Cholesterol is a household word regarding health these days, even though its cause/effect relationship on health (espectially cardiovascular disease) is still up in the air. As is the meaning of "high" cholesterol.
Yet despite the ubiquity of cholesterol warnings, there's still a lot of misinformation and no-information. Therefore, we're proud to bring you ... three things you probably don't know about cholesterol.
A 1999 Mayo Clinic study carefully assessed the number of calories a group of 16 subjects needed to maintain their weight (also known as their Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR). Then they were each given an extra 1000 calories per day for 8 weeks and not allowed to do any extra exercise. While fat gain occurred, it varied widely, from less than a pound to more than 9 pounds. What was the secret that allowed some of the subjects to gain almost no weight while others gained more than a pound a week?
Quick: what did you have to eat last week Thursday? And I mean everything. Every drink, snack, meal, and mouthful throughout the entire day. Chances are, you can't recall, and that's fine...unless you're trying to analyze problems with your current dietary habits and improve upon them.
Tracking everything you eat is the only reliable way to detect unhealthy patterns and measure your progress in correcting them. (The same is true for fitness, but that's another story.)
But there's more to it than that.
A high-ranking op-ed in today's NY Times (based on most-viewed and most-emailed) is titled "The Myth of High-Protein Diets" and was written by Dean Ornish, an outspoken proponent of a low-fat diet and critic of high-protein, low-carb diets like Atkins.
Headlines are usually written by editors, and this one was clearly written to be provocative. But the antenna-raiser on this one is that Ornish has an agenda, which makes me skeptical that the op-ed will be objective. To be fair, op-eds typically aren't objective, but when it's allegedly dispelling a "myth," it really shouldn't be filled with misinformation. And yet...
A recent article in the NY Times technology section had the author "seeing what provided a better workout: a real personal trainer or a personal training app." Obviously I'm biased. As a tech guy, I was rooting for the app! (Weren't expecting that, were you?) And her conclusion in this single-sample unscientific study was indeed that the app was better for her. (Although it didn't match her original thesis: the trainer actually provided the better workout.)
The venerable pushup has long been a staple of exercise routines and for good reason. It's easy to do most anywhere (do not try them in pools of molten lava) and provides a good workout to the triceps, shoulders, chest, and core stabilization muscles. There are also hundreds of variations of the pushup, most to make it harder or work some part of the body more intensely, and some to make the movement easier for those not quite ready to do the real thing.
A woman in a gym, apparently having just completed a workout, says, "Fast: that's just the kind of relief my muscles need." Or something like that. It was the beginning of a commercial, and don't ask me for what (other than some pain relief drug, obviously) since it was switched off after that line. Perhaps it was a good commercial, though, since it did get me thinking.
First of all, why is she sore immediately after working out? Sounds like she needs a new workout. (Or a good trainer!) Immediately after a hard workout, muscles experience fatigue, often in the extreme. As in "I can't get up" extreme. But that's different from pain, and no pain-relief product will put a stop to that. The muscular pain associated with a hard workout typically shows up 24-48 hours afterwards and is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS.
