Author: Armin Brott

Categories
Sweat

Gains Galore: The Benefits Of Weightlifting

Sure-fire, get-in-the-best-shape-of-your-life-or-your-money-back fitness methods have been around for thousands of years. Just in my lifetime, I’ve seen: 8-Minute Abs, aerobics (including videos by Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, and Suzanne Somers) , Body by Jake, boot camps, Bowflex, Charles Atlas, Chuck Norris’ Total Gym, CrossFit, Hula Hooping, Insanity, Jazzercise, kettlebells, Nautilus, NordicTrack, P90X, Pilates, pole dancing, Shake Weight, Spinning, Tabata, Tae Bo, ThighMaster, TRX, Wii Fit, and Zumba. And that’s by no means a complete list. Over the years (centuries really), there’s been one method that won’t ever show up on a list of fads, but, despite the absence of hype, it may very well be the most beneficial of the bunch: good, old-fashioned weightlifting.
Let’s take a look at some of the proven benefits of weight training.

Testosterone

Political correctness would have us believe that testosterone as a bad thing. In excessive quantities, it can be problematic. But in normal quantities, it’s what makes men men: it motivates us, gives us energy, helps us take the initiative, and gives us a sex drive (women, too, have testosterone).
Below-normal levels of testosterone have been linked with depression, lack of drive concentration problems, fatigue, irritability, physical weakness, diminished or absent sex drive, sleep problems, trouble coping with stress, your overall risk of mortality, and more. Strength training boosts the body’s natural testosterone production.

Physical Health

The impression one gets from most of the fitness trends in the introduction is that the only way to burn fat is with cardio exercise. Not true. In fact, a lot of research indicates that weight training is actually a more efficient way to burn fact. To understand how this works, we need to understand about your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the energy we use when we’re resting to maintain basic bodily function.
Muscles increase our BMR, meaning that it takes more energy to support a pound of muscle than a pound of fat. So as your muscle mass increases, your body gets more efficient at burning fat. The result? You lose weight—even when you’re sleeping.
Weight training has been shown to increase bone density (thereby reducing the risk of fractures in older adults), improve balance (which reduces the risk of falls that might cause fractures), reduce the risk of stroke by as much as 40 percent, lower blood pressure (some studies show that two weight-training sessions per week is as effective as blood pressure–lowering meds), strengthen the heart, reduce diabetes risk and cancer, and improve longevity. UCLA researcher Arun Karlamangla, MD, summed it up like this: “the greater your muscle mass, the lower your risk of death. Thus, rather than worrying about weight or body mass index, we should be trying to maximize and maintain muscle mass.”

Physical Performance

Strength training helps offset the half-pound of muscle mass we lose every year after about age 30. It also increases your strength, flexibility, endurance. That makes us less likely to get injured doing other athletic activities. Strength, flexibility, and stamina are also quite helpful to maintaining your sex life.
Theoretically, we spend about 30 percent of our life sleeping. But in reality, many of us are chronically tired. Regularly getting less than 6 hours of sleep is associated with a host of serious health risks, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, mental illness, car accidents, and general cognitive impairment (see below). Researchers Patrick O’Connor, Matthew Herring, and Amanda Caravalho found that people with sleep problems who did regular strength training for 8 to 10 weeks had a 30 percent improvement in the quantity of their sleep. Older adults who did regular weight training reduced the number of times they got up at night compared to those who didn’t do any exercise.

Mental Health

By changing the shape of your body in a good way, weight training may improve your self-esteem. It also training triggers a release of endorphins, which help reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression. A little anxiety is a good thing—it keeps us aware, makes us focus, and gives us the energy to run away from dangerous situations. But too much anxiety can ruin your sleep, cause physical pain, and have a negative effect on your whole life. O’Connor, Herring, and Caravalho found that people who did weight training and cardio three times per week experienced less depression than those who didn’t get that exercise.

Cognitive Function

Strength training builds strong brains as well as strong muscles and bones. People who lift weights tend to have a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps with verbal processing and memory. According to O’Connor, Herring, and Caravalho, resistance training is especially beneficial to older adults, especially in memory and memory-related functions. Other researchers have found that weight training improves executive function, which is the brain’s capacity to keep us organized and on task.

Social Status

Like it or not, we’re animals. And like most other animals, we have a social structure that in many ways operates out of our control. Here’s how it works: physically strong men tend to be more confident. Confident (and muscular) men tend to be more respected by others, are seen as better leaders and more competent in general.
As a result, they’re able to motivate others to work harder, they get more promotions, and they make more money. They’re also seen as more attractive than their less-confident (and less-muscular) brothers. “Studies have demonstrated that people assign positive personality traits to drawings or photographs of mesomorphic (muscular) men and mostly negative traits to nonmesomorphic men,” say researchers Timothy Judge from the University of Florida and Daniel Cable from the London Business School.
For example traits ascribed to mesomorphic men were very positive (i.e., best friend, has lots of friends, polite, happy, helps others, brave, healthy, smart, and neat). By contrast … ectomorphic (slender) men were described with a different set of negative traits (i.e., nervous, sneaky, afraid, sad, weak, and sick).”

Future of the Species

Besides making men more attractive to the opposite sex, weight training can have an influence on future generations. Weight training gives our DNA an improved capacity to repair itself. That keeps our genes healthy. And since our children get half of their genes from dad, at least some of our healthy genes will be passed on to our children, thereby making them healthier too. In addition, a 2004 study of Danish men found that muscular men had more semen volume, a greater number of healthy sperm, and were more fertile than either skinny or obese men.

Easy Implementation

Tapping into the benefits of weight training isn’t all that complicated. While cardio exercise, almost by definition, can take a lot of time, many experts say that 30 to 60 minutes of weight training per week is plenty.

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Nosh

Forget Dieting: Not Eating At All Might Be Best

The perfect diet is kind of like a unicorn—a nice-sounding, mythical creature that lots of people claim to have seen but doesn’t actually exist. However, it turns out that there may actually be a perfect diet (could unicorns be far behind?), but there’s a catch: This diet doesn’t include any food at all, or at least for long stretches of time.
It’s called intermittent fasting. The science behind it is still a little, well, thin (most of the existing research has been done on animals), but the benefits that have been discovered thus far are nothing short of amazing. Let me give you a few examples. Intermittent fasting (we’ll talk about what, exactly, that means below) may:

  • Decrease blood insulin levels, which accelerates fat burning
  • Increase production of human growth hormone, which also accelerates fat burning and muscle building
  • Help you reduce the number of calories you eat
  • Increase your metabolic rate, meaning you’ll burn more calories
  • Cause less muscle loss than traditional diets that reduce calories on a daily basis
  • Make your body resist oxidative stress, which is a factor in aging and a number of chronic diseases
  • Reduce inflammation, which is a factor in many diseases and conditions
  • Reduce many of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol; it may also help prevent brain damage caused by a stroke
  • Prevent cancer and reduce some of the nasty side effects of chemotherapy
  • Increase production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which helps keep brain neurons from dying
  • Prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

Okay, so what is intermittent fasting?

It’s pretty much what it sounds like: You fast for short periods and then go back to your regular diet. There are a variety of approaches. Some proponents suggest fasting 16 hours every day (for men; 14 for women), half of which can happen overnight so you won’t notice it as much.
Others suggest fasting a full 24 hours once or twice per week (no food at all, but water and other calorie-free drinks are okay). Still others say to fast 20 hours per day and do all of your eating during the remaining four hours. Unfortunately, these and other similar approaches will be really challenging for most people.

If it looks like fasting does that count?

Then there’s the fast-mimicking diet (FMD) advocated by Valter Longo, a researcher at the University of Southern California. Longo and an international group of colleagues did studies on mice and found that putting them on a very-low-calorie diet just four or five days per month boosted their immune system, reduced inflammatory diseases and the incidence of certain cancers, slowed bone density loss, and improved cognitive abilities in older mice.
He also did several human trials, putting the volunteer subjects on a highly restricted diet for only five days per month for three months. At the end of the study, the subjects had reduced risk factors relating to aging, cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease—with no negative side effects.
The diet Longo used was meant to produce the same effects in the body as fasting while still allowing for some nutrition. If you were to try this (which you shouldn’t do without first checking with your healthcare provider), you’d eat whatever you normally do for 25 days.
Then the actual diet starts. On day one, you eat 1,090 calories, broken down into 23 percent carbs, 56 percent healthy fats, and 10 percent protein. For the next four days, you cut back to 725 calories: 47 percent carbs, 44 percent healthy fats, and 9 percent protein. That’s 34 to 54 percent of a normal person’s daily caloric intake. Repeat twice more. Do the same three-month cycle a few times per year.
If you’ve ever tried intermittent fasting or you decide to give FMD a whirl, let us know how you did and what results you saw.

Categories
Wellbeing

Top Plastic Surgeries For Men

When it comes to spending money to look good, women have got men beat, hands down. In 2014, of the 1.3 million cosmetic procedures—and the $12.9 billion Americans spent on them—women accounted for 90 percent. But things are changing: the number of cosmetic procedures (which include both surgical and non-surgical) men had is up 273 percent since 1997. As soon as someone develops a safe, legitimate penis enlargement procedure (not the kind that flood your spam filters), we expect that figure to quadruple every year for the next, well, forever,
So what kinds of procedures are men getting? Let’s take a look at the most popular ones first. But the real interesting stuff is the lesser-know-but-becoming-more-common ones.

  • Gynecomastia (removing what are often known as man boobs or moobs)
  • Eyelid (making both the upper and lower eyelids less droopy. This does not remove those dark circles under the eyes).
  • Facelifts
  • Liposuction (removing fat, usually from the chest and belly)
  • Nose reshaping

Men’s top five non-surgical procedures are:

  • Botox (to reduce wrinkles on the forehead and face)
  • Chemical peel (a process that removes the top layer of skin to expose the smoother layer underneath)
  • Laser hair removal (from chest, underarms, etc.)
  • Microdermabrasion (similar to chemical peel except that the top layer of skin is essentially buffed off)
  • Soft tissue fillers (injecting collagen, fat, or other substances into the skin to reduce wrinkles or add fullness to the lips)

Among surgical procedures, gynecomastia is the only of the top five that’s growing–up 14 percent from 2013 and 29 percent from 2010. However, more and more men are opting for pec implants and abdominal “sculpting” (to give you that bodybuilder chest and six-pack abs without having to bother going to the gym), cheek and chin implants, and buttock lifts and augmentations (to give you the large, perky butt you’ve always dreamed of. Wait, what? Really?)
All of the top non-surgical procedures except for microdermabrasion have grown since last year. Laser skin resurfacing seems to be replacing it.
I used to spend a lot of time wondering why women would spend so much time and money to make themselves look different. My oldest daughter has beautifully curly hair, which she used to spend endless hours straightening. Her sister has wonderful-looking straight hair which she used to spend endless hours curling. Fortunately, my youngest daughter is perfectly happy with her curls.
Men may not be spending as much time or money as women do on modifying our body, but we’re going to increasingly bizarre lengths to look good, whether for possible romantic partners, adoring fans, the media, the board of directors, or possibly just for the mirror at home. Here are just a few of the cosmetic procedures men are getting.

  • Bicep implants (if you’ve done your chest, butt, and abs, you can’t very well have skinny arms)
  • Chest hair surgery (take hair from the head and implant it on the chest)
  • Moustache surgery (same basic idea as above. Hey, not everyone can grow one.)
  • Voice-deepening surgery (injecting fat into the vocal cords to make you sound like Barry White)
  • Scrotal ironing and reduction (your sac too wrinkled? Too saggy? We can fix that)
  • Otoplasty (to make the ears stick out less or just move them to a more pleasing location)
  • Necklift (to reduce sagging)

And just so you know, women are going to some extremes as well. Between 2013 and 2014, labiaplasty procedures increased by 49 percent (since the suffix “plasty” means “to reshape,” we’re sure you can figure out what labiaplasty is all about).

Categories
Wellbeing

Will Having More Sex Make You Happier?

Sex is pretty important stuff. After all, none of us would be here without it, right? And just about everyone agrees that a little dancing between the sheets is an important ingredient in a happy romantic relationship. Given that, a lot of us would assume that sex more often would make you happier and improve your romantic relationships.
Sounds perfectly logical, but the answer to the question, “Does more sex make you happier—or have any other benefits?” is a resounding “it depends.”
On the “Yes” side, various studies have found a connection between sex and a stronger immune system, lower blood pressure, reduced heart attack risk, improved sleep, lower stress levels, better memory and analytic skills, an increase in brain-cell building, and reduced anxiety and depression.
One study even found that sex could reduce prostate cancer risk. It’s not so much the act of knocking boots, though, but the ejaculations that count–and you can do that all by yourself. Either way, you’ll have to do it a lot. Men who ejaculated 21 times per month had a 20 percent lower risk of developing prostate cancer than those who did so “only” 4 to 7 times per month, according to the study’s lead author, Harvard epidemiologist, Jennifer Rider.
The circumstances of your coital bliss are also important. For example, people with many partners are less happy than those who have fewer (in fact, several studies have concluded that the number of partners needed to maximize happiness is…wait for it…one). People who cheat on their spouse and men who frequent prostitutes are also less happy than those who are able to keep their pants on when they’re away from their main squeeze.

Doing the Numbers

Okay, if sex is good for you, then how much is enough? Tim Wadsworth, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, has a pretty good idea. Compared to those who didn’t have intercourse at all in the previous year, Wadsworth found that people do so 2 to 3 times per month are 33 percent more likely to report high levels of happiness. Those who do the deed once a week are 44 percent more likely to report high levels of happiness, and those who have sex two or three times per week are 55 percent more likely.
But be careful: the nookie-to-happiness ratio isn’t just a numbers game. Perception and competition also play a role. “There’s an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there’s also this relative aspect to it,” Wadsworth said. “Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking that we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier.” For example, if a couple is having intercourse two or three times a month but they think that their neighbors are partaking once a week, the first couple’s “probability of reporting a higher level of happiness falls by about 14 percent,” Wadsworth found.

Which (not who) comes first?

Okay, so there’s a connection between those joint sessions of congress and happiness. But George Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, wasn’t clear on which one of the two caused the other. Does carnal knowledge make people happier or do happier people have more afternoon (or morning or nighttime) delights? Or is there another variable, such as health or income, that affects both? Loewenstein and his colleagues decided to find out.
They started with 64 volunteer couples (all were legally married, heterosexual, and age 35 to 65) and randomly divided them into two groups. One was asked to double their conjugal frequency, the other didn’t get any instructions. The study lasted for three months and both members of the couples got surveys before, during, and after. The questionnaires asked participants about their about happiness levels, how often they had sex, and how much they enjoyed it.
The couples in the increase-it group did, indeed, boost their sexual encounters. But the results weren’t what Leowenstein and his team were expecting. “Contrary to what one would expect if the causal story running from sexual frequency to happiness were true,” they wrote in their paper, “we observed a weak negative impact of inducing people to have more sex on mood.” In other words, increasing the number of times you have sex may actually decrease your happiness, desire, and enjoyment.
The researchers were quick to point out that the problem wasn’t the increased sex, itself. Instead, it was the fact that the sexual act was a homework assignment instead of something the couples jumped into on their own.
So there you go: more sex doesn’t necessarily make us happier. So stop worrying about quantity, forget about how much action the guys down the street are getting, and start focusing on quality and spontaneity.

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Wellbeing

Manorexia: Understanding The Masculine Side of Body Image Distortion

Close your eyes for a second and imagine someone with an eating disorder.
If the person you envisioned was female, you’re not alone. In fact, most of us believe that women and girls are the only ones affected by eating disorders. But the facts tell a very different story. In the U.S., at least a third of the 30 million people suffering from eating disorders are boys or men, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). That’s 10 million people, most of whom won’t ever get the help they desperately need because they have a Y chromosome. And that, my friends, is a real—and sometimes quite deadly—tragedy.
So why do we ignore men and boys with eating disorders? I’ve come up with at least three reasons:

  • Even though a lot of those 10 million boys and young men know they’ve got a problem, they refuse to ask for help because they’re afraid that people will make fun of them. After all, real men don’t have eating problems right? Guys who do acknowledge that they have a problem and ask for help often find that eating disorder treatment programs accept only females.
  • It never occurs to most medical professionals that boys could actually have an eating disorder. So even when the symptoms are staring them in the face, pediatricians and primary care docs too often don’t see them. Mental health professionals_people who really ought to know better—also turn a blind eye to boys. One of the big industry groups, the American Psychiatric Association, has a very informative section on its website devoted to eating disorders. But the first symptom on the list is “menstrual periods cease.” That pretty well eliminates the boys.
  • Since so few professionals seriously consider the possibility that eating disorders might not be purely a female issue, they routinely exclude boys and young men from relevant research. And if they’re left out of research, they’re also left out of clinical trials for drugs and other potential therapies.

How the Media Feeds Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are typically related to body image. People suffering from anorexia, for example, look in the mirror and, no matter how skinny they are, they see an obese person. Generally speaking, girls and women worry more than boys and men do about being overweight, and some of those worries are driven by the media. Many critics put the blame on the undeniable gender-based double standard: dad-bod, for example—a nice way of saying “soft and pudgy”—is perfectly fine for men, but mom-bod includes a tight butt and a six pack. Others point to men’s magazines, movies, and TV, and the idealized images that girls and women feel they have to emulate to be considered attractive.
There’s a lot of truth there. But next time you’re at the grocery store, spend a few minutes flipping through Cosmo, Shape, and other women’s magazines. You’ll find that the images of women are nearly identical: alluring, idealized, and sexy. The enormous pressure girls feel from all sides to look like those perfectly airbrushed actresses and models can make them feel terrible about their own body and sometimes leads to eating disorders.
That’s the bad news.
The worse news is that the media does something equally damaging to boys. Men’s magazines, movies, and TV shows feature guys with impossibly large biceps, too many abs to count, and the kind of physique most of us  could never achieve. Those same idealized (and objectifying) images also show up in girls’ and women’s magazines, where they influence the expectations their readers have for men and boys.
As a result, males who are overweight may feel even more pressure to lose weight—which could contribute to eating disorders. And those whose weight is perfectly fine may develop another type of disorder: “muscle dysmorphia,” also known as “bigorexia.” Bigorexics (who are almost always male) look in the mirror and, no matter how ripped they are, see a 96-pound wimp.
While bigorexia isn’t as deadly as anorexia and other “traditional” eating disorders, it can still lead to a number of very serious problems.
Boys and men who feel pressured to have the perfect body often become anxious and depressed (which can lead to suicide). They diet and work out obsessively and can do permanent joint and muscle damage. Those obsessions can become so consuming that homework, school attendance, and career may suffer, and they may stop spending time with friends and family because they don’t want to interrupt their workout schedule or they feel embarrassed about how skinny they are.
Bigorexics may drain their bank accounts to pay for personal trainers and surgery (if exercise doesn’t produce the desired effects, it’s always possible to get that Mr. Olympia look with pec, bicep, calf, ab, and other implants). And they may load up on “supplements,” including testosterone and steroids, which have been linked to increased blood pressure and heart attack risk, reduced liver and bowel function, dementia, and sudden flashes of anger sometimes called “roid” (as in steroid) rage.
If you suspect that you or someone you know has an eating disorder, including bigorexia, it’s important to find help. Now. If the person is under 18, start with his pediatrician. If he or she laughs it off or refuses to consider an eating disorder, find another doctor. If he’s over 18, set up a visit with the primary care doc or a mental health professional who has experience treating people with eating disorders. You’ll also find a ton of great resources, information, guidance, and support at the NEDA website, http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

Categories
Wellbeing

The Calcium Conundrum: What It Takes To Build Strong Bones

Pop quiz: Name three nutrients that are critical to building strong bones. Calcium, right? Everybody gets that one. Any others? Some people get vitamin D, and they’re correct. But almost no one can come up with a third. Give up? In addition to calcium and vitamin D, healthy bones need magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and vitamin K.
Okay pop quiz, part 2: What foods are the best sources of those bone-building nutrients? If you said milk, you’re in the majority—every day we hear that milk and other dairy products build strong bones. But if you said milk, you’re wrong—or at best only partly right. Yes, milk, cheese, and yogurt are good sources of calcium, and they do pretty well on vitamin D—if they’re “fortified,” meaning that it’s added to the milk. But they’re not even close to being good sources of most of the other important nutrients.
Let’s take a closer look at calcium, vitamin D, and some of those often-overlooked bone-building nutrients, including how much you need and where you get it.
CALCIUM is the most abundant mineral in the body, making up about two percent of our body weight. Almost all of it lives in our bones and teeth. In the U.S., the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for adults is 1,000 – 1,200 milligrams of calcium per day. Calcium helps bones grow when we’re young, and keeps them strong as we age.
Milk and dairy products are excellent sources, but there are plenty of other high-calcium foods that may be even better because calcium in vegetables may be absorbed by our bodies more efficiently than animal-based calcium. Sources include kale, tofu, turnip greens, broccoli, beans, black molasses, fortified drinks (orange juice, soy milk, almond milk, rice milk), fortified cereals, salmon, and sardines.
VITAMIN D helps the body get calcium out of your food and into your bones, where it belongs. RDA is 600 – 800 IU (International Units) per day, but a lot of Americans are vitamin D deficient, which means not enough calcium gets to the bones. The result is an increase in the risk of bone fractures.
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with a number of other health problems, including increased cancer and diabetes risk. Many experts now recommend 1,000 – 2,000 IU per day. Sunlight is by far the best source–just 10 minutes in the sun can give you up to 10,000 IU. But thanks to our current obsession with sunscreen (which is a good thing, but we still need to spend some unscreened time outside), we don’t get enough. Sources other than dairy include cod liver oil, salmon, mackerel, sole, cod, tuna, sardines, and eggs.
MAGNESIUM makes bones stronger and teeth harder. The RDA is 200-420 milligrams per day, but Americans are even more deficient in magnesium than we are in vitamin D. Many experts now recommend that we get a 1:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium (in other words if you get 500 mg of calcium, you need 500 mg of magnesium too). Excellent sources are pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, whole grains, barley, soybeans, almonds, cashews, other nuts, beets, and collard greens.
PHOSPHORUS works with calcium to build bone mass and strength. As with vitamin D and magnesium, if we don’t get enough phosphorus, our body starts jettisoning calcium, usually via urine or by creating kidney stones. RDA is about 700 mg per day. Excellent sources include soy, whole grains, barley, dairy, nuts, cheese, soybeans, sunflower seeds, and lentils.
POTASSIUM neutralizes naturally occurring acids that can eat away at our bones. RDA is 4700 mg per day (four times more than calcium), and great sources are sweet potatoes, other potatoes, cantaloupe, bananas, avocados, tomato products, spinach, beans, yogurt, halibut, mackerel, peaches, and apples.
VITAMIN K keeps calcium in the bones and out of the bloodstream. RDA is 90 micrograms (for females) to 120 mcg (for males) per day. There’s barely any vitamin K in dairy products, but a cup of kale will give you 630 mcg. Other sources include spinach, turnip greens, and other dark leafy veggies, asparagus, cabbage, and broccoli.
As you can see, strong bones are made of quite a bit more than calcium and vitamin D. Problems start when the ratio of calcium to the other nutrients gets out of whack (and it almost always is). Too much calcium may increase our risk of developing kidney stones and arthritis, and may actually lead to an increase in the risk of developing osteoporosis and suffering bone fractures. (About a third of women–and a fifth of men–over 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture.) And the biggest culprit is milk. Wait, what? Yep, as counterintuitive as that sounds, it’s true.
A number of international studies have found that countries where milk consumption is highest (the U.S. is at the top of that list) have the highest rates of hip and other bone fractures (we’re at the top of that list too).

What’s wrong with milk?

While milk products are high in calcium, they don’t contain enough of the other co-operating nutrients to get that calcium to the right place. Milk also contains a lot of protein, which sounds like a good thing but has its own problems. Eating a lot of animal (but not vegetable) protein–which Americans do too much of–increases bone fracture rates even further.
Oh, and it gets worse. In the China study, men with the highest calcium intake had double the risk of developing prostate cancer and four times the risk of having metastatic (mean it spread to other parts of the body) and fatal prostate cancer.
As long as we’re talking about important foods, let’s not forget about some that can have a negative effect on bone strength: these include salt, caffeine, sugar, and animal products. In moderation, they’re fine, of course. But eaten the way we typically eat them is a problem.
Finally, as important as diet is in building strong bones, it’s also important to do some weight-bearing exercise. Those include simple things like walking and jogging (but not swimming or horseback riding). Try to get 30 minutes at least five days per week.
Before you start any exercise routine or make big changes to your diet, talk with your healthcare provider about what’s best for you and your unique circumstances.

Categories
Lifestyle

Shining A Light On The Color Of Pain And More

I’m sure we can all agree that color matters. If you’re behind the wheel of a car, red means “stop,” green is “go,” yellow is “proceed with caution” (unless you’re a teenager, when it means “floor it.”) If you’re buying baby clothes, pink and blue mean very different things. And everyone knows what “seeing red” means, while just hearing the words “blue skies” conjures up images of peace and tranquility.
Marketers have made a science of using color to send messages to consumers. McDonald’s, for example, uses red and yellow in its logo in part because those colors appeal to children (it’s no surprise that LEGO’s color scheme is the same). Starbucks uses green because it’s calming, and they want their customers to come in, relax, and spend $5 on a cup of something vaguely European sounding. Home Depot’s orange background “stimulates activity and is often associated with affordability,” according to the company. And nothing says “keeps your house warm in winter and cool in the summer” better than Owens-Corning’s pink insulation (they were the first company to ever trademark a color).
Governments, too, sometimes use color to influence behavior. In the 1970s, U.S. Navy prison wardens found that violent inmates became docile when confined in pink cells. And officials in Japan and England discovered that adjusting the color scheme at popular suicide spots (installing blue lights on Japanese train station platforms and painting the Blackfriar’s bridge green, respectively) caused suicides to drop significantly.
Okay, so color affects our minds and our moods. But here are two even more important questions: Can color affect us physically? And can color affect us even if we can’t see it? The answer to both is a resounding yes—at least when that color comes in the form of light—a fact backed up by more than 2,000 animal and human studies done over the last 50+ years. The lights/colors with the most significant effects were red and blue. And those effects depend on the time of day and way the lights are applied.
Let’s start with blue light. During the day, it’s great stuff. Researchers at Harvard found that blue wavelengths improve people’s attention, physical and mental reaction times, and memory. However, at night, those same blue wavelengths interrupt our sleep cycles in a big way. Blue lights are commonly found in electronic screens of all kinds (phones, tablets, computers, televisions) and in those energy-efficient, compact fluorescent lightbulbs that we probably bought at Home Depot because their orange sign convinced us that they were cheaper there. What’s the problem with losing a few hours of sleep? Plenty. Those same Harvard researchers say that exposure to light at night—specifically blue light—has been linked to several cancers (breast and prostate), diabetes, and obesity. Now here’s the most amazing part: Even though they can’t actually it, blind people exposed to blue light at night also have trouble falling asleep.
Now on to red. Night or day, people exposed to red wavelengths tend to have more energy and be less depressed than those exposed any other color light. But the real magic of red light happens when it’s being directed at various places around your body and skull, places here you can’t possibly see it.
Study after study has shown that red light–usually delivered with LED lights tuned to a very specific wavelength–has an amazing capacity to treat dozens of physical conditions, from low sperm count and muscle pain to heart problems and depression. In animal studies, red light has sped up post-stroke recovery times, reduced wound sizes, and regenerated severed or severely damaged nerves. And when focused on specific receptors in the brain, it’s as effective as drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin at relieving pain. “It’s conceivable that with much more research we could develop ways to use light to relieve pain without a patient needing to take a pain-killing drug with side effects,” said Edward R. Siuda, one of the authors of a new study done at Washington University in St. Louis.
In human studies, red LED lights improved more than 40 percent of musculoskeletal training injuries in Navy SEALs, reduced wound-healing time for Navy submarine crews, and reduced by 47 percent the pain associated with childhood cancer patients’ oral mucositis, a common—and very painful—complication of chemo and radiation.
If you’re interested in learning more about using light to cure (or at least help) what ails you, check with your healthcare provider. Be aware, though, that despite the massive amount of evidence, many traditional M.Ds are less-than-completely enthusiastic. You may have better luck with a local chiropractor.

Categories
Wellbeing

Watch Two Cat Videos And Call Me In The Morning…

According to YouTube, 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute. And 45 percent of the people posting those videos are uploading footage that features an animal—usually a cat. If you’re not one of the suppliers, odds are you’re a consumer. With more than two million videos and 26 billion views, cats are one of YouTube’s biggest categories. No one can say for sure, but pet food giant Friskies estimates that cat videos account for 15 percent of all Internet traffic (and I’m estimating that, singlehandedly, I’m responsible for at least another 10 percent, streaming videos on Netflix and binge watching House of Cards, 24, Dexter, The Blacklist, The Walking Dead, and a bunch of others).
So don’t feel bad if you’ve indulged in a few (or a few hundred) cat vids. They’re incredibly addicting. I’m not really a cat person, but this article took at least two hours longer to write than it usually does because I got sucked into the black hole inhabited by Grumpy Cat, Henri the French-speaking existentialist, Maru the Japanese box diver, and dozens of their mewing buddies.
Turns out that cat videos are more than just a guilty pleasure (and by “guilty,” I really do mean guilty. A lot of time people spend on their in-cat-uation is time they should have been doing something else—like working or studying). In fact, it may actually be good for you.
Researchers have consistently found that physically interacting with pets can have some very significant, positive effects on patients’ physical and emotional health. A variety of studies show a correlation between pet therapy and decreases in anxiety and depression, reduced behavioral problems, and lowered blood pressure and heart rate. But petting an animal who’s sitting on your lap is quite a bit different than going online and watching one jump onto a chandelier or run around the house with a paper bag over her head. Or is it?
Jessica Gall Myrick, a professor at Indiana University’s Media School, set out to answer that question. She surveyed nearly 7,000 cat-media consumers and found that after watching feline videos, people felt more energetic and experienced fewer negative emotions (annoyance, anxiety, and sadness) and more positive ones (contentment, happiness, and hope).
Myrick, whose results were recently published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, also found that the increase in positive emotions was more than enough to offset the feelings of guilt people felt when they’d used cat videos as a procrastination tool. “Even if they are watching cat videos on YouTube to procrastinate or while they should be working, the emotional pay-off may actually help people take on tough tasks afterward,” Myrick said in a press release. Sharing those videos helped too, making “what had seemed like a waste of time a more worthwhile endeavor—the spreading of cheer and goodwill to others.”
People who tend to be more agreeable or shy are more likely than others to watch vids, as are cat owners. Interestingly, only a quarter of the videos people watch are ones they actually go looking for. The rest they stumble upon by chance.

Categories
Nosh

How Your Coffee Habit Could Save Your Life

Let me get this out of the way up front: I hate the taste of coffee in any form. Even the smell bugs me–I’ve often had to cross the street to avoid the aroma wafting out of a coffee shop. It’s always struck me as nothing more than a delivery device for caffeine, and I’ve often thought of people who drink coffee as somewhat weak (“What do you mean you ‘need’ your morning coffee? Shut up and get to work.”)
But after spending a lot of time looking at the research on coffee (admittedly hoping to find studies that would allow me to sneer even more at all you coffee drinkers), it turns out that there’s a lot of evidence that people who drink moderate amounts of coffee (two to three cups per day) enjoy some interesting health benefits that non-coffee drinkers may not. Still hopeful, I dug a little deeper, hoping to prove that it’s the caffeine that produces the positive results. But I’ve sheepishly come to the conclusion that in many cases, there’s something in coffee itself–not tea, not Red Bull, not chocolate–that’s responsible.
I’m not sure any of this is enough to get me to actually drink any, but I’d definitely take a coffee pill if I could find one. Here’s some of what science tells us about coffee. You be the judge.

Brain

A number of studies have found that drinking the equivalent of a cup or two of coffee per day is associated with improved memory, and that for older adults, drinking three to five cups per day significantly reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or other dementia. Some of these studies attribute the benefits to caffeine (giving test subjects caffeine pills rather than have them drink actual coffee). Other studies have ruled out caffeine by showing the same benefits from decaf. Researchers speculate that the antioxidants in coffee (which is one of the most antioxidant-rich foods out there) protect brain cells from getting damaged.
Moderate coffee consumption has also been linked with a reduction in the risk of developing other brain-related conditions such as Parkinson’s and with reducing symptoms in those who already have it.

Cancers

There hasn’t been a huge amount of research on coffee’s effect on various forms of cancer, but what there is, is pretty optimistic. Older adults who drink four or more cups of coffee per day may reduce by half their risk of dying from mouth or throat cancer. Decaf helped, but not as much, and tea had no positive effects at all.
Drinking two cups per day reduced the likelihood of dying from liver cancer by as much as 60% compared to those who drank less than one cup per day. Since decaf produced similar results, this may be another case of antioxidants at work, inhibiting the growth of cancer cells by reducing inflammation.
Drinking two cups of coffee per day also lowered the risk of developing colorectal cancer by 22% when compared with people who drank less than one cup. Drinking two to five cups reduced the risk by 44%, and guzzling more than two and a half cups reduced the risk by 59%.

Diabetes

Diabetes is one of the biggest killers and it’s getting worse every day. Several studies have found that regular coffee drinking (two to four cups per day) lowers the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes–and the more you drink, the lower the risk (within reason–I’ll get to the risks of going overboard below).

Erectile Dysfunction

Compared to men who drank no coffee, participants in a study at the University of Texas who drank at least two cups per day were 42% less likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED). There’s something in coffee that helps relax arteries in the penis, which increases blood flow. Interestingly, coffee-drinking men who had diabetes–which is already one of the biggest causes of ED–didn’t have any benefit.

Heart

The same blood-vessel-relaxation properties that reduce erectile dysfunction may also reduce stroke risk by decreasing the risk of developing blood clots. Coffee may also reduce the amount of damage done after a stroke. There’s also some indication that, depending on how it’s prepared, coffee could reduce cholesterol levels, another risk factor for stroke and heart attack. One large Japanese study found that two cups of coffee per day reduced the risk of dying from any kind of cardiovascular disease (which includes both stroke and heart attack) by 38%.

Suicide

A study done at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking three cups of coffee per day reduced suicide risk by 45%. But it’s not clear whether that was the coffee itself or the fact that a lot of people get their coffee at coffee shops, which tend to be full of people; social interaction helps reduce suicide risk as well.

Weight Management

Although I don’t have a weight problem, I found one study especially interesting. Overweight research participants who were given green coffee bean extract lost significantly more weight over a 22-week study than those who didn’t get the extract. That’s good news for those of us who need a way to get the benefit of coffee without actually having to drink it.

Too Much of a Good Thing? Yep

Given its many health benefits, it’s tempting to start throwing back as much coffee as possible. But more isn’t necessarily better. A five-cup/day habit actually increases the risk of heart disease. Large amounts of coffee can actually close off blood vessels, which could lead to a stroke. In addition, coffee can cause insomnia, upset stomach, interfere with some medications, increase anxiety, and if you’re drinking caffeinated coffee, it’s highly addictive and withdrawal can be painful.
Coffee drinks also often contain a lot of calories. A 20-ounce Mocha Frappuccino at Starbucks is about 500 calories, and a 24-ounce Venti Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino has 590. That’s 20-25% of the calories you should be getting over the course of the whole day. Plus, because those drinks often taste so good (to some people), you may be tempted to eat more, which could make you gain weight, which increase your risk of diabetes and everything else that goes with it.
Before you start buying up farmland in Colombia or investing in coffee futures (yes, there is such a thing), check with your doc to make sure it’s okay for you. Because it contains caffeine, coffee could be dangerous if you have very high blood pressure, heart disease, or a history of seizures. If you do, ask your doctor whether decaf or coffee extract are safe. Coffee also contains a chemical compound called cafestol that stimulates production of LDL (that’s the bad cholesterol). Apparently, paper filters eliminate cafestol, but espresso and other unfiltered coffees don’t.
Bottom line? While there are plenty of benefits to drinking coffee, as with most things in the world (with the possible exception of money), moderation is key. And don’t use coffee as an excuse for living an otherwise-unhealthy life. You’ll see far more benefit from eating right, exercising, and giving up smoking–even if, like me, you’ll never let a drop of coffee cross your lips.

Categories
Lifestyle

Beards: The Secret to Success Or The Kiss Of Death?

The story goes that in 1860, Abraham Lincoln grew a beard in response to a suggestion from an 11-year-old girl who said it would make him a more attractive presidential candidate. She was right. About 140 years later, another 11-year-old girl–who happened to be my daughter–told me roughly the same thing. I wasn’t running for president, though; she was giving me dating advice. As it turns out, she, like most 11-year-old girls, was right, too.
So what is it about beards that can help you win elections and improve your love life? One theory posits that a beard is a sign of confidence. In a fight, a beard can be a disadvantage since it can be grabbed by an opponent. So a beard could be a man’s way of saying, “Go ahead, grab it. I can kick your butt anyway.”
In addition, a number of recent studies have found that in the eyes of heterosexual women, facial hair makes men more attractive. Actually, [linkbuilder id=”6502″ text=”what attracts women”] isn’t the hair itself, but the uniqueness. When the majority of men are clean shaven, shaggier guys rate higher. But when the tide turns and smooth skin becomes rare, that’s what the gals go for. I should say that my daughters have all been quite prescient, making sure that at any given moment, my scruffiness level has been exactly what women happen to be most attracted to (whether they’re actually attracted to me is another story, but as any guy with daughters will back me up, it’s simply not possible to argue–or at least to win an argument–with three girls).
But even during those times when facial hair is sexy, not all beards are equally appealing. Given a choice between a clean-shaven face, light stubble, heavy stubble, and a full beard, women tend to go for the heavy stubble–and it could be for very different reasons than you might expect.
According to another beard-related study that you probably heard about, some men’s whiskers are home to so much bacteria that they’re almost as bad as toilets. Naturally, no matter how sexy a woman (or anyone, for that matter) might find facial hair, no one really wants to get their lips too close to a toilet. Beard hair is coarser and is shaped differently than other hair, which makes it a perfect place for all those nasty bacteria to latch on and dig in.
Some biologists speculate that by sporting a beard, a man is advertising that his immune system is so healthy that he can carry around colonies of germs with no ill effects. A heavily bristled face gives women their scratchy, sexy fix but may offer some reassurance that the hair they’re nuzzling is still relatively sanitary–or at least that the guy on the other end of that stubble is healthy.
Of course plenty of people say that those who insist that beards are bacteria-infested cesspools are full of at least as much crap as the facial hair they’re criticizing. After all, they say, our bodies–inside and out–are practically covered with creepy crawlies of one sort or another (and for the most part, they’re actually good for us).
Bottom line? We seem to be entering a hirsute tipping point where beards are so common that they’ve lost some of their luster. So if you’ve got one, consider shaving it, or at least trimming it way down (unless you really are sure you can kick the other guy’s butt). If you’re clean shaven, though, and want to up your hot quotient, a week’s worth of stubble will do you a world of good. But either way, keep your face–and the hair that inhabits it–clean. Really, really clean.