Stretch Like a Rubber Band

Stretching was found to be one of the most crucial and feel-good activities. Many a time, standing up and stretching our backs a little after sitting for long, will make us feel good. But the question is, how good is stretching, and what are its benefits?

Since the craze of Pilates and Yoga, many have found stretching to be comforting. Some may even feel sore after doing a certain amount of stretching. Over a period of time of stretching each muscle, one would believe that they have increased their flexibility by being able to achieve a better range.

Flexibility is defined as the ability to move a joint through its entire range of motion. We often see a gymnast on television or a street performer with hyper-mobility. This is due mainly to pure genetics. But this may not necessarily be a gift that we want. Let me tell you why.

When we stretch till we feel a slight burn and sometimes even a slight pain, and we think that it is our muscles we are stretching, our understanding of it is totally wrong. When we stretch till we feel pain, what we are doing is actually stretching our tendons and ligaments.

In a matter of time, our tendons and ligaments lengthen and we feel that we have achieved better flexibility due to the greater range of motion. When our ligaments and tendons are loose, the chances of dislocation of the bone are much higher. Which is why once a person has dislocated his shoulder or knee for the first time, dislocation of it in the future is much more likely to happen. As we age and lose strength, we lose more stability of the ligaments thus increasing the likelihood of mild dislocation.

Indeed, stretching based on an action of full range of motion makes sense. But to aspire to reach a greater range than that of a normal one, is just plain ignorance, considering the amount of damage it may cause in the future.

While the ligaments hold the joints snuggly in place, the muscles acting through the tendon actually move the bones. The tendons across the joints behave like pulleys, allowing the bones to move relative to one another.

The warnings of coaches and other fitness gurus, instructing us not to lift weights as our muscles will lose flexibility, is sadly, a misconception. As it turns out, muscular strength actually enhances flexibility. Why? Because trained muscles are stronger, more supple and have improved circulation. They are better hydrated and thus have the ability to exert a greater amount of force across the joint, allowing full range of motion while maintaining the integrity of ligaments, hence producing optimal stable flexibility.

Brigham Young University professors and exercise physiologists, Clayne Jensen and Garth Fisher, reported that among athletes, Olympic weight lifters were second, behind gymnasts, in an overall score of a number of flexibility tests. Think of it, swimmers, figure skaters, javelin throwers all could not beat the flexibility of the weight lifters.

Could it be Yoga? Pilates? A regimen of painful stretching exercises? No, the secret is, greater muscular strength, stronger ligaments and tendons allow the joint to move easily through their entire range of motion.

Aerobics for the Heart?

“General cardiopulmonary fitness ” versus “Sports-specific endurance”

Clearly, running will give you greater endurance for running. Similarly, a rower would have better endurance at rowing if he trains for rowing. You become good at what you do.

On average, at least one death occurs at every marathon. Most of the time, the cause of death is heart attack. This goes back to the history of the Greek Olympic Games. The modern Athens Marathon commemorates the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon, Greece, to Athens in 490 B.C., bringing news of a Greek victory over the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides delivered the momentous message "Niki!" ("victory"), then collapsed and died, thereby setting a precedent for dramatic conclusions to the marathon.

He died! Because of an over-strenuous activity of his heart.

Dr Kurt J Harris MD wrote an article concluding that the chances of clacification plaque forming was a lot higher in those who perform aerobic activity.

This was what he said:

“A given runner, in the German study, could be predicted (by MRI) to be more likely to have had a heart attack than a person with the same age, height, weight, smoking history, etc., who was sedentary. Take two subjects who otherwise look the same from a risk standpoint (which we know is kind of worthless anyway) and the sedentary one is more likely to have healthy coronary arteries.

And if compared to a person of the same age and sex, the runners in the German study had about the same chance of having had a heart attack, but this was despite being less likely to be obese, hypertensive, smoker etc., all those things that cardiologists tell us "cause" heart attacks.”

Like runner Jim Fixx, a fitness buff, who clearly died way earlier than he was supposed to, as compared to inactive Winston Churchchill. We can’t train our hearts and lungs and compare cardiopulmonary fitness to improvement of cardiovascular of our heart. Same goes with a marathon runner who has very good cardiovascular fitness but dies of a heart attack. On average there is a death at every marathon competition. Does this particularly mean that the people who died were unhealthy? Mind you, some were even world-class athletes.

We can train our muscles but not train our heart and lungs and then compare it to better health.

Here’s another article that further supports this statement (http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ACC/19091):

ATLANTA -- A group of elite long-distance runners had less body fat, better lipid profiles, and better heart rates than people being tested for cardiac disease, but, paradoxically, the runners had more calcified plaque in their heart arteries, according to a study reported here. Investigators performed computed tomography angiography on 25 people who had run at least one marathon a year since 1985, according to senior author Robert Schwartz, MD, of the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Foundation. They compared the athletes with 23 control patients who were undergoing the same scan for symptomatic or suspected heart abnormalities

By Ed Susman, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today Published: March 18, 2010 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Cli nical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

The Over-rated Vo2Max

Vo2Max is defined as the maximum oxygen consumption, or the aerobic capacity.

It is the bench press of endurance athletes, the trophy of gauging how endurance athletes compare lung capacity and being personally better in terms of so-called “fitness”.

It is true that certain evidence was found that Vo2Max studies have a relation to cardiovascular improvement. Nonetheless, Vo2Max is still an outright over-rated way of gauging one’s fitness.

Again, it has a lot to do with genetics. If u get an amateur athlete who trains really hard and does a Vo2Max analysis, he wouldn’t be anywhere close to an elite athlete who has not trained in years.

When u train, you better your Vo2Max but does that mean you’re healthier. No doubt, a better Vo2Max translates to better efficiency in transportation of oxygen supply, there is, however, no correlation of efficiency of transport of oxygen in the blood supply to muscle and benefit towards the heart.

You have as good a heart and lungs as whatever Nature has given you. Nature has designed them to last a good long while. Each of your organs has a limited capacity. When you exceed the capacity, there is a perception that your heart and lungs are out of shape.

As we age, we lose muscle mass and activities that you used to do become harder to achieve. You feel like your heart is pounding every time you get up to try to do something, but that is not because your heart and lungs have become weaker. It is because your muscles have become weaker and need strengthening. As we age, we lose muscle mass. If you strengthen your muscles again, you will be able to walk that flight of stairs, you maybe even able to run again. All you need to do is to strengthen those muscles.

“Strength is not everything, but without strength, you are nothing.” - Werner Kieser. Let strength training be the foundation, for whatever exercise or sports you decide to do.

The Big Fat Lie

I may sound a little biased in the things I suggest, mainly because I look into the evidence and research-based articles and books which prove otherwise. I am not a big fan of conventional wisdom but at the end of the day, it is indeed a “RED FLAG” in what we’ve been taught to belief and what we know to be ‘true’.

When Too Much is Too Much

It was said once that too much protein is bad for the kidney, too much carbohydrates causes diabetes, too much fats causes high cholesterol. So what should we consume then, if everything seems to be detrimental to our physical health?

Fats

Well, this was what I found. Saturated fats are good for us. We need to consume more fats, especially saturated fats, to prevent heart disease. It all makes sense as when human beings were consuming more fats decades ago, the rate of occurrence of heart disease was significantly lower.

Cholesterol

Then what about cholesterol and the thickening of the arteries with lipids of the calcification of the arteries lobs? Cholesterol is divided into two types - HDL (the good stuff) and LDL (the bad stuff).

LDL is basically ‘bad cholesterol’, but it has not been well-defined. LDL, when consumed, is broken down into small cholesterol - VLDL or Very Low Density Lipoprotein, the fluffy LDL. In meat, we get a lot of LDL, such as through the fats from steak. Being fluffy, they do not go through our arteries and thus do not cause calcification (clogging) of the arteries. A piece of steak that undoubtedly contains LDL, is also rich in HDL. This ensures a balance of both types of cholesterol as the HDL content in a piece of fatty steak is higher than the LDL content. Besides, this LDL is really quite harmless to our bodies due to the fact that it is fluffy.

However both HDL and LDL play an important role in our bodies:

Cholesterol:

- Regulates hormones and protects against heart diseases

- Aids in Vitamin D production

- Acts as an antioxidant.

- Is necessary in mothers’ milk for breast-feeding

- Is used to repair damaged cells

And the list goes on…

What I am trying to say, is that, don’t dismiss “cholesterol” as bad for our bodies, don’t forget the good it does for us.

So, who’s the bad guy?

It's vegetable oil and carbohydrates that are causing the problem.

Energy System

I know a little about the energy system and how it works. Basically, carbohydrates (CHO) are broken down into glucose and are later joined by the krebs cycle, protein breaks down into polypeptides and later amino acids go through the oxidative deamination transmission. And fats on the other hand go through the triglycerides into the beta oxidation process

What We Were Taught

Without going into too much detail, let’s discuss some lessons based on what we were taught in schools and universities.

Fats are divided into many based, the use of fats basically called the triglycerides which are then used in our bodies as part of the energy system.

Gary Taube’s “Good Calorie, Bad Calorie” explains our body’s response to insulin. When we eat carbohydrates, our bodies have to increase its secretion of insulin. As we all know, insulin increases the blood sugar (glucose) in our blood. Glucose burns and produces energy immediately, and then burns off. Later, we get hungry because our body is again, in lack of sugar.

An Alternative Source of Energy - Fats

CHO has always been known as essential towards providing us with energy. Wouldn’t be tired and lethargic without CHO?

Well, if we rely on fats for energy, our energy level becomes stable. Insulin doesn’t come into play in our bodies and our bodies will not be confused by a sudden surge in sugar level. There is no spike of sugar in our blood and we are therefore able to maintain a more consistent energy level.

Ketones Bodies and Ketosis

In order for acetyl CoA, produced by the beta oxidation, to enter the kreb cycle, a sufficient amount of oxaloacetate is needed. Oxaloacetate is converted to glucose (non-carbohydrate form). When oxaloacetate is converted to glucose, it is used as energy.

When we consume carbohydreates or sugar in any form, be it pasta, rice or even fructose sugar, our bodies can only keep a certain amount in muscles and liver as glycogen, after which insulin automatically relies on conversion of the sugar into fats.

The Truth About Cholesterol - Heart Disease or Arthrosclerosis

This is what we have been thought about the prevention of heart diseases and how it occurs.

Step1: We consume a lot of food that is high in cholesterol.

Step2: High blood cholesterol causes atherosclerosis.

Step3: Atherosclerosis clogs up our vessels causing a clog in our arteries and resulting in

coronary heart diseases.

Should I Avoid Animal Fat if I Have Had a Heart Attack?

A research was conducted, comparing 2 groups of people and their types of diet.

One group was taking a lot of saturated fat, meat and eggs daily. Another group ate a lot of vegetables and refrained from consuming fats. The study lasted over 20 years and what the researchers found was that there was no doubt that the people who ate a lot of saturated fats had high cholesterol. Nonetheless, the group that did not eat saturated fats died earlier and some even reported to develop heart disease.

The study proved that saturated fats never did promote heart disease. In fact, it assisted and prevented heart problems. Cholesterol was just an indicator that researchers got off athletes. Naturally, athletes have low-saturated fats content in their bodies. They are indeed fit, but not particularly healthy. The reason I say this is because even athletes at the elite level were found to be getting heart attacks. There needs to be a distinction between ‘fitness’ and ‘health’.

With low cholesterol levels, how is that even possible? This clear example proves that cholesterol level is not the right way to gauge a person’s health. Calcified plaque is what causes heart attacks. Calcification on your arteries clogs the arteries which then causes heart attacks.

Summing It Up

Cut down on your carbohydrates. If possible, keep to a diet consisting entirely of saturated fats, and you will have a better chance of reducing the likelihood of a heart attack and it will also help in weight loss.

At the end of this video, you can see that even Dr Oz pretty much agrees with GARY TAUBES. They also both agree that it is not cardio or aerobics exercise that will cause you to lose weight but it's the increase in muscle mass. I'll be talking more about this in the next posting, on why strength training is the best way to lose weight.