Good news in the medical world

The Dean Ornish lifestyle change program will now be covered by Medicare (article here, CMS decision memo here). This hopefully means we'll be seeing more diet and exercise programs pop up around the nation, and people will be able to afford them.

Below (or link here) is a 3-minute Ted Talk where Dean Ornish talks about the pandemic of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, and how these diseases are reversible through diet and lifestyle in 95% of people. He also talks about how prostate cancer can be reserved or stopped through diet and lifestyle. 

What I wish we learned the first day of school

“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” 

~ Hippocrates

So simple and so true. I wish we learned this the first day of medical school. Better yet, I wish we all learned this the first day of elementary school.

I think this is one reason why people like yoga so much. While everything else in life has gotten so complicated, yoga is a simple prescription for health based on the right amount of nourishment and exercise.

A little exercise: Good for your telomeres

We know that stress shortens telomeres. This new study indicates that this may happen only in inactive people.

The study at UCSF looked at 62 postmenopausal women suffering long-term stress (caregivers of chronically ill loved ones). They divided the group into inactive and active people (active = at least 75 minutes of weekly physical activity). It turned out that only the inactive group had shortened telomeres.

Wow! Another reason to make time for exercise… especially if we lead stressful lives. Seems that even just a little physical activity can protect these important pieces of our chromosome.

One of the lead telomere researchers, Elissa Epel, said:

"Telomere length is increasingly considered a biological marker of the accumulated wear and tear of living, integrating genetic influences, lifestyle behaviors, and stress… Even a moderate amount of vigorous exercise appears to provide a critical amount of protection for the telomeres."

To me, one of the most exciting things in the article was the last paragraph about how they are now telling people the length of their telomeres to see if this impacts people’s lifestyle choices (to reduce stress, eat less meat, exercise, drink less alcohol, etc) in order to keep their telomeres long and healthy. Can’t wait to hear results of that study...

An inclusion diet

The New York Times had a great article yesterday about Scott Jurek – a vegan ultramarathoner. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth the read. 

Photo credit here  

I love seeing articles like this in the New York Times (thank you to the author, Mark Bittman!), because being vegan does not mean you have to be weak and wimpy… Jurek’s easy days are 40-mile runs! 

He says, “When you’re a vegan, to increase your calories as you increase training you need more food. This isn’t an elimination diet but an inclusion diet.”

An inclusion diet, I love that.

Jurek also says: “None of this is weird. If you go back 300 or 400 years, meat was reserved for special occasions, and those people were working hard. Remember, almost every long-distance runner turns into a vegan while they’re racing, anyway — you can’t digest fat or protein very well.”

Many people who get into yoga move in the vegetarian/vegan direction, but it's great to hear about other athletes doing this as well. 

I wonder if there have been any studies looking at how the switch to a vegan diet impacts people's athletic performance?

Yoga: a minimalist's path

I love the simplicity and minimalism of the Ashtanga yoga practice and just wrote about it in this guest post for my friend Ben’s blog, Minimalist Muscle.

I discuss the 7 reasons why Ashtanga yoga is a minimalist's gym (I’m sure I left some things out so please add to this list if you think of anything!):

1. Yoga minimizes equipment: The only equipment you really need is your body. No shoes and no socks. A mat is nice but not even necessary. No need for weight machines – your body provides all the weight and resistance you need.
2. Yoga simplifies food consumption: The practice of yoga brings greater awareness to the food you put into your body. People become drawn towards simple, healthy, whole, vegetarian foods that nourish the body.
3. Yoga minimizes lost time and money: While I may not always have the hours to devote to the physical practice, the practice of yoga helps simplify life habits (minimizing loss of precious time and money), including: 
• What I eat
• The time I go to bed
• The relationships I nurture
• The way I socialize
• The things I buy
• The projects I invest time and energy in
• My professional interests and direction
4. Yoga turns you into your own teacher/trainer/coach: In the Ashtanga yoga style, everybody learns the postures and the correct order in which to do them. This means you can practice anytime and anywhere (i.e. hotel room floor when traveling). 
5. Yoga develops functional muscle: The Ashtanga yoga practice will help you build muscle while also increasing flexibility... the ideal combination for a healthy, lithe, functional body.
6. Yoga de-clutters unproductive thoughts: The physical intensity of the yoga practice makes your mind focused (it’s hard to think about anything besides breathing when your muscles are shaking, sweat is dripping, and you’re trying to hold a certain position). Thoughts, worries, anxieties, stresses that usually clutter your mind are minimized and silenced.
7. Yoga is a traveling gym: The Ashtanga yoga community is a global, growing community of people with shared interests, purpose, and goals. In many cities all of the world, you will find an Ashtanga teacher that offers the same practice…. it’s a traveling gym that meets you wherever you are.

Loving the heat

The warm weather brings a hot and sweaty practice… I’ve missed it!

As I mentioned in this post a few months back, I found my body temperature rises about 2 degrees during my practice (this was not the most accurate measurement and I think it's probably higher than that).

But my question is: what is the effect of generating this daily fever as a result of practice (or any other sweat-inducing exercise for that matter)?

Treatment for certain tumors includes the use of regional hyperthermia (temperatures up to 104-109 degrees Fahrenheit). The high temperature sensitizes the tumor to radiation and/or chemotherapy. Exercise can’t raise our body temperatures that high, but what might be the effect of the more mild increases in body temperature that exercise creates?

I couldn’t find an answer to this specific question, but I did find this paper, which discusses how “mild hyperthermia” enhances immune system functioning and may provide long-term protection from tumor growth. They write:

“There has long been appreciation in this field of the potential similarity between exogenously induced hyperthermia used in the clinic and natural hyperthermic states which occur during fever. Because of the close association between fever, inflammation and immune cell activation during infection, several investigators have speculated that there could be significant effects of elevated (fever-range) temperatures on enhanced anti-tumor immunity.”

I wonder how high we can get our body temperatures during practice... (trying to think of a good way to measure this?)

Might yogis (and other athletes) who create and sustain and daily “fever” have stronger immune function as a result? And might this help fight infections and cancers over a lifetime? 

Morning mysore in schools

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." ~John Cage 

Roosevelt high school in Wyoming starts the day with a workout (and not just students… teachers join in as well). 15-20 minutes of sweat breaking exercise, then off to work (no time to shower).

Since starting this morning exercise routine, the school has seen reading performance improve dramatically.

This program was inspired by Dr. John Ratey and his book “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,” where he talks about how exercise leads to the growth and remodeling of the brain.  

As one teacher said, “the culture at Roosevelt supports wellness and fitness… It’s not unusual now for a student to leave history class, run around the outside of the building and return to the classroom focused.”

We need more schools to follow their lead! 

How about morning mysore in schools? Everyone (teachers included) could grab a mat and pile into the gym for practice. I bet that would improve test scores!

Another drink? Mind your telomeres!

Drinking a glass of red wine a day may help prevent aging, but this study (discussed on NPR here) finds that heavy alcohol drinking may "severely" shorten your telomeres. 

The reason? Alcohol (just as with smoking, obesity, chronic psychological stress, and others we have identified yet) causes oxidative stress and inflammation, damaging and shortening these important pieces of your chromosome.

Telomeres are the pieces of DNA at the ends of your chromosomes, and shortened telomeres means aged cells, chromosome instability, risk of cancer, heart disease, dementia, and more.

One reason I’m fascinated by telomeres is because we actually have some control over them! Their length is an indicator of our overall health and wellbeing - the amount of stress and inflammation our cells have battled over time.  

If you haven’t seen this yet, check out this study by Dean Ornish on how lifestyle changes of diet, exercise, and stress reduction increase telomerase (the enzyme that maintains the length of telomeres).

Based on what we know so far, here are 6 things you can do to keep your telomeres healthy: 

1. Limit alcohol intake
2. Reduce meat consumption while increasing fruits, vegetables & omega-3 fatty acids
3. Stop smoking 
4. Exercise 
5. De-stress 
6. Lose excess weight 

I would also add get enough sleep and replete Vitamin D (so many of us in northern latitudes are deficient)… but these last two are just my hypotheses, I haven’t seen any studies looking at those questions.  

Our brain on stress

Chronic stress can actually reshape and shrink the brain.

Studies have shown that mice living under chronic stress (confined in a wire cage) have “retraction in the projections, or dendrites, of some of the neurons in the hippocampus” and the hippocampus (an area of the brain important for mood, memory, and cognition) shrinks in overall volume.

A specific protein, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), has been found to mediate the growth and adaptability of neurons. The less BDNF, the less neurons can adapt and grow, and the more the brain shrinks.

So why should we care about this BDNF business?! Because exercise increases BDNF release! As The Ratey Institute* points out, exercise-induced BDNF release may make the brain more resistant to stress.

This study showed that just three months of endurance training significantly increased the release of BDNF. Wow! What might yoga does to BDNF levels?! Maybe we can test this on our Philadelphia ashtangis at some point… :)

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*The Ratey Institute is an organization dedicated to 1) the scientific study of the brain/body connection, and 2) improving educational and public policies to optimize physical and mental health… getting people moving and exercising. Dr. John Ratey, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes that: “The marriage of the brain and body bathed in the effects of exercise creates the essential environment for optimal mental and physical health.”