Zombie apocalypse and the unmoving human race

There's been lots of talk about zombies in the media this week. But all you have to do is ride on the subway during rush hour to see a sea of zombies commuting back and forth to jobs they most likely hate. We all know that sitting all day and not exercising isn't good for us. We also know that chronic illness like diabetes and heart disease and obesity is on the ever constant rise. So why do we need yet another study to give us yet another reason to get off our butts and leave them behind. To me, it's a plea by health researchers that it's time to wake up to the fact the way most people live is just plain bad for us. But being caught up in the consumer machine where we think working more will solve our financial problems and where employers treat people like machines that can keep on going no matter how unhealthy or worn out they get. The fact that as a population we are getting fatter and fatter and moving less and less and getting very preventable lifestyle induced diseases should point to the fact that there's an underlying sickness in our society. So the the New York Times Well Blog covered yet another study that shows that inactivity is really bad for us especially when we sit all day like zombies in front of computer screens.

They wanted to determine whether this physical languor would affect the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels. “It’s increasingly clear that blood sugar spikes, especially after a meal, are bad for you,” says John P. Thyfault, an associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri, who conducted the study with his graduate student Catherine R. Mikus and others. “Spikes and swings in blood sugar after meals have been linked to the development of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.”

They used volunteers for the study that are normally very active and asked that the volunteers cut back on their activity levels dramatically. Then they watched what happened to their blood sugar levels while sitting all day.

And there were changes. During the three days of inactivity, volunteers’ blood sugar levels spiked significantly after meals, with the peaks increasing by about 26 percent compared with when the volunteers were exercising and moving more. What’s more, the peaks grew slightly with each successive day.

This change in blood sugar control after meals “occurred well before we could see any changes in fitness or adiposity,” or fat buildup, due to the reduced activity, Dr. Thyfault says. So the blood sugar swings would seem to be a result, directly, of the volunteers not moving much.

Which is both distressing and encouraging news. “People immediately think, ‘So what happens if I get hurt or really busy, or for some other reason just can’t work out for awhile?’” Dr. Thyfault says. “The answer seems to be that it shouldn’t be a big problem.” Studies in both humans and animals have found that blood sugar regulation quickly returns to normal once activity resumes.

Do we really need another study to encourage us to move? Are studies even going to have an impact on how much people move anyway? Not really. Instead, individuals need to look at the sickness that has infiltrated their lives and led to them not moving and becoming sedentary. There's no data out there that can impact an individual's choices, not until the individual wakes up to the fact they are caught up in a system that keeps them not only sedentary, but also numbed out to the fact that our priorities as a race are totally out of whack.

Are you addicted to stress?

So much focus of stress management is about trying to either remove a stressor or find better ways to cope with stress. But what about this idea? Maybe after being under prolonged chronic stress we are actually partly responsible for manufacturing the stress because on an unconscious level we have become addicted to the chemicals that are released while under stress. That while we don't experience stress, we actually feel off centre like we can't tolerate something out of the ordinary and somehow we use our thoughts processes or reactions to life or create life circumstances that keep us stimulated and jacked up on cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine? Just a thought. Anyone who has ever been under a load of stress for a long period of time might have a harder time tolerating peace. This chronic stress could have started in childhood. But regardless of when it started, if we've become accustomed to the physiological reactions to stress, we might have a hard time not living without the status quo. Think about it. Maybe we get addicted to drama and chaos. If you've ever had a chance to relax, take it easy, coast a bit at work, yet can't seem to take the lull or find other ways to keep yourself busy then maybe you're a stress addict. I know I can be. I speak from experience. Maybe we should start looking at the possibility that people can become addicted to stress.

Four mysteries of belly fat revealed

My most recent iVillage article is all about the blasted belly fat so many people struggle with. There are loads of myths floating around about these particularly stubborn fat cells. So I tell you the truth in this article. We've learned a lot about belly fat in the last decade about belly fat. It's time to re-adjust our approach to tackling it.

The Secret to Looking Good at Any Weight

My most recent column is all about how to look your best, right now, not four months from now.

Also included are three postural exercises you can do right at your desk.

So go check it out now so you start feeling your best today!

Bad news for people who sit...even if you exercise

A study recently reported in the New York Times Well blog by Gretchen Reynolds is just plain scary and eye opening. If you sit all day, it doesn't matter if you exercise regularly, you can still be considered a couch potato at risk for all the same health issues. What?!!!

We all know that sitting all day is not healthy. It makes us feel lethargic and less than vital. But I always thought the effects of sitting for eight hours a day at a desk could be undone with regular exercise. Well this study says NO.

A growing body of science suggests that prolonged inactivity, a practice known more familiarly as sitting a lot, is both widespread and unhealthy. In a representative study published last month in The Archives of Internal Medicine, Australian researchers compared medical records and lifestyle questionnaires for more than 220,0000 Australian adults 45 and older.

They found that the more hours the men and women sat every day, the greater their chance of dying prematurely. Those people who sat more than eight hours a day — which other studies have found is about the amount that a typical American sits — had a 15 percent greater risk of dying during the study’s three-year follow-up period than people who sat for fewer than four hours a day.

So what they found was...

It seems that after exercising, the study authors concluded, people “substitute either lighter and/or sedentary activities.”

David W. Dunstan, a professor at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia, who has studied inactivity and wrote an editorial to accompany the new Australian paper, says he found the study fascinating. By measuring muscular inactivity using electromyography, he says, “the measurement is getting closer to the heart of the sitting problem, that being a problem of muscular disuse.”

Dr. Finni agrees. Although she and her colleagues did not look directly at the downstream biochemical effects of the inactivity, she says, their results suggest that normal exercise, which fills so few hours of even active people’s days, “may not be enough in terms of health.”

Maybe it's time to get work stations that allow for more movement? Perhaps we should be standing at attention to our workstations? Or maybe we should be all get Google Glasses and start walking on a track together in our work teams answering emails and sweating at the same time. All I know is that there's a great need for some serious evolution in the way we work. And sitting just isn't ever going to get good for us.

Globe and Mail article

Monique Savin, the Power Crunch columnist for the Globe and Mail, interviewed me a few weeks ago regarding Kelley Keehn, a personal finance expert.

Check out the article.

To me being healthy is all about finding balance. Overdoing it in any way towards any extreme is a sure fire way to get out of balance and create a state of tension and depletion in our bodies.

Trust me. I know all about over doing it! I'm no angel on this front. That's the main reason why I want to help raise my clients' awareness about the tendency to overdo things in our society. Whether it be about working too much or thinking more and more exercise makes us healthier or going on overly restrictive diets. At the heart of these behaviours is the feeling of not being good enough. And when we fail at being perfect, the pendulum can swing in the opposite direction of feeling like a failure and giving up altogether in making changes.

Anyway, I could go on but you get the drift.

My Friend Taught me the Gratitude Game

This week someone very special invited me to join in on a gratitude game with just 2 other people. I was very honored since to the other two people, I'm almost a stranger.
But they accepted me into their daily exercise. I haven't been doing enough gratitude workouts, to build a muscle that will atrophy just like any other muscle in our beings will.

I knew I needed to make sure my attitude didn't slip too far down the tube. And just at the right time, I was fortunate enough to be offered help from a friend.

So here is how you can start your own gratitude game according to the way the small group I've been invited in is doing it:

Find even just one friend or up to 5 friends.

Every morning, email your group a list of 10 things you're grateful for. Everyone else in the group does the same thing. And voila, you've implemented a daily exercise into your life that might make a big difference in how you experience the world around you. Plus I've found what other people are grateful for makes me reflect on more I am grateful for as well.

This week I got my car towed and then I got a traffic violation ticket as well. It's been a bit of an expensive week. But when I wrote my list out every morning, these annoying things just faded away next to the backdrop of the things that really matter.

Call me cheesy. I call you a cynic.

Try!