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Nutritional & Lifestyle Guidance
A healthy diet is an important part of any fitness program and essential for vitality and energy levels. Just as important is a happy and restful lifestyle with minimal stress. You may be surprised when I tell you that stress may be the reason why you are not losing weight. If you think about it, a lot of us work 70 hour week at our job while simultaneously trying to manage a family, scheduling your kids activities, eating a lousy diet of process foods and refined sugars, and we expect to somehow fit exercise on top of that. Sure your kids may be happy but is your family happy as a whole, are you waking up on Sunday thinking about the stack of papers on your desk awaiting you Monday morning, and do you get enough sleep?
Your lifestyle has everything to do with the way you look and feel and until you change that in steps, you will not feel energized. strong, and rested. Just take a step back away from your daily life and see what factors are contributing to the way you feel today.
Recipes:
Barbecued Shrimp In Lettuce Wraps
Ingredients:
16 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
Light oil, such as vegetable oil, for drizzling
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
1/3 cup orange marmalade, eyeball it
1/2 cup hoisin barbecue sauce, available on the Asian foods aisle
Bibb lettuce, for wrapping
1/4 cucumber, julienne slice
Preheat a grill pan over high heat. Toss shrimp with a drizzle of oil and season
with crushed pepper, salt and black pepper. Mix marmalade and barbecue sauce.
Grill shrimp 2 minutes on the first side, turn and baste liberally with sauce. Cook a minute or 2 longer, turn and baste again. Cook 1 minute more
then transfer to a serving dish.
To eat, wrap shrimp in lettuce with cucumber
Articles:
Tufts Announces Diebetes Study
Tufts University recently conducted a study and found patients who include at least 3 whole grain (cereals, breads, etc) servings per day are less likely to develop Type II diabetes.
Type II diabetes is usually seen in people over 40, or those who are obese. Type II diabetes is the non-insulin-dependant type. The key to treating diabetes are to prevent its onset, or prevent complications from arising once the disease has been diagnosed.
The use of exercise with diabetic patients has shown to improve glucose tolerance, overall metabolism, as well as overall blood glucose control, cholesterol and strength. Exercise in general (aerobic or strength training) has an insulin-like effect on glucose uptake into cells.
Aerobic training programs for diabetic patients should consist of moderade-to low-impact types of training (to guard against injury to feet and lower legs), and should be built up gradually, with regard to both intensity and time. Walking can be one of the most beneficial forms of exercise for anyone with diabetes. For those with lower extremity problems, using a pool for swimming, non-weight bearing walking, or running against resistance works great.
Arm crank type upper body machines, rowing machines, or other nonimpact aerobic machines are also very beneficial.
Weight training programs for diabetic patients should always start with light to moderate weights (depending on your condition) for preliminary conditioning, improved posture, and to improve blood sugar control.
Patients with diabetes must have had a medical exam before participating in any exercise program. Their physician should be involved with you to develop a program that is tailored specifically for their patient. Follow-up reexaminations are essential to monitor patient progress, and to discuss changes in managing their diabetes, because often, over time, a diabetic patient improves their glucose management, so medication levels need to be adjusted accordingly.
Childhood Obesity & Diebetes
CDC: Diabetes public health resource
Apr. 16, 2003
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Once a true medical oddity, children with adult diabetes are becoming commonplace. Doctors blame the twin evils of too much food and too little exercise and fear a tragic upswing in disastrous diabetic complications as this overweight generation reaches adulthood.
At hospitals everywhere, boys and girls who range from chubby to hugely obese are being diagnosed in unprecedented numbers with type 2 diabetes. Most are barely into their teens. Some are as young as 6.
This disease used to be called adult-onset diabetes, since it rarely occurred before middle age. But over the past decade, it has slowly become clear this is now a disease of the young, as well.
Just how frequently is uncertain, since nationwide statistics are still being gathered. Nevertheless, doctors are convinced they see the leading edge of a dangerous shift, one that will inevitably lead to kidney failure, blindness, heart attacks, amputations and more as these young people live another 10 or 20 years with their diabetes.
"There is an epidemic of type 2 diabetes in youth, absolutely," says Dr. Lori Laffel, head of the pediatric unit at Boston's Joslin Diabetes Center. "Over the years, we always saw an occasional child with type 2. It was a handful a year."
But in the early '90s, the pattern changed. Out of the blue, it seemed, large children, usually accompanied by overweight parents, began to show up with type 2 diabetes. During the early '90s, Joslin's totals increased five times. Since then, they have doubled again.
Until this shift, almost all diabetes in children was type 1, what was called juvenile diabetes. In many ways, it is a different disease. Type 1 results from a misguided attack by the immune system on the insulin-making cells in the pancreas. Victims stop making insulin completely, so they cannot convert sugar to energy.
But type 2 has always been a disease of people in their 50s, 60s and beyond. Their bodies still make insulin, just not enough. They may go for years without realizing they have it.
Around the country, doctors say Joslin's 10-fold rise in childhood type 2 over the past decade is typical. Is it because they are looking harder or doing a better job of separating type 2 from type 1? Not likely, they say.
"It's not because we missed a lot of cases," says Dr. Phillip Lee, head of pediatric endocrinology at UCLA. "We just didn't see it. Now referrals of type 2 are almost 50 percent of our diabetes cases."
Why? Doctors have little doubt. They blame inactivity and overeating. The hours on end in front of the tube, for instance, and the 20-ounce sodas in school vending machines. (Swilling four of those a day is nothing special for many kids, one doctor notes, and adds up to 1,000 calories, close to half of a boy's daily needs, all from sugar.)
Virtually all children with type 2 are overweight, although this hardly makes them unique. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that 15 percent of all U.S. children and teenagers -- and nearly a quarter of black and Hispanic youngsters -- weigh too much.
Still, the ones with diabetes tend to be especially big, tall for their age and large all over. Twelve-year-olds weigh 250 pounds. Invariably their parents are heavy, too.
"These are not little kids," says Dr. Morey Haymond, head of diabetes care at Texas Children's Hospital. "Even the 6-year-old is a big kid for his age."
Nearly all of them have a skin condition called acanthosis nigricans, velvety, dirty-looking dark patches around the neck and other skin folds. They are a sign of insulin resistance, an inability to respond efficiently to insulin, which is common in the overweight.
In girls, the insulin resistance often triggers hormone upsets that result in facial hair, acne and ovarian cysts.
Young blacks and Hispanics have more of this kind of diabetes than do whites. Their extra weight alone may explain some of it, although experts believe these minorities also may have an extra genetic tendency toward diabetes that is compounded by their weight.
Many who do not have outright diabetes still have abnormalities that put them at high risk for diabetes. Doctors estimate that for every youngster with type 2, four or five others have what's called syndrome X or metabolic syndrome, a combination of obesity, insulin resistance, bad cholesterol counts, high triglycerides and high blood pressure.
"Unless we make a significant alteration in their lifestyles, they will likely progress to a deteriorating course of insulin resistance, pre-diabetes and diabetes," says Dr. Francine Kaufman, endocrinology chief at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and president of the American Diabetes Association.
Adults with type 2 diabetes face many complications that shorten or worsen their lives, although these can be reduced or prevented with medicines, weight loss and exercise.
Unless we make a significant alteration in their lifestyles, they will likely progress to a deteriorating course of insulin resistance, pre-diabetes and diabetes.
- Dr. Francine Kaufman on the possible future for children with type 2 diabetes
Since the problem is so new, no one knows exactly what will befall those who start the disease in their teens rather than their 50s. But many fear the complications will emerge in early adulthood.
"The horizon is really dark," says Dr. Jorge Calles-Escandon, a Wake Forest University endocrinologist. "We know what happens to adults with type 2 diabetes who don't take care of it properly. They die prematurely. They have heart attacks, strokes, blindness, renal failure. There is no reason to believe this will be different for adolescents."
One follow-up study suggests he is right. Researchers from the University of Manitoba tracked down 51 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as children. Two had died on kidney dialysis, and three others were still on it. One 26-year-old woman had lost a toe to amputation, while another had gone blind.
In an attempt to find out how many young Americans actually have the disease, the CDC will count all the diabetes cases among 6 million people under age 20 for five years. It expects 6,000 of them to have it at the start and 800 more to be diagnosed annually, 30 percent of them type 2.
"Whatever we get will be an underestimate of the true disease," says the CDC's Dr. Desmond Williams, since the study will not go looking for youngsters with diabetes, only record those who come to doctors' attention.
The diabetes association recommends testing children for type 2 diabetes if they are overweight and have two other risk factors, such as a parent with the disease, signs of insulin resistance or if they are black, Hispanic or American Indian.
Nevertheless, outside of big hospital obesity clinics, experts say this kind of testing is rare. Pediatricians and family physicians simply are not trained to think about adult diabetes in the young, and without obvious symptoms, children are likely to be missed.
"It's possible that we are looking at the tip of the iceberg, the ones with the most severe disease or with pediatricians who are attuned to looking for this," says Dr. Stephen Daniels, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati.
No easy solutions
If so, what can be done? Doctors understand what they are up against -- a culture of cheap, high-calorie food and sedentary pleasures -- and can think of no easy solutions. These are, after all, teenagers. They feel immortal and are loathe to do anything their friends do not, such as ordering a salad or joining an aerobics class.
Some wonder if refocusing the exercise and eating habits of the entire society is the only solution. Others think about more focused approaches, such as luring overweight girls into after-school workouts, where they might learn something both fun and sweaty, like break dancing.
Some experts believe exercise is as crucial as weight control in preventing type 2. Pediatrics professor Bernard Gutin of the Medical College of Georgia notes that physical activity stimulates movement of sugar into cells and improves the body's response to insulin.
"Vigorous exercise in kids is especially important," says Gutin, who is testing the effects of basketball, soccer and dancing on overweight boys and girls. "That translates simply into running rather than walking."
But the first, and often biggest, hurdle is getting youngsters and their parents to acknowledge they actually have a problem, that the weight must go. Often they come from families where everyone is overweight, where nobody exercises in any way.
"It's difficult to change what you have grown to accept as normal all your life, and you are surrounded with an environment that is not willing to change," says Dr. Silva Arslanian, director of clinical research at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
One large federally financed study, involving several thousand young people in North Carolina, Texas and California, will see if modest changes at school can make a difference. It will test whether healthier choices in the cafeteria, better access to water and improved phys ed programs, among other things, have an effect on youngsters' risk of type 2 diabetes.
"Can we really reverse things?" asks Kaufman, who's directing that study. "We're not going back to the 1950s, but we could make this a healthier time in which to live."
Speed and Power Development
By Lee Taft
For some odd reason, there is a perception that once a person becomes an adult, speed and power training are no longer a necessary part of their training program. Yet, many of these people perform activities and sports that require a great deal of speed and power!
I guess it comes down to the nature of the beast. Once people reach middle age or older, it is assumed they have much higher risks of injury and fragility, therefore any form of exercise that can exacerbate this potential is unwarranted.
Well, obviously this form of thinking has many flaws. First, not all speed and power training is geared to be 100 percent effort with high risk exercises. Second, just because someone is older doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability or the need to perform such speed and power exercises. I personally would say that if you don’t include some form of speed and power training with every capable client, you are not fully allowing them to reach their physical potentials.
Let’s take a look at the huge benefits of speed and power training. When individuals perform exercises at a high intensity that requires their anaerobic system to be the primary source of energy, many good things happen: the cardio-respiratory system must adapt and eventually become stronger, the musculature system must adapt to higher demands and the hormonal system will release high levels of HGH for quite some time (two to four hours) even after exercise is finished. The higher release of HGH gives some wonderful benefits to your body such as a more muscle, younger looking skin and greater energy, to name a few.
When I speak of speed and power training, I think this immediately conjures up images of high intensity weight lifting and super hard football practices. Obviously, this is not what I am referring to when I speak of speed and power training for the masses.
Exercises such as throwing a medicine ball require power. There are numerous ways to throw a medicine ball that are safe yet invite the fast twitch muscle fibers to be responsive. How about running, riding a bike or swimming hard for roughly 10 to 30 seconds? This is a form of speed training. Obviously, there needs to be a lead up time with clients who may be out of shape and not ready to push at higher levels (85 to 95 percent) of intensity. But as you can see, virtually any form of exercise can be used to increase speed and power and, more importantly, get the benefits that speed and power training has to offer.
What exactly are the benefits of power training for the average adult? When people are able to quickly apply force with the extremities or torso, they are able to perform many household, sport-related or injury preventing actions with greater results. For example, you might be working with a client who loves to play tennis. The tennis serve, ground strokes and footwork all require certain levels of power. If this client was only trained at a slow tempo during his or her workouts, the results would not be as beneficial as if they were to have been doing higher speed training like medicine ball throws of quick rotations with tubing or cables.
Let's step out of the sporting arena for a moment and look at a housewife rearranging furniture in the house. There are going to be times when pushing a heavy piece of furniture or lifting a heavy object will require some power (moving the object with greater speeds). By training this client how to use her legs and back properly while performing exercises at the gym with greater speed, this can be transferred into the home rather nicely.
Speed training can be easily misunderstood as well. Speed training does not require the client to only perform running exercises on a track, although that is a great way to get the benefits of anaerobic training. It could be riding a bike, swimming, walking fast up a hill or rowing. The goal with speed training is to get the body into the anaerobic state in which oxygen debt will occur. When this occurs, there are some great benefits to the body caused by the release of HGH. HGH is a hormone that has been linked to youthfulness and energy. Many people are paying tons of money to have injections of this hormone to gain its youthful anti-aging benefits, when really all they need to do is let the body produce more of it for them!
How do we get the body to produce more HGH? As mentioned above, there are many exercises that can be performed. It isn’t the exercise that is the key element. The key element is the intensity of the exercise.
In his book Ready, Set, Go, Phil Campbell outlined the important benchmarks that must be reached to gain the remarkable benefits of HGH release. The first benchmark is that there must be a state of oxygen debt. This occurs when the intensity is high and causes the body to not recover quickly enough with simply using oxygen. This state of oxygen debt must force the body to supply oxygen to the blood with rapid breathing. During this state, the release of HGH is generated.
The next benchmark is the muscle burn effect. When this occurs, there is a build up of lactic acid and HGH is released. Having the body temperature increased is the third benchmark for the release of HGH. Simply getting the body to raise its temperature enough to get a sweat going is a sign that the body temperature has increased.
Finally, the Adrenal Response is a benchmark that has been shown to help the release of HGH. The client must become out of breath. There is a release of adrenaline that occurs during high stress that is used to normalize blood circulation.
There are other factors that will play a role in the release of HGH, but the above mentioned benchmarks are important if HGH is going to be released at higher levels during exercise.
The value of speed training is more than just becoming faster. Many years ago, when I was working with groups of adult athletes, I was using this form of training in their daily workouts. It was physically obvious to them and to me how their bodies changed and their energy levels increased. Also, it doesn’t take a long time to do a higher intense anaerobic workout. It is important to progress clients to this form of higher intensity training. A complete physical by a qualified professional should occur beforehand.
Listed below are several exercises and/or equipment that can be implemented into speed and power training for the masses:
Power Exercises
* Medicine Ball Standing Chest Pass - Simply pass the ball back and forth with a partner. It is advisable to let the ball bounce so the potential for injury is reduced to the hand and fingers.
* Medicine Ball Side Push Pass - The partners will stand sideways to each other and pass the ball by rotating the hips and upper body to push the ball to the each other. Similar to a ground stroke, golf swing, batting action.
* Medicine Ball Overhead Throw - Perform this exercise under a high ceiling or outdoors. The client gets in a good squat position with the ball between the knees and then explosively throws the ball above the head with a good body extension.
* Tubing/Cable Rotation - The client will assume a good athletic stance with the tubing or cable handle in both hands. They will quickly rotate the body and arms to one side and slowly return it to the start. Once again, this action is like a batting or tennis action.
* Fast Lifting - Power training can be performed with dumbbells, body weight, barbells, Kettlebells or any other piece of equipment. The key is to use good form and perform the exercise at high speeds.
Speed Training
* Track Sprinting - Simply run around a track, performing 10 to 30 second sprints from 75-95 percent effort.
* Stationary or Road Bikes - Following the same time frame and intensities as above.
* Swimming - This can be done by actually performing swimming strokes or doing running, jumping or twisting exercises in the water for the 10-30 second time frames.
* Hill Walking - Simply walking up a steep hill at a fast pace will greatly increase the intensity of the workout.
* Ladder Drills - Using a quick foot ladder to perform intervals is a great way to get the intensity levels up. It also improves coordination and body awareness.
* Rowing - This can be actual boat rowing or machine rowing.
* X-country skiing - This is a great way to get intensity levels up.
* Roller Blading - Can be used just a like sprinting.
As with any exercise program, it is important to evaluate your clients' goals prior to beginning. Also, there may be postural issues, weaknesses and/or imbalances that must be corrected. Nutritional considerations are vital to gain the benefits of a proper exercise program, especially in this instance when poor nutrition can hinder the results of HGH release. Once these issues are addressed, you will quickly see the results that can be realized from a properly executed speed and power training workout!
References:
1. Campbell. Phil., Ready, Set, Go! Pristine Publishers, 2003. Pg 42-44
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