A new Rx

It's been a while, but I'm back for a quick update. Class, studying, and training has kept me quite busy, but I wanted to get in a quick note while it was fresh in my mind. The idea today is pretty basic, but well outside of modern group think. What I'm proposing is the idea that less is more. No, that's not a misprint I said LESS is more. In today's modern society people look at more of everything as being better. More exercise is always better. Taking more vitamins must be better. More over the counter and prescription drugs to help lose weight or fight off sickness will get me back on track. All sounds familiar, right? What you may not realize is that all this extra crap is hampering your efforts. Exercise is important, but almost more important is rest. If you are breaking down that muscle during an intense workout, there has to be time for it to rebuild if you want to make gains. There's an old saying that rings true here. There's no such thing as over-training, just under-recovery. Take that to heart people. Yes vitamins are important in overall health, but why not get them from your food? Keep in mind that vitamins in a bottle are synthesized in a lab to try and imitate the ones you get from REAL food. Also realize that your body isn't really sure how to handle and process a lot of these vitamins which is putting even more stress on your system, and managing stress is the name of the game here folks. If prescriptions or over the counter meds are also in the mix, that stress level goes up exponentially. Once again, the body doesn't know how to deal with most of these laboratory inventions that are meant to help, but often hinder your health. If it can't be processed it merely gets stored away to wreak havoc gradually over time. Then you have those who are taking meds to combat side effects from their other prescriptions. Is that not just downright wacky? Here is the general concept I'm trying to put forth, if you are working 60 hours a week, then going to the gym and hammering yourself for another 2 hours, Sleep less than 7 hours a night, pop pills because you don't have time to eat real food or are fighting off sickness or pain, and can't understand why your life quality is not improving, then it's time for a change. Here is my prescription. Try to cut down on work hours by staying focused and being more efficient at your job. Don't overwork yourself in the gym. Shorter more intense workouts may be just the trick to get you in and out quickly, while still getting the exercise you desire. Stop taking vitamins and getting off any other meds. Instead, supplement yourself with real quality food that is local or organic to get the nutrients and vitamins you need. Get quality rest! Turn off the TV and computer and get in that bed. Try this for at least two weeks, and if you don't feel and improvement go back to your old ways. Although I have a feeling if you truly commit to these ideas you won't ever look back.

Take the Plunge!

That's right folks, it's time to get wet and wild. Well, not too wild, but definitely wet. I'm talking about swimming. Not just swimming in the recreational sense, but for your health. Going for a nice cold water plunge can be invigorating and refreshing, and for good reason. Most people don't realize that the lymphatic system, which helps move waste out of the body, needs our help to function properly. It doesn't have a nice pump like the heart to make it go, but uses gravity and movement to help it along the way. This is the reason why most people feel more energetic and refreshed after a good workout. What you may not know is that temperature changes in the body also are helpful in putting those lymph nodes into overdrive. This can be accomplished in a couple different ways. One being contrast showers or baths, and the other a nice cold plunge. The contrast shower is simply bathing in cold as you can stand water for 30 seconds to 1 minute, followed immediately by warm water for 1 to 2 minutes. This can be repeated a few times or simply once remembering to always end with cold water. Another option, my favorite, is the cold plunge, and it couldn't be easier. After finding a nice cold body of water, you simply dive in, get back out, and let your body warm itself. You can also repeat this one a few times if you like. Just this morning I went over to a nearby lake, and after doing some mobility work and sprints on the beach, took solace in the cool refreshing waters of lake Michigan. Not only did it feel amazing and help me cool down, but I felt extremely clean and fresh also. Besides giving a boost to your immune system it will help keep your skin taught, smooth, and radiant. There is something about the natural water and all the added minerals that help rejuvenate the body and skin in a way that showers and baths from a well just can't match. Plunges are a great way to help regeneration and recovery in between training, or just a great idea for overall health.

Organic Vs. Conventional

Recently a friend of mine made me aware of a story from CNN’s Jack Cafferty stating that organic food is no healthier or nutritious than regular conventionally raised food. Immediately I was up in arms, as I have been living the organic life for the some time now. After some good natured ribbing and a look at Mr. Cafferty’s blog post I decided to take a deeper look. The basis of the Mr. Cafferty’s declaration is a study commisioned (i.e. funded) by the U.K. government and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. I found it strange that an american publication would be running this, but after following the money trail I can now see why. Thanks to the good people at opensecrets.org I found that big agriculture and food processing was responsible for almost 150 million dollars of donations to the U.S. government in 2008 alone. Industrialized Ag is highly tied to government, and when they smaller organic farms start to take market share they get mad, but I digress. The research team “looked” at 50,000 studies conducted over 50 years and found that there was no significant difference between organic and conventional foods. I immediately found the free abstract for the paper online, but was left wanting more. Being a curious fellow I shelled out the $8 to get a copy and get a more in depth look at the so called research.

What did I get for my 8 hard earned bucks? Six pages of what I consider to be less than thorough work on such an important and topical subject. For starters the conclusion that was arrived at was not based on 50,000 studies as you may have been led to believe, but only 55 that were consider satisfactory. Secondly, these studies were found through normal means that you or I might use when researching for a college term paper. The team stuck a few different keywords into scholarly article search engines, like pubmed.com, and hit search! I know you’re probably thinking that this is nuts, but try to keep in mind that all searching and subsequent data extraction was performed by 2 research assistants! After extraction the data had to be synthesized into hard numbers. This was tricky as the studies varied on representation of the data, controls, sample size, etc...

“Most of the studies contained no information of the sample size or variablity around central estimates. The analysis presented is therefore a pragmatic choice that permitted the available data to be used to its fullest extent. We calculated the standardized percentage difference in the reported mean nutrient content, as follows:

[(Content of nutrient in organically produced foodstuff-content of nutrient in conventionally produced foodstuff)/content of nutrient in conventionally produced foodstuff]X100.”

This leads me to believe that the research team simply pressed on to get a satisfactory result for themselves and funder, the U.K. government, to push political agendas forward. Surprising that this study is so lacking even after being subject to an independent expert review panel consisting of two people! And shocking as it may seem they were both connected to the U.K. government. What really struck me as sad was how the bulk of the discussion portion of this paper brought notice to the poor quality of the research they had found, and how limited the team was in finding better data. The actual details of nutrient content was condensed to a paragraph and a couple of tables, which were inconclusive at best. The Nutritional categories used, which again were fairly random and based on what was available, were: Nitrogen, Vitamin C, Phenolic compounds, Magnesium, Calcium, Phosphorous, Potassium, Zinc, Total Soluble Solids, Copper, and Titratable Acidity. Organic foods showed an higher value in phosphorous and titratable acidity, but lost out on nitrogen content to conventional food. On the rest they were even. Again, they were only using the standards and methodology given in this particular study. The data for livestock was an even bigger joke. Breaking down the nutrient content for meat was relegated to only two categories; Fats and Ash! Who out there is worried about Ash content in their meat? And the fats were unspecified, so we have no way of breaking down the omega-3’s versus omega-6’s. Not to mention CLA content which is proposed to be a quality source of antioxidants and anti-cancer agents. We couldn’t get anything on protein content and amino acids here either. A complete disregard of for livestock is evident. We simply need more information before such a bold claim can be made.

Moving on to what I feel is most important is the complete lack of attention given to other potentially harmful compounds found in our food. Quoting once again from the study, “We did not address difference in contaminant contents (e.g. herbicides, pesticides, or fungicide residues) or the possible environmental consequences of organic and conventional agricultural practices because this was beyond the scope of our review.” Aside from the fact that I do agree that delving into agricultural practices would be outside the realm in this case, I have to disagree with not including contaminant content. If they believe that people buy organic strictly because they feel its more nutritious then they are truly out of touch. It doesn’t matter if the Vitamin C content is the same if you ingest millions of particles of pesticides that offset any benefit you may have seen from said Vitamin C, it’s about overall health! Do a quick google search using pesticides+cancer and see what comes back. It’s staggering how much information is out there on the link between the two. I recently read an article about people in foreign countries using pesticides for suicide! Are they specifically dodging these issues? Possibly. Is it due to the government funding? Possibly. Shame on them for being so obtuse and casual about such an important subject. When large news outlets publicize things of this nature it’s downright negligent to not put in the due diligence and get to the root of the issue.

I could spend all day spouting off the benefits gained from eating organic foods, but the best way to really find out is to try it for yourself. Go to your local grocer or co-op and get one weeks worth of organic food and spend the next week eating only that food. Nothing processed or from a restaurant, just real-whole food. If you don’t feel better and more invigorated then maybe I’m just crazy, but I think you will feel a change. You have to remember that pesticides are foreign to the body, meaning that it is ill prepared to process them effectively. Nine times out of ten those harmful chemicals are being stored away in fat deposits and keep polluting the body over time. Also keep in mind that the same goes for any animal foods that you might eat. If you have a nice fatty steak from an over-drugged poorly fed animal, all the crap that was in them will now make its way into you! It’s real simple when you break it down and try to forget about all the hype surrounding these topics. Just remember to keep digging after you read some random news blurb, there is always more to the story!

Go Barefoot

I absolutely love being barefoot! Whether it be just hanging out, walking around, running, or training I love the feeling of my feet directly on the ground. Besides the obvious feeling of freedom there are numerous benefits to a barefoot lifestyle. Improving and enhancing your proprioception and kinesthetic awareness is number one on my list. Fancy terminology aside, what this means is being more in tune with your body and how it moves through space. Increased agility, flexibility, and balance are what you may notice after being barefoot for awhile. Our bodies are extremely tactile and desire input from there surroundings when deciding on a proper reaction. When you put modern footwear over the foot you take away your foot and entire bodies ability to come up with the best strategy for movement. Think about trying to play catch with a hard molded glove over your hand allowed for only minimal movement through a range of motion. Not so easy, right? So why do the same on your feet.

This is extremely prevalent in the act of running. Modern running shoes are designed so that the runner is making first contact on the heel and rolling the foot over to move. They have it completely backwards! Look at an infant and you will see proper movement patterns. When they first start to toddle they will lean forward and gently fall onto the ball of the foot as they move forward. Using forward momentum to move through space. While on the opposite end of the spectrum we look at a runner who is extended the leg completely, landing on the heel, and then pushing off of the ground to move forward. Not only is this style of movement harder on the joints, but it is using up so much unnecessary energy to simply move forward.

Strength training is also improved by going barefoot. The chain of events in any type of movement start at the base and work up. Take for instance a simple body weight squat. You push the butt back, squeeze the hamstrings and glutes, and drop down into a squatting position. The movement is reversed by pushing away from the ground and back up. When a barefoot is solidly planted the ability to push and activate muscles becomes a much simpler task and you can feel all the muscles activating properly and make adjustments as necessary. When there is another layer of rubber, air, and/or gel in between the ground and the foot there becomes room for error. You can't feel as well if the heel is staying planted. If you're coming up on one side or the other. Whether or not you're pushing out on the sides of the sole. The problem is an opening for more interpretation without knowing. The foot was made specifically for these types of movements without a middle man, so why not allow it to do so? The flexibility that can be gained will also help greatly in every day movements. When the shoe is gone greater ranges of motion are achieved, and concurrently with it flexibility. The joints and ligaments stretch out and get stronger allowing for ease in movements that weren't possible before. This makes for gains in strength that also weren't possible before.

Lastly, I would like to touch on the idea of injury prevention. Barefoot training will undoubtedly will help stave off injuries over the course of your lifetime. Especially in running or lateral movements the barefoot is king. It was made to adjust to changes in conditions and terrain. The most common ankle injury is a sprain or roll. Normally this happens when the shoe is planted in the ground but is unable to communicate a sudden change in the terrain and the shoes goes left ankle goes right. These issues don't plague the barefoot runner. Why? Because without knowing it your body does what it is made to do without having to think about it; i.e. proprioception. You can't help but keep the foot under the hip, lean forward, and make ball of foot contact when barefoot. You might say that with modern advances, cement, blacktop, etc... that going barefoot is dangerous. But I defy you to try it. What you'll notice is a buildup of the pads of the feet toughening them dramatically over time thus making it easier to move all on any type of surface. Start slow with sandals or converse all stars and then make the jump. If you are in the gym kick off your shoes and try a couple sets without and see how it feels. Revel in the freedom of not having worry about sweaty socks and shoes. Kick off the shoes and let those puppies breathe!

Poo Talk

I was recently reading a book entitled The Owner-Built Home, by Ken Kern, when I stumbled onto some information I hadn't imagine I would find. The particular section was about composting and the use of a squat style toilet. These are very popular even today in popular countries. The idea of squatting in more primitive societies is not only for resting, but for ridding the body of waste. In this position we have a more natural opening of the colon and increased intra-abdominal pressure that both contribute to a full and complete excretion of waste. Think about a baby playing in your lap, and then they squat down all of a sudden and make "that" face. You have just seen a very natural bowel movement. They are just going off instinct. They don't know about in door plumbing and refined society yet, but just following what the body is telling them. Quoting from Harold Aaron's, Our Common Ailment:

"The high toilet seat may prevent complete evacuation. The natural position for defecation, assumed by primitive races, is the squatting position...When the thighs are pressed against the abdominal muscles in this position, so that the rectum is more completely emptied. Our toilets are not constructed according to physiological requirements."

I couldn't believe I was reading this type of insight in a home building book! And from the 60's no less. I did more research and found that it is indeed hard to find such a toilet these days, but it is possible. Out of the 119 toilets currently available on the American Standard website, none come close to a traditional squat type toilet. As mentioned before they are quite common in other countries, and of course with hunter gatherer tribes who don't need such conveniences, but not in the good ole U.S. of A. This is interesting to me because of our populations major issue with constipation. I'm not saying that this is entirely the reason, in fact poor food, lack of exercise, dehydration, and over-medicating are all common culprits as well. Sadly due to the rampant obesity and muscle atrophy in our "modern" world, I don't even think people could manage to squat down to use this type of toilet anyway. And many if they finally did get down there would need some type of railing system or the fire department to help them get back up!



We often lose sight of how important our surroundings are to health. Not just in regards to a squat style toilet, but the use of modern building practices which use any number of hazardous and engineered products that affect how our bodies function. What I'm really trying to get at is the connection between all the facets of our lives and how they contribute to overall health and well being. Choosing to install a squat style toilet or step, using natural products in the building of a home, eating organic food, exercising the body, getting quality sleep. All these choices are interconnected and vital to how we live and ultimately the quality of life.

Wants and Needs

I've been thinking a lot lately about goals. I now have many new goals which have led to a greater lifestyle change, and many new questions. On a sometimes daily basis I'm faced with the dilemma of want versus need. I think we can all agree that there are certain needs that are universal, these being food, shelter, and clothing. Do I really need to buy a new pair of jeans when the few pairs I have are perfectly wearable? Will a new cell phone really improve my life in any way? Most of the time I decide that many things which I used to never question are no longer needs for me. Then I thought about the idea of wanting and needing things in a deeper sense. Often I hear people say things like they know they need to eat better, but yet they still haven't applied themselves to do it. Then I realized that in today's world we have a reversal of these mindsets taking place. For example, I know that I need to exercise to stay healthy and physically fit. Yet I do it on a daily basis because I truly want to. I now feel like wanting something is more important than needing it when we are trying to reach goals. For our paleolithic ancestors it was much easier to live on a needs basis. They truly needed to hunt and gather food on a daily basis. They needed to cover their bodies in a way to keep warm. They needed to find shelter to avoid the elements. If they didn't do all these things death was very likely to occur at some point. With modern convenience and everything necessary for life so easily in our grasp we've lost sight of the importance of these needs. It's not even something that most people have to think about in today's world. Wants have overtaken the needs in most decisions we are faced with. So what do we do? I recommend that you take a look at your goals and figure out how to reach them. When you know the route toward whatever the goal is, then start wanting to implement them. I think you'll find that the mind will easily make changes when you are concentrating on what you want. If your goal is to go to the gym and do something physical at least three times a week, then say to yourself "I want to go to the gym." Repeat the phrase over and over visualizing yourself at the gym and how you will feel and look when you have reached your goal. Do this until you are so excited about the idea that you can help, but run down the gym and make it happen. WANT whatever your goal is so bad, that anything less will not satisfy you. When you do that I contend that mind and body will have no choice but to follow. Comments or thoughts?

Quality, what's it all mean?

When you think of the word quality, what is the first thing that comes to mind for you? It seems that I have been thinking and talking to people a lot about quality these days. Not just in regards to food and exercise, but overall quality of life. Obviously this mine is just one opinion of what makes life worth living, but at the base level would be health. If you are constantly fighting off infections, viruses, injuries, obesity, disease, etc... then when is there anytime to truly appreciate life. Let's be honest, being sick is not fun. How often have you heard someone say "I wish I was dead" or something similar while fighting off the latest flu bug? Small changes can make for a big difference in fighting off sickness. Personally, I know whenever I go off the wagon for a one day ice cream binge that the next day I will feel hungover and sniffle a bit in the morning. This is nothing that concerns me greatly as it is a rare occasion, but think about if you were doing that on a daily basis? Sugar will bring down the immune system in the body for at least six hours per serving, so you can imagine the terrible cycle the body would be on if constantly fed sugar. It's also important to remember that sugar isn't limited to the kind found in sweets. Sugar in some form can be found in grains, starches, pasteurized dairy products, and even fruit!

My next step for overall health is physical preparedness. To me this means being able to perform normal day to day activities without impingement or unnecessary pain. I will often see people huffing and puffing just from normal walking, or having to use the handrail when going up and down stairs. It makes me sad to see people struggling with what I consider "normal" activities due to physical impairments that are within there control. Just the other day I saw a man pushing his wife around in a wheelchair. Looking at her it seemed that nothing was really wrong except that she was morbidly obese. If a person has the necessary muscle mass and ligament/tendon strength they should be able to support their body weight in a comfortable fashion. When you start to lose that muscle and add more adipose tissue(fat) in it's place then things get complicated. This is a tough way to go through life in my opinion. When you are not able to move under your own power and depending on someone else or an electric motor to do simple things like get the mail then where is the joy in your life? These people most likely will stay on the same path until they reach death. The idea of trying to turn it around is too much to handle for most, and the ease and convenience of just zoning out eating crap food and popping some pills is what gives them enjoyment, albeit momentary. These kind of people are also commonly stricken with diabetes as well. So adding onto all the stress is the idea of having to measure blood sugars constantly and, with type 2 diabetes, taking insulin shots. Take a look around you and think about how many people you see with handicap parking stickers that don't appear to have any handicap except that they are too fat and sick to walk to their destination from any further away. If you have been thinking that some of the everyday movements you use to do with ease have started to get a little more difficult it might be time to take at look at some of your life choices and make some changes.

The next ingredient in our quality formula is psychological happiness. For me this means being able to wake up everyday and be happy that I'm alive and well and able to do what I want. Constant fear, anxiety, worrying, and anger are no way to live and quite stressful. If you want to be happy I think it's easy to do. Give up trying to control everything and everyone around you and just live moment to moment in the very best way you can. Negative thoughts will emanate from you and spread to others. Truly engage and listen to those you interact with and see the effects. There is a connection to the other two values that we already discussed and I feel its obvious here. Waking up without sickness or being impaired physically will naturally lend itself to a state of positivity and overall well being. On a biological level, when you are filling your body up with unnatural and processed foods it can cause hormonal and chemical imbalances. These imbalances are often then exacerbated through the addition of prescription drugs meant to treat symptoms instead of looking for root causes. When the body is out of homeostasis it's constantly fighting to get back to that point. This process is often very stressful on the body and can cause great mental despair. So looking at our average unhealthy human being we find little to no movement due to physical impairment heaped on top of sickness and disease with small amounts of "happiness" found through more crap food or drugs. Does that sound healthy to you? If it does, then more power to you. If you feel that this could become your future then start looking at some of your choices in regards to food, health care, and exercise. In my opinion it's never to late to start on a path to improved health and overall quality of life. Please let me know how you feel in the comments section.