I got tipped to this today, and felt compelled to post it here. It’s 1 hour and 30 minutes long; and has some deep bio-chemistry – but it’s necessary to understand what he’s saying. How does it boil down? Fructose is evil. All sugar needs to be looked at; and how much of it is in everything we eat and drink needs to be looked at. Sugar minus fiber is what lies at fault; removing fiber from sugar causes all sorts of evil mayhem in our bodies.

There’s a LOT here to digest (groan worthy pun) but it’s worth anyone’s time and effort to watch this. I was mesmerized.

I’m not a doctor, not a scientist – but this is much too important to not learn from and start thinking/talking about.

Original article here: Click here

I’m reposting this here because it’s brilliant and on point. The humor can be crude, but the message is on-point. Scott

Diet Products

It’s very simple: if a weight loss pill, plan or exercise machine claims to make weight loss “effortless,” it is a scam. Let’s have science explain:

Diet Products

Due to the cruel laws of physics, losing weight requires two things:

1. Pain

2. Hunger

This is due to a few fairly simple facts about your body. Your body wants to store fat, because through most of human history, food was scarce and in times of plenty it wants to store up for when supplies are short.

This is a process your body invented to keep you alive, over centuries of living in a world that did not have fast food or Hostess snack cakes. Any time you try to stop or undo that process, your body will send unpleasant sensations to your brain, because it thinks you’re setting youself up to starve to death.

To lose weight, you must endure those unpleasant sensations. There is no shortcut.

For instance, you can exercise to the point that your body will run out of the ready fuel in your system, at which point it will reluctantly dip into its fat reserves and burn them. You will experience fatigue and pain when this happens. This is your body punishing you for using the fat it has stored up. It doesn’t want to use it. Your body was saving it for an emergency.

You can also restrict the amount of food coming into your system so that your body is forced to go through that same fat-burning process, but this time your body will punish you by making you feel hunger, or cravings for fattier foods that will let it replenish those fat reserves on your thighs and belly and everywhere else.

Any pill or cream that claims it can “burn fat” while you sit on the sofa, or exercise machine that claims to make exercise “easy” or “effortless” is a scam to steal your money.

There have also been numerous products put on the market intended to suppress hunger. But turning off one of the fundamental processes that keeps you alive (ie your brain alerting you that you need to eat) is not an easy thing, and time and time again those pills turn out to be dangerous or even deadly (see the popular diet drug Fen-Phen, pulled from the market due to potentially fatal side effects, only to be replaced by Ephedrine, which was also promptly banned in weight-loss products for being just as dangerous).

Now, most of the weight loss supplements you see at your grocer store now are just mild appetite suppressants, usually just packed full of caffeine or another stimulant, since the nervous, jittery, mildly sick feeling they induce does tend to kill your hunger. Just note that it is only replacing one unpleasant sensation with another (the body does not give up easily). Occasionally they will package these supplements with “all natural” ingredients on the label (such as “Hoodia” or “Green Tea Extract”).

The most recent and terrifying addition is Alli, the brand name of Orlistat, which lets you eat fat, but simply prevents it from being absorbed in the stomach. If this sounds like a perfect get-out-of-fat free card, keep in mind that (once again) you are short-circuiting one of the body’s natural processes. The result is that you will have uncontrollable greasy diarrhea, pooping out an orange substance like the stuff you see sitting on top of a pizza. The fat your stomach couldn’t absorb has to go somewhere.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Just because pain/hunger is required in order to lose weight, you should not assume from this that if you are feeling pain and hunger you are therefore losing weight. Many weight loss plans will give you all of the unpleasant feelings of a real diet plan, only without the weight loss.

So is the situation hopeless?

Not at all. Most people have a higher tolerance for physical suffering than they think. And it is temporary; exercise gets easier as muscles get stronger (though at the point it becomes TOO easy, it’s time to increase what you’re doing) and your system WILL adjust to getting less food.

Also, you can lessen the suffering that will come with weight loss by losing the weight slowly – your body won’t kick and scream as much about losing one pound a month as it will if you are trying to lose five pounds a week Biggest Loser-style. It’s impatience that makes most diets fail.

The even better news?

Weight loss doesn’t cost a dime.

Exercise can be done on the floor – mankind was getting exercise long before any machines had been invented for the purpose. Google around for the best techniques. Diet is just a matter of not eating the foods you already know you shouldn’t be eating. Both of these will cause you some mild suffering. Enduring that suffering is the only thing between you and being thin.

Good luck.

It’s humor, it’s not scientific, but it’s a message that needs to be told and learned.

I’ve my own story about supplements, but I’ll get into them later. Suffice to say, no more. Ever. No more protein drinks, ‘energy’ boosters, or anything else. Taking Creatine messed with my kidneys. Pre-workout drinks like NO-Xplode messed up my kidney function and digestive tract. My doctor demanded I stop them all. NO more. Four months clean of ALL of that… and I’m feeling fine. Workouts going fine. Recovery time is fine. I miss none of it.

The original article on Cracked.com is here: Link

Health: How to Stop Throwing Your Money Away on Snake Oil

Go to the drug aisle in your grocery store. In between the pills and the vitamins will be a huge shelf full of herbal supplements that promise to do everything from helping you lose weight to easing joint pain to making your brain work better.

And it’s all BS. All of it.

Worse, it’s BS that we spend $34 billion a year on, almost a third as much as we spend on prescription drugs that actually do something.

Just to be clear: Scientists have spent billions in government money carefully testing the effectiveness of this stuff. Their results? No, echinacea can’t cure your cold. Gingko doesn’t do anything for your brain, glucosamine and chondroitin won’t fix your arthritis. Hoodia gordonii won’t help you lose weight.

If it were good for you, it probably wouldn’t be covered in horrible spikes.

Don’t get us wrong; we completely realize that lots of the drugs we have now were once naturally occurring in plants and that it is therefore possible that out there, somewhere, is a leaf yet undiscovered by science that will cure your diabetes. But if so, these rip-off artists in the grocery aisle aren’t going to be the ones who find it.

They’re scam artists.

They’re so sure their supplements don’t do anything they don’t do any actual quality control to track how much of the supplement is in each pill. They just throw a little bit in there and shrug. Aren’t they worried about people accidentally overdosing? No, they’re not. They know you can’t overdose on a placebo.

All they’re doing is “curing” ailments that either naturally go away on their own (colds, joint pain) so you wind up falsely attributing the relief to the supplement, or they’re claiming to cure conditions that are hard to quantify (see supplements for “alertness” or “stress relief”). Snake oil salesmen have been getting away with that technique for thousands of generations.

Students, we’re counting on you to make sure that ours is the last.

Some Truths Include:

1. Pharmaceutical Companies Are Jerks, But at Least They Use Scientists;
2. Why Hippies Have Never Discovered a Single Disease Cure;
3. “Homeopathic” is Another Word for Voodoo BS;
4. Just Go See a Doctor You Big Baby.

Read more:  Original Article

1) Diet. Most important, yet completely tied to and intertwined with the other two legs. There are lots of formulas, approaches, thoughts, fanatical craziness about diet; it’s really simple. Think about what you eat before you eat it and don’t eat too much of any one thing or type of thing. Drink water as your main hydration, everything else should be infrequent and treated as a ‘dessert’ if you will.

2) Movement. Sitting is the culprit. If you sit a lot – in a car, at a desk, on a sofa – your body won’t work right as you age. You need to move. Workout, exercise, play sports. Do it often. If you are not moving at least as much as you sit, and walking is fine here, then you need to think about it. What you do and how you do it can be as detailed as you like as you progress up the intensity ladder, but walking is key to everybody.

3) Rest. Proper uninterrupted rest. Find your balance point, do it on a regular daily basis if necessary. If you walk around sleep deprived all the time, you cannot function properly.

Living proof and footsteps to follow in.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Jack LaLanne at 95

He exercised his personal demons

Bad food and sloth ooze over our planet like hot fudge mixed with giblet gravy. Fast food speeds us to our doublewide coffins, and we gave up exercise when watches started winding themselves.

But the battle to deliver mankind from its bad habits rages. Leading the charge, as he has for 80 years, is the Bay Area’s gift to world health, Jack LaLanne.

He’s 95, in fabulous shape although no longer the slab of muscle who inspired a nation via his daily exercise TV program. The brain is still cooking, and that’s always been LaLanne’s most effective tool.

Jack’s wife, Elaine, says she fell in love with him a half century ago not for his muscles.

“I was not interested in his body,” says Elaine LaLanne, also in super shape at 84. “I was attracted to his mind. I thought, ‘He’s got a brain. He’s got a brain.’ ”

“And he’s sittin’ on it,” LaLanne whispers, squeezing the biceps of an interviewer, who suddenly regrets skipping his morning push-ups.

The LaLannes were in town Wednesday for a party in honor of Jack’s 95th birthday, at John’s Grill, where the Jack LaLanne Salad never goes off the menu.

Teaming with wife

They’re a team, Jack and Elaine. When the subject of doughnuts comes up, Elaine says, “Jack, tell him what the healthiest part of the doughnut is.”

“The hole!” LaLanne says.

When the interviewer mentions that he watched LaLanne’s TV show in the ’50s, because his mom tuned in daily, LaLanne gives the interviewer’s biceps another firm squeeze and confides, “I spent a lot of time on the floor with your mother.”

But seriously, folks. Beneath the jokes and whimsy is a man as serious as a heart attack mixed with a stroke. He’ll make you smile, but he’ll also grab you by the arm, and by the head and the heart, and lead you to a better life.

LaLanne has made a fortune, but he won’t retire. He carries on his crusade with the zeal of a man whose jumpsuit is on fire.

“If you believe something, live it!” LaLanne barks.

He recently wrapped up a tour promoting his 11th book, “Live Young Forever: 12 Steps to Optimum Health, Fitness & Longevity.” One reason to trust what the man preaches: He has seen the dark side.

A reformed sugarholic

LaLanne at 15 was “a miserable goddamn kid. It was like hell.” He was a sugarholic, gorging on sweets then barfing to make room for more. He was constantly sick, underweight, had zero energy, headaches so bad he would bang his head against a wall. He had an explosive temper, severe depression and a head full of demons when he dropped out of Berkeley High.

Then a neighbor gave Jack and his mother tickets to a lecture by clean-eating advocate Paul Bragg. Boom! Jack LaLanne was born.

Says LaLanne, “Bragg said, ‘My dear friends, it matters not what your physical condition is. If you obey nature’s laws, you will be born again.’ I went home and prayed, ‘Dear God, give me the willpower to refrain from those foods that are killing me.’ ”

Soon LaLanne was healthy beyond his dreams. He became a football star, a wrestling champ and a babe magnet. At 22, he opened a gym in downtown Oakland, and when business didn’t boom – maybe because in 1936 nobody knew what the hell a gym was – he told himself, “Jack, people are not coming to you. You gotta go to them!”

He trained cops and firefighters, he recruited at high schools, and in 1951, he began hosting a daily exercise show on KGO (Channel 7) – where he met Elaine – that became a network smash, running until 1985.

Using his personality and pep – with his muscles serving as his background singers – he bullied a nation into rethinking its nonapproach to nutrition and exercise. He invented and pioneered the fitness industry.

“My whole life,” LaLanne says, “is, ‘How can I help people like that man (Bragg) helped me?’ ”

Now Jack and Elaine sell their juicers on infomercials, the book is out, and he’s still preaching the gospel. The seeming futility of shaping up the world does not daunt him.

“I never think about that,” LaLanne says. “I think about things that I can improve.”

Still working out

One thing he can always improve is himself. LaLanne works out two hours a day, mostly swimming and lifting weights, at the LaLanne mansion on the Central Coast.

“I work at living,” he says, leaning close and squeezing an arm. “Most people work at dying. Dying’s easy.”

One of LaLanne’s most effective sales devices has been his amazing feats of strength. When Arnold Schwarzenegger came to America in 1968 and became an instant sensation on the Southern California muscle scene, LaLanne challenged the kid to a duel at Muscle Beach. The Austrian Oak was 21; the Oakland Oak was 54.

“I beat him in chin-ups and push-ups,” LaLanne says. “He said, ‘That Jack LaLanne’s an animal! I was sore for four days. I couldn’t lift my arms!’ ”

At age 70, handcuffed, LaLanne towed 70 loaded boats 1.5 miles in Long Beach Harbor. Now LaLanne’s most outrageous publicity stunt is kicking life’s butt on a daily basis.

“What feat are you going to do this year?” Elaine asks, lobbing another softball to her slugger hubby.

“I’m going to tow Elaine across the bathtub!”

In Datebook: Legendary fitness guru Jack LaLanne gives a Chronicle reporter a real workout.
LaLanne’s innovations

Jack LaLanne invented fitness. His innovations include:

The gym/spa: In 1936, he opened the Jack LaLanne Physical Culture Studio at 409 15th St. in Oakland, the first modern gym. He eventually sold his chain of studios to Bally.

Mind-body fusion: Now it’s a popular concept. “You can’t separate the mind and body,” he says.

Exercise machines: The kind with cables, pulleys and weight selectors. LaLanne didn’t patent them, but he invented them, including the first leg-extension machine.

Muscles on women: Before LaLanne’s TV show, a woman’s only workout was behind a vacuum cleaner.

Muscles on athletes: LaLanne helped dispel the “muscle-bound” myth. He was a fine athlete and a 4-handicap golfer.

Exercise videos: His TV show was the first workout video, live.

Varying workout routines: It’s what some now call “muscle confusion.” LaLanne changes his workout routine every 30 days. And he’ll do a particular lift slow today, fast tomorrow.

Yoga: He has never called it that, but from the beginning he preached the importance of stretching.

- Scott Ostler

E-mail Scott Ostler at sostler@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

I’ll just speak for myself right now. As I come into 2009, I’ve been really focused and prioritized towards fitness since April. Last November 2007, I separated my left shoulder in a sports injury (indoor soccer. How do you separate your shoulder playing soccer? Leave it to me to find a way…). It took me 4 months to have some normal range of movement and start to build my strength back up. That’s one reason I look so weak in my ‘before’ pic that I’ve posted on this site as my ‘Day 1′ photos. I needed to really change up my routine, get my life in order and not just ‘fade away’ like I felt I was. It wasn’t about looks, or walking around with my shirt off in the summer. It was about performance on the soccer field running around slower and slower with less power and less stamina than ever before.

The main issue for me was simply letting the aging process take over. I was 41 and felt older. I was working out, eating 1/2 decent (and 1/2 not decent!) but felt old. And slow.

I found P90X, but through on-line research and not the (in)famous infomercial you see all the time on the weekends. I was researching Plyometrics (aka ‘jump training’) after watching a special on Kris Draper from the Detroit Red Wings focused on Plyo and keeping his speed and jump as he aged as a professional athelete. The search led to P90X and I liked what I read, and then in checking out reviews from folks I found a lot of folks I knew on-line and in real life had tried it and I liked what I heard from them.

When I got the program, I admit I was overwhelmed with it. I read all the included material and watched the workouts. I took the fit test to set a baseline. And then… I waited. I wasn’t sure I could commit that much time (an hour a day, six days a week) and focus on my diet over 90 days.

I laugh to myself about that now;

What’s happened to me over the last half of 2008, physically and mentally (related to getting in this groove) is really moving to me. I’ve regained my jump, energy and strength. I feel like I’m 20. I’ve got abs like I’ve never had before, my core is stronger than ever before, my strength matches (almost) where I was in my 20′s, my stamina is better than ever before, my flexibility is better than ever in my life and my balance is better. Doing Yoga on a regular (weekly) basis in this program has done wonders for me. I hated that part of it, but now have come to understand what it’s doing for me overall. Especially on the flexibility and balance part of this whole experience.

Physique wise, I’m totally impressed with what all this has done for me. I didn’t really believe that looking like this was really possible again. Really. lol. I hate typing stuff like this, because it comes off the wrong way so much; but I don’t think I’ve ever had it all ‘together’ like this ever before. When I was in my 20′s and really focused on muscle building, size and strength, I had no idea about core strength or worried about abs too much. Back then, to me, if my stomach was flat, then I was fine. Now, combining portion control and sensible common sense good foods instead of bad ones… I have abs. I’ve never had that before. Ever.

Mentally, I feel like I can accomplish things and am more confident tackling even very large tasks and hard tasks in any realm because I am more focused on what I can actually do. I’ve proved to myself that things that seem so impossible can be successfully done with consistent effort applied over time. I can weather things that before would really bother me without blinking an eye now.

In August, I reset my goals and focused on my 42nd birthday coming up this January. I wanted to see how close I could actually come to looking like I did at my physical peak… which I sort of loosely peg about age 23. I was working out everyday, very determined to get bigger and stronger. I was playing outdoor soccer and worked at a job where I was running a lot. Luckily I have some pictures from then, though I don’t often take such pictures, where I was ‘posing’. They’ll remain private, but suffice to say, I am pretty much there even right now by the end of December. I still have another whole month (my birthday is the last day of January) to keep working. It’ll be fun to see how I end up at that point.

I’ve often gone off about ‘perfection isn’t a destination, it’s a process’. So when you set a goal and actually, gasp, get there… what do you do? Set new ones. I have no intention of slowing down, eating crap, getting sedentary or letting all this work go to waste. I want to stay fit, live clean and enjoy the rest of my life as best I can. I want to be the old guy out on the indoor soccer field that guys marvel at for keeping up even though he’s the oldest guy by far on the team. I want to be the guy that my kids can grow up and later think, “Well, the old man still does it, why can’t I?”

When folks toot their own horn, even if they can do it and be honest, I hate it. It always comes off to me as arrogant. That’s not my intention. I just want to be honest with myself – and anyone following this blog – about where I’ve been, how I’ve gotten here and where I am going.

Peace.

I follow (or TRY to follow) a 30/40/30 diet. 30% protein/40% carbs/30% fats. I try to obviously eat ‘good’ carbs (complex carbs) and ‘good’ fats (nuts, fish oil, flaxseed oil) with a serving of protein at every meal. For snacks I have a protein shake (love BSN “Syntha-6″) or a protein bar (love BeachBody’s P90-X “Chocolate Peanut-Butter Bars”). Three ‘normal’ meals with 2-3 of these snacks everyday. It’s not complicated. It works.

Here’s the article:

Protein power: Your muscles need a helping of it at each meal

Carolyn O’neil / Cox News Service

Just when you thought it was fine to relax with a glass of well-earned wine and nibble on a few whole-grain crackers, nutrition researchers are here to ask, “Did you have enough protein today?”

OK, we know you’re not into body-building competitions, but get a load of this midlife reality check: You could be losing muscle mass and strength — a condition called sarcopenia — if you don’t consume enough high-quality protein on a daily basis.

“We’re seeing sarcopenia, which commonly occurs in the elderly, in younger subjects in their early to mid-50s,” says Susan Hewlings, a registered dietitian and assistant professor at Stetson University in Florida who specializes in protein metabolism. Hewlings and other researchers at the American Dietetic Association’s annual Food and Nutrition Conference this year shed new light on the connection between what we eat and the health of our aging muscles.

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Bottom line: Research shows that to prevent and treat lost muscle mass you must consume 1.5 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight per day. That translates to about 90 grams of protein a day for a normal weight man and would be less if you’re a petite woman.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner

But here’s where the real specific advice kicks in: You should be including sources of high-quality protein such as eggs, milk and meats and balancing your protein intake throughout the day.

“Typically, people eat less protein at breakfast, a little more at lunch and then eat a lot at dinner,” Hewlings says. “To optimize protein synthesis and prevent sarcopenia, it needs to be more evenly distributed.” There goes that diet plan to starve all day and splurge on a big steak for dinner. Your muscles are hungry for amino acids found in protein foods all day long.

In fact, Robert Wolfe, professor of geriatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, warns that, “When there are periods of the day when no amino acids are being absorbed from the gut, muscle serves as the only significant reservoir of protein.”

That means your body starts robbing the muscles of stored protein to keep organs and other tissues humming along. So make sure you’re eating protein-containing foods every day and including protein in each meal. And that includes snacks. Something as simple as fresh apple slices topped with peanut butter is a good choice.

Hewlings emphasized that protein alone can’t do the job of preserving and building muscles as we age. “I call exercise ‘poor man’s plastic surgery,’ ” she says. “And note that physical activity boosts lean body mass only if you’ve got enough protein in your diet.”

Keep fat intake down

Since foods are often a combination of the three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat), choose protein-containing foods wisely with other health concerns in mind.

For instance, a 6-ounce broiled porterhouse steak is a great source of complete protein — 38 grams — but contains 44 grams of fat. The same amount of salmon gives you 34 grams of protein and 18 grams of fat, and it’s the kind of fat that’s good for you.

For a complete list of protein foods to include in a healthy diet, go to www.my pyramid.gov.

Carolyn O’Neil is a registered dietitian and co-author of “The Dish on Eating Healthy and Being Fabulous!” This article appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Here’s my response to that; and it leads to some changes you can incorporate into a more healthy diet. Not strictly ‘health nut’ or ‘fitness nut’ stuff; but real life, quality of life, rest of your life common sense eating habit. Quickie statement that defines it: “Processed foods are no good. At all. Taste good? Maybe. Past that? NOTHING.”

High fructose corn syrup gets you fat? You’ve got it. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg, literally. Artificial sweeteners are even more evil and dangerous and all these things added to a more sedentary lifestyle = big problems.

It’s all such a mess that it’s overwhelming to even try to grasp, let alone deal with on a personal level. HFCS, and even just corn, are almost in everything a large majority of the population in the US eats everyday. Remembering that the simple adage of ‘all things in moderation’, even if you don’t mean to eat corn, some form of it is in something you ate yesterday, today and tomorrow if you are the average American.

Try removing anything with HFCS in it, anything with the words ‘partially hydrogenated’ in it, and anything listed with ‘bleached’ or ‘enriched’ (bleaching flour removes nutrients of wheat, so by law it must be ‘enriched’) flour from your diet. (Aka ‘processed‘ foods).

I’d guess that anyone would have to make major changes to what they currently eat.

It’s amazing what we call food.

My wife calls the average American diet as ‘eating for taste’; I call it eating for death. (Gross overstatement to make a point, but it’s my opinion).

Remove all that for a few weeks and tell me you don’t feel MUCH better.

Add in some form of regular exercise on top of that? You won’t believe how good you actually can feel.

BY SARAH AVERY • MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS • November 28, 2008

RALEIGH, N.C. — The ancient practice of yoga is increasingly finding a new following — among doctors and medical researchers who are working to prove its benefits for a variety of illnesses.
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Researchers at University of North Carolina Hospitals are studying yoga’s benefits for people with irritable bowel syndrome. Doctors at Duke University recently completed a study showing that yoga provided significant improvements with hot flashes, sleep and energy levels for postmenopausal women with early breast cancer.

And an oncologist in Beaufort County, N.C., sees improvement in his patients who take yoga classes.

“There’s been an explosion of data using yoga as a treatment option,” said Dr. Shelley Wroth, an obstetrician at Duke Integrative Medicine and a yoga teacher. She said studies have found that yoga helps people suffering from hypertension, anxiety, arthritis, chronic back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, stress, depression, diabetes and epilepsy — among others.

A recent study at Duke involved breast cancer patients who were experiencing severe hot flashes and other menopause symptoms. Because of their illness, they were prohibited from taking hormone replacement therapy, so yoga was proposed as an alternative. The study found significant improvement among the women who took yoga classes, compared to women who did not.

“There are a lot of reactions to stress that exacerbate the menopausal symptoms,” said Laura Porter, coauthor of the Duke study. “Yoga — the physical poses and the more cognitive aspects of it — dampens the stress reactivity.”

But even as the science establishes yoga’s benefits, less is known about why it’s helpful. Porter and others postulate that the practice reduces stress through stretching, breathing and meditation. For people battling illness, stress reduction may pack extra potency.

“A lot of our diseases have some sort of origins in stress, and the stress reaction,” said William Frey, who is leading a yoga class in Raleigh, N.C., as part of a UNC-Chapel Hill study among patients with irritable bowel syndrome. “By taking care of stress, you’re starting to eliminate some of the diseases that are caused by it.”

Frey said he began offering yoga eight years ago through UNC-CH’s Program on Integrative Medicine.

“There was some concern we might be bringing spiritual elements into a very clinical setting,” Frey said. “But as people have seen its staying power, and see the results and research, there’s beginning to be more respectability.”

Yoga’s legitimacy increased when the National Institutes of Health became interested in it. The agency is funding studies on yoga and its effect on diseases. But some skepticism remains — in the medical profession and among patients.

Gioia O’Connell, a 54-year-old breast cancer survivor from Apex, N.C., said she wasn’t sure that yoga would help her. Her main hesitation was that yoga stemmed from Eastern roots, and she worried it was incompatible with her Christian faith. Still, she signed up for the study at Duke.

“I have to tell you, it was energizing,” O’Connell said. After being diagnosed with cancer in 1994 and undergoing a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and rounds of daily drugs, she felt wrung out. “It helped with stiffness, aches and pains. And the breathing really did help my energy level. That’s what I deal with, being a cancer survivor, the fatigue.”

Dr. John Inzerillo, an oncologist in Washington, N.C., said his patients have felt that benefit time and again. He began teaching yoga about five years ago as part of a busy practice in Goldsboro, N.C.

“We had breast cancer survivors, lymphoma survivors. Over the course of time — three or four months — I could see a lot more flexibility,” he said, noting that patients also said they felt less stressed.

About three years ago, Inzerillo scaled back. He quit the Goldsboro practice, set up shop in Washington and wrote a book, “Passion Beyond Pain,” about the importance of striking a thoughtful balance in life to overcome pain.

“I made life changes to allow me to get more enjoyment out of life and be more effective at work,” he said. “People get disconnected from the things that really mean something in life.”

Original Article here

* NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Bulging Waist Carries Risk
By ROBERT TOMSHO

A bulging waistline may be a stronger predictor of premature death than a person’s overall weight, according to a large-scale European study that bolsters the findings of earlier research.

For the study, published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, researchers tracked nearly 360,000 men and women in nine European countries for about a decade. Study participants ranged in age from 25 to 70.

At the outset, researchers calculated participants’ so-called body-mass index. The BMI has been the standard formula for assessing weight. It uses a person’s height and weight to come up with a score. A person with a BMI of between 25 and 29.9 points is considered overweight; those with higher scores are deemed obese.

The researchers also measured the circumference of participants’ waists as well as the ratio of their waist and hip measurements. In recent years, various studies have shown that the location of body fat — particularly if it is in the waist area — can be an important factor in assessing the risk of various diseases and death. Men with waists measuring over 40 inches are considered at a higher-risk; for women, the figure is 35 inches.

Current treatment guidelines call for physicians to measure patients’ waists but usually only when their BMI indicates they are overweight, said Tobias Pischon, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the German Institute of Human Nutrition, in Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Germany.

For the study, patients were divided into groups according to their BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-hips ratio. During the course of the research, more than 14,723 of them died from various causes.

Researchers found that even patients who would be considered at normal weight, according to their BMI, faced increased risk of death if they had a large waist.

Normal-weight male participants with waists measuring 102.7 centimeters (about 40 inches) or more were twice as likely to die as those with waists measuring 86 centimeters (34 inches) or less. Women who weighed in the normal BMI range but had waists that were 89 centimeters (35 inches) or more were 79% more likely to die than those with waists measuring 70.1 centimeters (28 inches) or less.

The researchers also calculated that, for a five-centimeter, or about two-inch, increase in waist size for patients with any given BMI score, the risk of death increased by 17% for men and by 13% for women. The researchers found similar trends when they compared waist-to-hips ratios.

Rob M. van Dam, a Harvard Medical School professor not involved with the research, said that while the European study doesn’t break new ground, its size and breadth make it a “very important” contribution to the field. “They really put it on the table in a very convincing way,” said Mr. van Dam, who has been involved in similar research.

Dr. Pischon, the study’s lead author, said in an email that the research didn’t focus on why larger waists mean a higher death rate, but added that the fat in the abdomen tends to be so-called visceral fat, which builds up around the organs and secretes certain hormones that contribute to the onset of various diseases.

He said future research should focus on whether treatment for weight problems should focus on preventing increases in waist size rather than holding down weight overall.

We need to move folks. Move and relearn to eat properly.