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If you were stranded on a desert island and could only do 5 exercises…. well that’s just silly. If you were stranded on a desert island, you’d have to do all kinds of activity to build yourself shelter, make clothing, hunt for sustenance and protect yourself. You’d get all the “exercise” you needed from real movement and daily activities.

Let’s talk about something more of us can relate to. If you were stranded in an office for 40 hours a week, had numerous other obligations that required lots of sitting and reduced your exercise time, what 5 exercises would you do? You would want to incorporate some of the basic movements your body is supposed to do. Push, pull, bend, squat, and lunge. There are plenty of other movements you’d likely do if you had more time, but we’re looking for the best bang-for-the-buck, time wise.

Pushing may be the easiest to incorporate. Find a small space and do a few pushups. Done! Pushups will work your chest, and triceps; a couple major muscles incorporated when pushing. Pushups will also activate your core (abs, obliques, and lower back) to keep your butt from sinking when you’re in proper position. If you can’t do a standard pushup, try it from your knees instead of your feet. If you can’t do knee pushups, try some wall pushups. Keep your back straight, and your elbows close to your body.

If you’re able, pull-ups and chin-ups are a great way to work a lot of your pulling muscle. All the major back muscles are used, as well as the biceps and shoulders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since many people cannot do a pull-up, here are some other options: Lat pull down, upright row, seated row. These exercises do end up isolating slightly different muscles, but all of them work your biceps, lats, and upper back to some degree.

While you might be able to find a heavy bar to lift, it seems like a lot of those exercises require a gym, or some kind of weights, right?. If you don’t have time between meetings or coffee breaks to use your office gym (if you even have one), take your belt, a strap, or a rope and wrap it around a pole or another sturdy structure about chest high and do this variation of the seated row. Place your feet at the base of the pole and lean back, grabbing the belt for support. When the belt is taut and your arms are straight, you’re in the starting position. Keeping your feet still, pull yourself towards the pole with with your arms, bringing your chest closer to the pole as you squeeze your shoulder blades together.

Bending is a necessary daily activity. You might have to tie your shoes, pick something up off the floor, or even (gasp!) lift a box. We’re told to “lift with your legs” which involves squatting (and will be our next movement), so that we don’t injure our backs. That’s a smart move if you have a weak lower back, like most of us. But what if we wanted to concentrate on strengthening our backs to prevent injury? Instead of the “don’t use it because you’ll hurt it” mentality, think of the “use it or lose it” mantra.

When starting out, begin by stretching out your hamstrings and gluts and warming up before trying to strengthen your lower back. Reaching for your toes while keeping your lower back straight will warm up your lower back muscles while stretching your hamstrings. Concentrate on pivoting at the hips without rounding your back. This will stretch those muscles so when they are used, they won’t be so tight they cause an injury.

A great way to strengthen your lower back is to do “back extensions.” These can be done in the same place as the pushups. Lie down, stomach on the floor and lift your head and upper torso as much as comfortable, using your lower back to lift. Put your arms out to your sides and imagine you are an airplane. Point your thumbs up towards the sky and squeeze your shoulder blades together. Keep your toes on the floor when starting out and slowly progress to lifting your toes and activating your glutes.  Lift and hold for a count of two. That’s one repetition.

Squatting can be a big help when the time comes to lift something heavier. Your lower back muscles are very small in comparison to your glutes, quads and hamstring muscles which will activate when you squat properly. I posted about why and how to squat a little while ago. Most people will tell you squatting so far down that your butt is lower than your knees is a good way to cause knee injury. Again, “use it or lose it”. If your muscles aren’t trained to do something, you’re more likely to hurt those muscles if they are called in to action. If we train our muscles and joints to move through their full range of motion, we’ll actually be able to do so.

You can start out by squatting down onto a coffee table or other short furniture. A lowered desk chair would work just fine. Slowly lower yourself, keeping your back straight on the bench or chair keeping your balance by sticking your butt back and pivoting at the hips and bending your knees. Push through your heels (think about lifting your toes to focus on pushing through the heels) to stand back up. Once the bench is easy, you can progress into a full squat.

Our last exercise is the lunge. You might be wondering why lunging is in the 5 exercises since it seems like we don’t do this motion very regularly. Lunging works a lot of important muscles, stretches others, and helps improve your balance all at the same time. They also don’t require a lot of space, or any extra equipment. Just find a spot where you can take a really big step forward.  Not only is this a good glute and quad workout, but you’ll get a nice stretch through your hip flexors on the back leg, which will be a good change from being seated.

Step forward and keep your front knee over your front foot, preventing the knee from going past the toes. Keep your back toes pointed forward and sink your hips down until your hips are at the same height as your knee and you form a 90 degree angle in your knee. Push back off your front heel to return to the starting position and then step forward with the other foot and push back in the same manner. That’s one repetition. I like to keep the back foot farther back to stretch the hip flexor. If the hip flexor stretch is too uncomfortable, take a smaller step and let the back knee go straight down instead of slightly back.

If you do 10 repetitions of each exercise, and did 3 sets in a circuit (one exercise after the other, then going back to the first exercise), it probably won’t take you more than 10 minutes. Doing this twice a day will get you blood moving and keep your joints lubricated. Next time we’ll get into how to create a “home gym” on the cheap.

Are there any other exercises you love? Post your time crunched exercise ideas in the comments!

The Skin Deep website has a list of essentially all the personal hygiene products you might use, and rates them based on ingredients. You may not want to know what’s in your soap or your deodorant, but if you do, this site has all the details. It has moisturizers, soaps, deodorants, sunscreen, toothpaste, shampoo, and almost anything else you use in the bathroom. I thought it was easiest to search for a specific product. If you want to browse through a list of items, it can get a bit tedious since there are so many. The site is a little tough to use, but if you find your product, it gives you a lot of information about it (usually). While they do have some links to Amazon or other places you might find it online, it’d be nice if you could filter things by price or availability so you could find “good” product close by without paying a fortune. More pictures would also be helpful. Their rating system is easy to follow and color coded. 0-2 is good (green), 3-6 is less good (yellow), and 7-10 is bad (red). The score is supported by research and they tell you if any has been done, ranging from none to very thorough.
I’ve been using Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 liquid soap for a couple years now and have been happy with it. I use it as shampoo, body soap, and shaving cream. In a pinch (or camping) you can use it as toothpaste and laundry soap or dish washing soap. Personally, I’m a fan of the Almond scent as the Peppermint one was a little too tingly for me in the morning.

As far as deodorant is concerned, I’ve taken a liking to the Thai Deodorant Stone. For me, it seems to work better than either of the “natural” deodorant sticks (Tom’s, Jason’s) I’ve tried, and it has less chemicals and ingredients. It’s basically a salt stick which inhibits bacterial growth which causes odor. You can use it on your feet too if you have foot odor problems. I recently heard of Primal Pit Paste and would be interested to try it out if I get a chance.

I used coconut oil as lotion for a little while, and then got sucked back into the standard moisturizers because of price, and convenience, but I have been looking for a good replacement to the regular grocery store lotions. Dr. Bronner’s makes a coconut based lotion, but it’s pretty watery, absorbs (or dries) really quickly (too quickly in my opinion), and is a lot more expensive than other brands. I will try EO Everyone Lotion here in the near future and see how it is. It’s a bigger bottle and not too expensive so I hope I’ll like it, since it’d be a good alternative to the store brand lotions.

What do you use for skin care? Do you read the ingredients, like you do with food? Let us know how you stay clean and healthy!

This is an article NPR picked up from Nature Genetics. After scientists looked at the skulls from cavemen, they’ve concluded that they had pretty good teeth. So much so that it appears they didn’t have the oral hygiene issues that we have today. Even with our toothpaste, floss, mouth wash and fluoride filled water. Eating more meat, nuts and vegetables seems to keep our teeth cleaner, and the proper bacteria in our mouths.

After the introduction of grains and sugar, the bad bacteria had a good source of nutrients which caused us to get cavities. We all know sugar is bad for our teeth, and we brush our teeth twice daily and floss, but those bad bacteria have roughly 12 hrs between brushings to grow and make pretty little holes in our enamel.

The idea is similar to that of the proper balance of bacteria in our digestive tract. The proper bacteria are healthy, and an imbalance towards too many “bad” bacteria may be one of the causes of our increase in chronic diseases. Most people don’t think of cavities as a disease, but it does seem to prove that there is an imbalance of bacteria in our mouths.

What did you eat since the last time you brushed your teeth? Think the bacteria like it as much as you did?

The myth of grease, or chocolate causing acne were dismissed in the 60’s, and most people don’t think food has much to do with acne, but a new study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics “has determined that there is increasing evidence of a connection between diet and acne, particularly from high glycemic load diets and dairy products.”

http://www.eatright.org/Media/content.aspx?id=6442474903#.USTWkug1eCo

Acne is a form of inflammation. We’ve heard of inflammation in joints, and even in arteries (which I’ll talk about in the 2nd part of the Artery Cloging Saturated Fat series), but this is an external display of inflammation. It’s also a venue for the body to try and expell toxins and things your body finds disagreable. Some people may have an unfavorable reaction to dairy, or these high glycemic load foods.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the actual study, or exactly what these “high glycemic load” foods were. I’d be very interested to see how the study was conducted, what diary products they tested, and what foods were part of the “high glycemic load.” Is all diary the same? Does dairy fat content matter? What about goat milk? What about cheese, and yogurt? There are too many questions still to do a real write up of this, but I’m glad to see people are at least re-thinking the idea that food might be a factor.

If you do suffer from acne, it may be an interesting study to try out on yourself. Eliminate dairy for a week or two and see if it makes a difference. If anyone finds the actual study, please send it to me. If you have any input, thoughts, or personal experience please share in the comments section.

To do more, do less. We run around ragged and can’t focus and not only lose productivity, but quality and creativity suffer too. Make time to do nothing and recuperate. This article from the NY Times dicusses our go go go lifestyle and how it’s not really making us more productive.

More sleep, more vacation time, more time away from the office, all means less “work” time, but may increase productivity and definitely less burn out by employees. It’s a good short read. If you don’t have time to read it, you may be the very person who should.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/relax-youll-be-more-productive.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

 

Fair warning: This video shows open-heart surgery and some may find it disturbing.

I was shown this video recently and I felt like it was as good a time as any to try and explain the myth of “artery clogging saturated fats.” We hear this term and this idea all the time: if you eat fat, especially saturated fat, it will fill your arteries with a thick greasy coating of fat, or harden and get lodged in your veins, forming plaque.

That video ignores the mechanisms behind how plaque forms. The next video actually does a good job of describing how plaque is made. It is much more complicated than just grease lining your blood vessels like the drain in your sink. Unfortunately it doesn’t explain why LDL and HDL are good or bad. We’ll get to that, but first let’s explore why this idea is so prevalent in our society.

I heard a nutrition teacher say just the other day, and I quote: “Animal fats clog your arteries.” Fat and cholesterol get grouped together mainly because they are both in animal meat, which has been deemed by some as the direct cause of heart disease and obesity. There is definitely a higher risk of heart attack when a person is fat. Unfortunately the word “fat” perpetuates the idea that eating fat makes someone fat. Since fat does have more calories than carbohydrates or protein, consuming too much fat could cause excess caloric intake, which can eventually cause weigh gain.  Animal fat doesn’t just find its way out of your system and latch onto other fat cells in your hips or belly, or clog your arteries. It’s hard to fight this idea when it’s repeated everywhere, and we are “taught” this myth over and over again.

For a very thorough history of the whole situation, read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Here I’ll give you a short synopsis. Three events occurred around the same time. First, during World War I when meat was saved for the soldiers, more folks grew vegetables in their own “victory gardens.” Second, some experiments were done on rabbits. Adding cholesterol to a rabbit’s diet caused these rabbits heart disease. Scientist selected rabbits because “the rabbit exhibits hypercholesterolemia within a few days of an administration of a high cholesterol diet…”(1). Third,new techniques were becoming available to determine the cause of death in people. The electrocardiogram was invented in 1918 and helped cardiology become a medical specialty. They were able to figure out who died from heart attacks and soon after that, exactly what kind of heart attack. Before the 1910’s anyone past middle age was deemed to have died from natural causes. It’s likely a lack of proper diagnosis, rather than a lack of heart attacks affected the number of heart attack deaths. You may be asking how victory gardens, rabbits and the infancy of cardiology could be related. On their own they don’t mean much, but when you put them all together you can paint the picture we’ve all come to believe as the truth.

Before 1910 no one kept track of what people ate. During World War I it became useful to track, but the numbers weren’t very accurate, so the USDA did a bit of estimation. So when the government started keeping track of food consumption, meat was scarce and vegetable consumption was high, which may have been a dramatic change from the way people ate just a few years before the war. It really wasn’t until after World War II that the USDA had more reliable information about food consumption, and the numbers they did have for meat were most likely artificially low.

Then there’s the rabbit model. The thinking behind this is if rabbits get clogged arteries like humans, and if rabbit arteries get clogged on a high cholesterol diet, it follows that human arteries must do the same. The idea is reasonable if you accept the idea that rabbits and humans are similar. We share many characteristics, but diet and the ability to process cholesterol in food is not one of them. Rabbits never naturally eat cholesterol, and their digestive systems are similar to humans’ but far from exact.

Rabbits developed plaque when they ate cholesterol, the population began eating more meat and cholesterol after WWI ended (up from the artificial low) and there was an increase in deaths from heart attack (due to better diagnosis). When scientists looked at this data in the 1940’s, they could easily argue that the dramatic increase in heart attacks coincided with an increase in meat consumption. Combined with the rabbit model to site as evidence, they could “prove” that cholesterol (and therefore meat) was the cause of heart disease. The time frame matches but there is no science linking the two. The rabbit model simply proves rabbits shouldn’t eat cholesterol.

When Ancel Keys shared this information, along with his “7 Countries Study,” (which had many flaws we won’t get into now) it was hard to argue that cholesterol may be bad for human longevity. Eventually, he convinced the USDA to recommend a lower cholesterol diet for people at “high-risk.” High risk was defined as men who had already had heart attacks. Ultimately that suggestion trickled down to include the rest of the population too, because if reducing cholesterol helps prevent heart attacks in high-risk men, then why wouldn’t it help everyone? It’s pretty easy to see why this is now accepted as “common knowledge” but the science never really proved any of it.

There is a correlation between countries of affluence and an increase in chronic diseases like coronary heart disease, and high blood pressure. And it’s true that countries of affluence eat more meat, particularly here in the USA. At the same time, we also eat more added sugar, more preservatives, more hydrogenated oils, and lots of poor quality, nutrient scarce foods. The meats we eat are, more often than not, unnaturally fattened with corn and soy affecting their omega-3/6 ratios (2)(3). The oils we use are heated, pressed, damaged, genetically modified, or all of the above. All of these foods contribute to heart disease (4),(5), but it’s hard to definitively identify which of these is the biggest culprit.

Another argument is that eating more saturated fat will raise your cholesterol. The idea may be based on the fact that if you eat more animal fat, you are most likely eating more cholesterol because of the meat accompanying that fat. When measured in humans though, dietary saturated fat intake made no difference in blood cholesterol. (6) Your liver makes cholesterol by taking lipids (fats) you eat and transforming it into cholesterol. It may make logical sense that the more fat you eat, the more cholesterol you’d make, but the body is smarter than that. We’ll talk about how cholesterol is made and what it does in the next segment, and then how to prevent heart disease the right way. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next installment of the artery clogging myth.

Ref. (1) http://la.rsmjournals.com/content/38/3/246.full.pdf

Ref. (2) http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

Ref. (3) http://www.mercola.com/beef/omega3_oil.htm

Ref. (4) http://news.health.com/2010/04/20/added-sugars-diet-threaten-heart-health/

Ref. (5) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050617065306.htm

Ref. (6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2123482/?page=3

Clostridium difficile, called C.diff for short, is a gastrointestinal infection. It can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. Most cases historically have occured after the use of antibiotics, or in folks susceptible to infection, like the elderly in hospitals or nursing homes. While the antibiotic kills off an unwanted infection somewhere else in the body, the gut flora is harmed inadvertently. When certain gut bacteria are killed off, the balance of “good” and “bad” bacteria might be disturbed and can lead to a C.diff infection.

A relatively new treatment for C.diff is a fecal transplant. The idea behind it is that a healthy donor has the proper balance of good and bad bacteria and will repopulate the gut of a patient with C.diff. Obviously we’re inclided to think, “that’s just gross,” but with a disrupted gastrointestinal system, the possibility of another infection and/or pathogen transfer is actually something to be concerned about.

A new synthetic stool treatment in the works, called “RePOOPulate” (yes, really), might be a good treatment for those with C.diff. All the bacteria, with none of the pathogens. For those of us lucky enough to have a relatively healthy digestive system, a good way to keep it healthy is by taking some probiotic pills, eating some fermented dairy, or some fermented veggies. Saurkraut, or kimchi are probably the most commonly eaten varieties, and happen to be really easy to make at home.

I’ll post some recipes soon! Until then, you might just eat some dirt.

There are many reasons breastfeeding can be beneficial. A reason they talk about in this article is that it promotes good gut bacteria.

“‘These changes in the developing microbiome could explain susceptibilities to a variety of conditions later in life,’ such as obesity, diabetes, and GI conditions.”

They say C-section, formula fed babies have the poorest gut flora.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/OBGYN/Pregnancy/37304

Our guts have been expecting two things for a long time. An “inoculation with bacteria from the mother” during vaginal delivery, and mothers milk. This has been the norm for hudreds of thousands of years.

The study is small and there were a bunch of other factors which couldn’t be accounted for, like the anti-biotics the mother took during pregnancy or at delivery, or if the baby had any soon after birth. They do say “species richness was higher in formula-fed infants,” but they seem to have an “over-representation” of “bad” bacteria.

There still a lot to figure out, but it’s good to know that the “simple route” is a good option for lots of babies.