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Healthy Tip: Ice Cream Alternative

I just found this health related video on YouTube … and thought you might enjoy it!

youtube.com/watch?v=xI_1gcAk0Ik%3Fversion%3D3%26f%3Dvideos%26app%3Dyoutube_gdata

*Re-Upload* Original Upload Date: April 10, 2010 Something New! I love this “recipe” and thought I’d share it with you all! I’ve been eating this since my high school track days ( cue Twilight Zone…) and thought you’d all like it as well! It’s packed with nutrients and it’s a desert that you will NEVER feel guilty about eating..shoot, eat it twice a day if you want! It’s so thick and creamy that you will probably crave it MORE than ice cream! It’s really simple, but sometimes people don’t think of these simple and easy ways to substitute everyday foods with a more healthy, natural alternative! If you like it, let me know and I will share more tips! Nap ps FAGE is a little on the pricey side for yogurt, but for EXCELLENT reason. You definitely get what you pay for, and can feel good about the choices you’ve made. I’ve included two links below, so get your coupon and give it a try! For a cheaper alternative, try Chobani. They do not treat their cows with growth hormones as well, just beware the yogurt will be sour,lol…FAGE is not sour at all! Free Coupons: www.fageusa.com www.facebook.com Visit My Second Channel For More Recipes! : youtube.com Catch Me on Twitter! : twitter.com FTC Disclaimer: I don’t receive free products nor am I paid for making these videos, and I’ve purchased everything featured in this video myself.

Tell us what you think about this video in the comments below, or in the Battling For Health Community Forum!
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Healthy Tip: Turkey Burgers with Spinach and Feta Cheese

I just found this health related video on YouTube … and thought you might enjoy it!

youtube.com/watch?v=tRvWe2XhLGk%3Ff%3Dvideos%26app%3Dyoutube_gdata

*Re-Upload* Original Upload Date: July 01, 2010 Long Overdue, but just in time for the July 4th Holiday! No need to skip the burgers this summer for fear of weight gain, just substitute the red meat for a leaner version, Turkey! Now, I don’t eat meat often, but when I do, I ALWAYS opt for chicken or turkey…in fact, I can’t remember the last time I bought or ate Beef…who needs it!? Go lean, feel great, and be happy! I bet once you try these burgers, you’ll wonder why you ever ate beef in the first place… Turkey Burgers with Spinach and Feta Cheese: 3 lbs. All-Natural Turkey Meat 1tbl. lemon seasoning 1tbl. garlic powder 1/2 tsp. salt 1.2 tbl. pepper 1/2 Frozen Spinach (when defrosted) 3 oz. Feta Cheese Colby Jack Cheese Whole Wheat Burger Buns Makes 12 1/4 lb. Burgers …or if you’re my husband…6 1/2 lb. burgers, lol! ENJOY! Visit My Second Channel For More Recipes!: youtube.com Catch Me on Twitter! : twitter.com FTC Disclaimer: I don’t receive free products nor am I paid for making these videos, and I’ve purchased everything featured in this video myself.

Tell us what you think about this video in the comments below, or in the Battling For Health Community Forum!
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NSD Powerball – How To Start The NSD Powerball Gyroscope With Thumb

I just found this health related video on YouTube … and thought you might enjoy it!

youtube.com/watch?v=znGNmZ8Z92o%3Ff%3Dvideos%26app%3Dyoutube_gdata

Visit www.PowerBallnsd.com For All Powerball Reviews. And For The Best Place To Buy Your NSD Powerball Gyroscopes, Visit www.PowerBallnsd.com ======================================== This video shows you “how to start the NSD Powerball Gyroscope with a thumb” and while I was at it I also tried to break The Powerball World Record…(lol!)…not, just kidding 🙂 I’ve actually been practicing for just a few days, but I really think you should learn how to start the nsd powerball gyroscope with your thumb as soon as possible – after you’ve figured out how to keep it going of course – as it saves you time and it just looks so much better. Enjoy my “NSD Powerball – How To Start The NSD Powerball Gyroscope With Thumb” video…and…try not to laugh 😛 Please also rate my “NSD Powerball – How To Start The NSD Powerball Gyroscope With Thumb” video and feel free to leave a comment or if you’ve purchased your NSD Powerball at The Powerball Shop, please tell us how it went. We’d love to hear from you 🙂 Thanks! Robert The Powerball Shop www.PowerBallnsd.com

Tell us what you think about this video in the comments below, or in the Battling For Health Community Forum!
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Performance-enhancing drugs in sports Part I

What do retired professional athletes and sportspersons do in their “old age”? They take it easy, they enjoy life, they coach, or they write a book and tell all.

This is what Andrei Agassi just did in his autobiography entitled “Open.” I have never read it and I doubt if I ever will as I am not a big fan of tennis. However, what makes Agassi’s book so controversial is because the title has a double meaning. It is not only about his game or his personal life. It is about his honesty and his admitting to taking the recreational drug crystal meth during his professional years.

About crystal meth

Crystal meth (source: chemistry.about.com) is officially called methamphetamine or metamfetamin. It is usually used in crystalline form, thus the name. So what does crystal meth do? It has some positive and negative effects. On the upside, it can

• change moods and cause elation
• enhance energy and performance
• lead to weight loss
• increase sexual drive

The downsides are

• addiction
• loss of appetite
• sleeping problems
• mood swings, even psychosis
• potential for overdose

Crystal meth is not the only recreational drug used by athletes. The most common performance-enhancing drugs used by professional athletes are:

• Anabolic steroids
• Androstenedione  
• Creatine
•  Stimulants
• Diuretics

Why take drugs?

Agassi is not the first professional athlete to use forbidden drugs nor will he be the last. He joins the likes of star sprinter Marion Jones, cyclist Jan Ulrich and fellow tennis pro Martina Hingis. But the big difference is that the aforementioned athletes got caught; Agassi didn’t. According to his autobiography, he tested positive for drugs but lied before the governing body of ATP and got away with it.

So why do athletes take drugs?

Agassi wrote that he started taking the drug when his career was in crisis. Clearly, drugs can enhance performance. According to this Australian report, here are some of the reasons why athletes take performance-enhancing drugs:

• winning can attract lucrative sponsorship deals and endorsements;
• society places great emphasis on success in sport, which puts more pressure on an athlete to win;
• some banned drugs can speed recovery from injury, which means athletes can be back training and competing more quickly;
• some athletes believe their competitors are using drugs and that to be competitive, they need to take drugs as well;
• some athletes’ desire to win is so great that they are willing to use any means, including cheating, to gain success; and
• some coaches may push drug use to enhance their athletes’ chances of winning, which boosts their profile as a successful coach.

Coming up next: the health effects of performance-enhancing drugs.

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The Olympic diet: what do athletes eat?

We all know that our diet is a key factor to being and keeping healthy. It is the food we eat that provides us the energy to perform our daily activities – it is what keeps our heart pumping. Now, we get to wonder, what do high performance athletes eat? What gives them the energy, the power to run, swim, jump or lift weights faster and better than non-athletic people like you and me?

Here are some examples of what Olympic athletes eat on a normal day.

Gymnastics

Gymnastics is an example of anaerobic physical activity. The gymnasts need strong spurts of energy for short periods of time to jump, flip, swing and perform somersaults.

In this msnbc report, gymnasts like Stephen McCain go for the low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet.

Most gymnasts try to get between 60 percent and 70 percent of their calories from proteins (like meats and cheeses), the rest from carbs (like whole-grain pasta, fruits, vegetables) and fats (like oils from peanuts).

Of course gymnastics is a special sports where weight is highly relevant to performance. Gymnasts have to closely watch their calorie intake to keep down their weight.

Other anaerobic sport sports such as weight lifting and shot put, put less emphasis on weight but more muscle growth and therefore have other dietary requirements. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), for example, recommends body builders to eat

“…a pre-exercise snack that includes a combination of carbs (for energy) and protein (for muscle building): cereal with milk, yogurt and a banana, bagel with peanut butter, trail mix (nuts and dried fruit), or a turkey sandwich”.

In addition, ACSM warns of the danger of undereating, especially among female athletes who strictly control their weight. Undereating can lead to shortage of calories needed for strenuous exercise, resulting in amenorrhea (irregular menstrual cycle) and iron deficiency anemia

Swimming

Now, how about eating a thousand calories every hour? Unthinkable? Well, that´s what Michael Phelps, winner of 8 gold medals in swimming require during rigorous training and competition, according to a report at WebMD. On a normal day, he can easily take in 6000 to 8000 calories in pizza and pasta.

Unlike gymnastics, swimming is an aerobic sports that requires prolonged energy output. High calorie, high carbohydrate diet is what endurance athletes like Phelps need. However, they need to make sure that calories intake is well-distributed all throughout the day and certainly no big intake immediately before a race. High calorie foods with small volume are especially recommended so that “granola with fruit and yogurt would be a better choice than flake cereal with milk.”

Nutritional requirements of athletes differ from those of “mere mortals” like us. For more information about good dietary habits, check out The Dietary Guidelines for Americans published jointly every 5 years by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

 

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July Olympic Resource Post: A tribute to athletes battling heart disease

Many of us look to up to successful sports people and we can’t really imagine that some of them may also be fighting against heart disease like the rest of us. After all, physical exercise is supposedly the key to cardiovascular health.

Yet, there have been sudden deaths in past sports competition. According to Dr. Barry J. Maron of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, “about 125 athletes under 35 involved in organized sports die of sudden death in the United States each year…” The institute keeps a national registry of such fatalities and the majority of cases recorded were due to cardiac-related events.

Although researchers are scrambling to find the best preparticipation screening, it’s always a difficult decision between safeguarding an athlete’s life and killing his/her Olympic dream.

In this resource post, I would like to pay tribute to athletes who have succumbed to heart disease in their quest to be the best.

The fatalities

Reggie Lewis played for the Boston Celtics. He suffered from cardiac arrest on the court in the summer of 1993. Reggie had an overly enlarged and thickened heart. He was 27 years old.

Ryan Shay collapsed during the marathon Olympic trials in New York in November last year. Ryan was diagnosed with an enlarged heart at the age of 14. He died of the disease 14 years later.

Perhaps the most recent fatality is Gyorgy Kolonics, the two-time Hungarian gold medallist in canoeing. He died less than a month before the Olympics start during a training session last July 15. The probable cause of death was heart failure. It would have been the 36-year old’s 5^th Olympic Games.

The survivors

There are others out there whose athletic careers have been cut short by heart disease but are lucky to survive and tell their stories.

In his blog, elite cyclist Craig Cook tells us his story. Craig was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia earlier this year.

“This blog is about my condition, the things that might have led to it, and the course of treatment I am on. It is written as a resource for other endurance athletes who might have arrhythmias“,

writes Craig in his blog V-TACH where he continues to chronicle his battle against the monster of heart disease.

Greg Welch was a triathlete – triathlon is also known as the “Iron Man” competition – and he was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia in 1999. He experienced the attacks during the Hawaiian Iron Man competition but still managed to finish the race in 11^th place. He had to retire from competitive sports and was joined his triathlete wife Sian in retirement shortly after.

John Morton is a biathlete who represented the US at the Winter Olympics in 1972 and 1976. In 2003, he was diagnosed with a 50% occlusion of the coronary artery. The 57-year old was shocked with the diagnosis.

“…although I might have worried that I’d someday be a candidate for knee or hip replacement surgery, I never for a moment questioned the durability of my heart. If exercise was the key to a healthy heart, I figured mine would still be beating long after the rest of me had collapsed in a heap.”

Read more about Tim’s subsequent cardiac surgery and successful rehabilitation in his article “The Heart of an Olympian.”

Other endurance athletes whose careers were cut short by arrhythmia or irregular heart rhythm include the Italian six-day cyclist Marco Villa who won a bronze medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and Tour de France cyclist Bobbie Julich.

The causes

The most likely culprits for sports-related cardiac problems are hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and ventricular tachycardia.

According to the Medline Medical Encyclopedia, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is “a condition in which the heart muscle becomes thick.” This thickening makes it harder for the heart to pump blood and reduces the efficiency of the valves as well. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a major cause of death among young athletes who seem perfectly healthy. In many cases, the condition is asymptomatic and the first signs of the disease can be acute – collapse and sudden death during physical exertion.

Recent studies show that sudden cardiac death is more common among black athletes especially those originating from West Africa or the Caribbean, compared to other ethic groups and this may be due to left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a form of asymmetrical cardiomyopathy. Black athletes have been observed to have thicker left ventricular walls compared to white athletes. LVH is reflected in abnormal ECG readings during preparticipation screening.

Ventricular tachycardia is a rapid heart beat initiated within the ventricles, characterized by 3 or more consecutive premature ventricular beats. While a normal heart beats 60 to 100 times every minute, this rate can go up to 160 or even over 200 in cases of ventricular tachycardia. This form of arrhythmia can be due to pre-existing heart conditions.

However, recent studies report about “acquired arrhythmia” among endurance athletes. It was not until very recently that athlete’s heart (dilatation, hypertrophy and enhanced vagal tone) was recognized as a possible risk factor for the development of atrial fibrillation, establishing a link between excessive training and the presence of arrhythmias, according to an editorial in the European Heart Journal.

In subsequent posts, I will review recent studies that may clarify whether too much of a good thing such as physical exercise may be bad for the heart.

In the meantime, let’s cheer on our Olympians and hope for a cardiac event-free Olympics this year.

Olympics Special: Athletes screening using ECG

The Summer Olympic Games in Beijing have just started. What better way to start this week than talk about athletes’ heart rates?

There are certain tests that professional athletes have to go through before they can complete. I am not only referring to those tests that detect the use of performance enhancing drugs. Athletes also have to go through tests to determine their health status. A major determining test in the preparticipation screening of athletes is the electrocardiogram or ECG which reads the heart’s electrical activity and look at the heart rate patterns. ECG measurements are usually done while at rest. Athletes who have abnormalities in their ECG are disqualified – for their own safety. Many cardiac events happen during sports competition.

Most professional sports and health bodies, including the International Olympic Committee and the European Society of Cardiology endorse the use of ECG in the preparticipation screening of athletes. However, the American Heart Association (AHA) finds that ECG screening has certain limitations including low sensitivity and high rate of false positive results. In addition, recent studies (see this previous post) have shown there are racial differences in ECG patterns of athletes that might complicate interpretation of the results.

Instead, AHA recommends a 12-step screening program that can help detect potential health problems. The screening program requires completion of a questionnaire covering the following:

Personal history

• Chest pain/discomfort upon exertion
• Unexplained fainting or near-fainting
• Excessive and unexplained fatigue associated with exercise
• Heart murmur

Family history

• One or more relatives who died of heart disease (sudden/unexpected or otherwise) before age 50
• Close relative under age 50 with disability from heart disease
• Specific knowledge of certain cardiac conditions in family members: hypertrophic or dilated cardiomyopathy in which the heart cavity or wall becomes enlarged, long QT syndrome which affects the heart’s electrical rhythm, Marfan syndrome in which the walls of the heart’s major arteries are weakened, or clinically important arrhythmias or heart rhythms.

Physical examination

• High blood pressure
• Heart murmur
• Femoral pulses to exclude narrowing of the aorta
• Physical appearance of Marfan syndrome
• Brachial artery blood pressure (taken in a sitting position)

A recent study by Italian researchers indicate that exercise ECG, e.g. ECG measurements done during active exercise should be used because they tend to be more sensitive in detecting cardiac abnormalities than ECG measurement at rest. Looking at over 30,000 athletes, they observed discrepancies between the results of resting ECG and exercise or stress ECG. 1,812 or 6% of the participants showed resting ECG abnormalities, some of which turned out to be “innocent” changes. Only 1,459 (4.9%) of the participants showed abnormalities for exercise ECG. However, exercise ECG detected cardiac anomalies in 1,227 participants not detected by resting ECG. Furthermore, they only observed that these anomalies are more common in athletes older than 30 years old.

In the next days, this blog will feature more health news around the theme of competitive sports and athletics.

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Racial differences in athletes’ hearts

It’s going to be a summer of sports. The European Football Championships have started. So have the NBA play offs. And there are the Olympics Games in Beijing to look forward to.

Athletes are known for having stronger hearts than ordinary mortals like you and me. However, a recent study shows that among athletes, heart structure and function may significantly differ – depending on skin color and ethnicity.

A study of about 2000 athletes conducted at the National Football League (NFL) Invitational Camp from 2000 to 2005 showed that black football players have double the likelihood of having electrocardiograms (ECGs) that do not follow the norm. The problem is whether these “abnormal” readings should also be considered as “unhealthy.” Researchers however, believe that

“the criteria we have always used for normality are based on data from white people, and it turns out that black and white people are not identical in this regard.”

Unfortunately, during medical check ups of athletes, the ECG readings are usually used as indication of health status.

“If you use the ECG as a screening tool, the ECG in blacks are more likely to be abnormal. That would raise the possibility of heart disease more frequently — an unbalanced situation. Black athletes are more likely to be judged incorrectly to have heart disease.”

This difference is not only restricted to football players.

In another study by British researchers, 300 leading European black athletes from different disciplines were matched with 300 white athletes in the same discipline. Their results show black athletes tend to have left ventricles which have thicker walls compared to their white counterparts. The left ventricle is chamber of the heart that pumps blood to the body. The thickening of the left ventricular walls is called left ventricular hypertrophy and is usually taken as a symptom of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease “considered to be the most common cause of exercise-related sudden death in young athletes.”

It has been thought for quite a while that there are some ethnicity-related differences in people’s hearts but it has never been proven. These studies were the first ones to show evidence that such differences does exist, at least for young athletes. These studies show that ethnic differences should be taken into consideration in pre-competition screenings.

Sources:

Magalski et al. BrowneRelation of Race to Electrocardiographic Patterns in Elite American Football Players. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol., June 10, 2008; 51: 2250 – 2255.

Basavarajaiah et al. Prevalence of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy in Highly Trained Athletes: Relevance to Pre-Participation Screening. Am Coll Cardiol, 2008; 51:1033-1039.

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