Health Hazard: Sitting

Sitting too long is apparently killing you.

Photo from photoXpress

Sure, we exercise regularly. We limit the indulgence and eat the right foods. Those are good healthy habits, but it’s not enough. According to UK researchers, sitting too long is risking you diabetes, heart disease and even death. That is regardless of your exercise.

This study also asserts that Americans spend 60-70% of their time sitting. Before you deny this, evaluate yourself. Do you sit when you eat? Do you sit when you use your computer? Do you sit when you watch your shows? Yeah, I think we do a lot of sitting.

Is this implying that we should stand when we do these activities? Yes, and it’s not a bad thing. I wrote this post standing up, and ideas come smoother when I pace around.

All we do now is contrary to the men who lived in a cave. They walk on foot. They stand and collect or kill for food. They don’t sit around and expect to receive food as instantaneous as ten minutes. It’s true that we live longer because of our medical innovations, but I believe their bodies are healthier. I don’t think our bodies evolved that fast to accommodate long hours of sitting. It is unnatural for us.

Pan (2012) called sitting as the “worst positions for the body to maintain”.  You are familiar with the feeling of strain on your lower back after a prolonged sit. That is because sitting puts immense pressure on your back, unlike when standing up, the weight is evened out. Many people sit in the wrong posture as well. Flexors tighten, hamstrings shorten, nerves pinch, blood pressure flow disrupts result from sitting.

Either you cut your prolonged sitting or take intervals from sitting. How hard would this change be for you?

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Source:
Study: Sitting too long can be a health risk; The Community Press & Recorder
Why Sitting Too Much Is Dangerous; Mashable

Fitness Industry Secrets

The fitness industry is more marketing and psychology than physical.

Fitness Membership. Photo from fitfreedom.wordpress.com

The fitness industry has a spur of growth these recent years, due to illnesses like diabetes and obesity. And of course, thanks to Hollywood we all want to be hot. And that’s the promise of the Fitness Industry, be it a club membership or DVD take-outs – you will be hot and sexy when you buy their products and services.

You decided to join a fitness club. On the façade you saw beachfront bodies, hot, sexy, and sizzling! Expectedly, models are the lean and muscular ones. It doesn’t mean that they got fit in that gym, but seeing them makes you believe. Admit it, most people are visual people. Seeing what you want to be is enough to persuade you.

You may or may not notice, but the trainers are marketing savvy. You signed the contract and gave them permission to bill your credit card. Often times, they still make you choose your personal trainer. And you’ll see, some are more expensive than the others. Paying them more doesn’t guarantee you better results. It’s still all you, you do the work for your own body, not the jam-packed trainers themselves.

The next step is to measure your current fitness or health status. How can you know if you are obese, overweight, fit, or underweight? They measure your BMI (body mass index). This scale, created by the US government is flawed! Its purely based on height and weight butwhat about fats proportion? What if you just have huge bone density that adds to your weight? And all other considerations are not accounted. According to this scale, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Michael Jordan are all overweight. However, it’s the most popular and easiest measure. But if your BMI surprised you, you may just have the body of Brad Pitt.

They offer the services of in-house nutritionist. They will give you a tease, and make the nutritionist assess your diet for the first time and recommend some changes. Diet and nutrition is common sense. Eat what the caveman eats, all natural and avoid processes and you’re good. Paying extra for nutritionists or books is expendable.

Gym Equipment Exercise. Photo from inletfitness.com

You got started. The leeway to steadfast weight trimming and strength building is the equipment and machinery. But you and your trainer will spend less time in it. Instead, your trainer will drive you to “stability balls, resistance tubing or bands, and balance tools”, more on exercises you can’t do alone. These trainers are told to veer away from constant use of equipment, because when the person learned how to use them (and it’s damn easy to learn), they won’t need trainers and will stop the service (DeFranco, 2012).

It’s a psychological game! They get you psyched up in the start, then when it’s been months and you do the same exercises over again, they intervene and re-psych you up to keep you paying the membership. It’s an industry, meaning a business. It doesn’t care if you get healthier or leaner. What it cares about your money.

Their programs may not work out for you, really. Our genetic makeup is part of the equation, but would they say it? No. They trick you to believe what the best looking body is, but each of us look at our best differently. And then they promise you that the best way to achieve it is through their gym.

If you noticed nothing’s changed, or at least on the timeline they promise you, it’s also planned out. They’ll say that despite the program, diets and supplements they served you, it all falls down to individual differences. It didn’t work out for you because it isn’t right for your body, and you keep on finding what works for you. Yeah, you’ve gotta pay them more.

Their gym is a breeding ground for germs, thanks to the sweaty bodies all around. From athlete’s foot to flu, they have it. And these clubs, not all of it, are not mandated by law to handle medical emergencies. Some trainers can’t even do CPR. Thing is, we are prone to injury when exercising, isn’t it? And heart attacks, due to improper exercise or overexercise, will need immediate help in matters of minutes.

Fitness industry doesn’t have a federal regulation to keep private data. Doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, all these professionals are ruled by law to preserve nondisclosure of any private information you shared with them. But the fitness industry doesn’t have that, and unfortunately you have to share your medical history to them at the beginning of your program. Be prudent as these people are free to gossip about you.

It’s hell hard to terminate a membership. Even if you communicate that you want to quit, chances are you signed a contract in day one and they’ll keep earning from you credit card even after you stopped. You better read before you sign, because if you sue them, they just present your signature and they win.

I’ve been a member of a nationwide fitness club. I know many success stories. Sure, there are people who got their magazine cover body, and fitness clubs helped them. But victim here, not all trainers are qualified to be one. Their management will employ many to meet the sky high demand, and see for themselves if they’re good with being a trainer. If not, oh well, drop him and get another.

Personal Trainer Encouragement. Photo from methodfitness.com

Even the professional and ethical can’t escape the demands of business, and what kept their growing bank account are some tricks here and deceit there to get you excited and believe all the miracles they claim.

I’m not implying that we quit our membership. Our body will always clamor exercise, and their services shot straight to that humane need. But you deserve to know all their secrets; and you can be fit at home, at work, at school, at Disneyland park, wherever.

How was your experience in fitness clubs?

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Sources:
Fitness Industry Secrets;   Fergus Niall Personal Training
Seeing Is Believing If You Want To Burn Fat – Or Is It?; FatBurning Furnace
10 Things Fitness Clubs Won’t Tell You; SmartMoney
5 Secrets the Fitness Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know; Ezine Articles
What the diet industry won’t tell you; Low-Carber

10 Things Your Personal Trainer Won’t Tell You; IDEA Health and Fitness Association

Weight-Loss And Science: What You Should Know That Helps

Diet? Exercise? Recent scientific findings reveal more ways to drop the pounds.

Photo from photoXpress

We know the convention – diet and exercise will keep slashing your unwanted pounds. And now, we appreciate science more for they gave us findings that made it easier to be slimmer. Read these 5 recent scientific findings that combats the clingy fats in our body. Science is on our side, so we better win the weight-loss battle.

Writing loses weight.

It doesn’t take much calories to write, but actualizing our thoughts would help. A new psychological study led by Dr. Logel in University of Waterloo found that writing down the things we value most will lead to weight loss. In their study, those who wrote their most valued principles in religion, politics, or even their beloved choice of music, lost an average of 3.41 lbs; while those who wrote the values of other people, not their values, gained 2.76 lbs in average.

A pill replaces exercise.

A new drug has the same benefits of exercising – just minus the sweat and time. How does it work? The pill simply contains Irisin, a hormone triggered by exercising that promotes calorie burning and controls glucose level. Though I personally think this promotes unnecessary human laziness, it is mainly intended to people with obesity, diabetes and other diseases deemed them to be “weak patients”. Doctors from Harvard Medical School argues that it should not replace regular exercise. Real work out is good not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well.

Garlic is a super food.

Hundreds of scientific publications are confirming that garlic has several medicinal benefits. More attractive to the weight-conscious, it reduces cholesterol by the action of its allicin component. To grasp the most benefits from it, slice or crush the garlic to stimulate an enzymatic process that makes it in its more active form. The outcome yields cardiovascular benefits, robust antibacterial properties and cancer prevention. However, you would like to leave it around 15 mins for the active compounds to form.

Eat fats during breakfast.

Science tells us to eat moderate amount of fats during breakfast. Timing is crucial – eat fat before sleep then you gain weight. But eating fat at the time of waking programs your body’s metabolism. As Dr. Young raises, having a fat-rich breakfast opens your metabolism to be efficient to fat burning for the rest of the day. So I won’t skip breakfast anymore.

Eat slowly.

It takes about 20 minutes before the brain receives satiety signal from your stomach. It means that only after 20 minutes your brain will decide that you are full and you should stop eating. So, the trick is you eat slowly and after 20 minutes, you’ll be full and you’ll stop eating. Eating fast, on the other hand, leads to overeating as our brain won’t receive any “you-are-full-stop-eating-already” signal.

What other weight-loss technique works for you?

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Sources:
Your Secret Weight-Loss Weapon; Men’s Health
New pill that ‘helps you to stay fit without exercise’; The Telegraph
Does Garlic Reduce Cholesterol?; Livestrong
Benefits of Chopped Garlic; Livestrong
Eating Fast May Make You Fat; LiveScience
Bacon or Bagels? Higher Fat at Breakfast May Be Healthier Than You Think; ScienceDaily

Demise of Computer Mouse

Developers must really hate our computer mouse. 

Photo from stock.xchng

First, tablets dismiss clicking and transforms into tapping directly on the screen. Then, they wanted to eradicate the use of hands altogether and make use of our stark eyes to navigate on our computer.

Tobii, a swedish company, instituted the technology of eye tracking. With just the movement of your eyes, you can switch from surfing the internet to organizing your personal files. You could watch the demo video in Use Your Eyes Instead Of A Mouse.

I get it. It is really cool and futuristic. All they want us to do is sit in our computer and let our eyes do the work. Computer then will even be more boring. They are completely inducing people to be alone since it is a problem when two people are looking in one screen. Personal computers will indeed be per person.

I think it is also leeway to further laziness in humanity. And since you move your eyes, you are putting more pressure on your two precious eyeballs, leading to an increased potential eyestrain.

I think there’s nothing wrong with my mouse. I can stick to it. And I like using my hands. But this technology is useful for people with hand problems, such as tremors, or disabilities.

Are you ready to let go of your computer mouse?

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