Recently, I was speaking with my bank officer, Angelo, and noticed that he had a muscular build that suggested that he lifted weights. I asked if he did, and he replied that he had indeed lifted a lot in college. But then he let out a sigh and said, “Now that I have a bad back I wouldn’t think about lifting anything heavier than my 2-year-old son.”

He went on to tell me about how his back went out, and his wife had to call an ambulance because he couldn’t get off the floor.

Why Are We Plagued With Painful Backs?

This wasn’t the first conversation I’ve had with an individual with a bad back. Whether it’s with a familymember, coworker, or a friend, the subject of a bad back frequently arises. That’s not surprising since back problems are at epidemic proportions.

While low back pain rarely indicates a serious disorder, it is the number one cause of disability worldwide.

Consider these statistics:

• Approximately 60% to 80% of Americans will get at least mild back pain at some time in their lives.
• In 2007 alone, about 27 million US adults aged 18 or older reported having back pain.
• About 70% of these people – 19.1 million – sought treatment by a doctor.
• More women (10.9 million) received medical treatment for their back pain than did men (8.2 million).

Is There A Solution To Painful Backs?

I sympathized with Angelo and related that I too had problems with my back. I told him that I was diagnosed with a herniated lumbar disc 25 years ago. Until about a year ago, I had severe back spasms that would keep me immobile for days.

But, I told him, that’s all in the past now. At 61-years-old, I have no more spasms and no more pain. Infact, my back is stronger than it’s been in 30 years and soon I’ll be attempting a 300 lb deadlift.

Apparently I aroused his curiosity because he wanted to know what I did to make my back better. “Simple,” I said. “I do heavy barbell deadlifts, squats, and some additional core training.”

“How old are you again?” he asked. “Sixty-one”, I replied. He just shook his head in disbelief and lamented, “Well, I don’t think I’ll be lifting weights any time soon.” He then excused himself to go make some copies.

The Quirkiness Of Low Back Pain

I noticed, however, that Angelo got up from his chair, seemingly without any pain, and returned to his chair and sat down, again without any obvious difficulty. If he was currently having back pain, he didn’t show it. Apparently, his back had gotten a lot better.

Research has shown that after an acute low back pain event, about 90% of individuals recover in a few months. However, here’s the problem. Recurrent back problems are common, varying between 25 to 50% in a year. Unfortunately, for about 10% of the adult population, an acute back pain episode will turn into chronic low back pain.

My Strengthened Back

Since I’ve learned how to properly protect and strengthen my back, my back problems are just a bad memory. Also, my back is getting stronger. Here’s a 300-pound deadlift I did a few months ago. I’m 61 years old and weigh 165 pounds.
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Perhaps this strategy will help you to continue lifting heavy things well into your senior years or even help you get your back strong again so that you have no need to fear lifting up your young children or even your grandchildren.

First though, let’s take a look at why our backs are failing us.

Why Are Our Backs Failing?

Our spines are a wondrously created biological system. They’re called upon to be stiff enough to bear loads and at the same time flexible enough to allow us to twist and bend. They’re composed of a series of stacked vertebrae that are separated by fibrocartilaginous water filled discs that provide shock absorption.

The discs are composed of two parts: a tough outer membrane (annulus fibrosus) and an inner water segment (nucleus pulposus).

Unfortunately, as we age these vertebral discs begin to degenerate.

Degenerative Disc Disease

The accumulated daily stress from compression and minor injuries will cause our discs to break down. This is known as degenerative disc disease (DDD). Technically, DDD is not a disease but a normal process of aging. Nearly everybody over the age of 40 is experiencing some disc degeneration.

However, not everyone who experiences DDD will have back pain. Some people with awful looking back x-rays never have any pain. But for most of us, a degenerative disc spells trouble.

These problems occur when the annulus fibrosus degenerates to a point where it tears or ruptures. If the tear is serious enough, the contents from the nucleus pulposus may leak out causing the disc to gradually collapse. This may result in decreased shock absorption capacity and/or create pressure on surrounding nerves.

Specific Causes Of Back Pain Associated With Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD)

Back pain from DDD is usually caused by four scenarios.

1. Annular Tears
2. Inflammation
3. Disc Herniation
4. Abnormal Micromotion Instability
5. Spinal Stenosis

All of the above conditions can result in lower back pain. Sometimes pain may also radiate to the hips, buttocks, thighs or legs. If pressure, is placed on an adjacent nerve by the nucleus pulposus of the disc, then sporadic tingling or weakness through the knees, legs, and feet can also occur. See sciatica.

Severe muscle spasms can also result from DDD. These spasms are the result of your body’s attempt to stabilize your spine. If you’ve ever had a back spasm, you know how painful it can be.

A Sedentary Lifestyle Can Worsen Degenerative Disc Disease

Though DDD is a normal process of aging, our less active lifestyles may be worsening the condition. Research (and here) has shown that approximately 25 percent to 35 percent of American adults are inactive. Inactivity is defined as having a job that requires little physical labor, engaging in no regular physical activity program, and being generally inactive around the house or yard.

Further, consider that many of us have office jobs that require sitting for eight to nine hours a day. Now add another hour or two of driving time and that adds up to a lot of sitting.

The result of a sedentary lifestyle compounded by prolonged sitting is disastrous for back health because it leads to a weakening of the muscles of your midsection or core. A weak core contributes to back instability. An unstable back is not something you want when your discs are degenerating.

Disc Herniation Due To Injury

Disc herniation doesn’t always have to be the result of DDD. Injury, especially from sports-related activities, can also cause herniation. I initially injured my back in high school during wrestling practice. Twenty years later, I injured it again on the Back To The Future Rideat Universal Studios. Go figure. But any sudden bending or torsional movements can cause a disc herniation.

Treatment Of Acute Pain With DDD And Disc Herniation

My purpose in this post is not to discuss what to do with acute low back pain or a herniated disc. Forinformation on that, you can check out WebMD and the Cleveland Clinic.

Fortunately, according to research, most annular tears and minor disc herniations will get better over time. Orthopedic surgeons at the University of California, Irvine, estimate that only 5% of us who have back pain will need surgery. However, if your pain is intractable, surgery may be an option. See Dr. Peter Attia’s story.

Healing Chronic Back Pain

If you’re someone who has suffered from chronic back pain, I’m sure you’ve heard the same advice from well-meaning friends that I’ve heard over the last 30 years. It goes something like this. Why don’t you see my chiropractor? Have you tried physical therapy? I have some good stretches you need to try. You need to strengthen your core with sit-ups. Rolling on a big stability ball did the trick for me.

All of these techniques are supposed to cure back pain and prevent problems in the future, right? Well, some of them worked for me over the short term, but not over the long term.

The reason was that they didn’t fully address the number one factor we can control when it comes to DDD. That’s back stability.

Spinal Stability

As I mentioned before, our spines are to be rigid enough to bear loads and at the same time flexible enough to allow us to do crazy things like dancing, simple things like tying our shoes, or wondrous things like looking up at a beautiful nighttime sky.

In order to do that, your spine has to be stabilized by muscles and other soft tissue. These structures act as a guy wire system to stiffen and stabilize the spine when it is required to bear loads.

If these muscles are weak, the stability of your spine will be severely compromised. That makes it possible for vertebrae to pinch and poke around soft tissue and squeeze discs. That’s disastrous to a back that is already in decline.

In order to increase spine stability, you’ve probably heard that you have to strengthen your core muscles. This is good advice but is usually not sufficient. Let me tell you why.

The Limitation of Bodyweight Core Training

Your core muscles are those found in your midsection and the mid and lower part of your back.

To strengthen those muscles, we’re told to do exercises like planks, crunches, bird dogs, etc. This is excellent advice, and I’ll talk about those exercises shortly. However, these exercises usually target smaller muscles which are not the only muscles that support the spine.

The largest stabilizer muscles of the lower back and the largest amount of abdominal muscle tissue cannot be adequately strengthened by bodyweight-only exercises.

In order for these muscles to get stronger, they must be progressively loaded. This means that once a muscle has adapted to a load (e.g. 200-pound squat) an increased load (205-pound squat) must be employed so that muscles can continue to adapt and grow. Body-weight only exercises can’t accomplish this.

This is not to disparage body-weight only exercise routines. Dr. Ted Naiman has a body-weight weight only exercise plan that is extremely intense.

That brings me to the 10 strategies for protecting my back.

1. Barbell Squats And Deadlifts

Performing heavy deadlifts and squats to strengthen a bad back may sound counter-intuitive. But it’s not. These exercises performed with progressive loading over time strengthen the largest back stabilizer muscles. Deadlifts strengthen the erector spinae, and squats strengthen the abdominals. At the same time, they will also strengthen the smaller muscles responsible for stabilization.

When done correctly (with a flat back), these exercises strengthen and stabilize the back. They mimic normal body movements which will train your body to perform daily movements correctly.

In other words, when you bend down to pick up your child, your body will assume it’s performing a deadlift and stabilize the spine accordingly.

My Start To Deadlifting

When I started deadlifting, I wasn’t experiencing acute back pain. I had slight achiness when I stood up after sitting for prolonged periods, but it would subside after I walked around a bit. That was about it.

At 58 years old, I started deadlifting with 65 pounds and have progressed up to 300 pounds. Never despise the day of small beginnings. You never know where hard work can take you.

In the over 4 years I’ve been lifting, I’ve only missed about five days of training because of my back. More on that later.

I wasn’t able to start squatting right away because of bad shoulders (I couldn’t grab the bar). But I’ve been doing back squats for over 2 years without any significant problems.

2. Proper Technique

Strategy 2 continues to deal with barbell resistance training. If you’re going to do barbell back squats or deadlifts, they must be done with proper technique. Proper technique will reduce your chance of injury and improve your strength.

If you can find a good coach, fantastic. There is online coaching available from the good people at startingstrength.com. If you’re a home gym do-it-yourselfer like me, there are videos online that show how to perform the lifts correctly.

3. Treat every weight as heavy

Sometimes we assume because a weight isn’t near our max, that it isn’t heavy so we can’t get injured on it. That couldn’t be more false. The one time I did tweak my back on a deadlift, it was on a warm-up that was well below my workout weight.

Check out this video from Aaron Lipsey featuring the instruction of world-renowned back expert Dr. Stuart McGill on proper deadlift form.

The takeaway is to prepare for the lift by mentally and physically activating your core.

McGill has helped numerous athletes return to their respective sports after back injuries. In this video series, elite lifter Layne Norton from Biolayne.com, documents how Dr. McGill was instrumental in his rehabilitation from a severe back injury.

A key to that rehab was the incorporation of McGill’s Big Three.

4. McGill’s Big Three

Let’s get into some of the body weight core exercises. While deadlifts and squats made my back stronger, they didn’t solve all my back problems. They did relieve a lot of chronic lumbar pain, but I was still experiencing occasional severe spasms while not lifting. This occurred about twice a year for the first three years I was lifting.

For the last year, however, I haven’t experienced any spasms or injury. I believe this is because I have incorporated Dr. McGill’s big three core exercises into my daily workout.

The Core Strengthening Exercises

McGill recommends these three core exercise for back rehabilitation but they are also used as a preventative measure. These exercises include:

1. Curl-ups
2. Bird dogs
3. Side planks

McGill demonstrates these exercises in the video below.

The curl up and bird dog workout sets are based on a descending pyramid structure. Six repetitions on each side, 20 seconds of rest, then 4 reps, then 2 reps. Each rep is held for 10 seconds. On bird dogs, this is done for both sides. For curl-ups, I use the same pyramid for each side of the raised leg.

For side planks, I hold it for 45 seconds on each side. You could also alternate 10 seconds per side.

I do these exercises religiously at least once a day.

5. Daily Walking

One of the ways to keep your spine healthy is by engaging in a program of walking. According to McGill, proper walking prevents the pelvis from tilting to one side, thus keeping your spine in alignment.Also the process of walking deloads the spine. (McGill, Back Mechanic. pg. 114).

Here are important tips for a good walking program for back health.

1. Walk with your chest out and your head up
2. Maintain a brisk pace (I usually maintain a 3.5 mph pace). A slow pace is not good for back health.
3. Walk 3/day for 10 minutes or 2/d for 15 minutes.
4. Let your arms swing from your shoulders.

I started walking 10 years ago as a therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome. When I started, I could barely make it around the block. Now I walk between 1.5 to 2 miles at least 6 days a week.

For those of you who like scientific studies check out this one showing the efficacy of walking for back pain.

6. The Cobra Pose

As I mentioned earlier, I did have a lumbar disc herniation. While I never had severe sciatic pain, I often had recurrences of tingling and other paresthesias in my foot. To solve this, I used a yoga exercise called the cobra pose.

It’s essentially a back extension exercise that is supposed to push the disc back into its proper space.

I first found out about it from these physical therapists in the video below. They’re a riot.

I do this exercise 3 times a day. I hold the pose for 30 seconds and do 3 sets.

7. Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch

When you lift your knee while standing, the muscles responsible for doing this are your hip flexors. The major hip flexors are the iliacus and the psoas. Often they are grouped together and called the iliopsoas.

The psoas muscle starts at the vertebrae T12, L1-4 (and possibly the discs), runs down to the pelvis where it joins the iliacus, and then to the femur. One of its major functions is to provide stability to the spine.

Often, from constant sitting or other reasons, this muscle can become tight. The effect of this is to cause your pelvis to tilt forward. This causes instability in your spine and an abnormal pressure on the lumbar discs.

Below is an excellent tutorial on how to stretch the hip flexors. I do it 3 times a day. 30 secs on each side for 3 sets.

8. Back Bridges

Back bridges are another stretch that I do as part of my core routine. Dr. McGill tells us why they are an important exercise.

“Chronic back pain tends to cause people to use their hamstring muscles, instead of their glutes to extend the hip. This changes patterns that increase spine load when squatting. Performing the back bridge, squeezing the gluteal muscles, and eliminating hamstrings, helps to establish gluteal dominance during hip extension.”

When we arise from a squatting or stooping position, we want the glutes to be the dominant muscle extending our hip. If the hamstrings predominate, then more pressure than necessary will be put on the spine.

Here’s a video on how to do back bridges.

9. Be Back Conscious During The Day

If you have a bad back or an aging back, one precaution you must take is to be back conscious during the day. You’ve heard the saying, “lift with your legs, not your back.”

Well, you can’t totally eliminate the use of your back when lifting. So that means you have to be especially careful when lifting anything or even when bending.

If you have to lift something, remember to stiffen your core first. Brace yourself with your arms if possible.

When getting out of the car, use the handle to help yourself out. When lifting, brace yourself and make sure your back is stabilized.

Here’s a lesson I learned the hard way. If you’re going to sneeze while standing, stiffen your core first.

This is pretty common sense advice, but it’s so easy to forget.

10. I Take Collagen Every Day

There is some evidence that a possible cause of degenerative disc disease is a reduction of collagen in the disc. Further, as we age, our natural collagen synthesis decreases.

Also, because I lift heavy weights, I know I’m causing significant tissue damage.

So in order to make sure my body is getting enough collagen, I take collagen peptides as a supplement.

The evidence that collagen supplements actually helps your spine is scant, but it may certainly help in keeping other bone, tendons, and ligaments healthy. It seems to work for me.

Okay, that’s what I do to protect and strengthen my back. Hopefully, some of these strategies may help you. God bless and have a great week.

Please remember…
The information in this post is not intended as a substitute for professional medical help or advice. These are the things I do to help my back. Everyone is different and not everything works for the same person. A physician should always be consulted for any health problem.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post 10 Ways I Protect My Back So I Can Barbell Train At 61 Years Old appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

I remember when I was 15 years old thinking to myself, “If I live to be 65 years old, that means I’ll be around for 50 more years. Wow, that’s a long time!” When you were 15, 50 years seemed like forever, didn’t it?

We’ve all had these kinds of thoughts when we were young. Our bodies were strong and vital and we thought we’d never grow old. But years sneak up on us, don’t they?

At 40, you start to notice that you don’t recover from exercise like you used to. The aches and pains that disappeared after a few days now linger for months.

At 50, you realize that your body has definitely seen better days. Fifty-five brings a medicine cabinet that is starting to get populated with prescription meds for what our society calls lifestyle diseases. You know what they are: high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and even heart disease.

At 60, aging starts to become a concern. Maybe you notice it’s a little bit of a struggle getting up the stairs, maybe at times you forget where you put your car keys, maybe you hesitate to pick up your grandkids because your back isn’t as strong as it was 20 years ago.

Wow, isn’t this all kind of depressing? Is the best we have to look forward to a continuous descent into ever worsening physical decline? I mean, is a walker or a wheelchair or the assistance from a stranger just to go to the bathroom what we’re destined for?

No! It doesn’t have to be. In this post, I’m going to show you that it’s scientifically and empirically proven that we can delay the aging process or even, possibly, make our bodies young again.

Reversing The Curse

I’m not saying that we can get rid of gray hair (if we have any hair left to gray). I’m also not saying that we can get rid of those crows feet around our eyes or the brown spots accumulating on our hands.

What I am saying is that even if you’re a 57 years old aging couch potato (like I was), you can once again have a strong and vigorous body, perhaps even one to rival the one you had in your thirties or forties.

And here’s something very important. Not only can you recapture strength even into your eighties, but your muscle cells can also actually regain a gene expression that is of a much younger age than your actual chronological age.

Did you catch that? Your muscles can not only get stronger, but they can also get younger as well!!!

Life Span Versus Health Span

Now, no one can guarantee you a long life. Our lifespan (the number of years we live) is in the hands of the Lord. But we can strive to improve our healthspan (the years we live with good health).

In this post, I’ll show a scientifically proven way to improve the cellular age of your muscles.

And I’ll also show you how to develop better muscle quality. That means you’ll have stronger, healthier pain-free muscles and joints.

You don’t have to resign yourself to the fact that your body has to eventually disintegrate into a pool of mush.

Before we look at the science, let’s take a deeper look at the problem.

Aging Muscle – The Danger Of Sarcopenia

After the age of 30, our muscle mass begins to deteriorate. It happens to everyone, and it’s called age-related sarcopenia. However, for sedentary individuals, the loss of muscle mass can be profound and ultimately become a dangerous health situation.

Researchers estimate that physically inactive individuals can lose as much as 3% to 5% of their muscle mass each decade after age 30. This study is a little more conservative and states that age-related sarcopenia begins in approximately the fifth decade of life (our 40s) and proceeds at a rate of 8% every decade.

That means by the time you’re 70 you could have lost about 24% of your muscle mass.

Different muscle groups may also be more affected than others. Research has shown that you could lose as much as 40% muscle mass in your quadriceps muscles (thighs) between the ages of 20 – 80. See my post here on why barbell squats are an important exercise for all adults.

Age-related Loss Of Muscle Strength

Muscle loss translates into a loss of muscle strength. Older adults can expect to be at least 20% to 40% weaker than their younger adult selves. However, after the age of 60, the loss of muscle strength exceeds the loss of muscle mass. This study concluded that,

Muscle strength might be more important than muscle mass as a determinant of functional limitations and mobility status in older age.

Think about how the loss of muscle strength could affect your quality of life. Does your house have stairs to climb? What about taking packages out of your car? Do you get off a toilet every day? If we want to be able to perform these activities well into old age, we must maintain muscle strength.

Losing too much strength due to aging means losing independence and perhaps even a devolution into a life of frailty.

Why Do Our Muscles Decline With Age?

As researchers delve more into the science of aging, they have proposed a number of reasons why our muscles deteriorate with age. These include programmed cell death, oxidative stress, alterations in protein turnover, inflammation, hormonal dysregulation, disuse, and mitochondria dysfunction.

While all these factors play an important role in the aging of muscle mass, mitochondrial dysfunction has caught the attention of researchers.

The Role Of Mitochondria Dysfunction

You’ll remember from high school biology that mitochondria are the power plants of your cells. Researchers are now convinced that dysfunction within these mitochondria is a major cause of aging. They are, however, not as of yet sure of the exact processes involved.

If you’re really into the geeky science behind mitochondrial dysfunction and aging, see here and here. Also, Dr. Rhonda Patrick from the Found My Fitness podcast has a fascinating interview with Dr. Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging here. They discuss various theories of aging and possible life extension strategies. Again, beware, it’s science heavy.

But consider this. If you could limit mitochondrial damage, you should theoretically be able to slow down the process of muscle aging. Let’s take that a step further. If you could improve the function of your mitochondria, could you reverse the aging process and possibly make your muscles young again?

Researchers suggest that this may be possible.

Strength Training Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle

In a 2007 study, researchers led by Simon Melov of the Buck Institute studied 25 healthy, relatively active, older individuals (65 – 79 years old) and 26 younger (18 – 28 years old), sedentary individuals. Skeletal muscle biopsies were performed on the younger and older individuals. The older individuals were placed on a 6-month progressive (weights gradually increased) strength training program.

After the 6-month exercise period, muscle biopsies were performed on 14 of the older individuals. Okay, you’re probably thinking the population size is not that large. True, but studies of this type are extremely difficult to perform. However, the study was well randomized and controlled.

Okay, you’re probably thinking the population size is not that large. True, but studies of this type are extremely difficult to perform. However, the study was well randomized and controlled.

Nonetheless, the results were astounding!

The Results Of The Buck Study

Strength Increases

After the 6-month strength training program, the study researchers found that,

…the older individuals were able to improve strength by approximately 50%, to levels that were only 38% less than that of young individuals…”. This means that the older individuals who were engaged in the weight lifting program were able to narrow the strength gap between themselves and the 30-year-olds from 50% to 38%.

That’s a 36% improvement in strength in just six months. Imagine what could happen after three years of training. See my results later in the post.

Does Stronger Mean Younger?

Okay, so far this study showed that older people even up to their 70s can recapture strength. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they reversed their age, right?

Well, yes and no. If I’m stronger today at 61 years old than I was at 30 years old, then I’ve in a sense recaptured the strength of my youth. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll have another 30 years to live.

But it may have an important effect on my healthspan. If I can remain strong in my years going forward, then my risk of disability is greatly reduced.

But let’s get back to the question of getting younger. Did the seniors who lifted weights get younger? Let’s see what the study said.

Mitochondrial Improvement

Researchers in the Buck Study performed muscle biopsies on seniors before and after a 6-month training regimen in order to examine their mitochondria. Previous to weight training, even though the seniors were healthy, their mitochondria revealed a gene expression that was consistent with their age.

However, when the researchers observed the muscle biopsies in the seniors who had weight trained for six months, they found,

…a remarkable reversal of the expression profile of 179 genes associated with age and exercise training…Genes that were down-regulated with age were correspondingly up-regulated with exercise, while genes that were up-regulated with age, were down-regulated with exercise.

They continued,

Genes that are downregulated with age show a marked reversal to youthful levels with exercise, and genes that are upregulated with age also show the same trend to return to youthful levels in association with exercise.

In other words, the 14 older individuals who weight trained developed younger muscles as expressed by their genes.

The researchers summed up by stating,

We report here that healthy older adults show a gene expression profile in skeletal muscle consistent with mitochondrial dysfunction and associated processes such as cell death, as compared with young individuals. Moreover, following a period of resistance exercise training in older adults, we found that age-associated transcriptome expression changes were reversed, implying a restoration of a youthful expression profile.

Did you get that? When it comes to muscle mitochondria, weight training can reverse almost 40 years of aging!

Weight training, however, is not the only way to improve mitochondrial function. Let’s take a look at a Mayo Clinic study.

The Mayo Clinic Study — Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Exercise

As I’ve mentioned, researchers believe that mitochondrial dysfunction plays a key role in the aging of muscle. This dysfunction ultimately leads to a loss of strength and endurance.

In 2017, the Mayo Clinic released a report on their finding concerning muscle cell adaptations of younger and older individuals as a relation to different types of exercise.

The younger age group (aged 18 to 30) and the older (age 65 to 80) were split into 3 different exercise groups. These were high-intensity interval training (specifically biking and walking), strength training using weights, and a combination of moderate intensity interval training and strength training.

Following 12 weeks of training, researchers took a biopsy from the thigh muscle of each individual. They then compared the molecular makeup and lean muscle mass of each group, along with sedentary controls.

This is what they found.

Results of the Mayo Clinic Study

The Mayo team found that strength training is more effective at building muscle than the other forms of exercise. That was an expected finding.

Another expected result was that HIIT had the greatest effect at inducing positive changes at a cellular level, especially on mitochondria.

However, what surprised the Mayo researchers was the effect of HIIT on the muscle cells of the older group.

The Older HIIT Group Showed Dramatic Mitochondrial Improvement

While the younger group of HIIT individuals showed a 49% increase in mitochondrial capacity, the older volunteers experienced a stunning 69% increase. Combined training produced the least favorable results.

Also, the HIIT group comprised of older individuals showed the highest amount of increased gene expression which also surpassed that of the younger HIIT group.

The researchers also found that HIIT caused an increased expression of the genes that produce mitochondrial proteins and protein responsible for muscle growth. This means that HIIT may slow down or even reverses the age-related decline of muscle.

The Conclusion of the Mayo Clinic Study Authors

Dr. Sreekumaran Nair, one of the Mayo clinic’s study authors stated,

Unlike liver, muscle is not readily regrown. The cells can accumulate a lot of damage, however, if exercise restores or prevents deterioration of mitochondria and ribosomes in muscle cells, there’s a good chance it does so in other tissues, too.

According to Nair, exercise may prevent mitochondrial deterioration and possibly reverse damage already done, even in other tissues.

The editors from Science Daily were also enthusiastic concerning the results of the study.

… exercise — and in particular high-intensity interval training in aerobic exercises such as biking and walking — caused cells to make more proteins for their energy-producing mitochondria and their protein-building ribosomes, effectively stopping aging at the cellular level.

So, according to this study, the best way to restore or prevent muscle deterioration is to engage in HIIT.

However, is HIIT alone the best exercise for anti-aging?

The Best Anti-Aging Exercise Strategy

Concerning the best anti-aging exercise program, Sreekumaran Nair stated,

Based on everything we know, there’s no substitute for these exercise programs when it comes to delaying the aging process. These things we are seeing cannot be done by any medicine. Exercise is critically important to prevent or delay aging.

Ok, but which is the best? Nair clarified by adding,

If people have to pick one exercise, I would recommend high-intensity interval training, but I think it would be more beneficial if they could do 3-4 days of interval training and then a couple days of strength training.

From a cellular standpoint, HIIT is the best anti-aging exercise program. However, HIIT will not build the muscle quality that strength training can provide. Therefore, in order for you to achieve improved health and possibly a longer life span, it would benefit you to combine both methods of training.

Now, this is all good in theory. But an important saying goes, “the best exercise program for you is the one that you’ll stick with.” While HIIT has been proven to be the best at optimizing cellular function, it’s also extremely difficult to do.

Does it really help our cause if the best exercise for anti-aging is nearly impossible for us sedentary over-45er’s to actually engage in?

The Problem With HIIT

There is no one standardized HIIT workout routine. The Tabata method, though, gives an idea of what’s generally involved. This method calls for 20 seconds of maximum effort and is followed by a short 10 seconds of rest. This cycle is repeated eight times.

For example, you sprint on a treadmill at an all-out pace for 20 seconds and then rest for 10 seconds. You rinse and repeat for seven more times.

Greatist has a great infographic on HIIT.

I’ve never tried this type of exercise nor do I expect I ever will. If you can do it, God bless you. It’s supposed to be utterly brutal.

Recovering From Chronic Illness and HIIT

Now, if you’ve been sedentary your whole life or you’re recovering from a chronic health condition like I was (chronic fatigue syndrome), does that mean that we should entirely discount HIIT?

Not necessarily. Dr. Mercola has suggested a modified HIIT here.

Again, at 57 years old and recovering from CFS, I wouldn’t consider Mercola’s HIIT workout. After watching him do it, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to recover sufficiently.

So what kind of high-intensity exercise can we actually do that will give us the best anti-aging cellular benefits?

One thing we shouldn’t do is despise the day of small beginnings. Meaning we start from where we are and then progress. Let me briefly illustrate this from my experience.

57 Years Old Untrained, Sedentary, and Recovering from CFS

Four years ago, at 57 years old, I was about 80% recovered from a 30-year struggle with CFS. I was also recovered from a two-year bout of severe bursitis in both shoulders.

Needless to say from a musculoskeletal perspective, I was in pitiful shape (I had been doing a brisk 35-minute walk at least 5 days/week for about 6 years)

One evening, I happened to glance at my arms and was shocked at what I saw. My arms were puny and frail looking. That was my motivation to start strength training.

Initially, I started with 15-pound dumbbells. I did three sets of eight reps of bench press, overhead press, and curls three times a week. I didn’t have a specific plan.

Since I had no pain and little fatigue, I continued on. After a few weeks, I graduated to a barbell. My son had an inclined squat machine so I used that to exercise my legs.

As the months went by, I thought I could do this consistently, but I needed a plan. I eventually found the Starting Strength method. This system is a barbell program that involves four basic exercises: the deadlift, back squat, bench press, and overhead press.

So, I went out and bought some Olympic weights and a power rack, and I started the program. Remarkably, I experienced very little fatigue from Starting Strength and I progressed rapidly. If you’re interested in Starting Strength, check out Mark Rippetoe’s excellent book here.

See my post here on how I used Starting Strength to get stronger.

Where My Strength Is At Now

After three years of lifting, I’ve graduated to an intermediate level. At this stage, it’s a little more difficult to make gains. However, last month at 61 years old, I pulled a 300-pound deadlift at a weight of 167 pounds.

 

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I’m not saying you have to lift weights to get strong. Some people get ripped on body weight exercises. But strength training with weights the right way is guaranteed to build muscle.

So if a completely untrained individual recovering from CFS can lift weights, many of you can as well. The only thing holding you back is if you have a debilitating illness.

By the way, for you ladies out there thinking weightlifting is not for you, Barbara has been lifting for 3 years as has my 28-year-old daughter Nicole.

If you’re an older adult and you want to get into barbell training, an excellent resource that will answer all your questions is The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40.

But what about HIIT????

Me and HIIT

Until recently, I haven’t been able to do any kind of serious HIIT. Every time I tried, I developed severe fatigue that often compromised my weight training. So, I just continued to walk.

If you can’t do HIIT, then definitely walk. I believe this has been one of the most important factors in my healing from CFS.

Recently though, I’ve started to introduce my body to some HIIT.

I Begin HIIT

I went on a keto diet in August 2017. Within a few months, I felt better than I had in over 30 years. Most of the fatigue symptoms left my body and I experienced a surge of energy.

So last month I decided to start to add in some HIIT to my routine. Here’s what I do on my treadmill.

• 3-minute warm-up at 3.5 miles per hour (heart rate is at 60% of max)
• 1-minute run at 4.0 miles per hour (HR is at 80% of max)
• 2-minutes at 3.5 miles per hour
• Continue the above 2 sequences for 4 more times
• 3-minute warm-down at 3.5 miles per hour

I do this twice a week.

So far this has been working well for me. I suspect over the coming months I’ll probably improve cardiovascularly, and I may be able to intensify the program.

Even though I’m not doing the classic HIIT, I am getting some intensity. As I said, we should not despise the days of small beginnings.

Okay, am I getting younger? I don’t know. I do know I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. And I know I feel better than I have in 30 years. Something must be working.

The Bottom Line

HIIT combined with resistance training is a scientifically proven anti-aging strategy. Experientially, I can attest to that fact.

As the people from Nike say, “Just do it”.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Remember, we would love to hear from you. Have a blessed week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post One Scientifically Proven Way To Reverse The Aging Process appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

If you’re a regular visitor to our site, you’re probably someone who wants your diet to be dominated by healthy, clean food. You want to eat food to be nutrient dense and free from plant toxins (gluten, lectins, etc.), free from poisonous chemicals (glyphosate), and free from nasty bacteria.

Sometimes, though, our efforts can be thwarted by something simple and completely unnoticed. For instance, since Barbara and I have a big family, are home often, and run a cooking blog, our kitchen gets really messy on a daily basis. That means we do a lot of cleaning up.

Much of that cleaning up is done with paper towels. We use so many paper towels that I’ve made it a mission to get the best price I can on our favorite towels. Sometimes I buy enough that my garage looks like a Bounty distributorship.

My Foolhardy Plan To Ditch Paper Towels

A few months back, I got to the point where I had had enough of buying and using paper towels. It seemed like such a waste of money. So I had this bright idea. Why not switch to using cotton dish towels? After all, couldn’t they accomplish the same thing as paper towels but also provide significant savings?

So I asked Barbara to limit the use of paper towels. I then suggested we use cotton dish towels as they were cheap, washable, and reusable. “Okay, she said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“Why not?” I responded. “We’ll save a lot of money. It makes very good sense.”

She knew I was committed to this new course of action so she didn’t argue the point. But she had that look on her face women get when they let a man think he’s smart, but they know he’ll regret his decision later on.

A few days after the start of my experiment, I went to use a dish towel and I noticed that it had a peculiar smell. I asked Barbara what it was, and she gave me the low down.

“I told you we can’t use dish towels in our kitchen. We do way too much cooking and cleaning. They simply can’t handle the job. Once they get grease or food on them, they’re done. After a few days, they start to culture stuff.”

Then came the hammer.

“And, do you really want me wasting valuable time by washing hand towels every other day?”

Wow, my wife is a smarty. She hit me with a scientific argument and then clinched her position with an economic argument (cost-benefit analysis).

She won. It was back to paper towels. Before I sulked away with my tail between my legs, I just asked if we could be a little more economical with their use.

“Yes, dear,” she replied.

Not only had my wife proved that she had a lot more kitchen wisdom than I, but she had also protected her family from potential disaster.

New research shows that lurking in those cotton dish towels might be millions of disease-causing microbes.

New Research On Kitchen Hand Towels

Earlier this month at the annual meeting for the American Society for Microbiology, research was presented that showed that kitchen towels could carry pathogens potentially leading to food poisoning.

Researchers from the Department of Health Sciences, University of Mauritius, collected 100 kitchen towels after one month of use and found that 49% of the towels had bacterial growth on them, including E.coli and S.aureus. You definitely don’t want those critters around your food.

The number of bacteria found was increased with larger families, the presence of children, in multiple purpose towels, and in families with non-vegetarian diets.

Lead researcher Dr. Biranjia-Hurdoyal concluded,

Our study demonstrates that the family composition and hygienic practices in the kitchen affected the microbial load of kitchen towels. We also found that diet, type of use and moist kitchen towels could be very important in promoting the growth of potential pathogens responsible for food poisoning.

I have personally validated this research via the smell test.

Did you know that the U.S. government has actually published guidelines for proper kitchen towel use?

.Gov’s Kitchen Towel Playbook

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) and Kansas State University identifies kitchen towels as the number one source of cross-contamination in the kitchen.

Here are some of their guidelines to prevent the spread of bacteria in your kitchen.

Keep Your Hands Clean

According to the USDA, properly washed hands is the first step to eliminating contamination of kitchen towels with bacteria. If your hands contain bacteria, it will be transmitted to the towel and then to whatever the towel touches.

They recommended washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. Obviously, this should be done before doing any cooking. But they also recommend washing your hands after:

• Handling raw meat
• Handling raw meat packaging
• Handling raw eggs (even if you just touch the shell)
• Throwing away trash
• And after cooking

Never Reuse Paper Towels

Because of the porous nature of paper towels, bacteria can get in the towel and stay there. If the towel is used more than once, any bacteria in the towel will get a free ride around the kitchen. Therefore, paper towels should only be used once. Use the towel and then toss it. Better the bacteria end up in the trash than in your kitchen.

Keep Cloth Towels Fresh

The USDA tells us that cloth towels can build up bacteria after multiple uses. They sure can, trust me. The USDA recommends washing the towels frequently on the hot cycle of your washer. They also suggest that you keep a cabinet well stocked in order to have a ready substitute.

This is all great advice for limiting the potential for bacterial contamination in your kitchen. A healthy kitchen can be just as important as healthy food.

In our home, we’re sticking with the judicial use of Bounty for now.

But here’s something to be concerned about with the use of paper towels.

A Big Problem With Paper Towel Usage

Each year, Americans use about 13 billion pounds of paper towels. That amounts to over 45 pounds per person.

There’s a problem with that kind of usage. Many paper towels, especially the ones found in commercial restrooms, are often made out of recycled paper. Unfortunately, these towels cannot be further recycled. This means that paper towel waste will end up in landfills and other parts of the environment like our oceans. So it makes sense to use these kinds of paper towels wisely.

Experts estimate that if every person reduced their use by just one towel per day, 571 million pounds per year of paper waste would be eliminated.

Watch this video to see how to lower your paper towel consumption when washing your hands.

If you didn’t watch the video, the keys to lowering your paper towel consumption is to shake your hands vigorously 12 times before drying and then fold the towel to increase absorbency.

Eco-Friendly Paper Towels

I checked on Bounty towels. Their website states that they are recyclable and will biodegrade in 60 days or less. Now that’s a good thing.

However, Bounty towels are made from 100% virgin wood pulp. That means people have to cut down trees to make the paper. Wasting towels means wasting resources which is not a good thing.
Bounty does claim that their paper comes from 100% responsibly managed forests. That’s a good thing.

If you’re into super environmentally friendly products, Seventh Generation has paper towels at a low price. We use a lot of their product but we haven’t used their paper towels. You can check out the reviews on Amazon.

I hope the information I have given you will make your kitchen time a healthier experience for you and your family.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Remember we’d love to hear from you. Have a blessed week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Could Your Dish Towels Make You Sick? appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

Disclosure: We received no compensation from MyFitnessPal or Under Armour for this post.

In a previous post, I showed you how to use the MyFitnessPal app to calculate your daily food consumption for a ketogenic diet. For Barbara and me, this app has been absolutely essential to our keto diet success story.

However, shortly after publishing that post, I realized that most of our friends probably use their mobile devices a lot more than a laptop. Unfortunately, the screenshots I used in that tutorial were from my laptop.

So, in order for you to experience the same keto diet success that Barbara and I have had, I thought it would be helpful if I put together a tutorial on how to use the MyFitnessPal (MFP) app on your handheld device too.

When I initially set up MyFitnessPal on Barb’s phone, I thought it would generally follow the computer program, but it didn’t. The phone app is very different than the desktop program.

I’m not completely tech ignorant but configuring this app took a bit of time. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it, and I must say it’s a handy app. If you’re tethered to your phone, then this app is a great way to keep track of your macros.

Since I’m an iPhone user, I will tailor this tutorial to that specific device. I can’t imagine though that the app would be that different on android devices, but I could be wrong.

Download The MyFitnessPal App

The very first thing you have to do is download the MFP app. That means you’ll have to use your email. MFP will send you an email at least once a week. I hate spam as much as anyone, but I kind of enjoy the MFP emails. They’re not pushy on selling things even though they’re run by the clothing manufacturer Under Armour.

While their dietary theory is not always the same as mine, they often have interesting recipes that can be modified for gluten-free, low-carb diets and their fitness tips can be useful at times. They’ll also send you a summary of your weekly progress.

Okay, once you have the app installed, your first step is to enter your personal goals.

Establishing Your Personal Goals

If you’ve already read this far, I assume you know what your ketogenic dietary goals are. But if you don’t, you can click here to see how Barbara and I do it using ketogains.com. Once you have determined those goals, you can then proceed to the MFP app.

The Home Page

When you open the MFP app, it will display the home page. It looks like this.

As you can see, my personal goal of 1500 calories is already set. Again, I established this goal by calculating my daily macronutrient intake on the ketogains.com calculator. Next, you want to enter your personal goals.

Entering Your Personal Goals

In the above picture, on the lower right, is the more button. Tap this button and it will take you to the More page.

Now tap the Goals button. This will take you to the main Goals page.

On this page, you can set some general health and fitness goals. These include goals like starting weight, current weight, goal weight, and activity level. Notice I set my activity level at “not very active”. Since I’m not on my feet all day and I’m not an endurance athlete, I felt that was the right choice.

As you scroll down, you’ll see Nutrition Goals. Don’t set these yet.

Continue to scroll down and you’ll see Fitness Goals. You can go ahead and set Workouts/Week and Minutes/Workout.

Now scroll back up to Nutrition Goals and tap on Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals. If you have the free version app, when this screen opens, the other categories should be locked.

Setting Nutrition Goals

Tap the Calorie, Carbs, Protein and Fat Goals button and the following Calories & Macros screen will appear.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. Calories are easy to set because you can set them at exactly what you want. Just tap on it and set the number you want.

However, if you only have the free version, like I do, you cannot set carbs, protein, and fat by the grams. You must do it by percentages. Again, if you have your macro percentages in mind, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

First, tap on either of the three macros and you will be brought to this page.

You can adjust any of the macro percentages to a percent you desire. I set mine to 5% carbs, 25% protein and 70% fat. This equaled 100% of my daily allowable macro intake.

As you can see, it automatically set my carb consumption at 19 grams. Protein at 94 grams and fat at 117 grams. This is pretty close to the parameters calculated by the ketogains.com calculator. It may not be exact, but it gives a good basis from which to work. Make sure your macro percentage is set to 100%.

Hit the check mark at the top of the screen and your macros are set!

Now, tap the back arrow twice and you’re back to the MORE page.

Now you’re ready to start adding in your daily food consumption.

Adding In Daily Food Consumption On MFP

Let’s start to add in food. In the above MORE page, tap that big blue button with the plus sign. That will bring you to this screen.

Now, tap that big orange button that says food. You guessed that already, right? You’ll now be brought to the Select a Meal page.

You can choose to add food to whatever meal you’d like. Let’s start with breakfast.

Adding Food For Breakfast

Tap on the Breakfast button, and you’ll be brought to this screen.

From this page, you can search for a food. Most of the food we eat is in the MFP data bank. It will also record your recent and frequent food choices. You can see it has kept a whole list of my recent food choices. I was fortunate that the mobile app imported all my food choices from my laptop version.

Okay, let’s first search for scrambled eggs. Type scrambled eggs into the search bar, press search on your device, and a whole list of scrambled egg choices will appear.

Now tap on Large Egg – Scrambled. Subsequently, a whole lot of nutrition information, including macronutrient data, will appear. Eggs are almost the perfect food. Notice their macro data. They have excellent protein and fat and are in low carbs.

If you’re going to eat two eggs, go to servings, tap it, and it will allow you to add more. The macronutrient data will adjust accordingly.

Since I usually eat two eggs a day, I’ll input that data. Once you have added a particular food, tap the check mark at the top of the screen. It will then bring you to the Today page.

As you can see, you can add more food to whatever meal you choose.

Adding More Food

To add more food, just tap the Add Food button and go through the same process.

I’m going to add in one link of Trader Joe’s Sweet Italian Sausage from the breakfast add food button. Go ahead and search for it. See if you can find it. Once you find it, tap the check mark at the top of the page, and you’ll see that the screen has added in the sausage.

Don’t add any more food right now. I want you to look at the top of the screen where it shows a green 1218 remaining. This is obviously the number of calories I can consume for the rest of the day.

Now, tap the green 1218. It will bring you to the Nutrition page.

The Nutrition Page

My app opens to the Macros selection on the Nutrition page first. If yours open differently, tap the Macros selection first. This screen shows you the macro content of the food you have already ingested for the day.

You can see that I’ve already consumed 4g of carbs, 20g of fat, and 23g of protein.

The Total category shows you my macro percentage of the food you’ve eaten and the Goal category is your original daily macro data.

The Total category is not important right now but will become important later in the day as it will show you how close to or how far you’re over your goal.

Now, don’t leave this screen just yet. At the top of the screen, tap the Nutrients button. 

The Nutrients Selection

When you tap Nutrients, this page will pop up.

This page gives you a clearer picture of what’s going on with your food consumption in relation to your macros.

In my case, you see that I’ve eaten 23g of protein. Since my goal is 94g, I can eat another 71g throughout the day. This will allow me to judge what I can include on my menu for the rest of the day.

Carbs and fat are also displayed as are many other nutrients. Oops, you can see that I haven’t eaten any fiber yet. No worries. That will fill up later on in the day. Or, like today, I ate Barbara’s delicious broccoli frittata. I got some fiber there. Some mornings I’ll saute up some fresh spinach — there’s some fiber!

Remember, fiber can be subtracted from your carb totals to lower your theoretical carb intake. For example, one-half cup of kale has 3 g of carbs, but it also has 1g of fiber. Therefore, your total carbs would be 2g.

The forward and back arrows allow you to go back a day or forward a day. You can ignore these for now. You can also ignore the Calories button. We’re not really interested in calories.

Now, tap the X button at the top left of the screen, and you’ll be brought back to the Today (Add Food) page.

Adding Fractions Of A Food

The two foods I illustrated were pretty simple to input. Two eggs and 1 sausage are complete quantities. What do you do if you want to add a food by particular ounces?

Easy peasy! Okay, if I had a broccoli frittata this morning, I would want to include the ¼ cup of broccoli Barbara used to make it.

Let’s start from scratch. From the Home page tap the big blue circle with the plus sign, then tap the red circle that says food.

From the Select A Meal page, choose Breakfast. Now search for broccoli. When the list of broccoli comes up, choose Broccoli, raw. It will be listed as 1 cup chopped. That’s a problem. Barbara didn’t use one cup of broccoli. Now, what!?

Simply tap the Broccoli, raw button. The nutrient page for broccoli will appear. You’ll see there Serving Size and under that Number of Servings. Next, tap the Number of Servings. This page will appear.

From here you can set the serving as multiple cups or a fraction of a cup. Suppose Barbara used ? of a cup. I simply tap ?, then hit the check mark. That will set broccoli at ? of a cup. Then I tap the check mark at the top of the Add Food page and broccoli is added to my Today page.

Notice that broccoli was added as 0.1 cups and not ?. I guess MFP rounds down, but it’s close enough for me. Play around with the add food page, and you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Editing Your Food Choices

Uh, oh. You added broccoli when you wanted to add kale. What do you do now!!!!

Sometimes you may add a food by mistake. For example, here I have some Trader Joe’s bacon that I want to remove.

To remove the bacon, all I have to do is hit edit at the top left of the screen, and it will allow you to delete any food.

Simply chose bacon and then hit the delete button at the top right, and bacon will be removed.

MFP Saves Your Food Choices

The above process seems like a lot of work, but it does get easier. One reason is that MFP keeps track of all the recent and frequent foods you’ve added. In other words, if you added scrambled eggs today, then that food will show up immediately in your recent food list.

As you add more foods, your list will grow. For example, when I want to add a food for any meal, this list will automatically pop up.

These are some of my Recent food choices. I can actually scroll down for many more choices. If I preferred, I could have tapped the Frequent button at the top of the screen, and it would have given me even more choices. All of these foods were added by me in the past.

If you add food using your computer, they will be automatically imported into the app.

Now, the beauty of this list is that you don’t have to constantly search for foods. Also, and this is a great feature, you can add multiple foods at once.

Adding Multiple Foods

Simply tap Multi-add at the bottom of the screen, and this page will pop up.

You simply check the food you want and then hit Add, and MFP will automatically add them to your food list for the day. How easy is that?

These are the basic steps for getting you going with the MFP app. There are some other features you can play around with. You can add your daily water consumption, keep a log of your exercise, and track your weight loss.

Okay, that’s about it. I hope this tutorial will be of help. I wish you well in your health and fitness journey.

We would love to hear your comments. Have a blessed and healthful week.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post How To Use The MyFitnessPal App On Your Mobile Device appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In previous posts, Barbara and I have talked about our goals and successes with the ketogenic diet. In my last post, I showed you the simple strategy we use to configure our macros for the diet. 

You’re now familiar with what a keto diet is and how ketosis affects your body. You’ve established why you want to go keto (e.g.. weight loss, help in treating a specific health condition, or enhanced physical performance). And you’ve solved the mystery of macro calculation.

So now you’re ready to dive right into the keto diet, right? Well, not so fast. Slow down a bit.

You’re not going to just jump into a lake without knowing something about the depth of the water or its temperature. So it is with the keto diet. Even after knowing what your daily macronutrients should be, there are still several other important things about the Keto diet that you need to know.

You might have heard some of the horror stories from people who’ve tried keto. Some report that they experienced the dreaded “keto flu”. Others complain that their strength training suffered horribly, some are hungry all the time, and others complain that they just can’t find good keto recipes.

In this post, I’ll show you how Barbara and I avoided most of the problems associated with the ketogenic diet and how we quickly corrected a very annoying unexpected problem.

First, let’s get some preliminary stuff out of the way.

Preliminary Stuff

Before Barbara and I went keto, we had a complete physical and blood panel. There was no medical reason preventing us from trying the keto diet. Also, even though we wanted the health benefits of ketones, we weren’t using the diet to treat any specific disease.

As I’ve said in the past, if you’re going to go keto, make sure you’re healthy enough to do it. If you’re using keto to treat a specific disease (type 2 or type 1 diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer) or if you’re taking meds for a condition, make sure you do it under the supervision of a doctor who understands low-carb diets.

Okay, let’s get to the important nuances of a keto diet.

What Does High In Healthy Fat Mean?

A ketogenic diet is characterized as a low-carb (<30 grams net) high-fat diet. It’s called high fat because a majority of your macros will come from fat. Fat comprises about 70% of Barbara’s diet and mine.

However, just because a keto diet is high in fat doesn’t mean that Barbara and I can eat any kind of fat we want. Most of our fat comes from meat (grass fed when possible), butter, olive oil, coconut oil, salmon, sardines, avocados, eggs, and cheese.

I’m a big advocate of quality extra-virgin olive oil. I probably enjoy a good EVOO as much as some people enjoy a fine wine. See my olive oil post here.

The fats we avoid like the plague are highly processed seed oils (corn, vegetable, soybean, etc.). See my post on the dangers of soybean oil here.

Most of the fats we eat are saturated. The mainstream medical community still has this perverse antipathy to saturated fats. However, saturated fat is not your enemy.

Crucial Things We Had To Be Aware Of Concerning The Keto Diet

Before Barbara and I went keto we did a ton of research. One thing we were concerned about was the dreaded “keto flu”.

The Keto Flu

Some people who jump right into a keto diet often report experiencing symptoms like fatigue, headaches, irritability, and muscle cramps. These symptoms have become known as the “keto flu”. But this isn’t really the flu. Experts relate that these symptoms are a result of the body moving away from carbohydrate metabolism to fat metabolism.

The transition away from carbs allows the kidneys to work more efficiently whereby they excrete more sodium and water. Also, a keto diet eschews high sodium containing processed foods. If you were consuming a lot of these foods prior to keto, their removal from your diet may contribute to sodium depletion.

A simple fix for the “keto flu”, or to avoid it altogether, is to maintain the proper intake of sodium and water.

Barbara and I never experienced the “keto flu”. One probable reason is that we had a gradual transition to keto. We were paleo for many years, then switched to low-carb, and then to keto. By the time we went keto, we were already somewhat fat adapted. So apparently our sodium intake was adequate.

Also, you have to make sure you get enough water when on keto.Generally, we drink at least 6-8 glasses of water per day. This seems to be adequate for us.

Barbara and I experience this rapid weight loss when we first went low-carb, but not when we went keto. Our weight loss on keto was gradual and sustained.

Let’s explore the recommendations for sodium, potassium, and magnesium intake in more detail.

What Should Your Sodium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

A teaspoon of table salt has about 2.3 grams of sodium. Doing the math means you’ll need at least a little over 2 teaspoons of salt a day.

No, that doesn’t mean you have to dump all that salt onto your food.

You’ll get some sodium naturally from food (pickles, etc.) and some from salting your food. If you don’t think you’re getting enough sodium, you can get even more from bullion cubes or broth.

In my case, and it’s something Barbara finds utterly disgusting, I’ll put some pink Himalayan salt in the palm of my hand and just lick it up. I learned this from Dr. Mercola who said he does it 6-8 times throughout the day.

Caution On Sodium Intake

Some individuals should exercise caution when adjusting salt intake. Individuals with persistently high blood pressure and fluid retention and people taking NSAIDs should be wary of raising their sodium intake until their conditions resolve. See here. Also, people performing heavy work or physical exercise in the heat may need more sodium.

If you’re healthy and concerned that consuming 5 grams of sodium is dangerous, this 2014 study should allay your concerns. After observing 100,000 individuals, it found that the lowest mortality risk occurred at 5.0 grams of sodium per day.

For Dr. Phinney’s sodium recommendations, see here.

Let’s take a look at potassium.

What Should Your Potassium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Potassium is another important electrolyte to consider on a keto diet. It is generally recommended that you get at least 1000-3,500 mg of potassium daily. If you’re on a well-formulated keto diet, you should get enough potassium from foods like raw spinach, avocado, mushrooms, salmon, steak, and pork loin.

To be on the safe side, occasionally we’ll sprinkle some of this potassium salt on our meat. Caution: it tastes rather blah.

What Should Your Magnesium Intake Look Like On A Keto Diet?

Magnesium is a mineral that many Americans are deficient in. According to a 2011 report in the Journal Nutrition, 45 percent of American adults do not get the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) amount of magnesium from their diet.

Barbara and I were already aware of the importance of supplementing with magnesium well before we went keto.  We were taking 200 mg/day.

Since we were getting 200 mg from our supplements and the rest from our food, we thought we were okay. We found out the hard way that we were very wrong.

Constipation: A Side Effect Of A Keto Diet

After a few weeks on the keto diet, I developed constipation. This was the first time I had this problemsince before going on a paleo diet years ago. Suggestions to eat more fiber and drink more water were not helpful as I was already doing that.

I read that upping my magnesium intake might help. So Barbara and I increased our magnesium to 600 mg/day. Literally, overnight the problem disappeared and never returned. What a relief that was!!! This is the magnesium that we use.

What About Micronutrients?

Since Barbara and I were on a paleo diet for at least 5 years, we were already eating a lot of whole foods and we continued doing this on our keto diet. We eat at least 3-6 portions of above ground leafy and cruciferous veggies daily. This ensures that we get a good supply of micronutrients.

Maintaining A Good Omega-6 To Omega-3 Fatty Acid Ratio On A Keto Diet?

An important nutritional parameter Barbara and I seek to maintain in our keto diet is an optimal omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio.  These fatty acids are essential fatty acids. That means that even though our bodies need them to function properly, our bodies cannot produce them. We must, therefore, get them from our diet.

Omega-3 fatty acids are recognized as promoting healthy cells and having beneficial anti-inflammatory properties. Several studies had been performed that show they help in reducing the risk of heart disease. See here, here and here.

Omega-6 fatty acids are important for maintaining cell wall integrity and providing energy for the heart. However, when the omega-6 level is elevated, they become pro-inflammatory in a negative way.

Increased omega-6s have been associated with chronic inflammatory diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, CVD, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. See here and here.

More importantly, for health concerns, is the proportion of omega-6 to omega-3 you get from your diet. Here’s why.

Today’s research suggests that a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should fall between 1:1 – 4:1. However, with today’s Western Pattern diet this ratio has now increased to between 15:1 – 16.7:1. See here and here.

This ratio does have health consequences. For example, a ratio of 4:1 was associated with a 70% decrease in total mortality, a ratio of 2-3:1 suppressed inflammation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, and a ratio of 5:1 had a beneficial effect on patients with asthma, whereas a ratio of 10:1 had adverse consequences. See here.

An Additional Supplement To Our Keto Diet

In my last post, I included a sample of what we eat during a typical day. You may have noticed that MCT oil was on that list. MCT oil is not essential to a keto diet, but if you’re looking to up your ketone production, it may help.

MCT Oil

Remember one of the main reasons for us going keto was so that our bodies would be in a state of ketosis. MCT oil is a supplement that is known for increasing ketone production in the body.

It’s a medium chain triglyceride oil that is derived from palm kernel oil or coconut oil. Upon being ingested, MCT oil passes directly to the liver where it is metabolized into ketones.

MCT oil has been reported to help with metabolic syndrome, and to increase cognition in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients.,

Also, since your liver converts MCT oil directly to ketones, it won’t store the oil as fat. The newly produced ketones, therefore, are an instant source of energy for our bodies.

Anecdotally, individuals had reported increased clarity and energy after consuming MCT oil. You can add my name to that list.

This is the MCT oil we are currently using. I pour one tablespoon into my 12:00 PM green tea, and I’m good for the day. There is no change in the taste of the tea, but the consistency is a little oily. It is oil after all.

For more on the benefits of MCT oil, see here. It’s important to note that you don’t need to consume MCT oil to be in ketosis.

Some Cautions When Consuming MCT Oil

There’s one more diet tweak I’d like to mention.

Fasting

Many people who practice a keto lifestyle engage in fasting. If you refrain from eating, your body will have no choice but to consume its own fat for energy. Thus you will lose weight. Also, because no carbs are being consumed, your body will produce ketones.

Fasting will also aid in bringing your body into a better state of insulin sensitivity.

However, I have tried prolonged fasting (more than 24 hours), but it doesn’t work for me. I’ve found the stress on my body is too much for me to handle. Barbara coped better with it, but she also found it stressful.

Since we were not trying to lose humongous amounts of weight, we decided not to incorporate it into our keto regimen.

For everything, you want to know about fasting, visit Dr. Jason Fung’s site here.

There’s also some controversy in the keto world about the dangers of a loss of muscle mass when fasting. Dr. Phinney says it’s possible while Dr. Fung says it’s not. The jury is still out on this issue.

While we don’t fast, we do engage in delayed onset eating.

Delayed Onset Eating

While we don’t do prolonged fasts, we do practice delayed eating. We generally finish eating about 8:00 pm and don’t eat again until at least 12:00 PM the following day. That gives us a 16-hour fast period every day. Eating this way should produce better insulin sensitivity and more ketones.

I’m never really hungry until about 12:00 PM so I’ve experienced no problems with this practice. At 12:00, I’ll have a couple of eggs, bacon or a sausage, some greens, green tea, MCT oil, and a scoop of collagen, and I’m good until about 4:00 PM. At 4:00, I’ll have a sardine salad, EVVO, greens, almonds, more green tea, some avocado, and maybe some blueberries. Then at 7:00, I’ll have whatever Barb is cooking up for dinner.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Going forward, we’re concerned with 4 things:

1. Maintaining our waist measurements
2. Increasing muscle mass
3. Optimizing body fat percentage
4. Continuing to produce ketones

In order to accomplish these goals, we’ll stay on a keto diet. We don’t eat a lot of refined carbs, potatoes, or rice so that won’t be difficult. Some keto experts state that when individuals who have been on a keto diet become fat adapted they can up their carb intake.

I don’t anticipate doing that at the moment.

In order to gain muscle mass, I probably will up my protein intake to 0.8 grams per pound of lean muscle mass. That means I’ll consume about 104 grams of protein a day.

I may also slightly increase my fat intake. But I have to be careful here because I still have a bit more body fat to lose.

Barbara is completely ecstatic with the diet. She’s just about hit her target weight and has boundless energy. Keep going, girl. 61 is the new 41. She may up her protein a little, but for now, she is happy where she is.

Do You Strength Train And Walk?

While the keto diet is a healthy diet, it’s not everything you needfor a long, healthy life. Strong muscles and moving often are also important.

If you already strength train, keep getting stronger. If you don’t but want to, here is the easy method Barbara and I use.

And keep walking. It may be one of the best exercises you can do.

That’s it! Oh, wait, no, it’s not. Remember, we have over 50 delicious low-carb recipes for you to check out. See them on our home page.

If you’re someone who needs more keto info, see the ketogains.com Reddit FAQ page here. Also, check out Mark Sisson’s new book, The Keto Reset Diet. It containsa wealth of information on the keto diet.

Okay, that’s definitely it for this post. We love to hear your comments. Have a blessed week!

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 5: Important Tweaks We Made For Keto Success appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

This is part 3 of our series Our Keto Journey. In our last post, Barbara highlighted how a ketogenic diet helped her shed fat and is helping her guard against Alzheimer’s Disease. However, as I mentioned in this post here, not everyone goes keto for the same reasons. Remember, a keto diet is high in healthy fat, moderate in protein, and very low in carbs (<30 net grams /day).

In my case, I wasn’t overweight, but I did have a metabolically dangerous visceral fat issue that required I go keto. Also, since the keto diet has potent anti-inflammatory effects, I wanted to see if it was possible for the diet to get me over the last hurdle of recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Let’s first take a look at my use of a ketogenic diet for my fat problem.

A recent report found that the obesity epidemic in the United States is continuing to grow to unhealthy proportions. This means that tens of millions of Americans will continue to be at a high risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and many types of cancer.

But did you know that there are millions of individuals who don’t look obese, who are technically not overweight, but who are metabolically obese?

Medical researchers label these individuals as normal weight obese (NWO). You may have heard them characterized as having a skinny fat body type.

The problem for NWO individuals is that they are at the same high risk to suffer all the diseases associated with being severely overweight. Now before you think this is some small segment of the U.S. population, some researchers estimate that there may be up to 30 million Americans who fit this profile.

I’ll repeat that for emphasis. Up to 30 million Americans might be NWO.

The hidden danger for NWO individuals, though, is that since they’re normal weight, they don’t realize that they have a serious health problem. In fact, they are harboring a metabolic ticking time bomb waiting to explode into a severe disease at some future date.

As an NWO person, it was imperative that I change my body type. And here’s the good news. You can change your body type and improve health. And it doesn’t matter what age you are.

Read on to see how serious a health threat NWO is and how I defeated it.

What Is Normal Weight Obese (NWO)?

I’ve never been “technically” obese or severely overweight so I was spared the emotional trauma that accompanies this disease. But I did have a very serious problem with excess body fat.

Even though I was normal weight, I had an unhealthy amount of fat on my body compared to lean muscle. Individuals with this body type are termed normal weight obese.

Metabolically, it’s a very dangerous body type. As I mentioned previously, just like those who are severely overweight, we NWOs are at a higher risk for a host of metabolic diseases.

In fact, skinny fat people (the other term for NWO) might be even more unhealthy than overweight persons who have well-distributed weight and good muscle mass.

Do Only The Obese Have To Fear Body Fat?

By outward appearances, I always looked fit and trim. I wore clothes exceedingly well. But what those clothes masked was about 20-25 pounds of fat that resided right around my abdomen. Since that was the only place I was fat, my overall weight was usually normal as calculated by body mass index (BMI).

I also was not particularly lean. I did some weight lifting in my twenties, but at 30 years old I developed CFS. That stopped me from doing any intensive exercise. For the next 28 years, my muscle mass would remain poor in quality and I would even lose some muscle due to normal aging.

That excess fat around my midsection, though, meant that I was a particularly bad type of skinny fat. Now, I know God created me with abs. I believed they were in there somewhere, but for 60 years of my life, I never saw them.

What’s TOFI?

There’s another name that scientists also like to call us. It’s TOFI. That means thin on the outside, fat on the inside.

The problem with excess fat around the abdomen (also called central obesity) is that it’s often indicative of a dangerous type of fat, called visceral fat, deeper inside our bodies. The American Heart Association states that,

Regardless of your height or build, for most adults a waist measurement of greater than 94 cm [37″] for men and 80 cm [31.5] for women is an indicator of the level of internal fat deposits which coat the heart, kidneys, liver, digestive organs and pancreas. This can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

To complicate matters, with my big gut I had skinny legs and a small butt. This is known as an apple shape skinny fat. Sheesh, the name calling just keeps coming for us NWOs.

Research has shown that thin hips and thighs when accompanied with a large belly are predictive of an even greater risk for metabolic disease.

As you can see, we skinny fatties are a metabolic disaster waiting to happen. The scary thing, though, is that we don’t realize it.

In order to improve my body type and become healthier, I went on a low-carb diet. It helped, but it only took me so far. I still carried around too much belly fat. To get where I needed to be, I had to resort to radical means.

How Do You Get To Be Skinny Fat?

There are basically three things that must be present for someone to become skinny fat.

1. A poor diet – This means eating a lot of refined carbs, sugar, fructose, and seed oils (vegetable, corn, soy, etc.). Basically, it means consuming the standard American diet. Over consume that stuff, and you’ll gain weight, guaranteed.
2. A sedentary lifestyle – Leading the life of a couch-potato or a lack of devotion to strength training usually results in lack of lean muscle mass.
3. Genetics – The third factor necessary to be skinny fat seems to be something we have no control over. Recently, researchers have found that there is evidence that this body type is genetically determined.

That doesn’t mean, though, that just because a large part of this body type is genetic controlled, it can’t be changed. It requires hard work, but it can be done. And the rewards are certainly worth it.

I want to be around for my children’s weddings. I want to be there for my future grandchildren. And I want to enjoy my golden years with my wife. Therefore, my skinny fat body had to be transformed.

Before I get into how well the keto diet performed, let me give you some parameters on how doctors determine if an individual is at metabolic risk because of NWO.

How Do You Know If You’re Skinny Fat?

If a person is NWO and they already have symptoms of metabolic syndrome such as insulin resistance, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, or cardiovascular disease, they will use the term metabolically obese normal weight (MONW). An NWO person has an increased risk to become MONW but has yet to manifest overt disease.

However, determining what obesity actually is has been difficult for researchers. Classically, it’s defined as having too much body fat. However, the problem is what exactly is too much fat.

Can Body Mass Index (BMI) Determine Obesity?

In the past, body mass index (BMI) was thought to be a reliable indicator of obesity. It attempts to determine your risk for diseaseaccording to your height and weight. A BMI over 30 would place an individual in an obese category. Twenty-five to 30 would be overweight and 18.5 to 25 would be normal weight. You can calculate your BMI here.

However, there are several shortcomings of a BMI measurement. It ignores:

• Body fat percentage (BF%)
• Lean muscle mass
• Weight distribution.

This means that a person who has a BMI over 30 and is considered obese by BMI could theoretically be very healthy if they possess good lean muscle mass and good weight distribution.

On the contrary, you may have a normal BMI but be at risk for the complications of obesity like us TOFIs.

Body Fat Percentage

Medical researchers now focus on body fat percentage (BF%) as a better indicator of health. BF% is the total mass of fat divided by total body mass times 100. While there is no consensus on exactly what BF% constitutes obesity, researchers have proposed some guidelines.

The American Council on Exercise has suggested these parameters as acceptable BF%:

The Obesity Research Center at St Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons used the following BF% guidelines to establish obesity:

Other studies confirm these findings. This study which analyzed 6171 subjects greater than 20 years of age considered a BF% >23.1 in men and >33.3 in women as being NWO.

Another study of 4,489 subjects aged ?60 years (BMI = 18.5 to 25) labeled men who had >25% BF and women who had >35% BF as being NWO.

From these sources, we can safely say that if you have a normal BMI but your BF% is ?25% or greater, then you are considered NWO and thus at an increased risk for metabolic disease.

What Are the Risks Of NWO?

Several studies with large cohorts of individuals have consistently shown that NWO individuals suffer a greater risk for metabolic disease. See here, here, here.

This study of 6171 subjects found that individuals classified as NWO had a prevalence of metabolic syndrome4 times higher than people with normal BMI and normal BF %.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is characterized by at least 3 of the following conditions: abdominal obesity, hypertension, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels. MetS is also highly associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The study also found that women with a normal BMI but with the highest BF% (>33%) had about an 8 times greater risk of having metabolic syndrome and a 2.2 times higher rate of dying from cardiovascular disease.

If these results make you concerned about the amount of body fat you’re carrying around then that’s a good thing.

How Do You Determine Your Body Fat Percentage?

The easiest way to determine your BF% is to look at some images of people with their BF% indicated. That’s what I do. It’s not the most accurate but it’ll give you an idea where you stand.

You can also use this calculator here. But again accuracy is limited. These calipers will give you a better estimate of your BF%.

If you want to know your exact BF% you’ll have to have it professionally done. Remember you want it <25 if you’re a man and <32 for a woman.

Waist To Hip Ratio (WHR)

Remember, I mentioned before that I had a particularly bad type of NWO. My belly was large and my backside was small. This meant that my waist to hip ratio (WHR) was poor. This ratio is determined by dividing the circumference of your waist by that of your hips (W ÷ H).

Researchers now believe that this ratio gives a better indication of an individual’s risk for metabolic disease.

According to the WHO, a healthy WHR is:
0.9 or less in men
0.85 or less for women

This study done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University used the following guidelines to determine metabolic health risks associated with WHR.

What Are The Risks Associated With A High WHR And Normal BMI?

In 2015, the Mayo Clinic conducted a study on 15,184 adults concerning mortality risks on individuals with high central obesity as measured by WHR. This study was conducted over a 14 year time period. Their findings were astonishing.

A recent study of 42,702 participants also found that “when compared with the normal weight participants without central obesity, only normal weight and obese people with central obesity [measured by WHR ed.] were at increased risk for all-cause mortality.”

Okay, I think I’ve made it pretty clear. If you’re an NWO individual, if you have central obesity, or if you have a high WHR, you’re playing with fire. It’s not something you want to ignore. Your health risks are too high.

At one time my WHR was almost a 1. That meant I was at a high risk for metabolic disease. I had to do something about it.

My Transition To Keto

Here is a progression of my journey to a ketogenic diet.

My highest weight was 193 pounds. At that point, my waist was 40. This caused my WHR to measure at a whopping 1.05. As I said, I was a metabolic ticking time bomb. I hit these numbers shortly after going gluten-free (GF). At that time, manufacturers were just starting to make tasty GF products (bread, pizza, pasta, etc.), and I was devouring them like there was no tomorrow.

On the paleo diet, I ditched all refined grains (except rice), sugar, industrial seed oils, and processed foods. If I had forsaken rice and sweet potatoes, I probably would have lost more weight.

It was the low-carb diet, though, that caused significant amounts of fat to melt away from my abdomen. However, I eventually plateaued, and that’s when I went keto. You’ll notice that my hip measurement increased by 1 inch. After two years of barbell back squats, my legs have gotten tremendously stronger (for me :)) but I guess I just can’t put any fat on my backside.

Also, notice that I didn’t lose strength during my keto period. Initially, I did reduce some weight on bench press and deadlifts, but within a few months, I regained what I lost.

So, as you can see, in order to really get where I had to be I needed to make the leap to keto. I don’t think staying moderately low-carb would have gotten me there.

It was during the paleo phase that most of the energy I lost because of CFS was restored. A big thanks to Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple for introducing me to paleo.  That brings me to how keto could help my CFS.

Can Keto Help With CFS?

I developed CFS in 1986. It came on me literally overnight. Within 24 hours I had lost at least 60% of my energy levels. It took nearly 26 years to get back to 90 percent. The three biggest factors that helped me were daily walking, a reduction in stress, and the paleo diet. From what I’ve read, few people heal 100% from CFS. But I wanted to see if I could get to 100%.

Could the keto diet help get me there? I haven’t seen any studies suggesting it might, but theoretically it’s possible. Here’s why.

CFS Is An Inflammatory Disease

For years doctors told me I had inflammation going on inside my body. Like I didn’t know that. The fatigue, muscle aches, and early arthritic joint changes informed me of that every day. The experts said I must have some virus that we can’t detect. Nonetheless, I was chronically inflamed.

Doctors still don’t know what causes CFS, but a study released last year revealed that CFS is highly associated with an increased expression of inflammatory cytokines within the body. The researchers concluded, “Our findings show clearly that it’s an inflammatory disease.”

Now, in my first post in this series, I illustrated the potent anti-inflammatory nature of the keto diet.Would the keto diet be able to quell the inflammation still going on in my body? After being on the diet for 8 months, I can’t give you an empirical answer. But experientially I can say I’ve felt better than I have in 31 years.

CFS And Dysautonomia

About 90% of CFS sufferers have dysautonomia. I happen to be one of them. Dysautonomia is a dysfunction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. Experts are not sure of the exact cause of the dysautonomia but there are 3 suspected ones. It’s either inherited, a result of some form of neurodegeneration, or it’s a result of an injury.

Now we know that a keto diet can help in conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s where neurodegeneration has taken place. Can the keto diet help me with my dysautonomia? The jury is still out on that but I will keep you informed.

That’s my keto journey. In our next post, I’ll walk you through exactly how we do keto.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a blessed week. Don’t forget to leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

This article originally appeared on glutenfreehomestead.com.

The post Our Keto Journey Part 3: Defeating A Skinny Fat Body And Healing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

In my last post, I examined the efficacy and safety of statins. They’re the cholesterol-lowering drugs that tens of millions of Americans are currently taking.

The genesis of that post was my refusal of statins from my doctor.

After reviewing my lipid panel, my doctor said I needed statins because my cholesterol was high, especially my LDL-C. He believed this increased my risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

He assured me, “Statins will lower my LDL-C and my risk of CVD.”

I subsequently refused his offer and gave him three reasons why.

I told him I believed that statins are often ineffective in lowering CVD risk, they’re dangerous, and I don’t need them.

Further, I explained that basing my CVD risk primarily on LDL-C levels was not in accordance with current scientific research.

Ooooh… I got such a look.

Doctors don’t like being told they’re wrong. Also, look at it this way. If I’m right, then I really am saying that my MD was violating one of his basic bioethical principles: “First Do No Harm.”

My doctor decided not to argue the point with me. That was wise as I was much more informed on statin use than he was.

In this post, I’ll show you why my doctor was wrong to offer me statins. I’ll also present some ways for optimizing your cholesterol levels.

Remember, these drugs are not harmless. They come with the potential for severe adverse reactions.

If you’re on statins or your doctor wants to put you on them, consider this information carefully. Then discuss it with your doctor. It’ll make you a well-informed patient.

Mainstream Medicine’s Criteria For Statin Therapy

Most mainstream physicians evaluate a patient’s need for statin therapy in accordance with the patient’s risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) as indicated by his or her cholesterol numbers.

For example, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) define a high-risk individual as one who has:

1. A history of CVD or a history of diabetes
2. Or an LDL level over 190 mg/dl
3. Or an LDL level of 70 to 189 mg/dL, without clinical CVD or diabetes and an estimated 10-year CVD risk > 7.5% (you can find your 10-year CVD risk according to the ACC here).  

If the nation’s doctors strictly observed these guidelines, then 80% of individuals over 65 years old and 44% of people between the ages of 40 to 64 in the United States would be on statins.

Currently, there are about 46 million people on statins. That number would jump to more than 70 million if the recommendations of the ACC and AHA were followed.

A Closer Look At The ACC/AHA Guidelines

If you look closely at the criteria for statin therapy, you’ll notice that criterion 2 and 3 appear to be primarily based on LDL-C levels.

That means that millions of asymptomatic individuals are considered to be at a high risk for CVD simply because they have an LDL-C level above what the ACC/AHA considers normal.  

Let’s take a look at the practical implications of these guidelines by examining my cholesterol levels.

My Lipid Panel

These are my cholesterol levels:

Total cholesterol (TC): 252 (normal range 0-200)

Triglycerides: 91 (normal range 30-200)

HDL cholesterol: 51 (normal range 40-60)

LDL-C cholesterol: 202 (normal range 0-130)

These results are all in mg/dl units.

As you can see, my TC and LDL are high. Those values were a signal to my doctor that I needed to be on statins.

Even though I have neither diabetes nor CVD, my LDL-C level is over 190 so I’m considered at high-risk for CVD. According to the ACA/AHA that makes me a good candidate for statin therapy.

However, consider this. If I reduce my LDL-C to 189 by natural means (diet), would I still be a candidate for statins? How about if I brought it down to 150?

Estimated 10-year CVD Risk

Even if I were to bring my LDL-C level down to the above numbers, I might still be a candidate for statins. Here’s why.

Since my LDL-C was over 70, my doctor would calculate my 10-year CVD risk. If it was > 7.5%, he would immediately recognize that I fulfilled category 3 of the ACC/AHA guidelines for statins.

By the way, my 10-year risk was over 7.5% even though the only risk factors I had were perhaps my age (60) and a high LDL-C and TC.

However, do you see the major problem with this risk calculation?

Two data points required in the calculation are your TC and LDL-C levels. This means that high TC and LDL-C are already presupposed to be risk factors.

But if they’re not, then the calculation for your 10-year risk determination is worthless.

So, the important question remains: is an LDL-C of greater than 190 mg/dl always an indicator of high risk for CVD?

Does my LDL-C number of 202 make me a good candidate for statin therapy? Yes or no? I say no.

Let’s begin by debunking the “cholesterol-heart disease” myth. One of my high numbers was total cholesterol.

Total Cholesterol Levels Aren’t a Good Indicator Of Heart Disease Risk

For years, we were warned that consuming foods high in cholesterol would eventually give us heart disease. So we refrained from eating foods like eggs and red meat.

However, the “cholesterol-heart disease” theory, perpetrated by the AHA, was debunked years ago.

Today, it’s acknowledged that total cholesterol levels tell us nothing about our overall risk of heart disease risk. That’s why the ACC/AHA no longer use it in their guidelines.

The only caveat here would be if an individual had a condition called familial hypercholesterolemia.

For the general population, though, several important studies have shown no association between heart disease and cholesterol. See here and here.

Watch below as in about one minute Dr. Malcolm Kendrick destroys the cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis.

Low Cholesterol Could Be Unhealthy

Cholesterol is vital to our existence. It’s a necessary component of cell membranes, a precursor for many hormones, necessary for our body’s use of vitamin D, and important in neurologic and digestive functions.

Since we don’t know exactly how much cholesterol is needed for these processes, lowering cholesterol too drastically could cause unintended negative health consequences.

Dr. Diamond in the Expert Review report noted that,

“there is a well-established role of viruses in cancer development, and it is well-known that reduced levels of cholesterol are associated with a greater incidence of viral infection and cancer…”

Remember that statins lower total cholesterol levels. This could be a reason for the increased cancer risk associated with statins.

Taking it a step further, Zoe Harcombe has done an excellent job showing that lower cholesterol levels are in fact associated with a higher mortality rate.

Okay, so it appears that my total cholesterol of 252 is not necessarily a risk factor.

Now let’s take a look at LDL-C.

What Is LDL?

You’ve probably heard LDL-C called the “bad cholesterol”. It’s termed that because at high levels it’s been associated with atherosclerosis and heart disease.

However, LDL-C is not cholesterol at all. It’s a low-density lipoprotein (LDL) that is responsible for carrying lipids, including cholesterol and triglycerides, around your body.

You’ve probably noticed by now I’ve abbreviated LDL as LDL-C.

This is because a standard lipid panel blood test doesn’t directly measure your LDL. Your LDL is calculated by using total cholesterol, HDL, and triglycerides.

Therefore, LDL-C is basically an estimate of your LDL level.

However, many researchers believe this estimated version of LDL is not the best way to assess CVD risk. They suggest a better way of evaluating risk is by considering the number and size of LDL particles.

LDL Particle Number

LDL-C is actually a measurement of the cholesterol mass within LDL-particles. Let me illustrate what this means.

LDL particles traveling in your bloodstream are analogous to cars with passengers traveling down a highway.

Cholesterol and triglycerides (as well as other fats) are passengers on the LDL molecule.

LDL-C is an estimate of the number of cholesterol passengers in the LDL particle.

At one time, researchers thought it was the cholesterol concentration in the LDL particle that was the driver in CVD.

Today, however, researchers believe that it’s the number of cars on the road, not the number of passengers that is the problem.

In other words, it’s the number of LDL particles in the blood that drives CVD not the amount of cholesterol in an individual particle (LDL-P).

Often an abnormally high LDL-C will reflect high LDL-P values. This is probably why a high LDL-C is associated with CVD risk. However, frequently the opposite is true.

Discordance

In many individuals, LDL-C and LDL-P are discordant. That means their LDL-C and LDL-P levels are not in agreement.

In fact, one study showed that 30 – 40% of individuals with low or normal LDL-C may have elevated LDL-P.

That means that even while their LDL-C level indicates a low risk for CVD, their LDL-P value indicates that they actually have a high risk for CVD and of also developing metabolic syndrome.

Now, discordance can also work the other way. If a person has a high LDL-C and a low LDL-P, then that person is at a lower risk for CVD.

Unfortunately, since that person’s doctor is only concerned with LDL-C, the doctor would still want to put their patient on a statin.

An important recent study, which included 68,000 individuals, showed that high LDL levels were not associated with increased death in people over 60. In fact, the study showed that elderly people with high LDL-C live as long or longer than those with low LDL-C.

Therefore, LDL particle size is another factor to consider in CVD risk.

LDL-P Size

LDL particles exist in different sizes. There is a small dense particle and a larger buoyant particle.

Studies have shown that the smaller, denser LDL-P are the ones implicated in CHD. See here, here and here.

Another study showed that small LDL-P appeared to penetrate the coronary artery walls 1.7 times more than large LDL particles.

Research is also finding that small LDL particles are not the sole driver of CVD.

Inflammation Is Another Driver Of CVD

There is good evidence that there’s an inflammatory process behind the development of CVD, and that this inflammation exists prior to the formation of the atherosclerotic plaque.

It seems that LDL particles must be oxidized before they adhere to the coronary arteries. For a good discussion on this, see here.

Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome produce highly inflammatory states within the human body which could be a participating factor in CVD.

So, as we’ve seen, simply looking at LDL in isolation will not give you a good picture of how cholesterol is affecting your body.

If you want a true picture of your CVD risk in terms of LDL, you have to find out what your particle number and size is. These lab tests could be expensive though.

A Better Way to Assess Your Heart Disease Risk In Terms Of Cholesterol

While total cholesterol and LDL-C levels in isolation tell us very little about heart disease risk, there is a better way to predict risk.

The ratio of triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein has been shown to be a good predictor of heart disease. See here and here.

Triglycerides (TG) are a type of fat found in your blood. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) is considered your “good cholesterol”.

This study found that a TG/HDL ratio above 4 is an extremely powerful predictor of developing CVD.

Interestingly the predictive value of TG/HDL ratio was the same for men and women.

What’s The Ideal TG/HDL Ratio?

A TG/HDL ratio below 2.0 is considered ideal. A ratio above 4 is considered too high, and a ratio above 6 is considered extremely high. Note that these values are U.S. measurements. In other parts of the world, a different measuring system is used.

Remember that high TG/HDL numbers are usually found in people with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

My TG was 91 and my HDL was 51. So my TG/HDL ratio is 1.78. According to this indicator, I’m at risk a low for CVD even though my total cholesterol and LDL were elevated.

The Total Cholesterol/HDL Ratio 

Another ratio to determine heart disease risk is the TC/HDL ratio. It’s an older means of assessing risk, but some doctors still use it.

Health.Harvard.edu, relying on the 1948 Framingham Heart Study, states that,

A ratio of 5 signifies average risk for heart disease; 3.4, about half the average risk; and 9.6, about double the average risk. Women tend to have higher HDL levels, so for them, a ratio of 4.4 signifies average risk; 3.3 is about half the average; and 7, about double.

However, the Mayo Clinic suggests that this ratio should be closer to 3.5.

If the Mayo Clinic is correct, then my TC/HDL ratio (4.9) is a little high. This has prompted me to try and raise my HDL (good cholesterol) level.

In order to do this, I’ll try to keep my carb intake below 30 grams/day and add in more intermittent fasting.

How To Optimize Your Triglyceride/HDL Cholesterol Ratio

It’s possible to optimize your TG/HDL without taking statins. I mentioned before that insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome (including obesity) all contribute to lipid and cholesterol abnormalities.

Correcting these risk factors is essential to regaining a good TG/HDL ratio.

The following is the strategy I’m using to optimize my TG/HDL ratio.

1. Lose weight. Even modest weight loss can lower triglyceride levels. I’ve lost about 25 pounds and shed a good deal of excess body fat.
2. Limit intake of sugar and fructose (especially high fructose corn syrup).
3. Avoid a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Mainstream medicine tells us that diets high in fat, especially saturated fats increase the risk of heart disease. This is simply not true. See here and here. See my post on saturated fats here.
4. Follow a low-carbohydrate, healthy-fat diet (LCHF). I’ve been on a very low carbohydrate diet (<50 grams, often <30 grams/day) for about 10 months. Recent studies show that an LCHF diet is beneficial for improving TG/HDL ratios as well as other biomarkers. See here and here. See my post on why LCHF diets work for weight loss.
5. Consuming Omega-3 fatty acids like those found in fish oil. They have long been recognized for their ability to lower triglyceride oil. See here and here. I get my fish oil by eating salmon and sardines at least once a week.
6. Exercise often. See here and here.

That’s a wrap for this week. What’s your take on statins? We’d love to hear from you.

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The post My Cholesterol Level Part 2: Examining My Need For Statins appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.

I’ve now been on a low-carbohydrate healthy-fat (LCHF) diet for about nine months.

Outwardly, the results have been amazing. I’ve lost about 25 pounds (currently 168 lbs.), my BMI is 23.43, and my waistline is down to 35”. Also, my energy levels and weightlifting totals have not suffered.

However, I wanted to know how my LCHF diet was affecting my body on the inside. So I decided to see my M.D. for some baseline blood tests. 

The tests I was most curious about were my cholesterol levels, especially my LDL-C.

Make no mistake about it.  A LCHF diet is a high fat diet. My diet is composed of about 70% fat from healthy sources like extra-virgin olive oil, avocados, pastured butter, organic coconut oil, wild salmon, aged cheese, and grass fed meat.

This type of diet, according to the American Heart Association, could raise my cholesterol levels and put me at a high risk for cardiac disease.

Even though I believe the AHA to be wrong in their assessment of fat, I was still eager to see how a LCHF diet affected my cholesterol.

My Doctor Reviews My Cholesterol Numbers

As my M.D. reviewed my numbers, I noticed his eyebrows starting to rise slightly. This was followed by a very concerned sounding, “Your cholesterol numbers are a little high.”

Before he could give me my numbers, I responded, “Is my LDL high?” He nodded.

Prior to my test, I had a feeling some of my lipid levels might be high. Often when individuals go on a LCHF diet total cholesterol and LDL can become elevated.

These are my numbers in MG/Dl units:

Total cholesterol (TC): 252 (normal range 0-200)

Triglycerides: 91 (normal range 30-200)

HDL cholesterol: 51 (normal range 40-60)

LDL cholesterol: 202 (normal range 0-130)

As you can see, my TC and LDL levels are high.

My doctor proceeded to preach a sermon on the dangers of high cholesterol. His main point was that high cholesterol can cause heart disease.

I knew what the climax of the sermon would be so before he could mention the”S” word, I stopped him right in his tracks.

I Reject Statin Therapy

“Don’t even say the word statin.” That was my response to my M.D.’s sermon of gloom and doom.

He immediately looked stunned. I’m probably one of the few patients who has ever rejected his advice to take statins.

He quickly recovered his composure and summoned one last warning, “But you’re at risk for heart disease.”

Slowly I explained to him that I don’t need statins because current research shows that when my LDL and TC numbers are considered in context with my other lipid levels (which are good), I’m not at a high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Obviously, he realized he was dealing with an informed patient so he didn’t pursue the issue. He simply said, “Let’s review the matter in three months.”

In my next post, I’ll explain why my cholesterol numbers don’t indicate I’m at risk for CVD.

Today, though, I’d like to explore why my doctor was so quick to suggest I go on statins. 

Why Do Doctors Rush To Prescribe Statins?

Here’s the thing. Whenever mainstream medical doctors see high cholesterol levels and an LDL level over 190, their first reaction is to suggest that their patients take a statin drug. Statins lower cholesterol by blocking the enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol.

This practice appears to be motivated by recommendations from the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA).

These recommendations have resulted in millions of Americans taking statins and perhaps millions taking them needlessly.

We’ve Become A Statin Nation

As of 2012, 28 percent of Americans over the age of 40 are taking a statin drug. According to the 2010 census, there are about 163.5 million people over the age of 44.

That would mean that there are at least 45.6 million people taking statins.

While that number seems outrageously high, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2015 stated that even more Americans should be on cholesterol-lowering drugs.

They believe that 44 percent of people ages 40 to 64 along with 80 percent of those 65 and older should be on statins. Did you get that? Eighty percent of everyone over 65 should be on a statin!

That’s a staggering number. To say that we’re becoming a statin nation isn’t an understatement. We are a statin nation.

The CDC’s reason for the widespread use of statins is that they believe a huge percentage of the American population is at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), including the possibility of a heart attack.

Are the CDC, the ACC, and the AHA, however, correct in their assessment of this risk?

How Does Mainstream Medicine Determine Who Needs Statins?

The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association suggest that individuals be treated with statins if they are at a high risk for CVD.

They define high risk people as those who:

1. Have a history of CVD, or a history of diabetes,
2. Or an LDL level over 190 mg/dl
3. Or an LDL level of 70 to 189 mg/dL, without clinical CVD or diabetes and an estimated 10-year CVD risk of 7.5% (you can find your 10-year CVD risk according to the ACC here).  

It appears that these guidelines are what prompted the CDC to recommend that over 60% of all Americans over 45 be placed on statin therapy.

Before I explore whether the above guidelines are indeed indicative of a higher risk of CVD I think it’s vital to first consider the efficacy and safety of statin use.

It doesn’t matter what the guidelines are if the cure creates more harm than good.

Are Statins Really Effective And Safe?

Statins have often been called a miracle drug. This is because it’s claimed that they lower an individual’s risk of a first-time heart attack and reduce that person’s chance of developing CVD, while at the same time possessing no significant adverse side effects.

But Are those claims true?

Not according to a 2015 report in the journal of Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology authored by David M. Diamond and Uffe Ravnskov. Diamond and Ravnskov examined several clinical trials that reportedly confirmed the effectiveness and safety of statins.

After an in-depth review of the literature, they found that while,

…statins are effective at reducing cholesterol levels, they have failed to substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes.

In other words, the health claims that drug companies make about statins are false.

How Drug Companies Manipulate Statistics

Diamond and Ravnskov show that statin advocates often use a statistical sleight of hand in order to make statins appear to be successful in reducing heart disease.

This is done by reporting the relative risk reduction (RRR) of a particular statin, rather than its absolute risk reduction (ARR) .

Let me illustrate the difference.  Suppose we want to do a 5-year trial to see if a statin can prevent heart disease. In this trial, we include 2,000 healthy, middle-aged men. We then administer a statin to half the participants and to the other half we give them a placebo.

At the end of our hypothetical trial, we find that 2% of the placebo-treated men (a normal occurrence in most trials) and 1% of the statin-treated men suffered a heart attack. We can thus conclude that statin treatment has benefitted 1% of the treated participants. This is the ARR.

So we could construct a headline that reads,

“News Alert: New Miracle Drug Reduces The Risk Of CVD By 1% In At Risk Individuals!”

Now, that’s not a very impressive headline. Would it convince you to take a statin drug?

Let’s, however take a look at relative risk reduction. RRR is determined by dividing the ARR by the control event rate (the placebo group).

For example, the ARR is 1 and the control group contains 2 people who suffered a heart attack. To find the RRR we divide 1 by two and come up with 50%.

We can now write a new headline that says,

“New Flash: New Miracle Drug Cuts CVD Risk By 50%!”

Now that’s a lot more impressive sounding, isn’t it? That kind of headline could generate a lot of sales for statin drug manufacturers.

Interpreting Statin Research Correctly

The Expert Review report analyzed 3 major statin drug trials. These trials included over 48,000 participants.

The results of the trials led researchers to ecstatically declare that statins can significantly reduce the chance of a heart attack and CVD.

The makers of the popular statin Lipitor even advertised that it could lower the risk of heart attack in at-risk populations by 36 percent.

However, Diamond and Ravnskov discovered that when ARR data was used instead of RRR data, the risk of a heart attack was reduced by only 1.1 percent.

Notice the caveat at the bottom of the Lipitor advertisement.

In the trial concerning the statin Crestor, “public and healthcare workers were informed of a 54 percent reduction in heart attacks, when the actual effect in reduction of coronary events was less than 1 percentage point…”

Overall, Diamond and Ravnskov found that when the three major statin trials were analyzed from the perspective of ARR, only a 1-2 percent reduction of heart attack or CVD risk was achieved.

So when your doctor suggests you take statins because your cholesterol is a little high, he should remind you that your chance to avoid a nonfatal heart attack during the next 2 years is about 97 percent without treatment, but you can increase it to about 98 percent by taking a statin every day.

Not very impressive, is it?

Oh, and he should also remind you that with that 1 percent benefit, you might suffer some severe adverse reactions.

If you want to see Dr. Diamond explain his findings on statins, click here.

Adverse Reactions From Statins

While many doctors downplay the adverse reactions of statins, this 2008 review in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs analyzed almost 900 studies and found that adverse effects from statin drugs are “neither vanishingly rare nor of trivial impact.”

Statin therapy has been associated with increased rates of the following disorders:

• Musculoskeletal Disorders
• Cancer
• Cognitive Impairment
• Type 2 Diabetes
• Liver Enzyme Abnormalities

The American College of Cardiology in a 2016 report does admit that there are adverse effects associated with statin therapy. However, they say the occurrences are rare.

Yet, in the above-mentioned Expert Review report, the authors show that the way statin researchers measure the risk of adverse effects is also flawed.

Diamond and Ravnskov argue that when it comes to assessing the adverse effects of statins, researchers should focus on relative risk instead of absolute risk. The major statin trials primarily assessed absolute risk.

The two authors found that ignoring the relative risk of adverse effects, “minimizes the appearance of their magnitudes”, and adverse effects are “either ignored or explained away as chance occurrences.”

Diamond and Ravnskov ultimately conclude,

The reality, however, is that statins actually produce only small beneficial effects on CVD outcomes, and their adverse effects are far more substantial than is generally known.

Statins Might Also Cause Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is the formation of plaques within the coronary arteries. These plaques can break off, block the artery, and cause a heart attack.

A recent report in the journal Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology has suggested that statin use might actually cause atherosclerosis.

The authors suggest that statins may cause coronary calcification by:

• Damaging heart muscle mitochondria
• Depleting coenzyme Q10
• Inhibiting the synthesis of vitamin K2
• Inhibiting the biosynthesis of selenium containing proteins

As we have seen, statins may not be the wonder drugs they’re reported to be. While they do reduce cholesterol they don’t seem to significantly improve an individuals risk of CVD and are often accompanied by some serious adverse side effects.

So, with my total cholesterol and LDL being high, should I have assented to my doctors advice and accepted a prescription for a statin?

That decision ultimately depends on whether my cholesterol numbers actually put me at risk for heart disease.

Next week, I’ll take a look at that risk. I think you’ll see that my initial reaction to statins was the right one.

That’s it for this week. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

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The post My Cholesterol Levels Part 1: Why I Rejected Statins appeared first on The Progressing Pilgrim.