Flexitarian diet is highlighted in NewsWeek

In the Health section of NewsWeek this morning is an article on the Flexitarian diet style that is rapidly becoming more popular among those individuals who are concerned with maintaining their health. Flexitarian is a word coined to describe the eating habits of people who most of the time eat a healthy, plant-based diet, and occasionally eat foods that are less than healthy.

Here at Santa Rosa Strength we follow a plant based diet and recommend it to those who are concerned with wellness. We support our clients’ efforts with a program called the “The 6 Steps to a Plant Based Diet“. This is an excellent program and can be easily integrated into a busy lifestyle. For some people though, a 100% plant based diet is too strict, and for them we suggest a more relaxed approach; Flexitarianism.

Take a look around and you will see many people walking around today that are suffering from obesity. Hidden among those individuals however, are a growing number of people trying to manage a condition, children as well as adults, called Type II Diabetes. We are looking at the tip of the iceberg however. In the U.S. today, we now have over 50% of the population experiencing some type of ill health. This is a potential health disaster unless we correct the course we are on as a culture.

Many of the health issues that people are trying manage today are diet related. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is one of the poorest examples of our contribution to the world, yet the world is following us down this disease ridden path. If you are reading this, take a moment and ask yourself this question.

“What makes me think that my experience with the SAD diet will be any different with those who have developed disease from it?”

If you continue to do the same things, you will experience the same results. This is a fundamental law. Now I know that everyone has a great aunt that has lived to be 97, who has eaten meat and potatoes everyday of her life, smokes like a chimney, and the only veggies she eats are found at the bottom of her Martini glass. “She just knows how to live”, you might say. “She laughs and smiles all the time, and has a great outlook on life” You are right of course. Your great aunt has some insight to life that we can learn from, and it plays a big part on how we age, called attitude. But, pay attention here, she is not the rule! She is what we would call an exception! People who live with no regard to their long term health, experience results called disease. This is the rule!

If one wishes to experience the potential of excellent health for the entirety of their life, there are many things to consider and diet is only one part. It is a major part, however, and we should not waste any more of our time eating the junky foods that are being passed off as healthy choices any longer. Stop eating processed foods whenever possible. Stop eating and drinking chemicals whenever possible.

The following is a list of things a person can do to follow in the footsteps of those individuals around the world who have lived healthy beyond 100 years of age.

• Eat a Plant Based Diet – Studies on centenarians have shown that consuming a plant based diet will contribute to a long healthy lifestyle. There are cultures of people in the world who do not experience heart disease, cancer, diabetes, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, macular degeneration, or any of the age related loss of function that plagues our culture.
• Strength Train – Do some form of Progressive Resistance Exercise, regularly, for the entirety of your life.
• Recreate – Take the time to enjoy the things that you love.
• Change your attitude – In some of the centenarian cultures that have been studied, the elderly are revered, and they often compliment each other on how old they look. When is the last time you thanked the person who told you, “You are looking very old today Mr. or Mrs. So and So. Are you 100 yet?”
• Love Your Family and Your Community – Strong family and community ties have been shown to be a major contributor to longevity.
• Manage Stress – Many of the oldest cultures of the world are focused on a lifestyle, free from the things that normally cause us stress. Get a massage, play music, or engage in amorous behavior with a loved one.
• Find Yourself – A strong, deeply rooted, sense of ones inner strengths (and weaknesses) will contribute towards ones self confidence and healthy lifestyle. In our culture there are many, many avenues for inner exploration.

It is our wish, here at Santa Rosa Strength, that our community can come together, work together, and help our loved ones learn the principles of living healthy to 100.

Muscles Matter – American Medical News article advises physicians to recommend strength training for their patients

In a recent edition of American Medical News, an article titled Muscles Matter focuses on the need for resistance training beginning at the age of 40. In the article, Jeff Williamson, MD, clinical director of the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation at Wake Forest University School on Medicine is quoted as saying,

“I like to say there are really only two reasons why older people end up in a nursing home. One is that their brains stop working, and the other is that their muscles stop working. Especially their leg muscles. While the loss of skeletal muscle inevitably comes with aging, no one should just sit still and take it. In fact, sitting still would be the worst thing. People in their 40’s and 50’s need to take prompt action to preserve what strength they still have.”

For years experts in the exercise field have been telling people that they need to exercise, but their has never been a clear message as to what to focus on. Should one walk, swim, bike, or do yoga? The message is becoming more clear, however, as the medical journals begin to provide enough information to physicians, so they may be encouraged to play a greater role in persuading their patients to strength train.

“Just being in the hospital for a few days can dramatically affect muscle mass, ” Dr. Williamson said. “So physicians, in addition to thinking ‘I’ve successfully treated this persons heart failure or pneumonia’ need to be thinking, ‘How can I help restore their muscle mass and function?’ “

In the past much of the challenge has been in determining when a person was actually experiencing this muscle loss, called sarcopenia, but W. Jack Rejeski, PhD, a behavioral scientist at Wake Forest, is quoted in the article as saying,

“Difficulty climbing stairs can be the first sign of functional decline. We’ve shown in our research that such problems are one of the first signs of early disability.”

Sarcopenia has been written about and studied for years but the action needed to do something about it has been lagging behind the volumes of information. It is estimated that only 21% of all men and 17.5% of all women in the United States engage in some type of strength training today. Something needs to be done to change this, and physicians are the ones who can have the greatest effect on their patients exercise habits.

“Assessing a patients physical functioning should be part of an office visit,” Rejeski said in the article. “One way to conduct an assessment of lower extremity function is by the Short Physical Performance Battery. It’s a very simple test, but it has been shown in large studies to be predictive of decline in function.”

It’s not only the decline in physical ability that becomes evident with sarcopenia, however, and their have been 100’s of studies to determine the role of muscle loss with diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, as well as complications from stroke, and chronic neck and back pain. A recent search for sarcopenia on PubMed.gov revealed 675 articles on many different subjects. A visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website will reveal the question, posed on the site, why strength train?

The answers to this question are numerous:

• A group of older men and women completed a 16 week strength training program focused on reducing arthritis pain. Their pain was reduced by 43% and demonstrated that resistance exercise was just as effective, if not more so, than medications, based on CDC findings.
• The CDC reports that lean body mass decreases 15% between the ages of 30 to 60
• In a 16 week study of Hispanic men and women with type II diabetes, improved glucose control was demonstrated, which was comparable the results produced by medication.
• The CDC reports that resistance exercise improves balance and flexibility, as well as improves bone density.

The advise of the of the AMA and the CDC is based on information that has become abundantly clear. Everyone, including those who have elite level athletic prowess, will lose muscle as they age. If one wishes to avoid the severe maladies and loss of function associated with sarcopenia, one must strength train. It is now imperative for physicians to monitor functional strength loss, and prescribe resistance exercise.

At Santa Rosa Strength, we specialize in the clinical application of progressive resistance exercise (PRE), and for years have helped our clients manage: sarcopenia, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, complications from stroke, chronic low back pain, Parkinson’s, obesity, and forms of arthritis. With 1 weekly PRE session, proper nutritional guidance, recreational activities, stress management, and organic, whole food supplementation, individuals have been guided to success time and time again. If you are reading this, and need to make a change in your life, please call, e-mail, or just drop by. We will provide whatever is necessary for you to take control of your health!

Medical Marketing

Recently I have been reading “Overdosed America” by John Abramson, which is a very detailed account of the egregious conflict of interest that has infected our health care system. Todays CNN headline, “Don’t Become a Victim to Medical Marketing” is a great example of this, and again illustrates not only a need for change in our health care system, but also a need for a more hands on approach to our own health.

Americans spend more money on health care than any other country in the world, yet rank at the bottom of industrialized nations in total health. What gives? We must begin to take a more proactive approach to our health if we are to free ourselves from the shackles of the current system. Here are 5 things one could start doing immediately to gain more control over their overall health and maybe save some of those health care dollars for something a bit more enjoyable.

1. Switch to a plant based diet – There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that health is enhanced when eating foods that our bodies are designed for (plants), instead of eating foods designed for easier production, transportation, and storage, which are filled with chemicals. Processed foods cause heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Plants reverse heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
2. Strength Train to Reverse Muscle Loss – Sarcopenia (the gradual loss of muscle due to aging) has now been linked to most of the age related diseases and loss of physical abilities. One can do as little as 1 strength training session per week and still attain excellent results.
3. Recreate – Spend some time doing the things that you love to do (hiking, biking, walking, sports, etc.) a few days per week, for the entirety of your life.
4. Avoid Stress – One should learn how to avoid or reduce stress, in all forms, in order to attain maximum health benefits.
5. Take it Easy – Don’t overdo it. Take the time to recover and attend to the more mental aspects of your health. Take a nap, read a book, talk to your friends and children, and develop a healthy, positive view of the aging process.

Why we base our exercise protocol on SuperSlow.

High Intensity Progressive Resistance Exercise has been around for a long time and can now be found in many different forms under many different names. SuperSlow, Slow Burn, and The Power of 10 are the most visible, but there are others. Most of what we see today has its roots in the work done by the late Arthur Jones, founder of Nautilus. Then came SuperSlow in 1982. The work that has been done by Ken Hutchins, founder of SuperSlow, has been both groundbreaking and controversial. Initially, the controversy came from theory and conjecture, but much has passed from then to now. It has been proven that High Intensity Progressive Resistance Exercise (which I will refer to as PRE) has the effects that were promised. If you read the book “Resistance Training for Health and Rehabilitation” by James Graves, PhD, and Barry Franklin, PhD, you will discover the volumes of research that has shaped a generation of resistance trainers using these methods. You will discover that this type of exercise has had success in the areas of sarcopenia, osteoporosis, hypertension and stroke, Parkinson’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal injury, chronic low back pain, organ transplant, etc. There have been hundreds of studies that all have pointed to one thing that remains a constant. Resistance training is an important part of ones long term health plan regardless of the style. If one were to visit pubmed.gov, they would discover the volumes of research projects that are ongoing in this field of PRE.

There is also anecdotal evidence of the effects of PRE found everywhere. In our facility in Santa Rosa, California, one can find all types of conditions that are being managed with this potent type of strength training. Most notably, we are turning back the time clock on the bodies of persons who do not want to suffer the ravages of sarcopenia, the gradual loss of muscle over time. We are one facility of literally thousands that have sprung up in the last few years. The growth of these types of businesses is due to both need and results. The Baby Boomer generation is taking notice of the effects of sarcopenia and is becoming more motivated to do something about it. They will drive a new generation of businesses like mine that will deliver these types of results in the most time efficient manner possible. The field of PRE performed in this manner is set to explode.

There has been much media attention focused on the exercise industry. Much of it has been in the area of weight loss, but that is beginning to change with the needs of the population beginning to evolve. There have been articles on sarcopenia in many major publications, and the industry is beginning to respond. We have seen articles in the Wall St. Journal, Time, The Economist, Newsweek, Us News, and Vogue. We have seen programs on television as well, and have been inundated with information on the need for proper exercise and nutrition. With so much information available it is difficult at times to decide what is right. If one takes the time to examine recent history, and visualize the future, I believe the answer will come. The answer will not be easy, for it will require faith and effort. But the results will speak for themselves.