The Fitness Fixer

Fast Fitness - Making a Face

2009-11-06T00:04:00.004-05:00

In the first act of Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote, "Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters." Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Your face shows how you lead your life. In other words, "Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician." How can you improve your face? Healthy exercise and hard work doing good deeds, benefits your face more than the same time and money...

Summer of Garden Exercise, Fall Harvest

2009-11-05T00:07:00.006-05:00

We planted a vegetable garden this Spring in my mother's field. Hard exercise changed a rocky ruined area into beautiful food. It's getting cold now. Readers asked how the garden turned out. Here are stories: We are harvesting. By afternoon it is dark with a large orange moon overhead lightning our work. The hard work keeps us warm. When we first cleared the area, we filled the wheelbarrow with...

Thank you Grand Rounds - Health in NonClinical Settings

2009-11-04T11:55:00.004-05:00

Thank you Dr. Joe Kim for hosting Grand Rounds this week from his blog NonClinicalJobs.com and including Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright? among his votes for the best in medical writing for the week. Dr. Kim writes, Dr. Jolie Bookspan from The Fitness Fixer has been collecting some interesting data about sitting straight up. Read about it here: Fast Fitness - Contest:...

Moving More is Fun

2009-11-02T17:02:00.003-05:00

The human body is healthiest and happiest when it moves throughout the day. Reader Paul J sent this video clip of a project in Sweden, reminding people how much movement can be fun: Click > arrow to play:If movie doesn't load, click http://thefuntheory.com/?q=expriment/pianotrappan Medicines prescribed for poor mood and the surprising number of diseases caused by sedentary lifestyle, frequently...

Fast Fitness - Exercise Involvement In World Health

2009-10-30T00:02:00.003-04:00

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - shed unhealthy petty feelings of maltreatment because you had to wait in line for your luxury items, or didn't get them in your color. We have things to be extremely grateful for.More of the time, it is not necessary to gain them through harming others or the Earth. Lead by example. Teach children and others not to litter, pollute, harm others, do harm for money,...

Healthy Halloween - First Do No Harm

2009-10-29T14:04:00.004-04:00

Halloween - the time when I take off my lab coat for work, and others put them on for costumes. A time when we dress as groups who pledge: "An it harm none, do what ye will" also stated as, "First, do no harm." Who are these groups? Read on. The Wilderness Medical meeting where I have been teaching certification courses held a costume banquet last year. Medical professionals and students dressed...

Thank You Grand Rounds 6.6 for Halloween

2009-10-27T17:34:00.003-04:00

Thank You Code Blog for collecting the best medical articles of the week for the Halloween Edition, and including my Kneecap Tracking article among the scary entries. A reader's doctor says the fix for tight knee muscles is to cut the muscles. That is scary when pain can be stopped by stretching them instead. On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical articles from the...

Fitness Tests - Do They Do What They Claim?

2009-10-26T00:03:00.005-04:00

A number of conventional standardized fitness tests, surprisingly, are not accurate. They do not test what they claim to test. To get real answers that you can use, it is important to know if you are doing what you think you are doing. An example of a test that does not test what it claims is the "Sit and Reach" test. Sit and Reach is assumed to test hamstring flexibility, but is more a measure...

Fast Fitness - Balance Contest!

2009-10-23T00:02:00.004-04:00

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - another contest! Do you know what constitutes ability in balance as a lifestyle? Tell us! On the urging of reader Mr. Georges Nakhlé, I started the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) to train people in healthier, functional, more common-sense exercise and lifestyle. We teach classes, certify top students, and are creating better methods of...

Forward Air Head Syndrome - Doing Sets and Reps and Missing The Point of the Exercise

2009-10-22T00:02:00.007-04:00

After the article Help Yourself last Monday, I received many notes from readers. Almost a dozen the first few hours. Notes saying that that once they understood how my method changes "doing" exercises into stopping causes of injury, they tried to help their friends who had pain. The friends turned their generous help back into the party line of doing sets and reps of stretches and exercises, then...

Thank You SharpBrains Grand Rounds - Brain and Cognition Edition

2009-10-21T18:41:00.003-04:00

Thank you Dr. Alvaro Fernandez for hosting Grand Rounds this week and including my article Fast Fitness - BIPOD Reader Prescription for Healthier Feet in the list of best medical writing of the week. Congrats featured reader Paul J, who prescribed BIPOD. This week's Grand Rounds combined the usual Grand Rounds (health & medicine "best of" list) with Encephalon (brain & mind edition). To...

Reps of Exercises Don't Fix Pain; Fixing Causes Does

2009-10-19T21:46:00.007-04:00

Monica from Montana bent over dogs daily in her dog boarding kennel. She spent the summer doing stretches, exercises and going to chiropractors for severe back pain. She did all her "sets and reps" (repetitions) of the exercises her various practitioners gave her. The pain kept coming back. What did she do differently that stopped this cycle? I first heard from Monica through her short happy...

Fast Fitness - Contest: What Does It Take To Sit Upright?

2009-10-16T00:03:00.008-04:00

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a Contest! Conventional beliefs about posture include that you must do certain exercises or stretches or strengthening to change your posture. Is that true? Look at photo 1 and 2 and answer the simple question below: Photo 1 photo 2 Submit Your Answer: What muscle strengthening or stretch is required to change from first (unhealthy rounded) to...

Exercise and Weight Loss Reduces Kidney Disease and Death

2009-10-14T14:53:00.004-04:00

We recently found a cure for "irony deficiency disease." My near-7 foot tall husband and I were walking to a Vidocq forensic society meeting. A bake sale was set up in the building lobby - junk food, refined junk pastries, pies with artificial colorings. The sign stated "Bake Sale for Kidney Disease." I asked which items caused the most kidney disease. I was sure it was a staged joke for a...

Help Yourself

2009-10-12T12:19:00.003-04:00

Ivy from New Zealand wrote last week with an important reminder for readers who want to fix their pain: "Have just read your post re Captain Scott and knees - Don't Miss These Reasons It Doesn't Get Better. "It reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with one of my neighbours. She is 71, very much overweight and is in a lot of pain. She has been receiving physical therapy for the last...

Fast Fitness - BIPOD Reader Prescription for Healthier Feet

2009-10-09T00:08:00.010-04:00

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - BIPOD is a way to happier feet that you can do yourself at home. Reader Paul J sent in this gem in July. Other great work from him and other readers are still in the piles of mail. For background: A shoe insert is any pad of any size, shape or quality that you put in your shoe for various reasons. Hard shoes are a common course of joint pain. Many shoes benefit from...

Thank You Grand Rounds 6.3 - Pallimed

2009-10-08T20:28:00.002-04:00

Thank you Pallimed for not including me in your votes of the best in palliative medicine for Grand Rounds Vol 6, No 3 this week. Palliative medicine, by definition, means to alleviate pain and symptoms without eliminating the causes. Palliative comes from the Latin palliare, meaning "to cloak." My life's work is not to cloak problems but stop causes. Palliative care is sometimes all that is...

Kneecap Tracking - Don't Miss These Reasons It Doesn't Get Better

2009-10-06T18:02:00.014-04:00

Captain Scott, pilot, athlete, all around good reader, asked about knee pain when the kneecap (patella) "slides to the outside due to tightness in the tendons and muscles on the outside of the knee." His physician recommended surgery to cut the tight area. Is this needed? Tracking problems have several names: Lateral Facet Syndrome, Chondromalacia, Anterior Patello-Femoral Pain Syndrome, Lateral...

Exercise Reduces Colon Cancer Risk

2009-10-05T15:39:00.008-04:00

The British Journal of Cancer published a study finding that, "Exercise, including manual labor, cuts colon cancer (the most common kind of bowel cancer) by a quarter."(1) Another study by the Division of Population Science at the Fox Chase Cancer Center found that, "People who get lots of exercise have a 30 percent to 40 percent lower risk of developing colon cancer" and that "A sedentary...

Fast Fitness - Third Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankles and Knees in Jumps and Landings

2009-10-02T00:02:00.005-04:00

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - third in the series of Functional Fitness Training (FFT) to teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc. Assemble your group in neat rows. Stand in front in view of all. Tell them this is a basic, functional physical skill to reduce musculoskeletal injuries, that puts together the first and second skills, previously learned: Tell...

Reader Success With Functional Fitness Training - Stronger Ankles, Better Balance

2009-10-01T00:02:00.004-04:00

Here is a good start to October. I had invited readers to send in names for my group Functional Fitness Training program (tentatively named FFT) and success stories using it. Reader Paul J sent in both. He wrote: "I don't think I can come up with a better name than FFT. "Some ideas….let's see, "Simple Training Big Benefits. (The toe balance training is great; I suppose a success story is in...

Healthy Aging Starts Now - Part II

2009-09-30T10:07:00.007-04:00

Reader Robert Davis sent a well-written summary in last Thursday's Healthy Aging Starts Now. Here he adds about our view of aging, and improving physical skills as years pass rather than letting them slip away from lack of use: "I forgot to mention to that this stuff has helped my instrument playing as well! Sitting straight up and relaxed makes execution of difficult passages so much easier. I...

Thank You LaikaSpoetnik Grand Rounds From The Netherlands

2009-09-30T08:41:00.007-04:00

Thank you Jacqueline for hosting Grand Rounds Vol. 6 No. 2 this week on the LaikaSpoetnik MedLibLog and including my article Fast Fitness - Stretch For Menstrual Cramps - a quick stretching technique to ease symptoms of menstrual and other uterine cramps. On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the week. Who Is Laika? Jacqueline is an information...

Bodybuilding Champion Age 74 - Tsutomu Tosaka

2009-09-28T14:33:00.011-04:00

Mr. Tsutomu Tosaka began bodybuilding at age 40. Last week he won the 21st Japan Masters Bodybuilding Championship in Tokyo. He is 74. Tsutomo-San says healthy aging and staying in shape is easy and anyone can do it if they just work out from time to time. Below, a YouTube video should appear. Note Mr. Tsutomo's healthy upright neck position. Click the > arrow to play.If the movie does not...

Fast Fitness - Second Group Functional Training Exercise: Ankle Stability and Ability

2009-09-25T00:02:00.004-04:00

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - the second of the promised series of Functional Fitness Training (call it FFT until we create a better name) that you can teach your teams, squads, classes, students, kids, groups, battalions, etc. Assemble your group in neat rows. Footwear is whatever used for their sport or activity. Stand in front facing forward. Everyone sees your feet and you see each...