A Quick, Healthy Side Dish!
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Building a Better Workout: Muscle Confusion 101
Whether you train seriously or have a more casual interest in personal fitness, you’ve probably heard the term “muscle confusion” at some point. Muscle confusion has been strongly associated with several at-home workout programs over the past few years (P90X is probably the best known), but the underlying training principle is much more than just marketing. In fact, it’s been producing results in one form or the other since it was introduced in the 1970s.
While there’s been a lot of debate—and, yes, confusion—in the fitness world about the general concept, much of it has to do with exactly how the term is defined and the best techniques for actually applying the idea. There’s very little meaningful disagreement about why muscles need to be challenged in different ways in order for them to continue to develop.
Over time, muscles stop responding to the same workouts with the same improvements. This is because muscles naturally adapt if they perform the same types of exercises, with the same amount of resistance, for the same number of repetitions, on the same days, week after week. At some point, they simply no longer have to grow in size or strength to accomplish what’s expected of them. This is known as a workout plateau.
The goal of muscle confusion is to take the “routine” out of a workout routine by challenging the muscles in a variety of ways that encourage them to continue adapting. This is one way to avoid or minimize plateaus. Muscle confusion falls into a category of workout techniques known as periodization and more specifically, non-linear periodization. This technique changes each week’s workout sessions to focus on different muscle properties in order to achieve specific gains in size, power and stamina. These changes also tend to burn more calories, which aids in weight loss and weight management.
Muscle confusion workouts typically use traditional strength-training exercises such as the bench press, lat pull-down, biceps curl, triceps extension, leg press, leg curl and leg extension. However, these workouts “mix them up” in at least three important ways:
- Varying the amount of resistance from heavy to light
- Changing the number of repetitions in each set
- Altering the speed or pace at which the exercises are performed
A simplified example of a muscle confusion workout program might include one day a week of heavy lifting with one to four repetitions per set. The next workout day, a medium resistance might be lifted at a faster speed with one to four repetitions. The third workout day of the week, a lighter resistance might be lifted between six and 10 times starting out at a faster pace and slowing as muscle fatigue sets in.
In addition to changing the amount of weight, number of repetitions and speed involved in performing individual exercises, some experienced trainers increase the amount of muscle confusion even further by changing the order of the exercises themselves and varying the amount of time between sets. The change in exercise sequence can be used to pre-fatigue certain muscles (for instance, by performing the triceps extension before the larger-muscle-group bench press), while a reduction in time between sets (perhaps from two minutes to 30 seconds) can be used to accelerate the break-down in muscle tissue that stimulates repair and growth. Of course, no matter which muscle confusion variations are used, the usual precautions about warming up, exercising through a full range of motion and cooling down properly all still apply. And it’s always important to allow enough time between workouts for muscles to recover.
Beyond athletic performance and looking better in a swimsuit, there are lots of good reasons to consider a weight training program. Strong, healthy muscles help to support your frame, reduce wear-and-tear on your joints and keep the body in proper alignment. Plus, researchers have discovered that building lean muscle mass can increase metabolism, which helps with weight loss and weight maintenance since muscles use more calories to sustain themselves. They’ve also found that building more muscle mass (and bone mass) throughout your early adulthood and middle-age years may translate into a lower risk of disability and a healthier, more active lifestyle in your 60s and beyond.
A well-designed weight training program—perhaps built with ideas like muscle confusion in mind—can have many benefits that last a lifetime. But remember to talk with your chiropractic physician or other healthcare provider before you begin any new fitness program, especially if you haven’t been active in a while, are recovering from an injury or illness or suspect you may have health problems. As experts in helping patients recover, maintain and improve their musculoskeletal health, we can work with you to develop a well-rounded program that achieves your goals while reducing the risk of injury. Just call or visit the office today to learn more!
Taking Responsibility for Your Health
We had to share a great blog post today from elsewhere on the web! We hope you will read and enjoy!
No one else is responsible for your health and your body, except for you. No-one knows your body like you do.
You simply cannot delegate your health to anyone else and still expect to stay vibrantly well and healthy.
If you don’t take personal responsibility for creating your health, here is a very frightening, but real possibility… the results you get in your health are going to make someone else happy, but not you!
Food companies want you to become addicted to their highly refined, highly processed fake foods. Diet companies want you to eat their diet foods. Big pharma wants you to be on prescription drugs.
These profit-driven companies are very happy to take your money but they will not take responsibility for the quality of health that you experience. If you hand over your health to them, in the hope that their illusory advertising promises are real, you may be faced with the possibility of living out a life filled with disease, food addiction, frustration, stress, anxiety, and unhappiness…
Taking responsibility for your health gives you food freedom.
You can create an incredible sense of ‘freedom around your food’, when you begin to look at your diet and your health. When I awoke to the concept of taking responsibility for the food I ate and the thoughts I had, I started making vastly different choices for myself. I started reading food labels and studying them. I started getting proactive; asking different questions, shopping differently and eating differently.
Here are three things you can do today to begin taking responsibility for your creating your health.
1. Create an enjoyable and sustainable relationship with food.
When I began to heal my body, I knew I was going to make some changes to the way I ate, along with the way that I treated myself. I spent time dedicated to finding a way of eating that would be sustainable for me, based on my goals, food preferences, and lifestyle.
I asked myself the question, “Can I see myself eating like this tomorrow, next week and even next year?” When I found a style of eating that worked for me, I kept it and continued to refine it as my health journey progressed. With a few minor adjustments along the way, it is still the way I eat today – almost 12 years later!
Take care to eat foods that are as close to their natural state as you can, (with minimum intervention by man or machines and no ikky added chemicals). Primarily I ate a plant-based diet, high in whole grains, vegetables and fruits diet that were local, seasonal and organic where possible.
Along with eating sustainably, another thing that worked for me was moving away from the idea of deprivation. Since I loved food, I knew that I needed to change my focus from the rhetoric of dieting dogma and the idea of total elimination to something far bigger and more exciting.
2. Integrate my little-known but powerful ’80-20 Rule’.
While I was searching for a way to eat that allowed me to enjoy my food and still be healthy I stumbled upon the concept of ‘the 80:20 Rule’ and I decided to apply it to what I was learning about food.
Simply put, I began to eat about 80% real, natural foods and 20% lightly processed foods. This allowed me the flexibility to enjoy healthier versions of all of my favorite foods. I loved eating nutritious food that was good for me, tasted delicious and fulfilled and satiated me.
Today I wouldn’t want to eat or live any other way!
3. Take responsibility for detoxifying your body gently.
Another key distinction was that I started paying attention to the quality of food. I started to notice that some food was more processed and higher in toxicity than others. I began to favor food that was less processed and therefore had fewer toxins in it. As I reduced the toxic load I was ingesting, it allowed my body to begin its’ own natural process of detoxification and self-healing. As I began the process of gentle detoxification, my energy levels surged and to my delight, my waistline began to reduce…
Over time, I stopped eating all fake foods. This included processed and manufactured foods such as fast-foods, artificial flavorings, colorings, preservatives, additives, processed and refined white flour, white sugar, high corn fructose syrup (HFCS) or glucose-fructose syrup and all dangerous trans-fats.
You don’t have to make radical changes overnight (in fact I recommend that you don’t!). Instead, take your time to explore and find healthier substitutes for your favorite “fake foods.” Make your changes slowly but surely. Take baby steps to begin cleaning up your diet.
How to get started.
You do not have to be a medical doctor or a dietician to know how to get healthy or to take positive steps in the direction of taking responsibility for your wellbeing.
There are so many easy things, that anyone can do, that can radically transform your life, just like it did mine. Remember that claiming back your health is journey. Just take one more step, and then another. Make the choice to take responsibility to find what foods work for your body and enjoy the process of carving out your personal path to vibrant health and wellbeing.
I did it, and I know that you can too.
Today’s post was written by Katrina Love Senn and has been shared from the following website: http://www.katrinalovesenn.com/index.php/articles/natural-health/82-who-is-responsible-for-your-health
A Healthy Summer Salad!
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Migraines and Magnesium
A recent study from Iranian researchers found that there might be a link between blood levels of magnesium and migraine headaches.1
Researchers looked at 50 migraine patients and 50 healthy subjects with no history of migraine. The migraine patients had average magnesium levels of 1.86 mg/dl, while the healthy subjects had magnesium levels of 2.10 mg/dl.
The researchers didn’t find any variation in magnesium levels in patients during or between headache attacks.
Other research has confirmed a relationship between magnesium serum levels and migraine, and some headache experts recommend magnesium supplementation for migraine sufferers.2
Chiropractic has been shown to be an effective treatment for migraines, and your chiropractor can help you choose nutritional supplements and dietary changes that might be beneficial in reducing or eliminating migraines.
- Samaie A, Asghari N, Ghorbani R, Arda J. Blood Magnesium levels in migraineurs within and between the headache attacks: a case-control study. Pan African Medical Journal 2012. 11:46.
- Mauskop A, Varughese J. Why all migraine patients should be treated with magnesium. Journal of Neural Transmission 2012;119(5):575-579.
Desserts Can Be “Berry” Healthy!
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Menu Monday!
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4 Best Exercises for Improved Posture
Let’s face it. Good posture isn’t exactly a high priority for many Americans. Like most things related to our health and wellness, we don’t notice it until it’s gone.
Most of us live in a sitting culture—we sit at work, we sit at school, and we sit at home. The hard truth is that most of us sit too much and sit incorrectly. Beyond this, our love affair with mobile devices is amplifying the post problem by encouraging us to bend over, hunch our shoulders and crane our necks to look at small screens. Given our lifestyle choices, poor posture may seem almost inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For anyone with a bit of mobility, motivation and time, there are exercises you can do to improve poor posture. Here are four of the best types of exercises to help you improve your posture.
Exercises to Strengthen Your Core
A strong core is essential for good posture. Your core includes your abdominals, lower back, obliques, and hips. Strong core muscles don’t just give you an attractive “six-pack” to show off at the beach. In fact, they help hold your body up straight, improve your balance, and provide you with greater muscle control and efficiency. They’re also critical to maintaining back health and provide some measure of protection against injury. When your core muscles aren’t strong, other muscles have to compensate, which results in reduced mobility as well as weakness and even pain. So, to help avoid or reduce low back pain, try regular core training. Some core training exercises include basic crunches (but not full sit-ups), side planks, crunches with a twist, standing side bends, and plank holds. Doing Pilates is another great way to work out your core muscles, as are back extensions and slow swimming.
Exercises to Correct Your Rounded Shoulders
Because so many people spend their day hunched over while driving, sitting at a desk while working, using a laptop, or even watching television, rounded shoulders are extremely common—but they are in fact a postural abnormality. When you spend a lot of time in these forward-reaching positions, the muscles in your chest, shoulders, and hips become shortened and tight, and at the same time, your upper and middle back muscles lose strength. In order to help avoid and ease rounded shoulders, you can do exercises that strengthen the weak upper back muscles and stretch the tight muscles in the chest, shoulders, lats, and hips. As the upper back becomes stronger and the chest becomes more flexible, the shoulders naturally pull back, which improves your posture significantly. You can strengthen the upper back with exercises such as reverse dumbbell flys as well as rows with a resistance band, while you can stretch your tight muscles by doing standing chest stretches, torso stretches, and standing quad stretches.
Exercises to Neutralize Your Tilted Hips
Hips should be neutral and level when viewed from the side—however, some people have postural abnormalities stemming from their hips’ tendency to slant forward. This is called the anterior pelvic tilt, and it negatively affects posture. Lordosis (also known as “swayback”) is a common indication of this tilt. Seen very often in people who sit for hours every day with their legs bent, this abnormality is caused by weakness in the hamstrings, glutes, and abs as well as tightness in the hip flexors and thighs. Exercises to correct this tilt include the core exercises mentioned above as well as bridges, leg curls with a ball, and single leg hamstring flexions with a ball. Exercises that stretch tight hip and quad muscles include standing quad stretches and kneeling quad and hip stretches.
Exercises to Retract a Forward Head
Unfortunately, you can easily develop poor posture by tilting your head forward for hours every day. This happens when you drive, when you use a laptop or tablet, or when you watch television. When you fail to retract your head while performing everyday tasks, this tightens the front and side neck muscles and weakens the deep and rear muscles of the neck. The muscles at the front of your neck have to be strong enough to hold your head directly above—not forward of—the shoulders. Not only does this abnormality contribute to poor posture, but it also causes chronic neck pain. In order to retract a forward head, elongate the back of your neck by gently pulling your chin straight in. The highest point of your body should be the top back of your head. This works against the penchant to slip into a forward head posture. You can also work on this issue while driving: practice pulling your chin in and pushing your head into the headrest behind you for a few seconds at a time, then releasing. If you have a high-backed chair that you sit in at work, you can do this at your desk as well.
Fear of Movement After Car Crash Hinders Recovery
Your muscles contract, there’s a burst of pain, and a soreness that makes you want to avoid moving your neck too much or turning too far. You may worry about re-injuring yourself or you may think, “I could do more harm than good by moving my neck.” Unfortunately, not moving your neck after an auto injury can actually be worse for your recovery, especially for people after a car accident.
While the patients’ injuries ranged in severity, all of the patients had pain for under a month and all were injured in an auto collision. Researchers measured patients’ levels of fear using two different scales. They also examined neck range of motion and degree of neck disability. Patients were evaluated after one, three, and six months after the injury.
Patients who were more afraid to move their neck had more severe neck disability and reduced range of motion. Increased fear also prolonged the symptoms. In contrast, patients with lower levels of fear were more likely recover before the six month follow up.
Maintaining movement after an injury does more than just reduce anxiety. It also ensures that tissues don’t become more tense, restricted or damaged. Chiropractic can help you with recovery, because chiropractic works by restoring the normal movement and function of your neck and back.
Conclusion
If you’ve been in a car crash, don’t wait to get treatment. It’s important to get your spine moving again as soon as possible! Chiropractic can help you on the path to recovery!
References
Vangronsveld KLH, et al. The influence of fear of movement and pain catastrophizing on daily pain and disability individuals with acute whiplash injury: a daily diary study. Pain 2008; 139.2: 449-57.
Chiropractic Care and Your Sympathetic Nervous System
While chiropractic physicians are generally thought of as experts in diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal problems (particularly those related to back and neck pain), chiropractic treatments can also help the body’s nervous system function more effectively. From freeing pinched nerves and relieving generalized pain to regulating the immune system and stimulating healing, chiropractic care can achieve a wide range of long-lasting health benefits.
To understand how chiropractic care can have these broader benefits, it’s useful to know a little bit about how your nervous system works. Doctors use a few different frameworks for describing the structure and function of the nervous system. One of the most basic frameworks distinguishes between your autonomic nervous system (ANS) or “involuntary” nervous system and your somatic nervous system (SoNS) or “voluntary” nervous system. The remainder of this article is about the two main branches of the ANS, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
The body’s autonomic nervous system is actually made up of three parts—the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. All of these parts work together to act as a control system that regulates the functions of the internal organs, such as the heart, stomach and intestines. From a structural point of view, the ANS operates as a complex network of neurons that originates inside the spinal cord and extends throughout the body via a series of interconnected hubs (called “ganglia” or “trunks”).
The ANS is active at all times and is responsible for unconscious regulation of our glands and organs. In very general terms, the sympathetic nervous system regulates the “fight or flight” responses during times of stress or anxiety, including increased awareness, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and sweating. In contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system coordinates processes associated with the “rest and recover” or “rest and digest” responses, such as salivation, tears, sexual arousal and digestion.
The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems have a complementary, push-pull relationship that allows the body to respond very swiftly when necessary (through the sympathetic nervous system’s quick mobilization) and to slow down to perform other, less urgent activities in the background when appropriate (through the parasympathetic nervous system’s more gradual dampening). Together, these systems act a bit like an accelerator and a brake for our bodies and also help to maintain balance, or “homeostasis.”
During the fight or flight response, your body slows or shuts down many of the rest and repair processes so that more energy is available for the processes necessary for near-term survival. In nonemergency situations, the parasympathetic nervous system is supposed to go to work, conserving energy and directing it to rest and repair responses, including healing. This is where chiropractic care can be very helpful.
While stress hormones and the physiological changes they trigger can be helpful (maybe even life-saving) when we’re facing real physical threats, they can do significant damage to our health over the long term if they’re switched on all the time. Certain types of chiropractic adjustments have been shown to affect the autonomic nervous system by helping to down-regulate the sympathetic nervous system and stimulate parasympathetic activity. Quieting the fight or flight responses in turn promotes healing, bolsters the immune system and helps relieve the immediate sensation of pain.
There’s no doubt that chiropractors can help patients find relief from acute injuries and chronic musculoskeletal conditions. But we may also be able to help you address neurological problems. If you’re interested in learning more, we encourage you to call or visit the office today!
Additional Resources
Sympathetic and parasympathetic responses to specific diversified adjustments to chiropractic vertebral subluxations of the cervical and thoracic spine. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2686395/
Short-term effects of cervical manipulation on edge light pupil cycle time: A pilot study. http://www.jmptonline.org/article/S0161-4754%2800%2981597-3/abstract
Hormones: Chemical Messengers and the Chiropractic Link. http://www.theamericanchiropractor.com/articles-integrative-healthcare/4895-hormones-chemical-messengers-and-the-chiropractic-link.html