What's better - Steam or Sauna?

Disclaimer:
The contents provided are for your information only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult your medical doctor or other qualified health professional for further medical advice.

Know where to go to heat things up and cool off the stress.

HEALTH BENEFITS
Sauna: As your circulatory system feels the heat, it starts working harder. "The blood-flow boost can lower artery plaque, which is the primary precursor of heart attacks," says Angela Bonner, spa expert. Time to stock up on some dry heat eh?
Steam Room: "Breathing and holding in the hot, moist air relieves muscle soreness, as well as improving airflow in the lungs to loosen tight airways and relieve asthma," says Dr Atul Mathur, director of interventional cardiology, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, Delhi.
Result: DRAW

WEIGHT LOSS
Sauna: You can lose up to 500gm in 10 minutes. Japanese researchers found saunas actually work your heart hard enough to constitute light exercise.
Steam Room: You can lose up to 125g in 10 minutes. Your heart won't be working as hard as it would in sauna therapy, so virtually every gram of weight you lose will be in the form of sweat.
Result: SAUNA WINS

SKIN
Sauna: "Your capillaries will dilate more to push the heat out of your system, but your body will sense the dry heat and try to resist, in order to retain moisture, trapping dirt in your follicles," says Dr Shehla Agarwal, a New Delhi-based dermatologist.
Steam Room: "The 'wet heat' encourages your pores to open more fully, which helps release dirt and chemicals trapped in them. Best shower afterwards if you don't like the 'sticky' look," says Dr Agarwal.
Result: STEAM ROOM WINS

RECOVERY
Sauna: A recent study in the University of Otago found a post-workout sauna can actually impair recovery. "A cold plunge will help you recover faster," says Vishhal Chand Mehra, spa director, Ranjit's Caasa, Heritage boutique, wellness resort and spa.
Steam Room: "The steam will ease your breathing and you're less likely to suffer dehydration than in a sauna, which basically gives your body a greater chance to recover," says Mehra.
Result: STEAM ROOM WINS

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Heart attack risk for diabetics

A study from the University of Dundee in Scotland shows that neither antioxidants nor aspirin pills prevent heart attacks in diabetics (British Medical Journal, October 2008). Heart attacks occur when a plaque breaks off from the walls of a coronary artery and travels down an ever-narrowing artery to form a clot and block the flow of blood to the heart muscle. Aspirin helps to prevent clotting and therefore prevents heart attacks. Ibuprofen and other nonsteroidal pain medications block aspirin so they can increase clotting and heart attack risk in susceptible individuals.

One of the strongest risk factors for a heart attack is diabetes; 80 percent of diabetics die of heart disease. Diabetes could be such a strong risk factor for heart attacks that aspirin does not prevent it, or it may be that aspirin should be prescribed only for people with established symptomatic heart disease.

Other studies show that taking antioxidant vitamins (500 milligrams of vitamin C every day, 600 units of vitamin E every other day or 50 milligrams of beta carotene every other day) does not prevent heart attacks (Archives of Internal Medicine August 2007). As of today, there is no evidence that taking antioxidant pills helps to prevent heart attacks. Now many scientists think that you should aim to prevent your mitochondria from making excessive amounts of oxidants. The cells of your body have tiny chambers in them called mitochondria that help convert food to energy. When they do this, they knock of electrons from nutrients, and these extra electrons can eventually end up attached to oxygen. Electron-charged oxygen, called reactive oxygen species or free radicals, then attach to the DNA in cells to damage them and shorten life.

At this time, the only practical ways to reduce the amount of oxidants produced by mitochondria are exercise or calorie restriction with adequate nutrients. Both help the mitochondria burn food to produce fewer oxidants. In the future the same effect may be accomplished with chemicals, such as resveratrol or dichloroacetate, but studies of these substances in animals have not yet been successfully applied to humans.

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Is Fruit Juice good? (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1...

Fruit juice taken with cereal or other foods will be absorbed slower than fruit juice by itself, but will still cause higher blood sugar levels than if we did not drink the fruit juice. Smoothies are halfway between juice and whole fruit. The more the fruit is liquified, the faster its sugar is absorbed.

Scientists are frantically trying to explain the marked increase in diabetes, severity of diabetes, deaths from diabetes, increase in heart attacks, increase in obesity and so forth over the last 50 years in the United States. While the questions have not been answered yet, refined carbohydrates, particularly in liquid form, are suspect. Sugar-water does not suppress hunger the way that sugar in solid food does, and sugar-water causes the highest rises in blood sugar.

In a nutshell

Consume fruit in whole and its original form to get its nutrients.

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Is Fruit Juice good? (Part 1 of 2)

Researchers at Tulane University showed that eating fruit helps to prevent diabetes, while drinking fruit juices increases risk (Diabetes Care, July 2008). They analyzed diets of 71,346 women enrolled in the Nurses Study. Increasing intake of whole fruit by three servings a day lowered risk for diabetes by 18%, while a serving of fruit juice each day increased risk by 18%.

The food that we eat passes into our stomach and must remain there until it is turned into a liquid soup. No solid food is allowed to pass into our intestines. This delay prevents blood sugar levels from rising too high. However, sugar in drinks can pass directly into our intestines to cause an immediate rise in blood sugar. This can cause sugar to stick to the surface of cell membranes and damage them to cause the side effects of diabetes which include blindness, deafness, heart attacks, strokes, and so forth. It makes no difference whether the sugared drink is "junk food" such as a soft drink, or a supposedly healthful fruit juice.

If drinking fruit juice alone is bad to health, what about if we drink fruit juice while eating other foods?

Continue to Part 2...

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Working at Night

Two dozen scientists from ten countries met last fall in Lyon, France to discuss the theory that night lights may cause cancer. They reported that six of eight studies on the subject show that shift work increases risk for breast cancer (Lancet, December 2007).

Melatonin is a potent hormone produced by our brain at night. It has strong anti-oxidant properties that help to prevent cells from becoming cancerous. However, if a person sees bright lights at night, the brain stops making melatonin, and these people may be at increased risk for several cancers. The panel concluded that bright lights at night are probably carcinogenic.

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Sore throat, ahhhhhh!!

What do you normally drink when you have sore throat? Try Honey Lemon Juice if you haven’t tried so.

Why? Honey has soothing, healing and anti-microbial properties that will bring quicker relief to the throat. Lemons contain a substantial amount of Vitamin C that speeds up the healing process and also help to cut mucus.

How to make it? Mix a teaspoon of honey into a glass of warm water. Add at least two (2) teaspoons of lemon juice and mix it thoroughly. Drink once daily until sore throat is cured.

Tip: Do not use boiling hot water as it will destroy some of the properties of the honey.

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Just a little bit (of trans fat)...

After knowing the evildoing of trans fats, some people asked me if it’s alright to continue eating, say fast food, but on occasional basis. For example, instead of once or more weekly, now change to once every fortnightly or monthly.

Do you drive a car? Do you know what runs a car? Yes, car runs on petrol. When fuel level in a car is low, we drive the car to the petrol station to fill in petrol, so that the fuel level is up again and we can continue driving the car. Do we fill the car with liquid other than petrol?

Imagine this: Every time when we pump petrol to the car, we mix the petrol with one small cup of plain water, or coffee, or tea, or coke, can the car still run? Yes, it can, at first. Continuing to mix the petrol with plain water (or any other liquid) once in awhile thereafter, do you think the car will break down one day because of what we fill it up with?

Now, have you got the answer to the question at the beginning of this post?

When car breaks down or koyak, we can change to a new one. And this time, we’ll never feed it with other stuff except with petrol. But can we change a new body when our body breaks down and let everything restarts again?

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Is margarine healthier? (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1…

Since margarine is so bad, why was it being developed in the first place? Well, scientists didn’t think so at the very beginning. Over 100 years ago, the Americans had started to realize that eating animal fats such as cream, lard and butter could clog the arteries, thus should switch to consuming vegetable oils instead. But Americans liked to have toast with butter or potato with cream spread on top, and vegetable oils that were in liquid form made it difficult for them. To cater for this need, food manufacturers brought corn oils, soybean oil, sunflower seed oils and other vegetable oils to the laboratory for processing. By using the hydrogenating process, food manufacturers were able to convert liquid vegetable oils to solid form under room temperature. And by adding in artificial colouring and flavouring, the taste of this butter substitute has become as good as the original butter.

The food manufacturers initially thought that this butter substitute would have gotten rid of all the bad stuff found in animal fats. However, recent researches discovered that this man-made butter substitute, or margarine, has problems far worse than animal fats themselves. No doubt those animal fats do have their problems, but so long as we consume more vegetable and fruits, coupled that with regular exercises, these problems can be overcome. On the other hand, as margarine is developed through process of hydrogenation, the fat has turned to become trans fat that our body is unable to metabolize (as like the nature cannot decompose plastic materials). It is like planting a time bomb inside our body, thus it is worse than animal fat like butter. Due to the awareness and unpopularity of trans fats, the Americans have started to reduce trans fats in their diet as much as they can. For example, McDonald’s in the USA has claimed to stop using hydrogenated shortening (trans fats) in their products. But is McDonald’s in Malaysia also doing the same? And what about other products that contain trans fats, such like crackers, potato chips, cookies, popcorns, cakes and breads that some of us eat daily?

Oh, I think we still need to eat this plastic stuff for sometimes…

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Is margarine healthier? (Part 1 of 2)

For the past few decades, due to the influence of the western diet, we take bread and butter as breakfast. Subsequently, people starting to say that butter is not good, so we switch to margarine instead. Developed as a butter substitute, as margarine is made with vegetable oils, people consider anything that is plant or vegetable-based is better. Over prolonged period of time, this has created a lot of health problems such as high blood pressures, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke, allergies, reduced body immunity, obesity and so on.

Margarine is not any healthier than cream and butter. Developed over 100 years ago, margarine is made by hydrogenating edible vegetable oil (adding hydrogen to vegetable oil so to make it in solid form at room temperature and has longer shelf life), and thus making it to contain Trans Fatty Acids, or Trans Fats. As we learnt from The plastic fats: Trans Fats, trans fats are almost non-existent in the natural world, and our human body simply cannot decompose them naturally. Consuming trans fats is like consuming plastic itself, we should thus avoid it as much as we can. However, there are still many people out there mistake trans fats as good stuff. And like going for an all-you-can-eat buffet meal, they simply eat as much as they can. Sadly to say, they actually don’t know they are eating ‘plastic’ (trans fats).

Hydrogenated vegetable oil is the worst oil that we can take. If we have allergies, cardiovascular and other diseases, we must stop eating trans fats, or at least avoid consuming much. Even if we are healthy now, we should also learn to reduce the consumption of trans fats. Otherwise, our health will deteriorate overtime.

Continue to Part 2…

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The plastic fats: Trans Fats (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1...

Maybe some of us are unaware of this fact, that consuming trans fats is almost like eating plastic, or swallowing chewing gum. This is because trans fats, plastic and chewing gum are all man-made products, and they are non-existent on earth. They are nearly non-biodegradable too. How come we don’t eat plastic or chewing gum but consume trans fats on the other hand?

Take a look at this video excerpt, at the bottom of this paragraph, from a documentary titled “Super Size Me,” where they carried an experiment to see how the McDonald's foods stay after 10 weeks. They purchased some McDonald’s burgers and fries, and regular burger and fries from the street, put them all inside transparent glass containers individually, and see how long the food would take to decompose. As the experiment goes on, we can see that all the buns and meats have got rotted overtime, but the fries still stay fresh looking, as if they were just being bought on the day itself. Even molds and bacteria don’t want to eat the trans fats that are covering the fries (trans fats prolong the shelf life of the fries), so why do we human beings eat them? After taking trans fats into our body, how does our body metabolize them normally? Not only trans fats can be used as source of fat, it’s also now being used as food preservative!



So, what types of foods contain trans fats?

• Spreads, such as margarine and shortening;
• Fast food, such as fries, fried chicken, burgers, pies, pizzas;
• Frozen food, such as frozen pies, pot pies, waffles, pizzas;
• Baked goods, such as doughnuts, cookies, cakes, pastries;
• Chips;
• Crackers;
• Popcorns;
• Breakfast cereals;
• Energy bars;
• Candy

In a nutshell:
Trans fats or hydrogenated fats are artificial. They are worse than saturated fat and our bodies don’t know what to do with them. They have a double negative effect on cholesterol as they increase LDL (bad cholesterol) and decrease HDL (good cholesterol). Remember, LDL clogs our arteries while HDL helps to clear them. Can we eliminate trans fats entirely from our diet? Probably not. Instead, our goal is to have as little trans fat in our diet as possible. Happy eating!

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The plastic fats: Trans Fats (Part 1 of 2)

The FATS family has many members, such as saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and monounsaturated fats. Some of them are good, while others are bad; Some are natural fats, while others are simply artificial or man made. Trans Fats, or Trans-Fatty Acids, are largely artificial fats (a small amount of trans fats occur naturally in meat and dairy products) , and they are real bad fats! Trans fats are made by a chemical process called partial hydrogenation, where hydrogen atoms are added to liquid vegetable oil (an otherwise healthy monounsaturated fat) and converted into a solid fat. In short, it transforms liquid fats to become solid fats at room temperature. This makes what seemed an ideal fat for the food industry to work with because of its high melting point, its creamy, smooth texture and its reusability in deep-fat frying.

Because of its altered and enhanced properties, trans fats extend shelf life of food. They also add a certain pleasing mouth-feel to all manner of processed foods. Think of buttery crackers and popcorn, crispy french fries, crunchy potato chips, creamy frosting and melt-in-your-mouth pies, cakes and pastries. All these foods owe those qualities to trans fats.

Hydrogenated fats were initially seen as a healthier alternative to saturated fats: using margarine was deemed better for us than using butter, yet numerous studies now conclude that trans fats are actually worse. True, saturated fats raise total and bad (LDL) cholesterol levels. Trans fats do the same, but they also strip levels of good (HDL) cholesterol, the kind that helps unclog arteries. Trans fats also increase triglyceride levels in the blood, adding to our risk of cardiovascular disease. Basically, the more solid the fat at room temperature, the more it clogs our arteries.

Continue to Part 2...

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Is low-fat diet better? (Part 5 of 5)

Continued from Part 4...
(Start from Part 1)

Since the past few decades, both the nutritionists and medical doctors have encouraged us to consume less animal oil or fat, including lard, butter, and chicken skin. However, this argument is debatable. It’s not wrong that many chronic diseases are caused by high consumption of oil and fat, but this is due to over 80% of the oil and fat that people consume today are those of bad oil and fat. Animal oil or fat is bad, but it’s not the worst. Many of us are unaware of this fact, thus avoiding animal oil or fat like the plague, but consuming other bad oil and fat in massive amount, and at the end continue to suffer from chronic diseases.

Oil can be divided in term of good and bad. If it’s good oil, it’s good for health even if we consume slightly more. However, even if it’s good oil, if we use it wrongly during the process of making or cooking, the good oil will turn bad oil. Many oils turn bad after high temperature cooking, like deep frying. Not only its property changes, it also releases toxins. Therefore, the question is not about how much oil or fat do we take, but rather in the consumption of good or bad oil.

How to tell which oil is good, or bad? Ha! See you next round!

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Is low-fat diet better? (Part 4 of 5)

Continued from Part 3...
(Start from Part 1)

Many of the diabetic or high cholesterol patients, under the order by their medical doctors, are practicing low-fat diet, and their problems have become more and more serious at the end. Why is this happening? For diabetic patients, although they have reduced the consumption of both oil/fat and meat, the ratio of starch or carbohydrate in their diet has increased, thus controlling of their blood sugar level becomes even more difficult. For patients with high cholesterol, despite their meat consumption has reduced, they take in more pastry, kueh, biscuits, and so on, unawarely taking in more trans fat and free radicals. This makes their bad cholesterol level (LDL, or low-density lipoprotein) to increase even more than just by eating boiled meat in water.

Compared to the olden days, the days when our ancestors, or great great grandparents, or great grandparents, or grandparents, or even our parents, lived, we are eating better and more food now. Just do a simple Internet search, or visit some of our friends’ blogs, chances are we can find endless postings on what to eat and where to eat, and even how to eat. As such, our fat intake has also increased considerably when comparing to those olden days. In the olden days, oil, fat and meat were scarce and expensive items. People only ate them during festive season like New Year, for example. But today, we eat meat and oil every day. Because of this, many of the chronic diseases, like heart attack, stroke, diabetes, allergy and obesity, that were hardly heard of in those days, have become our very closed friends today. According to some researches done in the United States, many of these diseases are linked to our diet, especially related to the intake of “oil” in the food. The higher the consumption of fat and oil, the higher the chances of suffering from chronic diseases. This means chronic diseases are equivalent to fat and oil now. Animal oil or fat is ever being regarded as the prime culprit of chronic diseases in the medical industry.

Continue to Part 5...

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Is low-fat diet better? (Part 3 of 5)

Continued from Part 2...
(Start from Part 1)

Low-fat diet is unnecessarily healthier. You see, fat is a very important substance to our body. Many of the body's building structure and physiological functions require fat. When fat intake is insufficient, our emotional will become unstable, immune system becomes weaker, blood sugar turns unstable, and consequently suffer from endocrine disorders, thus endangering our health. On top of that, reducing fat also reduces fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K to the body. This creates deficiency and many side effects will come by.

The problem with oil and fat is not of high or low consumption. Rather, it’s of the intake of good or bad fat/oil. If it’s of good fat/oil, it doesn’t harm as much even in larger intake (moderation is still preferred). On the other hand, we should stay as far as possible if the fat/oil is bad.

The problem with Anne in our example (refer to Part 1), or anyone of us who is on low-fat diet, is that, although she doesn’t consume much fat and oil, she consumes high amount of starch (breads, pastry, etc). This makes her gets hungry faster, and the tummy also gets bloated easier. The emotion also fluctuates with the rise and fall of the blood sugar in the body. All of these signs are that of a typical pre-diabetic state. For fat and oil, although she might have eliminated in her diet, she has in fact unawarely consumed large amount of trans fat when she takes her breads and biscuits. This makes her prone to future cardiovascular and chronic inflammatory diseases.

(Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the terms like starch, blood sugar, trans fat, etc. We’ll look at each of them in the future. Remember, one step at a time.)

Continue to Part 4...

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Is low-fat diet better? (Part 2 of 5)

Continued from Part 1...

Losing weight is always the ever-popular hot topic nowadays. Turn on the TV, or just flip through the newspapers and magazines, there are endless messages telling us that to look good we must lose weight. This weight-losing phenomenon has been changing the way we live, and it has even impacted the young generation. My skinny niece, who has just entered primary school, sometimes refuses to eat because she says she doesn't want to get fat. Scary!

Many people assume that eating lesser fatty and oily food can reduce the fat in their body, and thus practicing low-fat diet. They don't take food like chicken skin, fatty meat and even butter. This makes their face to look pale, emotionally unstable, and some even suffer from depression. On the other hand, some people are worried that they might suffer from chronic diseases, thus become very cautious with oil and fat. They believe strongly that low-fat diet means something good for their health.

So, is low-fat diet good? The answer is NO! No! No! No! Read with me: Low-fat diet is unnecessarily good. Why? OK, let's go on to find out the facts behind low-fat diet.

Continue to Part 3...

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Is low-fat diet better? (Part 1 of 5)

For the last couples of years, the body weight of Anne has been increasing every year. Compared to the time when she just started working, she has gained a massive 10kg over the years. Besides her colleagues reminding her about it, she also realizes that her body is going out of shape. Some of her friends tell her that this is so because she has taken in too much fat and oil in her diet. For this, Anne decides to get away from fatty and oily food. Hamburgers, deep fried chicken, french fries, pisang goreng, char kuoy teow, nasi lemak, curry, everything is now out of her diet. In deed, she takes only vegetable salads, breads, biscuits, pastry, cookies, or sushi in daily meal. Half a year passes, however, not only her tummy is getting more bloated and bigger, her emotion has also become unstable. She gets irritated and hot tempered easily on even the smallest matters. And when she is hungry, her hands and feet are feeling cool, and headache also sets in.

What is going on? Have I eaten something wrong? In the mind of Anne, there are simply more and more question marks...

Continue to Part 2...

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Chewing my food

There was this day I took lunch together with my aunt at her house. Over the meal, we had small talks and blah blah blah. Then out of a sudden, she asked why I eat so slowly. I looked at her and realized that she had finished her food while I still had nearly half of my plate full. She said, "Young man, you should eat fast so that you can compete with others in this dog-eat-dog world!" I told her that I am enjoying the food... (and my job doesn't require me to rush over lunch too!)

All the while I've realized that I eat relatively slow compared to other people. At home, I'm always the last one who leaves the dining table. When I'm eating out with other people, I'm never the first person who finishes the food. Last time when I was employed, it was never a good experience to do lunch with my colleagues. As lunch hour was short, I always had to rush and eat fast. Not only I felt really pressurized when eating, I was fat X3 then. Later years when I started my diet program, I made and brought my own food to office and thus no longer need to rush for lunch.

Why do I eat slow? Well, first of all, because I'm fat, and eating fast can cause obesity (more details on upcoming paragraph), so I eat slow. (Oh oh oh! I know I'm fat, but I don't want to be obese!) Fast eating can cause digestive problems too. And, in many cases, fast eating results in not tasting or enjoying our food or even knowing what we have just eaten. By eating food too fast, we eat more than we might even want or definitely more than we might need. It takes about twenty (20) minutes from the time we begin eating to the time our stomach signals our brain that we might have had enough (our brain's appetite regulator is called the appestat). If we continue to eat too fast, we tend to overfill our stomachs, thus causing possible indigestion and discomfort. This, too, pushes food through our digestive system too fast and may result in improper digestion. As a result, problems such as constipation, heartburn, or diarrhea may occur.

An interesting study from Japan suggests that eating fast is a risk factor for diabetes. Researchers at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Aichi studied middle-aged men and women and found that the faster a person ate, the more likely he or she was to be fat (Preventive Medicine, February 2008). Furthermore, both insulin levels and blood sugar levels were higher in people who ate faster. High insulin and blood sugar levels are markers for being diabetic or at risk for developing type II diabetes. (Source: Eating Fast Leads to Obesity)

You see, one of the problems in our daily lives is that many of us rush through the day, with no time for anything. And when we have time to get a bite to eat, we gobble it down. That leads to stressful, unhealthy living, and causes chronic diseases in the future. And with the simple but powerful act of eating slower, we can begin to reverse that lifestyle immediately. How hard is it? We take smaller bites, we chew each bite slower and longer (I know this is hard! I'm still working hard to chew my food for at least 15 times before I shallow it.), and we enjoy our meal longer. It takes a few minutes extra each meal, and yet it can have profound effects.

Eat slower, enjoy the food and stay healthier. Or, eat faster and let the waistline go wider. You decide!

In a nutshell:

We are more likely to be overweight if we eat fast. Eating fast can lead us to obesity. Slow down our eating speed. Enjoy and savour the food more. Eat slowly and we are on our way to have better health and better life.

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Deep Impact on Knees

For those who have been joining my classes since last Friday, I did mention that my right knee actually hurt a little. Not sharp pain or persistent pain, just a little sting on and off. It alarmed me for the need to look after my joints and not to overwork. The pain is gradually subsiding now. If you have been checking every part of my blog, you would have noticed that at the bottom of the page, there is a section about my weekly calories burned. Because I'm fat, I want to make sure that I burn at least 800 Calories per day on average. This requires very strong discipline. Such as when I knew that I couldn't burn up at least 800 Calories on last week due to class cancellation, I ran on treadmill to make up the deficit. I suspected it was the run that hurt my knees. BodyCombat doesn't involve constant and prolonged running and jumping. And after doing BodyCombat for years, we have learnt how to avoid injury. So, the culprit that first came into my mind is the treadmill, ha ha!

In the post of Are all exercises the same?, we have learnt that exercises are different in terms of the capacity in conditioning our heart and lungs. Now, same question again but in different context: Are all exercises the same, this time in terms of the exertion of pressure or impact on our joints, especially the knees?

You have actually known the answer even without me telling. Yes, you are right: Different exercises or activities give different degree of impact or pressure on our knees. We know when we jump, our knees have to absorb more pressure than, say, climbing stairs. But have you ever wondered how strong is the impact actually? Or how much pressure are our knees absorbing?

Human body is such a marvelous thing. Our knees, being so small and look so fragile and vulnerable, have to support our full body weight when we are standing. And when we are moving, they have to, and are capable of absorbing pressures few times greater than that of our full body weight. Here are some examples on how many times our full body weight is put on our knees when we are performing different exercises:

^ Climbing: 3 times the body weight

^ Running: 6 times the body weight

^ Jumping: 9 times the body weight

For example, if we weight 50kg and we are running on the treadmill, our knees have to absorb 300kg (6 x 50kg) of pressure each time we stride! And when we jump and land, that pressure would become 450kg! Wow! Don't play play oh!

Now we know how much pressure our knees are taking with different exercises, we must then learn to appreciate them more. Give them good care and look after them properly. Know our own limits, and obey them whenever possible. Don't do things that will make us regret in the future. If we are overweight, do shred the extra weight off to give our knees lighter load. If we have knees problems, do engage in exercises that are more knee friendly. For me, I make sure myself exercise very regularly, so to maintain the body weight and body fat. What about you?

In a nutshell:

Our body can withstand pressures few times greater than our body weight. However, that doesn't mean we should take it for granted. The heavier we are, the higher the pressure and force our knees have to take. Do exercise some understanding on how hard our body is working, and do something to reduce its load in order to maintain better health and fitness in the long run.

How helpful is the information in this post to you? Rate it! Rate 5 stars if it's extremely helpful, and vice versa.

What? Vitamin pills are shortening my life?

It was very shocking when reading this 191-page review, dated 16 April 2008, titled Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases (file format: PDF, file size: 1.53 MB, click here to download). I believe many of us are taking multivitamin pills daily. Most doctors also take multivitamins themselves and recommend them to their patients. However, according to this review, it seems like we are doing more harm than good.

This review of 232,550 adults showed that those taking beta-carotene, vitamin A, C, and E and selenium gained no benefit over those who took placebos or no pills. "The findings show that, if anything, people in trial groups given beta-carotene, vitamin A and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality. There was no indication that vitamin C and selenium may have positive or negative effects."

The study was originally set up to see if antioxidant vitamin pills and minerals prevent gastrointestinal cancers. It found no protection whatever. Instead, an increased death rate of 16 percent was seen in those taking vitamin A pills, seven percent with beta- carotene, and seven percent with vitamin E. No increased death rate was seen in those taking vitamin C or selenium.

Most vitamins are parts of enzymes that start chemical reactions in our body. Each chemical reaction produces end products that are changed by further chemical reactions from other vitamins to other products that benefit our body. When we take a vitamin that has been isolated from the hundreds of other substances found in foods, that enzyme causes a chemical reaction that accumulates a disproportionate amount of its end products. If the substance that acts as an enzyme for the next chain of chemical reactions is not available, we can accumulate end products that may be harmful.

And don't forget that most of these antioxidant vitamins, like vitamin A and E, are fat soluble. That is, any unused portion will be retained by the body fat rather than being discharged from our body. When too much of these vitamins are being retained, they become toxic and poisonous, and we will suffer from that.

I visited the vitamins section of Guardian after lunch today and found that many of the multivitamin sold have very high dosage of certain vitamins and minerals. Some even go up to 500% or more than daily recommended intake. Unless we are consuming only vitamin pills and nothing else, can't we get those vitamins from our daily diet?

I've personally stopped taking all kind of supplementary vitamins and minerals for long time. Instead, I got them through natural food. But sometimes when I spot some deficiency, such as very dry lips, then I know I'm in need of vitamin B2, or riboflavin, I'll then pop vitamin B2 until recovery.

In a nutshell:

Try not to depend on pills for health well-being. After all, they are just supplements. Get vitamins and minerals through natural food instead. Otherwise, we might have to say goodbye earlier with this wonderful world.

Oh my sweat...

Some of you might have heard me saying in class that my sweat is tasteless or not salty recently. Often enough when we work out so hard in a class, the sweat on the face will flow into the mouth accidentally. (Some of you might say yuck at this moment. But no choice, lah! Instructors need to open mouth and talk, thus the chances of the sweat to get into our mouth is very high! Hey, have you seen our sweat, or maybe saliva, “flying” in a class before? Gee gee gee!!) This is the time when I discover that my sweat is no longer tasty, oops, I mean, salty like last time. This started to worry me as I thought that sweat is supposed to taste salty, right? So, if mine is tasteless, does it mean something is wrong with me?

Anyway, I did nothing about it. Just drink bird’s nest juice instead of plain water everyday. Just live life to its fullest like usual. Then on last week, I got to know a medical doctor who is also joining one of my classes. Yeah! What a golden opportunity to clear my doubt!

“Doc, my sweat tastes like plain water, lah! Not salty at all. Will I die prematurely?”

“No such thing, lah...”

“Huh? You mean no such thing for the plain taste of my sweat? Oh no! I’m going to die then...”

“I meant no such thing for you to die because of the taste of the sweat, lah!”

“Ohhhh... So what is happening to my sweat? Isn’t it supposed to taste salty?”

“Well, this is not a good or bad condition. You see, when you work out so vigorously and sweat profusely, and you're drinking a lot of water daily, the sodium level in your body is getting low and being diluted. That’s why you can no longer sense the salty taste...”

“Oh, I see. So I'm not "ham-sap" lah then. I thought my taste bud is dead already. Is there anything I should do then?”

“No specifically. Don’t worry about it. Just live your life as it is.”

“Thank you, doc! By the way, can I see you hold your boxing guard higher in the class later, ah?”