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Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, Recipes, and More 27 July 2019

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An Eclectic Collection of Fitness Reads for the Week

Resistance training without weights works just as well?
Training to failure: load and rep count really don’t matter.
Exercise (8,900 steps per day?) offers some form of protection against Alzheimer’s.

Geoffrey Miller on Sexual Fitness and the Paleo Movement. You likely won’t agree with everything he says, but interesting…
6-year old nails push-up records.
Does foam rolling help sports soft tissue injuries? (Free MedScape account required)
Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

From the Halls of Conventional Medicine…

Should you stop taking aspirin for heart health? A lay article recently published and the American College of Cardiology’s 2019 Guidelines.

Laminotomy beats laminectomy for lumbar spinal stenosis. (Free MedScape account required).

No added benefit for half of drugs introduced in Germany? A lay article recently published, based on a study published in the BMJ (see this and this).

Food, Glorious Food

The health writers at Vox have been busy taking on an overview of fiber here and the Keto diet here.
A saturated fat tax? Bollux.
Global meat consumption over the past 50 years.

Spicy Hanger Steak Lettuce Wraps
Grilled Leeks and Zucchini with Pecans
Simple Salsa Criola

Working Out in the Heat: A Quick Primer

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It’s been hot as blazes here in North Texas (and much of the country of late); it was 81 at 625 this morning on my way to a local park to walk, and the heat index was pushing 105 three hours later as I finished my second workout of the morning. The image above was taken from the NWS site here locally yesterday…

Today’s post isn’t meant to be an all-inclusive, exhaustive commentary on exercising and thriving in the heat, it’s intended to answer a few common questions that are coming in from clients, and remind you of a few key principles to follow.

The Prime Directive for Working Out in the Heat: Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate

Working out (or working) in the heat, particularly when higher humidity levels are part of the game, means you’ll need to pay particular attention to hydration. Count me among those who opine that rigid, one-size fits all hydration guidelines (8-10 tall glasses of water per day) are kinda silly if you’re paying attention to what your body is telling you, but the game changes when you’re pouring sweat at prodigious rates in the heat.

Water with a pinch of salt and trace minerals is the ideal hydration tool, probably as is coconut water, perhaps diluted to half strength. Interestingly Sisson argues that fresh squeezed orange juice with a pinch of salt is one of his favorites; read his logic in this post.

Understand, and Watch For, the Early Symptoms of Heat Related Illness

Not to push you to be hypochondriacal, but there are a few symptoms you need to be on the lookout for, especially if you plan on exercising vigorously in the heat. These symptoms include dizziness or feeling lightheaded, excessive sweating, excessive fatigue, headache, confusion or perhaps anxiety, a weak and rapid pulse, muscle cramps, and possibly even nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.

It can happen when you least expect it; it did to me yesterday in fact. I happened to be finishing a workout I routinely do without a significant struggle yesterday (heat index pushing 105) when I noted I was sweating excessively, felt a wave a global fatigue, the onset of a mild headache, and even a little nausea. My point – I knew immediately it was time to pack it in, cool off, and hydrate. You MUST do the same if the need arises.

Tips to Beat the Heat, and Keep On Exercising

Adjust your workout to fit the weather. Walking is almost always a great fall back; consider cycling (make your own breeze) or a pool-based workout as well. You may need to drop off in terms of intensity, pace, or volume during the hottest days.

Hydrate all day, not just during and immediately post your exercise.

Hit it early, with late evening a reasonable choice if early doesn’t work. These early summer mornings are some of the very best of the year, I love hitting the trails or the soccer fields for sprints before sunrise – it’s the coolest part of the day for most of the country right now.

Taking your fitness efforts indoors can be helpful; I know, I know – I much prefer to be outside as well, but there are some scenarios where the air conditioned gym wins the day.

Consider breaking a longer workout into several shorter intervals during the hottest days, or experiment with HIIT training if you’ve not utilized these short duration and damned challenging workouts.

Finally, considering carefully and thoughtfully embracing the challenge of building your fitness using heat as an hormetic stressor – here’s a great example.

Be safe, be smart, and we’ll have more to come about prospering in the heat in a few days…

Useful Gear: Tracking Heart Rates

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Today’s post is somewhat of a follow-up to a Question of the Day post back on 4 June about target heart rates; I talked back then about the critical differences between thinking about target maximal heart rates and target aerobic training heart rates.

By the way, if you’re not as familiar with the concept of target aerobic training heart rates, spend a bit of time reading Dr. Phil Maffetone’s work on the topic – here’s a great introduction to the topic on his site. (I still think his 180 formula is sheer genius and a great starting place for just about any and everyone considering an aerobic training program.)

There are a host of great wearable trackers out there – that’s my own Suunto Fitness 3 from a recent walk above – including those from Garmin, Fitbit, and Suunto for example, as well as many of the big-tech watches/wearable devices (like an Apple watch).

As I’ve progressed in my own fitness, I’ve found the heart rate tracking feature particularly helpful to make sure I’m getting into my aerobic training zone during my get-the-day-started early walks, and later when doing my (more often than not) twice-weekly sprint workouts tracking heart rate recovery for pacing all-out sprint efforts.

Tangentially, on the advice of a mentor in the health, wellness, and fitness game, my wife and I have even been tracking the impacts of different foods on sleep quality and nighttime heart rates (here’s looking at you, dark chocolate squares after dinner) – some consistent and reproducible patterns appear to be evolving. I’ll be sharing more down the road…

At least from where I sit, for most of us, choosing a specific device isn’t the critical issue; your budget in fact, and your interest (and/or ability) to take a deep dive into a new tech device (some of which are impressively complicated), may be the more critical limiting factor.

Clearly some of us in the ancestral health and fitness world tend to be a bit compulsive about data tracking and can lose sight of the big picture behind the avalanche of data before us; take care to not venture too far on the data analytics limb.

A useful rule of thumb I offer clients, and used to offer patients is this: never pursue testing or data tracking unless you expect the findings to have a genuine impact on how your manage your day, diet, training, etc.

Tracking your training heart rate will have a meaningful impact on how you approach your fitness, and is a great place to start if you’ve not been harvesting any training related data at all.

Keeping Track: The Power of Charting Your Progress

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At the risk of sounding perhaps a little too obsessive, and before you ridicule my analogue handwritten tracking forms, hear me out.

For friends, family, and clients who have a long path to travel to restore their health and fitness, just as I personally have done, I consistently suggest they keep a fitness journal of some sort to track their progress along the way.

There are host of great digital tools available today, and being somewhat of a techie myself, I’ve played with a bunch of them, though I still track my weekly overall fitness plan by hand, as well as almost all of my resistance workouts in a fairly detailed manner. Personally, I hate jumping on and off my phone in the gym when lifting – it’s damned distracting – and I like seeing the readily-tangible record of week to week and month to month progress laid out before me when heading into my next resistance session.

For what it’s worth, I set out one year and nine months ago to seriously rebuild my overall muscle mass and strength; back then a purely wild-assed guess was that it would take two years of consistent, diligent resistance work to rebuild a meaningful strength base. The first few cycles (basically 13 weeks or a quarter year each) didn’t seem to yield much in terms of body composition results, though my written record documents consistent and notable progress in my training routine.

The last three cycles have yielded consistent, and notable, results, and I’m genuinely looking forward to starting my eighth and final 13-week cycle of this particular routine next week before moving on to something else mid-fall.

Of course it’s not an absolute essential you track your fitness routine (digitally or in whatever manner floats your boat), though it can be a wonderful source of encouragement, reinforcement, and guide you as you get stronger, faster, leaner, and sharper along the way.

Sprinting: A Definitive and Easy Read

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Mark Sisson and his team over on Mark’s Daily Apple have recently posted a nifty two-part series on sprinting, something just about all of us should be doing in one form or another. Read Part One here and then Part Two here (includes a short video of Mark sprinting on the beach).

I was a competitive sprinter in my youth, and sprinted in the context of other sports in college and grad school (even playing the occasional flag football and Ultimate match in later years), though as my weight blossomed sprinting became a distant memory for over two decades.

Several years ago when beginning my own health reclamation I knew that I needed to add some form of sprinting back into the mix, though when I first starting my journey back, weighing over 400 pounds made that almost impossible. I eventually added hill sprints and cycling sprints into the mix, but have been enjoying the heck out of all out running sprints on a well-maintained soccer/football field most of all for the past several months.

There is something about running at (more or less) all-out effort that feels incredibly invigorating and plain youthful (something this 60 year old hasn’t necessarily felt in a while). As I’ve shared before, I do my main workouts every day fasted, my weekly sprints included, and I’ll swear my energy levels are even better on sprint days (and for a few days thereafter). More on sprinting, including some interesting research data, to come.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, Recipes, and More 8 June 2019

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Somewhat of an eclectic collection again today; it’s been that sort of week…

Humans and Their Interesting Quirks

Metabolic limits for (extreme) endurance events.
The study behind the above article.
World’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils found in Morocco.
Weakness (upper and lower extremity) associated with depression in middle aged women.

Aging Well (and Living Forever)

So maybe we only need 7,500 steps per day as we age? Anybody routinely shooting for more than 10,000?
High LDL linked to early-onset Alzheimer’s.
So how old are your organs?
Does health in middle age predict late life health?
Live forever with temporal expansion? (This one made me giggle a little…).

Some of the Week’s Best Ideas

How to read 80ish books a year (and remember them).
Interesting read on “why we’ll look back at our smart phones like cigarettes”.
When ignorance is bliss.
What can we really learn about finger length data? Scientist delve in.

Food, Glorious Food

CRISPR gene editing for fruits and vegetables? Count me among the skeptics.

I’m just here for the spicy peanut sauce.
Turmeric Cabbage Coconut Stir Fry
Quick Cucumber Mint Salad

A Useful Tool: Changing Your Routine

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There are times in life when routine can be your friend.

There are times when stepping into your routine can be reinforcing, choosing willfully to engage in behaviors that will become habits down the road, laying foundations upon which success will be built in the days ahead.

Some days stepping into your routine is downright comforting, allowing you to get on with the day’s business with less attention to details already smoothed by your routine, hopefully spending minimal time on less critical decisions, and smoothing the tugs and pulls of daily decision making.

There are times in life, on the other hand, when routine can become dull, limiting, repetitive, and soulless.

Some days (or weeks, or months) we need a change in the routine, something to shake things up and inspire a new view of life and the challenges of the day.

Those of us working hard to improve our health, for example via optimizing nutrition and activity, changing our routines often becomes an integral part of the game.

Simply moving off the standard American diet is a huge change for most people, not to mention a genuine run of nutritional ketosis, adding fasting days, or even going full on carnivore. Carb cycling is another great example, and the lay fitness literature is chock full of recommendations about changing up the exercise game (see this, this, and this for example).

The trick of course is knowing what to change and when to do it.

And let’s face it, changing the diet and fitness games is sometimes a matter of trial and error, or an N=1 experiment if you prefer. Listening to your body is key, as is not changing too many variables in too short a time frame.

I recommend you always have a reason to implement change, however simple it might be, and it’s often incredibly helpful to run your ideas and goals by a trusted friend, mentor, or coach.

Maybe it’s time to change up your fitness and/or food plan this week. Git ‘er done.