The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #169

It’s been a while since I’ve published one of these “weekly” updates. I was pretty good about doing these every single week for several years but after my daughter was born, life became too busy. I want to try to do more of these updates again, but I won’t be doing them weekly. I just don’t have time. But hopefully you find them useful on the occasions when I do publish them. 😀

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #169”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #168 – Easy Homemade Mayo, Preventing Side Stitches, and Home Pesticides Causing Cancer

sandwich-with-mayo

This week’s update includes:

  • Easy homemade mayonnaise in less than 2 minutes
  • 25 healthy sweet potato recipes
  • How to prevent side stitches
  • Why running injuries increase in the fall
  • 3 Exercises you should never do
  • Home pesticides can cause cancer

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #168 – Easy Homemade Mayo, Preventing Side Stitches, and Home Pesticides Causing Cancer”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #167 – DIY Sports Drinks Recipes, Grilled Smoked Tea Steaks, and Weight-Lifting Advice to Increase Strength and Power

diy-sports-drink

This week’s update includes:

  • 5 DIY Sports Drinks to Help Keep You Hydrated
  • Sergey Brin’s Search for a Parkinson’s Cure
  • The 10 Realities of Dating A Bodybuilder
  • Grilled Smoked Tea Rib-Eye Steaks
  • The Forgotten Piece of Weight-Lifting Advice That Will Make You Stronger
  • Joe Manganiello’s “Magic” Conditioning Routines
  • Current school start times damaging learning and health of students

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #167 – DIY Sports Drinks Recipes, Grilled Smoked Tea Steaks, and Weight-Lifting Advice to Increase Strength and Power”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #166 – Marijuana For Fitness, Why You Should Drink 5 Cups of Coffee Per Day, and The Massive Benefits of the Hollow-Body Hold Exercise

marijuana-and-dumbbells

I hope those of you in the U.S. and Canada had a great Labor Day weekend. I sure did! We had a lot of BBQ and spent time with the family. It’s always hard to jump back into work after getting a break, even if it’s only one extra day than normal.

We’ve got a lot of great stuff to talk about this week!

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #166 – Marijuana For Fitness, Why You Should Drink 5 Cups of Coffee Per Day, and The Massive Benefits of the Hollow-Body Hold Exercise”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #165 – Signs of Folate Deficiency, Living a Frugal Life, and Dirty Marketing Tricks of the Fitness Industry

eggs-avocados-sausage-coffee

Are you getting enough folate? If you eat as many avocados as I do, then you probably do 😉

This weeks update includes:

  • Information about folate deficiency
  • How to live a more frugal life (with my own health and fitness tips added)
  • Why the mainstream medical community no longer thinks cholesterol is bad
  • How physical fitness helps older people maintain healthy brain function
  • A fitness insider discussing the dirty marketing tricks of the industry

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #165 – Signs of Folate Deficiency, Living a Frugal Life, and Dirty Marketing Tricks of the Fitness Industry”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #164 – Workaholics Need Breaks For Their Health, Holocaust Survivors Passed Trauma To Their Children’s Genes, and a Book That Makes Kids Fall Asleep

working-at-night

It’s a been a rough past few weeks. My wife tore her meniscus at the Rugged Maniac in Denver three weeks ago and she just had surgery on her knee to repair it last Monday, which means I have to work from home to help my wife and care for our daughter as much as I can throughout the day, while still getting my 8 hours of work in for the day. It’s exhausting!

But, I still managed to read some great articles.

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #164 – Workaholics Need Breaks For Their Health, Holocaust Survivors Passed Trauma To Their Children’s Genes, and a Book That Makes Kids Fall Asleep”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #163 – Hack Your Sleep Starting Now, Facts Behind the Viral Coca-Cola Infographic, and 5 Ways to Build Grip Strength

sleep induction mat

Lots of fun stuff this issue.

Dave Asprey published a whole bunch of actionable tips for hacking your sleep, which I plan to start implementing right away. That’s me with my sleep-induction mat in the picture above!

Oh and did you see that Coca-Cola infographic that has been going around social media lately? It talks about all the bad stuff that happens in the body after drinking Coca-Cola. Well while a lot of it is true, it’s a big exaggerated.

I’ve also got a link to some easy slow cooker recipes, one of which I’m making today, which is the slow cooker sesame chicken. I can’t wait to eat tonight!

There are also some links here about Kama Sutra positions you should try, methods for building your grip strength, and 15 vegan popsicle recipes.

I hope you find some of this stuff useful!

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #163 – Hack Your Sleep Starting Now, Facts Behind the Viral Coca-Cola Infographic, and 5 Ways to Build Grip Strength”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #162 – Common Paleo Mistakes, Cooking Juicy Chicken, and a New Take on HIIT Training That You’ll Love

madhava-honey-jar

Here’s what we have this week:

  • Common paleo mistakes
  • Tips to help you love running
  • Using turmeric to treat depression
  • How to dominate leg day
  • How to get fit and have fun
  • Two tips for preventing knee tendonitis

Continue reading “The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #162 – Common Paleo Mistakes, Cooking Juicy Chicken, and a New Take on HIIT Training That You’ll Love”

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #161 – Gain 20 Pounds in a Month, Blue Light Blocking Phone Screens, and Making Sourdough Bread

I haven’t published an update here in quite a while, but I’m hoping to get back into it.



How To Gain 20 Pounds In 28 Days: The Extreme Muscle Building Secrets of UFC Fighters

I’ve been purposely putting on weight for about a month now (I’ve gained 10 lbs. so far) but I haven’t really created a solid strategy to do it, though I have in the past. I’ve done two large weight gains over the last 15 years, once on a “SAD” Standard American Diet (before I had an interest in health and fitness) and once on an entirely vegan diet, and both were pretty miserable.

On the vegan weight gain I went from 170 to 210 in about 3 months. It sucked! I put on a lot more fat than I had hoped though so I went back down to about 185 or so and managed to stay at that weight until going Paleo, which caused me to drop down to about 150 lbs. My new goal weight is 175 lbs, with minimal fat gain, so I couldn’t have come across this article at a better time.



The Amen Diet

This sounds like a pretty extreme diet, but very interesting. You eat one meal per day at about 1250 calories, fast for the other 23 hours, drink only water, and eat entirely vegan. The creator of the diet, Dr. Amen-Ra, is freakin’ buff though!



SleepShield

I know I shouldn’t be on my phone or iPad before bed, but I do it anyway. I should definitely invest in some of these blue-light blocking screen protectors.



Three Minutes of All-Out Intermittent Exercise per Week Increases Skeletal Muscle Oxidative Capacity and Improves Cardiometabolic Health

There’s no excuse for not getting a workout in, especially when all it takes is three minutes of your time and only once per week.



I Did It: 6 Days of Eating Dog Food

Eating paleo isn’t cheap but what about eating paleo dog food? This woman ate dog food, dried and canned, and even some biscuits for snacks for a week.



Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery?

Ben Greenfield has mentioned several times in his podcasts that the only bread he eats is sourdough because the fermentation process removes all of the negative aspects of grains. That still doesn’t make it safe for celiacs though. Making sourdough bread looks like a long annoying process, but I’m willing to give it a try.



Drink this 2 hrs before bed to sleep better -plus 5 tips for insomnia

I don’t have any problems falling asleep, but I seem to have problems staying asleep. I often wake up after only 4 or 6 hours and sometimes have trouble getting back to sleep. I wonder if these tips will help with that.



Biohacking: There’s An App For That!

All the apps an aspiring biohacker could ever need. There are categories here for brain training and self-quantification, sleep hacking, food sensitivities, stress management, money management, exercise & fitness, and productivity.



Small Amounts of Gluten in Subjects with Suspected Nonceliac Gluten

Here’s a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial that shows non-celiac gluten sensitivity is real. Keep in mind that this study was done on only 61 subjects, which isn’t a large sample size, but the results are interesting and hopefully leads to larger studies.



Adding Sea Salt to your drinking water can help with Hydration

Instead of drinking a gallon of water a day, drink some salt in your water so that you stay hydrated.



Kaatsu training is blowing fitness researchers’ minds

The idea behind Kaatsu training is that by applying pressure to your arms and legs while working out, you reduce the amount of blood flow from your muscles. By restricting the blood flow to the heart, your limbs fill with blood which fills unused capillaries and increases the lactic acid in the blood. This is what happens normally during long bouts of exercise, but by using Kaatsu training, you can make this process happen in a short amount of time and with minimal exercise. Your brain sends out a signal for hormonal response to recover those muscles, but with a light workout, little muscle fiber damage has occurred, allowing you to recover faster and build muscle faster. You don’t need to use the pressure cuffs mentioned in this article either. Some old bicycle tubes will work just fine.



The “Food Babe” Blogger Is Full of Shit

There are many excellent points made in this article. Influencers in the health community like the “Food Babe” spread misinformation online and stand to potentially cause more harm than good. I actually listened to an interview with the Food Babe on a podcast a couple months ago and I really didn’t like a lot of what I was hearing – lots of fear mongering. That’s not to say everything she says is bad. I think she started with good intentions, and maybe still has good intentions, but it has spiraled out of control and now it’s all business.



Yes, You Can Freeze Milk, Eggs, And Cheese For Later Use

I’m currently trying to put on weight so I’m buying a bunch of dairy products from Costco. I freakin’ hate going to Costco so I really don’t want to stock up once a week, so I wanted to know if I could buy a ton of stuff and freeze it all to use throughout the month. Looks like you can!

The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #159 – Olive Oil For Heart Health, Why Women Should Be Doing HIIT Training, And a Vacation Workout Game

olive-oil



Healthy fats help diseased heart muscle process, use fuel

This study was performed on rats, but may be useful to humans too. The researchers were able to balance fat metabolism and reduce toxic fat metabolites for heart health in rats by feeding them oleate, a healthy fat found in olive oil.



Too many colonoscopies

Not only are colonoscopies being done unnecessarily in people who don’t need them (essentially wasting more than $1 million in health care costs), but colonoscopies are also not being done as often as they should in people who DO need them.



Men Are Different, Women, Too – Also, When it Comes to the Metabolic Effects of Exercise

According to this, it’s easier for men to burn fat than women when it comes to aerobic exercise. Not only that, aerobic exercise simply isn’t the best way for women to get in shape. Instead, women should lift weights and do high intensity interval training (HIIT).



Fitness & menstrual health: How to stay lean, healthy, and fit while maintaining your period

Irregular periods or losing a period altogether is a sure sign of extreme stress on the body and if left untreated for too long, can cause serious health issues down the road. Poor hormonal health can cause low energy, decreased bone health, poor sleep, hair loss, dry skin, acne, inflammation in the body, anxiety, depression, and a whole bunch of other problems.



Crossfit Kids Classics: Rock Paper Scissors Tag

A fun game that also gets kids active and exercising.



K2: The Vitamin, Not the Mountain

Is vitamin K2 deficiency a real problem? Maybe. Maybe not.



Stay Healthy on Vacation With This Simple Hack

I love this vacation workout game Steve came up with. When I went on a trip to Las Vegas a few years ago, I actually did a pretty good job of keeping myself in check. I ate mostly healthy, although I allowed myself to cheat a little, and I also did at least 15-20 minutes of body weight exercises each morning.



One thing every woman 35+ should know about her moods

Whether your over 34 years old or not, if you’re dealing with mood issues such as anxiety or depression, you should make sure to eat quality fats, take care of your adrenals, and reduce stress on your body.



Realistic Reps and The Rule of Ten

This article is difficult to read because it’s dictated from Dan John’s DVD, but it’s worth trying to decipher the gold nuggets hidden within the various lines of Dan’s thoughts. Basically, there are specific exercises that are best performed using the “rule of 10”, which can be broken out into many ways – 5 sets of 2, 2 sets of 5, or 3 sets of 5-3-2, or whatever works for you.