Carbohydrate Loading DOES NOT Work
"Carbohydrate loading" the night before a big race can harm your performance and your health. More than forty years ago, I reported the case of a marathon runner who had a heart attack after carbohydrate loading in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Challenging Your Brain During Exercise May Help to Prevent Dementia
Scientific American has a fascinating article that explains why you should exercise your brain while you exercise your body. There is evidence that you may be able to make You can make new brain cells as you age by exercising your skeletal muscles and brain at the same time
How Often Should You Lift Weights?
You can become very strong and grow large muscles just by lifting a single set of 6 to 12 repetitions of a weight that is 75 percent of your maximum, three times a week
Creatine
Creatine is a substance found in muscle cells that helps your muscles produce energy, particularly while lifting heavy weights or exercising intensely. Your body makes creatine from three amino acids (protein building blocks) called L-arginine, glycine, and L-methionine. You also get creatine when you eat animal protein: meat, poultry or seafood.
Knee Pain in Bicycle Riders
The most common cause of knee pain in bicycle riders is having the seat set so high that it forces you to fully straighten the knee as the pedal reaches its lowest level. You are never supposed to fully straighten your knee when you do any kind of exercise, particularly cycling or running.
Restricting Carbohydrates Slows You Down
Restricting carbohydrates with a keto diet or fasting will tire you earlier when you exercise. Many studies show that low-carbohydrate diets impair performance in sports that require speed. On a low-carbohydrate diet, you can't train very fast and you can't move as fast in races.
Muscle Cramps: Prevention and Treatment
Muscle cramps occur most often at night when you are sleeping, but they also can occur when you exercise vigorously, tear a muscle, or keep one leg in an awkward position, such as sitting in a chair in the same position for a long time. Muscle cramps are classified into those that occur during exercise and those that can occur at any time not related to exercise, usually at night.
Everyone Should Exercise After Meals
A study from New Zealand shows that walking 10 minutes after meals lowers high blood sugar by more than 22 percent in diabetics, which is more effective than 30 minutes of exercise done once a day.
How to Start an Exercise Program
If you want to become fit and use exercise to help prevent a heart attack, first check with your doctor to make sure that you do not have anything wrong with your heart or blood vessels. Intense exercise can increase your risk for a heart attack if you already have a damaged heart.
Caffeine Boosts Endurance and Strength
A review of 34 recent studies shows that taking caffeine before and during exercise can increase muscle strength and endurance.
Can Intense Exercise Increase Your Risk for a Heart Attack?
The American Heart Association has cautioned that, "Exercise, particularly when performed by unfit individuals, can acutely increase the risk of sudden cardiac death and acute myocardial infarction in susceptible people." However, a recent review of 48 research articles found no reduction in lifespan, no matter how much a person exercises
Exercising in Cold Weather
Cold weather is associated with an increased incidence of heart attacks. The majority of cold weather deaths are associated with elevated blood pressure and increased clotting to cause heart attacks and strokes. If you have heart or lung disease, you are far more likely to die in cold weather than in the heat. Even a short-term drop in air temperature in the tropics is associated with increased heart attack risk
How to Prevent Wear-and-Tear Injuries
If you think that football is the sport with the most injuries, you would be wrong. Each year, 79 percent of long-distance runners suffer injuries that force them to take time off from running (Br J Sports Med, Aug, 2007;41(8):469-80). The most-injured part is the knee and the chance for an injury increases with running longer distances and having previous injuries.
Over-Training, or Too Much Exercise
A regular exercise program can help to prevent disease and to prolong lives, but every serious exerciser learns sooner or later that exercising too much can cause injuries and health issues. A recent study from Austria reports that emotional symptoms can often be an early sign that a person is exercising too much: restlessness, mood changes, irritability, emotional instability, recurring states of fear, emerging indifference and reduced performance motivation
Don’t Use Aspirin or NSAIDs for Muscle Pain from Exercise
Some athletes and exercisers take pain medication (aspirin or NSAIDs) because they think it may prevent muscle soreness or will help them to heal faster after a workout. However, taking pain medicines before or during exercise will not block pain, help you to exercise longer or recover faster from exercise.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)
To make muscles stronger, you need to exercise intensely enough to damage the muscles. You can tell that you are damaging muscles when you exercise vigorously enough to feel soreness in those muscles eight to 24 hours later, which is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS.
Plantar Fasciitis
One of the most common injuries in tennis and jogging is plantar fasciitis, pain on the bottom of the heel. A band of tissue called the plantar fascia extends from your five toes, along the bottom of your foot to attach on the bottom of your heel. When you run, you land on your heel and raise yourself on your toes as you shift your weight to your other foot, causing all your weight to be held up by your plantar fascia.
Should You Wear a Mask When You Exercise Outdoors?
The problem with wearing masks when you exercise outdoors is that they can limit your ability to breathe. This may not be an issue if you are doing casual exercise, but if you are running or cycling vigorously, you will probably find yourself gasping for air.
Exercise Improves Gut Bacteria
Many studies show that exercise helps to prevent heart attacks, and it may do so by changing the bacteria in your colon. A recent study from Finland shows that exercising for just six weeks can increase healthful anti-inflammatory bacteria in your colon.
Intervals for Everyone
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) surveyed more than 4,000 fitness professionals and found that High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is the most popular trend in fitness for 2018. All healthy people can benefit from some form of interval training. They can pick up the pace for a few seconds while walking, running, cycling, swimming, skiing or skating, and then slow down when they feel the least discomfort.
Standing Is Not Much Better Than Sitting
A recent study from New Zealand compared the effects of prolonged sitting, prolonged standing or taking regular activity breaks on blood flow and insulin levels. We know from earlier studies that prolonged sitting increases risk for forming clots, but this new study suggests that people with jobs that require them to stand for long periods may be even worse off.
Keep Moving for a Longer and Better Life
Everyone should try to keep on moving their muscles every day. Sitting around for long periods of time can cause you to become diabetic and increase your risk for a heart attack, and lying in bed for long periods puts you at increased risk for heart failure and premature death
Benefits of Exercising for Both Endurance and Strength
A systematic review of 18 studies found that combining aerobic exercise such as running, walking and cycling with resistance strength training helps older people to be more active and less likely to fall and hurt themselves, compared to those who did just aerobic or strength training alone. They become stronger, more coordinated, and have greater balance.
Piriformis Syndrome
If it hurts to touch a point that's in the middle of one side of your buttocks, you probably have piriformis syndrome. This chronic condition is very difficult to diagnose, because other injuries may produce exactly the same symptoms.
What to Eat Before, During and After a Bicycle Ride
Healthy and fit people usually don't need to eat during a ride when they cycle at a casual pace for less than two hours. However, you can prolong your endurance for a hard ride by taking a source of sugar when you ride very hard for more than an hour, and a source of salt when you ride for more than three hours.
Exercise to Reduce Muscle Loss and Inflammation
Women and men who exercise regularly have larger and stronger hearts, and greater endurance and strength, than those who do not exercise regularly. Their muscles are stronger and more coordinated. We can all expect to become weaker as we age, but you can markedly delay this inevitable loss of muscle strength by having a regular exercise program and following the same anti-inflammatory lifestyle rules that are recommended to help prevent heart attacks, arthritis and many other diseases.
Should You Exercise During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
Committed exercisers should try to continue to exercise during this COVID-19 pandemic, but they should realize that both too much exercise and exercising while sick increase risk for medical complications, such as irregular heartbeats, and death
Cycling Cadence
Cycling is a power sport. The stronger you are, the faster you can go on a bike. Power = [force that your feet apply to the pedals] x [cadence, or how fast you spin your pedals].
Cadence is the number of pedal revolutions per minute (RPMs). Fatigue for a bicycle rider comes primarily from how hard you press on the pedals, not how fast you turn them.
You Can’t Be Too Fit
Dramatic results in a new study from the Cleveland Clinic show that you can't be too fit, and that not exercising is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes or heart disease.
Brain Benefits from Exercise
Three new studies help us understand the many good things that exercise does for your brain. The first study shows that a regular exercise program alters blood flow to the brain to improve mental function in older people who suffer from mild cognitive impairment that often precedes dementia. The second study shows that exercise can improve thinking skills in people of all ages. The third study shows that exercise-induced muscle changes may help to boost mood in older adults
