That's Fit

Getting fit shouldn't require knowing any fancy terms, acronyms, or even a secret handshake. All that should be necessary is the desire to build a healthier body and mind. But, flip through just about any magazine or visit any fitness website and you're bound to come across information that doesn't make any sense to a fitness newbie. And yes, this website (and the author of this post) are just as guilty of offering somewhat more advanced content from time to time.

To help clarify, and to help create a better balance with my posts for people at more advanced fitness levels, I began what I call Gym Lingo columns. Usually I try to make sense of some common gym vocabulary -- from the types of sets to an assortment of common terms and phrases that make up the fitness lexicon -- but this time around I thought I'd focus on a very common acronym that, to someone who's never heard it before and/or don't know what it means, may need some explanation. So, I thought that the better fit would be to include it here in Fit Factor.

RPE. What do these three letters stand for? Rate of Perceived Exertion. The name, when no longer in acronym form, does a good job of clearing up what this fitness term is all about. A special RPE scale is typically referred to when someone wants to gauge their intensity level. With one being the lowest (meaning that the least amount of effort is being exerted) and ten being the highest (the maximum amount of effort is being exerted). Knowing where you fall on this RPE scale will help you figure out if you are working out hard enough or if you need to kick things into higher gear.

If you are reading this right now, it means that you're eyesight has to at least be pretty decent (or corrected to such a degree with glasses or contacts). It's not exactly a Large Print blog, that's for sure. At any rate, as we grow older, macular degeneration becomes a very real threat. However, new research out of the Netherlands reveals that eating eggs may help you keep your sight.

Evidently, egg yolks are chock-full of carotenoids known as lutein and zeaxanthin, with each playing a unique role in the protection and proper function of the eyes. Lutein absorbs the sun's damaging "blue light," while zeaxanthin aids in the growth of healthy cells.

If eggs really aren't your thing, you needn't worry too much. These eye-saving carotenoids can also be found in most leafy green vegetables.

With there being so many exercises that target the abdominal muscles, it's really tough to pinpoint which are the best. Everyone's body is different, so that doesn't exactly help make it any easier. Still, there are some exercises that seem to stand out from the rest, either for their effectiveness in firming your midsection or simply because they are less commonly practiced. And sometimes, it's a combination of both of these reasons.

This is certainly the case with the barbell roll-out. The move itself may seem slightly familiar; the roll-out movement itself became quite popular about 10 years ago after TV fitness salespeople hawked various brands of exercise wheels. Then, because some gyms didn't have these wheels, some people actually brought their own. But why spend money on something when you don't have to?

The barbell roll-out is a great exercise for your transverse abdominis, which are primary muscles in the functional core of the human body. And, it can be done with the equipment found in just about any fitness center or home gym. Start by loading a barbell with a small weight on either side (five-pound plates are perfect). Next, kneel down on a towel and grasp the bar with a grip that's around shoulder-width apart. Then, roll out in front of you to lower your upper body just above the floor. When you have reached almost full extension of your arms, hold for a second and then pull yourself back to the starting position.

When I was a kid, I took gymnastics at a local ... gymnastics place (for lack of a better term). I eventually quit, deciding that baseball, basketball and football were more my things. Anyway, the one part of gymnastics I always missed was bouncing around on the trampoline. As the years passed, I've always been tempted to buy one, but for one reason or another never got around to actually doing it. This is a shame, really, because not only are trampolines a lot of fun, using them also burns a good amount of calories.

Studies show that 10 minutes on a trampoline burns just about the same amount of calories as a 30-minute run, and it does so with 80 percent less impact on the ol' bones. Moreover, there are actual exercises you can perform on a trampoline, many of which you're probably familiar with already.

Common moves like the push-up, standing squat, lunges, and even jump squats done on a trampoline require greater use of your core muscles than when done on a hard, flat surface. The instability of the trampoline necessitates a certain amount of stabilization, or else you will tip over ... which is no problem, because then you can literally just bounce right back again.

Hormones produced by the thyroid gland have a significant effect on your health, particularly on your metabolism -- from the rate at which your heart beats to how quickly you burn calories.

As long as the proper amount of hormones are released by your thyroid, everything is as cool as school and your system function remains status quo. But sometimes your thyroid decides to become a bit derelict in its duties and fails to produce enough hormones, resulting in the disruption of the balance of chemical reactions in your body. This condition is known as hypothyroidism.

This problem -- even if the thyroid is only mildly underactive -- is certainly worth paying attention to. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine suggests that even a slight aberration in the activity of the thyroid can raise the risk of heart disease by as much as 65 percent. If you or someone you know is showing signs and symptoms of what may be an underactive thyroid, speak to a doctor about having a blood test done.

A quick browse through the British edition of Men's Health made me think about moving out to the heartland to buy some farmland. It also made the second part of that plan include having three kids. Why would I even entertain the notion of living such a polar opposite lifestyle from the one I lead right now? Living to be 100 seems like a decent enough reason to me.

According to the article, a study out of the University of Chicago Center on Aging found that fathering three children makes a man's chances of living to 100 by almost 300 percent. Couple that with the fact that farmers are more than two times as likely to live for a century than us city folk, and it would seem that a life on the farm with the kids could be a long and healthy one.

Now if I only had a clue how to drive a tractor. Hmmm ...

If we continue at the rate we're going, the entire U.S. population will be obese in 50 years. That's what a recent University of Missouri study suggests, anyway. Even if it doesn't turn out to be completely true, it's easy to see how it can still end up being quite close.

What can we do about it? Best I can tell, the only solution is to shape up. Through diet and regular exercise, the obesity epidemic can become a thing of the past, rather than an inevitable part of our future. With that little pep talk over, I feel obliged to now offer up a quick health tip. OK ... here goes.

Random Health Tip of the Day: add water to your cereal. Well, you don't have to add it directly to your cereal; drink a glass of water while you eat it. Men's Health magazine states that doing so will help slow the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, thereby preventing hunger-causing blood sugar spikes. In addition, the water will help make the fiber in the cereal expand, which will also help you feel fuller longer.

Guys, are you getting your greens? No, I'm not talking about the type of M&Ms that, in a hard-to-forget TV commercial from the mid 1980s, reportedly helps a batter take the ball down...town. Rather, I'm talking about the type of greens that are far less tasty than a piece of candy-coated chocolate, but vastly superior in terms of health. Greens, man. You know, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, etc.? You're right, I should have just mentioned Popeye from the start.

Nevertheless, a study out of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York shows that as little of three daily servings of raw greens can slash your risk of bladder cancer by as much as 40 percent. What's more, you may be surprised to learn (I know I was) that bladder cancer is actually the fourth most common form of cancer in men.

The next time you're at the supermarket, don't forget to stop by the produce section and go green!!

Remember the coup de toe episode of Seinfeld? You know, where Geroge tells Jerry to use a joke in his stand-up routine about the situation wherein a person's second toe is longer than their big toe, ostensibly positioning itself to be the new the leader of the foot. Well, it turns out that this digit disparity is much less of a laughing matter if your ring finger is longer than your index finger.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham in England found that people whose index finger is shorter than their ring finger have double the chance of developing osteoarthritis. Great - just checked ... my ring finger is longer than my index finger. Never, ever noticed that before. Anyway, researchers posit that a small index finger can be an indication of low levels of estrogen, steroid compounds involved in the prevention of bone density loss.

But if you're like little ol' index finger me, you can still protect yourself against osteoarthritis by keeping your weight under control. Maintaining a healthy weight will reduce pressure on your joints, thereby reducing your risk of developing this degenerative clinical syndrome -- regardless of how long or short your fingers may be.

If there's one thing gyms have a lot of, it's machines. Some of the larger fitness facilities have so many machines that they look more like you'd build a car there than a new body. With so many different machine options available, though, it's sort of unfortunate that you're better off not using any of them.

Many machines are designed to isolate a single muscle by guiding your movement on a fixed path. This may sound like a good thing at first blush, but it's not really that good at all. Over time, the isolated muscle you work can become stronger than its supporting muscles, possibly resulting in muscular imbalance or injury.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you shouldn't ever use machines; rather, I'm merely suggesting that you do not spend your entire workout -- or even the majority of it -- on them. For maximum return on your effort investment, stick to free weights as often as possible during your resistance training.

If you don't do dairy, then I doubt what I'm about to mention will make you any more inclined to go buy a gallon of milk. However, if you haven't banished dairy from your diet, but simply aren't consuming much of it, then what I'm about to tell you may have you reaching for a glass of milk tonight with your dinner.

A recent study at Harvard University reveals that women who consume little or no lowfat dairy products daily are 11 percent more likely to develop high pressure than women who ate at least two servings a day. While an easy solution may be to pop a few calcium and vitamin D supplements and call it a day, you unfortunately miss out on the protein and magnesium found in dairy products, both of which may also play a role.

If donning a milk mustache really isn't your thing, you can always get your two daily servings from yogurt, cottage cheese, and other lowfat dairy products.

When I think interesting and engaging reading material, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition immediately jumps to mind. Nothing gets me going like page after page of almost incomprehensible empirical findings written by some of the most cerebral people on the planet. Okay, fine ... so I don't actually read the journal ... or many of the articles for that matter. I'm more of an abstract guy, probably a carry-over from my Cliff Notes days back in high school.

That all being said, in the course of skimming through a recent edition of this well-respected journal, I happened upon a study on vitamin C that caught my attention. Thanks to the abstract, I learned right away that having higher levels of vitamin C in the bloodstream may help reduce the risk of stroke. Upon further examination of the article itself, I found that this comprehensive study (which included 20,649 British men and women) revealed that people with the highest level of vitamin C had a 42 percent lower risk of stroke than people with the lowest levels.

Even when outside variables -- such as age, sex, smoking, BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, exercise habits, etc. -- were controlled for, these findings remained the same. Researchers posit that high vitamin C levels may signal a healthy lifestyle that lowers the risk of stroke, specifically a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

A growing body of evidence suggests that DHA (a type of omega-3 fatty acid) and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

A recent study published in the journal Neurology summarized the findings of a four-year study of over 8,000 French men and women age 65 and older. The study suggests that daily consumption of fruits and vegetables greatly reduces the chances of dementia from all causes. Moreover, the study also suggests that weekly fish consumption -- fish is high in DHA -- was also associated with a reduced risk of dementia from all causes, including Alzheimer's disease in people who lack a specific genotype (apoE4) that, in and of itself, is a risk factor for developing Alzheimer's.

Most people have no issue eating fruits and vegetables, but not everyone enjoys fish. Fortunately, there are several other ways to still get DHA in your diet, including nutritional supplementation and healthy fortified foods.

I have vivid memories of frequently going to McDonald's as a kid and enjoying a Happy Meal. My metabolism revved like a jet engine at that age, so almost anything that made it down my gullet was used as energy and not stored as fat. Nowadays, If I still at McDonald's as often as I did back then, I'd probably have a body like Grimace.

It's a natural -- though very unfortunate -- fact that our metabolisms tend to slow down somewhere around the age of 25. From there, it slows down by around five to ten percent with each subsequent decade that passes. Does this mean that you're fate is sealed and that you must accept your overweight destiny? Not at all.

By exercising regularly, you can keep your metabolism decline under a great deal of control. For the most part, if you get up and start moving every day you can very well increase your metabolism, or at least keep it to around a 0.3 percent drop per decade, says Dr. John Berardi, author of The Metabolism Advantage.

Depending upon which type of exercise you perform, you mostly use one of the two types of muscle fibers.

The first of the two, slow-twitch muscle fibers, are called upon mostly during aerobic exercise (aerobic exercise in this case means the use of oxygen in the body's metabolic or energy-generating process, not a bunch of people jumping around in leotards). Slow-twitch muscle fibers react to slow, long-duration contractions. And, they're typically used at the beginning of a movement.

The second of the two, fast-twitch muscle fibers, are used more often during anaerobic exercise. These muscle fibers are utilized for rapid, short-duration contractions. Once you've started an exercise, the fast-twitch muscle fibers take the baton from the slow-twitch fibers.

If you're looking to add lean and toned muscle to your frame and drop some body fat, follow a workout program that incorporates the use of both types of the aforementioned muscle fibers.