there is no finish line...enjoy the ride...

Ride to Conquer Cancer

A week ago I participated in the Ride to Conquer Cancer with seven of my work colleagues.   We joined over 1800 cyclists from across the province of Alberta as they rode over 230km over a weekend.  Collectively our team raised over $43,000, adding to the over $8,000,000 this single event raised in the fight against cancer. 

It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words, than I guess a video must be worth a million words.  Below is a short 10 minute video I produced to capture the event’s highlights.  Enjoy. 

  

My Observations:

The majority of the people riding in this event were your everyday person and I couldn’t find a single person that hasn’t somehow been personally affected by cancer, either personally or through a close friend or relative. 

I write this blog with the intent to increase the quality of life through providing readers information about diet, exercise and general healthy lifestyle choices.  During the weekend, I listened to the many stories about people that had cancer and lost the fight, and those that won the fight.  But as I listened, I found myself making a mental tally how many cases were the result of “bad cards” vs how many were because of “bad habits”.  It didn’t take long to realize the majority were the result of poor lifestyle choices.  Obviously, this is not a scientific study, but the point I’m trying to make, is that many people contract cancer because they have adopted unhealthy habits from their parents, or friends and without even knowing it they find themselves running directly towards a serious cancer event. 

Too many of these cases is simply a lack of education regarding the risk factors beyond genetics.  For example, eating a diet that’s high in acid, is a breeding ground for cancer (the typical North American diet, especially soft drinks and alcohol are very acidic), or not eating foods that are high in antioxidants, that remove free radicals that cause oxidative stress, which may lead to cancer.  In the absence of information, people will do what others do with little consideration to the consequences.

The other comment I heard over and over again during the weekend was how cancer caught the person by surprise.  Cancer is generally a disease that takes years or decades to develop to the point of crisis.  Except for the people that were given “bad cards”, cancer should never come as a surprise.  If you are overweight (BMI greater than 24.8, which is now over 55% of all Canadians), or you smoke (21% of Canadians), or you drink more than the safe limit of alcohol (one drink a day for women, two for men), or if you don’t exercise daily, etc. etc. then don’t be surprised if one day cancer knocks on your door.  The decisions you make today about your health will affect you decades from now.

Regardless of how or why a person contracts cancer, this disease affects more than that individual, and events such as the Ride to Conquer Cancer raise much needed awareness in addition to the funding needed for scientific research that hopeful brings a day when we live in a cancer free world.  Until that time comes, take it upon yourself and make healthy lifestyle choices for you and your loved ones.

Enjoy the Ride.....Rob

Common Sense Isn’t So Common Anymore!

I just finished my annual two week cycling training camp at my place in Arizona.  It's a place where the weather is more conducive to early season cycling, unlike my home town of Calgary where you can still get caught in a freak snow storm in the middle of a 100km ride.  My feelings about Calgary weather are another topic and not what I’m writing about today. 

As I was returning home and waiting for my plane in the Phoenix Sky Harbour airport, I stopped at the bookstore to get something to read for the 3 hours flight back to Calgary, so I picked up the current issue of Bicycling Magazine when I came across an article that I just have to share with you.  The title of the article is: “Why Johnny Can’t Ride” and I’d like to hear from you on this one.  I hope I’m not the only one that thinks the “Nanny State” filled with “Helicopter Parents” has gone too far.

I wrote a post a while back titled, "Childhood Fitness, Where Did It Go".  The topic was about the absence of kids playing in the streets and parks because of many factors including, over-protective parents that can’t let their kids out of their sight for more than a nano-second, and the fact that today’s children are addicted to video games and monitors (TV, Computers, etc), which are both contributing to the probability if a child is under the age 16 they will live a shorter and less healthy life than their parents (if that can even be possible, judging by the current health of North Americans adults today). 

The more I read this article about Adam's situation, the more piss-off I got.  It’s a long article so let me give you the “Cole’s Notes Version”.

This is a story about a seventh-grader at Maple Avenue Middle School in Saratoga Springs, New York.  His name is Adam Mario and he’s getting a firsthand lesson in civil disobedience. The 12-year-old and his mother, Janette Marino, are defying Saratoga Springs school policy by riding his bike to school; yes, you read that correctly, for biking to school.  Something we as kids took for granted and were encouraged; in fact, we had two ways to get to school back then; you either walked, or rode your bike.  Adam rides about 4 miles (6.4km), each way to school and his mother rides with him to ensure his safety.   By the way, this is something my mother at that age would never do, nor would I want her because I enjoyed the confidence my parents had in me, not to mention the feeling of independence.  So when Adam and his mother arrived at his school, they were met by school officials and a State Trooper who informed them that such an act was extremely dangerous, strictly prohibited and she would have to come back to the school and pick up his bike.  They went on further to say the only two modes of transportation to and from the school were bus or car.

Janette Marino believes they didn’t do anything wrong and that it’s none of the state or school’s business what form of transportation she uses to get their son to school, as long as he gets there on time.  Besides, Adam would be one less child why the school has to buy another polluting bus, or idling car that sits in front of the school during pick up and drop off time.  The Marino’s  are part of a small, but growing number of parents challenging the sedentary habits of today's youths and what they view as overanxious "helicopter parenting”, where “Free Range” children is considered irresponsible parenting.  To these modern day parents, the thought of sending their children out the door to participate in unsupervised play, or to let them walk to school themselves is simply unthinkable.  So the Marino's basically said to hell with you; try and stop us.

Riding his 21-speed Giant mountain bike to school benefits Adam Marino's health and the environment, but state and school believe that biking and walking (which is also banded, believe me, I can’t make this stuff up) are too dangerous for middle school aged children to handle, although no walking or bike accidents have ever been reported on the school’s road.

So that’s the summary of this story; read the full story to fill in the gaps and I’m sure you will shake your head like my wife and I did.  There are many social issues one can comment on a story like this, especially given the health of the typical North American.  Given the theme of my blog I will focus on two that I believe are contributing negatively to the health of our children:

1)      Helicopter Parenting

2)      Health is Not a Priority

Helicopter Parenting:  I’m not sure when it happened, but over the decades since I was a kid, parents have become so protective of their children, it’s now affecting their health.  And for the most part, they fear something that’s not real and only in their mind.  This fear is further manifested when they hear about the one or two child abduction cases that are sensationalized by the media.  They fear if their children play too out of their sight that bad shit will happen to them, when in fact this kind of smothering is one of the causes why we have so many obese children.

My father who’s now 87 told me a great when he was a young lad of 7 or 8 years old, growing up in Scotland.  He and his best friend set out to ride their bikes from Edinburgh Scotland to Blackpool England a distance of 320km (one way) with no parent supervision.  They had a map, (which they could read and understand), a few shillings in their pockets to buy some food and shelter, and good health to get them there and back!  Remember, I’m talking about two 7 year old boys and the only thing my Grandmother said to him as he set off, was to ride safe (oh yea, and they weren't wearing helmets).  This could never happen in today’s culture, because every stranger is considered a potential kidnapper, or worse and what would happen if their little sweethearts fell.  Not to mention, most children are so out of shape they could never physically consider such a trip.  Finally, today's children are driven to all their activities, so they have no idea how to navigate much further than a few hundred meters from their front door.  If today’s Child Services ever caught wind of such parental freedom for their children, they would have locked my Grandmother up for being an irresponsible parent.  (By the way, the two lads only made it as far as Carlisle in Northern England, because they realized they would run out of money.   Even still, they rode a total distance of 320km and spent a couple nights on their own staying at youth hostels!) 

This story is so extreme by today’s standards, were “Free Range” play for children is such a rarity.  Except for organized hockey where my father was the coach, we never participated in any organized play, however we were always playing sports in the fields, climbing trees, riding our bikes, playing touch football and scrub baseball.  And there was never a parent watching over our shoulder.  This unnatural act that parents have developed prevents their children to roam free and play naturally.  By restricting the movement’s like we see today, says to children that their parents can’t trust them to be responsible for their decisions and actions.  No wonder children are so rebelious today.  And when combined with the Nintendo Culture of sitting their little fat behinds in front of a monitor for 5 to 6 hours a day you have a major contributor to the obesity epidemic we find in our young people today.

Health is Not a Priority: the fact that the majority of North Americans are not healthy means that health is no longer a priority in many people’s lives.  The statistics don’t lie and the costs to our healthcare system are out of control as a direct outcome.  If health isn’t a priority for the parents, it’s certainly not going to be a priority for their children’s.  Children emulate the actions of their parents, not their words.  So if they see dad sitting on his fat ass all weekend watching sports on TV, while eating junk food and drinking beer, instead of actually participating in a sport, they will do the same.  If the family eats highly processed, or  fast food from one of the many unhealthy convenient fast food restaurants, because mom or dad are too lazy to prepare something healthy, well this sets in motion a lifestyle of poor eating habits, which leads to all kinds of degenerative diseases. 

So as I read this article about Adam Marino and the Nanny State at the Maple Avenue Middle School in Saratoga Springs, I realize what a bizarre world we live in.  A world that’s so up-side-down, that something as healthy and natural as walking or riding a bike to school is considered dangerous to your health and should be prohibited. 

If you’re of a certain age, leave a comment and tell my readers about a story of “free range” play you used to do as a kid before the helicopter parents and the nanny state stepped in and ruined the fun we used to enjoy and take for granted as we explored our neighbourhoods and beyond.

Enjoy the Ride.....Rob

Drinking: How Alcohol Affects Athletic Performance?

I’ve often commented within this blog about the negative affects associated with the consumption of alcohol, in addition to the social stigma associated with people that abstain from drinking.  It seems drinking has become an accepted and integral part of our social fabric.  That said, as long as it’s restricted to 1-2 drinks a day (1 for women, 2 for men), alcohol can actually have positive heart health benefits.  The problem I see, is that most individuals drink far more than what is considered healthy.

But, how much alcohol can you drink before it negatively impacts athletic performance?  The answer is ZERO. Any alcohol in your system is detrimental to any kind of fitness activity, (well maybe except for recreational dancing).  Here are just four examples how booze wreaks havoc on the athletic body.

Slower Recovery

Hard workouts drain the glycogen stores (carbohydrates stored in the liver and muscles) and leave your muscle tissue in need of repair. "Pouring alcohol into your system as soon as you finish stalls the recovery process," says Tavis Piattoly, R.D. High levels of alcohol displace the carbohydrates, leaving your stores still 50 percent lower than normal even eight hours later. Sip or snack on a combo of muscle-repairing protein and carbohydrates before thinking that a cold beer as a good recovery drink.

Packed-On Fat

When booze is on board, your body, besides having to deal with the surplus of calories, prioritizes metabolizing the alcohol over burning fat and carbohydrates. Alcohol also breaks down amino acids and stores them as fat. "For some reason this process is most pronounced in the thighs and glutes," says Piattoly. "Excessive alcohol consumption really chews up muscle in those areas." It also increases levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), which further encourages fat storage, particularly in your midsection.

Disrupted Sleep

Boozing also blows your muscle recovery and performance by sapping your sleep. In a study of 93 men and women, researchers found that alcohol decreased sleep duration and increased wakefulness (particularly in the second half of the night), especially in women, whose sleep time was decreased by more than 30 minutes over the night. "Disrupting the sleep cycle can reduce your human growth hormone output—which builds muscle—by as much as 70 percent," says Piattoly.

Depleted Water and Nutrients

Alcohol irritates the stomach lining, which can reduce your capacity to absorb nutrients (the reason you have an upset stomach after a few too many), says Brian R. Christie, Ph.D.—not to mention that alcohol makes you pee. For every gram of ethanol you suck down, you pump out 10 milliliters of urine (that's about 9.5 ounces for two beers). As little as 2% dehydration will significantly hurt your athletic performance. And by the way, you can't rehydrate with a dehydrating drink (e.g., beer).

So regardless if you're training for the Tour de France, or the next local 5km fun ran, the next time you reach for something to drink after your workout, make it something that both you and your body will appreciate.  Cheers.

Enjoy the Ride ....Rob

Are you suffering from "Nature Deficit Disorder"?

Can you feel it? I certainly can. I finally got out for my first bike ride of the year after hibernating and training indoors on my bike trainer. The weather conditions weren’t great, as I saw cool temperatures, a little snow, a little rain and for a very brief moment, a little sunshine. But who cares, I was back outside breathing fresh air and being reacquainted with my old friend, "Mother Nature".  My step brother who lives in the South of France has been rubbing my nose in his even earlier re-introduction with the French version of Mother Nature since February.  Regardless, I'm talking about Springtime….and even though the French enjoy it two months before those of us that live in Alberta, it's just around the corner and I can hardly wait to get out of my basement gym and into the great outdoors on a regular basis.

That said, not everyone thinks this way. In fact the majority of North Americans continue to turn inward, even though the outdoors is calling them. Something is certainly wrong with this picture, as over 60% of all North Americans are either overweight or obese and the thought of being active is considered by many as an unnatural act. When I was travelling through France last year, and trying my best to learn little bits of their language, I found out the French don’t even have a word for “fat people”. Or as Paul Rudnick commented in a mock-Parisian tone in The New Yorker last week. “If a woman is obese in France,” he wrote, “we simply call her American.”

Of course, North America’s national branding of size comes with a host of deadly degenerative diseases like: Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many different kinds of cancer and all the medical costs that come with them, and you and I pay dearly for those that are obese due to inactivity and poor eating habits.

Spring is also Tax Season in Canada and let me remind all my Canadian readers that our healthcare system isn’t free, as many argue when comparing it to the US system. If you pay $50,000 in taxes, you are paying approximately $22,500 in healthcare fees through your taxes, and this is on top of your provincial health insurance premiums (except for Alberta). And let’s not forget that North Americans also voluntarily spend $55 billion on diet related products or services, which inevitably fail.

The sad part is; the solution is sitting right outside the door….and it’s free! For the last couple million years of human evolution, we have been a species that chased things to eat, or ran away from being eaten, or did physical labor necessary to grow our food. As a result we ate what was only needed, we took in Vitamin D from the sun (the best know antioxidant) and exercise was built into our lives (just like the French Paradox I wrote about last year). There were no gym clubs to belong to, we were simply active. And in less than one generation’s time, hundreds of millions of people have completely decoupled themselves from Mother Nature and all her health benefits.

There’s a new term for the consequences of this divorce between human and habitat — Nature Deficit Disorder,coined by the writer Richard Louv in a 2005 book, “Last Child in the Woods.” It sounds trendy, a bit of sociological shorthand, but give the man and his point a good listen. Louv argued that certain behavioral problems are caused by the sharp decline in how little time children spend outdoors, a trend updated in the latest Recreation Participation Report. For example, the number of boys aged 6 to 12 who engage in some kind of regular outdoor activity continues to slide. I wrote a blog last year about my observation that children no longer play outside in the numbers we used to see. Growing up, I remember my mother kicking me out the door in the morning and telling me she didn’t want to see me again until noon for lunch and again for dinner, and finally again when the street lights came on.  And all mothers did this.  Today, Social Services would be called in for this kind of parent behavior.

You can blame technology all you want, but behind every computer screen-dominant upbringing is an overly cautious parent that thinks there’s a “bogey-man” around every corner waiting to snatch their children. Understandably, we want to protect our kids from “out there” variables. But the fact remains that these over protective parents are setting their children down a lifestyle path that ends up in a long slow death.

Kids who do play outside are less likely to get sick, be stressed, or become aggressive, and are more adaptable to life’s unpredictable turns, and Louv said, since his book came out, things have gotten worse. “The average young American now spends practically every minute — except for the time in school – using smartphones, computers, televisions or electronic devices.”

It's time to change this trend and make this year, the year that you and your family shut off the electronics and rediscover the great outdoors. Your body will thank you.

Enjoy the Ride….Rob

HEALTH & DIET MISCONCEPTIONS

It’s now the beginning of March and I'll bet a few of you declared a New Year’s resolution to achieve better health this year.  If studies are correct, 78% of you have given up on that crazy notion and reverted back to your old ways and are using inaccurate misconceptions to justify your change of heart.

I wrote a blog a while back about all the excuses I hear why people don’t exercise.  Well here are some popular misconceptions I hear when it comes to starting or sticking with healthy habits.  The following ideas might seem like reasonable assumptions, but the research suggests otherwise. Here are eight misconceptions that might be getting in the way of your healthy resolution.

1.      My doctor will tell me if I have a weight problem

If you think your doctor will alert you that your weight is putting your health at risk, think again.  You’re better off looking at yourself in the mirror for an accurate assessment. And be honest with what you see.  A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that less than half of those who were overweight and only two-thirds of those who were obese were told during the past year by their doctor that they were too heavy.  Doctors are trained to treat illness, not prevent it, so don’t expect them to tell you to lose the weight until you have a weight related crisis to deal with.  And by then it could be too late.

Furthermore, according to Dr. Christine Gerbstabt MD, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and author of “Doctor’s Detox Diet”, “weight is a touchy subject, especially for women, which might partially explain why female physicians are less likely to bring up weight with their patients. Plus, doctors sometimes figure that their patients have the resources to address weight issues on their own because there's so much diet and fitness information available to the public domain."  Which we also know is untrue.

2.      I'll eat less calories if I skip breakfast

Please drill this into your head: Skipping breakfast won't save you calories. "People have this notion that if they don't eat breakfast they'll save calories, or can cheat-eat later in the day, but it really doesn't work that way," says Gerbstadt. "Your body needs food in small increments throughout the day to stay powered, and research shows that people who eat 400 to 600 calories at breakfast are less likely to be overweight." Starting your day with a morning meal can help jump-start your metabolism by 10 percent and prevents you from overindulging on snacks and large meals later in the day because you're ravenous.

If you typically don't feel hungry in the morning, I suggest you skip dinner - just once or twice - to reset your appetite clock.  Many people say they're just not hungry when they wake up, but this is because they ate too much at dinner, or ate unhealthy snacks all through the evening up until bedtime. Another suggestion is to stop eating after 7:30pm in the evening, this way, you'll be sure to wake up hungry.

3.      Taking the stairs takes too long

Sorry, but taking the elevator at work isn't just lazy, it's inefficient, too.  Nothing frustrates me more than seeing a person take the elevator for one to five floors.  Worse still, if they're overweight and holding a can of Coke or a bag of chips.  I work with a guy that almost never takes an elevator, (only if he has to climb greater than 20 flights of stairs!).  And it should be no surprise that he’s in amazing shape.  A Canadian study calculated that when you factor in the time you spend waiting for an elevator to arrive; taking the stairs will actually save you about 15 minutes each workday. Researchers timed hospital workers making trips between one and six floors, and found that it took 2.8 times longer per floor to travel by elevator than by stairwell. So the next time you catch yourself complaining about being too busy to work out, taking the stairs is a healthy way to gain a few minutes to your day.

4.      I lost 10lbs, that’s good enough

Don’t settle with mediocrity.  Losing 10 pounds may feel good, but if you're overweight or obese, a small dip in weight is only the beginning and not the finish line.  Your goal weight should be very close to your graduating high school weight, (assuming you weren’t overweight when you graduated). 

I’m training a 50+ year old fellow right now who had a starting weight of around 240lbs and when asked what his goal weight should be, he was somewhat surprised when I suggested his high school weight, which was around 170lbs.  Six months after starting, his weight is a very healthy 179lb, with only 9lbs to go!  When we started, I said we would focus on healthy lifestyle choices (Diet, Exercise, Rest, Reduced Stress) and the weight will take care of itself.  The results below speak for themself:

While short-term studies have concluded that obese people can see significant improvements in their heart health after a 5 percent weight loss, a new 10-year Swedish study found that you most likely need to lose twice this much to yield meaningful results. Obese people who lost 4 percent of their body weight showed no significant improvements in terms of major health risk factors, like blood pressure, diabetes, or any of a number of weight related degenerative diseases. 

5.      I’ll just work off that extra Big Mac

You probably know a thing or two about calories; like you need to eat less of them and burn more of them if you want to see the number on the scale go down, but chances are you may underestimate the effort associated with "burning" those extra calories off your body.

According to the Mayo Clinic, one MacDonalds Big Mac (540 calories) requires over an hour of stationary rowing to burn it off.  A study in the American Journal of Public Health found that when teens read a sign that said it takes 50 minutes of jogging to burn off a bottle of Coca Cola, sales fell 50% compared with those teens who just read the number of calories, suggesting that people have a false sense about how many calories they consume versus the exercise required to burn off those extra unhealthy calories.  People I speak with have a false understanding how easy it is to consume calories and how hard it is to burn them off.  So, my advice is to always be mindful of what you eat, because unless you’re training for an Ironman, exercise alone won’t address your weight gain associated with the consumption of unhealthy high calorie foods. choices

6.      I'm in control of what I'm eating

Sure you're in control and you have no one to blame for eating that extra cookie, or slice of apple pie but yourself, but no matter how strong your willpower, you may be consuming more food without even knowing it. A number of studies show that there are sneaky, subliminal factors that affect how much we serve ourselves. Not only do people dish out and eat larger portions when using bigger spoons, plates and bowls, as I spoke about in my Portion Control blog post a few months ago, but they also tend to eat more when their food is a similar color to their plate, say researchers from Cornell University.  Mindless-eating expert Brian Wansink found that people were more likely to dish out a big helping of pasta Alfredo on a white plate than a red one. No wonder when I vacation in Tuscany the Itialians serve their pasta in those brightly colored bowls in reduced quantities. 

7.       It's too expensive to eat healthy

I often get the excuse from all income brackets that it’s too expensive to eat healthy.  Times may be lean, but eating healthy doesn't have to be a luxury.  A 2011 study in Health Affairs calculated that following the USDA's MyPlate guidelines would only cost an extra $380 a year in groceries, or $1.04 a day. Also, findings from George Washington University researchers show that obese women earned $5,826 less per year than their thinner counterparts - so maybe eating right is worth the investment, both physically and financially.

Eating healthy doesn't have to be exotic or gourmet.  To see just how much it would cost to shape up your eating habits, try tallying a week's worth of food and meal receipts – count everything and don’t cheat.  Include your $15 lunch to your $4 Starbucks cappuccino - and then compare it with 7-day's worth of well planned healthy groceries.  Studies say it’s usually less expensive compared with how much you're spending dining out and eating on the run.

8.       A little snack won't hurt

Well, that depends on your perception of what qualifies as a snack and how often you're noshing between meals.  Remember point #5 above, and it’s not just what you eat that counts, but when you eat it.  Investigating the snacking habits over the course of a year, researchers found that healthy midmorning snackers lost 7 percent of their body weight compared with those who ate their healthy snack later in the day, who lost 11 percent of their body weight. Why? Midmorning snackers usually didn't stop at just one snack and tended to eat another later in the day too, as opposed to afternoon snackers.

The problem with snacking is that people don't know what a snack is.  A snack is nutritious and filling; it bridges meals and is no more than 200 calories.  Snack packs, cookies and candies aren't snacks - they're treats. You need to know the difference and know that there is a limit.

Summary

Hopefully, those of you that started down the path of healthy choices back in January are still committed to those resolutions as the day you started.  If not, hopefully this little post will re-focus your commitment and get you back on track. 

Enjoy the Ride….Rob

Happy Valentine’s Day - Top tips for a Healthy Heart

It’s Valentine’s Day and I felt it was only appropriate to share my top 10 tips to for maintaining a healthy heart. There are many steps you can take to prevent heart disease and concentrating on key lifestyle areas such as eating, exercise, smoking and drinking, and considering other factors like diabetes and stress are all great places to start. Here are my 10 top tips for a Happy Valentine heart

1. Stop smoking. Quitting smoking is the single most important thing you can do to live longer. If you are a smoker, you are twice as likely to have a heart attack than a non-smoker. But from the moment you stop smoking, the risk of heart attack starts to reduce. With public smoking bans introduced just about everywhere, there has never been a better time to give up.
2. Cut down on salt. Too much salt can cause high blood pressure, which increases the risk of developing coronary heart disease. Avoid foods like chips, salted nuts, canned and packet soups and sauces, baked beans and canned vegetables, pork pies, pizzas and processed meals from a package. Many breakfast cereals and breads that appear healthy also contain high levels of salt, so keep your eye on these too.
3. Watch your diet. A healthy diet can help to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, and can also help increase the chances of survival after a heart attack. You should try to have a balanced diet, containing plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, oily fish and limit you consumption of starchy foods. Avoid foods like cookies, cakes, pastries and dairy products that are high in saturated fats and most importantly, all forms of sugar.
4. Monitor your alcohol. Too much alcohol can damage the heart muscle, increase blood pressure and also lead to weight gain. Binge drinking will increase your risk of having a heart attack, so you should aim to limit your intake to one (for women) and two units a day for men.
5. Get active. The heart is a muscle and it needs exercise to keep fit so that it can pump blood efficiently round your body with each heart beat. You should aim for a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day. If this seems too daunting, start off gently and build up gradually. Keeping fit not only benefits your physical health - it improves your mental health and wellbeing too.
6. Manage your weight. The number of people who are overweight in Canada and the United States is rising fast - already more than half of the adult population is overweight or obese. Carrying a lot of extra weight as fat can greatly affect your health and increases the risk of life-threatening conditions such as coronary heart disease and diabetes. If you are overweight or obese, start by making healthy changes to what you eat, and try to become more active.
7. Get your blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked by your Doctor. The higher your blood pressure, the shorter your life expectancy. People with high blood pressure run a higher risk of having a stroke or a heart attack. High levels of cholesterol in the blood - produced by the liver from saturated fats - can lead to fatty deposits in your coronary arteries that increase your risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and diseases that affect the circulation. You can help lower your cholesterol level by exercising and eating high-fiber foods such as porridge, beans, lentils, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
8. Learn to manage your stress levels. If you find things are getting you down, you may fail to eat properly, smoke and drink too much and this will increase your risk of a heart attack.
9. Make sure you can recognize the early signs of coronary heart disease. Tightness or discomfort in the chest, neck, arm or stomach which comes on when you exert yourself but goes away with rest may be the first sign of angina, which can lead to a heart attack if left untreated.
10. Know your Numbers. Monitor the top ten health indicators and take the necessary action if they trend negatively. Knowledge is Power, but it takes Action to flick the Switch.

Happy Valentines and Enjoy the Ride.....Rob

Our Work Style maybe KILLING us

You’ll want to stand up when you read this......

I came across this article in the Globe and Mail a little over a month ago that has been on my mind ever since, mainly because it’s describing me the way I work.  I thought I did everything possible to prevent myself from visiting our Healthcare system with some kind of degenerative disease.  I eat a very healthy diet, with the odd exception now and then and being a cycling fanatic, I have no problem getting enough exercise.  In fact, some might say I exercise too much.  I don’t know why I haven’t considered this as a health issue before, but my work style should be taken into consideration, given how many hours a day I put in behind the desk of my home office.

Like so many of us office workers who sit on our butts most of the day and hardly move as we plough through the endless emails, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and conference calls. One has to ask is this type of work style is conducive to a healthy outcome?  The article below, which I copied below for you, presents some early conclusions regarding people like me that work in jobs that require sitting behind a desk for the bulk of the day.  The early results are worth careful consideration.  Sitting for hours at end can increase our chances of developing several types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and Type II diabetes.  And that’s just the beginning, as I’m sure more research in this area will uncover even more facts worth careful consideration.  

Since reading this article, I’ve made a couple adjustments to how I approach my work day, given the majority of my work is at a desk in front of a lap top computer.  Given that I work at home and may have a little more space and flexibility than those of you that work in an office, you may have to come up with your own plan. 

Here are the two things I’ve started doing since reading these studies:

• I purchased a Bluetooth wireless earpiece for my cell phone so I can walk freely around my house when I’m on a conference call.  If I don’t have to be in front of my laptop, I walk, and if I need my laptop, I stand whenever I’m on the phone.  This is great, because many calls last for at least an hour. 
• At the top and bottom of every hour, I walk up and down my stairs a few times, just to raise my heart rate and get the blood flowing throughout my body.  Not only does this address the concerns raised in the findings below, I find the movement increases my energy level and alertness.

How we live our lives is always changing and we should be mindful of health consequence brought on by these changes. I know some people will read this post and say, “Enough is enough; will the list of things that are bad for us ever end?”  But the good thing about new research is we uncover important information that may make a difference in the quality of our lives.  If getting off my butt a couple times an hour will make a positive difference to my long term health; well the decision is pretty simple.

Enjoy the Ride.... Rob

Is Your Office Chair Killing You?

Dave Mcginn, Dec. 05, 2011

You’re going to want to stand up for this. Researchers of sedentary behaviour, a burgeoning field with Canadians at its forefront, are beginning to amass a large body of evidence with one unsettling conclusion: Sitting down is killing us.

For decades, hundreds if not thousands of studies have examined the relationship between our activity levels and our health. Only recently have researchers turned their attention to the consequences of sitting at a desk all day and lying on the couch all evening.

 “We’re talking extensively and producing public health messages about what we don’t do. And we don’t talk at all about what we do do: We don’t move very much, but we do sit idle,” says Dr. Mark Tremblay, director of healthy active living and obesity research at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute.

The average person now spends 9.3 hours a day sitting. People who sit for six or more hours per day are 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years compared to someone who sits less than three hours a day, even if they exercise. Obese people sit 2½ hours more each day than people of normal weight, according to data compiled by Medical Billing and Coding, a U.S.-based organization.

As recently as 2006, there wasn’t much data about this – that’s when a group of Canadian scientists published a commentary calling for research on sedentary behaviour in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. “Research into sedentary behaviour is at an early stage,” they wrote. “We actually know very little about the nature of sedentary behaviour, its dimensions, determinants and relationships to important health outcomes.”

This year marked a huge turning point in the field. Research may still be at an early stage, but scientific interest has reached unprecedented levels. In February, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology launched its sedentary behaviour guidelines for children and youth, the first systematic evidence-based sedentary behaviour guidelines in the world. The August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine was dedicated to the theme of sedentary behaviour. The Journal of Applied Physiology, followed suit in October, with a theme issue of its own, highlighting the physiology of sedentary behaviour and physical inactivity. And in September, Dr. Tremblay and his team launched the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network, a first of its kind that has so far connected more than 100 researchers from around the world.

“We realized that there’s this big growing field of research, but we aren’t actually linked by one organization,” says Travis Saunders, one of Dr. Tremblay’s colleagues who helped establish the network. “So many labs are getting into this area that it’s hard to keep track of who’s doing what.”

Studies of sedentary behaviour suggest that sitting for extended periods of time increase a person’s chances of developing a wide range of illnesses and diseases, including several types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and Type II diabetes.

“It’s definitely an emerging area,” especially in cancer research, says Dr. Christine Friedenreich, senior epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services.

“There have only been 10 studies that have been published on sedentary behaviour and cancer risk, and most of them have only been published in the last one to two years,” she says. Meanwhile there have been more than 200 studies examining the link between physical activity and cancer, most of them published over the last two decades.

In a recently published study, Dr. Friedenreich found that high levels of physical activity reduced the risk of breast and colon cancers by up to 30 per cent, reduced the risk of prostate cancer about 10 to 20 per cent, and reduced the risk of endometrial cancer between 30 and 35 per cent.

The most arguably disquieting results of her study? People who jog for half an hour in the morning and then sit at a desk all day may be no better off than those who don’t go running, even if they are technically meeting the requirements of Canada’s physical activity guidelines, which recommend adults be active for at least 2½ hours a week.

“The big public health message is that people have been thinking they reduce their risk of cancer by doing something like 30 minutes a day of some sort of moderate to vigorous exercise, but that’s not in itself necessarily going to be sufficient,” Dr. Friedenreich says. “We haven’t quite done the research yet to figure out exactly how much you do need to break up your time.”

Such a study is currently being conducted by Australian researchers, one of many studies of sedentary behaviour needed to determine just how dangerous inactivity is to our health. For instance, while Canada was the first country in the world to launch sedentary behaviour guidelines for children, no such guidelines exist for adults, Dr. Tremblay says.

“Over the next 25 years you’ll see a ballooning of this type of research,” he says.

Whatever that research might discover, there is already enough evidence to draw a clear conclusion, says Frank Booth, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri. “It’s a lifestyle factor that’s like a bomb on health.”

Keep the Streak Alive - New Year's Resolution

The NEW YEAR is almost upon us and every year people make all kinds of resolutions.  Can you guess what is the number one resolution is for 2012?  If you guessed something to do with getting fit, losing weight, eating a healthier diet, you’re right.  I made such a resolution in 1979 when L was out of shape and overweight.  I made that resolution and have kept it alive by making my health a priority evry day since then.  And as a token measure of this commitment, I have worked out every Christmas and New Years day for the past 32 years.  This symbol of commitment to my health is as important as putting up the Christmas tree.

If I told you a new pill that could be found on the drugstore shelf that promises to strengthen your heart, manage your weight and boost your spirits and self confidence, you would probably dismiss my suggestion as "snake oil".   But exercise (even a brisk walk) does all this and more!  Walking is simple, and doesn't cost a cent and if you haven't been active for a while, it's a gentle low-impact exercise to ease you into a higher level of fitness and health.

 

With every passing year of your life, you have more to gain from being physically active and paying close attention to what goes in your mouth.  As age-related risks of chronic degenerative disease increase, regular exercise and a healthy diet will either slow or reverse that trend.  In fact, you're even more likely to notice the benefits of regular exercise and healthy food choices if you already have chronic health conditions.

Will you ever be fit again, and stay that was as long as you live? The answer is NO, unless you make a resolution to get fit and turn it into a habit .  So the issue isn’t whether you need one more article describing all the benefits of exercise and diet, no, the post is how does one make heathy life choices automatic HABITS. 

How long does it take a HABIT to become AUTOMATIC?

Say you want to create a new lifestyle habit, like regular exercise, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires Herculean self control to become a habit?

Clearly it’s going to depend on the type of habit you’re trying to form and how determined you are in pursuing your goal.  Ask Mr. Google and you’ll get a figure of somewhere between 21 and 28 days. In fact there’s no solid evidence for this number.  The 21 day habit myth came from a book published in 1960 by plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz when he noticed that amputees took, on average, 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb and he argued that people take 21 days to adjust to any major life changes.

According to Clinical Psychologist Dr. Peter H Brown, two significant factors influence the time it takes a behavior to become an automatic habit, 1) how bad do you want it, and 2) how life changing is the behavior.  Given these two variables the average time to form a habit is 66 days and can swing from as low as 18 days to as high as 254 days.  

Back in 1979 when I made my resolution and started running again, I hated every step at the beginning, but it only took a couple months to make running an automatic daily habit and although I switched to triathlons and cycling since then, exercise has always been a life priority that’s as automatic as breathing.  

Make your HABIT HAPPEN

I think I’ve heard just about every excuse why people don’t exercise and make their personal health a high priority over the years. Here are the top 10:

1. I’m too old to exercise, besides health is for the young, not the old
2. I’m too fat and embarrassed the way I look to exercise
3. I’ve tried to exercise in the past and it’s just something I’m not good at
4. I can’t afford to exercise as gym memberships are far too expensive for my budget
5. I hate exercising, it’s so boring
6. I have the genetics that prevent me from losing weight, so why bother exercising
7. I can’t exercise because there’s no gym near my house
8. I can’t exercise because I don’t know how to start
9. I can’t exercise because I don’t own any fitness
10. I can't exercise because I'm too tired

 
“If you don’t have time to exercise today, you'll have lots of time to be sick in the future”  Dr. Kenneth Cooper

By far, the number one excuse I hear more than all the other excuses combined is, “I’m too busy and don’t have time to exercise.”  Well, if this excuse were true, why are the gym’s, roads and pathway’s full of people that CAN make time in there schedules.  People that exercise have schedules that are just as busy as people that don’t.  So the real reason why people can’t find time to exercise is that their personal health and the health of their families isn't a priority.

How do you form a good Habit

So let’s take a look at how you can make exercise or other positive life choices automatic habits that are hard to break.

1. You need to pick a habit or goal that’s realistic.  Deciding to run for 2 hours a day, for 3 months straight is a goal that will likely fail and lead to injury.  Set yourself up for success and pick a habit or goal that you can accomplish.   A goal like walking or going to the gym 5 days a week for the next 8 weeks is a good start.   
2. Pick an activity you enjoy.  I personally love cycling and my habit is so entrenched in my life that I’ve become a master of fitting a workout into my day regardless of how busy I am.  Daily exercise for me is my normal state and an unscheduled day off is an uncomfortable anomaly. 
3. Once you’ve selected an activity you love to do every day and have set your goal, ask yourself WHY this goal is so important.  If you can’t come up with a solid reason or reasons to support your goal, success will be harder to achieve.  I coached my wife for a entire year in preparation to participate in a bike ride from Calgary Alberta to Austin Texas in support of Cancer Survivors.  Having big PURPOSE will provide the BIG motivation you need to succeed.

So here are some steps to set yourself up for success:

• Write down your habit with specifics, like your goal, days per week you will exercise, time of the day, etc.  The more specific you are the better chance of meeting your objective
• Tell everyone you know that you’re making a commitment to your health by doing (fill in your goal).  This will help you be more accountable for a positive outcome. And is the world of Social Networks, leverage Facebook or Twiter and tell the world.  It will be more difficult to quit your resolution after announcing to so many people.
• If you know you’ll require help sticking to your plan, hire a personal trainer for 3 to 4 months, or sign up for a registered fitness class so you have a schedule and routine that becomes habit forming.  And don’t give the cost a second thought, we’re talking about your health and there is nothing more important.  Just ask someone that has a degenerative disease like cancer what they would pay for the health you currently take for granted.
• Have your spouse join you, or at least encourage you in your new commitment to health. 

Remember that as with any new adventure in life, there will be ups and downs.  You really need to complete at least 66+ consecutive days of scheduled exercise of varying work loads of hard and easy days.  And if you should miss a day here and there, don’t worry, research shows that missing the odd day has little affect on the goal becoming an automatic habit.  

If there are other healthy lifestyle goals that require addressing, like your diet, don’t try to change everything at once.  Focus on tackling one goal at a time.  After you’re in your healthy exercise routine, than tackle your diet and other lifestyle goals.

You health should be your highest life priority.  As my mother told me when she was dying of Leukemia, "If you don't have your health, you have nothing."  As Christmas and New Year celebrations are right around the corner, why not make tomorrow the first day of the rest of your life, a healthy life.  No more excuses, start making it happen. 

Happy Holidays and Enjoy the Ride .... Rob

 

Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine

My step brother Gerry Patterson forwarded me this TED video and it reminded me of this famous quote: “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” -- Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.)

Hippocrates made this statement over 24 centuries ago and if there was ever a case that supports this philosophy, this is it.

Dr. Terry Wahls, was diagnosed with Progressive Multiple Sclerosis in 2003 and after all the leading scientific efforts failed her, she took matters into her own hands.   After understanding the foods that are necessary for optimal brain health, she developed a diet based on these findings, and went from being restricted to a motorized wheel chair to the freedom of a self propelled bicycle, and is here to tell her story of this amazing recovery through proper nutrition.  Furthermore, she is here to tell us all her story, so we can take preventative action and avoid her personal struggle.

While modern medicine spends billions of our dollars researching and developing drugs and pushing them onto the public through our health providers, or performing unnecessary and ineffective medical procedures as we accept lifestyles that do nothing more than reduce the quality or destroy our lives.  I think we deserve more for the money we pay into a healthcare system that basically focuses on illness treatment and does little to prevent these very illnesses from ever occurring through healthy diets and regular exercise.

What we find through Dr. Wahls' story is everything she discovers has been preached for years.  We know that eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, leafy greens and lean protein is good for us.  What she's done by saving her own life, is back this understanding up with clinical trials and the rigor of scientific method.  For many, her recovery will seem like a miracle, but actually, it's the science behind "Mother Nature" that's the real story.

 

Enjoy the Ride....Rob

 

It’s Only a Number

I was reading an article in today’s Globe and Mail that stated 81% of Canadians over the age of 65 suffer at least one Chronic Health condition.  I also read another recent article in a health publication stating that “Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s.” The author was referring to the fact that the prevalence of Alzheimer’s doubles every five years in people over 65.

Equating an age to certain health conditions is a big mistake in my opinion, especially when so many “Baby Boomers” are approaching retirement age.  And we see it all the time.  Have you’ve ever been in a room dominated by senior citizens?  The conversation enviably ends up in a discussion about their chronic illness(s) and all the medication they have to take.  And almost all equate the fact that they have a degenerative disease to their age and not a life time of self abuse.  And it’s not just the average senior citizen that thinks this way.  Many doctors and medical clinicians also equate age with various degenerative diseases. “Age” is widely claimed to be the “biggest risk factor” for osteoporosis, macular degeneration, stroke, heart disease, diabetes and many forms of cancer.  

The problem with equating the risk of these diseases with a meaningless number – your age – is that it allows you to abdicate responsibility and takes your focus off the true root causes of disease and puts it on something that you can do nothing about.  Having said that, I'm not naive to think that you can live forever just because you eat well and exercise.  Even the healthiest people eventually die of something.  That's why I want to do everything possible to increase the quality of my life, for as long as possible by making good lifestyle choices when I'm young. 

I was actually told a couple months ago that I should be careful racing my bike in a 170km road race this past summer, because “men of my age” have a greater risk of suffering heart attacks.  Even telling him after the race that I tied for second place overall with guys 2/3's my age and made health and fitness a lifelong priority, he still stressed that I was at risk of a heart disease because I’m 55 years old.  He was convinced that heart disease is something that happens to people of a certain age, regardless of their lifestyle, and only those with the great genetics will dodge the degenerative disease bullet.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The degenerative diseases that decrease the quality of one's life, or shorten it, have little to do with our chronological “age.” as a cause.  Rather, they are the long-term ramifications of unhealthy choices that turned into lifelong habits! These diseases do not magically appear at a certain age. They are generally the end-result of poor nutrition, stress, lack of exercise and free radical exposure to toxic overload over a long period of time,

The longer you expose yourself to these risk factors, the greater chance they will manifest into a serious degenerative disease, or diseases.  Given most North Americans haven't made health a priority in their life, it's only logical that they would draw the conclusion that age is directly related to certain degenerative diseases, because the statistics show it to be true.  Unfortunately, the statistics only provide the observation, not the root cause.  

Your focus should not be on your age, but removing the causes of these illnesses and diseases within your lifestyle – no matter what magic number you turned on our last birthday.

Enjoy the Ride …. Rob