YOU AND POOH

You and I, we're about to take this relationship to a whole new level right now.

The subject: Pooh, and how relates to your eating and lifestyle choices.

This is an article that appeared on the Precision Nutrition FB  page last week, a page that I have referred to before bit instead of nutritional and stress relieving information, we're getting real personal today.

It's a decent read but here are the high, or low lights, depending how you look at it.

- Bowel movements can signal what you;re doing great or suggest health challenges before symptoms arise.

- You're after "good looking" pooh, whatever that means

- pooh quality can provide information on your core muscles, your gastrointestinal system, your fiber intake, your hormones, your stress levels, your intestinal health, hydration levels, food intolerance's, your activity levels and general health issues that stand between you looking good or looking bloated.

 -   Step 1 is to actually look at your pooh then identify it in this chart:


                                  

- Your shooting for a pooh in the 3 - 5 range with 4 being the optimal pooh - good times.

- You should be having a sit down 1 to 3 times per day

- They should be quick and painless with no straining required

- It should be brown but coloring can change if you've eaten certain foods (red for beets, green for leafy greens etc)

- It should stink but not to extreme levels

- If it sinks then your diet is high in fiber and if it floats it's high in fat - that's interesting.

- Look for long term trends and don't be afraid to have a pooh diary.

- There's been a fair push for gut health in recent times and for good reason because nutrient absorption is vital.

 - Gut dysfunction can can be causes by things such as nutrient deficiencies, autonomic nervous system problems, immune problems, hormone imbalances, blood sugar irregularities, irregular sleep, medications, aging and chronic diseases.

- Because of how hour gastrointestinal brain works, we don't feel pain when things are wrong in our gut

- The gut bone is connected to the brain bone which controls your autonomic nervous system, which controls every voluntary and involuntary function of the body and the state of your GI tract can affect message signalling from gut to brain which can bring on brain fog, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, ADD and ADHD.

- Physically you might have issues with weight management, asthma/allergies, autoimmune disorders, skin conditions, arthritis/joint inflammation, heart disease, narcolepsy/sleep disorders, migraines and kidney problems.

- Fix this by opting for minimally processed foods like fruit, veggies and fresh meat and taking your time with your eating.

- Bacteria in the gut (or gut flora), helps digestion and absorption by breaking down carbs and helping to create digestive enzymes but problem pooh can let you know that your bacteria levels are low which can be brought on by travel, a change in diet and antibiotics.

- Gut flora protects the body from pathogens, boosts immunity and makes certain vitamins

- Struggling gut flora = struggling gut function

- To build a lot of gut critters get into beans/legumes, fruits, whole grains, starchy veg ans also consider foods that contain probiotics (good bacteria) such as yoghurt, mold-enhanced cheese (what the?), fermented products and again minimally processed food options and don't be afraid to try fruit from straight off the tree.

- Avoid overusing antibiotics which kill all the bacteria in your system, not just the bad stuff.

- Your pooh is a reflection of what you eat and from the chart above pooh's 1 and 2 indicate constipation so you'll need more fiber.

- Everyone reacts to foods differently but the main offenders for food intolerance's are lectins (seeds, grains, legumes, nuts), gluten (grains), casein, lactose, immunoglobins (dairy) and fructose (fruit sugars) and other sugars and starches

- Must I mention processed foods again?

- Keep a diary for a week or two and rate how you react to certain foods, good and bad.

- If your pooh is small and hard then you might assume that you need more fiber but it may actually mean you're dehydrated as water is used to move waste through your gut and if there isn't enough water to do so then the body will draw it from somewhere else and now you have 2 issues such as cramping or dry mouth.

- Keep track of your fluid intake and have a look at water vs sugar/caffeine/alcohol intake.

- Your GI tract is connected to your central nervous system and allows your gut and upstairs brain to talk to each other. When you're stressed your brain and gut know this and to conserve energy in times of high stress, they slow down digestion so you might find yourself suffering from constipation, bloating and indigestion. When stress gets really high then you meet a dodgy dude called Gary. Gary Gastro.

- If you're a regular of this blog then you'll know I've blabbered on about decreasing stress forever so look back through the archives and check out to combat it but anything that results in you feeling relaxed during or after it is what you;re after, and do them regularly.

- Too much or not enough movement have negative affects on your pooh where doing nothing can cause constipation and doing too much can put you in that high stress area we mentioned above

- So in the and you want to look at your pooh everyday for the next week while also increasing your water intake and nothing else and document any changes - there's nothing like a good old fashioned pooh study is there?

You can read the full article here.

5 Overrated Training Methods (Article)

The author of this article is Nick Tumminello who is a "trainers trainer" of sorts as far as education is concerned.

Here he looks 5 training methods and how you probably shouldn't be all too  consumed and gung-ho with them (Paleo Crossfit with Chia anyone?)

I'll break this down Young MC style for y'all:

POSTURAL ASSESSMENTS

 - The curvature of your spine, whether it be extreme or near non existent is not associated with health and spinal pain (everyone has their "own' neutral spine)
 - Rounded/forward shoulders can be present with and without pain although greater range if motion is often obtained with a more erect posture
 - Rounded/forward shoulders may not be a key contributor to shoulder pain
 - A 1997 study found that not even 1 of the 427 people examined presented with the text book perfect head resting position proving there is no such thing as perfect posture and it is specific to each one of us
 - There is nothing to support exercise will lead to changes in posture as they are of insufficient volume and frequency to offset daily living activities

MOVEMENT SCREENS

 - Any scoring system has limited ability to predict injury and increased scores often do nothing to improve performance
 - Those with a current or recent injury, a known risk factor for future problems will tend to score lower which is obvious and just identities a risk factor we already knew about
 - Movement screens that only consist of low demand activities may not adequately reflect an individuals capacity, or their risk of injury for movements that occur with higher loads and speeds

CORRECTIVE EXERCISE

 - Every exercise when executed with constant guidance and feedback is "corrective"
 - Language is important here as a client being prescribed "correctives" will stay in a mindset of "being corrected" which is followed by over protection and low movement variation (staying in the safe zone)

CORE STRENGTH TRAINING

 - Core muscle strength plays only a minor role for physical fitness and athletic performance in trained individuals when compared with no or only regular training
 - This doesn't mean to not bother with training your core muscles but you probably don't need 3 hours of Pilates a week doing so
 - For the lifting crowd, Squats and deadlifts don't activate the anterior core muscles all that well so you do need to add some more specific exercises into your program to train them.

CORE STABILITY TRAINING

 - A study compared general exercise treatment versus general exercise treatment plus spinal stabilisation exercises and found that the general exercise treatment reduced disability in the short term (immediately after treatment) to a greater extent than the stabilisation enhanced treatment.
 - There was no difference in long term  follow ups either
 - Motor control exercises and general exercise appear equally as effective at treating low back pain and movement control impairment with disability being reduced considerably by both interventions.\
 - The type of treatment is not of great importance compared to being guided through a long term exercise lifestyle

In the past I've followed each of these methods blindly thinking it was the holy grail of personal training but over time I've learnt to use them for what they are, and stop using some of them all together.

You can read the full article here.

TED Talk on Getting a Good Night's Sleep

For the life of me I cannot work out why people would rather about think about things that can't be altered at 2am rather then sleep.

Regardless of what's gone on with my day, and some are very hectic with a disabled wife, a near 6 year old and small business, I can always sleep through the night.

There are times that I might not have "turned off" like I usually do and take longer then usual to get to sleep but once I;m out then it's lights out - literally!

I've posted about sleep before and here's another sleep related blog based off a TED talk by a neuroscientist

Jeff Lliff.

Here are my takeaways:

• The brain's intense electrical activity uses up a quarter of the body's entire energy supply 
• The first problem we need to solve is nutrient and oxygen delivery which the circulatory system does through blood vessels to every corner of our body
• Just as every cell requires nutrients to fuel it, every cell produces waste and that is the second problem that needs solving
• The lymphatic system has evolved to fill this need where it takes up proteins and other waste, collects them and dumps them into the blood so they can be disposed of
• The weird part is that the brain doesn't contain any lymphatic vessels at all so the approach the body takes to waste disposal won't work in the brain
• The brain has a large pool of clean, clear fluid called carebrospianl fluid (CSF) that fills the space that surrounds the brain and waste from the brain make their way out to the CSF which gets dumped into your blood, similar to lymphatic drainage
• There is a specialised network of plumbing that organises an facilitates this process
• What they found was that the CSF outside of the brain didn't stay there but was actually pumped back into the brain along the OUTSIDE of the blood vessels and flushed into the brain helping to clear away and clean the waste from spaces between the brain's cells.
• The brain is already jam packed and has no room for a second set of cells like the lymphatic system but the blood vessels extend from the surface of the brain right down to every single cell in the brain and the fluid travelling along the blood vessels can gain easy access to the entire volume of the brain, essentially repurposing the same set of vessels to perform a lymphatic response
• This entire system is unique to the brain
• The BBIIIGGG thing here is that this only occurs when the brain is sleeping where the brain cells seem to shrink which opens up space between them allowing CSF to rush through and clear allowing waste to be cleared out
• When the brain is awake it puts off clearing away waste and waits for a time sleep as it's busy enough when you're awake
• Getting specific about waste, there is a waste type called amyloid-beta which is a protein that's made in the brain all the time (you're making it right now) which in Alzeimer's sufferers builds up and fills the space between the brain cells and limits the clearage taking place later

Another notch in sleep belt!

You can watch the full 11min TED talk, which has some videos to help explain it better, here.

REDUCE ANXIETY BY 65% WITH 1 SONG

Back in June of this year I posted about a musical event that was broadcasted on ABC Classic 2 simply titled "Sleep" - an 8hr musical piece designed specifically to put you to sleep.

This week I came across an article where neuroscience says that listening to this one song can reduce anxiety by up to 65%!

The highlights of the article were:

- Scientists have actually found the 10 most relaxing songs on earth - big call but let's go with it!

- A study was conducted  where participants needed to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible but the puzzles were deliberately made to cause great stress

- They measured brain activity and physiological states such as heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate

- The song "Weightless: by Marconi Union was the song referred to in the title.

- The song was actually made in collaboration with sound therapists

- A recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found that health issues from job stress alone causes more deaths than Diabetes, Alzeihmer's or Influenza!

- Many participants became drowsy listening to 'Weightless" so don't pop on while driving

- The article lists the top 10 relaxing songs and the author also put together their own Spotify playlist of these songs that runs for about 50mins which is downloadable.

So if you head out for lunch in the park or walk home from work then give this playlist a go and see how you feel in the hours after it.

The full article can be found here.