Fitness
Back and Spinal Fitness at PUSH as Rx leads the field with a laser focus on supporting our youth sports programs. The PUSH-as-Rx System is a sport-specific athletic program designed by a strength-agility coach and physiology doctor with a combined 40 years of experience working with extreme athletes.
The program is the multidisciplinary study of reactive agility, body mechanics, and extreme motion dynamics at its core. A clear quantitative picture of body dynamics emerges through continuous and detailed assessments of the athletes in motion and under directly supervised stress loads.
Exposure to the biomechanical vulnerabilities is presented to our team. Immediately, we adjust our methods for our athletes to optimize performance. This highly adaptive system with continual dynamic adjustments has helped many of our athletes return faster, stronger, and ready post injury while safely minimizing recovery times.
Results demonstrate clear improved agility, speed, decreased reaction time with greatly improved postural-torque mechanics. PUSH-as-Rx offers specialized extreme performance enhancements to our athletes no matter the age.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Physical Rehabilitation
It’s high season for grilling and backyard barbecues, with July 4 celebrations planned across the country. But experts say it’s important to be aware that the popular summer pastime is riddled with minefields when it comes to health and food safety.
“Grilling is generally a healthy way to cook food if you take certain precautions,” says registered dietitian Joan Salge Blake, an associate professor at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
Here are some tips from Blake and other experts:
Avoid food contamination: Mixing cooked food with juices from raw meat is a big no-no. “When it comes to food safety, we have to be careful about cross-contamination,” Blake tells Newsmax Health. “People bring the raw meat out on a platter, grill it and then put it back on the same platter without washing it. That’s how you can transfer pathogens that can cause a range of food-borne illnesses.”
Use a thermometer: You can’t trust your eyes to tell you whether or not meat is cooked enough. “One in four hamburgers turn brown prematurely, before they are at a safe internal temperature to be consumed,” says Blake. “Rather than trust our vision to determine if food is safe to eat, use a meat thermometer and make sure the internal heat is at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Keep the flame down: Cooking with high heat from an open fire creates carcinogenic compounds in beef, pork, poultry, and seafood. So while that flame-licked steak or salmon may have a great grilled flavor, it also contains heterocyclic amines (HCAs) from the charred part and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the fire’s smoke. Lab studies suggest that they can cause mutations in DNA that may boost the risk of cancer.
Pre-cook meat: One way to reduce HCAs and PAHs is to partially cook meat — by boiling or microwave — before grilling it. That will reduce the time it is exposed to the high heat and smoke that creates these dangerous compounds.
Flip frequently: “You want to keep turning the meat to keep it from getting charred, because that’s where the [biggest] problem is,” says Blake. “If it does get charred, don’t eat that part.” Aim to flip grilled foods at least once a minute.
Foil flare-ups: One thing that can make the flame flare up is when fat from the meat drips down to the heating source. Blake suggests putting some foil down on the grill, which will keep the melted fat from hitting the flame.
Use marinade: Studies show that marinades can significantly reduce the HCAs and PAHs in grilled meat. Researchers believe it works by helping to keep the meat moist, and it can also improve flavor. One study showed that using the herb rosemary lowered HCA levels by 90 percent. Other things that can cut down on the bad compounds are garlic, onion and honey.
Watch your sauce: Blake warns not to use the leftover marinade for a sauce on the grilled meat, unless you cook it as well, because it could contain bacteria and other pathogens from the raw meat.
Grill veggies: “One of the best things you can do for overall health is to grill more vegetables than protein sources,” says Blake. “They don’t produce HCAs and PAHs, and they have a wide range of health benefits.”
Be fire smart: The most obvious health threat of grilling is the fire itself. According to the National Fire Prevention Association, about 9,000 blazes are sparked by grills every year, causing an average of 10 deaths, 160 injuries and more than $100 million in property damage.
Using common sense can reduce fire risks. The NFPA cites the main fire causes as placing the grill too close to anything that can burn, not cleaning it regularly, and leaving it unattended. If you’re using a propane grill, don’t turn the gas on for too long before lighting it. You should also check lines and connections for leaks.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
UK research has revealed that many middle-aged office workers are as sedentary as elderly pensioners.
Carried out by the University of Edinburgh’s Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, the team gathered data on 14,367 people in Scotland taken from the 2012-14 Scottish Health Survey, to look at how age and sex affected weekday and weekend sedentary time.
Defined as time spent in any waking activity done while sitting or reclined, sedentary time includes working, eating, reading, watching TV, or spending time on a computer.
Many recent studies have looked at the effects of sedentary time on health, with some experts warning that more than seven hours of inactivity a day can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and an early death, even if people are physically active at other times of the day.
The results of the new research found that men aged 45 to 54 spend on average 7.8 hours per weekday sitting down, compared with 7.4 hours for the over-75s.
Time spent sitting at work is the main reason for their sedentary time.
The team also found that only the youngest group of men — 16 to 24-year-olds — are significantly less sedentary than the over-75s on weekdays.
Most of the time spent sedentary in this age group is spent in front of a TV or screen.
At the weekend, those aged 25 to 54 were the least sedentary, sitting for between 5.2 and 5.7 hours a day, and in contrast the over 75s were the most sedentary, at 7.3 to 7.4 hours a day.
In addition, the researchers also found that men spend less time in front of a screen as they get older, with women peaking in middle-age.
The results now replace previous findings that older adults are the most sedentary age group in the UK and highlights the potential health risks of excessive sitting at work.
“Large parts of the population are dangerously sedentary, something we have underestimated. We need to tackle high levels of sedentary time in early and middle age, when patterns may develop. Our findings suggest that changing habits in the workplace could be an appropriate place to start, given how much time we spend sitting there every day,” commented one of the study’s authors Tessa Strain.
The findings were published in the Journal of Sports Sciences.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
Obesity is not only an epidemic for the human race. One third of dogs and cats also suffer from it, according to a new American study. A lack of exercise, overfeeding and genetics are all contributory factors.
According to this American study published recently by Banfield Pet Hospital, the number of overweight and obese cats rose by 169% in the US over the past 10 years. For dogs, the increase was 158%. And the numbers are still trending upwards.
The survey analyzed data gathered on 2,521,832 dogs and 505,389 cats based on visits and checks made at veterinary clinics across the country. Almost 30% of the dogs and 33% of the cats seen during these visits were overweight or obese.
The main causes are a lack of exercise and too much food. A genetic predisposition can also be a factor, as some breeds of dogs and cats are more likely to become obese. Pets that have been sterilized also have an increased risk of gaining weight, as hormonal changes can boost their appetite and make them less inclined to play and take a walk.
Obesity has consequences for animal health. It raises the risk of type 2 diabetes, arthritis and heart disease.
Banfield Pet Hospital says that up to the age of 4 months, a kitten should be fed 4 times a day, and then 3 times daily when it is aged between 4 and 6 months. After that, feeding should be no more than twice a day. For dogs, it varies according to the animal’s size, age, physical condition and how active it is.
The study warns against the common attitude of giving treats to a dog or filling its bowl out of love or guilt for leaving it home alone. Portion size is also a problem, as it is often too generous.
Banfield Pet Hospital advises that the ideal weight for a dog or cat is when you can feel the animal’s ribs without being able to see them. If the animal is 10% above its correct weight, its ribs are no longer visible and cannot be felt, and if it is 20% above, no waist can be seen. Anywhere above the 20% mark is considered to be obese.
Only sport and a diet should be used to lower a pet’s weight.
Obesity also affects other types of pets. A British study in 2014 undertaken by the Pet Food Manufacturing Association revealed that 28% of pet rodents were obese and 15% of indoor birds.
And awareness can be an issue. In France, a 2010 survey by BVA/Gamm Vert revealed that only 13% of pet owners thought that their dog had a weight problem.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Gastro Intestinal Health, Gut and Intestinal Health
When it comes to stomach discomfort during exercise, forget that old adage “no pain, no gain.” New research suggests that excessive strenuous exercise may lead to gut damage.
“The stress response of prolonged vigorous exercise shuts down gut function,” said lead author Ricardo Costa.
“The redistribution of blood flow away from the gut and towards working muscles creates gut cell injury that may lead to cell death, leaky gut, and systemic immune responses due to intestinal bacteria entering general circulation,” Costa added. He’s a senior researcher with the department of nutrition, dietetics and food at Monash University in Australia.
Researchers observed that the risk of gut injury and impaired function seems to increase along with the intensity and duration of exercise.
The problem is dubbed “exercise-induced gastrointestinal syndrome.” The researchers reviewed eight previously done studies that looked at this issue.
Two hours appears to be the threshold, the researchers said. After two hours of continuous endurance exercise when 60 percent of an individual’s maximum intensity level is reached, gut damage may occur. Costa said that examples of such exercise are running and cycling.
He said heat stress appears to be an exacerbating factor. People with a predisposition to gut diseases or disorders may be more susceptible to such exercise-related health problems, he added.
Dr. Elena Ivanina is a senior gastroenterology fellow at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She wasn’t involved with this research but reviewed the study. She said that normal blood flow to the gut keeps cells oxygenated and healthy to ensure appropriate metabolism and function.
If the gut loses a significant supply of blood during exercise, it can lead to inflammation that damages the protective gut lining. With a weakened gastrointestinal (GI) immune system, toxins in the gut can leak out into the systemic circulation — the so-called “leaky gut” phenomenon, Ivanina said.
But, she underscored that exercise in moderation has been shown to have many protective benefits to the gut.
“Specifically, through exercise, patients can maintain a healthy weight and avoid the consequences of obesity,” she said. Obesity has been associated with many GI diseases, such as gallbladder disease; fatty liver disease; gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD); and cancer of the esophagus, stomach, liver and colon. Regular moderate physical activity also lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and depression.
To prevent exercise-related gut problems, Costa advised maintaining hydration throughout physical activity, and possibly consuming small amounts of carbohydrates and protein before and during exercise.
Ivanina said preventive measures might help keep abdominal troubles in check. These include resting and drinking enough water. She also suggested discussing any symptoms with a doctor to ensure there is no underlying gastrointestinal disorder.
Costa recommended that people exercise within their comfort zone. If you have stomach or abdominal pain, “this is a sign that something is not right,” he said.
Individuals with symptoms of gut disturbances during exercise should see their doctor.
The study authors advised against taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs — including ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or naproxen sodium (Aleve) — before working out.
Costa said there’s emerging evidence that a special diet — called a low FODMAP diet — leading up to heavy training and competition may reduce gut symptoms. FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. FODMAPs are specific types of carbohydrates (sugars) that pull water into the intestinal tract.
The International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders suggests consulting a dietitian familiar with FODMAP diets. Such diets can be difficult to initiate properly on your own, the foundation says.
Costa also said there’s no clear evidence that dietary supplements — such as antioxidants, glutamine, bovine colostrum and/or probiotics — prevent or reduce exercise-associated gut disturbances.
The study results were published online recently in the journal Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
It’s no surprise — overweight children who don’t properly learn self-regulating habits likely become obese adults. What is surprising is that one of the most common ways to help — restricting children’s diets — actually compounds the problem.
That’s the thrust of a new study by University of Illinois researchers who point to a disturbing pattern: Parents shame by withholding food due to weight gain, then children cope with the negative emotions by overeating.
Further exasperating the trend, overweight children are often rewarded with food by parents, and as they grow older, the children reward themselves with food.
Researchers who studied the pattern added a genetic component as well to better understand obesity. They reported that a child’s genetics, relating to cognition and emotion, likely play a key role. They found that when biological conditions were just right, a nudge by the social aspect sets kids on a path to obesity.
Kelly Bost, co-author of the study (published in Pediatric Obesity), and professor of child development at the University of Illinois, said: “When parents offer food to children whenever they are upset, children may learn to cope with their negative emotions by overeating, and they start to develop this relationship with food early in life; eating — especially comfort food — brings a temporary soothing. People intuitively understand that.”
The findings support the team’s hypothesis that a correlation exists between all factors: parenting approaches, combined with a child’s genetic make-up and restrictive feeding, and the child’s weight and the child’s propensity to be obese.
Bost said that children can effectively learn control for themselves: “Some of the things parents do, they may not think are related to how children are developing their eating habits. The ways parents respond or get stressed when children get upset are related in an indirect way. The way we respond to that emotion can help children to develop skills for themselves, to self-regulate, so that everyday challenges don’t become overwhelming things that they have to manage with respect to food.”
Bost and her team used data from the “Strong Kids” program, outreach developed by The Oregon Resiliency Project, an organization that is based on “research, training, and outreach effort aimed at social and emotional learning, mental health promotion, and social-emotional assessment intervention” of children, according to the organization’s website.
The team examined information about parents’ feeding styles, and how they typically reacted to their children’s (ages 2.5 to 3 years) negative emotions. The researchers examined these factors in combination with genetic data.
For the genetic factor, they looked at the COMT gene, a gene known for regulating cognition and emotion. This gene is the gatekeeper for dopamine, which controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.
Bost and her team studied minute variances in the gene pool to determine which children might be more susceptible to negative emotions or stress. They based their genetic research on the breakdown of amino acids in proteins that could lead to personality differences. One of them is the change produced by genetics in the form of a single part of our DNA: the nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). There are many types of SNPs; some affect the composition of protein and, depending on the change, affect the amount of dopamine in the brain, as presented by Psychology Today. Dopamine controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centers.
One type of SNP can change an amino acid from valine (Val) to methionine (Met). While largely academic, these two types of proteins influence emotion. Bost explained it best in the study: “We all carry two copies of genetic information — one from Mom, and one from Dad. In a person with Val/Val, the COMT system works three to four times faster than those with other combinations do, and therefore accumulates less dopamine in the front of the brain. Children who have at least one copy of Val tend to be more resilient emotionally. Those who are Met carriers have the propensity to be more reactive to negative emotion or stress.”
This genetic component was combined with the researchers’ studies. “We know that how parents respond to their children’s negative emotions influences the development of children’s response patterns over time,” Bost said in the study. “There is a whole body of literature linking emotion dysregulation to emotional overeating, dysregulation of metabolism, and risk for obesity, even starting at early ages. We wanted to begin to integrate information from these various fields to get a more holistic view of gene-environment interactions at this critical time in life for developing self-regulation.”
They began their research with a group of 126 children who were studied for the social aspect. For the genetic component, saliva samples were taken. Parents filled out questionnaires, rating how they typically respond to their common situations, including emotional outbursts.
Bost and colleagues found that parents most likely to use restrictive feeding were those who reported more frequent use of unresponsive stress-regulating strategies with their children — punishing or dismissive —and had children who were higher weight status and tested positive for the Met amino acid. But the same was not necessarily true for children who were Val carriers.
Bost and her team determined that breaking the cycle did not begin with blaming parents but instead by encouraging them to develop positive reinforcement and other techniques that could help their kids respond better and also help develop positive eating habits that likely would carry into adulthood.
While there exist myriad programs that focus on providing good nutrition or how to plan less stressful mealtimes, Bost explains that parents should also learn emotion regulation strategies in response to children who display emotional breakdowns and are eating to soothe — especially if the parents are restricting foods.
She added, “Sometimes the way parents respond is based on their own stress, belief systems, or the way they were raised. Educating parents from a developmental perspective can help them to respond to their children’s emotions in ways that will help their children learn to self-regulate their emotions and their food intake . . . responsive parenting involves an understanding of what stress-reducing approaches are most effective for a particular child.”
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness
A new diet plan that dictates that you eat only one food for several weeks to lose weight fast is drawing warnings from many experts who say it is dangerous and only successful in the short term.
The Mono Diet (sometimes called the Banana Island or Monotrophic Diet) was popularized by a YouTube star nicknamed “Freelee the Banana Girl” (real name: Leanne Ratcliffe) who claimed it helped her lose weight, the New York Post reports.
Ratcliffe claimed to have lost 40 pounds eating close to 30 bananas a day.
A new version, the Sweet Potato Diet, promises the spud can help you lose 12 pounds in just two weeks. The hashtag #monomeal on Instagram, which highlights pictures of people’s meals containing a single food, has more than 38,000 posts, and the diet was one of the most searched in 2016, according to Google.
Frances Largeman-Roth, a registered dietitian and author of “Eating in Color,” tells the Post you can lose weight by eating only one food, but it’s likely to result from eating less.
“Yes, this diet can produce weight loss,” she says “But, the weight loss is a result of caloric restriction — not because any particular food is magically producing weight loss. It’s an incredibly restrictive and unbalanced diet and I do not recommend that anyone follow it.”
Experts warn such diets can also cause symptoms like dizziness and lead to some serious health problems, including dangerous metabolic changes and muscle loss.
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Fitness, UTEP (Local) RSS
UTEP claimed two superlative Conference USA track and field honors as Emmanuel Korir and Tobi Amusan were named C-USA Male and Female Track Athletes of the Year, announced by the league office on Friday afternoon.
�Both athletes are very special and talented. He [Korir] was the best candidate for our league and would most likely do very well other top conferences as well,� head coach Mika Laaksonen stated. �A lot of work goes into these things and Tobi worked incredibly hard over these past two years and she absolutely deserves this award, they both do.�
Korir ran a world best 1:14.97 in the 600m earlier this year at the New Mexico Cherry & Silver meet, which was his first race on an indoor 200m banked track. The freshman followed that up by capturing the NCAA title in the 800m (1:47.48) at the same track in Albuquerque, N.M., with a time of 1:47.48. The freshman is one of three athletes in the world to run an outdoor sub-45 400m and a sub-1:44 in the 800m.
The Kenyan native won the NCAA outdoor title in the 800m (1:45.03) and is the first Miner to win both titles in the same year.
Amusan was the leading scorer for the Miners with 25 points at the C-USA Indoor Championships and notched a meet record in the 60m hurdles with a time of 8.01. The sophomore helped her team win its third consecutive conference title. Amusan qualified to the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 60m hurdles where she notched a sixth-place showing.
The outdoor season started with a bang, as she set a school record (12.63) in the 100m hurdles at the UTEP Springtime meet. She followed that with a first-place finish at the 2017 Clyde Little Field Texas Relays in the 100m hurdles, setting a meet record time of 12.72. The Nigerian native scored 24.5 points at the C-USA Outdoor Championships leading the women�s team to its first ever outdoor conference title.
Both athletes were named semifinalists for college track and field�s high individual honor, The Bowerman Award. The women�s three finalists will be announced on Wednesday, June 21 and the men�s finalists will be announced Thursday, June 22.
For more information on UTEP track and field, follow the Miners on Twitter (@UTEPTrack) and on Instagram (uteptrack).
