With the coming of spring many of us are headed out and joining summer leagues to play softball, go swimming or maybe ultimate Frisbee. Now is a good time to look at sports nutrition and how it can help us perform better and (especially for those of us, like me, that are in the over 40 crowd) recover quicker.
Protein and Diet
The primary reason athletes require protein is to repair and rebuild muscle that is broken down during exercise. Protein also helps to optimize carbohydrate storage in the form of glycogen. Protein isn’t the best source of fuel for exercise, but the body can and will use protein when there is not enough carbohydrates in your diet. This is not a good thing.
If protein is used for fuel, there isn’t enough available to repair and rebuild body tissues, including muscle. And in the case of a starvation type diet, the body will even steal protein from the muscles including the heart.
If you are an athlete that is into strength training you might believe more protein is important to build muscle. It turns out that strength athletes actually require high carbohydrate intake. The glycogen stored up from carbohydrates is required to fuel their workouts. It is the strength training workout that leads to increased muscle mass and strength.
This is because all high intensity, powerful muscle contractions (such as weight lifting) are fueled with carbohydrates. Neither fat nor protein can be oxidized rapidly enough to meet the demands of high-intensity exercise. You must get enough dietary carbohydrates in your daily diet to restore glycogen levels. Protein is necessary for the rebuilding and repair of the muscle, but carbohydrates can’t be ignored.
Many athletes support rapid recovery and repair of muscle tissue with protein shakes and powders. Don’t settle for mere protein, use a clinically proven Bio-Build® formula that combines 18 vitamins and minerals and essential amino acids. This will provide the body the nutrients it needs for recovery and repair, and for rebuilding muscle tissue.
Water and Staying Hydrated
Proper hydration is especially important during exercise. For athletes, drinking water is essential to comfort, performance and safety. The longer and more intense your exercise routine, the more important it is to drink the right kind of fluids and in the proper amounts.
A majority of people do NOT get enough fluids in their system each day especially when exercising.
Athletes, ever weekend athletes, need to stay hydrated for optimal performance. Studies have found that water loss due to sweating is linked to a drop in blood volume. This condition can cause the heart to work harder and can lead to muscle cramps, dizziness, fatigue and even heat illness such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
Causes of Dehydration can include
· Inadequate fluid intake
· Excessive sweating
· Failure to replace fluid losses during and after exercise
· Exercising in dry, hot weather
· Drinking only when thirsty
Consumption of beverages containing electrolytes and carbohydrates can help sustain fluid-electrolyte balance and exercise performance.
To help avoid early fatigue, weakness, muscle cramps, lightheadedness, and nausea, the body must stay hydrated to replenish these nutrients.
Whether you’re an elite athlete or just an aspiring one, an Endurance Sport Drink is the perfect drink during workouts. This thirst-quenching beverage keeps you hydrated and sustains energy. The advanced OptiCarb® formula enhances endurance, giving you the extra fuel to reach your performance goals.
Read some bio’s of other athletes who use products to make workouts and sports more enjoyable before, during and after. They help both the amateur and the professional.
Here is to your health and Making Life More...
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Improve your Health
An ounce of prevention towards wellness -
Learn the simple steps to living a healthier and happier life!
Concern over health and how to improve your health has become a topic more and more of us think about and try to implement in our lives. Advances in medicine have helped us live longer lives and have allowed us to overcome some of the ills and infections that used to kill many people. Vaccines have helped prevent illness and death. They have eliminated diseases like smallpox and have helped against rabies, diphtheria and the plague.
However, we have started to incur a new host of health problems due to the length of our life, the processed foods we eat, the fast paced lives we live and the chemicals that pollute our world. Everyday we see new commercials on TV about the next great drug that will make your life better or healthier. But do you actually listen to the list of possible side effects. Are these drugs really helping or just creating different problems. Remember, no pharmaceutical company ever made money by curing you quickly so you could stop taking their pills.
Why wait until you feel poorly before you see a doctor that will only work on alleviating your symptoms and not on fixing the underlying problem. Start achieving wellness and begin improving your health before you get to the point you need to see a doctor. Work on improving your overall wellness.
As the old adage says “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Of the leading causes of death in the United States, many can be prevented. The likelihood of contracting heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues can be directly impacted by the choices we make every day. The choices about what we put into our bodies and the choices we make that affect our personal environment.
Click here to see a study done by UC Berkeley Medical that shows how making the right choice can directly impact your health.
Here are some things you can do to increase your wellness and start down the path to improve your health:
Diet and Nutrition -
Your diet does a lot in determining your overall health and wellness. What you put into your body does make a difference. "It's easy to buy into some pretty popular nutrition misconceptions -- myths and half-truths that ultimately find us making far fewer healthier food choices than we realize," says New York University nutritionist Samantha Heller, MS, RD.
Read labels, don’t trust all the advertising and always try to get whole foods and not processed substitutes.
The same goes for your supplements. Get those that are made from natural ingredients and aren’t over processed. Every vitamin and mineral and phytochemical in our body works in concert with one another, and it's easy to knock that balance off. Be sure the supplements you are taking are balanced and introduced to your body in a way that they are usable and work together as nature intended.
Some of the things you want to make sure you get enough of in your diet are fiber, antioxidants, soy, and water. These things along with a well balanced nutritional intake of whole foods and supplements can go a long way in improving health and increasing wellness.
Weight -
Maintaining a healthy weight is critical to improving health. You don’t have to be as thin as a rail – this is actually just as unhealthy as being overweight – you just need to keep the excess in check.
It all begins with attitude. Start by changing how you feel about yourself, your body and your eating habits. Change to a can do attitude where you start to do what’s right for you. Simple moderate exercise, eating a healthy breakfast (no skipping allowed), reducing your calorie intake by not taking just one more are all small things we can do to get in better health by being at a better weight.
Don’t go for the fad diets that don’t work or at best get you to lose weight for a while but then just put it back on later. A slow and steady change will help you lose the weight and keep it off and it will be much healthier for you. Get plenty of whole foods, protein (quite often a good soy protein can give you what you need without adding fat to your diet) and drink lots of water.
Water is critical to the health and wellness of your body. It helps rid you of toxic build up and it is needed for normal cell processes to work. Another side effect of water is that it can make you feel full without adding the calories so you will eat less.
Exercise -
Aerobic exercise is very important to maintaining your wellness and improving your health. It has been linked to cancer prevention, reduction of osteoporosis, helping with depression, lowering the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and of course obesity and weight control. It can also help with cognitive functions – meaning you can think more clearly and work more efficiently.
Aerobic exercise makes most of us think of joining a gym or having to run several miles everyday. This is just not the case. You can keep it very simple and still achieve benefits. Walking is one of the best exercises out there. It is simple, easy on the joints, doesn’t cost us a lot of money and it can be done pretty much anywhere. To get a benefit from walking, you just need to make sure that it is aerobic. That means you want to walk at a pace that leaves you feeling "warm and slightly out of breath". One good way to start is the 5 out 5 back plan. Just walk 5 minutes away from the house and then you are force to walk 5 minutes back. Increase the time out as your health and fitness increase.
Stress Management -
Most of us live with some type of stress everyday. It has just become part of our lives. It has also become one reason we don’t always feel our best and why we are susceptible to feeling run down and ‘sick’.
Reducing stress can help now and our long term health. Stress keeps our bodies from functioning at their best and slowly wears on us. Find way to relax, to have that ‘me’ time where the pressures of the day can be pushed aside.
Try to simplify your life. Our world has become so fast paced and ‘in your face’ – ‘do it now’ that we just don’t have time to sit and watch the clouds or the rain or…. One simple way to gain a little sanity is to disconnect from the fast pace, try just turning off the cell phone. Just leave it behind for an hour.
But, no matter how much we work on getting rid of the stresses in our life there will always be something that causes us stress. Luckily, there are ways to help us overcome the stress nutritionally.
Avoiding Toxins -
With all of our advances and science and technology, man has come up with many great things to improve our quality of life. However, we are learning that some of these things that are there to improve actually produce side affects that can hurt us and our health – now and in the future.
The EPA has warned that indoor air pollution is more of a concern than the pollution we find outside. Many cleaners as well as skin and beauty products actually contain harmful toxins.
There are companies out there that do produce green cleaners that are safe for people and for the environment. Read labels and know what your beauty and cleaning products contain.
Click here to read about the many toxins that are out there and where they are found. One of the best ways to maintain your health is to wash your hands. We touch so many different things with our hands things that might have been cleaned with toxins or touched by something unhealthy that by just washing, you can cut down on many unwanted health affects.
Adequate Sleep -
Giving your body the sleep it requires is a great way to keep it healthy. During sleep your body regenerates and rejuvenates. It is absolutely imperative to get enough sleep, but getting more doesn’t always mean you are getting better quality sleep. Click here to read about the importance of sleep and how a good sleep program can improve your life in so many ways.
Quit Smoking -
Despite the many warnings and the known health risks smoking is still prevalent around the world. Quitting this habit can not only improve your health drastically and improve your chances of preventing future disease; it can relieve you of a financial burden. Just think if you applied all the money you spend on cigarettes on healthy nutritional supplements how much you could increase your health and wellness.
Its not always the difficult path that is required for change. Quite often making a few simple changes in our lives can make dramatic results.
Think about it!
Learn the simple steps to living a healthier and happier life!
Concern over health and how to improve your health has become a topic more and more of us think about and try to implement in our lives. Advances in medicine have helped us live longer lives and have allowed us to overcome some of the ills and infections that used to kill many people. Vaccines have helped prevent illness and death. They have eliminated diseases like smallpox and have helped against rabies, diphtheria and the plague.
However, we have started to incur a new host of health problems due to the length of our life, the processed foods we eat, the fast paced lives we live and the chemicals that pollute our world. Everyday we see new commercials on TV about the next great drug that will make your life better or healthier. But do you actually listen to the list of possible side effects. Are these drugs really helping or just creating different problems. Remember, no pharmaceutical company ever made money by curing you quickly so you could stop taking their pills.
Why wait until you feel poorly before you see a doctor that will only work on alleviating your symptoms and not on fixing the underlying problem. Start achieving wellness and begin improving your health before you get to the point you need to see a doctor. Work on improving your overall wellness.
As the old adage says “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Of the leading causes of death in the United States, many can be prevented. The likelihood of contracting heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues can be directly impacted by the choices we make every day. The choices about what we put into our bodies and the choices we make that affect our personal environment.
Click here to see a study done by UC Berkeley Medical that shows how making the right choice can directly impact your health.
Here are some things you can do to increase your wellness and start down the path to improve your health:
Diet and Nutrition -
Your diet does a lot in determining your overall health and wellness. What you put into your body does make a difference. "It's easy to buy into some pretty popular nutrition misconceptions -- myths and half-truths that ultimately find us making far fewer healthier food choices than we realize," says New York University nutritionist Samantha Heller, MS, RD.
Read labels, don’t trust all the advertising and always try to get whole foods and not processed substitutes.
The same goes for your supplements. Get those that are made from natural ingredients and aren’t over processed. Every vitamin and mineral and phytochemical in our body works in concert with one another, and it's easy to knock that balance off. Be sure the supplements you are taking are balanced and introduced to your body in a way that they are usable and work together as nature intended.
Some of the things you want to make sure you get enough of in your diet are fiber, antioxidants, soy, and water. These things along with a well balanced nutritional intake of whole foods and supplements can go a long way in improving health and increasing wellness.
Weight -
Maintaining a healthy weight is critical to improving health. You don’t have to be as thin as a rail – this is actually just as unhealthy as being overweight – you just need to keep the excess in check.
It all begins with attitude. Start by changing how you feel about yourself, your body and your eating habits. Change to a can do attitude where you start to do what’s right for you. Simple moderate exercise, eating a healthy breakfast (no skipping allowed), reducing your calorie intake by not taking just one more are all small things we can do to get in better health by being at a better weight.
Don’t go for the fad diets that don’t work or at best get you to lose weight for a while but then just put it back on later. A slow and steady change will help you lose the weight and keep it off and it will be much healthier for you. Get plenty of whole foods, protein (quite often a good soy protein can give you what you need without adding fat to your diet) and drink lots of water.
Water is critical to the health and wellness of your body. It helps rid you of toxic build up and it is needed for normal cell processes to work. Another side effect of water is that it can make you feel full without adding the calories so you will eat less.
Exercise -
Aerobic exercise is very important to maintaining your wellness and improving your health. It has been linked to cancer prevention, reduction of osteoporosis, helping with depression, lowering the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and of course obesity and weight control. It can also help with cognitive functions – meaning you can think more clearly and work more efficiently.
Aerobic exercise makes most of us think of joining a gym or having to run several miles everyday. This is just not the case. You can keep it very simple and still achieve benefits. Walking is one of the best exercises out there. It is simple, easy on the joints, doesn’t cost us a lot of money and it can be done pretty much anywhere. To get a benefit from walking, you just need to make sure that it is aerobic. That means you want to walk at a pace that leaves you feeling "warm and slightly out of breath". One good way to start is the 5 out 5 back plan. Just walk 5 minutes away from the house and then you are force to walk 5 minutes back. Increase the time out as your health and fitness increase.
Stress Management -
Most of us live with some type of stress everyday. It has just become part of our lives. It has also become one reason we don’t always feel our best and why we are susceptible to feeling run down and ‘sick’.
Reducing stress can help now and our long term health. Stress keeps our bodies from functioning at their best and slowly wears on us. Find way to relax, to have that ‘me’ time where the pressures of the day can be pushed aside.
Try to simplify your life. Our world has become so fast paced and ‘in your face’ – ‘do it now’ that we just don’t have time to sit and watch the clouds or the rain or…. One simple way to gain a little sanity is to disconnect from the fast pace, try just turning off the cell phone. Just leave it behind for an hour.
But, no matter how much we work on getting rid of the stresses in our life there will always be something that causes us stress. Luckily, there are ways to help us overcome the stress nutritionally.
Avoiding Toxins -
With all of our advances and science and technology, man has come up with many great things to improve our quality of life. However, we are learning that some of these things that are there to improve actually produce side affects that can hurt us and our health – now and in the future.
The EPA has warned that indoor air pollution is more of a concern than the pollution we find outside. Many cleaners as well as skin and beauty products actually contain harmful toxins.
There are companies out there that do produce green cleaners that are safe for people and for the environment. Read labels and know what your beauty and cleaning products contain.
Click here to read about the many toxins that are out there and where they are found. One of the best ways to maintain your health is to wash your hands. We touch so many different things with our hands things that might have been cleaned with toxins or touched by something unhealthy that by just washing, you can cut down on many unwanted health affects.
Adequate Sleep -
Giving your body the sleep it requires is a great way to keep it healthy. During sleep your body regenerates and rejuvenates. It is absolutely imperative to get enough sleep, but getting more doesn’t always mean you are getting better quality sleep. Click here to read about the importance of sleep and how a good sleep program can improve your life in so many ways.
Quit Smoking -
Despite the many warnings and the known health risks smoking is still prevalent around the world. Quitting this habit can not only improve your health drastically and improve your chances of preventing future disease; it can relieve you of a financial burden. Just think if you applied all the money you spend on cigarettes on healthy nutritional supplements how much you could increase your health and wellness.
Its not always the difficult path that is required for change. Quite often making a few simple changes in our lives can make dramatic results.
Think about it!
Friday, January 2, 2009
A Guide on How to Choose the Right Supplement!
So many choices and so many claims - How do you Choose?
Here's a guide to help you choose the best supplement for you.
More and more people are turning to nutritional, dietary and herbal supplements to prevent diseases and promote general good health.
Taking steps and improving my health lead me in the direction of nutritional supplementation or more simply put - Vitamins. Growing numbers of people (including me) feel that modern medicine is failing to address the issues that are important. The huge cost of medical care has many of us looking to maintain wellness and prevent disease so we can avoid the need to be so dependent on doctors and prescription drugs.
Modern lifestyles expose us to processed unnatural foods as well as toxins in the air we breathe and the water we drink. There are many aspects of modern day life that threaten to damage our health and push us down a path to poor health.
Even health conscious people can struggle to get all the basic nutritional elements they need.
Nutritional supplements can be the answer for many people as they provide the essential elements our bodies need to thrive and achieve the best health possible.
Remember that vitamins and supplements are a great way to complement your diet, but they are just that a good complement. They are not a "magic Pill" that gives us the freedom to eat a diet of junk food while we sit on the couch doing nothing.
The right supplement will definitely improve your health, however eating some fruits and vegetables and getting some exercise gives the body the best chance to achieve maximum wellness.
Be sure to choose your supplements wisely!
Not all supplements are created equal. Just as there are different levels of quality in the food we eat and the products we buy there are quality levels in supplements. The nutritional health and wellness industry is growing by leaps and bounds (partly due to the aging baby boomers) and many companies are putting vitamins and supplements on the shelves and online.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to know if you are getting quality that you can trust.
A recent study shows that the likelihood of choosing a non-toxic and effective health supplement from the overwhelming array of products that are available is only 2.5%. In other words, there is a 97.5% chance that without investigating the reliability of the product yourself you could select a nutritional product that might be hazardous to your health! (I call that a step in the wrong direction).
SO.... The question is "Who can you trust and what is actually good for you?"
It comes down to making choices.
Research your products and the companies that make them before you put your health on the line.
Many of us agonize over what clothes or car or TV we should buy but just grab the cheapest vitamin on the shelf. It’s your body and your life. The choices you make now affect your future health and wellness.
So how do you choose the right supplement?
First let me educate you on some information that I wasn’t aware of until just recently.
The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) does not regulate the vitamin and supplement industry.
That means that what is written on the label of a vitamin bottle might be true but also might be just a scam trying to make the supplement look better than it is. There is no one regulating what can or cannot be said about the effectiveness of the supplement.
This also means that there are no laws regulating the serving size or amount of vitamin and/or mineral contained in each tablet or capsule you are ingesting. No one to make sure it is a dosage your body needs or can use to maintain health.
Many vitamins work together in your body and if the proper amounts of each are not ingested together they might as well not be ingested at all.
They could actually do more harm than good.
Another important thing I learned during my supplement research is that many of the vitamins available use fillers and artificial ingredients in their products. I always thought if you bought Vitamin C then the pill was all Vitamin C. Turns out it might have things like petroleum in there too. It might even have more ‘junk’ then it does the actual vitamin.
The first step in choosing a vitamin or supplement is choosing a vitamin or supplement company.
Look at the label of any vitamin you plan on purchasing and see who the company is and check for contact information. Look them up on the Internet or even call them and find out some of their manufacturing practices.
Here's a guide to help you choose the best supplement for you.
More and more people are turning to nutritional, dietary and herbal supplements to prevent diseases and promote general good health.
Taking steps and improving my health lead me in the direction of nutritional supplementation or more simply put - Vitamins. Growing numbers of people (including me) feel that modern medicine is failing to address the issues that are important. The huge cost of medical care has many of us looking to maintain wellness and prevent disease so we can avoid the need to be so dependent on doctors and prescription drugs.
Modern lifestyles expose us to processed unnatural foods as well as toxins in the air we breathe and the water we drink. There are many aspects of modern day life that threaten to damage our health and push us down a path to poor health.
Even health conscious people can struggle to get all the basic nutritional elements they need.
Nutritional supplements can be the answer for many people as they provide the essential elements our bodies need to thrive and achieve the best health possible.
Remember that vitamins and supplements are a great way to complement your diet, but they are just that a good complement. They are not a "magic Pill" that gives us the freedom to eat a diet of junk food while we sit on the couch doing nothing.
The right supplement will definitely improve your health, however eating some fruits and vegetables and getting some exercise gives the body the best chance to achieve maximum wellness.
Be sure to choose your supplements wisely!
Not all supplements are created equal. Just as there are different levels of quality in the food we eat and the products we buy there are quality levels in supplements. The nutritional health and wellness industry is growing by leaps and bounds (partly due to the aging baby boomers) and many companies are putting vitamins and supplements on the shelves and online.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to know if you are getting quality that you can trust.
A recent study shows that the likelihood of choosing a non-toxic and effective health supplement from the overwhelming array of products that are available is only 2.5%. In other words, there is a 97.5% chance that without investigating the reliability of the product yourself you could select a nutritional product that might be hazardous to your health! (I call that a step in the wrong direction).
SO.... The question is "Who can you trust and what is actually good for you?"
It comes down to making choices.
Research your products and the companies that make them before you put your health on the line.
Many of us agonize over what clothes or car or TV we should buy but just grab the cheapest vitamin on the shelf. It’s your body and your life. The choices you make now affect your future health and wellness.
So how do you choose the right supplement?
First let me educate you on some information that I wasn’t aware of until just recently.
The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) does not regulate the vitamin and supplement industry.
That means that what is written on the label of a vitamin bottle might be true but also might be just a scam trying to make the supplement look better than it is. There is no one regulating what can or cannot be said about the effectiveness of the supplement.
This also means that there are no laws regulating the serving size or amount of vitamin and/or mineral contained in each tablet or capsule you are ingesting. No one to make sure it is a dosage your body needs or can use to maintain health.
Many vitamins work together in your body and if the proper amounts of each are not ingested together they might as well not be ingested at all.
They could actually do more harm than good.
Another important thing I learned during my supplement research is that many of the vitamins available use fillers and artificial ingredients in their products. I always thought if you bought Vitamin C then the pill was all Vitamin C. Turns out it might have things like petroleum in there too. It might even have more ‘junk’ then it does the actual vitamin.
The first step in choosing a vitamin or supplement is choosing a vitamin or supplement company.
Look at the label of any vitamin you plan on purchasing and see who the company is and check for contact information. Look them up on the Internet or even call them and find out some of their manufacturing practices.
- Do they follow and meet with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliance?
- Are the products they make independently tested and analyzed for effectiveness?
- Does the manufacturer test the supplements for purity and potency?
- What types of ingredients are used? Are they natural or synthetic?
- Is the product full of fillers and other artificial ingredients? Many companies use fillers, binders and coatings in their vitamin tablets. These are usually inactive ingredients that are unnecessary for your body and can actually do harm.
- Fillers are just that. They fill up space and help form the tablet.
- Binders help keep everything together. Many times these can actually be harmful and include such things as gum, carbopol and povidone.
- Coatings help keep it all together and can contain artificial flavors to make it taste better. (If you are trying to cover up petroleum and other nasty things no wonder you need artificial flavors.)
- Are the products bioavailable? Meaning does it actually get absorbed and used by the body and not just get passed through the system as waste.
- Are your vitamins and supplements a food or a drug?
All of this information should be available on the company’s website or by contacting their customer service representatives. If you are unable to find it or if they are unwilling to share this kind of information then it is probably in your best interest to avoid these supplements.
The second step is to research and educate yourself on how vitamins and supplements affect your body.
Learn what vitamins work together and why you need a good balance. Taking too much of a vitamin or taking an improper balance of vitamins can actually do more harm than good.
This knowledge can help you when it comes to choosing which supplements to purchase.
The key is to take a step - DO SOMETHING! Take an active role in maintaining your health.
Think about it!
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