I know a lot of people who claim, “I don’t play sports,” either out of fear they won’t be any good or a misguided notion that sports aren’t a worthy pursuit. Whether or not you were some kind of jock in high school, sports can greatly benefit your health and enhance your life as an adult.

• Exercise: Current guidelines advise adults to get 30 minutes of activity on most days of the week. If you’re one of the many, many people who tend to consider exercise as a chore, sports can offer you a fun, exciting way to get your sweat on.
• Friends: Total human health is complicated and comprised of many layers, and studies consistently show that people who have strong social ties tend to be healthier and have a better outlook than their isolated peers. So grab your friends and start a team, or join a team and make some new friends. Either way, you’ll have fun and do yourself good.
• Brain work: Your muscles need to be used regularly to stay strong, and the same goes for your brain. When you try a new sport, you may feel awkward as you stumble through your first lessons or games, but your brain (as well as your body) is getting a marathon workout trying to learn it all. Similarly, pretty much all sports require strategy and problem-solving in order to succeed – a win-win for your brain.

Sports offer a multitude of benefits, and softball isn’t your only option. You can also play basketball and volleyball on adult recreation leagues, take a beginner martial arts class with friends, join a local running club and participate in a race, or any number of opportunities. Find one you love, and get out there and play! Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

Starting around New Years, they began pestering me to join them at Beat Pete, but I kept putting them off. Three nagging doubts held me back from registering: 1) A 5k translates to 3.1 miles – farther than I had run since…well, it’d been a long time; 2) The race would be run on pavement, and I wasn’t sure how my joints would handle the transition from soft treadmill belt to hard road; 3) I’m not what you would call a fast guy (people only call me “Speedy” ironically), so I didn’t know if I was really what you’d consider “race material.”

The kids had many solutions to my doubts. 1) With a combination of jogging and walking, pretty much anyone can cover 3.1 miles; 2) Though it’s best to gradually acclimate your joints to a hard surface like pavement, one event wouldn’t kill me; 3) Unless you’re a professional, your primary race is only against yourself, but you can also compete against people of like abilities. Pick a few people you think you can beat, then see if you can make it happen. Thus, having run out of excuses not to join the Beat Coach Pete movement, I finally registered a week before the race.

Plagued by dreams of getting lost in Boise and being unable to find the starting line, I didn’t sleep well the night before. But as it turns out, Beat Coach Pete is not a quiet affair. The race area was loud, easy to find, and thankfully had fairly warm weather (since last year’s race was apparently graced by snow fall). As I lined up at the start, I took my daughter’s advice to pick a few other people to try to beat. I selected the three BSU Elvises (What’s the plural of Elvis? Elvi?) and a pregnant woman (please don’t judge me).

Since I typically run on a treadmill, the race itself was an adventure in footing. Small hills, grass, sidewalks, curbs, planters, trees, and the feet and elbows of thousands of other racers required much juking and jiving on my part, and I felt myself becoming victim to “race high” (according to my son-in-law, this is the tendency to get caught up in the moment, run much faster than you should, and burn yourself out too early). Summoning my discipline, I slowed to my pre-planned pace, but still had to walk a bit to make it to the finish. And although I did not beat Pete, I did finish about 10 minutes faster than I anticipated. I also beat two of the three Elvises (though I placed third in my race with the pregnant woman).

In the end, I’m really glad I was “coerced” into doing Beat Coach Pete. I’ve always known the importance of staying fit, but it was interesting to actually put my fitness into practice in an outside event. And since I’ve semi-promised my daughter and son-in-law that I’ll join them for the Harvest Classic 8k (that’s five miles!) in September, it looks like it won’t be the last time I do so. Wish me luck, and keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

I’ll never forget the day my sister-in-law told me her neighbors had moved and left their dog behind. We went to check on the dog and found a confused, desperately lonely, six month-old collie pup. With a little digging, we discovered that her owners had been gone for several months, and they returned to feed her only once a week. She was starving – both for food and for companionship. We were able to track down her owners, who told us if we cared about her so much we should just keep her. When they told us her name was Allie, we misheard and called her Callie. They corrected us, but we decided to keep the new name as a symbol of her new life (though her official full title soon became “Callie the Pretty Girlie”).

That was thirteen years ago (the typical lifespan for collies is ten years). These days Callie doesn’t hear or see as well as she used to, and she needs a lot of help getting around. But she’s still as loving as ever, and never fails to greet you with a “woof” and a wagging tail. I’m so grateful that she’s been a part of our lives.

I’m sharing this story because cruelty still exists, and I’m not just talking about animal cruelty, but cruelty of all kinds (though there are links between animal cruelty and domestic violence – get more information here). Whether it’s neglect, physical injury, psychological abuse, etc., cruelty is a disease with many faces, and much of the time, the victims can’t speak for themselves. That’s why awareness is so important. Cruelty exists in hiding. This is true whether it’s a local case of domestic violence or a puppy mill operation that spans several states. But by being aware, we can notify the proper authorities, intervene, and stop the cycle of cruelty and violence. Follow this link for more information on recognizing the signs of animal cruelty, and if you suspect an animal is being abused, call Canyon County Animal Control at 465-2257.

Animal cruelty is only a symptom of a larger disease, but it’s up to us make a difference when we can – for the month of April and beyond. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

These terms are most commonly used in drug trials. Because the human mind is so powerful, it can transform the power of suggestion into physical results, and this outcome is important to differentiate from the actual effects of the drug. While one group of test subjects receives the experimental drug, another group receives only a “placebo” (a sugar pill or dummy pill that includes no drugs). Neither group knows whether they are receiving the actual drug or not, so any resulting effects can be more accurately judged. Therefore, any results found in the placebo group are attributed to either the placebo effect (if the subjects perceived beneficial changes) or nocebo effect (if the subjects perceived negative side effects).

Of course, the power of suggestion is alive and well in the outside world too. Those trendy bracelets that “balance you out” and “improve” your energy and flexibility? Sorry, that’s a placebo effect. The person with terrible allergies who starts to itch at the mere mention of cats? That’s a nocebo effect. In the Boston Marathon, Heartbreak Hill is the name of a short, 88 foot incline in the 20th mile of the course that has become infamous as a grueling climb where racers’ hearts are broken. I’ve no doubt that running up Heartbreak Hill after already traveling 20 miles is difficult, but I wonder if it doesn’t often FEEL harder simply because the runner knows it’s Heartbreak Hill?

For life in general, but especially when it comes to our health, it’s worth it to try to take a step back and be objective. Ask yourself, “Is this product/supplement/exercise program/etc. really as good (or as bad) as I think it is? What are the concrete, measurable results?” Don’t just judge the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of something by whether or not it FEELS as if it’s working. In our clinic, we take measurements of our patients’ abilities so that we can present them with proof of their progress. This is especially important if they begin to get discouraged. Then we can say, “Look, in three weeks, your range of motion has improved by 60 degrees! Your hard work is paying off!”

Every once in a while, I meet a patient for their very first appointment, and they’ll stubbornly declare, “This treatment isn’t going to do me any good! I don’t even know why I’m here!” This is always a difficult position for me. Even though I’ll do my best for this patient, they won’t experience their full recovery. Why? They’ve already decided they won’t, and there’s little I can do to combat that self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s a delicate balance to keep an open mind and yet not be fooled by every “new breakthrough” or “proven method.” Look for repeatable results that are grounded in numbers, and don’t let a placebo or nocebo effect keep you from achieving your best health. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

But this is also a cancer that a lot of people don’t want to talk about. Yes, it has to do with butts and bowel movements, but this is important stuff. According to the CDC, if every American aged 50 and older were screened regularly, as many as 60% of colorectal cancer deaths could be avoided. You’d think that kind of statistic would have people lining up at their doctor’s door. Unfortunately, many people have a sort of nightmarish vision of what a colonoscopy is, and therefore, they avoid the tests.

I’ve had my share of colonoscopies, and I won’t lie to you – while they’re the most accurate screening test for colorectal cancer, they’re not fun. But the good news is that you only have to get one every ten years (unless you have increased risk factors, such as a close relative with colorectal cancer or an inflammatory bowel disease like ulcerative colitis – in these cases, you’ll likely need them more often). What’s two or three days of discomfort once a decade when compared to the overall good of your health? And if you absolutely cannot bear the idea of a colonoscopy, there are alternative tests, such as a virtual colonoscopy or a fecal occult blood test. The point is to get screened, period.

In addition to screenings, the primary goal is of course to avoid cancer in the first place. As it turns out, the tips to avoid colorectal cancer are the usual prescription for a healthy life and disease prevention of all kinds:

• Make plant-based whole foods (such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains) the foundation of your diet.
• Eat only small amounts of red meat and avoid processed meats (such as most sausages and deli meats).
• Don’t smoke. Drink alcohol only in moderation.
• Maintain a healthy body weight.
• Get 20-30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week.

Sadly, I bet most of us know someone who has been affected by colorectal cancer. Together we can work to take this second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths and knock it down a few notches. Be healthy, get regular screenings, and encourage your friends and loved-ones to do the same. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

Many people cling to these ideas as if they’re gospel. Well, I’m here to address a few persistent exercise myths that just won’t seem to go away.

Myth #1: You shouldn’t swim within an hour of eating or you may drown.

Because the process of digestion directs blood to the stomach and away from the muscles, it may be uncomfortable for some people to swim (or jog, dance, or bicycle, for that matter) while their food is digesting, but many other individuals are able to tolerate it just fine. In fact, a small snack before exercise will give your body the fuel it needs for a quality workout. Bottom line – let your gut be your guide. If you feel fine exercising after a meal, go for it.

Myth #2: To get six-pack abs, you should do tons of sit-ups.

While it’s true that sit-ups and other exercises that work the core muscles (such as planks and bridges) are important for overall fitness, they are not the key to a washboard stomach. Every person’s abdominal muscles lie behind a layer of fat. In lean people, this layer of fat is thin and allows the definition of abdominal muscles to show through. In not-so-lean people, it’s the opposite. So don’t give up on the sit-ups, but if you really want six-pack abs, you’re better off investing your time in fat-burning cardio exercise.

Myth #3: Jogging will ruin your knees.

Remember the scientific principle “correlation does not prove causation”? It applies here. Yes, many people experience aching knees when they jog for a variety of reasons. They may have poor form or weak muscles and tendons. They may be overweight and are thus putting extra strain on their joints. They may have taken on too much activity too quickly and caused themselves an injury. They may pronate. Or supinate. Or have leg length discrepancies. Or any other of a thousand possible reasons for aching knees that are not caused by jogging, but which jogging brings to light. The good news is that each of these issues can be addressed, making jogging a much more pain-free time for your knees. And the best part? Regular activity actually helps to strengthen joints in the long run!

I’m no Mythbuster by any means, but I do love to educate people about the fitness myths that are keeping them from getting the workout results they want. Let’s put these myths to rest. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

1. Remain Active: Hands down this is number one on the list. Staying fit and active has the potential to add years, maybe even decades to your life. Regular exercise helps to reduce body fat, increase muscle mass, decrease blood pressure, and drops your risk of diseases of all kinds, such as diabetes and cancer. Plus, exercise doesn’t have to be a run-until-you-drop daily grind. It can be anything you enjoy, such as dancing, gardening, cycling, aerobics, or anything else that gets you up and moving.

2. Weight Train: Not only does weight training protect against lost strength and muscle mass as you age, it helps build bone density and decreases your risk of a fracture (all of which are important for maintaining independence as you get older). Weight training doesn’t have to be done in a gym either. Resistance bands and calisthenics (body weight exercises) make strength training easy to do at home (for more info, see my blog post on strength building).

3. Eat Less: The average adult gains 2-5 lbs. each year. Over time, this adds up to startling amounts and leads us down the scary path of obesity-related diseases. But why does this happen? As we age, our caloric requirements decrease, but most of us persist in eating the same foods in the same portions as we always have. Focus on lean protein and whole grain carbs, but make fruit and vegetables the foundation of your eating. See your doctor or nutritionist if you have special dietary needs or want more information on what kind of eating plan is best for you.

4. Find a Challenge: Everyone likes to have something to look forward to – a goal to reach. Whether it’s a taking a new class at a community college or finishing a 5k run/walk, challenges keep us motivated to improve ourselves.

5. Embrace Change: By the time we reach middle age or retirement, many of us are pretty set in our ways. But even at that late age, our lives are still changing, and the young-at-heart people that I’ve met over the years weren’t afraid to adjust their habits if they felt they could be doing something better. Maybe it was a late in life change to whole grain bread over their usual slice of white, or finally embracing the fact that their day goes a lot smoother if they get to bed on time the night before. Whatever it may be, if you’re stuck in a rut, don’t be afraid to get out.

Who says our age has to define us? Every day I see reasons why our golden years should be the best of our lives. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

Based on observations during my 25 year (so far!) career as a physical therapist, here is my list of the top 5 things that make us feel old. And best of all? Each of these causes is changeable by YOU!

1. Smoking: This had to be number one. Smoking increases blood pressure, damages lung tissue, and decreases cellular elasticity (including that in your blood veins), which means your cardiopulmonary system must work increasingly harder to do the thankless task of keeping you alive. It also discolors teeth, wrinkles skin, and yellows fingernails, so you will look much older than you actually are. Step one towards the fountain of youth? Kick the nicotine habit (get support here).

2. Moving Less: As kids, we ran around and played. As adults, we sit on the porch watching the kids run around and play. This is accepted as a very natural part of aging, but it is in fact the root of oldness (items 3, 4, & 5 on this list are directly linked to decreased activity levels). When we reduce our movement and become more sedentary, we set ourselves up for weight gain and lost physical fitness – a negative double whammy that contributes toward statements like, “I just can’t do (insert activity here) like I used to.”

3. Shrinking Muscle Mass: Muscle strictly adheres to the “use it or lose it” principle, so one of the direct consequences of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is decreased muscle mass. The less muscle you have, the weaker you will be. The weaker you are, the less you can do things for yourself. The less you can do things for yourself, the less likely you will be able to live independently in your senior years. For everything from picking up your grandkids to carrying in your own groceries, you need muscle mass.

4. Inflexibility: When many people think of flexibility, they might think of the old bend-down-and-touch-your-toes test, but flexibility encompasses much more than that. Can you reach your back in the shower? Can you look over your shoulder while driving? Can you complete your daily activities without trouble? It’s true that muscles and tendons do shorten as a result of aging, but this is exasperated by being sedentary. A further danger of inflexibility is an increased risk of injury as your body is not prepared to withstand any sudden or unexpected motion.

5. Painful Joints: After a lifetime of use, it’s only expected that the body’s natural cushioning for your joints (called cartilage) should begin to break down. This is called arthritis, and though it may seem counter-intuitive, moving painful, arthritic joints is actually the best thing for them. Check out our FREE arthritis article here.

Aging is a somewhat arbitrary thing. You’re only as old as you feel, or so the saying goes. Yet some people run marathons into their 70s and 80s while others resign themselves to rocking chairs by 50. You don’t have to be part of the former group, but don’t let yourself join the latter. Fight aging by addressing these top 5 “feel old” causes, and you may just give your grandkids a run for their money. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

For reasons not yet entirely understood, there is a correlation between spending long amounts of time sitting and an increased risk of death (you can read two such articles here and here). What’s more, the correlation holds even if you exercise regularly. This isn’t just important news for couch potatoes, but also those who work 8-10 hours a day at a desk job. All of us can (and should) decrease the amount of time we spend watching TV, surfing the internet, and playing video games, but we can’t so easily quit our jobs. So what can we do to combat this scary statistic?

Some businesses are installing standing desks and treadmill desks to help their employees spend less time sitting, but if your office can’t afford that kind of investment, there’s a simple solution – just stand up. At least once per hour (set a timer if you need to), stand up from your desk. Spend a few moments walking around and gently stretching before returning to your chair. Pretty easy, right?

It will also help to reduce your risk in other areas. Even though it won’t protect you from the dangers of excessive sitting, make sure you do get the recommended amount of exercise (30 min of moderate level physical activity at least four days a week, but more is even better). In addition, stay away from the cigarettes, junk food, and excessive alcohol that we know to be harmful and receive annual checkups from your doctor.

Death by sitting sounds too ridiculous to take seriously, but it’s a legitimate (and fortunately, easily preventable) hazard of our modern world. Starting right now, take standing breaks every hour – or more often – so you can stick around long enough to find out what else science will surprise us with. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan

I’m borrowing an idea from Pat Croce here. Croce is an icon in the physical therapy and business worlds. He’s an entrepreneur, writer, and TV personality. He’s a former owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and recently opened a pirate-themed museum. But what first drew me to his advice was his business savvy. As a physical therapist, he grew a chain of 40 physical therapy centers and later sold it for $40 million. As the saying goes, not too shabby.

As Croce asserts (I’m adapting his ideas here), fitness can be achieved by following three steps:
1. Analyze, 2. Commit, 3. Schedule.

1. Analyze: When creating a financial budget, you analyze what you have to work with – your income and your bills – and you identify areas in which you can trim spending and increase savings. Exercise is much the same. Your fitness program should begin with a trip to your doctor to analyze what you have to work with, i.e. your cholesterol, resting heart rate, blood pressure, body fat percentage, etc. Then you identify areas that you can improve in, such as lowering your cholesterol and your blood pressure. Rather than just saying, “I want to lose 15 lbs,” this approach gives you many areas to succeed in. That way, if those 15 lbs. are coming off a little slower than you’d like, you can look at your new lower resting heart rate and improved blood pressure as markers that you are healthier and heading in the right direction.

2. Commit: A budget won’t work unless you commit to following it. A fitness program is the same way. Current guidelines suggest that adults need 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week (for those of you doing the math, this means at least four days each week). To accomplish this, you need to commit to two hours of weekly exercise. Considering there are 168 hours each week, this should be relatively simple (it amounts to only about 1% of your time). But if you don’t prioritize it, those two hours will seem as impossible to find as an extra 70 hours. Without legitimate commitment, success is impossible.

3. Schedule: Many aspects of our financial lives are decidedly inflexible. For example, that credit card bill is due on the 6th, not “sometime around the 6th.” If your payment is late, you get late fees. While I do advocate for a certain amount of flexibility in work-outs (it helps keep it fun and prevents burn-out), you also have to be honest with yourself. If you know that you easily find excuses to skip exercise, you might need to schedule your workouts with the same “no choice” quality that bill due-dates have. Write it on your calendar and put reminders in your smart phone. That way, you won’t be able to schedule other commitments at the same time.

Achieving fitness already requires hard work, so why complicate it any more than we need to? Follow these three steps for physical (and financial) success this new year. Keep moving, my friends!

- Alan