Healthy Andy

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that drinking green tea can help you live longer.  Many studies in the past have examined the specific health benefits of either green tea, or the active antioxidants in green tea, but this study examined the actual consumption of tea and compared it to mortality rates in Japanese adults.

The Ohsaki National Health Insurance Cohort Study

This study began back in the ’90s in Japan, following over forty thousand adults over the age of 40 without any history of major chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, that sort of nasty stuff).  Individuals were followed up on over the course of the next eleven years to see how many had died from any cause. Participants filled out a questionnaire that asked some basic questions about daily nutrition habits, including the consumption of green tea.  This makes this study very similiar to the Nurse’s Health Study, a study that has followed over 100,000 nurses over the course of decades (except, since it’s an American study, they don’t specifically ask about green tea).

For the Ohsaki study, participants were asked if they drank green tea never, occasionally, 1-2 cups per day, 3-4 cups per day, and 5 or more cups per day.  The authors noted that the typical “cup” of green tea is about 100 milliliters (about 3.5 ounces).

By the way, one of the nice things about this study is, the researchers took the time to see if their questionnarie was at all accurate.  They picked a sample of people and had them do a more comprehensive food diary for three days on four seperate occasions.  They found that there was a moderate to strong correlation between reported intake and actual intake.

The Results: Green Tea Makes You Live Longer

After accounting for potentially confounding variables like age or physical activity, the researchers found that the more green tea people drank, the less likely they were to die from any cause.  The effect was obviously most noticeable in the 5 or more cups of tea per day group; if you used non-tea drinkers as a baseline, the hazard ratio was 0.88 for the 5 cups a day drinkers.  This means that for every 1 non-tea drinker, 0.88 tea drinkers died… which basically means green tea makes you live longer.

The effect was even MORE pronounced among women; the hazard ratio was 0.77 for the heavy tea-drinkers.  So for every 100 non-tea drinkers who died, only 77 tea drinkers died of any cause.  The researchers followed these effects for eleven years.

Then, they took a look at more specific causes of death (they reviewed data for seven years for this). They found that green tea consumption significantly reduced the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, but didn’t reduce the risk of death by cancer.  After looking even closer into the data, they found that when it came to cardiovascular disease, the greatest protection was from stroke.  Once again, the effect was most pronounced in women, who had a 42% less chance of death by stroke if they were drinking 5 or more cups per day of green tea (compared to one or less).

This shouldn’t be a big shock to readers of this website- we’ve talked before about how antioxidants make arteries more elastic and pliable (and therefore healthier).  Since strokes are caused by either blockage or rupture of an artery in the brain, healthier arteries are going to be less prone to those kinds of problems.  And I don’t know about you, but I have no deep and burning desire to experience a stroke, so I’m going to keep drinking green tea and live longer than I would have otherwise!

Stay healthy!

By the way, the full text of this study is available online for free at this link:  http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/296/10/1255.long

If you’re looking to push through a plateau in your training, or just try something extra challenging in your chest workout, try one of these plyometric chest exercises that I’ve been doing lately (and having a real love/hate relationship with).  Be forewarned, though… they’re pretty intense.

What’s A Plyometric Chest Exercise?

Plyometrics is a term for a particular type of exercise favoring fast, explosive movements.  The idea is to train the muscles to produce a lot of speed and power as quickly as possible.  While this is related to raw strength, this isn’t necessarily the same thing. 

As an example, someone who can jump really high might not be able to squat a huge amount of weight.  But, they can explosively accelerate their body very quickly and thereby launch themselves into the air with greater speed than an Olympic weight-lifter might be able to.

These fast, explosive movements have obvious benefits for athletes, since many athletic events require speed and explosive power more than anything else (well, aside from coordination).  Aside from speed and power, plyometrics also encourages the neurological connections between the mind and the muscle, potentially leading to quicker reaction times.

Plyometric Chest Exercise #1

So let’s apply these principles to a chest workout.  For our first plyometric chest exercise, we’re going to go old school and dig out a good old-fashioned body weight exercise: the push up. But not just any push-up.  We’re going to do explosive or, as they’re sometimes called, “Marine Corps” pushups. 

It looks just like a regular push-up, but instead of simply pressing yourself up into a plank position, you’re going to lower yourself down and then spring yourself up into the air as fast and high as you can so that your hands clear the ground by several inches.  As you land, lower yourself back down, and then spring back up into the air, as many times as you can.

Once you get the hang of this, you should be able to launch yourself high enough that you can clap your hands before you lower yourself back down.  Even if you’re used to doing push-ups, don’t be surprised if you find plyometric pushups to be a surprising challenge.  You’re using a different set of fast-twitch muscle fibers to do these explosive movements versus a slower, more controlled push-up movement.

The great thing about this exercise, of course, is that it’s free.  You just need a stretch of ground that you can do this on, and the will to actually do it consistently.  For our next exercise, we’ll need a piece of equipment.

Plyometric Chest Exercise #2

For this exercise, we’re going to essentially do the same thing as in #1, but with a little twist: we’re going to do it on a Bosu ball.  For those of you unfamiliar with a Bosu ball, it’s basically half of an exercise ball with a firm plastic disc as a base.  Most people use it by standing on the base with the ball part on the ground, using it as a wobble board to make various exercises more difficult.

We’re going to do the same thing, but we’re not doing to stand on it.  Instead, grab either end of the disc part of the Bosu ball with both hands, and get into the plank position.  Since the ball part is on the ground, you’re already going to be wobbling a little bit.  If you’ve never done this before, you’re going to want to do a few regular push ups on the Bosu like this just to get used to it.

Once you’re ready, lower yourself down, and like before, launch yourself up into the air as quickly as possible so your hands (still gripping the Bosu) clear the ground.  As you go up into the air, bend your arms slightly to draw the Bosu up into the air.  As you come down, the Bosu will compress beneath you a bit.  Launch yourself back up, as many times as you can.

I actually find using the Bosu to do plyometric pushups is a lot easier on my hands and wrists than otherwise, because the Bosu will give a little rather than just landing back down on concrete or a hardwood floor.  But the instability created by the Bosu definitely ramps up the difficulty level.

Give it a try, and be ready for some soreness the next day!  As a general rule of thumb, it’s best not to do plyometric movements for any body part more than three times a week, so that your body can fully recover.

Stay healthy!

“Fish Oil May Not Prevent Depression, Says Study”, says the headline on a leading news website, even though the study isn’t about taking fish oil. Lies and misrepresentations tend to make me froth at the mouth in furious anger, so I just can’t let this go unanswered.

The latest in a long tradition of crappy science mixed with crappy journalism, this MSNBC article summarizes the results of a poorly-designed study which leaps to incorrect conclusions, and in the process, misleads the reader even more by interchanging the words “fish” and “fish oil”. Well, let’s see if Healthy Andy can’t untangle this mess for you.

First off, the study is question was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and was based off of a large nutritional survey that followed over 50,000 nurses over ten years. To sum up, the researchers checked to see who was eating fish, compared that to who ended up getting depressed, and found no correlation. Then, they declared that EPA and DHA, the main active ingredients in fish oil, have no effect on preventing depression.

Hang on, buster. Not so fast.

Let’s start by correcting the journalist who wrote that misleading headline. This study did NOT study the effect of taking fish oils. It studied the effect of eating fish. It’s not the same thing.

Does it sound like I’m splitting hairs? Here’s why there’s a difference: dosage. Eating fish obviously will provide EPA and DHA from the oils naturally present in the fish. However, it’s nowhere near as much as you get by taking a fish oil supplement.

In fact, dosage is the big reason why this entire study and subsequent news article should be kicked in the head and shown the door. If you eat some high Omega-3 fish every day, you MIGHT end up with a gram or two of EPA and DHA. And while that’s the dosage range I recommend for people without any problems to use as a basic health maintenance dose, if you look at the dosage used to actually treat depression, that’s a whole other story.

If you want to actually treat depression or similar mood disorders, you need to think bigger than a gram or two a day.  Try more like nine or ten grams a day of EPA and DHA.

So, not surprisingly, if you only give someone about one tenth the required dose to make a certain change in the body, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO SEE ANY CHANGE.

Plus, how much fish were these women eating?  What counts as “eating fish”?  Do shellfish count?  Farm-raised fish (which has very little Omega-3)? Did they calculate out the EPA and DHA content of the fish?  That would be pretty hard to do in this case, seeing as how they are relying on a recall survey (“what did you eat yesterday?”), and people really suck at estimating portion size.  Did these women eat fish every day?  Every other day?  How much and what kind (since different varieties of fish have differing Omega-3 contents)?

The bottom line is, the researchers really can’t tell how much EPA and DHA these people were ingesting on a regular basis.  Which means, they really can’t reach any conclusions about anything.

At best… at BEST… if you ignore the  fact that the researchers couldn’t accurately estimate Omega-3 intake, this study suggests that it’s hard to eat enough fish to improve mental health.  Which, I could’ve told you before, simply by looking at the dosage used to treat depression (nine to ten grams daily… you’re talking several pounds of high-quality fish here).  But to use a headline stating that fish OIL doesn’t have any effect on depression, is just plain wrong and misleading.

In fact, fish oil does seem to have a positive effect on depression.  You just have to take a sufficient dosage.  So shut your face, MSNBC, and do your homework before you go writing headlines.

It may sound like a gastrointestinal complaint, but in reality, a burpee is one of the oldest old-school bodyweight exercises out there.  Nobody’s really 100% sure where it came from or who invented it (there’s plenty of theories floating around out there), but the only thing that matter is, the burpee is a easy, free exercise pretty much anybody can do.

Like most bodyweight exercises, the burpee is really quite safe.  If you can jump up in the air and do a push-up without hurting yourself, you can do burpees.  In fact, that’s pretty much all a burpee is; a squat jump combined with a push-up.

Just What Is A Burpee?

Here’s how the exercise is performed.  Stand normally with your feet at shoulder width.  Bend your knees to squat straight down until you can put both hands flat on the ground next to your feet. 

After that, shoot your legs backward so that now you’re in the push-up position with your arms straight (also called the plank position).  Lower yourself down into a pushup, then push yourself back up to a plank. 

Draw your legs back underneath you so they are next to your hands again, and jump up into the air.  That’s one repetition.

The burpee is designed to be done for many repetitions, like a push-up or crunch.  Of course, you can try to make it harder by doing all kinds of crazy variations, like adding a pull-up.  In that variant, you end the burpee by jumping up to a pull-up bar, doing a pull-up, and then dropping down to a standing position on each rep.

Or, you could alter the push-up by making it a more explosive push-up, the kind where you spring up high enough into the air so you can clap your hands.  Really, you can alter the burpee however you like to make it suit you more effectively.

Here’s a video of a very fit women doing a modified burpee as part of a circuit training routine:

Can’t do a push-up yet?  You can modify the burpee as follows.  After you lower yourself into the plank position, take a half-second and rest your knees on the ground.  This will make the push-up easier to do until you build up enough strength in your arms to handle a “proper” push-up.

Who Should Do Burpees?

Simply put, anyone and everyone can and should mix some burpees into their exercise program.  It’s a great, simple, all-around full body exercise.  Multi-joint exercises, in general, are fantastic for rapid weight loss and building up functional strength and agility.  And, as I mentioned, they’re pretty mild to do… that is, for one repetition.  Start doing a bunch of burpees in a row, and you’ll quickly see how challenging they can really become.

The biggest advantages of the burpee exercise is that you don’t need any equipment whatsoever, and really, not much space at all.  Actually, the main space requirements are that you won’t hit your head on anything as you jump up into the air!  So for people who travel a lot, or can’t get to a gym, the burpee is a great exercise to help them either get or stay in shape.

Also, as I mentioned, since they’re pretty easy to do, burpees are great for beginners who aren’t quite ready (either physically or emotionally) to join a gym.  But make no mistake, advanced athletes should mix burpees into their routine as well from time to time.

Stay healthy!

A recent study published in the journal Obesity shows a link between H1 type antihistamines and weight gain. The study found increases in weight, waist size, and insulin levels compared to control groups.

This is an obvious concern, because antihistamines are such a commonly prescribed and used class of medications.  However, like so many other medications, antihistamines have side effects, and weight gain appears to be among them.

What’s an H1 antihistamine?

H1 antihistamines are medications that block the histamine receptors to reduce the inflammatory process.  Histamine is a chemical released by the body to signal the start of inflammation, and like most chemicals that act on the body, certain parts of the cell have receptors that recognize that histamine is around.  Once the receptor comes into contact with histamine, bingo… inflammation starts.

Rather than prevent the release of histamine, H1 antihistamines block the receptor, so histamine is still floating around, your body just can’t see it.  They also tend to make you drowsy as a side effect, which may account for part of the weight gain effect.

Common H1 antihistamines are Allegra, Clarinex, and Zyrtec.

Antihistamines and Weight Gain

This study took the results of data from a big survey done back around 2005 and compared antihistamine takers to non antihistamine takers.  After controlling for factors such as age and gender, the researchers found a correlation between taking prescription antihistamines and the weight gain factors mentioned earlier; weight, waist size, and insulin levels.

How much weight?  Women taking these drugs were about ten pounds heavier on average.

As always, it’s important to note that correlation is not causation; just because we see two things occuring at the same time doesn’t mean one causes the other.  It could be that people with bad allergies just don’t exercise as much as people without allergies. 

However, it is especially concerning to me that there was an effect on insulin levels as well as weight gain, considering the serious out-of-control issue this country has with the incidence of diabetes.  People who are currently having problems with insulin resistance or diabetes should definitely bring this study to the attention of their physician if they are considering taking antihistamine medication.

Other, non-medication options for reducting inflammation include taking heavy-duty OPC type antioxidants like pycnogenol and resveratrol.  I cover more on this topic in this article on antioxidants and inflammation.

Stay healthy!

Everyone’s terrified of fat.  But there’s good fats, bad fats, and REALLY bad fats, and you’d better know the difference unless YOU want to start being called “Fats”.

First off, let’s kill the rumor that all fats are bad, or that low fat diets are the way to fitting into your skinny jeans.  That’s just not true.  In fact, sugar and refined carbs are far worse for you than fat. 

Good Fats

Your body NEEDS fat.  There’s a group of fats called “Essential Fatty Acids” that, as the name implies, are essential to normal body functions.  What sort of functions?  Things like building blocks for hormones, building cell membranes… even the insulation that covers our nerves is made out of fat (well, a big part of it).

And yes, believe it or not, there was a time when even the caloric content of fat was considered good.  Remember, for a very long period of human history, there weren’t grocery stores or freezers or Tupperware, so calories and the life-giving energy they supply were an unreliable resource.  In those conditions, getting a windfall of energy from fat was a very good thing. 

Nowadays, of course, we have more calories around then we know what to do with, which creates a bit of a problem since evolution in that harsh starvation environment has hard-wired us to really, really like the taste of fatty stuff.  I’m getting a little off track here, though…. we were talking about good fats and which fats are good for you.

Basically, we’re talking about Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids… “fatty acids” is just a fancy term for fats.  Oh, there’s a few others, but really, those two kinds are the major essential fats of interest.  Our body needs both of them, so in that sense, they’re both “good”.

However, the tricky part is, we need them in a balanced ratio… I’ll explain why in a second.  Unfortuanately for us, we tend to gobble down tons and tons of Omega-6s (again, I’ll get to why that is in a second), and not a whole lot of Omega-3s, so our ratios tend to be skewed heavily toward Omega-6s. 

How skewed?  Some estimates go up to 20 or even 30 to 1! 

You Need Balance, Grasshopper

So what’s the big deal?  Why is balancing these fats so darn important to us?  There’s two major reasons that we are aware of; hormones and cell membranes.

As I mentioned before, essential fats are necessary in the creation of both of those things.  But having too much of one will lead to a corresponding skew in how your body makes those components.  Let’s talk hormones.

The Omega-6 fatty acids are the building blocks for pro-inflammatory hormones, while Omega-3 fats are the basis for anti-inflammatory hormones.  These two kinds of fats compete for the attention of your body; in other words, if there’s tons of Omega-6s floating around and not a lot of Omega-3s, they will push the Omega-3s out of the way and take over.

As the Omega-6s begin to dominate the body chemistry, the entire body becomes easier and easier to inflame, since Omega-6s form the basis for the chemical signals to start the inflammation process.  It’s like instead of having one mousetrap in the room, you have eighty… the littlest movement is going to set SOMETHING off.

And so, your body becomes a hair-trigger for inflammation.  And while some inflammation is necessary (it kick-starts the healing process), when you have CHRONIC inflammation, you start doing damage to the body.  In fact, chronic inflammation is starting to look like the biochemical boogeyman of the 21st century… it’s cropping up in all kinds of diseases like heart disease, cancer, you name it.

By increasing the level of Omega-3s in the diet, you return that ratio back to normal and reduce how much of the pro-inflammatory chemicals are produced by the body.  Going back to our metaphor, this takes a bunch of the mousetraps out of the room.  Now, your body isn’t going to pop off into an inflammatory state every time the wind blows.

And, as a consequence, since you’ve reduced the amount of chronic inflammation,  you reduce the damage that chronic inflammation causes.  So it’s not so much that Omega-3s CURE something, it’s more that they return your body to a normal state, and stuff starts actually working right for a change.

Wild fish are a great source of Omega-3s (farm-raised fish eat lots of Omega-6s, and therefore become filled with Omega-6s), as are grass-fed beef and chicken, wild game, and eggs from grass-fed chickens.  Fish oil capsules are a popular way to really amp up your Omega-3 good fats.

Bad Fats

Another important way to improve that Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio is to reduce the amount of Omega-6s that you eat.  Here’s the problem:  we stuff tons and tons of Omega-6s into our diet.  This is why our good fats to bad fats ratio stinks so horribly.

Why do we do it?  Well, not on purpose; that is, it’s not like food manufacturers are evil archvillians who are implementing a dastardly plan to destroy us all with bad fats (at least, I don’t THINK they are…).  It’s just that Omega-6s are economically a better choice than Omega-3s.

They’re cheap, in other words.  Corn is a big part of this.  America grows an absolutely ridiculous amount of corn, and we turn that into just about everything you can imagine.  High fructose corn syrup, corn chips… we even feed it to our livestock, when our livestock should be eating mostly grasses (grasses are high in Omega-3s, which is why grass fed animals are full of Omega-3s).

Omega-6s are also more stable and have a longer shelf life than Omega-3s, which makes them cheaper to store.  So we’ve made a trade-off; cheaper food for a really, really unhealthy ratio of bad fats to good fats.

The easiest way to avoid Omega-6s is to stick to a whole foods diet, which I constantly mention on this site.  That means no processed foods; nothing out of a box or a can, basically.  Lean, grass-fed meats and fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables, nuts… all in as close to a natural state as possible. If it’s processed, odds are somebody somewhere along the way stuck corn in it, or some other source of Omega-6s, or even worse, our final bad fats culprit… the trans fat.

Really, Really Ugly Fats

Trans fats are the heavyweight champion of bad fats.  Trans fats are chemically altered fats; they’re man-made (actually, there are a tiny number of naturally occuring trans fats).  They were developed in the early 1900s as a way to stabilize fats for storage… once again, making them a lot cheaper and more accessible.

At first, people thought trans fats like those found in margarine were actually a healthier alternative to the natural fats found in butter.  Partially hydrogenated oils like vegetable oil have become a mainstay of cooking, especially in fried foods… again, because it’s cheap and lasts a super-long time.

Unfortunately, trans fats are horrible for you.  We’re not sure of the exact biochemical reasons for this; it may have something to do with the human digestive system not really being able to break down trans fats very well.  There’s also a link between trans fats and higher levels of C-reactive protein, which is a test for inflammation (remember inflammation?).

Whatever the physiological link, trans fats have been linked to heart disease, obesity, depression, Altzheimer’s disease, and cancer… and I have a feeling more stuff is going to be added to the list as we continue to look.  The short answer is, you don’t want this crap in your body.

Trans fats are common in processed foods, fried foods, and cooking oils.  Just like with Omega-3s and Omega-6s, the best way to keep these bad fats out of your body is to stick to a whole foods diet like I mentioned earlier.

The health implications for increasing the good fats and decreasing the bad fats in your body is huge.  I haven’t even touched on cell membranes in this article (because it’s already getting REALLY long), but it should already be pretty obvious why keeping on the good fats side of the equation is going to play a big part in how long and how healthy you live.

Stick to the good fats and stay healthy!

Is green tea a weight loss supplement?  A surprising number of studies suggest that there is evidence to belive this to be the case.

First off, a couple of side notes.  Green tea has a huge number of health benefits far beyond mere weight loss, from antioxidant and anti-cancer properties to helping you keep your teeth.  I’ve discussed a few of them on this site in the past.  So I consider it a good addition to your health routine irregardless of any weight loss effects.  However, I also feel the need to point out that no weight loss supplement ever invented will beat good old fashioned diet and exercise habits for turning your bulging belly into a flat one.

At best…. at BEST… you can hope for a supplement to enhance your diet and exercise changes by MAYBE 10%.  If you’re trying to get more than that out of a supplement, you’re probably doing a mildly glorified version of smoking crystal meth. 

In case you’re wondering, I do not advise smoking crystal meth for weight loss, or any other reason, really.

Okay, back to green tea and weight loss. A recent meta-analysis out of the University of Connecticut suggests that green tea catechins (these are the antioxidants in green tea) can indeed help with weight loss, but only if there’s caffeine involved.

First off, for those of you unfamiliar with the term “meta-analysis“, that just refers to taking a whole bunch of studies and sort of summing up their results into one bigger group study.  The researchers don’t actually perform a scientific study of their own; they just borrow other people’s data.

They’re nice because you get to pool data into a much larger pile than one study alone can hope to do.  And, they’re cheap and relatively easy, because hey, somebody else did all the hard work of finding subjects and measuring them and poking them with a pointy stick (okay, not that last one). 

The bad news is, they are really, really vulnerable to researcher bias, in that if I’m a researcher and I really, really feel strongly that green tea is a super-fantastic weight loss supplement, I might (consciously or subsconsciously) only select those studies which will support my opinion.  This happens a lot more than you might think, so be aware of this particular limitation.

The Green Tea Weight Loss Meta-Study

In this case, the researchers found 15 studies that compared the use of green tea catechins with caffeiene to the use of the same green tea stuff without caffeine.  Added together, this provided a total of over 1,200 subjects, and when it comes to scientific analysis, more subjects is more better-er, as my Pappy used to say (not really). 

What they found, was that you pretty much had to have green tea plus caffeine in order to see any effect.  Green tea catechins alone didn’t seem to do much, and while caffeiene had some effect, it worked far better if you had green tea added in.  The effects were measurable for body weight, BMI (body mass index), and waist circumference.

Here’s the bad news.  When you read the fine print, this study doesn’t seem quite as strong.  Not every study measured the same things.  The dosages varied (of green tea as well as caffeine), as did the length of time the subjects were followed.  Basically, this was a real patchwork quilt of studies that didn’t seem to fit well together into a meta-analysis.

Still, it gives a crude indication that there’s probably something going on in the whole green tea- weight loss arena.  So let’s look at some more evidence.

The Green Tea Air Chamber Study

One study measured acutal energy expenditure in ten subjects with either placebo, caffeiene, or green tea extract (with caffeine).  Each subject was tested on three seperate occasions under three different conditions.  The researchers found a 4% increase in energy expenditure in the green tea group.  

How did they measure energy expenditure, you ask?  By sealing the subjects in a “respiratory chamber” for 24 hrs and measuring the changes in oxygen and cardon dioxide levels, and then using a fancy-schmancy equation to indirectly guess at how much energy the subjects were burning off.  Frankly, I’m not very familiar with that technique, so I can’t tell you how accurate it is or isn’t.

If we take it as a given that this technique is accurate for estimating energy expenditure, this is a nifty study, but ten subjects is a really small sample size.  This alone put this research more in the “pilot study” category, which is kind of a mini-study that checks to see if we should bother to make a bigger, more expensive study on the subject.  But by itself, it’s not too convincing.

The Bigger, More Expensive Green Tea Weight Loss Study

Okay, here’s a really good one.  A study published in the Journal of Nutrition in 2009 took a bunch of people, had them keep their caloric intake consistent, and had them exercise for three hours a week (some of it supervised).  Half of them got a caffeiene only supplement, the other had a green tea extract/caffeiene mix (the caffeiene level was the same as the other group).  Twelve weeks later, they checked the results.

What they basically found was that the green tea extract enhanced the exercise-induced weight loss.  Not a lot, but since they had over a hundred subjects, it was enough to be noticed.  What was most interesting was the effect on abdominal fat distribution.

You see, they didn’t just weigh these people.  They used CT scans to find out exactly how fat their bellies were before and after.  While the effects of green tea on body weight were only mildly noticeable, there was a much more obvious effect in abdominal fat distribution.  Specifically, the caffeiene only group had an average total abdominal fat area decrease of 0.3%, while the green tea group had a total abdominal fat loss of 7.7% on average.

I like this study because it directly measures what we really care about (does green tea make my big belly get smaller) rather than indirectly measuring something that maybe, kinda-sorta, somehow has something to do with what we want (like the energy expenditure air chamber thing).  Plus, they had a good sample size and simple-but-solid study design… the kind that’s harder to screw up.

And, they confirm what I told you up at the top of the page.  Supplements don’t do THAT much.  It’s the diet and exercise that will pull the heavy weight.  Even with large levels of green tea supplements (over 600 mg/day), there was only a small difference in fat loss over control… and these people were exercising, as well. 

So, in the great green tea weight loss supplement debate, remember that supplements only nudge you in the right direction… diet and exercise are going to do the real work in fat loss.

Article citations:

Meta-Study:

Effect of green tea catechins with or without caffeine on anthropometric measures: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Phung OJ, Baker WL, Matthews LJ, Lanosa M, Thorne A, Coleman CI.Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Jan;91(1):73-81. Epub 2009 Nov 11. Review.

Itty-Bitty Respiratory Chamber Study:

Dulloo AG, Duret C, Rohrer D, et al Efficacy of green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-h energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans. Am J Clin Nutr 1999;70:1040–5

Green tea catechin consumption enhances exercise-induced abdominal fat loss in overweight and obese adults.Maki KC, Reeves MS, Farmer M, Yasunaga K, Matsuo N, Katsuragi Y, Komikado M, Tokimitsu I, Wilder D, Jones F, Blumberg JB, Cartwright Y.J Nutr. 2009 Feb;139(2):264-70. Epub 2008 Dec 11.

We’ve all heard the phrase “stress kills”, but how?  What are the effects of stress on the human body?

Ever since the 50′s, a guy named Selye paved the way for scientific research into the biological effects of stress on an organism.  He identified a number of nasty effects that emotional stress can inflict on the human body.  In order to explain them most easily, first we have to go over a little bit of the nuts and bolts of how your nervous system works.  Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.

Stress And Health Is All About The Autopilot

First off, your Central Nervous System (CNS for short), which is your brain and spinal cord, coordinate all of the zillions of activities going on in your body at any particular time.  Some of those activities are big and voluntary… such as going for a jog.  Some are subtle and automatic, meaning we don’t have to think about doing them. 

Digestion is a good example.  You don’t have to actually think through each and every chemical reaction to break down your breakfast burrito, and thank goodness for that, but most of us really suck at chemistry.

Since neurologists like to give things big names, they decided to divide the nervous system up into stuff you do voluntarily, and stuff you do involuntarily (or automatically).  The automatic part of the nervous system they named the “Autonomic Nervous System“.  Why not the “Automatic Nervous System”?  Because that doesn’t sound anywhere near as impressive when you’re trying to show off to your friends, that’s why.

Those darn neurologists didn’t stop there.  Once we started learning a lot more about the stress response and how various critters, including humans, respond under stress, they divided the automatic part of the nervous system into two more divisions:  the sympathetic and parasympathetic.

Those are big words that really just stand for fairly simple concepts.  It’s important to understand the difference, however,  because that’s what’s going to explain the effects of stress on the human body.

Parasympathetic:  Feed and Breed

Bascially speaking, the parasympathetic nervous system (let’s just call it “feed and breed” from now on, it will be easier) is the mellowed-out version of you, physiologically speaking.  All the various maintenance issues of the body are handled in this version of your autopilot nervous system.  Digestion gurgles along, wounds get healed, tissues are repaired, your immune system is at its best, and reproductive functions are all a go. 

You can think of it in terms of keeping house if you like.  In Feed and Breed mode, the house gets cleaned, the trash gets taken out, and the lawn gets mowed.  There is peace in the valley.

Sympathetic:  Fight or Flight

The opposite end of the spectrum is the sympathetic nervous systerm, also called “Fight or Flight” mode (you may have heard this term before).  This is your body in warfare mode.  You are under attack, and everything in your body is shifted over to giving you every single edge possible for immediate survival.

Anything and everything that isn’t about fighting like crazy or running like the wind shuts down.  In other words, digestion, reproduction… all those things from Feed and Breed mode get the big OFF switch, and instead, vision improves, skeletal muscles (your big mover muscles like your arms and legs) get a  boost, and you’re essentially one big old adrenaline boost.

It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism.  Remember, things weren’t always so (relatively) calm and peaceful for us.  Back in the Stone Age, violence was commonplace.  If you go walking down the trail and a huge bear jumps out and wants to eat your face, you want every fiber of your being devoted to running away or fighting your way out.  Digestion?  Who cares about that?  It isn’t much good to be digesting your food nicely, if YOU are now being digested by the bear.

Chronic Effects of Stress

Of course, in the good old days, those stress episodes only lasted for a few minutes.  Pretty quickly, the situation resolved in one way or another… either you got away from the bear, or you were dead.  Either way, the stress response was over.  And, so, your body could then switch back into Feed and Breed mode once the threat was gone (well, assuming  you lived).

And there’s the kicker.  The stress response is only supposed to last a brief stretch of time.  The majority of the time, you should be chugging along in Feed and Breed mode, keeping your body nicely maintained, with little brief bursts of Fight or Flight to get you through the occasional ugliness.

But in our modern world, that isn’t how it works.  Our stresses are chronic, and so the effects of stress on our body compounds over time.  If you’re always in Fight or Flight mode, the house never gets cleaned (going back to our keeping house metaphor).  The dishes pile up in the sink, the trash overflows out the trash can and onto the floor, the lawn gets all overgrown and nasty and the neighbors start eyeballing you for bringing down property values all around the neighborhood.

Or, more literally, our body can’t do all the many, many maintenance chores that are necessary to keeping the machine running smoothly.  And so, we start to fall apart, little by little, because we’re stuck in Fight or Flight and can’t get back to Feed and Breed.

Parts is Parts, and Stress is Stress

Hang on there, Healthy Andy, you say.  I’m not being chased by bears.  That’s stupid.  I’ve never even seen a bear.  So how can you say my stresses are chronic?

Simple.  Your body responds to all stresses the same.  Positive or negative, physical or emotional, it doesn’t matter… you pop into Fight or Flight mode. 

So no, we don’t get chased by bears any longer, which is nice, but we do have things like jobs, and mortgages, and families, and all kinds of other sources of emotional stress that never seem to let up.  And since our stress is chronic, the effects of stress follow suit.  We get sick more easily.  We have trouble focusing.  We have trouble having kids.

Ever notice a couple who keeps trying and trying and trying to have kids, and they’re practically going nuts because it just isn’t happening, and finally they just throw their hands up and give up.  Two weeks later, there’s a bun in the oven.

Well, sure.  Because before, they were all riled up and stressing themselves out.  Remember, one of the effects of stress is to depress reproductive function, because that’s Feed and Breed stuff, and not Fight or Flight.  A fantastically fertile uterus never saved ANYONE from a charging bear.

And since our body doesn’t know any better… because it doesn’t think, it responds… you get two stressed out people who are stressed out because they can’t concieve BECAUSE they’re stressed out.  Once the stress goes away, Feed and Breed kicks back in, and suddenly yet another couple is out shopping for car seats.

It’s Not Absolute

I’ve kind of made it sound like there’s a big switch, with Feed and Breed on one side and Fight or Flight on the other, and never the two shall meet.  Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.  While one does tend to cancel the other out, it’s not an all or nothing sort of thing.

Instead, you sort of blend into stress, along a continuum.  So instead of a switch, it’s more like a dial, with STRESS on one side and MELLOW on the other, and the more intense the stress, the more the dial gets turned in that direction.  That’s a crude metaphor, but you get the idea.

And really, I haven’t gone into a lot of the specific physiological responses, like cortisol release, because frankly, this is already a really long article.  However, now you have a good basic understanding of the effects of stress on the human body and why stress and health are so closely related.

Your body needs down time to recover from Fight or Flight, so give yourself a break from time to time and stay healthy!

A recent question arose concerning fish oil side effects, and since I discuss so much about the value of fish oil supplements, it only seems right to specifically address any safety concerns people may have.  The good news is, there really isn’t much to worry about.

This is NOT how to take fish oil.

In fact, when it comes to fish oil and safety, the main concern is not side effects from the fish oil, but a concern about potential toxins contaminating the supplements.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the very first thing to check when buying fish oil is to insure that it is filtered, particularly for mercury and dioxins. 

The oceans of the world are horribly, horribly polluted… there’s apparently a giant swirling pile of garbage the size of Texas floating around out there… and if you’re a fish swimming around in those nasty chemicals 24/7, it isn’t such a stretch to recognize that some of those chemicals are going to find their way inside of that fish.  And if another fish eats that polluted fish, or many polluted fish, then all of those chemcials will become concentrated in the bigger fish as a result.

And if another, even BIGGER fish, comes along and eats that super-polluted fish… well, you get the idea.  The point is, toxins tend to get concentrated as you move up the food chain.  Then, you add in the fact that fish oil is basically a concentrated fish product, and you really, really concentrate a lot of the industrial pollutants into this product.

Most repuatable brands filter their oils for just this reason, so there’s no worry.  But, some of the real cheap-o brands out there don’t bother (it’s the most expensive step in the filtering process), so if you’re buying your fish oils at Walmart or Target or some other bargain basement place, be sure to double check on the label to be sure your fish oils are filtered.  In fact, just check regardless of where you get them.  I’d hate to see you grow a second, evil head from something so easily prevented.

Mild Side Effects Of Fish Oil

So other than extra evil heads, what other potential fish oil side effects are out there?  Well, there’s a couple of mild ones.  If you’re not used to fish oils and you start taking too much, too fast, you might start burping up fish taste (that’s called “fishy repeat”).  Kind of gross but harmless, and fairly easy to avoid.  Just ease gradually into your dosage over time, stick to good quality products, and take your fish oils with food (preferably something with fat in it).  You can also split the dosage up over the course of the day.

Related to that same idea is gastric upset, also known as “sore tummy”.  Again, the same things that cause fishy repeat are behind an upset stomach.  You may just be taking too much, too fast, or taking a particular brand that your body has an issue with.

These are relatively mild concerns.  Some more serious concerns are allergic reactions, blood thinning, and issues with pacemakers.

Allergic reactions are pretty self-explanatory.  If you’re allergic to fish… don’t take fish oil.  There’s unclear evidence on the interaction of fish oil with an increased irregular heartbeat for those people with pacemakers.  If this is you, talk to your doctor before supplementing with fish oils.

Blood Thinning From Fish Oils

Blood thinning effects are the most common concern.  Really, the blood thinning effect of fish oils is extremely mild, and are probably unnoticeable at dosages under 3 grams a day.   It’s not like fish oil capsules are going to turn a healthy person into a hemophiliac.

The real concern here is for people who are on medications for either blood thinning (such as Warfarin or other blood thinners) or medication for lowering blood pressure.  Those medications exert a very powerful effect, and large doses of fish oils might just bump you into a danger zone if you mix the two.  Again, it doesn’t happen often, usually only at high doses. 

My advice if you’re on blood thinners or blood pressure lowering medications is this:  talk to your physician about your interest in fish oils, and once you get the okay, gradually increase your dose.  I’m talking start at 500 mg a day for a couple of weeks, then up to one gram a day for several weeks, and so on and so forth.  If you start feeling light-headed or have any other symptoms, cut back your dosage. 

Fish Oil Side Effects:  Medications

The other major thing you need to look out for when it comes to fish oil side effects isn’t really a side effect per se.  It’s actually good news.

Here’s what I mean.  Fish oils have an amazing amount of research showing impressive effects in a variety of chronic diseases, from diabetes to depression and all kinds of other things you might never think of.  So if you start supplementing with fish oils at a therapeutic dosage, you may find some of these chronic conditions becoming more mild.

Nice, right?  Except if you’re taking medications for these conditions, all of a sudden, you’ll find that you’re now taking more than you need!  For example, if you’re a diabetic who requires a certain amount of insulin per day, and the severity of your diabetes reduces (and your need for insulin reduces along with it), if you continue taking your typical dose, you’ll actually be over-doing it.

Like I said, this doesn’t really qualify in the fish oil side effects category, and is actually good news… the less medication you need to take, the better… but still, you need to keep an eye on this.  Taking too much of a medication is just as bad as too little (actually, it’s usually worse).  Another reason to keep your doctor in the loop; monitor any improvement in your condition and whether or not that allows you to reduce the dosage of  your medication.

Notice you handle a lot of these issues the same way.  Ease into your fish oil dose (click here for more on fish oil dosage)  over time.  This will help you to avoid any digestive issues and also anticipate any problems you may have with side effects from fish oils with any medications you may be taking.

It’s worth saying that overall, the massive health benefits of fish oils far outweigh any potential side effects.  Just be smart, go slow, stick to the filtered stuff, and keep your doctor informed.

Stay healthy!

Forget Botox.  If you’re worried about wrinkles, a recent study shows how to prevent wrinkles naturally… you know, without injecting toxins straight into your face like a crazy person on a dare.

The quickie version is this.  A big, big study found that women over the age of 40 with wrinkly dry skin tended to be deficient in certain nutrients;  the big ones were Vitamin C and linoleic acid.  Now let’s go over it in more detail.

The Study On How To Prevent Wrinkles Naturally

Don't let this happen to YOUR skin!

First off, this is a big study.  The sample size was over 4,000 women aged 40-74, which is a great start.  The larger the sample size, the less likely you are to come to one conclusion or another just off of random variation.  The other thing I really liked about this study is that they used about a hundred different dermatologists to rate the womens’ skin for various factors (wrinkles, dryness, atrophy) based on a standardized measure.

With a lot of different raters and a lot of different subjects, you reduce the complication of having a rater who just thinks everybody in the world is dry and wrinkly, or just the opposite, and therefore throws off your results due to their bias.  With a large number of doctors doing the testing, some are going to lean one way, some are going to lean the other way, and odds are, it all works out in the end.

So far, so good.  The researchers assessed the subjects’ diets by 24 hour recall; in other words “Hey, write down everything you ate yesterday”.  Those of you who have read many of my articles know my mantra about self-report; specifically, you cannot trust self-report, because people lie, embellish, forget, miscalculate, or get embarassed.  To some extent, some of those factors were dealt with in the testing, as the person administering the questions helped people estimate portion size with phony food models (this is important, people tend to seriously underestimate their portion sizes), and to remember the little things people tend to forget to mention (did you put sugar in your coffee, did you eat a Tic-Tac after all those onions, that sort of thing).

Still, it’s self-report, so it’s not as accurate of a nutritional assessment as would be ideal.  Not to mention the fact that it’s just a 24 hour recall; we’re basically comparing how someone’s skin is compared to what they ate yesterday, in the hopes that what they ate yesterday is a good example of what they’ve eaten over the last few decades.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is, when it comes to nutritional research, self-report is usually the only practical alternative.   It’s too hard to follow a large number of people around and document everything they stuff in their face.  Try it some time. Wait, don’t.  You’ll draw stares.   Just stay aware of the limitations of this kind of study and draw your own conclusions.

The Results Of The Wrinkle Study

Okay, so enough about experimental design; what did the researchers find out about how to prevent wrinkles naturally?  After all, I just wrote an article trashing Botox and its weird side effect that was just discovered… it’s only fair I give you a better alternative.

The womens’ skin was assessed on three different dimensions: wrinkles, dryness, and atrophy (thinness and weakness).  There were a number of non-nutritional factors associated with these factors; sun exposure, being post-menopausal, and having low physical activity were all associated with “worse” wrinkle scores.  Smoking is another well-known problem factor in this area.

Now for the nutrients that prevent wrinkles. 

Each of the different measures of aging had different nutrient deficiencies associated with them, but there were some common threads.  Skin dryness was associated with low linoleic acid and Vitamin C (potassium and A were pretty close to significant, too), while skin atrophy was associated with low linoleic acid.  Wrinkles were associated with a number of nutrient deficiencies, including A, C, phosphorous, potassium, protein, and total cholesterol.

A higher overall fat and carbohydrate intake was associated with greater amount of wrinkles and skin aging.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the researchers did control for other variables like race (white people are more wrinkly), physical activity, BMI, sunlight exposure, and other stuff that might have confounded the results.  They even through in some fancy-schmancy statistical shenanigans called a logistic regression analysis designed to try to predict how much of a dose of this or that nutrient results in one measued “unit” of skin aging.  That’s neato and all, but really, I don’t put too much stock into those numbers because of the limitations of the experimental design (one day of recall).

How To Prevent Wrinkles Naturally

So what do we take away from this?  The major stuff you can do to slow or prevent wrinkles naturally is as follows:

• Avoid too much sunlight.  You’ve probably heard this before.
• Stop the smoking.  C’mon, you knew this already.
• Get some exercise.
• Don’t be old or white. (Just checking to see if you were paying attention)
• Eat a whole foods diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables to get as much of those nutrients in you as possible.  A good broad-spectrum multivitamin can act as an insurance plan against accidental gaps in coverage.  Additional Vitamin C isn’t a bad idea, either.
• Don’t neglect the protein!  Nuts, eggs, lean meats from grass-fed sources, all are important.   The lack of protein measure was by far the strongest association found with wrinkles.
• Lower your overall intake of fats and carbs/sugars.  Really, the main thing to avoid is the processed, artificial fats like trans fats, and processed carbs.  Unprocessed vegetables and fruits are fine. 
• Increase your intake of linoleic acid.  This is an essential fatty acid (fat) that the body makes from EPA and DHA, the main “good” fats in fish oil.  So, read this article on fish oil dosage.

The good news is, the way to prevent wrinkles naturally, really is just the same stuff I’m always telling you to do for good health; whole foods diet, fish oils, exercise, ditch the cigarettes, etc., etc.  So, if my pleas for a healthier lifestyle have fallen on deaf ears so far, perhaps the fear of wrinkly old-looking skin will motivate you.

Stay healthy!

Article citation:  

Cosgrove MC, Franco OH, Granger SP, Murray PG, Mayes AE. Dietary nutrient intakes and skin-aging appearance among middle-aged American women.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Oct;86(4):1225-31.