Post exercise cool down – do you skip it?

Confession:  I do. Almost always. Even with the yoga poses, I rarely make it through even 3 minutes of corpse pose. I start thinking of all the things I need to do and, bam, I’m up and running. But I’ve often wondered if skipping the cool down might be bad for me. According to some recent studies... uh… no. And yes. It depends on why you’re cooling down. Cooling down is valuable in that it prevents blood pooling in the extremities, which can cause dizziness or fainting. But a cool down does nothing to prevent muscle soreness. From the article in The New York Times:

“In a representative study published last year in The Journal of Human Kinetics, a group of 36 active adults undertook a strenuous, one-time program of forward lunges while holding barbells, an exercise almost guaranteed to make untrained people extremely sore the next day. Some of the volunteers warmed up beforehand by pedaling a stationary bicycle at a very gentle pace for 20 minutes. Others didn’t warm up but cooled down after the exercise with the same 20 minutes of easy cycling. The rest just lunged, neither warming up nor cooling down.

 

The next day, all of the volunteers submitted to a pain threshold test, in which their muscles were prodded until they reported discomfort. The volunteers who’d warmed up before exercising had the highest pain threshold, meaning their muscles were relatively pain-free.

 

Those who’d cooled down, on the other hand, had a much lower pain threshold; their muscles hurt. The cool-down group’s pain threshold was, in fact, the same as among the control group. Cooling down had bought the exercisers nothing in terms of pain relief.

In other words, warming up is important for preventing and/or lessening muscle soreness post workout. Cooling down? Possibly not so much.

 

Nestlé is trying to say they own a wildflower

A wildflower used in many homeopathic remedies.  If Nestlé succeeds in gaining a patent on the fennel flower, say goodbye to affordable supplements / homeopathic remedies that contain fennel flower. Please take a moment to sign the petition to stop Nestlé.  (Let me know if the link doesn’t work.)

Coming soon (I hope): a non-invasive test for colorectal cancer.

The New York Times has an article about it. 

“In its news release about the study Thursday morning, Exact Sciences said its test detected 92 percent of the cancers picked up by colonoscopy, and 42 percent of potentially precancerous polyps. It had a false positive rate of 13 percent.”

The article says investors were disappointed with the results. 92% accuracy? I’d say that’s fairly encouraging. 

The test, which involves taking a stool sample and mailing it back to the company’s laboratory, would not replace a colonoscopy. The article says that colonoscopies are considered the gold standard because if doctors find anything suspicious while they’re in there looking around, they can remove it before it becomes cancerous (or if they find cancer, they can begin immediate treatment.) But it goes on to say that a lot of people (me) don’t have colonoscopies because they’re uncomfortable (that’s not my reason), expensive (that’s the one!) and time consuming (I can deal with that one, too). They figure the sample kit might get more people to have screenings than would otherwise do so. Which… I guess if this is your only method of screening, an 8% margin of error might be a tad high.

The article says this isn’t the only non-invasive test out there. There’s one on the market now where you send a stool sample and they look for blood. It detects about 80% of cancers and 20-40% of polyps. And there’s another test that’s being developed where you send a blood sample instead of a stool sample. They look for certain chemical changes in DNA that can indicate someone has cancer.

It’s interesting. And if it can really be done for $25.00 from your home, that’s a beautiful thing. I’d definitely do that (even if it means I have to shell out for a real colonoscopy later.)

Vitamin D lowers risk of fibroids.

Boy, do I wish I’d known that years ago. I have awful fibroids. But a recent study has shown that having a blood vitamin D level of 20 ng/ml lowers your risk of fibroids by 32 percent, and that level of protection increases by 20 percent with each extra 10 ng/ml of Vitamin D. In other words, if you have a blood level of 30 ng/ml, your risk of fibroids is lowered by 52 percent; by 72 percent if you have a level of 40 ng/ml (if I’m understanding this article correctly.) They didn’t say where there’s a point beyond which there is no greater advantage. 

Is it becoming more and more obvious to you that we need Vitamin D, people? 

Boston.

I weep for you. Thank you, Carrie Jones, for your heartbreaking account of the events. And she is right. There are more good people in the world than bad people. It’s important to remember that at times like these.

I would love to take a dance class with her!

Photo by Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

Esther Rabinowitz, 90-years old, is still teaching ballroom dancing out in the Rockaways. She says in her classes, they dance to everything from Artie Shaw to Gloria Gaynor. She makes her own flamboyant, colorful clothing, and says each day she has to start her day looking in the mirror and being happy. Her new roommate says Esther drives “like a sailor.” But Esther says she drives like she dances – with timing and rhythm. I bet she’s a fantastic dance teacher and would be a hoot and a holler as a friend.

My inability to remember things is really scaring me.

And I wish that were a joke. But it isn’t. As I’ve mentioned on the blog quite a bit, Alzheimers’ doesn’t run in my family, it gallops, sprints, does marathons. I start to tell friends a story these days, and they interrupt me and say, “You told me this yesterday.” Or I ask them something and they say, “I told you that at lunch, two hours ago.” 

I’m at a loss as to whether I don’t remember because I didn’t hear, because I was distracted (worrying about something else), because my brain didn’t deem it important enough to remember (I am extremely self-involved), because I am too busy with other stuff, or whether I really, truly just cannot retain information anymore.

Side note: I’m working on this community fundraising event right now. It requires me to remember vast amounts of information:  sequencing; what items we’ve gotten from whom; what we need to pick up; what’s going to be dropped off by a third party;  names of other people involved; labels; this item goes with that item. And I seem (perhaps being the operative word) to be able to manage it.

But I’m at dinner tonight with friends, and no matter what the topic of conversation, I ended up (apparently) repeating myself a lot and asking them to repeat themselves a lot. Is this a result of my poor hearing (poor retention of information)? But then how to explain my lack of memory about things I’d said to others. Can’t blame that on my hearing.

Holy crap. I’m only 50. Seriously. Am I already going where so many of the women in my family have gone before?! This is really scaring the crap out of me.

There was an article in the Times yesterday (or the day before – gulp – I can’t remember) about how exercise seems to (a) ward off memory decline and (b) improve memory function in those with already failing memory. Here’s how bad my memory is:  I had to go to the dashboard on this blog and check to see if I’d already blogged about this earlier in the week. And I’m still not certain whether I did or didn’t. is this menopause? Should I go get that genetic test to see if I have early onset Alzheimer’s? Is it just fatigue from worrying all the time?

What the what?!! Help!! I used to be so sharp – the girl who remembered everything. Now, I have to type an entry in my computer about whatever phone conversation I had with my husband, so that I can remember it the next time I see him.

Part of me thinks it’s just because my focus is so divided: I’m having conversations while surfing on the Internet, so I’m reading and talking at the same time, and how much am I paying attention. But the thing tonight — starting to tell my friend the same freaking story again, and her saying, “You told me this yesterday.” Now — after I’ve left her house – now I can remember it. And her advice, telling me not to do something just because I felt guilty. Now I remember. But why couldn’t I remember it then?

I would say, “tell me this is nothing,” but I don’t want to be placated. Should I be worried, gang?

More weight or more reps?

image from http://www.campshane.com

It seems the answer to that question changes yearly. In this years’ version, they’re saying higher reps is just as beneficial as heavier weight, with the added bonus of fewer injuries. However, I don’t think the “equal benefits” portion of that statement is quite true. If you read the article, and then begin reading the comments section below – you’ll see why. In the Bone Estrogen Strength Training Study, one of the physicians stated that the key to seeing improvement in bone density was to get the women to exercise at the challenging level they were truly capable of exercising, instead of at the level they “thought” they were capable of exercising.  And yes – that is possibly the worst grammar contained in any sentence ever.  I haven’t had coffee yet.  I apologize.  Maybe I’ll take a stab at it again after caffeine.

Jane Brody on Calcium Supplements and Heart Attack Risk

Jane Brody has an article in the Well section of The New York Times about the theoretical link between calcium supplements and increased heart attack risk. There are no answers here, but it is an interesting read. She cites three studies: The Women’s Health Initiative study, a subsequent study published in December last year (which found no increase in heart attack risk with calcium supplementation) and a third study published in February of this year that DID find an increased risk, but only in men. 

What to think, what to think? 

Perhaps the most interesting fact about these studies (which Ms. Brody fails to elucidate) is the low level of Vitamin D that went hand-in-hand with calcium supplement: namely, a measly 400 IU. Also, no mention of Vitamin K. I’m going to repeat what I’ve said before, and I’m pretty sure Dr. Brown said the same thing: Vitamin D3 helps ameliorate those risks.

Would it be better to get your calcium from food sources? Of course it would. But as this article points out, that ain’t always easy.

Chronic infection tied to mental decline

This is interesting. Studies have shown that people with chronic infection are more susceptible to mental decline as they age. Researchers studied 1,625 people who were all over the age of 69. They tested for participants’ exposure to five common bacteria:  chlamydia, herpes 1 and 2, cytomegalovirus, and Helicobacter pylori. (Two of those I’ve never heard of…) The higher participant’s infectious burden, the lower their mental acuity test scores. (Do they mean the amount of bacteria present? Or the number of bacteria to which they’d been exposed?)

Three groups fared even worse: those with high infection loads who were sedentary, who didn’t have a high school diploma, or who were women. Gee. Thanks. Researchers posited:

The reasons for the link are not known, but chronic infection contributes to inflammation, and inflammation leads to atherosclerosis, a known risk factor for stroke and dementia.

“Another mechanism might be that these pathogens are neurotoxic, directly affecting the nerves,” said the lead author, Dr. Mira Katan, a clinical research fellow at Columbia.”

You can read the article here. You can read the abstract here.