What is it like in there?

When talking to people about health and fitness I enjoy watching the facial expressions. It is far more interesting to focus on what the body and face are saying instead of listening to the words. Sometimes words lie, even when the person doesn’t intend to. You can get so much more when you focus on the whole picture. Generally my favourite is the “Oh yeah” coupled with the raised eye brows, a very good indicator that what I have suggested is either to hard or they simply don’t care. I frequently get this reaction when talking about food, more specifically a fridge audit.

Now for those of you who have already participated in a fridge audit you already know what a great tool it can be. But to the many on the path to improved health and fitness it seems like it is unnecessary. For me the easiest way to explain it is if you were to get a home loan from the bank they will want to look at your finances before they approve it. The fridge is no different, if you are trying to get an idea of what a person is putting in their body take a look in their fridge. I was once asked by a patient “You want me to look in my fridge what’s yours look like?” Well I had a picture on my phone to show her. After looking at the picture she was quick to reply “You like rabbit food haha” she was joking and followed up with “You certainly practice what you preach”. I suppose she was right I do practice what I preach and I had proof to boot. That patient then went home and had a good look in her fridge. Now I am hoping some of you just got up and went and checked your fridge, if not please do.

So now let me tell you what is it you want and don’t want to find? It is simple. You want to find vibrant colours and plenty of variety. Just like a plate of food at meal time the majority should be vibrant vegetables, a small portion of meat and some complex carbs. Off course you would also like to find some form of yogurt or probiotic food and other dairies. Lean meats preferably grass fed or wild oily fish really as close to nature as you can get. What you don’t want to find is too many refined sugary drinks, pre-packaged meals and overly manufactured foods. The audit is simple and allows plenty of scope to choose foods that you may or may not be tolerant to.

So for those of you have mastered their exercise programs but are still struggling with weight loss or improved performance maybe the fridge audit is the way to go. And if you are feeling daring I would suggest a pantry and freezer audit as well. What is in your fridge? What cool things do you have in their? (no pun intended but it worked out well).

Sit on it.

                Sit on it or maybe don’t. The media has been lately talking up “new” research showing that sitting is the new smoking. Personally I do not like smoking and that is for so many reasons. Like most people however I don’t mind a good sit. So as a result I try to stay involved in the research stating sitting too much is bad for us. Now I have written an article about squatting or as some call it the paleo chair in the past. Right now as I write this article I am standing (curveball not squatting) instead of sitting in a chair. In Kids will be kids I wrote about the issue of opportunity for movement. It is important to remember whilst standing is not the opposite of sitting, movement is. I should also add that standing is another alternative to sitting in a chair.

                So why am I writing this? Well I usually take Wednesday off mid-week from training and sure I might do some mobility/recovery stuff but it is mainly to give my body a break from the previous sessions. So I woke up this Wednesday tight and sore especially in my lower back, not injured but fatigued. It was understandable since I spent a great deal of Tuesday sitting and working on various things. I am still working on acquiring a standing desk. I find sitting is a habit hard to break for most people. Whether it is working at a desk or spending time with the family a lot of us spent most of our days sitting.  This made me think about sitting in depth, recently I read that Kelly Starret said people that sit a lot should every 15 minutes or so reset how they sit. Whilst in theory I agree with it, I think if someone like me who loves to move or is a natural fidgeter struggles to undertake such an act every 15 minutes how on earth will the average office worker achieve it day in day out. Now I am sure there’s an app out there for that and if not, patent pending. 

By now some of you read this and said oh why can’t you fix your sitting technique and a plethora of other things. Well simply put I’m not perfect, though I am going to try to make it more of a priority. So what are the other solutions, standing desks are one and so are apps but is there a bigger fix, maybe office overhaul as it were. Now this is probably where much groovier and smarter people take over from me and I am sure there is research surrounding changing our environment to effect the way we do things, sitting being just one. Maybe it is time we have a societal shift. We are frequently looking at the past and taking things used or techniques and updating them to today’s world. Maybe we should have a room with no furniture in it (lounge room, just a suggestion) that would make us get on the ground if we want to sit, there are a lot of options we could utilise.  Can you of you think of ways we could get around sitting in chairs? 

               

You don`t have time for you?

Currently I am preparing to open my own practice for Exercise Physiology and allied health. Off course this has taken me a lot of time as I am undertaking a small business course while  working. I am hoping to have a bricks and mortar practice open soon but I also hope to do some online programming. If anyone out there is interested please contact me. Now this brings me to my next point which is health and fitness goals are similar to business goals.

I know a lot of you out there a skeptical but the one thing connecting both business and our health goals is time. Society as a whole is becoming more time poor each and every day. We are all struggling with  work long hours, having families and sometimes it seems hard just to keep our heads above the preverbal water.  Which leads me to my next point, by far the biggest excuse I hear from people is, “I just don`t have the time to exercise”. This is often followed up with,” I don’t have time to eat healthy I just grab whatever”. Sometimes in life this can be true. I am sure you all expected me to get on my high horse but life can get in the way of our goals. What I am truly worried about is do people really know what is taking up their time? 

             Even while being time poor there a many options for those trying to improve health. The first option is as simple as keeping a food dairy. Often when people ask me about food dairies I ask “do you check your bank account?” Almost always  yes is the answer. So off course then I ask why don’t you track your food? This may lead to various excuses many which fall into apathy and lack of knowledge. For me it is simple, if you track your bank account why don`t you track your food. Aren’t both these aspects equally important to you? For well and truly over a year now I have been keeping a food diary. With all the advances in technology it has become a lot easier than most people think. If you have enough time to  watch TV at  night then you have enough time to do this. 

And to those few who say I don’t even have a few minutes each day to keep a food dairy, I say start a time dairy. Built of the same premise as a food dairy a time dairy can help expose the everyday activities that is sucking up your time and stopping you from reaching your goals. TV is just one example of a time thief you may discover if you keep a time diary. I am interested to know what things come up for you. You may even find you have great time usage, or that certain things can be increased. Like in business “if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it”. Our time is precious if we can achieve our goals and dreams by using our time better shouldn’t we? Post in the comments below your biggest time thief.

The doping crystal ball: A sporting performance future.

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with someone while we were doing some weightlifting. I was snatching that day and somehow we had come to the topic of drugs in sport. The person I was lifting with is an ironman and in the past I have worked with him to improve his nutrition and overall performance. As you may be aware performance enhancing substances are often linked with weightlifting and also since the outing of Lance (you know who I am talking about) the public is becoming aware of drugs in endurance based events. To be frank I don`t know of many sports where someone hasn`t tried something to get an advantage, golfers have had laser procedures to improve vision after all. During this conversation I told this person about the possible future of performance enhancement in sports and he seemed shocked. I told him I thought the future in performance enhancement is gene doping and about what potential things gene therapy could do. I thought it was worth sharing this information with all of you as well.

So first off what is gene doping? Gene doping is defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency as "the non-therapeutic use of cells, genes, genetic elements, or of the modulation of gene expression, having the capacity to improve athletic performance". Seems simple right? We also have to ask ourselves is it ethical and is it safe. I`ll leave these questions up to you to answer for yourself. 

So how do we detect and stop gene doping? Well I want to be clear about this the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and other agencies are trying to get ahead of the game here. It is well known that they had to play catch up with steroids and some other performance enhancing substances. Often I have heard through the sport grapevine that detecting for substances is done via changes in blood and urine and even now some drugs are hard to detect with current methods. Gene doping is introduced differently than these other enhancing methods.  Gene doping can be done in a number of ways these include direct injection of DNA into the muscle, insertion of genetically modified cells or utilising a virus to introduce the information. Right now you may be thinking that it sounds really far out. Gene therapy was created to help those with life threatening disease and I believe the future of medicine lies in stems cells and gene therapy. The problem exists for sporting agencies because these genes are from our genetic codes. In other words the changes that would appear seem like natural mutations in the body. For testing to be successful agencies will have to take a long term approach. Reference values may have to be established from the time an athlete starts competing. The reference values would have to take a far more comprehensive range of values and see if overall homeostasis is disturbed or altered in some shape or form.  That would include even lower levels of competition to track changes over time. This type of testing would also require tissue samples to test DNA which may have to be site specific.

It has been outlined in a basic fashion what gene doping is and how it can be administered, but how could it actually be used? Well gene doping started out in medicine to help save lives. The doping method is the same in both instances with only the outcome being different. The difference being that therapy is used for those that are very sick e.g. someone with severe anaemia requires more haemoglobin or red blood cells (RBC`s) to get oxygen around the body. In comparison a healthy athlete doesn`t require further RBC so when they dope they gain benefits which equates to an advantage i.e. getting extra capacity to carry more oxygen to muscles. There are drugs already in existence that can do something similar but they can easily be detected through testing. Another case that was brought to my attention was those born without the myostatin gene or receptors. Myostatin helps to regulate muscle growth. This happens in a number of species including humans resulting in large and powerful muscles. This is a natural mutation but since gene therapy came along for muscular dystrophy, people have turned their attention to using this for improving sporting performance.  Gene doping has even been hypothesised to be used in concert with these other changes to increase endorphins of the doping athlete to further the effects of the enhanced “abilities”.

Sounds great doesn`t it? How great would it be too be able to run all day and then lift a car and look like the Hulk. Well I want you to think about this saying  “there is no such thing as a free biological lunch” (I am not sure who said that version and if you do please tell me). Those that dope already have to weigh up the risk reward equation. Those that want to increase erythropoietin may be faced with thickening blood that may clot leading to a number of adverse outcomes. It may even come to a point that the heart may stop due to excess load. Athletes don`t seem to stop and think “what are some bigger muscle going to do to me?” There are repercussions for all doping, connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments face extra strain which may lead to sprains, strains and tearing of tendon insertions from the bone. There is also an increased metabolic cost the body having so much muscle.  These are by no means an extensive list but provide food for thought. The ultimate risk is not knowing what could happen to the rest of the body. Will those new genes affect other genes leading to a more complex adverse outcome? No one really knows the long term effects because all of this is relatively new. To me it seems crazy to even think of doing anything like this but in saying that I have always been against drugs in sport. 

So what does the future look like? Will there be hulking twelve year olds breaking weightlifting records or humans making ultra-marathons look like a walk on the beach? I can`t say. What I can say is the future is here and now. I am sure this is not the last of the discussion on gene doping and this will begin to be seen more in the public eye. Who knows maybe the future of sports will be dominated by the genetically doped and manufactured battling it out for our attention and money.  What do you think the future will look like? Post comments.

References:

                     Filipp, F. (2007). Is science killing sport? Gene therapy and its possible abuse in doping.                                             NEMBO reports, 8(5), 433.

             Scherling, P. (2001, November). Gene doping, ISM. In UCL Conference on Genes in     Sport.

          Unal, M., & Unal, D. O. (2004). Gene doping in sports. Sports Medicine, 34(6), 357-362.