Marathons Lead To Heart Impairment

Happy holidays, faithful readers!

Running over 26 miles is viewed as one of the great physical challenges in endurance competition. Health science repeatedly shows us that when it comes to athletic competition, a healthy assessment of risks vs benefits is vital in securing safety.

In a recent study from HealthDay News (October 25, 2010), 20 recreational runners with a mean age of 45 underwent MRIs of their hearts before, immediately after, and three months after running in a marathon. Researchers compared the information found to baseline tests of cardio-respiratory fitness and blood chemistry.

The most disheartening finding was impairment in just over half of the muscle in the left ventricle during the race. However, because overall heart function did not decline as a result, it is believed that the non-impaired section of the left ventricle picked up the slack.  The specific types of impairments found were not noted.

The most promising finding was that the more well trained the runner was, the least impaired his/her heart became. It was found that having an aerobic capacity, or VO2max, of 50 ml/kg/min (roughly 14 METs) or higher was best for preventing this left ventricle impairment.

Why does this happen?  According to an interview with the authors, it is speculated that acute inflammation and dehydration were the cause of these problems.  It is important to note that in all 20 participants, heart muscle function returned to normal by the follow-up scan at the three month mark.  (The exact recovery rates are not known.)  While this does not negate the severity of the health risks associated with left ventricle impairement, it is helpful to see that these risks were relatively short-lived in this study.

If you are considering running a marathon, half marathon, or any other race, your Perfect Personal Trainer will gladly implement an appropriate, progressive, and personalized regimen to go about minimizing risks to your heart or other muscles, while improving your run's time and maximizing your enjoyment of the competition!

Top 5 Ways to Stay Slim at Thanksgiving

We've all made the comments and jokes about gaining fat as a result of the Thanksgiving holiday.  As our focus shifts to family plans and relaxation, we tend to sacrifice our fitness focus, resulting in body fat gains and a reduced feeling of confidence, not to mention an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

So, here they are -- the top five methods of preventing body fat gains while still enjoying your Thanksgiving holiday.  Enjoy!

#1 - Perform just five additional minutes of aerobic exercise every other day, from now through Thanksgiving.  If you start today, then by Thanksgiving, you'll have burned roughly 500-800 more calories than usual, making more room for some indulgence at Thanksgiving.
#2 - Consume at least ten 8-ounce glasses of water each day, especially during the few days prior to Thanksgiving.  This will help to reduce your appetite, so you'll feel content with fewer calories.
#3 - Go skinless:  Removing the skin from your turkey will help you cut down on additional calories and fat, without reducing the pleasure of eating.
#4 - Enjoy and savor every bite.  This has a physiological effect on your body that will actually make you feel more "full" with less food and drink.  Chew slowly, and enjoy your food.
#5 - Make a decision now to limit yourself to one small dessert selection and one glass of alcohol.  Enjoy them while they last, but then shift your mental focus to the company of your family and friends, consuming more water if you need something to curb your appetite.

Please post any questions below, or call us at (877)698-3648.  Perfect Personal Trainers are eager to help!

Body Fat to Joint Disease -- A Slippery Slope

Joint disease is a common issue for Americans.  But what we often think of as a common sign of aging or short-term injury is, more commonly that you might think, heavy wear-and-tear on a joint that is related to excess body fat.  Yes, excess body fat can weigh heavily upon your knees, hips, and ankles, resulting in a loss of structural integrity of these joints.

Lose just a few pounds and you'll take some strain off your hips, knees, neck, and back.  Extra pounds add to the load placed on your joints, increasing the risk of cartilage breakdown.  People with excess body fat may also have higher levels of substances that cause inflammation.  The good news is that even a little weight loss can help:  Every pound that you lose takes roughly four pounds of pressure off of your knees and other lower body extremities.

In short, if you're overweight, then don't put off your fat loss efforts!  Not only are your risks for cardiovascular diseases high, but your joints are struggling each day to resist the extra pressures that they aren't built for.  For a free consultation with a Perfect Personal Trainer, simply call (877)698-3648 or click here:  http://perfectpersonaltraining.com/signup.php

Thanks for reading!

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The Fad Diet Solution

Hello, readers!

With another holiday weekend now behind us, we have to ask:  Did you make poor food selections?  And, more importantly, did you overconsume calories?

It's times like these that people start considering any of the number of fad diets out there...

Low carb, high carb, low fat, no fat, cookie diet, pure liquid, and one of the recent worst -- the “egg, vinegar, and water diet” -- all have some potential for weight loss over a moderate amount of time, but with unhealthy physiological risks.  It is important to remember that weight loss shouldn't carry risky side effects.  Low carb diets, for example, are especially dangerous because the dieter is cutting out the body’s main energy source.  As another example, low fat diets are dangerous because they minimize the body's ability to absorb and utilize vitamins.  Trading one health problem for another is no way to get things done. And, if you are doing some unhealthy for your body, the symptoms won't be obvious.  While you may feel just fine during a fad diet, there may be some dangerous underlying issues that you are not aware of.
So, before considering one of these fad diets at any point in the future, we suggest that you rely on tried-and-true science, using the labels' serving sizes as helpful quantity guides. Below is a list of foods and their respective serving sizes from The American Heart Association and the government's food pyrimid.  These suggestions are recommended for their cardiovascular health benefits as well as their ability to help maintain adequate body fat.  Not only will you be on the road to heart attack prevention, but these will help you to maintain energy levels while minimizing your body fat!  Have a look and compare to your current diet diary...

Below are the recommended daily number of servings for a 150-180 lb person:

Vegetable Servings Per Day:  3-7 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• ½ cup of cooked vegetable
• ½ cup raw vegetable
• 6 ounces or ¾ cup of vegetable juice

Fruit Servings Per Day:  2-3 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 medium fruit (apple, orange, banana)
• ¼ cup of dried fruit (raisins, prunes, etc.)
• 6 ounces or ¾ cup of fruit juice
• ½ cup canned, frozen, or cooked fruit
• ½ cup raw fruit

Whole Grain Servings Per Day:  6-11 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 slice of bread
• About 1 cup of ready-to-eat cereal flakes
• ½ cup of cooked cereal, rice or pasta

Dairy Servings Per Day:  3 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• 1 cup of milk or yogurt
• 1-½ ounces of natural cheese (cheddar)
• 2 ounces of processed cheese (such as American)

Legumes Per Day:  4-5 Servings
Examples of a serving:

• ½ cup of cooked, dry beans
• ½ cup of tofu or 1 ½ -ounce soy burger
• 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
• 1/3 cup of nuts

These are important considerations when meal planning.  As you can see, a "serving" is pre-determined, not necessarily the amount you can comfortably have in a sitting. 

We, at Perfect Personal Training, hope this helps as you plan your meals each day!  For more nutritional information, please comment below or send an email to info@perfectpersonaltraining.com.  Our staff of highly trained exercise specialists and nutritionists are always eager to help with your personalized lifestyle change.


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Vitamin C -- How Much Is Too Much?

More important news that can change your life!

Finding ideals in vitamin quantity can be extremely confusing - especially since there is so much conflicting information out there!

The problem doesn't get any easier when it comes to vitamin C, a major player when it comes to preventing something as simple as the common cold or as serious as terminal cancer:  Conflicting viewpoints in the media make decision-making difficult, and often leads to frustration.  However, Perfect Personal Training is always seeking answers to questions such as these, with long and happy lives in mind.  Below, we explore the varying concerns and research...

The RDA for vitamin C is incredibly low by comparison to other scientific recommendations:  Only 65-125mg per day for adults, dependent upon gender and smoking habits.  Much research indicates that these numbers are far too low to obtain and maintain optimal physical health, and that these values are based on preventing "deficiency diseases" (such as scurvy) as opposed to chronic diseases like cardiovascular illnesses or diabetes.  Much of the information regarding vitamin C and the prevention of chronic disease is based on prospective studies, in which vitamin C intake is assessed in large numbers of people who are followed over time to determine whether they develop specific chronic diseases.

Dr. Linus Pauling is a twice-awarded Nobel Prize winner with tremendous research relating to both supplementary and dietary vitamin C intake.  A few of his discoveries are outlined below:

- Vitamin C is required for the synthesis of collagen, an important structural component of blood vessels, tendons, ligaments, and bone.

- Vitamin C plays a large role in the synthesis of norepinephrine, which is critical to brain function and affects mood.

- Gout is a condition brought on by high levels of uric acid in the blood.  Vitamin C supplementation (500 mg/day) for two months has been shown to lower serum concentrations of uric acid.

- Increasing vitamin C levels can increase the production and function of white blood cells, improving the immune system and helping to attack foreign bacteria and viruses. 

- Very high doses of vitamin C (up to 10 grams daily) are often used to battle cancer with some success, especially if taken intravenously.

- Oranges, grapefruit, and broccoli are all healthy foods that contain strong levels of vitamin C.  It is believed that vitamin C from foods such as these is more effective than in capsules, pills, or other forms of supplementation.

- The Linus Pauling Institute recommends a vitamin C intake of at least 400 mg daily—the amount that has been found to fully saturate plasma and circulating cells with vitamin C in young, healthy nonsmokers.  Smokers and those at risk for chronic diseases may benefit from higher amounts.

- A feeling of queeziness may be caused by overintake of vitamin C.  An appropriate daily amount, over time, often serves as a stool-softener without aches or discomfort in the abdominal area.

Thanks for reading!  We at Perfect Personal Training hope that you can use this information to better decide what amount of vitamin C is right for you and your family.  Questions or comments?  Please post below!

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Is BMI Obsolete?

Hello, faithful readers!

This may be our most important post of the last year -- especially for those of you with an unhealthy body composition.  We encourage you to read this posting and respond with questions or comments, as the information below may help revolutionize the medical approach to weight management.

Since PPT's inception, we've declared that the Body Mass Index (BMI) is an inaccurate method of evaluating one's risk for fat-related disease.  Our reasoning?  BMI does not determine any difference between a person's fat weight and lean tissue.  This means that if you were to gain ten pounds of hard-earned muscle while losing ten pounds of excess fat, your BMI would stay the exact same, and your doctor would likely tell you that your exercise efforts were not paying off in terms of fat loss.  Imagine that... You lose fat, gain muscle, and then hear that your BMI hasn't improved.  You'd be making tremendous progress, but you'd be likely to become discouraged from a lack of understanding.  Unlike our methods of body composition assessment (also called body fat percentage assessment), The BMI is a simple system that looks at fat, bone, water and muscle as all falling into one category:  weight.

The medical community has continued to rely on the BMI because of it's simplicity and ease.  And, for non-exercisers, it has some merit (until they begin exercising and gaining muscle, at which point it becomes misleading).  From its inception the Body Mass Index has been questioned for its numerous flaws, and other quick and easy means have been evaluated.  But finally, researchers from the University of Michigan seem to have something on the horizon that is just as simple, but that illustrates a more accurate assessment of health risk.
After assessing anthropometrics, or body circumferences in more than 1100 children ages 6 to 18, correlations were found between neck circumference and risk for later diseases such as obstructive sleep apnea, diabetes, or high blood pressure.  Whereas abdominal obesity is not taken into account with the BMI scale, it does seem to correlate quite well to these neck circumference measurements, thereby leading the researchers to feel that neck measurement would present a more meaningful value to patients than the BMI.

Neck circumference and risk stratification charts are not currently available, but should become so in the near future. In the meantime, rely on direct measurements of body fat (body composition) with your Perfect Personal Trainer, along with anthropometric measurements to predict risks to health and to assess proper lifestyle modification.

Learn more about your risk factors and the best ways to reduce them!  Call (877)698-DO-IT (3648) to speak with a Perfect Personal Trainer.  We're even happy to schedule a free consultation, right in your home or office, and to evaluate your risk factors for you and your family.

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The Shocking Truth About Sit-Ups

What you don't know sure can hurt you!

Are you still doing sit-ups during your workouts?  Please think again!  More and more scientific research is stacking up against this long-time fitness staple.

Stuart McGill, PhD, studied the effects of varying exercises on the lower back. Sit-ups, crunches, varying plank and stabilization exercises, and many others were involved and analyzed.  What was found is that a sit-up generates approximately 3500 Newtons of pressure (roughly 786 pounds of force). According to Dr. McGill and The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), pressures above 3300 Newtons are more associated with lower back injury or pain.

Aside from this heavy pressure, sit-ups also involve spinal flexion, which has it's benefits but is also associated with herniated discs.  This little fact makes this exercise even more controversial -- especially for those with any predisposition to spinal disorders or a loss of bone mineral density.


Additionally, prolonged sit-ups tend to lead to aggressive, uncontrolled lowering of the spine back onto the floor or mat, adding even more risk for injury and pain.  To play your core training more safe, we recommend varying forms of planks and other core stabilizing exercises, lateral flexion exercises, and of course, static flexibility training.  Remember -- any exercise can easily do more harm than good if the selection, intensity, or frequency is inappropriate for you.

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Thanks for reading, everyone.  Please comment below with any follow-up questions or thoughts!