Importance of Sleep

This story appears in the April 16, 2012 "One Day, One Game" issue of ESPN The Magazine.

TEN YEARS AGO, a Stanford researcher named Cheri Mah, examining how sleep patterns affect students' brains, came across something unexpected. Some of her test subjects happened to be Stanford swimmers, and they told Mah they set personal bests during the part of the experiment when they slept more than usual. Mah knew that many studies had reported how sleep deprivation can lead to declines in physical performance, and she wondered if those findings could be inverted: Does extra sleep boost athletic achievement?

...

Some of our genes act as internal clocks and release hormones according to cycles called circadian rhythms, which are triggered by darkness and light and alternate over 24-hour periods. When we mess with these rhythms by not getting enough sleep, our metabolism of glucose (which gives us energy) declines, and our level of cortisol (which causes stress) increases. Further, sleeping for long stretches is naturally anabolic: During deep sleep, our bodies release growth hormone, which stimulates the healing and growth of muscle and bone. So while it's possible to push through a lack of sleep during any one day, proper sleep helps athletes in two ways. First, it boosts areas of performance that require top-notch cognitive function, like reaction time and hand-eye coordination. Second, it aids recovery from tough games and workouts.

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The U.S. Olympic Committee began taking the issue of adequate sleep seriously in 2005, when it consulted with sleep specialist Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist, to help redo rooms at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and at the 2006 Torino Olympics. Out went twin beds; in came plush-top mattresses, blackout curtains, thermostats set to cool temperatures and reliable alarm clocks. Rosekind and his colleagues pushed for the Olympians to get nine to 10 hours of sleep a night, not the five to seven most young adults manage. "People need to be as smart about sleep," Rosekind once said, "as they are about diet and exercise."

Performance consultants and technology firms agree. Athletes' Performance, a leader in developing training and nutrition regimens for pros and Olympians, announced in February that it will use products from Zeo, a leading sleep-management firm, in its programs. Zeo makes devices such as a Bluetooth-enabled headband that tracks your brain waves while you're asleep, reports your patterns in great detail and summarizes your overall sleep quality in a ZQ Score. "We're already seeing them say, 'I got nine hours last night, what was your ZQ?'" says Mark Verstegen, president of Athletes' Performance. He calls sleep a magic pill.

Tony Dungy and my wife like to say that nothing good happens after midnight. It turns out they're wrong, but you have to be in bed -- and sleeping! -- to realize it.

Did people eat fruits and vegetables in prehistoric times?

By Brian Palmer|Posted Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012, at 6:12 PM ET

Did real cavemen follow the "prehistoric diet"?

Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images.

Russian scientists claim to have grown a plant from the fruit of an arctic flower that froze 32,000 years ago in the Arctic. That’s about the same time the last Neanderthals roamed the Earth. This particular plant doesn't produce an edible fruit analogous to an apple or nectarine, but rather a dry capsule that holds its seeds. Did hominids eat fruits and veggies during the Neanderthal era?

They definitely ate fruit. Last year, paleoanthropologists found bits of date stuck in the teeth of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal. There's evidence that several of the fruits we enjoy eating today have been around for millennia in much the same form. For example, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of 780,000-year-old figs at a site in Northern Israel, as well as olives, plums, and pears from the paleolithic era. Researchers have also dug up grapes that appear to be 7 million years old in northeastern Tennessee (although, oddly, the grapes are morphologically more similar to today’s Asian varieties than the modern grapes considered native to North America). Apple trees blanketed Kazakhstan 30,000 years ago, oranges were common in China, and wild berries grew in Europe. None of these fruits were identical to the modern varieties, but they would have been perfectly edible.

It’s not altogether clear why fruits have changed less than vegetables, but it might have something to do with their evolutionary purpose. Plants developed sugary fruits millions of years ago so that sweet-toothed mammals would gobble them up and disseminate the seeds. By the time hominids descended from the African tree canopy, delicious fruits were widely available with no need for artificial selection. Since vegetables gain nothing from being eaten, they didn't experience the same pressure to evolve delectable roots, stems, and leaves.Vegetables are a different story. Many of the ones we eat today have undergone profound changes at the hands of human farmers. Consider the brassicas: Between8,000 and 10,000 years ago, humans took a leafy green plant and, by selecting for different characteristics, began to transform it into several different products. Modern kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi are all members of the same species, derived from a single prehistoric plant variety. Wild carrots may predate human agriculture, but they’re unpalatable and look nothing like the cultivated variety. The earliest domesticated carrots were probably purple, and the orange carrot emerged in the 17^th century. While legumes predate the dawn of man, modern green beans are a human invention.

Just because there are some paleolithic fruits in production today doesn’t mean you can easily mimic the paleolithic diet. Modern apples, dates, figs, and pears aren’t necessarily nutritionally equivalent to their late Stone Age ancestors. Selection by humans has made them larger and sweeter, and may have caused other chemical changes. Ancient man also ate plants that you can’t find at a grocery store, like ferns and cattails. His relative dietary proportions of meats, nuts, fruits, and vegetables are in dispute, and probably varied significantly with location. Some paleoanthropologists also believe hunter-gatherers ate a far wider variety of foods than modern man, each in a smaller quantity, to minimize the risk of poisoning.

Fitting it all in

Long rests, periods of extreme-laziness, bursts of incredible intensity, long-drawn out endurance events. This is the easiest way to explain the training schedule I adhere to. Also known as a typical day for paleo-man. Lots of chilling to repair the muscles you've torn in your workouts. Even my time sitting in my office behind a computer is an important down time in my training.
Do what I do to add some endurance training to your schedule-run to work!! The weather is warming up out here on the east coast, people are coming out en masse to soak up the springtime sunshine. Being outside is good, it's grounding. Adds a component of nature to your training. If you're wondering how to fit it all in to your schedule - try using your body to commute to work! I can recommend an infinite number of scenarios on how to get to work using a bike or your feet. If you feel you work too far away, then drive 1/2way, run the rest. Take public transportation until you're 2 miles away from your work, run there and run back in the evening. Those two-a-day runs add up to great way to tax your oxidative metabolic pathway. Slow'ish runs do have their place in flushing out inflammation, reducing scar tissue, and building an aerobic base. Plan a route, figure out a way to run to the mall, to work, to the post office. Say in your head 2 purposes for every trip- "my errands plus fitness", "commuting plus fitness" ...!

Great news for weight loss - sorta

What’s in Qnexa? It’s a combination of two older drugs: the amphetamine phentermine, which is approved for short-term weight loss, and topiramate, an anti-seizure and anti-migraine drug sold by Johnson & Johnson as Topamax. Phentermine helps suppress appetite, while topiramate is supposed to make patients feel fuller.

Full article here

Worst Beverage in America

• Worst Water - Snapple Agave Melon Antioxidant Water

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 2 Good Humor Chocolate Éclair Bars

• Worst Bottled Tea - SoBe Green Tea

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 4 slices Sara Lee Cherry Pie

• Worst Energy Drink - Rockstar Energy Drink

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 6 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts

• Worst Bottled Coffee- Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccino

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 32 Nilla Wafers

• Worst Soda - Sunkist

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 6 Breyers Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches

• Worst Beer - Sierra Nevada Bigfoot

  Carbohydrate Equivalent: 12-pack of Michelob Ultra

• Worst Kids’ Drink - Tropicana Tropical Fruit Fury Twister

  
  Sugar Equivalent: Two 7-ounce canisters Reddi-wip

• Worst Functional Beverage - Arizona Rx Energy

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 6 Cinnamon Roll

• Worst Espresso Drink - Starbucks Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha with Whipped Cream

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 8½ scoops Edy’s Slow Churned Rich and Creamy Coffee Ice Cream

• Worst Lemonade - Auntie Anne’s Wild Cherry Lemonade Mixer

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 11 bowls of Cookie Crisp cereal

• Worst Frozen Coffee Drink - Dairy Queen Caramel MooLatte

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 12 Dunkin’ Donuts Bavarian Kreme Doughnuts

• Worst Margarita - Traditional Red Lobster Lobsterita

  
  Carbohydrate Equivalent: 7 Almond Joy candy bars

• Worst Beverage in America - Cold Stone PB&C

  
  Sugar Equivalent: 30 Chewy Chips Ahoy Cookies

The Great Myth of the Core Workout

The Great Myth of the Core Workout

Posted by Brandon M at http://www.liftbigeatbig.com

((Trrrruuust me, deadlifts, overhead squats, turkish getups - your core will be fine (in every sense of the word!)))

Add the word "core" to any form of exercise, and people seem to jump right on it. "Core blaster", "Core fitness class", "Sit on a ball at work to stabilize your core". It is a buzzword that is thrown around so much it has become meaningless. It appears in every fitness dvd and boot camp on the market. Core training seems to have become another example of something that the masses will sign up for in order to get out of doing any real work.

First, let's get started on the flawed training model of these core workout classes. Some of these classes can last up to 60 minutes and focus primarily on stretching, "core" exercises, and breathing patterns--all with the promise that you will have improved posture, better stability and of course, washboard abs.( Who doesn't want those, right?). The first of many problems with these classes is their tendency to focus on concentric and eccentric contractions. In reality, most of the stability in our bodies is isometric.

Another problem with these classes are the claims that it will stabilize your body. Grenier Kaycic has this to say about the complexity of trunk stabilization:

CONCLUSIONS: No single muscle dominated in the enhancement of spine stability, and their individual roles were continuously changing across tasks. Clinically, if the goal is to train for stability, enhancing motor patterns that incorporate many muscles rather than targeting just a few is justifiable. 

The passive human spine is an unstable structure that requires stabilization by the co-contraction of trunk muscles. In the fitness industry, they are often mistakenly referred to as the "core", implying that there is a distinct group of muscles for stabilizing. The transverses abdominis (TrA) is usually the muscle that is being mentioned. While it does play a role in stability, it is a role that is synergistic with every other muscle that makes up the abdominal wall.

A simple way to test the reliability of the stability help that TrA offers is on pregnant women. It takes the abdominal muscle 4-6 weeks to reverse the length changes and undergo re-shortening. Believing the core stability myth, it would seem that a women undergoing the changes of post-pregnancy would have severe lower back pain. Yet the study found that postpartum women women had unexpected speed in their recovery time. How is it possible that the lower back has been strengthened in a time when the abdominal wall is weakened?

The answer is that the relation between the abs and spinal stability has been dramatically exaggerated.

Not to mention that there is no evidence that proves that sitting on a ball at work is going to help improve your spine. If anything, it is going to relax your trunk even more. I'm not sure how it "forces your core to stay tight" as the claims say. You know what would make your back feel better at work? Getting up, walking around, and doing some air squats.

Getting back to the topic of fitness, ab-centric workouts have no place in the training regimen of a serious athlete. Any elite athlete will tell you that to build a strong core (core being everything between your neck and thighs), you have to work the compound lifts. Squats, presses, deadlifts, and the variations of the Olympic lifts will work your core in ways that you have only dreamed. I do abmat & GHD situps  about twice a week, and my core is stronger than it ever has been. This is because I spend the majority of my workouts on compound movements with core exercises as a supplementation, not the main focus of my training.

Look at elite Crossfitters. Have you seen their stomachs? I don't think they spend an hour doing 1/8 crunches on the BOSU ball.  Besides, a 6 pack comes diet more than training.

He uses the crunchercizer X-3000

Elite powerlifters and strongmen are squatting and deadlifting 800+ pounds. You think they are wasting time on those catapult-looking machines in the corner of the gym?

Superman

Stop wasting your valuable time in the gym focusing on your abs. All you have to do is work the compound lifts with excellent form, and your core will naturally strengthen along with everything else you are working. Abdominal definition will come from zoning in on your diet. You can do all the situps in the world and still have a gut if you are eating trash.

Just be a real (wo)man and keep lifting big. Only good things will come from it.

Sources:

Kavcic N, Grenier S, McGill SM. Determining the stabilizing role of individual torso muscles during rehabilitation exercises. Spine. 2004 Jun 1;29(11):1254-65. 

 Lederman, Eyal. PHD. The myth of core stability.

  Hodges, P.W. and C.A. Richardson, Inefficient muscular stabilization of the lumbar spine associated with low back pain. A motor control evaluation of transversus abdominis. Spine, 1996. 21(22): p. 2640-50.
  Hodges, P.W. and C.A. Richardson, Delayed postural contraction of transversus abdominis in low back pain associated with movement of the lower limb. J Spinal Disord, 1998. 11(1): p. 46-56.

  Freeman, M.A., M.R. Dean, and I.W. Hanham, The etiology and prevention of functional instability of the foot. J Bone Joint Surg Br, 1965. 47(4): p. 678-85.

Jull, G.A. and C.A. Richardson, Motor control problems in patients with spinal pain: a new direction for therapeutic exercise. J Manipulative Physiol Ther, 2000. 23(2): p. 115-7.

  Richardson, C.A., et al., The relation between the transversus abdominis muscles, sacroiliac joint mechanics, and low back pain. Spine, 2002. 27(4): p. 399-405.

The Toxic Effect of Sugar

This weekend's 60 Minutes had Dr Lustig on explaining how sugar is a toxin.  It's a good episode if you haven't seen it:  60 Minutes Sugar is a Toxin.  Note the best advocate for sugar is the sugar farmer. I'm sure he knows what the body needs.  :).  But all in moderation - anything in moderation is fine, right?  The problem is the moderation is gone, once you refine sugar it is potent and pure.  NOT the way we were intended to ingest it.  Note the 60 Minutes story's reference to how to block sugar receptors in cancer tumors.  It will take cutting edge science and $billions to allow us to keep over consuming sugar.  This should make any thinking person's head explode.  Invest medical research to allow us to continue to do things we shouldn't be doing?!? 


Dr Lustig got his fame from this youtube video.  Some advice on how to live longer/better and without metabolic syndrome or diabetes or obesity, etc etc..

• Limit sweets, especially sugar-sweetened drinks.  Even the naturally occurring sugars in 100% fruit juice can raise your risk.  Even in the 60 Minutes story the point is made - it'd take 10 oranges to equal that much sugar - and WHO  eats 10 oranges in a sitting??  Well YOU do - one large glass of Orange Juice takes 10 oranges.  Oranges are heathful, but a dozen oranges spike insulin production.  Where's your moderation.  Our parents had it right, a thimble full of OJ is all you need.  

• Recognize that starchy carbohydrates, such as breads, cereals, crackers, and pasta can have the same effect in producing too much blood sugar (glucose).  I don't eat breads, pastas, anything with refined flour.  These have the same insulin overproducing affects.

• Eat whole fruit which contains fructose, but also fiber and micronutrients that your body was meant to have.

• Read food labels for hidden sugars- high fructose and all other corn syrups; refined sugar and artificial sweeteners present in processed foods such as tomato sauce and bread; even maple syrup and honey may be layered onto other sugars.   This is decent advice as long as you know 50 more names for sugar.  All the same molecule, but the multiple words for it allow food labels to look like their ingredients are distributed across more ingredients... they aren't.  You can't pronounce an ingredient you probably shouldn't be eating it!