When Forgetting You Have a Problem Might Be The Problem.

When you take action and address a problem, sometimes you feel that it has been dealt with and now think that things will go well for you from now on. But there is a difference between doing well, and just thinking that you are doing well. 

I feel better when I have "done something" about my health. I also think that my car runs better after I wash it.  It is best to have some third party or look to an objective measurement to evaluate your true progress.

Change your attitude, change your lifespan

Does your attitude affect your health and longevity?

King Solomon thought so, (Prov. 17:22) and as it turns out, so does a Harvard Psychological Sciences professor.

In the second part of this podcast on longevity, we learn of a crazy sounding experiment: Older men were put in a monastery and lived as if they were transported back 20 years in time. They all got healthier.

Apparently, modern empirical science is finally catching up with King Solomon.

Big Picture Science

Coffee found to reduce Type 2 Diabetes SIGNIFICANTLY

If coffee was discovered today, it would be sold as medicine and as a health food that really works, unlike a lot of health food products.

The article below makes me feel good about my coffee habit. I didn't know coffee would be discovered to help diabetics, but I am glad that it does.

Diabetes and Coffee Type 2 Risks

Telling yourself the truth

What if you were told to write down everything you ate, but complained that the diet wasn't working. Then they put you in jail and fed you only what was on that list for a week. 

Would you lose any weight? The experiment has been done. People lose weight when fed the food on their list.

Why? We lie to others, but sadly, we also lie to ourselves.

But this is true.

If you don't tell the truth, the truth will tell on you.

Truth in labeling

The store won't warn you, they don't make money if you don't buy anything. Try and buy the most unprocessed food. Shopping the perimeter of the store and the freezers has better choices that the interior isles

Out of control eating

How our out of control eating looks to others. It is fun to do, but watching it...not so much.

DIY Sublimal Mind Control

You can surround yourself with not so subtle messages that will help program yourself to eat healthy and exercise. You can also sabotage yourself in the same way. Deprogram your environment now and begin a new program of self mind control in the direction of health.

Product Review: Fitbit Wireless Personal Trainer

If you want to get in shape, track your progress, or even measure the quality of your sleep, you might like the  Fitbit Wireless Personal Trainer. You don't have to be a gadget lover to like it.

What it does: It uses an accelerometer chip, like the Wii Fit , smart phones, iphones and other gadgets, which measures movement in three dimensions. At day's end, or whenever you like you can plug the included fitbit receiver into a USB port, and the receiver will wirelessly collect data from your fitbit tracker, then send the data to the fitbit website. You use this website for most of your tracking and analysis.

You can also wear the fitbit tracker when you sleep (you slip it in a cloth wristband that comes in the fitbit package). In the morning, sync the data from the device to the fitbit website, and it will keep a record of when you went to bed, how long it took to fall asleep, how often you woke up during the night, and what time you woke up. It tells you your "sleep efficiency,"

The Fitbit is not perfect and cannot do everything. It cannot tell how hard you're working, but it does a great job tracking movements, day or night, asleep or awake.

I feel this device would be a usefull and fun weapon to add to your anti-obesity arsenal and that it could be just the thing to help you win that war against fat.

How a little more muscle can help you lose weight faster

It makes sense that muscle cells burn fat faster than fat cells, but I just read an article about health misconceptions about how fast that really is.

Skeletal muscle cells burn approximately 13 Calories per kilogram per day or around 6 Calories per pounds per day. So, if you weigh in at 180 pounds and are a man, your skeletal muscles will burn around 442 Calories per day when you are just sit around all day. If you are an average female at that same mass, you’ll burn about 379 Calories from your at rest skeletal muscles per day.

Fat cells will burn around 4.5 Calories per kilogram or approximately 1/3 what skeletal muscle cells will burn.

That is a three times faster calorie burn for every pound of muscle gained. I think that means that when I get serious about losing weight, I will dust off the old weight bench and add a little muscle building time to my morning routine.

Blunt Doc says: Belly fat + Prediabetes + 10yrs = Diabetes + Heart Attack

He doesn't have much tact, but he get the point across. This no-nonsense cardiologist lays it on the line: Your belly fat and bad habits are killing you.

Waiting for a new pill? You can, but you'll get fatter & sicker if you wait the wrong way.

Same old story. There is always some new study giving hope, or some new pill on the horizon that will cure type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, stories like this give another excuse to procrastinate on beginning the diets or doing the exercises that can actually make you better right now.

Am I against hope? No.But even if they do get a pill that works, they won't be giving it away free.

If you want to wait for the pill, OK. Just do yourself a favor and wait for it on the treadmill and expect it to come after you hit your goal weight. If you wait for it on the sofa, watching TV, you might not live long enough to buy that new miracle cure.

The gist of the article is: "..Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have shown that an enzyme found in the mitochondria of cells is decreased in the skeletal muscle of those with type 2 diabetes, a finding that could lead to the development of drugs to boost the activity of this enzyme in an effort to fight the disease.

A paper in published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the enzyme, Sirt3, is decreased in the skeletal muscle of humans and animals with diabetes by at least half, compared to those without diabetes and that this may contribute to development of insulin resistance"

Exercise changes stem cells to bone instead of fat.

Any medicine that makes you thinner AND prevents osteoporosis at the same time would likely cost a lot of money. New research done by Department of Kinesiology's Gianni Parise shows that you can get it all for free.


The study shows that " mesenchymal stem cells" could become either fat or bone cells. Making mice do aerobic exercise on little treadmills made their little stem cells more likely to become bone than fat. Mice that were sedentary had more fat instead of bone got negatively impacted blood production in their marrow cavities.


I know some would prefer expensive medicine to doing aerobic exercise. But walking is free, lowers your chance of diabetes, makes you thinner, and now we know it gives you better bones and blood. 


So, what do you think? Spend money on pills or get healthy for free? If you must spend money, think: It might be better to get a nice treadmill than a new pill habit going on. 

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Linked to Diabetes: Is this good or bad?

"...carpal tunnel syndrome is fifteen times more common in people with diabetes than in the general population." Says Anne Kramer, in an article on ergonomics and the work place.


At first glance, this is depressing news. It seems to be a clear case of "when it rains it pours." But there may be some helpful ways to use this information.

One helpful element would be to use this link as a possible red flag. If you have symptoms of one of these problems, test for the other and you may derive a benefit in the form of early detection and treatment. A lot of people have diabetes that has not been diagnosed. Getting checked out for diabetes when you go in regarding a sore wrist might save more than your pitching arm. Early and effective management of diabetes can extend the length of life and improve its quality greatly.

Another benefit of this link might be an alternate method for the treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome. If it is diabetes related, the aggressive treatment of diabetes, or reversing type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise might reduce the carpal tunnel symptoms to the point that surgery becomes unnecessary. I have not heard of this as a treatment, but if the link exists, it makes sense to give curing your diabetes the best shot possible and seeing if there is an improvement in the carpal tunnel area. Diabetes is known to affect feelings in the feet and other extremities. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that diabetes may be adding to wrist discomfort as well.

Yes, the diabetes/carpal tunnel link is bad news. But it is bad news you can use to hear better news in the future.

This actually makes sense

It is supposed to be funny, but a couple of slices of deli meat with a garden onion or cheese stick in the middle a makes a pretty fast low-carb breakfast!

 

If it could happen to Boris, it could happen to you.

Boris was supposed to be a miniature pig. Boris didn't care. He gained so much weight, he is classified as obese for a pig. How did he get that way? This CBS video tells all: He raided the fridge and then hid the evidence. That's right. Boris is a secret eater.

Cant afford a weight set? Got a Sledgehammer? Most Manly Workout EVER!

Save some money and impress your friends with this Sledgehammer Workout! No joke, it really is a real workout. Really.

 I have to give this guy full credit for creativity, manliness and being cheap, all qualities that I value. Besides it's funny. What's not to like? Except maybe all the broken stuff you might have if you are not careful.



EMBED-23 Sledgehammer Exercises For Full Body Workout - Watch more free videos

Every hour of viewing takes 22 minutes off your life..!

Researchers from the University of Queensland, Australia have analyzed information from the "Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study," together with population and death rate data and arrived at a disturbing conclusion. Your TV is killing you. In fact, every hour of viewing brings you 22 minutes closer to death. 


It is assumed that it is the sedentary lifestyle, rather than being bored to death or preferring death to viewing so many commercials, that is the culprit.  Depression can lead to earlier death, but does TV viewing make viewers depressed, or do more depressed people view more television? The jury is out on that. But it is clear that the more time in front of the boob tube, you not only lost those 22 minutes at the end of life, but also just waisted the 60 min. you had.

Exercise and being Fat beats Dieting for the Obese- says CBS Health

If you could only pick one: exercise or diet, which would be more healthy? According to a new study, exercise without any weight loss brings better health than dieting. In fact, dieting and failing actually contributed to a decline in health.

I find some encouragement in this. So far, my focus has been on the scale and counting calories. Now I see I should be more concerned with my work outs and look at weight loss as a bonus, not the main goal. I still want and plan to lose those pounds, but shifting the priority to exercise helps me put first things first and simplifies my life.

Your Sickess Might be the Only Thing Keeping You Healthy.

We all love a "Win-Win" situation, or a "Two for One" when we can get it. There is an odd "win-win" recently discovered: People using medications to treat arthritis or psoriasis have a lower risk of getting diabetes. Maybe this is a "Lose-Win," but by treating one problem, you are actually helping yourself  escape another.

In a recent study, those treating Arthritis and Psoriasis with medications (like cyclosporine) were 38% less likely to get type 2 diabetes than those not receiving treatment for those conditions. If they used hydroxychloroquine, a Rheumatoid Arthritis drug (also used for fighting malaria), a whopping 46 % lower risk of diabetes was experienced.

So, maybe we shouldn't get depressed about some of our problems. The trouble you are having right now may be saving you from having something worse.

Promoting Exercise is Great, But....

It is great to promote exercise. The problem is, we are promoting other habits as well. It isn't enough to add the positive. We have to eliminate the negative.