Stretching & Muscle Strength

Apparently there is research suggesting that stretching can sap muscle strength. This is the first I have heard of it. That said, a recent study has found otherwise.
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This from Reuters:

While some research has raised the question of whether pre-workout stretching hinders muscle performance, a new study suggests that a few minutes of stretching may not sap the average exerciser's muscle strength.

Stretching is part of many active people's pre-exercise routine. But some recent studies have been pointing to potentially negative effects on athletic performance.

In some studies, though not all, stretching right before a workout has been found to decrease both sprint speed and jump height. There's also evidence that stretching temporarily reduces muscle strength.

However, one question has been whether such effects would be seen after the short bouts of stretching that a typical exerciser or weekend athlete might perform.

The new study, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, looked at just such a "practical" stretching regimen.

Researchers measured calf-muscle strength in 13 moderately active men and women under four different conditions: after no stretching, and before and after 2, 4 or 8 minutes of calf-muscle stretching.

They found that stretching did not diminish the participants' muscle strength compared with the no-stretching condition. It did, however, temporarily improve the range of motion in the ankle joint.

The findings suggest that "a few minutes of static stretching of the calf muscles before exercise is unlikely to diminish muscle strength," senior researcher Dr. Joel T. Cramer, of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, told Reuters Health.

Past studies, he noted, have shown that longer, less practical stretching regimens may in fact dampen calf muscle strength for a short time. "However," Cramer said, "most exercisers do not continuously stretch their calves for 10, 20 or 30 minutes." . . .

. . . None of this means that stretching is not useful to active people. As demonstrated in the current study, stretching can improve joint range of motion in the short term. And some studies suggest that over the long term, a regular stretching regimen can help build muscle strength.

Read the entire article.

Having spent a lifetime exercising and taking part in sports where stretching was an absolute necessity to protect one's muscles, I am convinced that, even if stretching causes a small loss in strength, of which I am not convinced, it still protects significantly against muscle pulls and related injuries injuries. I have learned the hard way that going from 0 to max with no stretching holds bad things in store.

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Weight Loss: "A $44 Billion Dollar Industry With A 99% Failure Rate"

A fitness coach ponders the weight loss industry and the promise of quick losses with minimal work.

This from Newton Daily News:

She’s fed up with being overweight! It’s time for a change. The ad says lose 20 pounds and drop two dress sizes (just like the celebrity). She walks through the door of the weight loss center and is greeted by the diet counselor. The counselor weighs her, discusses current nutrition habits and puts her on the 1,000 calorie per day plan and tells her to walk/jog everyday. She is informed that her food intake will come from the packaged foods and delicious shakes sold by the center, and she will lose weight.

A week later the woman returns to the diet center after following “the program” and the first thing they do is direct her to the scale. She lost five pounds! In a week! She buys more packaged food. The second week, two more pounds! The third week,the scale doesn’t move. But the counselor is ready for this and explains she has hit the dreaded plateau. The counselor cuts her back to the center’s 800 calorie plan.

Sure enough, the woman loses weight again. The only problem is her cravings are getting the best of her. Her body is telling her to eat more; she believes it’s lack of willpower. She gives in and has some ice cream. She gets back on the scale. She’s hit her second plateau. She gives up, she quits and goes on an all out cookie binge. She gains all the weight back! She blames herself! Sound familiar?

. . . We see this same scenario day in and day out. Weight loss is a $44 billion dollar industry with a 99 percent failure rate, and obesity is at an all time high. We are on a mission to get the right information out to maximize people’s lives, not shorten them with fad diets, magic pills, surgeries and infomercials.

The truth is, the above scenario had nothing to do with willpower. The lack of quality nutrients (from processed, packaged food) and calorie deprivation made this a no-win solution. Her body was telling her to eat to survive. Her body doesn't understand she’s trying to lose weight. Protective mechanisms in her body told her she needed the nutrient she can survive off the longest, fat, and the substance that provided the quickest energy, sugar. The binge was caused by the diet.

The counselor failed to tell her the majority of her weight loss came from water and muscle tissue. Losing water means nothing with long-term weight loss, but it’s a great trick for the diet centers. They put her on the scale after a week to prove the diet was working. More significantly, she lost muscle due to such a low calorie intake. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, meaning it burns calories! By sacrificing muscle, she slowed metabolism. Muscle is also the site where fat is burned. Less muscle means reduced ability to burn fat. The result of her diet center choice: a slower metabolism, a hormonally-induced appetite, a reduction in fat burning ability and a guarantee to accumulate fat faster than previous to the diet.

Worst of all, she blames herself and plans to go back to the center and try again. After all, in her mind, it worked until she caved. . . .

Read the entire article. There is no industry more the progeny of the con men of yesteryear than the snake oil salesman who make up today's diet and weight loss industry.

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Exercise, Aging & Early Onset Alzheimers

Is there anything for which exercise and fitness do not provide a positive benefit? Its been established for some time that exercise slows down brain cell loss in older, healthy adults. A recent study of people with early onset Alzheimers shows that exercise similarly limits brain cell loss in those individuals who maintain a regime of exercise.

This from the NY Sun:

Patients with early Alzheimer's disease who exercised regularly saw less deterioration in the areas of the brain which control memory, according to a study released yesterday at the 2008 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies showed that exercise positively affected the hippocampus region of patients' brains, an area that is important for both memory and balance. In Alzheimer's, the hippocampus is one of the first parts of the brain to suffer damage.

Exercise and physical fitness have been shown to slow down age-related brain cell death in healthy older adults, and earlier this month a preliminary study was published showing that exercise may help slow brain shrinkage in people with early Alzheimer's disease.

Now, researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., have used MRI and other neuroimaging tools to analyze how exercise affects the brains of those with early Alzheimer's.

The researchers found that patients with early Alzheimer's had a "significant relationship" between the size of key brain areas associated with memory and fitness, unlike healthy older adults. Those patients with better fitness ratings had less brain tissue atrophy and those with worse fitness had more brain damage. . . .

Another report from ICAD 2008 showed that a 12-month home-based exercise program reduced falls and improved balance in patients with dementia. According to researchers from Western Medicine, a consultant physician service provider for Hollywood Hospital in Nedlands, Western Australia, people suffering from dementia fall up to three times more than those who have no cognitive impairment.

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Psychology of Eating - Package Size

The surprising results of a recent study showed that subjects were more likely to overeat junk food when choosing from multiple "single serving" packs as opposed to eating from bulk packages.

This from NYT:

It is a truism of public health that people consume more junk food from large packages than from small ones. In response, food companies have decreased portion sizes and introduced single-serve packages, particularly for foods like ice cream and snack chips that people have usually bought in bulk, deciding on their own what constitutes a proper portion.

But a study in Journal of Consumer Research suggests smaller packages can lead consumers to eat more, by blunting their wariness about how much they consume. In one experiment, students were primed to think about their body shape, then were given potato chips and left to watch television. They ate nearly twice as many chips when given nine small bags as when given two large ones. They also hesitated less before opening the small bags.

The authors took particular aim at “multipacks” of single-serve portions, like the Häagen-Dazs ice cream cups known as “Little Pleasures.” “Consumers may merrily consume the innocently small packages of Little Pleasures at an even higher pace,” they wrote, “leading to over-consumption.”

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Health Markers: Waist Measurement versus BMI

Recent studies suggest that waist measurements are a much better indicator of health risks than the BMI commonly used as a thumbnail standard to measure obesity.

This from the NYT:

. . . The size of your waist can tell you far more about the state of your health than the number on a bathroom scale. Studies have linked larger waist sizes to higher risk for heart attack, cancer, diabetes, dementia and even incontinence.


Last month, Harvard Medical School researchers reported on a study of 44,000 nurses that showed even normal-weight women face twice the risk of premature death from heart disease or cancer if they are thick around the middle. Other studies have shown similar risks for men.

The notion of waist size as a barometer of health has been around for years, but the vast majority of doctors still put patients on a scale and calculate their body mass index, which measures weight relative to height.

But many studies of both men and women now suggest that it is not how much you weigh but where you carry your weight that matters most to your health.

In March, an analysis in The Journal of Clinical Epidemiology showed that body mass index is the ''poorest'' indicator of cardiovascular health, and that waist size is a much better way to determine, for both sexes, who is at a higher risk for hypertension, diabetes and elevated cholesterol.

Studies suggest that health risks begin to increase when a woman's waist reaches 31.5 inches and her risk jumps substantially once her waist expands to 35 inches or more. For men, risk starts to climb at 37 inches, but it becomes a bigger worry once their waists reach or exceed 40 inches.

However, those numbers are based on averages and are not always useful for very tall or short people, children or certain ethnic groups. Among the Japanese, for instance, health risks start to increase for men with a waist size above 33.5 inches, but for Japanese women, risk does not increase until their waists expand to 35.5 inches.

Last month, The International Journal of Obesity suggested that, particularly for young people, the waist-to-height ratio might be a better indicator of overall health risks. Put simply, your waist should be less than half your height.

But a thick waist does not always correspond with poor health. One extreme example is the Japanese sumo wrestler who despite his massive size still might have the cardiovascular health of a slimmer athlete. Sumo wrestlers typically store fat just beneath their skin, where it doesn't cause harm, rather than deeper in their abdomen.

Still, for most people, waist size is important. ''We've known for a long time that people who tend to deposit fat inside their abdomen are the ones who have the highest risk for diabetes and heart attacks,'' said Dr. Arya M. Sharma, chairman of obesity research and management at the University of Alberta. ''For most people who are not sumo wrestlers, it's actually quite a good indicator.''

Having a large waist means you are more likely to have fat around your heart, liver and even ordinary muscles, and it signals that you should be screened for other health problems, like insulin resistance and high cholesterol -- particularly high triglycerides.

Losing even a little weight can have a big effect. In a small study, 20 severely obese patients who were put on a very low-calorie diet lost an average of 20 percent of their body weight. That translated into only a 19 percent drop in body mass index, but waist size fell 23 percent. Inside the body, the effect was even greater. Using imaging technology, researchers found that the layer of fat around the heart shrank by an average of 32 percent, according to a report this month in the medical journal Obesity.

Stress hormones have also been linked to abdominal fat. In one study, researchers used blood and saliva tests to measure the stress response of 67 women, ages 18 to 25, who were subjected to speech and math tasks. Women who experienced the most stress during the tasks were more likely to have a thicker waist than the women who were not stressed, according to the March report in The International Journal of Obesity.

Doctors say that while diet and exercise can help shrink your waist, most people find it tough to succeed.

If you have a large waist, your first goal should be to stop gaining weight, Dr. Sharma said. Exercise and improving the quality of the food you eat will lower your risk for heart and other problems, even if you never lose pounds or inches.

''You might want to focus on being as healthy as you can and not obsess about your weight,'' Dr. Sharma said. ''Obesity management is not about treating numbers on a scale. It's about improving people's health.''

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