That's Fit

Keep your red and processed meat consumption to a minimum to avoid an increased risk of cancer, says a new study by the U.S. National Cancer Institute in the Public Library of Science Medicine.

Researchers found that people who ate the most of these specific types of meat had the highest risk of developing colorectal and lung cancers. Evidently, compounds created during cooking or the digestion of these types of meat damage DNA and in many cases result in the growth of tumors.

To help minimize your risk, the best -- and most obvious way -- to do so is to cut back on the amount of red and processed meat you consume. Researchers suggest sticking to around 3g per 1,000 calories you eat.

That's what Credit Suisse restaurant analyst Keith Siegner did for all of April 2008 and somehow managed to lose five pounds. Yep, that's right, he only ate at fast-food chains like McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway and Domino's for 30 days straight. But unlike Morgan Spurlock, of 'Super Size Me' fame, he actually lost weight.

I'm stuck! I've been teaching fitness for almost twenty years., and I often feel like I know all there is to know about body mechanics, weight loss, and fitness equipment. Today though, I'm totally stumped. My socks suck, and I can't seem to find a pair that don't!

I have been running a lot lately, and the only thing that bothers me after mile three is my socks! Ack! They're driving me nuts, and on the verge of giving me blisters. SO! I come to you, my brilliant That's Fit readers for help. Tell me about the socks you love and which ones I shouldn't waste my money on. This fitness pro needs your advice. My feet would like to thank you in advance.

Gallery: Fitz Needs Great Socks!

National Women's Health Week kicks off on Mother's Day with the purpose of empowering women to get healthy by taking action. Your health should be a major priority, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health has a few steps designed to help you achieve that. Businesses, government, and health organizations across the United States, hopefully near you, will be taking part in this event.

Objectives of the week are designed to teach women the benefits of:

• Engaging in physical activity most days of the week
• Making healthy food choices
• Visiting a health care provider to receive regular check-ups and preventive screenings
• Avoiding risky behaviors, like smoking and not wearing a seat belt

It may be a bit premature to start talking about sun safety, but it will be summer before we know it. Well, that's not entirely true -- the calendar is a pretty good indicator of when summer is here, so we'll be quite aware. Oh yeah, plus the temperature will jump up to the 80's and 90's (maybe even higher, depending on where you call home), so I think it's safe to say that summer will arrive just when we expected it to.

With that being the case, part of being prepared for the solstice is knowing how to protect yourself against the elevated risk of skin cancer during this time of year.

Start by limiting your exposure to only 15 to 20 minutes of direct sunlight. This doesn't mean that you have to be a vampire, waiting until dark to leave your house because you've already been outside for 20 minutes. What it does mean is that you would do well to not fall asleep while lying on your beach blanket. Next, be sure to drink plenty of water. It will help prevent dehydration and also protects the skin. You may also want to drink some coffee, since caffeine was shown in laboratory studies to reduce the risk of UV-induced skin cancer in mice. And lastly, don't forget that sunscreen -- as effective as it seemingly is -- does not last forever. A good sized glob of SPF15 will only last about 30 minutes, at which point you should apply more and/or head for some shade.

If you'd describe your sleep lately as "crappy," you have no idea how correct you are in your word choice. That's because, on average, ten percent of the weight of a two-year-old pillow is attributable to dust mites and their droppings.

Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, we're sleeping on crap. And, it's not just on our pillows that mites seem to enjoy so much; mattresses are veritable party clubs for dust mites, gathering anywhere from 100,000 to 10 million of these tiny suckers inside. What is it these intrepid invaders want from us? Our dead skin. You're feeling itchy right now just thinking about it, aren't you?

Because dust mites are responsible for many cases of asthma, eczema, and many allergy problems, it's a good idea to either replace your old bed and pillow or wash them thoroughly with hot water as often as you can.

Okay ... calm down. Everything is going to be just fine, I promise. Tell you what, why don't you take a second to let your blood at least reduce from a boil to a simmer and then we'll start to deconstruct your approach and, as best, we can come up with a solution. To help us in this endeavor, we'll refer to a recent article published in the current issue of Maximum Fitness magazine, which is aptly titled 6 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight.

For the next six days, I'll offer one of the tips in the order that they appear in the Maximum Fitness magazine article. So, you can either wait to read them day by day or, if you don't have that kind of patience, you can run out to the bookstore and pick up a copy of the magazine. Your call. Either way, we're going to get to the bottom of all this and find out what's keeping the numbers on your scale from getting any lower.

Possible Reason #2: You're Eating Reactive Foods That Cause "False Fat" What the hell is false fat? Good question. More or less, this is what people typically refer to as water weight, and it causes you to look bloated and actually weigh more. According to the Max Fit article, one way some people collect this extra "false fat" is food reactions, such as those from wheat, dairy, and sugar. Evidently, this can also occur from having poor or improper digestion and eating the same foods too often. The solution? Max Fit suggests avoiding foods to which you have a known reaction, thus helping to clear out this water-based false fat.

A new article in Women's Health magazine sheds some interesting light on the efficacy of antidepressant drugs. According to the article, which summarizes findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine, thirty-one studies on antidepressants were never published by the FDA. What's more, of those thirty-one studies, thirty of them contained negative information about these pharmaceutical drugs.

On the other hand, 94 percent of the published studies on antidepressants were positive. But, when all the studies are taken into account (i.e. when the information from the unpublished studies are factored in), the positive findings drop by 51 percent. The study's lead author, Dr. Erick Turner, was quoted in the article as saying that antidepressants' "batting average is not as high as you might have thought."

For more information on this study, pick up the issue of Women's Health now in stores or follow this link to a short reprinting of a January 2008 article in the NY Times on this matter.

A recent Japanese study, published in the Kobe Journal Medical Sciences and most recently highlighted in Fitness Rx magazine, confirms what we've known for quite some time: eating foods high in simple, fast-digesting carbs can cause you to pack on more fat. The difference this time around, however, is that this study provides an additional explanation for why this happens.

When you drink copious amounts of regular soda and chomp on white bread, you spike your blood glucose levels (also known as blood sugar). You may be familiar with this concept from your own knowledge base or from hearing of this process from someone who has diabetes. In response, your body produces a large amount of insulin in efforts to bring your blood glucose back down from orbit by moving the glucose out of the blood and into the cells (whereas a person with diabetes may have to use synthetic insulin -- administered either by shot or pump -- to make up for what their pancreas is not able to sufficiently do on its own in this regard). After this occurs, all excess glucose is stored for later use as fat in white adipose tissue.

When we hear about people dying from vaccine-preventable diseases, we tend to associate such loss with poorer countries than our own. This assumption is not terribly off-base, as many third-world nations do suffer an enormous amount of preventable human loss due to a lack of access to proper medical treatment. However, such vaccine-preventable loss is not exclusive to these less fortunate countries; an article in Women's Health magazine asserts that 50,000 adult Americans die each year for the same reason.

According to the article, the following is a list of five of the eleven vaccinations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests getting:

1) Hepatitis A: A virus spread by infected food and water that can cause liver infection. Most often a danger to travelers to foreign countries.

2) HPV: The Human Papillomavirus is a sexually transmitted disease that can potentially lead to cervical cancer in women. Genital HPV is the most common sexual transmitted infection in the United States. About 6.2 million Americans will get infected with genital HPV this year.

When performing a resistance training program, there are so many things that can go right: You can develop lean, strong muscles; improve your balance and posture; strengthen bones; and boost your immune health. And, that list can go on much further, too. However, there are also a few things that can go wrong, chief among them being an injury. Fortunately, there are a few good methods of preventing an injury from ever taking place, and one of those methods is more mental than physical.

You may have heard of what's known as the mind-muscle connection. More or less, this is the process of focusing on and visualizing the muscle group you are working as you actually do. For example, if you are doing a set of bicep curls, you would focus on your biceps getting as good a workout as possible and, as best you can, visualizing the muscle working and growing. The way this mental connection helps prevent injuries is basically because of this same process; intently focusing on your muscles as you work them will help ensure that you are sticking to proper form.

Most exercise-related injuries occur when attempts are made to lift unmanageable amounts of weight and/or when proper form is all but forgotten. Homing in on these areas of your body, as they are being worked, will greatly lessen the chances that you'll abandon correct form and, consequently, reduce your risk of injury.

For whatever reason, green apples give me heartburn. I still eat them from time to time, but without fail, I feel a little bit of acid reflux after I do. Many people also suffer from occasional heartburn, though their respective food or foods that cause it can be quite different. However, when heartburn is a frequent problem, it might be something known as GERD.

Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (let's stick with GERD, shall we?) happens when stomach acid makes its way back into the esophagus, resulting in that slight burning sensation in your chest. What makes GERD different than the occasional instance of heartburn is that it is due to a slight bodily malfunction: the muscular valve where the esophagus meets up with the stomach is weak and/or does not close properly.

Left untreated, GERD can lead to many esophageal disorders, such as bleeding, damage to the tissue lining of the esophagus, and inflammation. In more extreme cases, it may even be a precursor to esophageal cancer. Signs of GERD, beyond those already stated, include chest pain, raspy or sore voice, bad breath, and difficulty swallowing.

If you have any of these symptoms, you may want to schedule an appointment with your physician or a GI specialist very soon.

Sometimes heartburn -- or as my Italian grandmother calls it, agida -- is just that. It's uncomfortable, it's annoying, and it's no fun whatsoever. It's also not cause for any great concern. Most of the time, anyway.

For women who are getting up there in age, however, a little chest pain may be more than a simple case of heartburn. It could be a heart attack. This is because the chances of feeling a heart attack drops with age and, as a recent study from the National Institute of Health shows, women are less likely than men to recognize the signs of a first heart attack. This is likely because women tend to have their first infarction about 10 years later than men.

While this doesn't mean that a trip to the emergency room is necessary every time you feel a little heartburn or indigestion, it's certainly worth being aware and in tune with what your body could potentially be telling you.

Things have been crazy busy lately. After just getting back from a cross-country trip, I just found out I have to make the same trip again next week. Great. Nothing says comfy like being stuck in an airplane seat for six hours. On top of that, with all this time spent sitting in a cramped chair, there's always concern for DVT -- deep vein thrombosis.

Sometimes referred to as coach class syndrome, this is a formation of a blood clot that commonly occurs in the veins of the legs after people spend an extended period of time seated. Bigger problems can also arise if the clot embolizes; that is, if it separates and travels into the lungs, where it can cause a pulmonary embolism.

Many airlines, aware of the threat of DVT, are now suggesting that you get up and take a little stroll once and a while if you're aboard a long flight. This is easier to do on some flights than others, just as finding comfort in a seat can vary greatly depending on .... well, about eight thousand different factors. That's why you may want to check out SeatGuru.com (www.seatguru.com) before you book your next flight. It gives a great breakdown of each seat on the plane on which you are about to travel -- comfort, leg room, ability to recline the seat or not, if it has power port, etc. Knowing this information in advance may help protect against DVT (as well as major frustration), as it will provide you with the chance to fly as comfortably as possible.

Do you know what the second leading cause of cancer is in the U.S.? Colon cancer. Despite this fact, the number of screenings done to check for this cancer remain quite low. Colonoscopy can usually detect cancer at the early stages, thus saving the lives of many patients. Still, for one reason or another, about half of the amount of people who should be screened never undergo this process.

This may be due to a few reasons, chief among them being a lack of education on the disease. For one, many people think that colon cancer primarily strikes only men. Not true. The number of cases of colon cancer is almost equal among men and women. Second, not everyone is familiar with some of the signs and symptoms. Chronic diarrhea, blood in the stool, frequent stomach discomfort, and unusual changes in bowel habits are all indications that something may be amiss.

To help prevent the onset of this form of cancer, be on the lookout for any of the aforementioned symptoms and engage in a regular exercise program. Research has shown that walking for 60 minutes a day may decrease prostaglandin E2 levels -- a substance associated with colorectal cancer. Also, avoid smoking, and try to eat a diet rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and keep your fat intake to a minimum.