SHR

My recent lumbar spine compression has me thinking about a new era of training. I've proven that I can be strong. At 57 years old I'm hungry for some new challenges. So while I was training today I thought hard about how I would like to see my new style of training shape me as a Physical Culturist. What person could I look to for a model of physique but more importantly performance that I want to epitomize?  We all remember that opening scene of the movie Troy. The Greeks invade the country of Thessaly. The two kings, King Agamemnon of the Greeks and King Triopas of the Thessalayians decide to let the victory be decided by a battle between their best men. Triopas calls for his best warrior, a near 7 foot beast made of muscle and scars named Boagrius. The Thessalayian army cheers as they part like the Red...

BY KATE KELLAND (Reuters) - A baby whom doctors thought almost certain to die has been cleared of a previously incurable leukemia in the first human use of an "off-the-shelf" cell therapy from Cellectis that creates designer immune cells. One-year-old Layla had run out of all other treatment options when doctors at Britain's Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) gave her the highly experimental, genetically edited cells in a tiny 1-milliliter intravenous infusion. Two months later, she was cancer-free and she is now home from hospital, the doctors said at a briefing about her case in London on Wednesday. "Her leukemia was so aggressive that such a response is almost a miracle," said Paul Veys, a professor and director of bone marrow transplant at GOSH who led the team treating Layla. "As this was the first time that the treatment had been used, we didn't know if or when it would work, so we...

Chronic diseases now occur in children – let that sink in for a moment.  Diseases that, by definition, take a long period of time to develop and may causes physiological changes to the body are now appearing in a population whose greatest worry should be getting hurt while playing with friends. Currently, 17% of all children and adolescents in the United States are obese, and childhood obesity is associated with insulin resistance, abnormal glucose metabolism, elevated blood pressure, dyslipidemia, and inflammation. Indeed, many of these overweight-obese children will go on to develop and be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. There are numerous reasons why a child may suffer from obesity and its comorbidities. One of the more popular explanations is the overconsumption of fructose, particularly because of its unique metabolic properties when compared to glucose. However, previous research has not well-supported this hypothesis. For instance, the largest meta-analysis to date investigating the...

Out of all the vitamins and minerals essential to life, vitamin E is probably the hardest to come by. At least 90% of Americans don’t meet the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR; 12 mg/day) set by the Institute of Medicine, which is estimated to meet the nutrient requirement half of the healthy population. Considering that nuts and seeds and their oils are the best naturally occurring dietary sources, this isn’t too surprising. Only 6% of the US population eats nuts, and only 38% of these individuals don’t meet the EAR for vitamin E. To be fair, the government recommendations don’t exactly make obtaining vitamin E easy. Dietary modeling has shown that a 2000 kcal diet must contain 11 servings of fruit and vegetables and 0.6 servings of nuts and seeds to meet the vitamin E requirements while still adhering to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Of course, very few individuals follow these...

Every year we hear about some recall of spinach or some other vegetable due to E. choli or salmonella contamination. Dole just had a spinach recall in October. We immediately blame the mishandling by the producer or packer. The assumption is that some form of animal waste somehow found its way onto the produce and wasn’t neutralized properly and thus tens of thousands of bags of produce are recalled and hundreds of people are sickened and some may even die. But what if it’s Roundup (glyphosate) that’s actually at the root of the outbreak? What if through the use of these antimicrobial weed killers we’re creating more resistant strains of E. coli and salmonella. A recent multi-centered study lead by Dr. Brigitta Kurenbach at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury in New Zealand, may have helped us understand why this is. In their study pathogens like Escherichia coli and...

Sugar hurts boys but not girls when consumed as an infant There are numerous studies documenting a link between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and increased body weight and cardiometabolic risk in both children and adults, but data for infants is scant. To help fill this knowledge gap, Leermakers et al from University Medical Center Rotterdam examined the relation between SBB intake at 1-year of age and cardiometabolic health at 6 years of age in a Dutch cohort of 1950 children from the Generation R Study. When the infants were 1 year old, the parents (or primary caregiver) filled out a 211-item food-frequency questionnaire about the infant’s habitual diet during the last month. Total SBB included fruit juices, fruit concentrates, lemonades, sodas, and sports drinks, and 1 serving was considered to be 150 mL (~5 fluid ounces). Cardiometabolic risk was assessed via body fat % (DXA), insulin, blood pressure, and blood lipids....

Throughout evolutionary history women have nurtured their offspring with breast milk and there is strong evidence indicating that breastfeeding is associated with a lower risk of developing inflammatory conditions later in life for the suckling infant. It is believed that the provision of immunologic factors in breast milk is amongst the key events that promote maturation of the infant's gut-associated and systemic immune systems. While it has been known for many years that breast milk contains antibodies to fight infection, only recently has evidence for inflammation-resolving bioactive molecules been provided – thanks to a series of animal and in vitro experiments conducted by Arnardottir et al from Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Breast milk resolves inflammation First, the researchers obtained human milk-lipid mediator isolates (HLMIs) from healthy donor breast milk and assessed its ability to accelerate the resolution of acute inflammation in mice. After infecting the mice with yeast to stimulate an...

Over the past few days I have received emails and phone calls asking my position on the recent World Health Organization's opinion of red meat and the linkage to cancer. I reached out to the Super Human Radio Brain Trust and conferred with them. The position below is the blending of the opinons of Adel Moussa (author at the popular SuppVersity.com blog), Alex Leaf (News Director and nutritional blogger here at SHR) and myself.  There is little doubt that processed meats like sausages, chopped, flaked and formed ham and processed bacon increase your cancer risk - that's all junk and have little to do with "meat". The health difference between sausages or bacon and a piece of grass fed or even corn fed steak is greater than the difference between boiled whole potatoes and French fries. The only problem is that the headlines say "red meat" and this was to pander to a...

The role of fructose in health and disease is a controversial one. I have previously written about a systematic review and meta-analysis of 59 experimental trials and over 1,000 participants that showed fructose-containing sugars acted no differently from other carbohydrates with regard to their effects on blood lipids. However, blood lipids are only one aspect of health. Glucose metabolism, or the body’s ability to handle changes in blood glucose levels, is another important player in chronic disease, most notably type-2 diabetes. If a significant link between fructose and insulin resistance exists, then this is reason enough to change dietary habits and recommendations. As such, researchers from the Rippe Lifestyle Institute decided to conduct a 10-week randomized, parallel-group, partially-blinded study to assess the effects of incorporation of various sugars into the diet of 158 otherwise healthy individuals. The diet This study was designed to assess the impact of incorporating modest amounts of...

Should Patients with Metabolic Syndrome-related NAFLD be on the Hunter-Gatherer (Paleo) Diet to Decrease Morbidity? The paleo diet is no longer a fad among the alternative health community. It really was only a matter of time before Tarantino et al from Italy asked a central question – can a paleo diet reduce non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) prevalence? Their review begins with a basic recap of the differences between what they call a hunter-gatherer (HG) diet and modern Western diets. This includes the HG diet being anti-atherogenic and high in unsaturated fat, containing a variable amount of carbohydrates from fibrous and starchy vegetables rather than cereal grains, and being relatively high in protein. Additionally, the potassium-sodium ratio and fiber intake is much higher and the overall diet composition is more alkaline.   There is indeed evidence to support the beneficial effects of a HG diet on health. Tarantino et al mention...