There’s something you might not know about type 2 diabetes: anyone can get it. The onset of this form of the disease need not be related to heredity, although instances in your family may raise your risk for developing diabetes. However, you should also know that the condition is not unavoidable, even if you do have a family medical history to contend with.
What is Diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes develops when there is too much sugar in your blood, a condition known as hyperglycemia. Normally, your body creates insulin that breaks down sugar so that it can be stored in cells and burned off as energy. But over time, excess fat in the body can reduce levels of insulin being produced and create an insulin resistance in cells.
While the main cause of type 2 diabetes onset is thought to be obesity, the truth is that you can have a slim physique with a high percentage of body fat. The point is that even people who don’t necessarily look like they’ll develop diabetes may be prone to the disorder. And lifting weights can definitely help to lower your risk.
How to Prevent Injuries that Will Derail Your Progress
Adding weight lifting to your workout routine on a weekly basis can offer the average fitness buff a world of benefits.
For one thing, it can make you stronger, as expected, helping you to overcome obstacles in other types of exercise (running faster, throwing farther, jumping higher, etc.). But it can also help you to create the physique you’ve been trying for (whether it’s bulking you crave or simply a frame that features better muscle tone) and even lose weight if that’s what you want (muscle burns more calories than fat). And that’s just the beginning.
Weight lifting, when done improperly, can also result in a slew of injuries, most of which can be easily avoided by warming up and cooling down, building up to greater weights or more reps over time, using proper form, listening to your body, and asking for help from a spotter.
Here are just a few common weight lifting injuries that are best avoided:
Weight lifting is a great way to exercise, build toned muscle, burn calories, and promote overall health–but it can be dangerous as well. Our bodies aren’t used to the stress of heavy lifting, and our backs are particularly vulnerable to strain and injury.
An injured back can keep you out of the gym for weeks, or even months at a time, depending on the severity of the injury and your ability to recover. If you want to stay healthy, strong, and transform your body into a work of art, always remember to protect your back.
Step 1: Warm Up
Never start a workout without warming up first. Your body just isn’t ready for the stress of heavy lifting when you walk through the gym doors. You need to get primed before you start hitting the weights.
A short cardio warm up on the treadmill or elliptical is a great way to warm up your muscles and get the blood moving in your body. It is not necessary to use high intensity during your warm up. This is just a 5 minute effort to get the muscles moving.
Nearly everyone who trains, whether bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman, or just a general fitness routine, has at some point suffered from an injury. And whether it’s a minor sprain or a broken bone it can definitely derail your progress towards your fitness goals, leading to weeks or months of recovery in which all of your hard work slowly slips away via loss of both muscle mass, strength, and conditioning.
My Personal Experience
I mean, I once walked into a Gold’s Gym after taking about a month off from training, with the intention to deadlift. I wasn’t planning to hit a 1rm or a PR that day. It was just simple sets of 5 to get back into the rythym. On the second set, at 50% of my previous 1rm, my back spasmed, I dropped the weight, and I was out of the weight room for another solid month.
Every athlete and weightlifter has some version of this sad story.
As you may or may not know, diabetes is a metabolic disorder by which the body either fails to produce adequate amounts of insulin needed to properly break down glucose in the blood, or cells in the body are simply unable to react properly to the insulin that is created, leading to the same results.
Those who suffer from this disease may have side effects like frequent urination and thirst, but it can also lead to more serious complications like:
Your Lifestyle WILL Affect The Health of Your Eyes
Everyone knows how important it is for all of us to have a healthy vision. It is equally important to identify ways through which we can keep our vision healthy all our life. The eye specialists’ training in most countries is becoming more comprehensive and this particular medical field has experienced major advancements in eye diseases treatments and laser surgeries to correct farsightedness, nearsightedness and astigmatism. However, the underlying problem that initiates or causes the problem is not yet addressed to.
The type of degenerative change that occurs in our eyes in older age is known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It is one of the most prominent reasons vision impairment occurs in aging population, affecting 1 in every 4 people who are 65 or older. Macular degeneration occurs as your retina degenerates as a result of aging, causing you to face visibility problems, especially during night.
Fortunately, today measures can be taken to prevent such changes from taking place. Preventing macular degeneration related with aging is basically a science known as anti-aging. The common knowledge of this science is that we must adopt a healthy lifestyle in order to improve our health condition. But to your amazement, adopting a healthy lifestyle can even have a positive impact on your vision too.
If you drink milk, and you’re not a hard-gainer trying to pack on muscle mass, your milk should be low fat – skim or 1%. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said recently that nearly 73% of kids and teenagers consume milk, which is good, but then only around 20% of them tend to consume the low-fat variety. In fact, about 45% of them choose reduced-fat milk (2 percent), while 32% claim to regularly consume whole-fat milk.
I’ve been complaining about this for years, and I’m glad someone is finally echoing my sentiments. For babies and toddlers I can see using whole or 2% milk, because they need a ton of good nutrition to grow up strong. However, I have always believed that kids in pre-k, k, and elementary school should switch to 1% or skim milk. There really is no need to add extra milk fat into a child’s diet, not when American kids are clearly, on average, the most obese children in the world.
Researchers and experts collectively agree that the low consumption of low-fat milk implies that most kids and teenagers don’t live by the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Academy of Pediatrics, who state that kids ages 2 and older should drink low-fat milk. Recent efforts by both First Lady Michelle Obama, and the Surgeon General promote the consumption of low-fat milk and water over sweetened beverages. Adhering to these suggestions will help you and your child avoid dangerous conditions such as obesity and diabetes.
The prevalence of stroke victims in the US has increased in recent years. A study analyzed the history of over 8 million hospital patients from 1995 to 2008 has identified a 33% increased risk of suffering from a stroke if you are between the ages of 5 and 44.
Strokes Caused by Blood Clots
Contributing factors were found to be diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), blood lipid disorders, tobacco use, and obesity. People with one or more of those factors have a greater chance of developing an ischemic stroke, which is caused by blood clots. High blood pressure was reported in 50% of the stroke victims, and being male and over the age of 35 puts you at an even greater risk than anyone else. Great!
Foods that claim to be gluten-free are not always gluten-free. Many of those foods actually have enough gluten to cause gastrointestinal distress in those who are intolerant to wheat protein, also known as celiac disease. Gluten is actually defined as the protein contained in wheat, barley, rye, and other similar grains.
How can food manufacturers get away with this? It’s actually not entirely their fault, as there has never been an established US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation to define just how much gluten can be in gluten-free foods.
What is the Standard for Gluten-Free?
As of this writing, manufacturers can decide how much gluten they put in their gluten-free foods. However, the FDA is now planning to push through a standard for gluten-free food, that manufacturers will be required to meet before they can put gluten-free labels on their packaging.
The Feds are proposing that gluten-free food – usually wheat products like cookies, cakes, and breads – should contain no more than 20 parts per million of gluten. At those levels lab tests are unable to detect the presence of gluten, thus meeting the label claim of “gluten-free”. (more…)
Eating 5 or more meals a day is great for weight gain, but not so good for weight loss, and is not optimal for good health.
We already know that increased meal frequency does not increase the metabolism or decrease appetite. In fact eating more than 3 meals each day can often lead to increased calorie consumption over time, because people eventually get bored and tend to begin to ignore their meal portions, which results in overeating.
Conversely, we know that fasting tends to decrease your appetite once you get past that first 6 hour fasting window. We also know that intermittent fasting lowers insulin resistance and blood pressure, and promote lightening-fast weight loss. Knowing those facts, here are a couple more great reasons to switch to an Intermittent Fasting lifestyle, for good health and efficient fat loss.
First, The Study Results
To keep you interested, we’ll talk about the research results first, then we’ll look at the studies.
New studies on periodic fasting by the American College of Cardiology have determined:
periodic intermittent fasting seems to reduce the risk of falling victim to type 2 diabetes by 50%
intermittent fasting also decreases your risk of developing heart disease
HDL cholesterol increases during an intermittent fast
triglycerides decrease during an intermittent fast
human growth hormone (HGH) levels increase during a fast, leading to weight loss and muscle gain
HGH increases by a factor of 20 in men and a factor of 13 in women, on average
If you have been told you have high blood pressure, with the top number (systolic) of 140 or above, or the bottom number (diastolic) of 90 or above, you might be worried, and for good reason. High blood pressure means you have a higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
Your doctor may have talked to you about taking medication to bring your numbers down. I’m here to tell you that might not necessarily be the best solution. If your numbers are low enough, you might be able to control your blood pressure by adjusting your lifestyle. If you successfully control your blood pressure with a healthy lifestyle, you may avoid, delay or reduce the need for medication.
That being said, do not stop taking, or make any adjustments to your medication unless you talk to your doctor first. In fact, you should probably talk to your doctor before making drastic changes to your diet.
Here are 10 lifestyle changes you can make to lower your blood pressure and keep it down:
Monitor your blood pressure at home and make regular doctor’s appointments
Get support from family and friends
You are what you eat-or so they say. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables can be particularly important when it comes to controlling your blood pressure. What you choose to eat-and just as importantly, what you choose not to eat-may allow you to keep your blood pressure within safe limits.
Today you will learn about a proven diet for blood pressure control: The DASH diet.
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
From now on I want to take a more proactive approach to answering Your Health Questions by posting them separately in the blog. This way we can be sure that everyone benefits from the Q & A.
Kalee wrote:
I have shin splints right now so I can’t run or bike or anything but lift weights while sitting and do core exercises… unless you can think of anything that I could do for cardio that wouldn’t require me to use my legs. What exercises [should I use] until my shin splints heal? Thanks!
Response:
If you haven’t managed to avoid shin splints, then it is obvious that you haven’t read and understood my article about How to Avoid Shins Splints, but first, if you haven’t already, you should take a couple minutes to understand What Are Shin Splints. Once you’ve become well versed on shin splints, you can now read about how heal or treat shin splints. Let’s get this problem under control so you can get back to training.
Isn’t it obvious that we wouldn’t have to know how to recover from shin splints if we could avoid them in the first place? In order to understand how to avoid shin splints, we must first understand What Are Shin Splints. Then we can better understand how to proactively avoid them. We need to learn more about who gets shin splints, how to properly warm up and stretch the lower leg, and finally we need a method of strengthening those muscles. Assuming we can’t avoid shin splints, we will need to understand How to Treat Shin Splints.
Now, let’s examine the best ways to avoid shin splints by first understanding who is in danger of developing them.
Who Gets Shin Splints?
Athletes, weekend warriors, and even military recruits often experience shin splints, especially at the beginning of the season. Sometimes treatment can be as simple as changing to softer running surface or adding extra arch support to shoes to redistribute the stress. Active rest is often recommended by doctors as a primary treatment. This means that a runner should take up non-impact exercises such as swimming or biking, which gives the injured areas time to heal, but also maintains the cardiovascular benefits of exercise.
It is also believed that people with misalignment often develop problems such as shin splints. Misalignment to the knee, pelvis, ankle, neck, and spine, can result in abnormal posture and abnormal ROM at different joints, which causes excessive wear and tear on bones, joints, and muscles.
“Shin splints” is a term used to describe the pain felt between the knee and the ankle after athletic activity, and are considered a cumulative stress disorder rather than an acute injury. This painful condition occurs when muscles and tendons in the lower legs pull on the tibia bone along the shin.
There are several reasons why athletes develop shin splints, but ultimately we can say they develop when the constant stress placed on the joints, bones, and muscles of the lower leg overwhelms the body’s natural ability to recover from trauma.
The most common cause is inflammation of the periostium, the sheath that surrounds the tibia. Traction forces on the periostium from the muscles of the lower leg cause shin pain and inflammation.
So I read a study in Consumer Reports today about the content of heavy metals in protein drinks. The metals of concern are deadly when humans are exposed to them, even is small concentrations, over many years: arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium.
I wouldn’t exactly call the results of the study tragic, but I definitely think Project Swole readers should be aware and should avoid certain products.
You think you have it bad? Maybe you do, but I’m sure 99.9% of your stories are not as unfortunate as what has happened to an 8 year old girl from Londonderry, NH named Bella Tucker.
Who is Bella Tucker?
Bella is an 8 year old third grader who was a budding gymnastics star, loved to ride her bike and listen to music, liked going to school and hanging out with her friends, and is now going to be confined to a wheelchair without her own arms and legs for the rest of her life.
A cute little girl with long blond hair, Bella attended South School Elementary in Londonderry, New Hampshire and was a talented member of the Phantom Gymnastics team. Maybe she will do those things again one day, but for now she is confined to a hospital bed at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. She and her family need all the help they can get.
Easter Sunday 2010 was going to be a fun-filled day with egg hunts, jelly beans, and Easter dinner with family. As the day progressed Bella began to feel under the weather; she eventually developed a fever and had the chills.
She went to bed early with what appeared to be flu symptoms, but woke up early in the morning with a fever of 103, complaining that her hands and feet were cold. Bella’s step-dad rushed her to the local emergency room, where doctors said she needed to be transferred by helicopter to Boston Children’s Hospital.
No one could have guessed what would happen next; Bella and her family would never be the same.
Surviving Streptococcus Pneumoniae Sepsis
With a temperature that peaked at a whopping 105.8 degrees, doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital initially figured she might have meningitis. They were wrong. Two days later Bella was diagnosed with streptococcus pneumoniae sepsis, a rare form of pneumonia that had stopped the flow of oxygen to her arms and legs.
With a 10% survival rate for streptococcus pneumoniae sepsis, the future did not look good.
Doctors placed Bella into a drug-induced coma, no one could be sure if she would ever regain consciousness. After 5 days she emerged from her coma, but her body had already sustained severe tissue damage.
When you hurt one of your arms, you shouldn’t necessarily stop exercising the healthy arm.
A study at the University of Oklahoma suggests that when you train a single arm (or leg), the muscle nerve fibers in the opposite appendage are stimulated. This means you will still get the benefits of Central Nervous System (CNS) adaptations in an injured limb as long as you train the opposite healthy limb, over a short period of time.
Is there an exercise that you hate? For some people it’s squats, for some it’s deadlifts, and for others it could be something that most of us consider fun, like dips or the ab wheel.
If you any any particular exercise because it is hard, awkward, or uncomfortable, then you have probably found your weak spot.
Depending on the exercise, the main muscle used and/or the ancillary muscles used, are probably weak points for you. There is likely a muscle imbalance, or at least a weak muscle that should be prioritized for a couple months.
The best exercise you can do to bring up your weak point, is the exercise that you hate.
