Gym Benefits Undone by Too Much Sitting
I think that what disturbs me the most about this headline is the notion that the only way we can hope for longevity is through rigorous exercise the majority of our life span. Just because people who are thinner appear to be more active than the obese (which is questionable because it certainly takes more work to transport 280 pounds than it does 147) does not mean that their activity is the cause for the disparity in health. It ignores the possibility that perhaps those people are more active because they’re thin and not fat.
One can also decrease their death risk by not continuing in the things that increase it to begin with, like eating foods which are poisonous for the body. I can eat my diet and remain sedentary and not decrease my health as a result. If I eat a diet high in refined and easily digestible carbohydrates, then I will gain weight and my health will decrease regardless of the amount of exercise. If my diet required me to exercise just to stay within some semblance of health, that would be a sign that perhaps my diet is improper.
Alpa Patel, a researcher at the American Cancer Society (ACS), and his colleagues analyzed survey responses from 123,216 individuals (53,440 men and 69,776 women) who had no history of cancer, heart attack, stroke or emphysema that were enrolled in the ACS’s Cancer Prevention II study in 1992. Participants were followed from 1993 to 2006. The researchers examined the participants’ amount of time spent sitting and physical activity in relation to mortality over the 13-year period.
More leisure time spent sitting was associated with higher risk of mortality, particularly in women.
Women who reported more than six hours per day of sitting (outside of work) were 37 percent more likely to die during the time period studied than those who sat fewer than three hours a day. Men who sat more than six hours a day (also outside of work) were 18 percent more likely to die than those who sat fewer than three hours per day. The association remained virtually unchanged after adjusting for physical activity level. Associations were stronger for cardiovascular disease mortality than for cancer mortality.
When combined with a lack of physical activity, the association was even stronger. Women and men who both sat more and were less physically active were 94 percent and 48 percent more likely to die during the study period, respectively, compared with those who reported sitting the least and being most active.
For his part, the study author wrote:
“Several factors could explain the positive association between time spent sitting and higher all-cause death rates,” Patel said. “Prolonged time spent sitting, independent of physical activity, has been shown to have important metabolic consequences, and may influence things like triglycerides, high density lipoprotein, cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, resting blood pressure, and leptin, which are biomarkers of obesity and cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.”
These “biomarkers” are also the signs manifested in populations characterized as “Western-Influenced” and the overall term for this is metabolic syndrome, a collection of diseases that all appear to have a common cause and common treatment. History has shown us that those populations that decrease the amount of carbohydrates consumes, improve their overall health with regard to metabolic syndrome and all chronic illness. As a matter of fact, those populations that did not consume carbohydrates at all, did not manifest any metabolic syndrome. One may argue that there were some populations who ate a diet high in carbohydrates who also were healthy, and I would agree with you. However, that does not change my original supposition. The appearance of carbohydrates in cultures that previously consumed none was met with an outbreak of metabolic syndrome usually within the first or second generation.
In: Diet, Disease, Exercise, Obesity, Tweet
Do Certain Shoes Prevent Injury?
I haven’t written about running in quite some time, especially because I’ve scaled back quite a bit. However, I’ve ramped up a little lately preparing to run the Rock-n-Roll Chicago half marathon next weekend. So since I’ve been a little preoccupied with the subject, I came across a New York Times article examining whether certain shoes prevent injury.
Readers of this blog have read my review of the epic book, Born to Run, where Christopher McDougal shares some pretty damaging material from the running shoe industry. It seems that these major companies such as my beloved Nike and others have been duly informed that their products are nothing more than a fashion statement. They certainly do nothing to stem the injury epidemic in running and in fact, it’s been shown time and again that the more motion control and nonsense that is manufactured in the shoe, the greater the risk of injury.
The shoe companies tell us to change our shoes ever so many miles but the truth is, the more worn they are, the better they seem to perform which would suggest that going barefoot or at least going with minimal footwear is the key to overcoming injury. Of course, one must also take steps to learn to run properly. But that’s for another subject.
Military researchers began fitting thousands of recruits in the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps with either the “right” shoes for their feet or stability shoes. Over the course of three large studies, the most recent of which was published last month in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers found almost no correlation at all between wearing the proper running shoes and avoiding injury. Injury rates were high among all the runners, but they were highest among the soldiers who had received shoes designed specifically for their foot types. If anything, wearing the “right” shoes for their particular foot shape had increased trainees’ chances of being hurt.
Scientific rumblings about whether running shoes deliver on their promises have been growing louder in recent years. In 2008, an influential review article in The British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that sports-medicine specialists should stop recommending running shoes based on a person’s foot posture. No scientific evidence supported the practice, the authors pointed out, concluding that “the true effects” of today’s running shoes “on the health and performance of distance runners remain unknown.”
More recently, a study published online in late June in The British Journal of Sports Medicine produced results similar to those in the military experiments, this time using experienced distance runners as subjects. For the study, 81 women were classified according to their foot postures, a more comprehensive measure of foot type than arch shape. About half of the runners received shoes designated by the shoe companies as appropriate for their particular foot stance (underpronators were given cushiony shoes, overpronators motion-control shoes and so on). The rest received shoes at random.
All of the women started a 13-week, half-marathon training program. By the end, about a third had missed training days because of pain, with a majority of the hurt runners wearing shoes specifically designed for their foot postures. (It’s worth noting that across the board, motion-control shoes were the most injurious for the runners. Many overpronators, who, in theory, should have benefited from motion-control shoes, complained of pain and missed training days after wearing them, as did a number of the runners with normal feet and every single underpronating runner assigned to the motion-control shoes.)
The Overweight Eat No More than the Lean
Gary Taubes made this point in his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. Upon first glance, the reflexive part of you would probably revolt because you’ve been brainwashed to believe that obese people get that way simply because they eat too much. However, Taubes points out that astute doctors and scientists have known for some time that this isn’t the case. We also tend to believe that lean people exert more energy in their everyday tasks than the obese but even that is not universally true. If we take the time to learn a little about basic physiology, we can discover why these myths are just what they are: Myths.
University of Bristol graduate student Danielle Ferriday and her faculty advisor, Dr. Jeffrey Brunstrom, wanted to know if overweight and lean people responded differently to “food cues,” and, if they did, how the mind translates these different levels of “desire-to-eat.” To the end of finding out, they enrolled 52 normal weight and 52 overweight women in a study. Then, they exposed them to the sight and smell of pizza and measured how much they salivated, as well as their psychological responses. While lean participants didn’t salivate much more once they saw and smelled the pizza, the overweight participants salivated about a third more than usual once the pizza showed up. They also had more desire to eat, measured by a standard scale, than the lean study subjects.
However, the overweight participants didn’t eat more, even after being told to eat as much as they’d like. The researchers interpret this to mean that the overweight don’t necessarily eat more when at the table, but, because of their heightened sensitivity to the cues, they may be called to the table more often. However, just because they are called to the table more, doesn’t necessarily mean that they eat more food than the lean. However, I would be surprised if they did not.
Obesity is internal starvation. The body compensates by enlarging the fat tissue in order to increase the flow of fuel to the cells and tissues that need the fuel. Lean people are the way they are because their bodies are more efficient at using the food they ingest for energy. The obese suffer from a condition that does not allow their bodies to take advantage of the considerable reserves that are stored in their tissue.
We know from science that the levels of circulating insulin increase proportionately as weight increases. By the same token, the lean have less insulin in circulation. Therefore, it should not surprise us that the overweight would salivate, especially at the smell or sight of carbs, more so than the lean. Their blood sugar is more unstable and therefore their bodies will react to the chance to possibly balance the blood sugar by ingesting more sugars.
“This is potentially important, because this sensitivity may encourage snacking” and other bad eating habits that are “associated with increased energy intake, overweight and weight gain,”
The investigators wrote the above quote in the July issue of the International Journal of Obesity. They were unclear as to why the obese would be more prone to snacking. Evidently they don’t understand the draw that carbohydrates have on the body. This “energy boost” that is felt when a person consumes carbs is more akin to the defense mechanism of a plant such as a pepper. It gets hotter to attempt to defend itself against being eaten. So too with our bodies. Whey they sense a potential toxin, the body mobilizes itself against the threat. This is not an “energy boost” in the way it’s portrayed. Energy should be stable just our blood sugar should be. The highs and lows that people feel is a function of a faulty carbohydrate metabolism. To regain a more steady existence, it’s necessary to restrict their intake.
In: Diet, Insulin, Obesity, Sugar, Tweet
Should Diabetics Have Surgery to Control Blood Sugar?
Diabetes is a defect of carbohydrate metabolism. The cells in the body become resistant to the effects of insulin and does not process the movement of blood sugar into sells as it should. Generally, as the cells become more resistant, the fat tissue becomes more accommodating which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat tissue so without insulin, we are unable to store fatty acids. As with all chronic disease, all who get diabetes don’t get fat. Some people develop Type I and they are unable to store fat all which can just as bad if not worse.
For both, the experts recommend a diet of 70% sugar. Yes, those fruits, vegetables and whole grains are all sugar. Yes, they are slightly better than doughnuts, but….The blood sugar continues to ebb and flow, often drastically with enough force at times to trigger a heart attack. Because the experts believe that fat causes heart disease, despite numerous scientific studies to the contrary, (that’s the thing with religions…) they would rather the diabetics eat sugar and attempt to cover the situation with medicine. However, the dosage continues to rise and rise until just as the body could not handle the situation, the medicine is overwhelmed as well. And of course diabetic are several times more likely to get heart disease and all other chronic diseases at a rate much higher than the normal population.
Dr. Philip Schauer of the Cleveland Clinic is recruiting 150 overweight and obese Type 2 diabetics with BMIs between 27 and 43. Some will have surgery and their progress will be compared to those who manage their diabetes with medicine. The goal is to see which group can achieve complete remission. Smaller studies have hinted that stomach stapling and gastric banding — in which an adjustable ring is placed over the top of the stomach to create a small pouch — may work in diabetics who aren’t so fat.
The biggest problem with this approach is that it does not address the underlying problem, which is what got the person to the condition to begin with. If they continue to eat a diet of foods that their bodies cannot process in a healthy manner, it will only be a matter of time before the condition returns or something more sinister happens. Many people have reversed their Type 2 diabetes by simply changing their diet. Stop eating that which makes your blood sugar unstable and your body will heal itself from diabetes. It’s hardly a disease. Rather, it’s a consequence of a bad diet, as is most chronic disease.
In: Diabetes, Diet, Disease, Insulin, Obesity, Tweet
Should Kids Have Cholesterol Tests?
And by extension, should children take cholesterol medicines to deal with any problems found by such tests? Isn’t the thought revolting to you? In what generation known to mankind have we put children on as much medicine as they are on today. Today’s children cannot sit still long enough to read a book or be read to. They are hyperactive or heavily medicated with little or no “in-between.” It’s constantly zero to sixty because their diets send their blood sugar soaring. They eat complete sugary meals for breakfast lunch, and seventy percent of their dinner is comprised of carbohydrate foods. And let’s not forget the so-called healthy snacks that are mostly sugar as well. Yes, whole grains are nothing more than longer chains of sugar. You might feel full a little faster than after eating more processed stuff, but its still enough to send their blood sugar soaring and leave them crashing afterwards.
Is it any wonder that children don’t play outside all day and night as they did in generations past? All we have done is increase the amount of sugar that children consume all in the name of healthy eating. It’s only getting worse, not better. High fructose corn syrup is in most things on supermarket shelves. Even in foods that you couldn’t imagine they would be found in. All in the name of getting cheap foods to market. Even in whole wheat bread, there are 48 grams of carbohydrate in a single sandwich with two slices of bread. Sure, it’s less than white bread but not much better. The average person can only safely consume about 83 grams of carbohydrate per day. A single sandwich and the blood sugar is toast. Wash that baby down with a Coke and that’s all she wrote.
Now, comes the “experts” wondering about cholesterol screening for children. They eat the same pathetic diet that their parents eat, albeit with even more sugar in most cases and we wonder why they are starting to experience the dreaded chronic diseases of civilization faster than their parents or grandparents did.
In a report published in the journal Pediatrics, they call for screening of all children, expanding one set of current recommendations that target only those whose parents or grandparents have heart disease or high cholesterol. Another existing set of guidelines doesn’t call for screening in any children. Neal said treating youth with cholesterol-lowering drugs, the so-called statins, would curb the risk that they would go on to develop heart problems in middle age. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world.
This is the absolute saddest part. The prescription to the madness created by the standard American diet. Going on statins to ward off a possible heart attack. People are more afraid of heart attacks than any other thing. Recall that the present theory is that a lifetime of eating fat is what clogs your arteries. But these children who eat diets laden with sugar with very little meat are able to clog their arteries and raise their cholesterol at a rate some three times greater than their parents if the present theory is to be believed. That means that children must be swallowing tons more meat than their parents did. Wait, it’s the “fatty foods” which are french fries, pastries and other baked goods. That part is probably accurate. These are refined and easily digestible carbohydrate foods, not meats.
If you don’t want your children (or yourselves) on statins, change your diet not your prescription. It’s much cheaper and it is guaranteed to work, unlike the pills which might work or they might not. You might escape the heart attack with the pills but you’re still hundreds of times more likely to manifest some other chronic disease as long as you eat improperly.
In: Cholesterol, Diet, Disease, Heart Disease, Tweet
