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Foundations of Exercise

by Troy Edwards, posted in Uncategorized

by Troy Edwards

This post is a tie in to our Exercise episode of Foundations of Health

Listen to the episode here

So, I’ve been a personal trainer for decades, and over those years, it’s amazing how much I’ve seen best practices for training evolve. Training methods have become really dialed in for achieving strength goals, hypertrophy, athletics, and endurance training. What hasn’t changed is the basic movement patterns.

Push – A push pattern involves moving an object away from you, or yourself away from an object. This can be straight out like a push-up or bench press, or overhead.

A push-up is where I like to start people, since it involves training stability and “plugging leaks” better. More on that in a second. But for overall strength and size gains, you’re not going to beat a bench press. If you’re having trouble doing a push-up from the floor, I prefer you don’t do one from your knees since it takes so much away from the movement. I’d rather see an elevated push-up, as in from a table or bench

Overhead presses are pretty self explanatory as they’re just that. Pressing something over your head. This move quite often needs modifications, since a lot of people have limited thoracic mobility. In that case, you’ll want to start with a landmine press. For a non-modified version, I like to use dumbbells to do an Arnold press, since it really takes a lot of strain off the rotator cuff, and allows your body to pick the path it likes.

Pull – For this move, think seated row and pull-up. And if you can’t do a pull-up, a lat pulldown works well too. Pulls call for modifications much less frequently due to the mechanics of a pull vs a push. Almost never actually, beyond the strength requirements of a pull-up.

I’m not crazy over using a band to assist in a pull-up due to it helping you less where you are at your weakest. Instead, I like to have you jump up to the bar, and slowly lower yourself. Also, working your core is vital to obtaining a chin-up

Squat – A squat is sometimes referred to as a triple hinge, since you’re bending your ankles, knees, and hips. This can be with two legs or one leg, but either way, it’s still a triple hinge.

I like to start people with a goblet squat to a low target, like a chair or bench, just to get the pattern down. From there, I’ll work on a single leg pattern so that we can get the glute medialis involved. This will add stability to a lot of your daily and athletic activities. For runners, I love the Bulgarian, otherwise known as a rear foot elevated split squat.

Like the bench press, a squat is going to be best of overall strength and size gains. For athletic purposes, I like the front squat, since it involves a big demand on your core stability.

Hip Hinge – This would be a movement like a Deadlift or a Kettlebell Swing. I like to teach this pattern near a wall with a dumbbell or kettlebell. You want to reach your butt towards the wall on the way down, and think of squeezing the glutes and extending your head to the ceiling on the way up. This is a wonderful move to build a healthy back, but if done wrong, it’s a great way to ruin your back.

This is also, in many ways, the simplest of lifts, but it’s the toughest to train to use proper form. Of these basic patterns, it’s the one I most recommend you find a good trainer to show you how to train it properly.

Carry – This is pretty straight forward. Pick up something heavy, and carry it. It will add a lot a strength and muscle gains. It’s actually one of the best moves for overall strength. You may know it as a farmer’s walk.

There are many varieties of this exercise, but for strength, you can just grab a couple of heavy dumbbells. A trap bar will work even better

How many repetitions, sets, and how many times a week are going to depend on things like goals, time and equipment availability, and recovery.

Cardio – If strength is what you need to move yourself or an object through space, cardio is what allows you to keep doing it. It also gives your body a boost in recovery. Not only in blood flow supplying nutrients to the muscles, but also by increasing the count and function of your mitochondria. Cardio, if done right, is all about mitochondrial function.

Right now, the best way we know how to improve that is through an 80/20 split of Zone 2 to Zone 4. That can be dialed in a lot more than that, but you can’t go wrong with those numbers.

What that translates to is about 4 days of 45-75 minutes of “easy” cardio, and a day where you do HIIT training, fairly intensely, for about 10-15 minutes total in Zone 4.

Easy would be about 70% of your maximum heart rate. It’s a pace where you could hold a conversation on the phone, but the person would eventually ask if you were working out.

HIIT should be around 90%. And for that, you’d do about a 10-20 minute warm-up, then go hard for anywhere from 20 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes, then back to a Zone 2 pace for anywhere from 10 seconds to 4 or 5 minutes, then repeat. Do this for a couple of times at first, then work your way up to a total of 10-15 minutes. Finish with a 10-20 minute cool down.

A good cardio should involve big muscles. I really like the elliptical, because it involves so many muscles. It creates what I like to refer to as low perceived exertion. You’ll get your heart rate where you want it, without feeling nearly as much effort as it would take to achieve the same heart rate on a bike.

Of course, the best exercise is the one you’ll do. So if that’s on a bike, then by all means, I know plenty of very fit people that get the majority of their training on a bike

And for both strength and cardio, recovery is key! You’re breaking your body down during a workout. The recovery is where you make the adaptive gains. That said, recovery is going to involve a lot of factors, which we’ll get into in episode 4 of the podcast.

The big factors are things like sleep, age, nutrition, and other stresses in your life.

Foundations of Diet

by Troy Edwards, posted in Uncategorized

Guest post by Emily Kirouac RD

This post is a tie in to our Podcast Foundations of Health

“Diet” in its broadest terms, refers to the types of foods habitually consumed by a person, animal, or community. I believe that the word “diet” as we know it today, particularly in our Western culture, is often thought of as some form of dietary restriction, whether that be caloric restriction, or manipulation of a certain macronutrient, often with the intention of weight loss. For the purposes of this post, I will be focusing on the word diet in reference to the former. 

First things first, I don’t believe there is any “one size fits all” when it comes to diet, and what any one person should be consuming. Everyone’s calorie needs are different, everyone’s macronutrient needs are different. Some individuals may need to restrict or avoid certain food groups due to allergies, intolerances, or medical conditions. Some individuals may need more carbohydrates than others, fats, protein, etc. So when asked the question “what is the perfect diet?”My answer is simple – “have you worked with a Registered Dietitian?”. 

I believe it is so important to work with a professional that understands how food works within the body, can evaluate your specific needs and give you advice based on what your specific goals are, with science to back it up. There is so much misinformation on the internet. As a health professional, it is honestly terrifying to see some of what is out there. That being said, there is also a lot of quality information at our fingertips, you just need to know where to look. Dietitians can help weed out some of the misinformation and give you some quality sources so that you aren’t flying blind. 

That being said, there are a few “fundamentals” that I typically review with my clients. A few keys for good health and energy levels overall include: following a low glycemic eating pattern, avoiding irregular eating patterns, reducing added sugars in the diet, getting a variety of plant based foods, and including good quality protein at each meal. It’s impossible for me to give blanket advice to the population at large considering how different everyone is, but these fundamentals generally ring true. 

What is a “low glycemic eating pattern?” This essentially means eating to maintain balanced blood sugar levels throughout the day, avoiding peaks and valleys. This helps minimize risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, which helps minimize risk of a plethora of other conditions that can coincide. Key components to low glycemic eating include: balancing meals and snacks. What I mean by balance, include a good quality protein, a fibrous carbohydrate, and a healthy fat at each meal. At each snack, include a fibrous carbohydrate + a protein OR a healthy fat. Examples of this include an apple + a handful of almonds, Greek yogurt + berries, carrots and hummus. Another key component is to avoid going too long between meals. When we start exceeding 4-5 hours, blood sugar can start to dip. Have you ever experienced that hangry feeling? When you’re so hungry you could eat a whole bag of chips or bite someone’s head off for something trivial? This is the feeling we are trying to avoid, the feeling that causes snaccidents to happen (i.e. whole bag of potato chips). 

Avoiding irregular eating patterns goes hand in hand with low glycemic eating – avoid going too long between meals/snacks, avoid skipping meals, etc. Have you ever skipped breakfast and had a light lunch to cut back on calories in hopes of weight loss, only to find that by the time dinner rolls around you are starving enough to eat all of those skipped calories and then some? Not only are we setting ourselves up for overeating when we skip meals, but we are also slowing down our metabolism. This can result in those excess calories going right into storage. Your body does this to protect itself – when faced with starvation, your body goes into preservation mode, preserving those calories that you are taking in to maintain your energy for the future. 

Another fundamental is variety. I think that variety is particularly important when it comes to the plant foods that we are consuming. Not just fruits and veggies, but whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. I will get deeper into this in another post about gut health, but these types of foods feed the good bacteria in our gut. Our gut health is super important for a number of bodily functions, immune health, mental health and stress management, just to name a few. Studies show that the more variety we have in our plant based foods, the more variety we have in good bacteria in our gut, ultimately leading to better overall health. 

It’s important to keep an eye on added sugars for a number of reasons, including gut health, reducing risk for chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, and weight management. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 6 tsp per day of added sugars for women, and no more than 9 tsp per day for men. A grande caramel frappuccino from Starbucks has 13.5 tsp of added sugar, and a Dunkin’s medium sized peach passion fruit refresher has 7.25 tsp, just for reference. 

Final fundamental – good quality protein. Protein is important to include at every meal. Protein breaks down more slowly in our bodies than carbohydrates, so it ends up slowing the rate at which our blood sugar rises, and it keeps us feeling full for longer (instead of being ready for a snack an hour after eating). This goes with our fundamental of “low glycemic eating”. So, what does a “good quality” protein look like? A protein that includes all of the essential amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein (arginine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, etc.). There are 20 amino acids in total, 9 of which are “essential”, meaning that our bodies don’t make them on their own, and that we need to get them from diet. We get these “essential” amino acids from “complete proteins”, which are proteins that contain all 9 of those essentials. These include any animal protein such as chicken, beef, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, milk. Most plant based proteins are not complete proteins, meaning we need to make combinations that will compliment each other’s amino acid profiles. Examples include rice and beans, hummus (including sesame seeds and chickpeas). There are a couple of exceptions – soy is a complete plant based protein (tofu, edamame), quinoa. A plant based diet can be very healthy, it just also needs to be well thought out. 

All in all, as I previously mentioned, there is no “one size fits all” diet, and I believe anyone can benefit from working with a Registered Dietitian. It’s important to understand how to fuel our bodies and our metabolism for optimal function and overall health. The food we consume plays an incredible role in how our bodies function. If we aren’t eating well, we aren’t living well. 

Emily is a Registered Dietician and the Wellness Director at Executive Health and Sports Center. She is available for one on one consultations at ekirouac@ehsc.com

A little bit of everything (AKA Ep. 49 of Back and Forth with T&A)

by Troy Edwards, posted in Uncategorized

This post is a crossover to the podcast that I do with Angela, Back and Forth with T & A. It’s generally about nonsense like weird history facts that make us laugh, talking about one of our many adventures, commercials from our childhood, and everyone’s favorite episodes, music. From music we grew up with, to our Christmas playlist.

In episode 49, we listened to our audience, and finally did an episode focused on all the basics of diet and exercise… which, as it turns out, thirty minutes doesn’t allow for too much depth. But it was a great start, and we hope you enjoy the episode.

You can listen to it here: Back and Forth with T & A Ep. 49

Starting with diet, we talked about a key factor most people don’t think about, and that’s timing. In body terms, circadian rhythm. Your body works in cycles, from menstrual to body temperature, to sleep. And timing your food to work with these cycles can boost your health in several ways.

First off, If you always eat around the same time, your body will be more prepared to handle it. It will anticipate the incoming nutrients, and the digestive process will be prepped and ready. But also, there is plenty of evidence that shows timing your meals so that they start and stop in an eleven hour window, and making sure that your last meal is at least three hours before bed can greatly reduce the numbers for getting cancer and other metabolic diseases.

Another thing I try to pass on to my clients is the Salad Principle. I have an entire blog post dedicated to this and how it can be applied to your mental well being as well. But here I’ll apply it to how you can use it to improve your health, and that is if you are filling up enough on healthy foods, you just won’t have room to eat too many unhealthy foods.

I once tried following the Wahls protocol. Terry Wahls is a doctor that has MS, but dramatically reduced her symptoms, primarily through diet. It involves eating a lot of vegetables. And by “a lot”, I mean a “shit ton”. I was packing in nine cups of vegetables a day, including three of “greens”, think spinach and kale, three of “colors”, as in brightly colored peppers, eggplants, carrots, and three “sulfur”, as in cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower. Kale is wonderful since it falls under both “greens” and “sulfur”, and broccoli sprouts may be the absolute king of “sulfur”. She has a book out that gives all the details if you want to try it for yourself.

Three things I can tell you from my six month experience with this diet. First, as mentioned before… that’s a lot of damn vegetables. Second, I had more mental and physical energy than I can ever remember having at any other time of my life. And third, I was eating so many vegetables, that I had no room for any junk food. 

I did have to stop after six months because it was a lot of work to constantly be prepping that many vegetables, but mostly it was because I already have a very fast metabolism and am very lean, and I just couldn’t keep the weight on with this diet.

So now I’m trying to get as many vegetables in as I can through kale chips and fermented vegetables. The big shock for me was after laughing at all those silly internet ads about vinegar reducing belly fat, there turned out to be a lot of truth to the nonsense. The effects though are best achieved by getting your fair share through fermented vegetable, which isn’t vinegar but works by the same mechanism. Plus adds the bonus of fiber and probiotics.

And the last big topic I’ll cover about diet will be protein intake. There’s been some great studies showing that if you get the bulk of your daily protein in by 10am, no matter what time of day you workout, you will significantly improve your muscle gains and avoid muscle atrophy.

So, as far as exercise goes, it’s definitely the topic which I have the most to share, but I’m going to keep it simple for this post.

You want to think of your basic foundational movements. Push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and carry. So for push, start by thinking push ups and dumbbell presses. For pulls, pull ups are king, but most of us can’t do those, so I’ll throw in my second favorite, and that’s seated rows.

For squats, I like to start people with goblet squats, then move them to single leg and spit squats before putting them under a bar. For hip hinge, think deadlift or kettlebell swings. Just remember, the best thing for your back, no matter what condition it’s in, is deadlifts. But it’s also the worst thing for your back if you do it wrong.

Carries are pretty straightforward. You pick up as much weight as you can, and walk around with it. You’d be amazed at what this does for your body. My one piece of advice on carries is to watch your posture. You will reinforce whatever posture you carry with, so stand up straight and tall.

On the cardio side, your best time spent would be to focus on “slow and steady” zone 2 training. The general rule is to pick an exercise like jogging or elliptical, and go at a pace that you can still talk, but with some effort. Try to do that three to five times a week.

You also want to increase your VO2 max, and that’s best done by doing a HIIT workout once or twice a week. Go hard, but not too close to your max, because that’s just beating the shit out of your heart without getting gains. Save that level of intensity for running from snow leopards.

Lastly, let’s touch on recovery. You need your recovery to outpace your breakdown. Because when you are working out, you’re breaking down your body. It’s in the recovery phase that you get stronger, and if your workouts are outpacing your recovery, you’re just going to end up damaging your body.

Proper recovery involves getting good sleep, hydration, nutrition, stress reduction, and active recovery like walking.

For sleep, the strongest effector on influencing a good night’s sleep is morning sunlight. Get out there, first thing when you wake up, and get some sunshine. If that’s not possible, shine as bright a light as you can in your morning environment.

For hydration, how much you drink depends on so many factors, so I can’t give you an exact amount, but I’ll leave it at this… your lips shouldn’t be dry, and you should have to pee every couple of hours. And that pee should be fairly clear.

Stress reduction can come in so many forms. Some ways will help you by the way you deal with stress, and others will immediately just make you feel better.

Nothing takes away all my stress as instantly or as completely as touch. Holding your loved one close is one of the best ways to wash away the day’s stress. But if you don’t have a someone to hold, a massage will do very nicely.

Exercise is great, because it’s also a top runner for quickly alleviating your worries and angst, and it does a great job at better prepping your body to handle future stress.

Journaling is another favorite of mine for working through what your issues are, and prepping you for handling what may come at you in the future.

Meditation is a great way of quieting the mind, and can result in huge personal gains, but it takes consistency and practice.

And talk therapy has proven invaluable for reducing the daily stress for millions of people. It’s often a lot of work, but the gains will be long lasting and will help you manage future stress with more grace.

That’s all I’m going to cover for this article, but it pretty much touches on everything I can think of. I’ll pick topics listed in here and take a deeper dive, one by one, in future articles

Please listen to the podcast episode… please listen to all the podcast episodes! We had a blast making them!

“I don’t” vs. “I can’t”

by Troy Edwards, posted in 5 Minute Journal, Mental Game

A better way to use the affirmation section of The 5 Minute Journal

I’ll confess that I have had difficulty with the affirmation aspect of The 5 Minute Journal. It feels cheesy and forced to me, and I can’t even begin to do it without feeling like Stuart Smalley.

However, there have been a few interesting studies that talk about the power of “I don’t” vs. “I can’t” as far as following through with our intentions.

It makes sense. Think of the difference between, “I can’t start my day with sugary foods”, and “I don’t start my day with sugary foods”.

One is a restriction put on you, the other is a statement of a personal choice.  Or as they phrase it “…we argue that a refusal framed to connote a sense of empowerment and control is likely to be effective in self-regulation”.

So I recently started using this portion of the journal to remind myself of the habits that will produce the results I want, but stated as a “who I am” statement, like, “I don’t skip workouts”.

 

Here is the research document, which contains three studies:  “I Don’t” versus “I Can’t”: When Empowered Refusal Motivates Goal-Directed Behavior by Vanessa M. Patrick and Henrik Hagtvedt. by Boston College and the University of Houston

 

It’s a pretty technical document, so here are some tldr highlights…
120 undergraduates were asked to rehearse the strategy by saying: “For instance, when you are tempted by an unhealthy snack, you say ‘I don’t eat X’ or ‘I can’t eat X’.”.

Upon exiting the experiment, they were given a snack choice of chocolate candy bars or granola health bars.

64% of the participants in the “don’t” condition chose the granola health bar vs. the chocolate candy bar. Whereas 39% chose the healthy option in the “can’t” condition.

In another study with a much smaller sample size, 20 women were split into two groups of ten, and told to use the “I can’t” or “I don’t” strategy for fitness goals over the next 10 days. The results were 1 out of 10 vs. 8 out of 10 following through, favoring the “I don’t” strategy.

Using The Salad Principle To Improve Your Mood

by Troy Edwards, posted in Mental Game

My usual advice to someone wanting to switch to a healthier diet is to follow what I call “The Salad Principle”.

The Salad Principle is the idea of just adding one healthy item to your daily routine. Maybe replacing one meal with a salad. And when that becomes effortless, you add a smoothie. And so on, and so on. It’s not that you make an intentional effort to eliminate unhealthy foods, you just eventually don’t have room for them anymore.

So what I’d like to share here, is how applying “The Salad Principle” to your thoughts can be very effective at changing your outlook to one that is far more optimistic.

The principle, applied to your happiness, is that the more you focus on the positive in your day, the less room there is for negative thoughts. On top of that, when you create a habit of spending time each day, focusing on what you are grateful for and what made your day great, your brain will naturally start finding the positive in your every day.

Too often, we ruminate on things we wish were different in our lives. We spin them around, and end up holding a magnifying glass to them. We turn the volume up until there is nothing else we can hear.

So here I’ll list three approaches that will make it easy to include gratitude as part of your everyday, so that it’s the good events and people in your life that are made big and loud.

A gratitude journal, the 5 Minute Journal, and Compassion meditation (also known as Loving Kindness). OK… that last one is more for the truly driven. You know… the five friends you have that say they meditate, and the one that actually does… sometimes.

 

The simplest way is to just keep a gratitude journal. Buy a notebook to keep by your bedside, and start your day off by writing down three things that you’re grateful for.

If you need something more than a bedside notebook, maybe having an app reminder will make the difference. Zest, by Tapabit, is a straightforward app, available on the web, Android, and iOS. https://zest.tapabit.com/#/home

What I especially like about the Zest app are the examples from other people. If you are having trouble thinking of things to be grateful for, you can get ideas by seeing what other people have listed. And though they are anonymous, you can curate what you see by blocking users.

 

The next option is my favorite. The Five Minute Journal. 

Of everything that I’ve tried, this has been both the easiest and the most effective way to be more optimistic throughout my day.

It’s simple, quick, and very effective. It not only trains you to be more grateful for what you have, but also helps you focus on important tasks for the day, as well as help you reflect on how you could do better.

It just requires a few minutes in the morning, and a few minutes at the end of your day.

In the morning, you list three things that you’re grateful for, three things that you’d like to get done that day, and a daily “I am…” affirmation.  (Next week’s article will focus on how to best take advantage of this section)

At the end of the day, you take the journal out again to list three things that made your day kick ass, and something that you could have done better.

Gratitude, planning, and reflection with intent to improve, all in one spot, and in just five minutes a day.

It takes such a small part of your day, and feels like so very little, but it really has been the most significant self improvement tool I’ve ever come across.

Let me give just one specific example of how this can make many aspects of your life better. Relationships. You know the phrase, “There’s someone for everyone”? Yeah? Well it’s not true. Some people are terrible at relationships.

It’s not a matter of never having found “The right one”, it’s a matter of not having the skills or mindset to be a good partner.

Before you can be in a good relationship, you have to be the type of person that is good in a relationship. And two key features are being able to focus on what is positive about your partner and your relationship with that person, and a willingness to work on that relationship.

The daily reminders of things that you are grateful for, as well as acknowledging the parts of your day that were great, really go a long way towards training your brain to look for the positive in your life. If you include aspects of your relationship in these, you will be far more likely to hold the memory of a loving squeeze, than an irritated eye roll.

Also, the exercise to ask what you could have done better should have you finding moments where you could have been more kind. Or maybe you could ask yourself, no matter what the argument was about, “How could I have handled it better?”.

These things go a long way towards reminding you that you care more about your partner than you do about being right.

 

Option three takes a different approach, since the focus is not gratitude, but rather on compassion.

Richard Davidson, University of Wisconsin, did a 12 year study on meditation, making Matthieu Ricard known as “The happiest man on the planet”.

Brain scans actually showed an unusual “capacity for happiness”

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-be-happier-according-to-matthieu-ricard-the-worlds-happiest-man-2016-1

The specific meditation used by Matthieu? Compassion meditation. Also known as Loving Kindness meditation.

You can find a guided version of it on this page:

http://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/

One by one, you think about someone you love, an acquaintance, yourself, sometimes the focus is even on someone you might think of as “an enemy”. And for each individual (or group), you focus on feeling compassion for them. You hold onto it, and nurture it until you feel love in your heart, then you focus on that.

Yeah… that’s a lot more work than the previous two exercises. But considering it’s what “The happiest man alive” does, I’d feel remiss for not including it in a discussion on how focusing on positive thoughts can crowd out negative ones.

As someone who’s done it everyday, for years… tried it for a month… done it a couple of times, I can tell you that it leaves you feeling almost euphoric.

Where a negative brain sees problems, a happy brain sees possibilities

Best Arguments for Sauna Use

by Troy Edwards, posted in Health Tools

I’m a big proponent of using the sauna. Given the chance, I’ll start preaching about all the reasons people should be spending as much time in a sauna as possible. So let me sum up in a two minute read, the most convincing numbers I’ve seen to convince you why you would want to include the sauna as part of your regular health maintenance.

The Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor study followed 2,315 men, aged 42-60 from eastern Finland, for about 20 years.

From this study, several bits of interesting information were pulled. For one, it seems it’s hard to find a Finnish man that doesn’t use the sauna at least once a week, so the studies that pulled from the data compare the use of the sauna for men that use the sauna 2-3 times per week, or 4-7 times per week, to those that only used the sauna once per week.

Among the benefits were a 46% reduced risk of developing hypertension, a 63% reduced rate of sudden cardiac death, a 50% reduced risk of death by cardiovascular disease, and a 66% reduced chance of developing dementia.

Read that last paragraph again, and consider those numbers. A 50% reduced risk of death by heart disease, over a twenty year period. Right there… That alone should convince you. While cancer can be a horrible and deadly illness, heart disease is responsible for more deaths than all forms of cancer, combined.

4-7 times a week too much? The “2-3 times a week” group, while not as dramatic as the “4-7 times a week” group, still had outstanding numbers. A 24% reduced rate of hypertension, 22% fewer deaths by sudden cardiac death, and a 27% reduced rate of deaths by cardiovascular disease.

Not worried about heart disease? That number for reduced dementia rates, which includes Alzheimer’s, should sell you.

And there are more reasons to use a sauna than avoiding serious health matters in your future. There are plenty of benefits you’ll enjoy right away. Smaller hyperthermia studies, as well as animal studies, have shown the possibility of other amazing health perks. Like increasing cardio performance, improving your mood, and reducing muscle loss when sidelined with an injury.

A 2007 study performed at the University of Otago in New Zealand found that a 30 minute sauna session, after a 15 minute exercise session, improved time to exhaustion by 32%. That was with just 2 sessions a week, for a 3 week trial.

The Journal of Applied Physiology published a rat study that showed a 32% decrease in atrophy rates, in an 8 day trial on rats subjected to hindlimb unweighting. While that creates both interesting and disturbing images, it also shows the possibility of significantly reducing muscle loss when you are unable to workout.

And among the many articles on sauna use and mood improvement, is a Japanese study that showed an improvement in 6 factors of mood (Profile of Mood States – POMS), and 2 anxiety factors.

So while I always suggest you look at studies that involve animals, or small sample sizes, with a bit of skepticism, there are some big human numbers on the important health risks (OK, with the caveat that the Finnish study was all male subjects.), and enough smaller studies to at least peak your interests on the many other ways using a sauna can improve your health.

If you are looking for a deeper dive into the science of sauna use, I highly recommend you start by viewing the videos that Dr. Rhonda Patrick has shared on Youtube. The following two go deep into the “what and how” science of sauna benefits.

 

Achieving Goals Through Habits

by Troy Edwards, posted in Mental Game

The results we see in life, come from processes… habits. We set goals, but in order to get there, we don’t just “eat better”, or “stop procrastinating”. We decide that we’re going to “get healthy”, but then we have to decide what exactly that means. What habits do you need to create or change. Once you decide that, the daily focus isn’t on the result, but rather the process.

It’s the persistence of repeating this process every day that will help you reach your goal.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
~ Calvin Coolidge

So the challenge of any goal is to figure out what process will work for you, and developing that into a habit.

I’ve found two books that sum up what, for me, is the most useful information in making or changing habits. The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, and The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

In The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal, she discusses how the forebrain is the central control for our willpower, and how various things throughout the day draw from this limited resource. Traffic, choices of any kind, pain, low blood sugar, and many other things pick away at our reserves so that by the end of the day, we may not have the energy left to choose what to eat for dinner.

It’s a fantastic book that draws mainly on the research of Roy Baumeister, who has his own book on the subject, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. I just found McGonigal’s book to be more on point, with better examples, and specific ways you can make your willpower work better for you.

The real magic for me happened when I serendipitously read The Power of Habit as my next book. In it, Charles Duhigg goes deep into how advertisers use their knowledge of habits to get us hooked on their products. “Cue, action, reward” is a mantra that he covers from many angles, including how you can get this process to work for you.

It’s another great book that I highly recommend. But I believe when you combine the principles taught in both books, that it truly becomes life changing.

First, the idea that building a habit does take willpower, but once you make it a true habit, one that is harder to avoid than to perform, one that is medulla oblongata deep, it no longer takes willpower. Meaning it won’t matter that reserves are depleted, or that this will take away resources for another habit you may want to develop.

And second, is the knowledge that willpower is limited, so it’s much easier to change one thing at a time, until it becomes habit.

The books go far deeper into the research, the what’s, and the how’s, so if these concepts interest you, both books are worth a read.

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