Archive for Exercise

The three keys to preventing osteoporosis

October 28, 2007 at 1:19 am · Filed under Eat, Exercise, Health Issues

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Osteoporosis is a disease that results in the thinning of the bones to the point where there is a risk of fracture, and it affects one in two women and one in five men over the age of 50. The most common sites of fracture are the vertebrae of the spine, the wrist, and the top of the thigh bone where it joins the pelvis (neck of the femur).

Our bones are basically a storage site for minerals, and minerals are needed for many functions in the body. For example, calcium is needed in order to be able to contract your muscles. Our body will probably prioritize muscle contraction over bone density so that we can go about our daily activities, and will take calcium from the bones in order to help you contract your muscles, if you do not have enough calcium in the blood.

In order to maintain or increase our bone mass, first and most importantly we need to plug the drain:

  1. Avoid bread sold in plastic bags, as they usually contain phytates, which drain bones of minerals. Generally baked-goods are risky. Any day without baked goods is likely to be a day where you are gaining bone minerals, and any day that you eat baked goods is likely a day your are losing bone minerals. Simple as that. Home-baked bread that involves a few risings seems to be okay.
  2. Soak all grains (like rice, rolled or steel-cut oats, quinoi etc.), nuts and seeds for 12 hours, and drain the soak-water to eliminate the phytates before cooking, in order to prevent bone-mineral leaching.
  3. Stop using stimulants like sugar and caffeine, which results in our bones leaching minerals. (I know. Easier said than done…) Stimulants wreak havoc with our adrenal glands, causing systemic problems in the endocrine system.Systemic stress or anything else that can disrupt endocrine function is hazardous to bones.
  4. Eating whole food is generally much safer than taking supplements. Supplementing with calcium without knowing one's metabolic type can be risky, as some metabolic types need an acid form (parasympathetic dominants), whereas others need an alkaline form (fast oxidizers) for success, and the catabolic types like slow oxidizers and sympathetic dominants actually have adequate calcium and need the synergistic factors to absorb calcium into their bones.  Taking additional calcium will make their situation worse.

Secondly, we need consume the raw materials that our body needs to mineralize our bones in the form of whole food.

  1. Ensure you are consuming foods that contain calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, cholesterol, saturated fat, protein etc.
  2. Supplement with K2, trace minerals all year, and Vitamin D3 when you cannot get enough from the sun. (If you are covered in sunscreen, you will not absorb Vitamin D).
  3. For healthy bones we need a healthy hormonal/endocrine system that is secreting adequate amounts of the enzymes and hormones at the right times and in the right ratios necessary to prevent mineral leaching, and to deposit the minerals into the bone matrix. Find a functional medicine practitioner to get your hormone-system tested, and to move towards hormone balance.

Third, adequate mechanical stress exerted on the bones to make the body realize that it is important to strengthen the bones to be able to handle the mechanical stress. The more kinds of forces applied to the bones, and the more unusual the movement patterns for the bones, the greater the likelihood of increasing bone mass.

  1. Weight-bearing activity puts a compressive load through the bones.
  2. Strength training, depending on the nature of the exercise, will put torsion or bending forces through the bones.
  3. Stretching along the axis of the bones will put tension forces through the bones.
  4. If you know you have osteoporosis, osteopenia, or have noticed that you are getting shorter, avoid high-impact activity. Running would be a poor exercise choice, for example.

Most people are quite familiar with the importance of good nutrition and quality exercise for improving bone mass, but if we do not have an endocrine system that is functioning optimally, good nutrition and exercise won’t work, as we need our hormones to actually get the minerals into the bones.

Calcitrol is an important hormone that is involved in calcium deposition into bones. The raw material from which calcitrol is made is cholesterol, so it is possible that low cholesterol levels may affect the synthesis of calcitrol.

Cortisol is your stress-response hormone, so if you are suffering from chronic stress, either physical, emotional or spiritual or any combination of the above, or if you are feeling overly fatigued on a daily basis, you may be losing bone mass due to endocrine dysfunction.

It is also well established that corticosteroid drugs, both oral or inhaled, cause a decrease in bone mass just like excess endogenous cortisol does, so if you are on these drugs it may be wise to talk to your doctor about safer alternatives.

If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, find a functional medicine doctor or ask your physician to order saliva circadian rhythm adrenal and thyroid hormone tests, and then do whatever is necessary to rectify any issues through functional-medicine protocols and by adjusting lifestyle.

So although osteoporosis, like almost all the degenerative diseases faced by society today, is a complex disease physiologically speaking with a variety of “causes”, it can also be viewed as a very simple disease that is caused by living a lifestyle that breaks the laws of nature (eating fake food, inadequate amounts of quality flesh foods, not exercising enough or inappropriate intensity, not enough dark time, and being chronically stressed).

Related Tips
Food, our raw material
Customized Nutrition
Maintain bone mass by preparing grains, nuts and seeds properly
Biochemical Individuality
How steroids, hormones and neurotransmitters work
Thyroid function and dysfunction
High cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease

Wilson, James Adrenal Fatigue, 21st Century Stress Syndrome Smart Publications, Petaluma, CA 2001.
Reynolds RM et al. Cortisol secretion and rate of bone loss in a population-based cohort of elderly men and women. Calcif Tissue Int. 2005 Sep;77(3):134-8. Epub 2005 Sep 8.
Hubbard R. et al. Use of inhaled corticosteroids and the risk of fracture. Chest. 2006 Oct;130(4):1082-8.
Tauchmanovà L et al. Bone loss determined by quantitative ultrasonometry correlates inversely with disease activity in patients with endogenous glucocorticoid excess due to adrenal mass. Eur J Endocrinol. 2001 Sep;145(3):241-7.
Ledford D. et al. Osteoporosis in the corticosteroid-treated patient with asthma. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 1998 Sep;102(3):353-62.
Mineto M. et al. Bone loss is more severe in primary adrenal than in pituitary-dependent Cushing’s syndrome. Osteoporos Int. 2004 Nov;15(11):855-61. Epub 2004 Mar 18.
Hougardy DM et al. Is enough attention being given to the adverse effects of corticosteroid therapy? J Clin Pharm Ther. 2000 Jun;25(3):227-34.
Yamaguchi T. et al. Plasma lipids and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Endocr J. 2002 Apr;49(2):211-7.
Adami S. et al. Relationship between lipids and bone mass in 2 cohorts of healthy women and men. Calcif Tissue Int. 2004 Feb;74(2):136-42. Epub 2003 Dec 15.
Hunt CD et al. Calcium requirements: new estimations for men and women by cross-sectional statistical analyses of calcium balance data from metabolic studies. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Oct;86(4):1054-63.

Copyright 2007 / 2019 Vreni Gurd

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Exercise intensity and over-training

October 21, 2007 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Exercise

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I was having an online discussion with a physician who was poo-pooing yoga as being “woo” a few months back. Needless to say, I disagreed with his position, as I see great value in yoga on a number of levels, particularly for teaching good postural alignment, proper breathing, balance, and functional strengthening, not to mention the concepts of being present in the moment, acceptance of what is, and learning to let go, both physically and psychologically. The major point I was trying to make was that for many people, yoga or other quiet exercise will do far more to improve health status than a vigorous cardiovascular or strength workout. From his response, it was clear he thought I came straight out of the loony bin, but that’s okay. I see dialogue as valuable – the more ideas shared, the more familiarity and hopefully understanding between the healing professions over time. (I did try and clarify, as I felt he had misunderstood my point.)

It is well accepted that in healthy people a good workout causes one’s heart-rate to go up, breathing rate to go up, increases the heat in the body, causes the body to shunt blood away from the digestive tract and into the working muscles, all which form a part of the sympathetic (fight and flight) response. Then, as one recovers from the workout, the beneficiary is the parasympathetic (rest and repair) system which increases in tone resulting in lower resting heart-rates, lower blood pressure, stronger muscles and bones etc, and better overall health.  This is the exercise response we want and why exercise is promoted.

If an athlete were to go into an over-training state from doing too frequent high-intensity workouts with inadequate recover time, according to exercise physiologist and Olympic trainer, Tudor Bompa in his book Theory and Methodology of Training: The Key to Athletic Performance, the symptoms may include insomnia, increased excitability, lack of appetite, poor heart-rate recovery, digestive disturbances, slower recovery rate, more prone to skin and tissue disturbances – these are all symptoms of sympathetic dominance. In order to recover, the athlete would have to abandon all high-intensity workouts, and reduce stress levels as much as possible. The only exercise recommended would be light, rhythmical exercise.

I would argue that a surprisingly high percentage of the population, particularly women in mid-life, have a lot of those above-mentioned symptoms, although not necessarily due to over-exercising. These people are in sympathetic dominance for other reasons, like work stress, time stress, family stress, money stress, nutritional stress, inadequate sleep and dark time, chronic pain – whatever. The body does not make the distinction with respect to the kind of stress – the response is always the same. So, if an athlete is told to stop high-intensity training when they are in sympathetic overload, does it make sense for anyone to do high-intensity cardio or strength training when in that state? I don’t think so. If the goal is health, fitness and weight loss, exercising hard while in sympathetic overload won’t work. (The calories in vs. calories out concept doesn’t work well if your cortisol levels are high, which is why drugs like prednisone and other corticosteroids frequently cause weight gain.)

Instead, the sort of exercise that is appropriate is relaxing exercise that does not overly raise heart rates and breathing rates, and does not overly disturb digestion (parasympathetic exercise) like walking, yoga, tai chi, qi gong and other forms of exercise done slowly and with the breath.

If one is accustomed to doing hard exercise on a regular basis, even if one is depleted, it is often very psychologically difficult to slow down because somehow it is ingrained into our psyche that exercising harder/longer will give better results. Frequently people simply don’t believe me when I tell them to stop doing long-duration cardio training if their goal is weight-loss, as the body perceives that activity as a stress, which raises cortisol levels and makes it tough to lose fat. If the body is overly stressed, walking will work better than running.

So, how do you know whether parasympathetic-type exercise may be more appropriate for you? Do you frequently drag yourself out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning? Do you regularly feel unrested in the morning? Do you frequently have times in the day where you would really like a nap? Do you need coffee or other stimulants to get through your day? Do you frequently have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep at night? Do you have chronic digestive or other health issues, or are you in pain frequently? Are you under a fair bit of emotional stress? If you answered yes to more than one question, parasympathetic-type exercise will give you energy and improve your health, whereas sympathetic exercise (hard exercise) will drain you and worsen your health.

Related Tips
The autonomic nervous system and fat loss
Cortisol, our stress hormone
Acute vs Chronic Stress
Exercise – how often, how long, how hard?


Bompa, Tudor Theory and Methodology of Training: The Key to Athletic Performance Kendall Hunt Pub. 1997
Mastorakos G et al. Exercise and the stress system. Hormones (Athens). 2005 Apr-Jun;4(2):73-89.
Mastorakos G et al. Exercise as a stress model and the interplay between the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal and the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axes. Horm Metab Res. 2005 Sep;37(9):577-84.
Chek, Paul, Balancing the autonomic nervous system Online
Chek, Paul Zone exercises for balancing stress and building vitality Online

Copyright 2007 Vreni Gurd


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Walking, sacroiliac joint dysfunction and hip pain

August 5, 2007 at 1:54 pm · Filed under Exercise

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I was going to write about insulin this week, but I’ve been noticing something in my practice, and I figured I’d better write about it before it slipped my mind. So my apologies to those of you that are eagerly awaiting the next installment in the endocrinology series.

I should also apologize to all my wonderful SI joint teachers who took the time to really coach me with respect to SI joint dysfunction, (Diane Lee and Linda Joy Lee, Marcy Dayan, Paul Chek, Shayne McDermott, David Ewert, Mark Finch, Tom Myers, and most recently, Richard DonTigny), because it is very probable that you actually did teach me this, and I forgot and have now simply relearned it for myself.

For those of you that are not in the exercise or physiotherapy field and have no idea what and where the sacroiliac joint is, it is the joint between the sacrum, or the triangular bone at the bottom of our spines that the tailbone is a part of, and the pelvis.  People that have SI joint pain frequently point to the "pelvic bump" area in the very low back where the dimples are as the achy spot, and that pain is often one-sided.

For non-exercise people, skip to the next paragraph where I’ll explain this more simply, but for those in the field, what I’ve noticed is that most people that get SI joint pain seem to walk using their hip flexors as the prime movers.  While walking quickly, the pelvis is frequently in anterior tilt and/or there is a distinct forward lean of the trunk, and very often the person with the dysfunction is "pulling" their legs forward rather than "pushing" them. In my practice at least, using the hip flexors to walk seems to be a far more obvious pattern in SIJ dysfunction than a Trendelenburg sign, although the patterns do frequently go together.  I realize that someone in anterior tilt also tends to have poor local stabilizer and poor glute function, but I have found that even when someone has generally improved their pelvic position and been trained to connect to those muscles in other functional patterns such as stand-to-sit-to-stand, unless their faulty motor-recruitment pattern in walking is also corrected, the SIJ pain does not go away due to the constant forces trying to unlock the joint.  So I have put gait to the top of the priority list, and have been spending a lot of time recently teaching people how to walk – and it seems to be helping. Because I frequently see this same faulty walk pattern in those that have had or are about to have hip replacement surgery, I think it is possible that overuse of the hip flexors during gait may pull the femur slightly forward in the acetabulum, potentially creating a wear problem leading to the need for hip replacements. Therefore in my opinion, correcting this faulty gait as soon as it is recognized (possibly in late childhood or adolescence) may go a long way toward not only reducing future pain and suffering, but also reducing the need for hip replacement surgeries. If a study has not already been done on this, I think the idea has potential!

Probably the easiest way to explain this concept is to actually try it and feel it in your body. So, stand up, and pretend that your pelvis is a bucket, and you are pouring water out the front. You should feel like you are sticking your butt out behind you, and you have a big arch in your low back. Now try walking while maintaining this pelvis position. Notice how you have no choice but to use the front of your hips to move your legs? Notice how effortful this is?  Not good.  Hard on your SI joint, hip joints, low back, turns off your local stabilizers and your gluteus maximus, and way over uses the hipflexors and quads.  If you have SI joint or hip pain or if this is how you tend to walk, it may be worth your while to try a different way.

First, stretch your hip flexors gently for a minute or two.  Then, while hanging onto something, try standing as tall as possible on one leg on a small stable stool or a stair, tucking the tail under slightly (hold the bucket level so no water spills out) without squeezing the buttocks, so that the other leg can hang down completely suspended from the hip socket. You should be able to swing the leg like a pendulum with no muscles gripping the leg bone at all – it pretty much moves by itself with no muscle effort.  That is how one’s leg should feel in the swing phase while walking – loose, like it’s hanging, and pretty much moving by itself.  So, now get down from the step and try walking.  The trick is to walk while standing as tall as possible – this will frequently be enough to bring your pelvis to a neutral position.  If you can’t get that "hanging" feeling at the hip joint while you walk, stretch your hip flexors again, stand taller, and tuck your tail under a bit more by using your lower abdominals to gently pull up the pubic bone.  If you are walking correctly, you will not only feel like your legs are floating, but you will also feel that any work that is happening is coming from the back side of the body rather than the front side.

Related Tips
Take your space and improve your posture
Exercise – The fabulous stability ball
Breathe – Are you a chest gripper?
Think – Pain is our body’s alarm system


Lee, Diane The Pelvic Girdle Churchill Livingston, 2004.

Lee, Diane and Lee, Linda Joy An Integrated Approach to the Assessment and Treatment of the Lumbopelvic-Hip Region DVD, 2004

Lee, Diane and Lee, Linda Joy Postpartum Health for Moms – An Educational Package for Restoring Form and Function after Pregnancy CD ROM 2006.

Lee, Diane Assessment Articular Function of the Sacroilac Joint VHS

Lee, Diane Exercises for the Unstable Pelvis VHS

Richardson, C, Hodges P, Hides J. Therapeutic Exercise for Lumbopelvic Stabilization: A Motor Control Approach for the Treatment and Prevention of Low Back Pain Churchill Livingston 2004.

DonTigny, Richard Pelvic Dynamics and the subluxation of the sacral axis at S3 The DonTigny Method.

Myers, Thomas Body Cubed, A Therapist’s Anatomy Reader “Poise: Psoas-Piriformis Balance” Massage Magazine, March/April 1998.

Myers, Thomas Body Cubed, A Therapist’s Anatomy Reader “Fans of the Hip Joint” Massage Magazine, Jan/Feb 1998.

Myers, Thomas Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists Churchill Livingston, 2001

Chek, Paul CHEK Level 1 Advanced Back Training Chek Institute.

Johnson, Jim The Multifidus Back Pain Solution: Simple Exercises That Target the Muscles That Count New Harbinger Publications Inc. Oakland CA, 2002.

Lee, Diane Understanding your back pain – an excellent article explaining the concept of tensegrity and its importance in stabilizing the pelvis and spine.

DeRosa, C. Functional Anatomy of the Lumbar Spine and Sacroiliac Joint 4th Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back & Pelvic Pain, Montreal, 2001.

Gracovetsky, S. Analysis and Interpretation of Gait in relation to lumbo pelvic function 4th Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back & Pelvic Pain, Montreal, 2001.

Dananberg H. Gait style and its relevance in the management of chronic lower back pain 4th Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back & Pelvic Pain, Montreal, 2001.

Online at www.kalindra.com A fantastic website devoted to sacroiliac dysfunction.

Copyright 2007 Vreni Gurd

www.wellnesstips.ca

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Exercise, the autonomic nervous system and fat loss

March 4, 2007 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Exercise

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Many people think that in order to become healthy they must lose some weight. Actually the opposite is true. In order to lose weight, one must become healthy. The truth of the second statement can be seen in gyms everywhere, where people honestly do put in their exercise time and eat a diet of rabbit food, and still despite all their efforts, the fat does not budge, or not to the point expected for the effort put in. The frustration in these people is palpable. Their trainers that are giving them killer workouts are also frustrated. What is going on?

For the answer, we must understand how the autonomic nervous system (ANS) works. This is what runs our body behind the scenes, not under our conscious control. The ANS regulates our heart-rate, our respiration, our immune system, our temperature control, our organ function, our hormones etc., all in the background while we carry on with our life. There are three parts to the ANS – the sympathetic system, the parasympathetic system and the enteric system. For our purposes today, we will discuss the sympathetic, otherwise known as the "fight or flight" system, and parasympathetic or "rest and repair" system and their interaction.

The SNS and the PNS generally have opposite functions – when we are under stress, the sympathetic system raises our heart-rate, increases our respiratory rate, releases cortisol, our stress hormone to help us cope, shunts the blood from the digestive tract into the muscles so that we can either run away from or fight whatever is threatening us.  If organ systems in the body are unhealthy and therefore stressed for one reason or another, or we are mentally or emotionally stressed, that increases sympathetic load as well.  The sympathetic system by its very nature is catabolic, meaning it breaks down muscle tissue due to the increased levels of cortisol secreted.  High-intensity physical exercise is also sympathetic in nature – the heart-rate goes up, respiration goes up, body temperature goes up, and cortisol is released into the blood stream.  I have explained in previous tips how cortisol turns blood sugar into fat.  (No, I’m not saying exercise is bad!)  When the threat is dealt with, the parasympathetic system slows our heart-rate and respiration back down, brings the blood back to the digestive tract so that we can digest our food, and works to repair any tissue damage, increases libido etc.  Night time is when the parasympathetic system has lots of time to do its job, provided we go to bed early enough.  The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems should balance each other nicely, and in those people that have a balanced nervous system, high- intensity exercise will lead to fat loss, as the parasympathetic rest-time between workouts is when muscle tissue is built. 

Those that are unable to lose fat by doing regular high-intensity exercise may have a dominant sympathetic nervous system, and consequently, an inhibited parasympathetic system.   There is too much systemic stress coming from somewhere, and for those people adding high-intensity exercise is counterproductive, as it adds to their sympathetic load pushing them even more out of balance.  Anxiety is very common today, frequently based in financial stressors, poor or inappropriate diet and its consequences, and/or poor relationship stressors, but one does not need to be anxious to be in sympathetic overload.  In my tip on dealing with health issues, I give a roadmap on an
approach to reducing sympathetic load.  Anything that can be done to reduce the stressors is important for successful fat loss (and pain reduction).  As for exercise, yes, it should be done several times a week, but choose exercise like Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Yoga, Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, etc., or any exercise that is done slowly and with the breath, which will increase the parasympathetic system and help balance the ANS. Later, when the body is in balance and healthier, the fat will come off.   The information in today’s tip is a summary of Paul Chek’s article Balancing the Autonomic Nervous System, so feel free to read the original, more detailed article. If you want to know if you are in sympathetic overload, which organ and glandular systems are stressed, and figure out what to do about it, find a Holistic Lifestyle Consultant near you, or reply to this email if you would like me to work with you.

Related tips:
Dealing with health issues
Want fat loss? Aerobic exercise alone is not the answer


Chek, Paul Balancing the Autonomic Nervous System 2006

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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Exercise – How long, how often, how hard?

October 15, 2006 at 2:11 pm · Filed under Exercise

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The first two questions are easy – do some form of exercise almost every day. If you are going to the gym, your work-outs should not be longer than an hour, unless you are an elite athlete training for some sport. And even then, if your time is used wisely, you will get more bang for the buck with shorter workouts. Many athletes over train, and either wind up injured or sick and tired by overtaxing their system. It is important to understand that it is between workouts that you actually get stronger and more fit, as you recover from your previous workout.

Weight training or other forms of resistance training should be done 2 to 3 times a week, with at least one day off between sessions. During the weight-training session you are actually breaking down muscle tissue, so you leave the gym much weaker than when you entered, and it takes at least 48 hours for those muscles to repair themselves and become stronger than before the workout. Therefore, strengthening the same muscle groups two days in a row does not allow for enough time between workouts for the muscles to regenerate, resulting in weaker rather than stronger muscles. If you are still sore when you go back for your next workout, rather than doing another tough strengthening workout, lighten the weights, and do more repetitions which will get the blood flowing to those sore muscles, and you will probably leave feeling less sore. Or, take another day off and go hard when you have completely recovered.

Cardiovascular training can be done daily, but I would suggest taking at least one day off a week to make sure your body has a day to completely recover.  If you are doing cardio 6 days a week, examine your motives.  Are you training for an event?  Are you trying to burn fat?  If fat burning is your reason for spending hours doing cardio, think again. You will get much better results weight training, particularly if you set up a weight circuit using large muscle groups and moving quickly between exercises.  Weight training increases your metabolism so you burn more calories all day and all night.

Stretching is frequently dropped when time is short, but stretching decreases compressive forces in your body, and can do a lot to reduce pain. Stretching needs to be done at least 5 days a week to get results. Stretch the tight muscles rather than the loose ones. Simple concept, but we often enjoy stretching the areas where we are flexible already, and don’t like stretching where we are not. Stretching the tight muscles will improve muscle balance and help your body function better. Use an exercise professional like a Chek Practitioner or personal trainer to design a program for you based on your needs.

How hard to exercise depends on your health.  If you have no health issues, you jump out of bed in the morning full of energy and you don’t require coffee to get you through your day, you can exercise hard, and high intensity workouts will increase your fitness and wellbeing more effectively than low intensity workouts.  If you have health concerns or you are dragging yourself through your day, perhaps using caffeine or another pick-me-up, exercising hard is a bad idea. You want to train yourself rather than drain yourself.  After your exercise session you should feel energized.  If you feel like crawling into bed, the workout was too hard.  I love Paul Chek’s analogy of the body as a stress bucket.  If your stress bucket is overflowing and you are in pain or you have no energy, adding the stress of hard exercise that fires up the sympathetic nervous system will make things worse.  You still need to exercise, but a more gentle approach is necessary. Yoga, Tai Chi, or Qi Gong tend to be calmer forms of exercise that can actually poke holes in the stress bucket and thereby help to heal you.

On another note, I would like to introduce you to Nadine Ijaz and her Food Apothecaria. Her selection may be small, but she has thoroughly researched the foods and products she offers to be the best for our health and for environmental sustainability. Some examples of her quality foods include pasture-fed butter, quality high vitamin cod-liver oil, salad dressings made from unrefined oils, raw honey where the bees have NOT been given antibiotics (I still can’t believe that even bees are given antibiotics!), to organic miso made with sea salt rather than processed salt. Her items are not packaged in plastic, but in glass or paper, which is better for your health, and the environment.  She will ship anywhere, but shipping is extra.

Related tips::
Resistance Training
S-T-R-E-T-C-H and Feel Better!
Heart-Rate Training
Want Fat Loss? Aerobic Exercise Alone is Not the Answer

Chek, Paul;The Golf Biomechanic’s Manual: Whole in One Golf Conditioning Golf Biomechanic’s Manual: Whole in One Golf Conditioning Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2001

Chek, Paul;How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.

Stark, Steven D.;The Stark Reality of Stretching: An Informed Approach for All Activities and Every Sport The Stark Reality of Stretching  1999

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Use your Power, and The Elixir of Youth

September 23, 2006 at 2:40 pm · Filed under Exercise, Other

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A healthy environment is an absolute must if we are to remain healthy and disease free, and I’m sure it is obvious to you that our environment is being sorely threatened, from the air we breathe, to the water that supports all life, to the soil that gives life to the plants that provide food and habitat for land animals. There is a lot we can do to turn the fate of the planet around, and if enough of us act together, we can use our buying power to have a big impact quickly. Because companies are so bottom-line oriented, choose to only support companies that tread lightly on the earth. Make the environment part of your buying criteria when making large purchases as well as the small day to day ones. Don’t buy stuff that is overly packaged. Choose dish-washing and laundry detergents that are phosphate free, and only wash when you have a full load. With food, refuse to support commercial agribusiness that kill the organisms in the soil and pollute our waterways with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Only buy organic produce, preferably local, (farmer’s markets are great!) so the food doesn’t travel far using fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.  Only choose pasture-fed meat and dairy, and free-range poultry and eggs.  Don’t support factory farms that are cruel to the animals involved and cause huge pollution problems. Governments are largely hamstrung by trade laws and industry lobbyists, and don’t have the courage to make the tough environmental decisions for fear of the economic and legal repercussions. As individuals, we have more power than governments to create big change, by how we spend our money. Companies are beholden to their customers, and even the worst offenders will change if their customers demand it, or they will go out of business. So, use your purchasing power wisely, and spread the word! Pass on these fun yet educational links: The Meatrix and The Meatrix II, Revolting and StoreWars.

Changing the subject rather drastically, let’s talk about the Elixir of Youth. Yes, such an Elixir does exist, and it is very powerful. To become younger, you must take this Elixir at least three times a week on a regular basis, and over time you will notice signs that you are regaining your youth. You will notice your energy increasing, your moods improving, your stress levels decreasing, your muscles becoming stronger again, your body regaining a more youthful appearance, your body-fat decreasing, your balance improving, and your skin becoming more clear and radiant. It won’t be long before you are sleeping much better, and you may even find that your aches and pains are disappearing! If we could look inside your body, we would notice that you are controlling your blood sugar much better, your bones are becoming stronger, your blood pressure is improving, your joints are lubricated and working better, and your digestive system is functioning better. Some may find that over time, your life is expanding – you are once again capable of doing things that perhaps you were unable to do for a while. You are indeed reducing your biological age. The Elixir works well if taken regularly, and doesn’t work at all if not taken frequently enough. Is this Elixir expensive or hard to obtain? No. Do you want some? It is yours for the taking. The Elixir is exercise.

Related tips:
Organic vs. Conventional meat, poultry, eggs and dairy
What is organic food?
Eat local and save the world

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.
Chek, Paul; You Are What You Eat CD Series  Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2002.

www.wellnesstips.ca

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Heart-rate training

June 4, 2006 at 12:51 pm · Filed under Exercise

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Your heart is a muscle that sits in the centre of your chest right behind the breast bone and between the two lungs. It is not really located on the left side of the chest as is often believed, but the left ventricle of the heart that pumps the blood to your whole body sits slightly to the left, which may give that illusion. Your heart pumps about five litres of blood throughout your body every minute in order to bring nutrition, oxygen, hormones and electrolytes to every cell, and to carry waste and carbon dioxide away from the cells. Depending on your fitness, it can either pump a thimble full of blood with each beat, in which case it has to beat very frequently to get that five litres of blood around your body, or it can pump about a cup or 250 ml of blood with each beat if you are in good cardiovascular shape, using less beats to deliver the same amount of blood. As your heart becomes a stronger muscle and can pump more blood, your heart-rate per minute will decline. A very fit person may have a resting heart-rate in the low 50s, and an unfit person may have a resting heart-rate in the 90s. A stronger heart is a healthier heart, and that is why even patients that are recovering from heart attacks are usually given a walking program.

If you are out of shape, walking is an easy way to begin strengthening your heart, and it can be an enjoyable activity that is relatively easy to include in your life. Perhaps instead of taking the car, you can complete some errands on foot. Slowly build up your walking time to half an hour a day. If it is safe, walking after dinner can be very helpful with weight-loss, as it will reduce your blood sugar as well.

Once walking half-an-hour is not challenging, it is time to increase the intensity of the exercise to get continued improvements in heart strength. To know if you are working hard enough when exercising, you can calculate your heart-rate zone by subtracting your age from 220, which gives you your theoretical maximum heart-rate in beats per minute, and then taking 60% to 80% of that number. Now you know the lower and upper limit in heartbeats per minute that you should be exercising in order to condition your heart. (There can be huge variation in maximum heart-rates – if you want to know exactly what your max heart-rate is, ask whether your University physical education or kinesiology department does max testing.) Common forms of aerobic exercise that you can use for exercising your heart include jogging, cycling, swimming, inline skating, cross-country skiing, for example, but if you are injury-free, I would suggest setting up a weights circuit that uses the large muscle groups and do exercises such as multi-directional lunges, cable wood-chops, squat push-presses, pull-ups of some sort, and possibly a Swiss ball push-up prone pike or maybe burpees. By moving quickly between exercises you will keep your heart rate up AND maintain your muscle mass. Use a qualified personal trainer or CHEK Practitioner to teach you how to do the exercises correctly. Unless you are an athlete that is training for a cardiovascular event, I don’t think it is a great idea to do more than 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week. Too much cardio decreases muscle mass and immune function. For more info on this, see Want fat loss? Aerobic exercise alone is not the answer.

The easiest place to take your pulse is in your neck. Find your Adam’s apple and slide your fingers into the groove just to the side of it and feel for your pulse. Don’t press too hard as you have receptors in the carotid artery that will sense the pressure and slow your heart-rate down giving you a false reading. Count the number of beats you feel in 10 seconds and multiply by six to get the number of beats in a minute. You will get good at taking a tiny pause in your exercise to check your heart-rate. Or those heart-rate monitors are a fantastic tool to help you with your cardiovascular exercise program. As you get into better and better shape, you will have to work harder and harder to get your heart-rate into your zone. Congratulations – your fitness is improving!

Take your pulse daily in the morning before getting out of bed to learn your resting heart-rate. If you ever notice that your resting rate is 10 beats higher than usual, your body is fighting something, so don’t exercise that day, do what you can to reduce stress and nourish your body well, and you may avoid getting sick.

Related Tips:
Want fat loss? Aerobic exercise alone is not the answer
How hormones, neurotransmitters and steroids work
Resistance Training

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.
Chek, Paul; Golf Biomechanic’s Manual: Whole in One Golf Conditioning  Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2001
Sherwood, Lauralee; Human Physiology, From Cells to Systems  West Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN, 2006.
McArdle, Katch & Katch; Exercise Physiology, Energy, Nutrition and Human Performance Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2006.

www.wellnesstips.ca

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The fabulous stability ball

May 22, 2006 at 2:24 pm · Filed under Exercise

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The stability ball is the perfect piece of home exercise equipment that can double as a chair.  Those big air-filled, colourful balls are full of whimsy and make exercise fun, yet give a surprisingly tough workout. When I got my first one I did one set of abdominal curls on it and my abs were sore for a week.  And at that time I thought I was in great shape! 

The stability ball (Swiss ball, physio ball) is one of the best ways to train the body because you must stabilize yourself while you do the exercises.  You are forced to use not only the movers, but also the stabilizers of the body, and as such, you teach your body how to move in a coordinated way. 

If you think of yourself as a bit of a "clutz", using a stability ball will go a long way to solving that problem.  Because you use far more musculature with stability ball training, you burn far more calories as well.

Compare that to doing machine training in a gym, where you are usually seated in a chair that is bolted to the floor, often wearing a seat belt, and pushing or pulling the handles, or moving your legs back and forth. Fewer stabilizers are necessary, so your mover muscles become stronger at the expense of the stabilizers. 

Do that for a long time and you develop joint pain, because the small stabilizer muscles that are supposed to control the motion at the joints can no longer do the job because they are so over-powered by the mover muscles.

For this reason, include stability ball exercises in your fitness routine.  For example, lie on the floor and put your feet on the ball.  Draw in the tissue just above the pubic bone, and push through your feet to lift your pelvis into the air, then slowly lower your pelvis back to the floor.  This is an excellent exercise for strengthening the back body, and it teaches the brain to coordinate the movement with the trunk as well. 

Or, put your stomach on the ball, hands on the floor and walk out on your hands until your shins are on the ball, keeping your spine in neutral.  Then without allowing your back to round, bend your knees and pull the ball under you, then push it back to the start position.  This exercise is called prone jack knife, and is excellent for strengthening the entire front body as well as the arms and shoulders. 

Any exercises that can be done with a bench and dumb bells can be made more challenging using a stability ball.  There are many resources that have stability ball exercises included, some of the best from Paul Chek, in the form of videos or books. 

The best way to learn stability ball exercises is to hire a CHEK Practitioner or qualified personal trainer who can teach you the exercises and ensure you are doing them correctly.

When purchasing a Swiss ball, be sure that when fully inflated the ball you choose allows you to sit such that your knees are slightly lower than your pelvis. 

The quality balls are two layers thick, so if you roll over a staple they won’t pop.  If you are planning to do heavy duty weight training, ball quality is critical.  Buy the Duraball Pro, as it can take up to 1000 lbs of force.  

If you are wanting one for a desk chair, buy the larger size and only inflate it to the smaller size so that the ball will be soft enough to prevent numb bum.  Using a ball as a chair will keep you moving enough to keep your spine and disks healthy, although you will have to gradually build up your time on it.  Have fun and get fit!

Related Tips:
Resistance Training

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy!  Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.

Chek, Paul;  Golf Biomechanic’s Manual: Whole in One Golf Conditioning  Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2001.

www.wellnesstips.ca

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Now I know what back-pain feels like! Not fun!

April 23, 2006 at 11:06 pm · Filed under Exercise

I’ve had back pain before. I had an annoying little SI joint problem that made my back ache. Nothing severe – more an annoyance that I was happy to eliminate by learning how to connect properly to my deep stabilizing muscles. Particularly my right multifidus wasn’t working. I had a hole where I should have had a muscle. Once I got that one working my back pain disappeared, and I haven’t had a problem in about 8 years. I then went on to teach others about the magic of the local stabilizer muscles and help others eliminate their pain too.

However, last week I severely strained my SI joint in the gym picking up a weight wrong. (I know better!) I actually heard something tear which scared the daylights out of me, and instantly my back hurt a lot! Then after being very sore all day, to my astonishment, I woke up completely fine the next day. I counted myself very lucky.

Then yesterday we had a fabulous day skiing at Whistler, but I’m not too good at using my legs as springs when I go over those moguls, and so the forces just carried on right up into my injured joint. My back was sore again by the end of the day.

Today I couldn’t get out of a chair. I’m walking around like an old woman, and practicing everything that I’ve been preaching. I’m connecting to my transversus, multifidus and pelvic floor. I’m straddling things I have to pick up from the floor, and keeping my spine in neutral as I use my legs. I seem to be dropping everything from keys to pencils today – annoying – so I’ve had a lot of practice! I’ve taped my back. I’ve done superman and horse stance exercises. I am now really understanding the desperation people with back pain must feel. I can’t imagine living with this for a long time. One day at a time. I’m hoping I’ll be able to manage work tomorrow.

www.wellnesstips.ca

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To run or not to run???

April 17, 2006 at 11:08 pm · Filed under Exercise, Other

Well, today was Easter Monday – I didn’t take appointments today, although I did catch up on paperwork at home. It was sort of sunny, and it crossed my mind that I should go out for a run. Break up the time I spend at the computer. Get the blood flowing. It would be good for me.

But you know, I really hate running. Every April I say “this year I’m going to learn to like running”, and I drag myself outside, and for 15 or 20 minutes I torture myself and with every breath I ask myself how soon can I stop. And then I keep it up three times a week for about a month, and then sometime in May I drop it.

I don’t understand how runners find that activity fun. I really admire people that love to run, and I really want to be like them. Running whips one into shape so quickly. And it is a natural movement. Remember when we were kids how much fun we had running around? What happened? Now I’d rather bike 100km than run 5.

So, did I go out running today? No. I sat outside on the porch and felt guilty that I didn’t. Tomorrow the mental battle begins again.

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