Fitness Contrarian » Optimal Health http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com Fitness Shortcuts from New York Veteran TRainer Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:09:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Are You Feeling Unhealthy? http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/feeling-unhealthy/ http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/feeling-unhealthy/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 00:50:03 +0000 Mike Cola http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/?p=4776

One of my personal training clients was telling me that he is feeling unhealthy and really tired. I was surprised because he is in great shape and typically feels great. However, anyone can get caught up working too hard, not sleeping enough and letting their diet slip for a few weeks. Even the fittest people feel out shape from time to time. It happened to me last summer and I wrote about it in a post titled “Are You Feeling Out of Shape Now that it is the End of Summer”. If you’re feeling unhealthy try these tips that I gave my client.

5 Tips to Feel Healthy Quick

1- Start Juicing: There is no better way to super charge your diet with vitamins and minerals than with vegetable juice. Checkout this video that I did about how juicing can help lower your blood pressure. I also recommend the juicer that I use every day.

2- Get a Good Night’s Sleep: You can’t go too long without getting enough sleep. I wrote about the importance of sleep for your body and mind in this article titled “Get Adequate Sleep”. Most people need at least 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

3- Try a Fast: Fasting might seem counter intuitive when you are feeling tired and need energy. However, there are so many helpful benefits to fasting for 24 hours. Intermittent Fasting can energize your whole body. I have written a number of articles about the benefits of fasting called “ Fasting For Weight Loss”, “Intermittent Fasting Resource” and “ Skip Breakfast” to name a few.

4- Play Outside: It’s so easy to over work at your desk and let the days go by without spending enough time outside. For good health we all need to feel the sun hitting our faces on a regular basis. Read this article I wrote about the importance of getting outside called “ Outdoor Play Time”.

5- Do Easy Aerobic Exercise: When you are over worked and have not been sleeping enough, it’s no time to push too hard in the gym. Hard workouts are stressful on the body and should only be performed when you have been putting in the time to properly recover from them. Checkout this post I wrote about the benefits of easy workouts called “ Do Easy Aerobics on a Regular Basis”.

Whether you’re a fit person suddenly feeling unhealthy or someone who has not been taking care of yourself for quite some time, these 5 tips can really help. My client who is in good shape just over extended himself at work and even in the gym. When he started working long hours planning a big event, I should have told him that he needed to make sure he was getting enough sleep, eating well and not overdoing it at the gym. Actually, just one of these five feel healthy quick tips like juicing or intermittent fasting could have stopped him from feeling tired and unhealthy.

Let me know if you are feeling unhealthy and if you are, I hope these tips can help.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

]]> http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/feeling-unhealthy/feed/ 7 Eight Ways to Prevent Dementia http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/prevent-dementia/ http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/prevent-dementia/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:34:05 +0000 Mike Cola http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/?p=4739

The idea of losing your ability to think clearly and remember people and places is a very scary thing for anyone who is getting older. Unfortunately Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is on the rise in the U.S. (an estimated 4.5 million Americans live with dementia). But you should not feel hopeless; there are things you can do to prevent this common form of dementia or delay it from emerging. Genetics do play a role but how you live and eat can have a big effect on preventing the disease.

8 Ways to Prevent Dementia

1- Keep Your Heart Healthy: Small strokes result in vascular dementia. When the blood supply to the brain is altered it can adversely affect cognitive ability. To reduce your risk of stroke, control your blood pressure and cholesterol with an active lifestyle, a healthy natural diet and with medication, if you have to.

2- Get Enough Vitamin B: Individuals with AD tend to have higher blood levels of homocysteine, an amino acid that increases your risk of dementia. Eating foods that are high in B vitamins and folic acid keeps homocysteine levels under control. You can also take a multivitamin supplement that has vitamin B6, B12 and folic acid in it.

3- Eat a lot of Fruits and Vegetables: Fruits and vegetables have nutrients in them that can prevent brain damage. Eating a diet high in whole natural fruits and vegetables is a great way to keep your body healthy.

4- Exercise Regularly: Studies have shown that just 15 minutes of exercise three days per week can lower the risk of developing dementia. Walking for 30 minutes every day is a smart way to keep your body and mind healthy.

5- Eat Food high in Omega 3s: Eating fish once per week reduced the risk of AD according to a recent study that followed over 800 adults and eating even more omega-3 rich foods reduced the risk even further. Walnuts, flaxseed and soy are all high in omega-3s.

6- Challenge the Brain: Giving your brain a workout is a good way to lower your risk of AD. A person, who reads regularly, learns new things and solves puzzles exercises their brain, which can ward off decline.

7- Stay Socially Active: Older people who stay in touch with friends and have an active social life seem to preserve their brain function better that those who don’t get out and stay active. It’s important to keep in touch with family and friends, and talk to new people.

8- Keep Diabetes Under Control: You’re at a higher risk of developing AD if you have diabetes. Keep your blood sugar levels under control and take medication if you have to, to reduce your risk. Keep a healthy weight, watch your sugar intake and stay physically active.

These are some of the things that we can do to ward off disease. Living a healthy active lifestyle, eating right and not worrying about things that are out of your control (like getting older) will not only prevent disease but it will make you less stressed and concerned about it. I hope this list of 8 Ways to Prevent Dementia will help you take a more active approach to keeping yourself healthy.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog

]]> http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/prevent-dementia/feed/ 9 Rest and Relaxation is Essential for Good Health http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/rest-and-relaxation-for-good-health/ http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/rest-and-relaxation-for-good-health/#comments Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:38:15 +0000 Mike Cola http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/?p=4682

I have always felt that rest and relaxation are just as important as hard work, although it’s easy to forget. We all need to kick back and recover from all the stresses that life can bring. Being an athlete, I had to learn this the hard way with numerous over-use injuries over the years. But I think at least for now, that I have finally reached a point in my life where I can balance hard work and play time.

I came across a wonderful article called The Lost Practice of Resting One Day Each Week. This article is written by Joshua Becker who has a great website called Becoming a Minimalist. Joshua has a nice way of explaining the importance of taking some time off to rest and recover from the everyday grind. Without proper recovery, we can’t live a happy, healthy and fulfilled life. Checkout all of his relaxing tips for your body, mind, and soul:

Ask any physician and they will tell you that rest is essential for physical health. When the body is deprived of sleep, it is unable to rebuild and recharge itself adequately. Your body requires rest.

Ask any athlete and they will tell you that rest is essential for healthy physical training. Rest is needed for physical muscles to repair themselves and prevent injury. This is true whether you run marathons, pitch baseballs, or climb rocks. Your muscles require rest.

Ask many of yesterday’s philosophers and they will tell you that rest is essential for the mind. Leonardo da Vinci said, “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.” And Ovid, the Roman poet, said, “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” Your mind requires rest.

Ask most religious leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for the soul. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, and Wiccan (among others) teach the importance of setting aside a period of time for rest. Your soul requires rest.

Ask many corporate leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for productivity. Forbes magazine recently wrote, “You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everybody needs to rest and recharge.” Your productivity requires rest.

Physicians, athletes, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, and corporate leaders all tell us the same thing: take time to rest. It is absolutely essential for a balanced, healthy life.

Yet, when you ask most people in today’s frenzied culture if they consistetly set aside time for rest, they will tell you that they are just too busy to rest. Even fewer would say that they set aside any concentrated time (12-24 hours) for rest. There are just too many things to get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, too many bills, and too much urgency. Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today’s results-oriented culture.

Unfortunately, this hectic pace is causing damage to our quality of life. We are destroying every sense of our being (body, mind, and soul). There is a reason we run faster and work harder, but only fall farther behind. Our lives have become too full and too out of balance. Somewhere along the way, we lost the essential practice of concentrated rest. We would be wise to reclaim the ancient, lost practice of resting one day each week.

To get back into balance, just consider the countless benefits of concentrated rest for your body, mind, and soul:

§  Healthier body – We each get one life and one body to live it in. Therefore, we eat healthy, we exercise, and we watch our bad habits. But then we allow our schedules to fill up from morning to evening. Rest is as essential to our physical health as the water we drink and the air we breathe.

§  Less stress – Stress is basically the perception that the situations we are facing are greater than the resources we have to deal with them – resources such as time, energy, ability, and help from others. We have two choices, either reduce the demands or increase our resources. Concentrated rest confronts stress in both ways. First, it reduces the demands of the situation. We have no demands on us as long as we have the ability to mentally let go of unfinished tasks. Secondly, rest reduces stress by increasing our resources, particularly energy.

§  Deeper relationships – A day set aside each week for rest allows relationships with people to deepen and be strengthened. When we aren’t rushing off to work or soccer practice, we are able to enjoy each other’s company and a healthy conversation. And long talks prove to be far more effective in building community than short ones on the ride to the mall.

§  Opportunity for reflection – Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. It is even more difficult to see the forest when we are running through the trees. Concentrated rest allows us to take a step back, to evaluate our lives, to identify our values, and determine if our life is being lived for them.

§  Balance – Taking one day of your week and dedicating it to rest will force you to have an identity outside of your occupation. It will foster relationships outside of your fellow employees. It will foster activities and hobbies outside our work. It will give you life and identity outside of your Monday-Friday occupation. Rather than defining your life by what you do, you can begin to define it by who you are.

§  Increased production – Just like resting physical muscles allows them opportunity to rejuvenate which leads to greater physical success, providing our minds with rest provides it opportunity to refocus and rejuvenate. More work is not better work. Smarter work is better work.

§  Reserve for life’s emergencies – Crisis hits everyone. Nobody who is alive is immune from the trials of life. By starting the discipline today of concentrated rest, you will build up reserves for when the unexpected emergencies of life strike… and rest is no longer an option.

Properly developing a discipline of concentrated rest requires both inward and outward changes. Consider these steps to reclaiming the lost practice of weekly rest in your life:

1. Find contentment in your current life. – Much of the reason we are unable to find adequate rest is because we are under the constant impression that our lives can and should be better than they are today. This constant drive to improve our standing in life through the acquisition of money, power, or skills robs us of contentment and joy. Ultimately, rest is an extension of our contentment and security. Without them, simplicity and rest is difficult, if not impossible. Stop focusing on what you don’t have and start enjoying the things that you do.

2. Plan your rest. Rest will come only from intentional planning and planning rest will come only if it is truly desired. Schedule it on your calendar. Learn to say no to any tasks that attempt to take precedent. Plan out your day of rest by choosing creative activities that are refreshing and encourage relationships. Understand that true rest is different than just not working. As the Cat in the Hat wisely said, “It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.” Avoid housework. Plan meals in advance to help alleviate cooking responsibilities. And by all means, turn off your television, e-mail, and blackberry.

3. Take responsibility for your life. You are not a victim of your time demands. You are the creator and acceptor of them. Refuse to complain or make excuses and start changing your habits. Remember, you are only as busy as you choose to be. Leave “if only” excuses to the kids. If needed, alert your employer about your desire for rest and tell them you will be unavailable on that particular day.

4. Embrace simplicity. Embrace a lifestyle that focuses on your values, not your possessions. It is difficult to find rest when the housework is never finished, the yard needs to be mowed, or the garage needs to be organized.

5. Include your family. It is much easier to practice the discipline of concentrated rest if your family is practicing it too. The fact that this gets more difficult as your kids get older should motivate you to start as soon as possible.

6. Live within your income. A debtor is a slave to his creditor. It is difficult to find rest for your mind when you are deep in debt. The constant distress of your responsibility to another may preclude you from truly enjoying a day off. It is possible; it’s just more difficult. Don’t overspend your income, live within it.

7. Realize the shallow nature of a results-oriented culture. If you live in a results-oriented culture where productivity alone is championed on every corner, rest is counter-cultural. And thus, the saying goes, “If you rest, you rust.” Rest may even be seen as a sign of weakness by others. Unfortunately, that view of humanity’s role in this world is shallow. It is true that many of the benefits from concentrated rest are not tangible; but then again, only a fool believes that all good things can be counted.

Rabbi Elijah of Vilna once said, “What we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so.” The implication is clear. We could live lives that produce countless widgets, but we won’t start living until we stop producing and start enjoying. Capture again the lost practice of resting one day each week and start truly living.

Read more from Joshua at his blog, Becoming Minimalist, subscribe to his feed, or check out his new ebook, Simplify.

I hope you found this article helpful. We all need to set aside some time for rest and relaxation. All work with no play is no way to live. Let me know how you recover from a hard week of work.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog


]]> http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/rest-and-relaxation-for-good-health/feed/ 10 Acetaminophen and Alcohol: Liver Warnings http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/acetaminophen-and-alcohol-liver-warnings/ http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/acetaminophen-and-alcohol-liver-warnings/#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 21:56:29 +0000 Mike Cola http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/?p=4565

When listening to a public radio station last year about over the counter drugs, I was surprised when a doctor pointed out that acetaminophen (Tylenol) is most likely the most dangerous drug you have in your home. He said it’s especially dangerous if you mix acetaminophen and alcohol. He pointed out that even the normal recommended dose when mixed with a few drinks can be a detriment to your liver.

This prompted a discussion about taking Tylenol and drinking with a friend of mine who is a doctor. She said she would never take Tylenol for a hangover or right after she had a few drinks because it could lead to serious liver damage.  I know a lot of people who do this all the time. Fortunately, I don’t take Tylenol for my headaches because it doesn’t work as well as ibuprofen or aspirin.

As a follow-up, I checked out a bottle of over-the -counter migraine medicine that contained acetaminophen. It had 2 caplets (250 mg of acetaminophen) as the recommended 24 hour dose and the warning on the label said:

Sever liver damage may accrue if you:

  • Take more that 2 caplets in a 24 hour period which is the maximum daily dose
  • Take it with other drugs that contain acetaminophen
  • Consume 3 or more alcoholic drinks every day while using this product

I find that most people including myself typically ignore the warnings on the labels of most over -the -counter drugs and think that it’s OK to have a few drinks or just feel that the warnings are overly cautious. In addition, the manufacturers of the medicine do not make it easy for one to read the label. The writing on the bottle I was looking at was so small I had to use a magnifying glass to read it (granted it was a small bottle containing only 24 pills).

Here are some informative links from the FDA about how to take over-the-counter pain relievers and fever reducers; Acetaminophen Toxicity, Acetaminophen and Liver Injury,  Safe Use of Over-the-Counter Pain Relievers and Fever Reducers and Acetaminophen Information

FDA Video about Acetaminophen Risks:

After watching this video it makes me even more cautious about taking acetaminophen or giving it to my kids. In my opinion, Tylenol is a high risk over-the-counter medicine and should be avoided, if possible. Talk about the risks of taking it with your doctor and make sure you never mix acetaminophen and alcohol.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

]]> http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/acetaminophen-and-alcohol-liver-warnings/feed/ 2 Cognitive Thinking and Balance: Impaired by Sleep Medicine http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/cognitive-thinking-and-sleep-medicine/ http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/cognitive-thinking-and-sleep-medicine/#comments Sat, 15 Jan 2011 02:11:52 +0000 Mike Cola http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/?p=4444

Adults who take the popular sleep medicine zolpidem better known as Ambien have a much greater risk of nighttime falls and diminished cognitive thinking, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

When I came across this study it really concerned me because so many of my clients and friends take Ambien and other types of sleeping pills. Everyone is always talking about how they can’t remember things like they used too. Conventional Wisdom (CW) would say we’re just getting older but this study makes you think, are we just getting older or are we doing things like taking sleeping pills that are actually fogging are brains and messing with our cognitive skills. I don’t mind getting older but I don’t like when CW contributes every possible condition you have to old age.

As such, lets take a closer look at this study. The study looked at 25 healthy adults who were taking the popular sleeping drug zolpidem. One adverse effect was that the drug led to a significant loss of balance when a person was woken-up two hours after being asleep. This was a very important finding because nightfall’s are a serious problem hospitalizing over 30% of people over 65 years of age.

The researchers used the “tandem walk” similar to the drunk driving test where you have to walk with one foot right in front of the other on a 16-foot-long beam that was six inches wide to measure their balance. All 25 participants were able to walk the beam previously but not while taking zolpidem.

Kenneth Wright, a professor who led the study said, “The balance impairments of older adults taking zolpidem were clinically significant and the cognitive impairments were more than twice as large compared to the same older adults taking placebos”

The second adverse effect of taking the medication was impaired working memory. The study also pointed out that when subjects taking the sleeping pills were woken after two hours of sleep they could not randomly add numbers.

In addition, the researchers pointed out that taking the medication can have serious repercussions if there is an emergency in the middle of the night like a fire, medical emergency or if you are taking care of a sick child.

We all know how horrible it is when you can’t fall asleep and insomnia is really a problem. If you’re having trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor and see if they have any advice that does not involve taking medication. Exercise, meditation and a change in your diet can all help you sleep. If you have a lot on your mind and that’s keeping you up, go talk to someone about it.

We all want good cognitive thinking and proper balance throughout the day so if you don’t have good morning thinking don’t blame it on getting older. It might be the medication you are taking.

Let me know about your experiences with taking sleeping pills. Have you had any adverse affects?

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my e-mail list.

Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Contrarian – Fitness Blog

]]> http://www.fitnesscontrarian.com/cognitive-thinking-and-sleep-medicine/feed/ 4