that the “spare tire is the body’s response to the fall in estrogen at menopause.” This shifts fat storage from a woman’s hips to the waist.
MUST a gain in body fat always come with menopause?
“Menopause can account for significant weight gain in the abdominal area and elsewhere,” says Heather Bartos, MD, a board certified OBGYN, and chief of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Denton, TX.
“After menopause women tend to gain weight not only because of the drop in estrogen but because of depression, emotional lability (eating your feelings, and there are a lot of feelings surrounding menopause), loss of muscle tone due to age and other factors,” continues Dr. Bartos.
“Changes to the diet combined with exercise and even estrogen replacement may be the best, corrective course of action for menopausal weight gain.”
Your gynecologist will discuss all available options.
Diet and Exercise Options to Combat Menopausal Weight Gain
When I was a personal trainer at a large gym, I helped many post-menopausal women lose body fat.
The typical client of post-menopausal age had a body mass index of between 25 and 30 (overweight) and 30 and over (obese).
Usually, they had already been trying to lose weight — especially in the midsection — but were not able to, even after improvements in diet.
Once I began working with these clients, I discovered that in 100 percent of them, their workout regimen was falling way short.
Formula for Efficiently Burning Fat
• Plant based diet, lots of “good” fats like olive oil, nuts, seeds and wild-caught fish.
• Limitation on processed foods.
• Most caloric meals eaten in the morning and also within a few hours of a kick-butt workout.
• Keep your hands off the treadmill.
• Employ a type of cardio called high intensity interval training twice a week.
• Emphasis on “big” moves (e.g., bench press, overhead barbell press, squat, deadlift).
Some of these clients had never strength trained and believed that only aerobics (steady state, not high intensity intervals) should burn their belly fat.
Does belly fat gain always start after menopause?
• At around age 30, a woman who has not been lifting weights begins losing muscle mass.
• Each decade thereafter she loses five pounds of muscle (unless she begins weight workouts).
• This loss of muscle causes a change in body composition.
• She may still weigh the same, but the proportion of lean muscle tissue to fat has changed.
• She now has a higher body fat percentage, even though her weight and even dress size may be the same.
• Come menopause, the excess fat will shift over into the belly more than ever before.
When Weight Training Won’t Bust Belly Fat
- Strength training isn’t intense or heavy enough.
- Strength training focuses on isolation moves like dumbbell curls, triceps kickbacks, leg curls, side bends and crunches.
I’d tell my menopausal clients, “If you do barbell squats and deadlifts, you’ll lose belly fat.”
They didn’t get this. The explanation is simple: Intense barbell squats and deadlifts will dramatically raise the body’s energy needs post-workout.
Along with a smart eating plan, the body will siphon fat out of the belly for this recovery energy.
Body fat will be lost all over the body, but for a woman with noticeable menopausal fat gain in her abdominal area, the loss of this fat will be most striking.
Workout Solutions to Belly Fat in Menopause or Weight Gain During Any Point in Life
• Trade the steady state cardio for high intensity interval training.
• Take your hands off the treadmill. Here are 10 reasons why.
• Ditch the crunch and sit-up marathons.
• Most of your strength training should consist of big compound moves like the lat pull-down, bench press, leg press and deadlift.
• Lift heavy and hard so that you’re breathing heavily and sweating.
Employ progressive resistance: always striving to get stronger and stronger rather than still be at 60 pounds on the lat pull-down after six months of training!
Finally, I always told my clients, “Becoming strong from lifting weights won’t bulk you up. Donuts will.”
Dr. Bartos served as an assistant clinical professor of OBGYN at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences for several years and was a physician in the U.S. Navy for eight years.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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