What a Muscle Needs to Grow.

Have you ever thought about what a muscle needs to grow big and strong? Do you go to the gym and just throw weight around hoping that your muscles will get bigger?

I’m going to share with you exactly what you need to know for a muscle to grow. I follow these strategies myself each and every day. They have become my lifestyle.

Before we dive too far in, I encourage you to change your mindset and view muscle growth as a long-term endeavor. Building muscle does not happen overnight. There is no quick way to do it. It takes time, dedication, and hard work.

But take it from me that is IS worth it! I love looking and feeling great everyday. In my opinion, there’s no better way to live your life!
Overload the muscles by lifting weights

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

I’m not sure who said this quote but I love it. You can apply it to almost anything in life. With regards to muscle growth, it means that if you continue doing what you’re doing now at the gym, don’t expect to see different results. In otherwords, make a change if you want to see different results. I know it’s scary, but change isn’t always a bad thing!

A muscle needs to be worked, stimulated, overloaded in order to grow. You need to force your muscles to adapt to new weight.

Think about it, if you’re always lifting the same weight, why should your muscle grow? It’s doing perfectly fine the way it is lifting that amount of weight. However, when we increase the weight, our muscles think wow, I’m not used to this kind of weight, I better grow and get stronger in case I’m subjected to this amount of weight again.

It’s really a simple concept: overload the muscles to stimulate new muscle growth.
Establish good nutrition habits

Sorry if I burst your bubble, but going to the gym and overloading your muscles is only one part of the equation. You also need proper nutrition. Eating enough of the right foods and not so much of the bad foods will take your muscle growth to a new level.

Anything needs nutrients to grow. Muscles are no exception.

If your nutrition is not in check, chances are you will see some muscle growth but it will be extremely limited. You’ll get nowhere near your full potential.

Proper nutrition is an entire article in itself, but I’ll give you a quick spiel. Basically, the closer the food is to nature, the better. For example, vegetables are great because they come straight from the ground. Nature did not intend for us to eat food that is littered with chemicals and preservatives. Processed food contains less nutrients than whole food. Less nutrients = less muscle growth.

Rest

You thought we were done, didn’t you!? Don’t worry, rest is the last piece of the puzzle!

Contrary to popular belief, your muscles do not actually grow while you are lifting weights at the gym. It may feel like it since your muscles get “pumped” and appear bigger and stronger.

But the truth is completely opposite. This pump is only temporary. When we overload our muscles with weight, we’re actually creating tiny micro-tears in our muscles. We’re breaking the muscle down.

Yes, you’re destroying your muscles at the gym. But that’s okay! That’s what you want to do! This is where rest comes into the equation.

Rest is extremely important because it is when your body repairs these tiny micro-tears with bigger, stronger muscles. Shoot for 7-9 hours of sleep a night on a consistent schedule. In other words, go to sleep and wake up at the same time everyday, including weekends. I know this can be difficult (trust me) but it is the ideal situation.

Rest doesn’t just include sleeping, it also includes time away from the gym. If you’re constantly at the gym, you’re not giving your body enough time to repair your muscles.

Rest is just as important as training and good nutrition.

"The Ultimate Anti-Oxidant."

Tart Cherry Juice has been getting a lot of attention internationally as there are so many incredible benefits linked to this incredible Anti-Oxidant. Dr. Oz even called Tart Cherry Juice the "Ultimate Anti-Oxidant."

Vitamins and Minerals:

Tart cherries truly have such an extraordinary variety of nutrients making it a wonderful addition to your healthy and active lifestyle. Tart Cherries contain potassium, beta carotene, folic acid, iron, calcium, magnesium, vitamins A, C, B6, E and powerful enzymes.

Anti-Oxidants and a Powerful Enzyme:

Tart cherry juice has been tested to have the very highest ORAC value of all fruits and vegetables. ORAC, which stands for oxygen radical absorption capacity, basically measures how many anti-oxidants are in a food product and how powerful they are.

The testing of Tart Cherries also found they also contained a very powerful enzyme and cellular anti-oxidant Super Oxide Dismutase, or SOD. Our bodies typically don’t have enough SOD since very few foods contain it, and given it is an incredible scavenger of debris in our bloodstream, adding Tart Cherry Juice to our healthy eating and drinking is very important.

Endurance Athletes:

A study conducted at the University of Vermont tested the effects of Tart Cherry Juice on college students who underwent strenuous exercising found that the “consumption of tart cherry juice before and after eccentric exercise significantly reduced symptoms of muscle damage.”

In a similar study marathon runners who drank Tart Cherry Juice both 7 days before and on the day of competition had significantly less muscle pain following the race. They also tested, in another study, marathoners who drank Tart Cherry Juice 5 days before, the day of, and 2 day after running a marathon experienced faster recovery of strength, reduced inflammation and lipid peroxidation, and increased total anti-oxidant capacity compared to a non-cherry beverage.

Additional Benefits of Tart Cherry Juice:

Here are some more benefits of adding Tart Cherry Juice to your workout and supplement regimen:

* Supports Healthy Joints

* Offers Protection from Inflammation

* Contains Cancer Fighting Flavonoids
* Supports Healthy Cardiovascular Function

* Improved Insulin, Blood Sugar and Cholesterol Levels

* Rich in B-Vitamins for Better Metabolism and More Energy

* Increases in Strength while Decreasing Muscle Recovery Time and Muscle Fatigue

We encourage you to check out mybesthealthpotal dot net to read more about this antioxidant and get more free health info to help you live a healthy life

How Many Warm Up Sets Should You Do?

Pump Up the Warm Up
Do you find that your opening sets in a weight workout routine are getting harder and harder to perform? As you get older, it takes a little longer to hit that "sweet spot" where your muscles are raring to go. Your prime sets may seem more painful to perform than they have in the past.
There is one tool you can employ to get a better start to your workouts - a longer warm up session. Many guys are so eager to get into the heavy duty working sets that they marginalize the warm up. That's a mistake, and becomes an ever bigger mistake as you get older. Even the pros face the need to adjust for a longer warm up. For instance, the great Sergio Olivia once pointed out in a magazine interview that as he got a bit older he found it necessary to greatly increase his warm up prior to the working sets.
Adding an extra set or two for warming up is not a waste of time but vital necessity for maximizing your working sets. And that is what you want - to have your muscles fully primed for prime time. If it takes an extra set or two during the warm up period, then it is well worth it. For movements such as the bench press and the squat, where a heavy weight load is placed on the body in a compromised position, you absolutely want to have the body as warm up as possible. Your body performs best when it has had its temperature raised a degree in preparation for the event.
It is also vital to get in a little more rather than less warm up time for explosive movements, such as the power clean. That's because you are putting maximum stress on the body with both muscle and momentum. And lifts such as the barbell curl, which place a heavy load on the elbow, also require more warm up time. Getting the body warm and the joints ready to go is important.
It doesn't take much to put the extra warm up into place. If you normally warm up with a couple of sets before hitting your routine, add one to two more sets if you have been feeling the pain a bit in your training. And add more support to your preparation by adding one more day of stretching during the week. The combination of more warm up time and an additional day devoted specifically to stretching will greatly improve the productivity of your training sessions and keep you in the iron game a lot longer than the average trainee who doesn't do them.

The Media’s Profound Ignorance About Nutrition Misses the Mark Yet Again

According to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research,¹ vitamin supplements are probably useless when it comes to preventing heart disease and/or cancer.
Their analysis is being used by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to update its recommendations on supplement use, and the findings were recently reported by NBC News² under the headline: “Vitamins don’t prevent heart disease or cancer, experts find.”
But is this really an accurate evaluation of the available evidence? A strong rebuttal³ to NBC’s reporting was immediately issued by Dr. Andrew Saul,⁴ editor of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service.
Dr. Saul has over 35 years of experience in natural health education; Psychology Today named him as one of the seven natural health pioneers in 2006.

“I would like to apologize for NBC News. It seems that the organization that brought us Lowell Thomas, John Cameron Swayze, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley has lowered its standard of reporting,” he writes.

“NBC's supplement-bashing headline article... displays an ignorance of clinical nutrition that is difficult to ignore, and, thanks to its media prominence, can't be.

Of vitamin supplementation, NBC specifically said that a ‘very extensive look at the studies that have been done show it may be a waste of time when it comes to preventing the diseases most likely to kill you.’ The ‘very extensive look’ encompassed 24 preselected studies. It looks like they just possibly may have missed a few...”

Dr. Saul ‘Apologizes’ for NBC ‘Hatchet Job’ Reporting on Vitamins

Dr. Saul then goes on to list 19 studies⁵ showing strong correlations between vitamin use and reduced risk of heart disease and cancer. If you’re in doubt, I suggest you to take a look at some of those studies before you swallow NBC’s “hatchet job on vitamins,” as Dr. Saul puts it. Below is a handful. For the full list, please see Dr. Saul’s article.⁶

• JAMA 2012:⁷ Multivitamin supplements were found to reduce cancer risk by eight percent.
• International Journal of Cancer 2011:⁸ A mere 10 ng/ml increase in serum vitamin D levels was associated with a 15 percent reduction in colorectal cancer incidence and 11 percent reduction in breast cancer incidence.
• American Heart Journal 2011:⁹ Each 20 micromole/liter (µmol/L) increase in plasma vitamin C was associated with a nine percent reduction in heart failure mortality. According to Dr. Saul, if everyone were to take 500 mg of vitamin C per day—the dose required to reach a healthy level of 80 µmol/L—an estimated 216,000 lives could be spared each year.
• International Journal of Cancer 2011:¹⁰ While the NBC declared that “Vitamin E does no good at all in preventing cancer or heart disease,” this study found that gamma-tocotrienol, a cofactor found in natural vitamin E preparations, decreases prostate tumor formation by a respectable 75 percent.
• International Journal of Cancer 2008: Here, 300 IUs of vitamin E per day reduced lung cancer risk by 61 percent.

Were Those Really the Best Studies They Could Find?

This is a Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.

It’s worth noting that study selection for the featured review was done by two investigators who “independently selected and reviewed fair- and good-quality trials for benefit and fair- and good-quality trials and observational studies for harms.”
What this means is that they didn’t assess the consensus found in available research, but rather “independently” picked and chose which ones they wanted to include in the analysis.
Out of the more than 12,760 study abstracts screened, a total of 26 studies were selected for inclusion in their analysis. Selected for inclusion were studies looking at the following supplements’ effects on heart disease or cancer:

Multivitamins	Beta-carotene	Vitamin E	Selenium	Vitamin A
Vitamin C	Folic acid	Vitamin D	Vitamin D with calcium	Calcium

Also notable is the fact that for a study to be included in the review, it had to use supplement doses lower than the upper tolerable limit set by the US Food and Nutrition board.^{11, 12} For vitamin D, this means a dose limit of 100 IUs a day for adults! Research suggests most adults need about 35 IUs per pound of body weight in order to obtain therapeutically relevant serum levels.  This dose of vitamin D is worthless as most adults require doses 50 times greater. So it is no surprise they found no effect as they were not testing for clinical significant levels. Remember, the devil is in the details.

Vitamin D May Be Critical for Cancer Prevention

Their conclusion on vitamin D is in stark contrast to an ever growing number of studies showing that vitamin D (with or without calcium) has tremendous protective effect against cancer. For example, a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine¹³ concluded that a serum 25(OH)D level of more than 33 ng/mL was associated with a 50 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer.
Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition¹⁴ that same year found that after four years of follow up, cancer-free survival was 77 percent higher in women who received 1,100 IU vitamin D and 1,450 mg calcium per day, compared to those who received either a placebo or calcium by itself. Theories linking vitamin D deficiency to cancer have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies.
According to Carole Baggerly, founder of GrassrootsHealth, 90 percent of ordinary breast cancer may be related to vitamin D deficiency. In fact, breast cancer has been described as a “vitamin D deficiency syndrome.” The way vitamin D interferes with breast cancer’s ability to spread is by affecting the structure of those cells—without adequate vitamin D, they fall apart and are forced to “overmultiply” in order to survive. Previous research has shown that optimizing your vitamin D levels can reduce your risk for as many as 16 different types of cancer, including pancreatic, lung, ovarian, breast, prostate, and skin cancers.

Most Important—Maintaining Optimal Vitamin D Serum Levels

Of utmost importance is the maintenance of a therapeutically beneficial serum level year-round. Here, studies indicate that the bare minimum for cancer prevention is around 40 ng/ml. Research suggests an ideal level might be around 60-80 ng/ml. A 2009 review article¹⁵ titled: “Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention: Global Perspective,” published in Annals of Epidemiologya states that:

“Higher serum levels of the main circulating form of vitamin D, 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), are associated with substantially lower incidence rates of colon, breast, ovarian, renal, pancreatic, aggressive prostate and other cancers.

Epidemiological findings combined with newly discovered mechanisms suggest a new model of cancer etiology that accounts for these actions of 25(OH)D and calcium. Its seven phases are disjunction, initiation, natural selection, overgrowth, metastasis, involution, and transition (abbreviated DINOMIT). Vitamin D metabolites prevent disjunction of cells and are beneficial in other phases.

It is projected that raising the minimum year-around serum 25(OH)D level to 40 to 60 ng/mL (100–150 nmol/L) would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three fourths of deaths from these diseases in the United States and Canada, based on observational studies combined with a randomized trial. Such intakes also are expected to reduce case-fatality rates of patients who have breast, colorectal, or prostate cancer by half... The time has arrived for nationally coordinated action to substantially increase intake of vitamin D and calcium.

Smart Supplementation Could Save Healthcare System BILLIONS Each Year

Although Dr. Saul doesn’t mention it, the NBC also failed to mention the recent report on vitamins produced by the Council for Responsible Nutrition Foundation, titled: “Smart Prevention—Health Care Cost Savings Resulting from the Targeted Use of Dietary Supplements.”¹⁶ This report concluded that—based on the scientific evidence of benefit— supplementation at preventive intake levels could save the American healthcare system more than $11 BILLION each year. Steve Mister, president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition Foundation¹⁷ told Drugstore News:¹⁸

“Chronic disease takes a huge toll on people’s quality of life, and the healthcare system spends a tremendous amount of money treating chronic disease, but has failed to focus on ways to reduce those costs through prevention. We already knew that the dietary supplements identified in the report can play a role in reducing the risk of certain chronic diseases; we felt compelled to find out if they could also contribute to healthcare cost savings by reducing the medical events associated with those conditions. This new report says emphatically that they do.”

How to Reduce Cost of Heart Disease by More Than $4 Billion Annually

The “Smart Prevention” report examined the effect of eight different dietary supplement regimens on four chronic diseases: heart disease, diabetes, age-related eye disease, and bone disease, and assessed the potential health care cost savings if American adults were to take these supplements at therapeutic dosages.
Unfortunately, this report also failed to review many of the benefits of vitamin D, which is one of the most widely beneficial and least expensive supplements on the market.  Again, a growing number of vitamin D experts estimate it could cut the rate of cancer by half. If this were to be factored into the equation, the health care savings could likely go up by a factor of 1,000 or more, and there would be trillions of dollars of savings instead of billions.
Now, in the case of heart disease, use of omega-3 supplements among adults aged 55 and over diagnosed with coronary heart disease could reduce annual hospital costs by more than $2 billion on average, saving the health care system close to $16.5 billion between 2013 and 2020, according to the “Smart Prevention” report. Use of vitamins B6 and B12 among the target population could also reduce hospital costs by an average of more than $1.5 billion annually, saving the health care system more than $12.1 billion between 2013 and 2020. (Again, vitamin D would also radically lower the cost of heart disease as it has profound benefits in cardiac health, but unfortunately the authors didn’t factor vitamin D in into this equation.)

According to the authors: “An average of $4.23 billion per year and a cumulative savings of $34 billion from 2013 to 2020 in avoidable hospital utilization costs is potentially realizable if all US adults over the age of 55 diagnosed with CHD were to use phytosterol dietary supplements at protective levels.
Likewise, potential total cost savings among the same target population given the use of the psyllium dietary fiber at preventive daily intake levels would be an average hospital utilization cost avoidance of $4.38 billion per year and cumulative savings of $35.05 billion from 2013 to 2020.
The potential net health care cost savings of phytosterols and psyllium dietary fiber supplementation, after accounting for the cost of supplement utilization, would be an average annual savings of $3.32 billion per year and $2.48 billion per year, respectively, after accounting for the costs of supplementation utilization from 2013 to 2020.”

Who Benefits by Scaring You Away from Dietary Supplements?

Earlier this summer, a flurry of media reports told readers to beware, if not outright be afraid, of taking supplements. Two of the primary figureheads in his summer drive of anti-alternative health PR were Dr. Paul Offit and Senator Dick Durbin. Offit, notorious for his claim that infants can tolerate 10,000 vaccines at once, penned a New York Times article with the unambiguous headline: “Don't Take Your Vitamins.”¹⁹ The featured NBC article²⁰ again brought Offit’s radical opinions to the fore:

“Dr. Paul Offit... says he is not surprised by the findings. But he doubts the millions of Americans who buy vitamins will stop because of this recommendation. ‘They are constantly hearing information from those who market these products that they are good for you, that they boost your immunity, that they reduce stress’... Offit said the review could have done more to highlight some of the dangers of overdosing on vitamins.... ‘I would like to see someone step forward and say there’s harm.’”

Of course he would. Take away nutrition, and the only thing you have left to battle disease with is drugs, surgery, and vaccines. While it’s important to remember that a) there is a major difference between natural whole-food supplements and pharmaceutical grade synthetic vitamins and minerals, and b) that supplements should only be taken in addition to, NOT in place of, a healthy diet, I believe Big Pharma mouthpieces are standing on quicksand when it comes their claim that supplements are harmful, or do more harm than good in the long term.

Data Shows the Safety of Supplements

The March 2013 GAO Dietary Supplements report,²¹ for example, showed how incredibly safe supplements are—particularly when compared to drugs and vaccines. Since 2008, the supplement industry has been required to report adverse events to the FDA’s adverse effects reporting (AER) system, pursuant to the 2006 Act. Consider the following statistics comparing dietary supplement AERs with drug AERs from the 2013 GAO report2 for the year 2008:

• 1,080 dietary supplement AERs were reported to FDA4
• 526,527 prescription drug AERs were reported4
• 26,517 vaccine AERs were reported4

When you do the math, there were 488 times as many adverse events reported from prescription drugs as from dietary supplements. In all, the number of AERs is miniscule compared to the hundreds of millions of supplement servings consumed each year.²² In fact, according to a 2007 National Health Interview Survey,²³ more than half of American adults (157 million individuals) take nutritional supplements. Further compare that to the statistic that about the same number of people—just over half of all Americans—take two or more prescription drugs,²⁴ and the difference in safety between supplements and drugs becomes even clearer. Other data further supports the remarkable safety record of dietary supplements. For example:

• In 2002, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reversed its long-standing anti-vitamin stance with the publication of two scientific reviews (based on 30 years’ worth of scientific papers looking at vitamins in relation to chronic diseases), both of which recommended daily multivitamin supplementation for all adults.²⁵
• Data from the US National Poison Data System’s annual report, which tracked data from 57 U.S. poison centers, showed vitamin and mineral supplements caused zero deaths in 2010. For comparison, pharmaceuticals caused more than 1,100 of the total 1,366 reported fatalities.
• FDA-approved drugs cause 80 percent of poison control fatalities each year.²⁶ Poison control centers report 100,000 calls, 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations and nearly 500 deaths each year from acetaminophen (Tylenol) alone.
• Data from the European Union indicate that pharmaceutical drugs are 62,000 times as likely to kill you as dietary supplements. You’re actually more likely to be struck dead by lightning or drown in your bathtub than have a lethal reaction to a dietary supplement.

Take Control of Your Health with Proper Nutrition and Lifestyle

Granted, there are poor-quality supplements out there—many of which, by the way, are produced by large pharmaceutical companies—that are made with synthetic ingredients that could potentially do more harm than good, especially in mega doses, which I don’t recommend. Yet the overall safety record of supplements, despite some inferior products being used, really speaks volumes. The same cannot be said for drugs, where even drugs perceived as more or less harmless, such as acetaminophen, actually cause more adverse event reports than supplements.
About 90 percent of each dollar Americans spend on food is spent on government-subsidized, disease-inducing denatured processed foods that tend to leave you vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies. Drugs clearly cannotfix this problem, although conventional medicine surely tries by throwing prescriptions at each and every symptom that is, ultimately, rooted in poor nutrition. In this respect, there’s clearly a place for properly selected, high-quality whole food dietary supplements, taken at therapeutic dosages.
Furthermore, certain nutrient deficiencies, such as vitamin D for example, are rampant now that everyone has been scared away from sun exposure. This is tragic, since the evidence is quite clear that optimizing your vitamin D levels can have a highly protective effect against a wide variety of chronic disease, including but not limited to heart disease and cancer. The featured review in NO WAY disputes such evidence, considering the studies they chose to include.
Ideally, you’d get most or all necessary nutrients from whole food—or in the case of vitamin D, from appropriate sun exposure—but there are cases in which a supplement can be helpful to counteract a deficiency. If you’re eating a wholesome diet you’re FAR less likely to end up with nutritional deficiencies, however. Last but not least, you may sign up for the peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service free of charge at orthomolecular.org. You can also freely access the entire OMNS archive at that link.

How to Perform a Barbell Squat with Proper Form

Step 1: Set up the squat rack for squats

If you want to perform a barbell squat, you’re going to need a squat rack. You can find a squat rack at your local gym. If your gym doesn’t have a squat rack, you need a new gym, seriously!

A couple tips to set up your squat rack correctly:

Set the squat rack supports that hold the barbell at a proper height for your height. An appropriate height would be not too high that you have to get on your tip toes to remove the barbell from the squat rack supports and not too low that you have to hunch way down to remove the barbell. Find some middle ground and set the barbell onto the squat rack

Move the squat rack rods to a low setting. You want the rods in this position in case you would happen to lose your balance or collapse during the exercise. These rods might just save your life from hundreds of pounds of iron crashing down on you. Safety first!

Step 2: Load the weight onto the barbell

Step two is simple: load your desired weight onto the barbell. You can also attach a neck cushion to the barbell at this point if you wish

Step 3: Get into position

Now we’re getting somewhere! Position yourself beneath the barbell.Rest the barbell across the upper part of your back and your shoulders. If you place the barbell too far forward you risk straining your neck. If you place it too far back it could roll down your back and you could lose control of the weight.

Position your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart with a slight bend at the knees. Grasp the barbell at a comfortable width, usually slightly wider than the width of your feet. Stick your butt out and allow your back to go in its natural arch. Keep the head tilted slightly upwards, but not so much that it places strain on your neck. Caution: Don’t pull a rookie mistake here and round the back. You could seriously mess your back up.

Step 4: Lift the barbell off of the squat rack supports

Now that you’re in position, it’s time to move some weight around! Stand straight up and lift the barbell off of the squat rack supports. Take a few baby steps backwards and make sure you’re in the same position you were prior to lifting the barbell.

Step 5: Squat

When you go to squat, don’t focus on bending the knees to lower the weight. Instead, focus on sticking out your butt while keeping your head and eyes slightly up. This practice allows your back to stay in its natural arc to prevent injury.

Continue lowering the weight until your quadriceps become parallel with the floor.

It’s acceptable to go slightly lower than parallel. Keep both feet flat on the ground. Pause for a split second at the bottom of the motion. This pause keeps you from “bouncing” back up, which could cause injury. Before you begin the upward motion, do a quick mental check to ensure the head is still tilted slightly back and the eyes are looking slightly up. This head position helps keep the back from rounding.

Use the legs and core to push the weight upwards. When you reach top position pause for a split second again before continuing with the next rep. Repeat as many times as desired.

Step 6: Place the barbell on the squat rack supports

When you are finished with your set of barbell squats, take a few steps forward and slowly place the barbell back onto the squat rack supports. Don’t let the weight crash onto the supports as this can cause unnecessary strain on your neck and back.

Breast Health: 8 Things Every Woman Needs To Know

I always advocate self-care as the first step in preventing and treating health challenges. When it comes to breast health, the importance of self-care is a message I can't share often enough. It is great to see pink ribbons everywhere in October during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month! If I had my wish, every pink ribbon would carry an additional important message for women.

That message would read "You can improve your breast health and reduce the risk of breast cancer right now with a few simple lifestyle changes."

We may not be able to control where we live or our genetic risk factors- it's true. However, a growing body of research is showing us that women really can make a difference in their breast health through diet, exercise, and weight management.

These simple steps can help optimize your body's hormonal balance and reduce the risk of developing breast cancer, and provide additional health, anti-aging, and disease-prevention benefits.

We need to emphasize that everyone should be focusing on what we can control not what we can't.

- We can evaluate our hormone levels with a saliva test. The best way for premenopausal and postmenopausal women to know if their bodies have an imbalance of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone is to do a saliva test. Saliva Testing is the most accurate and easy way to this.
- We can use bio-identical hormones if we need hormone supplementation. Bio Identical means that the molecular structure of the hormones identically match the hormones made by our body as opposed to Pregnant Mare's Urine which is natural to horses not humans.

- We can change our habits: reduce alcohol consumption and quit smoking.

- We can manage our weight and exercise daily. Studies also show that maintaining a healthy, average weight is just as important in favorably influencing the estrogen/progesterone ratio. Regular exercise is equally important. On the other hand, obesity, high insulin levels, alcohol intake, smoking, oral contraceptives, hormones from meat and meat products, pesticides, and herbicides can swing this ratio in the wrong direction.

- We can eat a balanced diet choosing Eat organic to avoid pesticides, herbicides, and estrogen in meat and dairy products. Include one to three servings of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, bok choy, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and cabbage in your diet each day. Studies show that In dole 3 Carbinol the active ingredient helps balance estrogen levels.

- We Can supplement wisely with E Fa's, essential fatty acids and use a fruit and vegetable concentrate if you do not eat 5 - 8 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

- We can do BSE's- breast self exams becoming more familiar with our own body

- We can become better informed - read Dr. John Lee's "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer" as a start.

Do Free Weights or Machines Build Muscle Faster?

Stand and Deliver
A lot of modern, popular training revolves around machines. The body is often contorted into various positions, seated or prone, in many of the machines. And while it is fine to get in some training in this manner, it is a mistake to make all of your training off the ground. Ground based training is vital for building a complete body. Those who don't utilize ground based training can't reach their full potential.
The very best exercises are not the ones that are easiest to perform or which make you feel most comfortable (such as sinking down into a nicely padded seat) but rather the exercise that push the body and force it to fully develop. In spite of all the nice new machines and various gadgets that keep coming onto the market, the best training results still comes from is ground based training.
So why is ground based training so essential to development of the human body? Virtually all sports and similar pursuits involve putting the feet on the ground, with force. Many people train without having their feet on the floor, or without having their feet on the ground with force. So when they have to do so in real life, it is alien to them. They have not trained in this manner, and come up short. You perform based on how you practice so if you never practice with ground based activity, you are unprepared.
When you are sitting on some thickly padded seat with your feet dangling off the floor you are not obtaining any realistic action. Top fitness guru Boyd Epley has noted that athletes need to have their feet on the ground when they train. And he is right – it is the quickest way to build up sport specific skill sets.
This carries over to the bodybuilder as well. What good is building muscle if it isn't functional - if you can't use it? There is a lot going on when an athlete trains, including the proper neuromuscular coordination in the body (specifically multi joint action). This won't happen on your typical machine. It is essential to get on the ground to get your body into top gear.
Central to this issue is the fundamental fact that the body adapts to the stimulus it is given. That goes for food and it is also true for training. If the body is given a certain type of training, it develops (or fails to develop) in a specific way. Ground based training and non-ground based training are both training styles, but only one makes the body adapt to a realistic scenario.
Often the guy in a typical gym workout gets no change of direction, very little balance work, no prioproception action, and frequently doesn't get far beyond a fixed stance or seated position. Ground based training changes all of that, getting you actively working out in a new way.
Ground based training doesn’t have to be super fancy - things as simple as the standing press, squats and deadlifts are a great start. Start using the ground right away and get in total shape.

4 Belly-Blasting Carbs (add these to your menu today)

While there are plenty of BAD carbs out there, you don't have to completely eliminate carbs from your diet in order to burn fat fast, especially when you choose the RIGHT sources. Having said that, below are my top 4 choices for belly-blasting carbs that'll leave you full and satisfied, while helping you toward your fat loss goals to boot!

#4 - Berries & Cherries

Berries like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and cherries (although not technically a berry) are some of the BEST carbs you can eat. They are high in fiber, packed with antioxidants, and score extremely low on the glycemic index, especially cherries which come with a GI of just 22.

I enjoy fresh berries for dessert several times a week and it's an awesome, nutritious way to finish off any meal. Great as a snack, too! Try them on top of Greek yogurt... Mmm :)

#3 - Sprouted Grain Bread

Sprouted grain breads, like Ezekiel 4:9 bread (one of the most popular brands of sprouted grain bread) is a great way to include bread in your diet without all the issues associated with white breads and even 100% whole wheat breads.

Instead, Ezekiel bread is organic, sprouted, 100% whole grain flourless bread. A 2-slice serving even contains 8 grams of complete protein and 6 grams of fiber, so don't give up the bread, just choose the right kind!

#2 - Quinoa

While brown rice is thought to be the healthy grain, there’s one even better, and that’s quinoa.

Quinoa is a gluten free grain that contains double the protein of brown rice along with greater fiber content and a lower glycemic load.

Not only that, but quinoa is the ONLY grain to contain complete protein and the full spectrum of amino acids. It comes in several varieties, including “oatmeal-like” flakes and it’s wholegrain rice-like form.

Enjoy it as an oatmeal substitute for breakfast, in salads or casseroles, or as a wholesome whole-grain, high protein side item to any lunch or dinner meal.

#1 - Beans, Lentils, and other Legumes

Beans and Lentils, part of the "legume" family, just may be my #1 choice for a healthy carb. Packed with loads of fiber and protein, these guys come in so many different varieties that you'll never get bored: lentils, chickpeas, black eyed peas, black beans, red beans, kidney beans, navy beans, butter beans, lima beans, pinto beans...and the list goes on.

Because of their fiber & protein content, along with their versatility, I eat something from the legume family in at least one of my meals daily. I'd highly recommend you'd do the same!
Now before I go, I also want to make sure you're aware of one particular carb that you literally should NEVER eat.  You see, this extremely common carb wreaks havoc on your fat-storing hormones in a MAJOR way, and has even been shown to hamper memory, slow brain activity, and increase your risk of Alzheimer’s.

The Promise of Adult Stem Cells in Disease Management, Anti-Aging, and Life Extension

By Dr. Mercola

Since time immemorial, man has searched for the Fountain of Youth. Nothing has changed in that regard, but the methods of inquiry and discovery have certainly progressed.
Some of these ideas rival even the most outlandish sci-fi scenarios imaginable, up to and including the transfer of your consciousness into a bionic body.¹ Personally, I don’t want to veer too far from the natural order of things.
But the technology and science enthusiast in me can’t help but be intrigued by the ideas and radical advances in the field of extreme life extension. One of the most promising techniques in this field, from my perspective, revolves around the use of adult stem cells.
Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells found throughout your body. They multiply and replace cells as needed, in order to regenerate damaged tissues. Their value, in terms of anti-aging and life extension, centers around their ability to self-renew indefinitely, and their ability to generate every type of cell needed for the organ from which it originates.
Dr. Bryant Villeponteau, author of Decoding Longevity, is a leading researcher in novel anti-aging therapies involving stem cells. He’s been a pioneer in this area for over three decades.
Personally, I believe that stem cell technology could have a dramatic influence on our ability to live longer and replace some of our failing parts, which is the inevitable result of the aging process.  With an interest in aging and longevity, Dr. Villeponteau started out by studying developmental biology.

“If we could understand development, we could understand aging,” he says.

Later, his interest turned more toward the gene regulation aspects. While working as a professor at the University of Michigan at the Institute of Gerontology, he received, and accepted, a job offer from Geron Corporation—a Bay Area startup, in the early ‘90s.

“They were working on telomerase, which I was pretty excited about at the time. I joined them when they first started,” he says. “We had an all-out engagement there to clone human telomerase. It had been cloned in other animals but not in humans or mammals.”

What is Telomerase?

Your body is made up of 10 trillion cells, each of which contains a nucleus. Inside the nucleus are the chromosomes that contain your genes. The chromosome is made up of two “arms,” and each arm contains a single molecule DNA, which is essentially a string of beads made up of units called bases.
A typical DNA molecule is about 100 million bases long. It’s curled up like slinky, extending from one end of the chromosome to the other. At the very tip of each arm of the chromosome is what’s called a telomere.
If you were to unravel the tip of the chromosome, a telomere is about 15,000 bases long at the moment of conception in the womb. Immediately after conception your cells begin to divide, and your telomeres begin to shorten each time the cell divides. Once your telomeres have been reduced to about 5,000 bases, you essentially die of old age.
Telomerase is an enzyme that is involved in repairing the ends of the chromosomes, i.e. the telomere, thereby preventing it from shortening.

“What you have to know about telomerase is that it’s only on in embryonic cells. In adult cells, it’s totally, for the most part, turned off, with the exception of adult stem cells,” Dr. Villeponteau explains. “Adult stem cells have some telomerase – not full and not like the embryonic stem cells, but they do have some telomerase activity.”

What’s so Great About Stem Cells?

At Geron, Dr. Villeponteau worked on a program to isolate human telomerase. They were the first industrial lab to do so, and successfully at that. The founder of Geron was Michael West—now known for his pioneering work with embryonic stem cells. In ’94-‘95, West began searching for another product to add to Geron’s arsenal besides telomerase. He honed in on stem cells, recognizing their incredible potential for turning regeneration of body tissues into a practical reality.

“He identified several groups that were working on the isolation of human stem cells,” Dr. Villeponteau says. “He put together a collaborative agreement with these people and part-funding from Geron. That bore fruit later in the ‘90s. That’s how Geron became both the telomerase and the stem cell king – it was because of that early support of the stem cell research. They had lines of stem cell, embryonic stem cells, before anybody else did.

I was involved in a lot of that initial research. But what I came away with was that these embryonic stem cells, as good as they were, had problems too. Because you had to isolate them, you had to grow them, and then you had to put them into a foreign body, if they were going to be useful. That means you have to worry about immunity, because it’s a different type of somebody else’s cells. That was a problem.

The other problem was that it was not that easy and straightforward to differentiate these embryonic stem cells the way you want them. I started to be more interested at that point in adult stem cells.”

Most of the research currently being done, both in academia and industrial labs, revolves around either embryonic stem cells, or a second type called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Dr. Villeponteau, on the other hand, believes adult stem cells are the easiest and most efficient way to achieve results.
That said, adult stem cells do have their drawbacks. While they’re your own cells, which eliminates the problem of immune-related issues, there’s just not enough of them. Especially as you get older, there’s fewer and fewer adult stem cells, and they tend to become increasingly dysfunctional too. Yet another hurdle is that they don’t form the tissues that they need to form...
To solve such issues, Dr. Villeponteau has created a company with the technology and expertise to amplify your adult stem cells a million-fold or more, while still maintaining their ability to differentiate all the different cell types, and without causing the cells to age. Again, it is the adult stem cell’s ability to potentially cure, or at least ameliorate, many of our age-related diseases by regenerating tissue that makes this field so exciting.

The Case Against Telomerase for Life Extension

I was initially intrigued with the principles of using telomerase to potentially extend human lifespan. But in talking to a few other clinicians, I became aware that using a generic process to influence the entire body raises potentially serious concerns.  Dr. Villeponteau’s amplification process of human adult stem cells, however, appears to bypass such concerns as it’s targeted to one cell type. He explains:

“Here’s the issue: I think, with telomerase activation systemically, it probably doesn’t do much good, because 99 percent of your cells are not going to be affected, nor should they be. You don’t even want them to be, because the somatic cells in the body, the cells that do all the work – muscle, nerves, and all of that – have a natural lifespan. Maybe you can do certain things to extend [their lifespan] a little bit. But you’re going to do only a little on the margins. They’re going to be dying and they have to be regenerated. There has to be a regeneration process.

They used to think that certain tissues like the brain and heart muscle didn’t have any stem cells; didn’t have any new growth. That’s not true. Now we’ve found that they do have them. In the case of neuro [brain cells], it is very important for memory that you have this capability. I think where the telomerase activation really helps, even taken systemically, is in the stem cell compartment because it would help with your own stem cells.

We have a product that we’ve been selling commercially... to stimulate stem cell growth and maintenance of the stem cells, and telomere function is part of it... [A]ging itself and stem cells are multi-faceted and multi-pathway. You really have to attack it from different pathways. There’s no magic bullet in its treatment. You have to get in multiple ways, because aging is a process that [involves] multiple pathways.”

An Example of How Adult Stem Cells Work

Dr. Villeponteau uses skin as an example to illustrate the potential benefits of adult stem cells, as your skin can be used as a cosmetic “guidepost” for how old you are. As you get older, your skin starts to thin and loose its elasticity. This is what causes your skin to wrinkle and sag. Now, your skin is constantly renewing itself; shedding old cells as new cells are created underneath.  Adult stem cells are responsible for these new skin cells being born.
As mentioned earlier, with age, your adult stem cells are reduced in number. They also become increasingly dysfunctional. As a result, the turnover in your skin slows down by about half. If you were able to keep the regeneration of skin tissue at more youthful levels by the addition of adult stem cells, you’d be able to maintain youthful-looking skin longer. While this may sound too good to be true, Dr. Villeponteau points to experimental and practical evidence showing that body organs can be repaired using this technology. As for stopping the clock on general aging, however, the results are less clear.

“For general aging, are we going to be able to replace your stem cells by, let’s say, IV? We don’t know how much good we can do. But there has been one rat experiment that’s been done. They were able to extend the lifespan by adding IV stem cell population,” he says.

Three Different Types of Stem Cells

There are three major types of stem cell populations, each with their own set of pro’s and con’s:

1. Embryonic stem cells. As the name implies, embryonic stem cells come from human embryos. Ethical issues have been raised with respects to the use of embryonic stem cells, as you have to destroy the embryo in order to collect the stem cells.
While potent, their immaturity also poses problems. It’s difficult to program them to develop into later-stage tissues. It’s also difficult to find a way for them to form the specific tissue types that you want, because they’re further removed from those individual tissues – say, liver, brain, or muscle tissue. Embryonic stem cells also have cancer potential because they form keratomas, although that’s rare. And, since they are not your own cells, they may cause an immune reaction.

2. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). These cells, discovered in 2008, have caused great excitement among scientists. These cells can take a fibroblast (a type of cell) from virtually any part of your body, and transfect it with, or put in, four different genes that are known to be important for stem cell function. This converts the original cell into what amounts to an embryonic stem cell—your embryonic stem cell.
However, this too has its problems. On the upside, it eliminates the issue of an immune reaction, since it’s your own cells. But it still has the potential to promote tumor growth. As explained by Dr. Villeponteau, whenever you insert genes into a genome, you run the risk of putting it near a cancer gene, thereby generating cancer. There are also difficulties in being able to differentiate them into the various tissues you might need. Still, it’s an exciting area where lots of research is being done.


“Very recently, there was one group that was able to take, I think, seven chemical drugs and convert a small proportion of the fibroblast into these iPS cells—doing it just chemically and not using any genes. Of course, that’s much safer. But we don’t know the full impact of what that’s going to mean yet,” Dr. Villeponteau says.


3. Adult stem cells. On the upside, they don’t have the immunity problem because it’s your own cells. This also eliminates any ethical problem. So far, they do not appear to pose a cancer risk, which is another major advantage.  The disadvantage is that they’re difficult to grow and that there aren’t enough of them to be effective. It would be a game changer if you could amplify their numbers, and this is precisely this key component that Dr. Villeponteau is working on. So far, they’ve developed the media, and a procedure that looks promising, through which adult stem cells could be multiplied. He believes it might be one to two years, however, before the principle can be proven.

How Stem Cells are Currently Used

In the US, it’s illegal to take out a cell, amplify it, and then put it back into the human body. The FDA considers that as a drug. However, it is legal to take bone marrow, for example, and isolate the stem cells. As long as you don’t treat the cells with any kind of drug, or try to grow them, you can then legally put them back in, in a purified, concentrated form. Such treatments already exist, both in the US and abroad.
One of the most common treatments using isolated adult stem cells is for knee injuries. According to Dr. Villeponteau, they’re achieving very good results doing that, and many are actually cured. Adult stem cell therapy has also been successfully used in people with back problems, and it appears particularly effective for joint problems and bone growth. Dr. Villeponteau even used adult stem cells to treat bone loss around one of his front teeth, with good results.
He also believes it could be successfully used in the treatment of diabetes, and for recreating the human pancreas and perhaps even the heart. Another area he believes will eventually benefit from adult stem cell technology is in the general reconditioning of your circulatory system—your arteries, veins and capillaries. Autoimmune diseases and multiple sclerosis (MS) may also benefit. At present, there’s a doctor in Utah who claims to be using adult stem cells on stroke patients; successfully regenerating brain function. Stem cells have also been used in cancer patients for the past two decades.

“Cancer patients, if they get high levels of radiation to kill off the cancer, it also kills off blood-forming stem cells. What they’ve been doing in some places, for 20 years now, is to take a sample of your bone marrow and then replace it after the chemotherapy or the radiation therapy to regrow your immune system quickly. They can do that several times. That allows you to go to a much higher dosage of radiation that you would otherwise not be able to survive.”

Another novel technology that also makes use of stem cells is 3D-printing architecture, where iPS cells or embryonic stem cells (not adult stem cells) are used to recreate an organ using a 3D printer. This too is something straight out of a science fiction movie, but it does work, and it’s legal. They’ve successfully replicated an esophagus for example, as well as human ears. It’s really only a matter of time before they figure out how to replicate more complex organs, such as kidneys, pancreas’, livers and hearts using this technology.

More Information

When I think about aggressive future efforts to reverse the aging process, nanotech comes to mind. In talking to Dr. Villeponteau, I believe the technology he’s working on is akin to biological nanotech. Rather than creating synthetic nanobots to repair tissues, it would seem far wiser to focus on the already intrinsic intelligence of the human body, which already knows how to use adult stem cells to perform such tasks.
There’s no telling how long it will take for this kind of technology to be perfected, but research is certainly moving ahead at near-breakneck speed. Dr. Villeponteau believes adult stem cells is the fastest way to make some real headway in the areas of cellular regeneration and life extension.
Until then, you can certainly add many years, likely decades, to your life simply by eating right, exercising (which promotes the production of muscle stem cells, by the way) and living an otherwise clean and healthy lifestyle. Extreme life extension, on the other hand, is a different matter.

“I think you can add 20 years to your life now if you eat right, take the right supplements, and exercise. You’d delay diseases, but that’s all you’re going to get. You’re not going to get extreme changes. To do that, you need real science,” he says.

Dr. Villeponteau’s book, Decoding Longevity, covers preventive strategies to prolong your life, mainly diet, exercise, and supplements—although he admittedly also includes some drugs. A portion of the book also covers future developments in the area of more radical life extension, such as stem cell technology. To keep abreast of advancements in this area, you can check out his company website at www.centagen.com.

Common Fitness Habits that Can Prevent You from Reaping Maximum Results

when it comes to creating a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, your habits can literally make or break you. Setting good habits from the start can save you a lot of frustration and wasted time down the road.
Two featured articles address some of the detrimental exercise habits many get trapped in, and a third article offers up helpful tips to improve your workout.  I’ll summarize some of these here, and focus on what I believe are the most important parts of a healthy fitness routine.

Busting Bad Fitness Habits

Prevention Magazine¹ and fitness trainer Jillian Michaels² recently wrote about common fitness habits that you would be wise to reconsider, if you want to improve your results.
This includes:

1. Avoiding exercise due to sore muscles—More than likely, you’ve at some point experienced the muscle soreness that sometimes follows a new or vigorous workout, called DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). Tempting as it may be to coddle and rest your sore muscles, recent research³ has found that exercise using light resistance actually provides acute relief similar to that of massage.
   
2. Ignoring severe pain — On the other hand, ignoring messages transmitted through sharp pains is not to be recommended either. Pushing through pain can result in hard-to-heal injuries, so always listen to your body. Pain can signify that you’re doing an exercise incorrectly, so make sure to pay attention to your form.
   
3. Staying within your comfort zone— This is a critical flaw of any fitness regimen. Without variety and challenge, your body will quickly adapt and plateau.
As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body.

4. “Machine hopping” without a plan — According to exercise physiologist Tom Holland, quoted in the featured article, this has pro’s and con’s. On the one hand, jumping from one machine to another automatically prevents your body from adapting to any particular routine. On the other, he warns, “ you need to develop a sound strength base before you can build on it. Jumping around doesn’t allow for that.”
   He suggests making sure you maintain a certain amount of consistency to start, and sticking with a particular routine for four to six weeks to develop a solid base. Once your fitness and strength increases, you can give yourself more leeway.
   
5. Avoiding strength training— Many people, women especially, avoid weight training because they don’t want to “bulk up” a’ la Schwarzenegger. This is another critical mistake, as strength training has significant health benefits that have nothing to do with building “bulky” muscles.
For example, weight-bearing exercise, like resistance or strength training, can go a long way to prevent brittle bone formation, and can help reverse the damage already done. It also has brain-boosting side effects, which can help you avoid age-related dementia.

Two More Common Mistakes: Skipping Warm-Up and Stretching

While you can get away with skipping the warm-up when you’re doing a low- to moderate impact workout, not warming up can easily lead to injury when you’re doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises, especially sprinting. The same applies for stretching, which I’ll discuss in just a moment.
As previously noted by John Paul Catanzaro, a Certified Kinesiologist and exercise physiologist, it takes only 10-15 seconds of muscular contractions to raise your body temperature by 1ºC, and a proper warm-up should raise your body temperature by 1-2ºC (1.4-2.8ºF). This is enough to cause sweating, and is really all that’s required in terms of warm-up.

“Simply going through the motions of any exercise is sufficient to supply blood to the appropriate working muscles. Just a few repetitions is all you need to really warm-up the muscles; aerobic activity is not necessary, and will zap valuable energy and time,” he says.

So, instead of aerobics, Catanzaro recommends performing the following dynamic stretching routine before your workout. Start slow and shallow and gradually increase speed and range with each repetition; 5-10 reps per movement is all you really need.

Squat	Arms horizontal
Split Squat	PNF pattern
Toe Touches	Arm circles
Waiter's Bow	Wrist flexion/extension
Side Bends	Wrist circles
Trunk twists	Shoulder shrugs
Arms vertical	Head tilt
Arms vertical alternating	Head rotation

To Stretch or Not to Stretch?

There’s plenty of confusion to go around when it comes to stretching as well. As a general rule, it’s not critical to stretch before a workout, and in some cases it may even be contraindicated. For example, a recent study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research⁴ found that passive static stretching prior to lifting weights can actually make you feel weaker and less stable during your workout. The researchers concluded that such stretching should be avoided prior to strength training, noting that the passive stretches may have impaired strength because of joint instability.
In other instances, such as when you’re doing high intensity sprinting exercises, prior stretching is imperative, and should NOT be skipped.  When I first began sprinting, I ended up injuring myself by ignoring the recommendation to stretch properly beforehand. The stretching exercises I demonstrate in the following video finally helped me recover, but I suggest you avoid making the same mistake and just do the stretches before you start sprinting.
Fitness trainer Jillian Michaels also notes that stretching is ideally done after your workout, when your muscles are nice and warm. My own trainer agrees that while light stretching is okay prior to any workout, it’s better to leave more intense stretching to the end.  In her article, Jillian Michaels⁵ offers a simple dynamic “butt-kick” stretch that can be done while walking or jogging:

“As you walk or jog, exaggerate the knee bend so that you are trying to kick yourself in the butt. You want your knee to point straight to the ground as your heel comes toward your butt. Keep your arms pumping in the normal running motion... The higher you get your heel and the more you keep your knee toward the ground (instead of coming up in front of you with hip flexion), the more of a quad stretch you'll get.”

Remember: Intensity is a Key Ingredient for Fitness Success

Another common mistake is to focus your workout on longer, slower aerobic exercise. Many get into the routine of just plodding away on a treadmill for 30-60 minutes, and then calling it a day. High intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a core component of my Peak Fitness program, is key for reaping optimal results from exercise. There are many versions of HIIT, but the core premise involves maximum exertion followed by a quick rest period for a set of intervals.
My Peak Fitness routine uses a set of eight 30-second sprints, each followed by 90 seconds of recovery done after a proper warm up as discussed above and followed by a cool down period.. Phil Campbell, who is a pioneer in this field, trained me in this technique. Also, while I typically recommend using an elliptical machine or recumbent bike, it can be performed with virtually any type of exercise; with or without equipment.
Ideally, you’ll want to perform these exercises two or three times a week for a total of four minutes of intense exertion, especially if you are not doing strength training.You do not need to do them more often than that however. In fact, doing it more frequently than two or three times a week can be counterproductive, as your body needs to recover between sessions. If you want to do more, focus on making sure you're really pushing yourself as hard as you can during those two or three weekly sessions, rather than increasing the frequency.
Remember, intensity is indeed KEY for reaping all the benefits interval training can offer. To perform it correctly, you’ll want to raise your heart rate to your anaerobic threshold, and to do that, you have to give it your all for those 20 to 30 seconds.  To calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. That number is your maximum heart rate in beats per minute. Here's a quick summary of what a typical interval routine might look like using an elliptical:

• Warm up for three minutes
• Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds. It is better to use lower resistance and higher repetitions to increase your heart rate
• Recover for 90 seconds, still moving, but at slower pace and decreased resistance
• Repeat the high intensity exercise and recovery 7 more times

When you're first starting out, depending on your level of fitness, you may only be able to do two or three repetitions. As you get fitter, just keep adding repetitions until you’re doing eight. For a visual demonstration, please see the following video.

Easy Ways to Improve Your Workouts

The third featured article, published by Newspress.com,⁶ offers several helpful tips for getting the most out of each workout. Listed suggestions include:

• Use a stop watch. This is particularly useful for when you’re doing Peak exercises discussed above. Resting too long between sets will lessen the overall intensity of your workout.
• Take notes to track your progress. As mentioned earlier, you need to continually increase the work you do in order to keep improving. So note the weights, reps, and intensity of each exercise, and kick it up a notch as soon as each exercise becomes easy to perform.
• Choose the right music for your workout. Research has shown that music can significantly boost your exertion level during a workout. While your body may be simply responding to the beat on a more or less subconscious level, the type and tempo of the music you choose may also influence your conscious motivation. Together, the synchronization of moving to the beat along with being motivated by the music itself allows it to do its magic.
• Allow your body to recover. While most people suffer from lack of exercise, once you get going, it can be addictive and some people do end up exercising too much — either by exercising too intensely, and/or too frequently. A really important part of creating optimal fitness is recovery. An equation to keep in mind is that as intensity increases, frequency can be diminished.
• Tailor your diet to your exercise regimen. The featured article suggests eating slow-digesting carbs (the author suggests whole grains) prior to your workout. While research has indeed shown that eating easily digestible carbohydrates before exercise may enable you to work out longer, there’s also plenty of research that strongly supports skipping eating before exercise… especially if you’re interested in maximizing your fat-burning potential.
  
  When you exercise while fasting, it essentially forces your body to shed fat, as your body's fat burning processes are controlled by your sympathetic nervous system (SNS), and your SNS is activated by exercise and lack of food.  The combination of fasting and exercising maximizes the impact of cellular factors and catalysts (cyclic AMP and AMP Kinases), which force the breakdown of fat and glycogen for energy. One study⁷ found that fasting before aerobic training leads to reductions in both body weight and body fat, while eating before a workout decreases only body weight.
  Also remember that on days when you’re doing HIIT, you’ll want to strictly avoid all sugars, especially fructose, at least two hours before and after your workout.
  Restricting these carbs after exercise will prevent the production of the hormone somatostatin, the role of which is to inhibit the production of human growth hormone (HGH). If you consume fructose before or after high intensity exercise, you effectively negate one of its most potent benefits—the production of HGH, also known as “the fitness hormone.”
  

Aim for a Well-Rounded Fitness Program

Ideally, to truly optimize your health, you’ll want to strive for a varied and well-rounded fitness program that incorporates a wide variety of exercises. Remember, without variety, your body will quickly adapt. As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body. I recommend incorporating the following types of exercise into your program:

1. Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods.
2. Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you're really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also "up" the intensity by slowing it down. For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff. The following video offers a demonstration of his techniques:

Total Video Length: 1:52:03
3. Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.
Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls “Modern Moveology,” which consists of a catalog of exercises. Postural exercises such as those taught in Foundation Training are critical not just for properly supporting your frame during daily activities, they also retrain your body so you can safely perform high-intensity exercises without risking injury.   Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.

4. Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is active isolated stretches developed by Aaron Mattes. With Active Isolated Stretching, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.
5. Avoid Sitting For Prolonged Periods: Last but not least, emerging evidence clearly shows that even highly fit people who exceed the expert exercise recommendations are headed for premature death if they sit for long periods of time.  My interview with NASA scientist Dr. Joan Vernikos goes into great detail why this is so, and what you can do about it. Personally, I usually set a timer to go off every 10 minutes while sitting, and then stand up and do one legged squats, jump squats or lunges when the timer goes off. The key is that you need to be moving all day long, even in non-exercise activities.

Top 5 Anti Aging Foods

With so much of beauty and health consciousness among the younger generation finding the right type of anti aging foods is a very hot topic in the present days. We hear both men and women of the present generation talking about many ways of remaining young and this includes taking care of their diet contents and patterns that assure a longer, healthier life with less symptoms of aging in their bodies. There are many food items when added to your diet regularly have the effect of making your look younger for a long time.

The following list gives some of the well known anti aging foods that you have to add to your diet to get that young, glowing and wrinkle free skin to make you look young and beautiful even when you are past your middle ages:

Berries – this group of foods are the best ones for your skin and overall health as they contain rich doses of all the necessary anti-oxidants that are responsible for cleansing your body of the harmful build of toxins. By regularly adding berries to your diet you give your body the required power to cleanse itself which is necessary for a higher level of wellness that will give you a younger look. For best results do not forget to add atleast one type of berry in your daily food.

Ginger- happens to be one of the best spices that have many health benefits. This is good for enhancing your overall fitness by guarding you against common colds, flus, giving relief from pains caused by rheumatic arthritis. This is also well known for its increasing of libido, improving your digestion and boosting blood circulation. Besides this it has a good effect on your skin tone and hair growth. Add this anti aging food daily to your diet.

Garlic- this is an herbal food that has the effect of fighting against Cancer, fatal flus, coronary diseases and regulates your blood pressure besides reducing your cholesterol levels. You can even eat it raw to get the best results as an anti aging food.

Nuts- are the best foods that give you the right proportion of all types of minerals that are necessary to fight against the symptoms of aging on your body. These contain many of the essential minerals like Magnesium, Potassium, Iron, Copper, Zinc, and Selenium that are necessary for the proper functioning of our internal systems. They are good for our digestive systems and tones up your immune system. So add Walnuts, Almonds, and Or Cashews daily to reduce aging through proper dieting.

Avocado- this fruit is rich in Vitamin E, Potassium and Monosaturated Fat that gives a unique luster to skin and hair. This fights against water retention in your body and regulates blood pressure. Add it to your food as much as possible and this will become one of the best anti aging foods you use to remain young.

For a longer version of this list with references and back up and other health and wellness articles visit www.MyBestHealthPortal.net