Dr. Jonny Bowden

Tag: research

  • Dr. Jonny Speaks at the American Nutrition Association

    Dr. Jonny Speaks at the American Nutrition Association

    Dr. Jonny Bowden discusses the myths surrounding cholesterol at this talk given for the American Nutrition Association.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGOpjPNtjes

  • The Three Worst Exercise Mistakes

    The Three Worst Exercise Mistakes

    The following is a guest blog post by Dr. Jade Teta, one of my top go-to guys for exercise.

    I am going to tell you three very real stories from my clinical experience.

    Story 1:  The Marathoner

    She entered one of those marathon running training programs.  The reason?  She wanted to lose weight.  She ran almost every day for 12 weeks slowly adding time to her runs until she was doing 60 to 90 minute runs 6 days per week.

    How did it work?  She gained about 6 pounds.

    Story 2:  The Crossfitter.

    She signed up for a program called Crossfit hoping she would lose weight and tone up.  She did intense workouts 5 days a week.  These included weight lifting exercises, cardio based calisthenics, and other exercise based skills.  She did it for a year before coming to me. Her complaint. She did not lose a single pound despite exercising more than she ever had her entire life.

    Story 2:  The Gym Rat

    He was in the gym every single day.  He would do a Body Pump class three times per week. He did 30 minutes of cardio 3 times per week.  He played tennis and did yoga on the weekends.  Despite all this work he said he was 5 pounds heavier and 2% greater body fat 5 years after beginning this regime.

    —————————————–
    The 3 big exercise mistakes.
    —————————————–
    It took me many years to figure out what so many people in the same situation as those above were doing wrong.  And it was a hard won lesson. A lesson I refused to believe until I saw it play out again and again with individual after individual.

    What made it so hard to learn this lesson is that it was not a universal phenomenon. There were certainly many others who did the same types of workout regimes who seemed to get results from them.  Granted, most of these people were guys in their teens, twenties and thirties.

    So what were these people doing wrong. Three things actually:
    • Exercising too long
    • Exercising too hard
    • Exercising too frequently

    ———————————————————–
    Stress can keep you fat and make you fat
    ———————————————————–
    Exercising is a type of stress.  When just the right amount is done it is a positive stress.  Something physiologists call “eustress.”  This type of stress causes favorable adaptations in the body and usually leads to a healthier, more fit, leaner and functional body.

    Exercise that is overdone in any of the three ways above is a negative stress. And we now know that this type of stress can keep you fat or make you fat.  And I want to explain exactly why so you can stop making this same mistake.

    Stress can keep you fat or make you fat for 3 reasons:

    • It makes you hungry
    • It makes you crave
    • It turns on your fat storing physiology

    When you exercise for too long, too hard or too often you go past the tipping point of exercise benefits and several biochemical changes occur that make it difficult for you to lose fat.

    Remember, to lose weight you need two things: 1) a calorie deficit and 2) hormonal balance.

    If you achieve a calorie deficit but your hormonal system is not balanced you will be far more likely to lose muscle but not fat.  But that is unlikely to happen because hormonal imbalance is almost always associated with cravings for and consumption of highly palatable calorie dense foods.

    When stress hormones rise as a result of exercise that is too long, too hard or too frequent hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin change in a way that make you hungry all the time.

    This same stress physiology causes the motivation centers in the brain (areas of the brain that keep you goal focused and on task) to shut down. At the same time, they turn on the reward centers of the brain.  These are the areas of the brain that make you seek out short-term pleasure.  In other words, if there is a Cheesecake factory next to your gym, exercise that is too long, too intense and too frequent makes you more likely to hit the cake bar than the weight room.

    The final nail in the coffin comes from a hormone called neuropeptide Y or just NPY.  Under normal short-term stress NPY is suppressed because cortisol is controlled. But under chronic stress your nervous system releases more NPY. My other name for NPY is the NEW PUFFY YOU hormone………because it causes immature fat cells to grow into full-grown puffy fat cells.

    This is why stress, any type of stress and even stress of too much exercise, can make you fat or at least keep you that way.

    ————————-
    The Fix
    ————————-
    So how do you fix this issue?  Well, the exercise junky in you is not going to like this.  I have found that many people wear the amount of exercise they do like a badge of honor. But nothing could be sillier. It is just like those people you hear bragging about not needing but 4 hours of sleep………and then when they walk away you are saying to yourself, “No wonder they look 10 years older than they actually are!”

    Why the hell would you want to keep doing all that exercise if you are not getting results from it?

    The fix is to cut back on the duration, intensity and frequency of your exercise. In each of the above cases, after much convincing and cajoling, I moved each person to a workout program that was no more than 3 to 4 days per week (plus plenty of walking and relaxation activities) and they ALL started losing weight.  EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!

    I have rarely seen this fail. It is so successful in fact I barely have to do an intake on these people any more. And yes, it even happens with my own Metabolic Effect workout.  I remember one client looking at me in shock when I told them you are not going to get great results from doing Metabolic Effect workouts 6 days a week.  They almost fell out of their chair.

    If you want results from exercise you need to master the art of exercise efficiency, doing the amount to get the result you want and no more.

    ——————————————
    Enter Metabolic Aftershock
    ——————————————
    When I put together the Metabolic Aftershock program many people asked me what type of program it was. I told them it is a workout program, but at its core it is really a metabolic restoration program.

    What I meant by that is that it is a workout and diet program designed to get the exercising tipping point just right.  You train hard a few times per week.  You walk.  You eat the right things at the right times and you turn negative exercise stress into positive eustress fat burning exercise.

    That is how it works…one 9-week cycle of this program has already taken hundreds of people who were stuck in a weight loss plateau, or heading in the wrong direction, and started stripping the fat off of their bodies.

    And the program was specifically designed for the high stress, time crunched, convenience minded person.  The workout uses only body weight, takes only 15 minutes and is only done 3 times per week. It can be done by all fitness levels and physical abilities. And it works like you would not believe.

    I’d love for you to try it.  And just to give you a little extra incentive, the program comes with a 100% money back guarantee.  If you’re not satisfied just return it within 30 days to get your money back…

    To find out more about my program, Metabolic Aftershock, click here

  • Exercise: The News You Don’t Want To Hear

    Exercise: The News You Don’t Want To Hear

    My mentor, the late great nutritionist Robert Crayhon, used to say this: “The two great dangers with nutrition are thinking it does everything, and thinking it does nothing”.

    The same can be said of exercise.

    This article is about exercise. And about weight loss. And about the relationship between the two.

    Which, sad to say, is probably a very different relationship than you might think.

    Now before we get started, a disclaimer. I exercise regularly. I think you should too, no matter who you are. I think exercise is the greatest anti-aging activity on the planet. And the data are clear: exercise can help with depression, lower the risk for heart disease and cancer, reduce the risk and complications of diabetes. It can even grow new brain cells.

    What it can’t do is cause you to lose weight—at least not if you do exercise in the traditional way.

    (I told you this was news you didn’t want to hear.)

    For every person who managed to make the annual weight loss issue of People magazine, for every healthy guy smilingly holding up an old pair of pants twice the size of Cleveland, for every 100-pound lighter winner of “the Biggest Loser”, there are thousands more who lose, regain, lose, regain, give up and essentially look the same year in and year out. If exercising the traditional way could produce weight loss, we’d be a whole lot skinnier as a nation and those “success” stories would be far more common.

    A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association followed the exercise habits of over 34,000 women and concluded that it took about an hour a day of moderate (3mph walking) exercising to maintain weight. This research confirms the findings of the National Weight Control Registry which reports that 90% of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off exercise on average for an hour a day.

    Now that sounds like a lot. But remember that nearly all of this research focuses on moderate intensity exercise like walking. And walking is fine—for all the health benefits mentioned above—but it’s pretty inefficient for weight loss.

    A much better and more efficient way to exercise—and one which research is clearly showing works a lot better—is to do high intensity circuit training. Put the beauty bells down and lift some iron. Shorten your rest periods. If you’re doing “aerobics” do some interval training where you sprint for a while then jog to catch your breath. (This is exactly what programs like Metabolic Aftershock do! )

    So here’s the strategy:

    One: Revamp your diet, concentrating on carbohydrates. Carbohydrates- particularly sugar, soft drinks and starches like potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, cereals and crackers—drive levels of insulin, your “fat storage” hormone, through the roof, which makes it brutally hard to lose body fat. Eat more protein and fat, get your carbs from vegetables and fruits, and eat less of everything.

    Two: Exercise regularly, but exercise smart. Increase the intensity and shorten the time. Circuit and interval training are the modalities that have trainers and exercise physiologists the most excited these days when it comes to both health benefits and fat burning. Pay attention—they’re right! (My current favorite exercise program is Jade Teta’s Metabolic Aftershock.)

    Three: Recognize that fitness and six-pack abs aren’t the same thing. Exercise for fitness and for health, and to maintain your gains. But don’t expect your morning walk to create a complete body transformation, especially if you don’t take serious aim at your diet.

    Eric Ravussin, professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, LA and an expert on weight loss put it best: “In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss”.

    That’s certainly true—if you’re doing exercise in the conventional way.

    But with a brilliantly designed, scientifically based, high-intensity interval program like Metabolic Aftershock—which takes just 15 minutes three times a week—it’s a whole different story. Combine that program with a controlled carbohydrate diet like New You in 22, and you’ll be on your way to a body—and a state of health—that you’ll be proud of for the rest of your life.

  • Chemicals in Food that Make You Fat

    Chemicals in Food that Make You Fat

    For decades we’ve been told that the “formula” for weight loss is incredibly simple: eat less and exercise more.

    Unfortunately, that’s very far from the whole truth.

    We’re now learning that there are powerful influences on weight that go beyond calories and exercise.

    We’re at the infancy of our knowledge about obesity, and we’re not all that brilliant about weight loss in general. But one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is this: it’s not just about eating less. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Hey, I think I’d like to be obese!” I’ve talked to serious scientists who’ve been studying this stuff for 20 years, people who the media would consider A-list experts, and privately they’ll tell you that obesity is baffling and mysterious and that they’re just scratching the surface of the subject.

    One of the most disturbing discoveries in the past decades has been that chemicals in our food and our environment are actually obesity promoters. Known as “endocrine disrupters”, these chemicals “mimic” what hormones in our body do. These chemicals hijack hormonal pathways, sending messages to cells to store fat and generally disrupting the regulatory system that helps control appetite and weight. They can do this by…

    1. increasing your number of fat cells
    2. lowering the number of calories you burn
    3. playing havoc with the mechanisms (like the hormone leptin)  that regulate our appetite

    High fructose corn syrup, for example, is an obesogen. It makes you insulin resistant and interferes with leptin efficiency. The result is a double whammy:

    1. you crave more food and…
    2. the food you eat turns into fat more easily.

    Even tap water contains obesogens. One in particular—atrazine—slows thyroid hormone metabolism. Another—a fungicide called tributylin—stimulates the production of fat cells.

    Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a synthetic estrogen and has been shown to increase insulin resistance, which is at the heart of obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. And phthalates, which are chemicals found in all sorts of products from shower curtains to perfumes, may lower your metabolism, leading to increased weight and lowered muscle mass.

    What a mess.

    Avoiding these chemicals is no small trick, especially since we haven’t even indentified all the potential endocrine disrupters in the environment and food supply, and no one knows the “safe” dose of any of them.

    This is why, in my judgement, it’s always prudent to err on the side of caution. Eat food that looks like food your grandmother would have recognized as food. Avoid food with bar codes. Buy organic—especially for the “dirty dozen”, foods that have been found to have the greatest pesticide residue. (You can find the “Dirty Dozen” online at the website of the Environmental Working Group.)

    Since many of the foods that contain these endocrine disrupters are processed foods that are also addictive, breaking the addiction to sugar should be a primary goal of anyone wanting to lose weight and get healthy.

    And make no mistake—the foods that make us fat, sick, tired and depressed are as addictive as any drug on the planet. (That’s why we spend as much time as we do on breaking the chains of food addiction in my diet program Unleash Your Thin »

    In addition:

    • Buy fish and meat that is hormone and antibiotic free. That means wild salmon and grass-fed beef only.
    • Use aluminum bottles or BPA-free ones.
    • Don’t let plastic water bottles get hot—it increases the leaching of BPA into the water.
    • Never, ever put plastic in the microwave
    • Move away from canned foods and towards pouches, frozen or fresh when possible.
    • Dump your air fresheners. (Try opening a window or putting out a nice diffuser, potpourri or fresh lavender
    • Get rid of non-stick pans, especially Teflon ones. If you must use them, never ever use a metal implement on them, as that can scratch the surface and release damaging chemicals.
    • Use natural skin care products without “fragrance” – I use Jeneuvia by Wallsburg Farms »
  • Postmenopausal Hormone Replacement Reduces Mortality Risk?

    Postmenopausal Hormone Replacement Reduces Mortality Risk?

    The following is a guest article by Raymond Ishman, MD,   CEO and Chief Medical Officer of  Cenegenics, Philadelphia. Cenegenics is one of the leading anti-aging clinics in the United States.

     

    The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study was prematurely stopped in 2002 due to a reported increase in the incidence of breast cancer in women in the hormone replacement arm of the study. As a result, thousands of women have stopped, or been taken off their hormones unnecessarily. This has lead to needless confusion, suffering and fear, to the point of hysteria in some, regarding the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Since then, many of the main findings of this study have been debunked, albeit with much less media attention.

    Multiple studies have challenged the conclusions of WHI. One such study was published in the British Medical Journal and released October 9, 2012. The data came from the Danish Osteoporosis Prevention Study where recently postmenopausal women, ages 45- 58, were treated with or without HRT for 10 years. The original study was actually started in the early 1990s. Hormones were stopped at 10 years when the results of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study were released in 2002, with follow up carried out until 2008. In the current report, the same data was analyzed for cardiovascular outcomes, cancer and overall mortality.

    In the Danish study, women who previously had a hysterectomy were given oral bioidentical estradiol. (Topical is now the preferred route) Women who still had a uterus were given a combination of oral estradiol and a synthetic progestin. (Bioidentical progesterone is now the preferred “progestin”)

    Conclusions of the analysis were that “After 10 years of randomized treatment, women receiving hormone replacement therapy early after menopause had a significantly reduced risk of mortality, heart failure, or myocardial infarction (heart attack), without any apparent increase in risk of cancer, venous thromboembolism (blood clots), or stroke.” The mortality risk reduction was about 40%! They went on to state that “early initiation and prolonged hormone replacement therapy did not result in an increased risk of breast cancer or stroke.”

    There was no significant difference in the incidence of breast cancer between those who took hormones and those who did not. In fact, women who started hormone therapy prior to age 50 had a significant decrease in the incidence of breast cancer.

    What does this study tell us?

    • Hormone therapy started in recently menopausal women and continued for a prolonged duration does not increase mortality, stroke, heart failure, or heart attacks.
    • The rate of breast cancer or other cancers was not increased in this study.

    How can this be reconciled with the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative?

    • The Women’s Health Initiative used Premarin (derived from pregnant mare’s urine) and medroxyprogesterone (a synthetic progestin that has been found to increase the risk of breast cancer), not bioidentical hormones.
    • In WHI, the average age of the participants was 64, with many well into their 70s, many of whom were smokers and had other cardiovascular risk factors. These women had never been on hormones prior to the study.
    • One post hoc analysis of WHI that only looked at women younger than 60, also found a reduction in heart disease and death, although not statistically significant.

    Take home message:

    • “HRT” can be safe and effective when done properly.
    • Patient selection is important – generally, healthy women within 10 years of menopause at the start of hormone replacement are the best candidates. However,
      this does not preclude the use of hormones in older healthy women.
    • When hormones are started early after menopause, there appears to be a reduction in mortality due to cardiovascular disease.
    • There was no increase in breast cancer even with prolonged use in this group of patients.

    Commentary:

    • Most prior studies that showed no benefit or an increased risk of cancer, heart disease or blood clots, refer to “HRT” which is a general term, not indicating which hormones were used. Most used a Premarin (horse urine estrogen) equivalent and a synthetic progestin, most commonly medroxyprogesterone. The synthetic progestin component appears to be what is mainly responsible for the increase in breast cancer risk seen in some prior studies.
    • Studies using bioidentical progesterone have not shown the increased cancer risk with some studies showing a decreased risk.
    • Most prior studies did not specifically look at recently postmenopausal women.
    • The results of this study may even have been more favorable if topical (instead of oral) estradiol and bioidentical progesterone (instead of a synthetic progestin) had been used.

    While some clinicians would consider it premature to recommend HRT for mortality reduction, it is increasingly clear that with appropriate patient selection, the use of bioidentical hormones given via the proper route of delivery, does not pose an increased risk of mortality or cancer, and may even decrease these risks.

    Raymond Ishman, MD,  is the CEO and Chief Medical Officer of  Cenegenics, Philadelphia. Cenegenics is one of the leading anti-aging clinics in the United States.

  • Egg Yolks as Dangerous as Smoking?

    Egg Yolks as Dangerous as Smoking?

    Oh brother, here we go again…

    Last week, the journal Atherosclerosis published a study examining the association between the number of egg yolks consumed per week and the amount of plaque in the carotid artery. The study concluded that eating egg yolks is almost as bad as smoking when it comes to speeding up plaque deposits.

    OK, everyone, relax and take a deep breath.

    The idea that a food which contains 13 essential vitamins and minerals, high-quality protein, antioxidants, eye-health supporting carotenoids (lutein and zeaxanthin) and brain supporting choline should have almost as bad an effect on the heart as a pack of Salems just doesn’t pass the smell test, even if your nose is clogged. And it doesn’t begin to jibe with previous research.

    But that’s just the beginning.

    Readers of this newsletter have heard me rail time and time again against drawing conclusions from what are known as observational studies, of which this is a prime example. If you’re new to my column, here’s the difference between clinical study (which this is most definitely not) and an observational one. It’s an important difference, and it’s essential to understanding why the present study is not only horrible science, it’s also useless.

    What Exactly Is An “Observational Study”?

    In an observational study from which many associations are generated, you take a whole bunch of people- thousands of them—and you gather data about a zillion different things.

    Maybe it’s blood pressure and cholesterol, maybe it’s heart disease, maybe it’s what they ate for breakfast, how often they brush their teeth, how many of their parents had diabetes, how many of them own television sets, practice the rhumba, love Lady Gaga, take antidepressants, or pop a Centrum now and then.

    OK now you’ve got a statistician’s version of heaven—tons and tons of data. A gazillion gigabytes of numbers from thousands of people, and it’s your job to see if there’s any pattern, to determine which things are “associated”, meaning “found together”. If two things are said to be associated (or correlated), that means there is some relationship between these two things.

    Get it?

    Of course, discovering that two things happen to be found together is only the first part of science. The second, important part, is finding out why. Observational studies don’t touch that question; they merely catalogue what’s found together and leave it to the big boys to run the actual clinical studies and find out what the found association actually means (if anything).

    This study didn’t even generate tons of data because they only looked at two- count ‘em, two—variables. Smoking and egg yolk consumption. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

    So this egg yolk study was an observational study, like all the other studies with weird and inexplicable “results” (i.e. taking a multivitamin will kill you). You cannot- repeat cannot– attribute cause and effect to an observational study. All you can say is that it’s been observed that two things are found together more frequently than might be by chance. You have no idea about why.

    (If you want to read a great story about the idiocy of drawing cause and effect conclusions from observational studies, read the following paragraphs. If you’d just as soon move on with the story, skip over the part about storks and babies.)

    Storks and Babies: A Short Tangent into Observational Studies

    In a certain region of Denmark, there is a correlation between the number of storks and the number of babies. Seriously. It’s a positive correlation, meaning the more storks there are, the more babies there are. According to my old Psych 101 professor, Dr. Scott Fraser—this stork-baby correlation thing has held up for years.

    So. A classic observational study shows more storks, more babies. Less storks, less babies. What do we conclude?

    Well, here’s what we do not conclude, unless of course, we’re three years old: Storks bring babies. We might not know why the correlation occurs—it’s admittedly puzzling and amusing at the same time– but we’re pretty sure that it’s not cause and effect.

    Dr. Fraser used this example back when I was in his psych class to introduce the concept of confounding variables.

    A confounding variable is one which is not measured directly, but which accounts for the relationship between the two things that were measured.

    See if you can find the “confounding variable” in the storks-babies correlation.

    Give up?

    Here’s the answer to the puzzle. In Denmark, the cities are largely populated by singles and by childless couples. When people want to have kids, they move to the suburbs. In the suburbs of Denmark, the houses tend to be A frames with tar-based sloping roofs. Storks love to nest on tar and sloping roofs.

    The tar-based sloping roofs are the “confounding” variable. Both storks and newlyweds flock to the same area. Puzzle solved.

    Back to Egg Yolks

    When statisticians do studies like this “egg yolks kill” study, they try to “correct” for the confounding variables by applying statistical techniques that nullify other potential influences, like age, sex, years smoking and all that other good stuff.

    But they can only “control” for the variables they think of. And they often don’t think of precisely the variables that are making the difference, particularly when they already have a point of view about what the outcome is going to be (it’s called “confirmation bias” and it’s rampant in research.)

    In this study, for example, investigators claim to have statistically controlled for smoking, but they failed to control for overall lifestyle behavior. “Can they truly statistically control for all health factors of smoking?” asks Donald Layman, PhD. No, folks. They can’t. They also didn’t control for sugar intake, nor for omega-6 intake. (The high ratio of omega-6’s to omega-3’s in the western diet is probably responsible for more heart disease than saturated fat ever was!)

    It gets worse. They also didn’t control for exercise. Not only that, they completely failed to mention whether the “high egg users” were also the “high smokers”. (Smoking is one of the biggest factors associated with increasing plaque area.) And did I mention that plaque generally increases with age? Subjects in the “high egg consumption” group had an average age of 69.7 years while subjects in the “low egg consumption” group were on average 12 years younger, with an average age of 55.7 years.

    But that’s not even the best part.

    Buried at the end of the study is the finding that there was no association between cholesterol and plaque growth. Not total cholesterol, not LDL cholesterol not HDL cholesterol. None of them had any association with greater plaque. So if eating 2 extra eggs a week—the difference between the “low egg consumers” and the “high egg consumers”—is causing plaque growth, it’s got to be by some other mechanism than the cholesterol in the eggs, since cholesterol wasn’t associated with the reported plaque growth at all. Yet they claim that the reason they did the study in the first place is because there’s reason to be concerned about the cholesterol in eggs!

    Let’s review.

    In a very limited observational study of 1200 people, researchers measured carotid artery thickness and then went back and examined data on two variables: smoking and egg yolk consumption. That’s all, folks. And they found that people (average age 57) who ate about 2 ¾ eggs a week had less plaque growth than people (average age 69) who ate about 4.1/2 eggs a week.

    Plaque growth might also have been positively correlated with portions of asparagus eaten on Wednesdays or number of pitches thrown in a little league game when the subjects were nine. Of course the researchers wouldn’t have looked at any of that, because they wouldn’t have thought it was relevant. And maybe it’s not. But is sugar consumption? Omega-6 fat consumption? Lifestyle choices? Smoking? Age? The investigators didn’t look at other “suspects” because they had already decided they had the guilty party.

    David Jenkins, one of the researchers on this paper, is a wonderful man, a very smart, gentle scholar who has made an enormous contribution to nutrition with his work on glycemic index. I questioned Dr. Jenkins after his presentation at the American College of Nutrition conference in New York in 2010, and it was abundantly clear that he was a strong believer in the cholesterol hypothesis and that he was concerned about the growing trend towards looking at cholesterol as just a minor player in heart disease. For those of us who believe that the cholesterol hypothesis is just a myth, I’m sure he feels this study is a wake-up call

    Unfortunately this study is nothing of the kind. Sad to say, it’s just really bad science and I’m honestly amazed that it got published at all.

  • Computer Use + Exercise = Reduced Memory Loss

    Computer Use + Exercise = Reduced Memory Loss

    A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings  found that combining computer time with moderate exercise reduces your risk of memory loss compared with either activity alone.

    Researchers interviewed over 900 70 – 93 year olds after they completed a questionnaire about how often they exercised and used a computer.

    Just to clarify, “moderate exercise” included activities like:

    • brisk walking
    • doubles tennis
    • yoga
    • weightlifting.

    Mentally stimulating activities, on the other hand, included:

    • reading
    • social interaction
    • using a computer

    So why did researchers single out computers?

    Because so many people in this study used one on a regular basis.

    “The aging of baby boomers is projected to lead to dramatic increases in the prevalence of dementia,” lead researcher Dr. Yonas E. Geda said. “As frequent computer use has becoming increasingly common among all age groups, it is important to examine how it relates to aging and dementia. Our study further adds to this discussion.”

    Researchers found a combination of mental and physical stimulation reduced risk for mild cognitive impairment, a condition somewhere between age-related memory loss and early dementia.

    More specifically, they found:

    • For participants who neither exercised nor used a computer…
      • 20.1% had normal cognitive function
      • 37.6% showed signs of mild cognitive impairment.
    • For participants who exercised andused a computer…
      • 36% had normal cognitive function
      • 18.3% showed signs of mild cognitive impairment.

    In other words, the synergistic effects of exercise and mental stimulation best protected these participants against cognitive decline.

    51ZLpg8AQpL._SL110_
    If you’ve read any of my books, especially The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer  you know how much I value exercise and learning as critical tools to age better.

    Simply put, people who constantly challenge their minds and bodies live longer and more happily than complacent, sedentary people.

    After all, you probably saw the recent study in The Journal of the American Medical Association that showed people who sit more often have shorter life spans.

    Evolution designed us to use our bodies for physical activity and our minds for learning, and those demands don’t diminish as we age.

    In fact, a study in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise concluded that “no segment of the population…can benefit more from exercise than the elderly.”

    Those benefits go beyond physical health: a study in that same journal showed that moderate- and high-intensity resistance exercise programs both benefitted cognitive functioning.

    In other words, exercise can boost your mental power. And when your mind remains active and alert, you’re more likely to exercise than if you’re in a mental fog or TV-induced trance.

    No matter what your age, I want to propose two challenges to prevent memory loss and keep your mind and body in prime condition:

    1. Develop and maintain a vigorous exercise program. Brisk walking is good, but I want you to step it up a few notches. Try a new exercise class or sport, for instance, to boost your physical and mental skills. I never get tired of talking about my favorite exercise, burst training, which you can do in your own home and requires just minutes a day. You can devote all that time you save to learning a new language or rereading your favorite novel.
    2. Keep your mind active by always engaging in new activities. It doesn’t need to be anything rigorous: mental stimulation might include reading a new author or seeing a film outside your favorite genre. And as this study showed, online learning provides another way to keep your brain stimulated. Join forums about your favorite topics, for instance, or learn a new program.

    Harvard University made a list of seven activities you can do to keep your brain healthy and active at any age.

    Their number-one strategy is the same as mine: keep learning.

  • Skipping Sleep Can Lead to Diabetes

    Skipping Sleep Can Lead to Diabetes

    A study in the journal Science Translational Medicine found that not getting enough sleep, or getting poor-quality sleep, can make you fat and eventually lead to diabetes.

    Unlike past epidemiological studies, this one looked at people sequestered in a lab over a six-week period. Doing this allowed researchers to mimic third-shift work, jet lag, and other conditions that prevent a quality, full night’s sleep.

    In other words, by keeping these 21 brave participants tightly confined, researchers could control how many hours of sleep they got, when they slept, as well as other factors like diet and exercise. It wasn’t like they could slip off for a nap or anything.

    At the beginning of this six-week study, researchers allowed participants about 10 hours of sleep every night.

    Nice, right? Sign me up!

    But not so fast. Researchers eventually cut back participants’ sleep to less than six hours over a 24-hour period.

    Even more challenging, they rotated these six hours over different times of day and night to disrupt circadian rhythm, much like a hospital worker or someone flying to a different time zone might get inconsistent sleep.

    After suffering weeks of aberrant sleep patterns, researchers concluded the study by allowing participants plenty of recovery sleep.

    Regardless, these sleep-deprived people showed higher blood sugar levels, which can lead to obesity and diabetes. Even though they recovered, those weeks of not getting quality, consistent rest took its course.

    “The evidence is clear that getting enough sleep is important for health,” said lead author Dr. Orfeu M. Buxton, “and that sleep should be at night for best effect.”

    I know how easy it is to say this and yet how few people get seven to nine hours of high-quality, consistent sleep every night.

    More likely, you’re staying up late to meet deadlines, awakening at 3 a.m. with the next day’s business on your mind, or tossing for hours and hopelessly glancing at your alarm clock.

    To change those patterns, you need to prepare for sleep. About an hour before bed, shut down electronics and other stimulation, and unwind with a cup of tea and maybe a hot bath.

    Sleep is actually one of the seven key principles for living longer and living better covered in my DVD  7 Pillars of Longevity »

    Developing better sleeping patterns might require a natural sleep aid. One of my favorites is melatonin, a hormone your brain’s pineal gland produces to regulate sleep, circadian rhythm, and your body’s internal clock.

    Especially as you get older, your brain makes less melatonin. If you occasionally suffer from jet lag, have aberrant sleeping patterns, or just can’t get a good night’s rest, melatonin might be your ticket.

    A meta-analysis in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews  found melatonin safe and remarkably effective to reduce or eliminate jet lag.

    And a study in the Journal of Sleep Research found that melatonin could help night-shift workers sleep better during the day.

    My favorite melatonin supplement comes from Designs for Health.

    This high-quality melatonin has vitamin B6 to aid the conversion process, contains no cheap fillers or binders to inhibit efficacy, and comes from one of the best, most ethical supplement companies in the world.

    Best of all I think it is only $11 for a 60 day supply.

    Nothing is more important than a good night’s sleep, so take the very best melatonin to help you get there.

  • Want to Burn More Fat? Spend More Time in Bed!

    Want to Burn More Fat? Spend More Time in Bed!

    A study in the journal Sleep found that getting adequate sleep could help you overcome a genetic predisposition towards being overweight.

    The study looked at 1,088 pairs of twins. Researchers learned those who slept less than seven hours a night had a higher body mass index (BMI), one measure of being overweight or obese.

    What’s more, genes influenced about 70% of that high BMI. (The other 30%, in case you were wondering, involved environment.)

    On the other hand, for twins who got more than nine hours’ sleep, genes contributed only about 32% to higher BMI.

    In other words, sleep determined how much genes influenced these twins being overweight.

    “The results suggest that shorter sleep provides a more permissive environment for the expression of obesity related genes,” said lead researcher Dr. Nathaniel Watson. “Or it may be that extended sleep is protective by suppressing expression of obesity genes.”

    If you keep up with science, you’ll know genetics are the next big thing for fat loss and ultimate health. You can now take tests, for instance, that look at your genetic DNA profile to determine your ideal diet, nutrient needs, and exercise regimen.

    But I think this study proves a valuable point beyond genetics: sleep matters for fat loss.

    Indeed, too many people coast by on five hours’ sleep and caffeinate themselves the next morning with a big vat of Starbucks. But as you’ll see, that’s a recipe for terrible health and gaining fat.

    That’s because too little sleep knocks your hormones out of whack. Let’s take a look at five hormones that sleep impacts:

    1. Ghrelin – this is your hunger hormone: it tells your brain to eat. When you get a crappy night’s sleep, you crank out more ghrelin. Couple that with lack of judgment from being so tired, and you can see why you’re mindlessly devouring a Starbucks Danish that you didn’t even want.
    2. Leptin – leptin tells you to stop eating. In other words, it has the opposite effect of ghrelin. When you don’t sleep well, you become more leptin resistant so your brain doesn’t get the message as effectively.
    3. Insulin – insulin is your ultimate fat-storing hormone. Chronically elevated insulin makes fat burning almost impossible. Guess what? A few nights of terrible sleep can make your cells insulin resistant, leading to higher insulin levels.
    4. Human growth hormone (GH) – this “youth” hormone prevents aging, builds muscle, and helps fat burning. Lack of sleep means you make less GH.
    5. Cortisol – cortisol is your stress hormone. Couple a crappy night’s sleep with rush-hour traffic and an irate boss, and you’ve got a recipe for chronically elevated cortisol levels.

    Get what I’m saying now about poor sleep adversely affecting your hormones? It all adds up to a dismal picture for fat burning and feeling your best.

    I know getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done. I want to leave you with three tips to prepare for a good night’s sleep so it happens more often:

    1. Cut off the stimulation and power down. About an hour before your bedtime, turn off your laptop, TV, and other distractions. Take a hot bath, drink some chamomile tea, meditate, or do whatever works for you to unwind.
    2. Stop eating about three hours before bed. Those late-night Haagen-Dazs freezer raids aren’t doing anything for sleep or your waistline. Close the kitchen after dinner for better sleep and fat burning.
    3. Try a natural sleep aid. Everyone needs a little help falling asleep sometimes. If you suffer jet lag or are trying to adjust to a new time zone, melatonin could be your answer to fall and stay asleep.
  • Fish Oil Boosts Women’s Power

    Fish Oil Boosts Women’s Power

    Guest article from Craig Weatherby, health and science reporter for Vital Choice, Inc

    Fish Oil Boosted Women’s Power

    Older women gained more strength from exercise when taking omega-3s; Results echo findings in younger people.

    by Craig Weatherby

    Bone and muscle weakness is common among older women … and to a lesser but substantial extent, men as well.

    Diet and exercise can help prevent or slow age-related declines in bone and muscle strength … two critical factors for avoiding crippling falls and limits on physical activity and capacity (Misic MM et al. 2009; Bento PCB et al. 2010).

    A study we reported last year indicates that omega-3s from fish and fish oil can enhance efforts to build the strength of bones and muscle among healthy young and middle-aged adults.

    And the new findings suggest that the same is true in older people, judging by the results of a controlled clinical trial from Brazil.

    Although the new study was small, the advantage seen in those who took fish oil while engaged in strength training was substantial, and more than a statistical anomaly.

    This Brazilian trial is the first to show that supplemental fish oil can enhance muscle activation and force among elderly women undergoing strength training.

    Brazilian trial finds fish oil enhanced exercising women’s strength gains

    A team of researchers from Parana Federal University recruited women aged about 64 (plus or minus 1.4 years) and assigned them all to a strength training program (Rodacki CL et al. 2012).

    The 45 participants – who were not engaged in any other regular exercise during the year before the study began – were divided into three groups:

    • Control Group took no fish oil during 90 days of strength training.
    • Fish Oil Group #1 took two grams of fish oil per day during 90 days of strength training.
    • Fish Oil Group #2 took two grams of fish oil per day for 60 days prior to the study, and during 90 days of training.

    Each one gram (1000mg) capsule of fish oil contained about 0.4 grams of omega-3 EPA and 0.3 grams of omega-3 DHA … which are modest amounts.

    After 90 days of strength training, all 45 women showed gains in muscle power, measured as muscle torque and the rate of torque development.

    (Muscular torque is the force of a muscle contraction, and is a key measure of the force a person can exert.)

    Before and after the study period, the scientists gave all of the participants four tests of strength: “foot up and go,” “sit and reach,” “chair-rising,” and “6-minute walk”.

    After 90 days of training, no differences were seen in three of these tests.

    However, the two fish oil groups both showed about 50 percent greater strength in the chair-rising test, compared with the control group.

    (This test, also called chair-standing, measures the number of times you can come to a full standing position in 30 seconds while your arms are crossed over your chest.)

    Interestingly, the researchers detected no additional strength benefit from a longer period of supplementation with fish oil.

    It seems likely that the observed strength benefit stems from raising your cellular levels of omega-3s to a certain level, after which further increases provide no more benefit.

    Both fish oil groups showed substantially higher levels of omega-3s in their cell membranes at the end of the trial, compared with the control group. Fish Oil Group #2, which took the omega-3 supplements the longest, had the largest increase … their EPA levels rose by 112 percent and their DHA levels rose by 50 percent.

    The researchers stressed the practical implications of the strength advantages seen in all of the women, which were greater in the two fish oil groups (Rodacki CL et al. 2012):

    • “The improved RTD [rate of torque development] reflects improved muscle contractility [torque], which is an important measure for the elderly due to its contribution to several daily life tasks and its relation to the ability to recover from a slip or trip, preventing a fall.”
    • “Strength training has been shown to facilitate muscle protein anabolism, energy expenditure, and improved appetite and food intake in elderly people.”

    And as they wrote, “Thus [fish oil] may be an attractive supplement for the elderly to maximize their neuromuscular responses to strength training, which is important to life quality.” (Rodacki CL et al. 2012)

    Based on the results of other studies, the Brazilian team proposed that fish oil may work in at least two ways:

    • Alter the fluidity of muscle cell membranes.
    • Increase muscle cells’ sensitivity to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which facilitates fast communication between nerves and muscles and accelerates muscle contraction (torque).

    Clearly, older people can gain a great deal from strength training … with or without fish oil.

    But it seems that omega-3s enhance some of those gains, and may make exercise more rewarding in a pretty short period.

     

    Sources

    • Smith GI, Atherton P, Reeds DN, Mohammed BS, Rakin D, Rennie MJ, Mittendorfer B. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids augment the muscle protein anabolic response to hyperinsulinemia-hyperaminoacidaemia in healthy young and middle-aged men and women. Clin Sci (Lond) 2011; 121:267–78.
    • Bento PCB, Pereira G, Ugrinowitsch C, Rodacki ALF. Peak torque and rate of torque development in elderly with and without fall history. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon) 2010;25:450–4.
    • Alves RV, Mota J, Costa MC, Alves JGB. Physical fitness and elderly health effects of hydrogymnastics. Rev Bras Med Esporte 2004;10:31–7.
    • Misic MM, Valentine RJ, Rosengren KS,Woods JA, Evans EM. Impact of training modality on strength and physical function in older adults. Gerontol 2009;55:411–6.
    • Skelton DA, Greig CA, Davies JM, Young A. Strength, power and related functional ability of healthy people aged 65–89 years. Age Ageing 1994;23:371–7.
    • Rodacki CL, Rodacki AL, Pereira G, Naliwaiko K, Coelho I, Pequito D, Fernandes LC. Fish-oil supplementation enhances the effects of strength training in elderly women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Jan 4. [Epub ahead of print]