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
If you live in the city, you might want to make sure you take your vitamins. A study from Columbia University found that B vitamins reduce changes to the epigenome — the chemicals that regulate and direct genes — caused by air pollution.
The study reveals even small amounts of the vitamins could counteract the damage caused by tiny, toxic pollutant particles called PM2.5, which include toxins such as sulfate and black carbon. These pollutants are often deposited in the respiratory tract resulting in inflammation in the lungs and throughout the body.
According to the World Health Organization, about 92 percent of the world’s population lives in areas where pollution is higher than safety levels set by the WHO. The U.S. also has pollution problems. The American Lung Association says that 47 percent of Americans live in areas that often have dangerously high levels of pollution.
“The molecular foundations of air pollution’s health effects are not fully understood,” said Dr. Andrea Baccarelli. “Our study launches a line of research for developing preventive interventions to minimize the adverse effects of air pollution.”
For the study, researchers gave adult volunteers a B-vitamin supplement (2.5 mg of folic acid, 50 mg of vitamin B6, and 1 mg of vitamin B12) or a placebo daily for four weeks. Participants were healthy non-smokers, 18 to 60 years old, who were not taking any medicines or vitamin supplements. They were then exposed to pollution particles.
Blood tests showed that levels of B vitamins increased significantly in those taking the supplements. Tests also found that while the PM2.5 pollutants can turn off cells in the immune system, supplementing with B vitamins limited their effect by up to 76 percent.
“As individuals, we have limited options to protect ourselves against air pollution,” said Baccarelli. “Future studies, especially in heavily polluted areas, are urgently needed to validate our findings and ultimately develop preventive interventions using B vitamins to contain the health effects of air pollution.”
The study’s results are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
by Dr Alex Jimenez | Diets, Fitness, Probiotics
Created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, National Nutrition Month® is celebrated annually every March to help everyone make more informed food choices and develop healthier eating habits for improved well-being.
With many recent studies focusing on the benefits of a diet that includes probiotics, also known as “good” bacteria, and prebiotics, which act as food for probiotics and promotes their growth, here we round up some of ways that boosting levels of good bacteria could improve various conditions and overall health.
Reduce social anxiety
A 2015 study of 700 students participants found that eating fermented foods, a good source of probiotics, is associated with reduced symptoms of social anxiety.
The study, published in Psychiatry Research, also found that the link between fermented foods and reduced social anxiety was strongest among those who already rated high in neuroticism.
The findings came after an earlier study published in The Lancet Psychiatry stated that an increasing amount of evidence suggests an important relationship between the quality of diet and mental health.
Improve sleep, protect against stress
A study published just last month found that prebiotics, can help improve sleep and protect against the negative effects of stress.
The team of researchers fed 3-week-old male rats a diet of either standard chow or chow that included prebiotics, and found that those on the prebiotic diet spent more time in non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, which is restful and restorative, than those on the non-prebiotic diet.
Rats who were on the prebiotic diet also spent more time in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep after being exposed to a stressor, with REM sleep is believed to be critical for promoting recovery from stress.
Previous research has also shown that stress can reduce healthy diversity of gut bacteria, but the rats on the prebiotic diet maintained a healthy and diverse gut microbiota even after exposure to stress.
Reduce obesity
A 2015 study confirmed a link between balanced intestinal flora and weight loss.
The study, published in the journal Obesity, showed that while following a four-week high-fat diet the men who drank a probiotic milkshake containing VSL3, a probiotic with multiple strains of bacteria including Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium longum, put on less weight than others following the diet who drank a placebo milkshake.
The researchers think that probiotics could have changed gut bacteria in a way that resulted in less body fat accumulation, and that the probiotics could have reduced fat absorption.
Reduce risk of allergies
Prebiotics have been shown in various studies to help reduce the risk of allergies.
A French study using mice found that those who received prebiotics had a lower risk of developing a wheat allergy thanks to the prebiotics improving the immune system’s tolerance to allergens, while a US study by the University of Chicago also found that in infants who had trouble tolerating cow’s milk, a new probiotic not only got rid of the allergy, but also changed the composition of their gut bacteria significantly.
A separate study also from the University of Chicago, found that supplementing rodents with probiotics containing the bacterium Clostridia later in life could reverse a peanut allergy.
