Dietician's Blog

Weight Lifting Rules for Middle Age and Beyond

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:45:17 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin Many middle-aged and older people have started to lift weights, since extensive data show that lack of muscles increases risk for diabetes, heart attacks and premature death (British Medical Journal, September 2009; Journal of Physiology, September 2009). However, within the first few weeks of their new weight-lifting [...]

Prevent Heart Disease by Reversing Your Biological Clock

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:00:49 +0000

Prevent Heart Disease by Reversing Your Biological Clock Human cells have biological clocks called telomeres which cap the ends of chromosomes. The telomeres shorten in length everytime a cell divides and replicates. Eventually, the telomeres become too short for cell division and the cell dies. Shorter telomeres accelerate a cell’s biological clock and are considered markers [...]

Eggs Do Not Cause Heart Attacks

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:29:47 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin Eggs have not been shown to increase risk for heart attacks, according to an an extensive review of the world’s scientific literature in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (July-August 2009). For example, the Physician’s Health Study followed doctors for 20 years and showed no association between [...]

Muscle Growth Hindered by Obesity or High-Fat Diet

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:46:00 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin A study from the University of California, Davis shows that a high-fat diet prevents exercising mice from enlarging their muscles (Journal of Physiology, December 2010). The mice received either a low fat, high carbohydrate diet or a high fat, low carbohydrate diet for 14 weeks. Each group [...]

More Exercise is Better

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:36:21 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin Dr. Paul Williams of the University of California at Berkeley thinks that the American Heart Association’s recommendation of “half an hour a day of exercise” is way too little. He has followed more than 100,000 runners for 20 years and has shown that exercising much more than [...]

Almost All Obese Men Will Eventually Become Diabeic

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:40:31 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin This month, two studies show that being overweight shortens life. A study from the University of Uppsala in Sweden followed 1800 Swedish overweight men, from age 50 for 30 years and showed that almost all are at high risk for heart attacks and premature death (Circulation, December [...]

Mediterranean Diet Most Healthful

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:27:51 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin A comprehensive review of the world’s literature, covering research in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from 1966 to 2008, shows that eating a Mediterranean diet prolongs life and prevents heart attacks, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease (British Medical [...]

The Hygiene Hypothesis

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:20:53 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin A study on mice may explain why it’s not so bad to get lots of infections when you are young. Many studies show that children raised on farms are less likely to develop allergies than those raised in cities. If your immune cells and proteins do not [...]

Stress Fractures Caused by Weak Muscles and Over-Striding

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:55:11 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin One of the most common injuries in runners is a stress fracture of the lower leg (tibia) because running fast causes the foot to hit the ground with tremendous force that can shatter bones. A study from the University of Minnesota shows that women with stress fractures [...]

Why Sprinting Improves Endurance

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:18:47 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin Jens Bangsbo of the University of Copenhagen has shown that if you want to run, cycle or swim faster at any distance, you have to train at a pace that is almost as fast as you can move (Journal of Applied Physiology, November 2009). He asked competitive [...]

Junk Food Alters Intestinal Bacteria in Just One Day

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:41:24 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin After just one day of switching from a plant-based diet to a high-fat-and-sugar diet, mice with human intestinal bacteria developed bacteria associated with obesity in humans, and soon became grossly obese (Science Translational Medicine, November 11, 2009). Dr. Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St Louis first showed [...]

New Vitamin D Recommendations

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:23:12 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin At the University of Toronto School of Medicine’s “Diagnosis and Treatment of Vitamin D Deficiency” conference on November 3, 2009, thirty of the world’s leading researchers on vitamin D recommended 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily (the current recommendation is 600 IU). Vitamin D3 blood levels should [...]

Will avoiding dietary sugar prolong life?

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:07:05 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin Nobody has yet shown any way to extend the life span of humans. However, both exercise and calorie restriction (with adequate nutrients) have been shown to extend the life span of animals. Both of these measures apparently extend life by increasing the number and size of mitochondria [...]

Just Getting Old Does Not Cause Diabetes

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:05:44 +0000

Submitted by Fitness & Health with Dr. Gabe Mirkin A study from the University of Pittsburgh shows that the marked increase in diabetes in older people is caused by obesity and lack of exercise, not by aging alone (Diabetes Care, August 2009). Most cases of diabetes are caused by cells not being able to respond to [...]

Preventing Sugar Spikes After Meals

Life Extension — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:38:16 +0000

Preventing sugar spikes and restoring insulin sensitivity is the first step in preventing diabetes. If you're at risk for diabetes (middle age, family history, overweight, inactive) follow the suggestions in this article.