A few months ago I ran a story spotlighting some pros and cons of alcohol consumption

Beach Body or Beer Belly: Alcohol and Your Physique

For those of you who don’t want to read the entire piece, here are the Coles notes:

• small amount of alcohol –> health promoting
• red wine –> greatest cardiovascular benefits
• distilled liquor –> best way to get buzzed for fewest calories
• frequent alcohol consumption –> not conducive to building a great physique

Pretty straightforward really. Of course, there are many more considerations than just those I’ve listed above. One of the issues that seems to be most challenging for individuals looking to include the occasional drinks for “health” reasons is the commong refrain “but I don’t like drinking wine”.

If that’s the case and beer is really more your thing, then you might consider using St. Patrick’s day to indulge in a pint.

Guinness = Aspirin?

Although I strongly caution against taking Guinness’ slogan at face value (a pint of Guiness a day is a great way to pack on 5 lbs), darker beers do have some research backing their benefit in terms of reducing platelet aggregation… at least in dogs: Guinness Could Really be Good for You.

In humans, the research isn’t quite as convincing that dark beers (stouts) have markedly stronger health properties than lighter beers (lagers). However, the good news is that both types of beer do have some (and I repeat, some) health promoting properties.

Research done at The University of Western Ontario (Alcohol: Friend or Foe? Alcoholic Beverage Hormesis for Cataract and Atherosclerosis is Related to Plasma Antioxidant Activity) has shown that the potential health benefits of alcohol consumption are strongly related to the dose.

As we can see in the graph above, one drink of red wine, lager or stout all seem to positively contribute to plasma antioxidant activity. This is good. Unfortunately, 3 drinks of those same alcoholic beverages all show significant pro-oxidant activity… this is not good.

Strangely enough, 3 glasses of non-alcoholic stout were also problematic, which further underscores our still nascent knowledge about how food interacts with our bodies.

Bottom line, a pint of beer or glass of wine a day isn’t going to kill you and does appear to have a role in improving cardiovascular health. Then again, consuming copious amounts of vegetables and fruit, as well as sleeping 7-9 hours a night, practicing stress reduction techniques and exercising regularly have even greater benefits to cardiovascular health… but those don’t really jive with the spirit of St. Paddy’s day.

I’ll just point out once more that although one drink could be viewed as health promoting, anything more and you start to do more harm than good. Of course, I don’t think my public service announcement will really change anyone’s drinking plans for today… but I figured you should at least know

Till next time, train hard and eat clean.

And P.S. – If you are drinking today, do the smart thing and get a DD or leave the keys at home and call a taxi. If you choose to drink in excess and damage your own health, that’s your business. But endangering the lives of others… not acceptable.

Related posts:

1. Beach Body or Beer Belly: Alcohol and Your Physique
2. Beating the Bulge: 5 Strategies for Combating Holiday Weight Gain
3. Multivitamins: Does a Body Good?

Although the title of his piece alludes to the fact that while statin use does lower cholesterol, it also increases your risk for diabetes by 9%, the crux of his post dealt with the overall foolishness of trying to treat chronic/lifestyle diseases with medications. Here’s a telling quote (the bold type is my addition),

The fundamental focus of lifestyle or functional approaches (which includes nutrition, exercise, and stress management) is the restoration of normal function and balance in each individual. When you do this, risk factors and symptoms go away automatically. Conventional interventions, on the other hand, are primarily focused on blocking, interfering with, or excising a biochemical or physical manifestation of disease. This is the reason biology shifts towards normal when using lifestyle medicine, instead of medication, and the only side effects are good ones: weight loss, more energy, better sleep, increased well being, a reduction of most disease, and increased longevity.

While it is still a matter of public debate, there is ample evidence that lifestyle therapies equal or exceed the benefits of conventional therapies such as medication and surgery. Nutrition, exercise, and stress management can no longer be considered alternative medicine. They are essential medicine, and often the most effective and cost-effective therapies to deal with the chronic disease epidemic that afflicts millions of Americans and is now the primary cause of death worldwide.

He also goes on to highlight the work of another doctor, Dr. David Ludwig, who suggests that our current dietary recommendations have been a key player in this increase in chronic disease.

A sentiment I echo 100%.

Dr. Ludwig points out that our singular focus on nutrients in isolation (i.e. carbs vs. fats. vs protein vs. vitamin C vs. fibre, etc) has led us to being a nation who “knows” more about our food than ever before, yet who understand absolutely nothing.

Let’s face it, the human body is pretty intelligent and remarkably adaptable. The adaptability is why we have civilizations that can exist on diets where over 80% over their energy comes from carbohydrates and others where less than 5% of total energy comes from carbohydrates or how it’s possible to have civilizations where daily alcohol consumption is integral to a healthy lifestyles and others where the best health is achieved by teetotalers.

And yet “nutrition experts” will argue till they are blue in the face about the superiority of one diet over another (high carb vs. low carb, vegan vs. meat centric, etc). “Experts” who suggest that by adding a particular “super food” to your diet, your health will dramatically improve. Or that the best dietary solution for everyone is contained by some generalist food guide.

Right.

As a result of the bastardization of our understanding of health over the past 50-100 years, we now have millions of people looking for the magic pill we can take that will “cure obesity”, “stop cancer” or “eliminate heart disease”. Which is sad… so sad.

Health Care in the Year 2010

Optimal health isn’t about putting more synthetically-derived compounds into your body, it’s actually about doing the opposite. If you want the “secret” to better health, here it is:

Stop

• Eating crap. Seriously, your diet sucks.
• Relying on prescription medication to treat chronic disease.
• Stressing about everything. Most things just aren’t that important.
• Expecting your health to improve without any effort on your behalf.

Start

• Moving more. Exercise isn’t a punishment, it’s a celebration of what makes us human.
• Building and sustaining meaningful relationships. Facebook is fun, but will it help you move a sofa?
• Appreciating that results take hard work. Although building a house out of bricks takes longer than one built out of straw, it also won’t crumble the first time the wind picks up.
• Eating whole foods. Don’t worry about calories, macros or % daily value. Your grandparents never knew how many calories were in the stew they ate, but they knew that eating stew was better for them than eating ice cream… and not one of them got diabetes at the age of 35.
• Making sleep a priority. It’s the cheapest and most dramatic body composition tool we have.

So there you have it, 9 “secret” strategies to implement today to dramatically overhaul your life. I realize that nothing on this list is either shocking or new, but that’s beside the point. The point is we need to start doing these things, otherwise our collective health will continue to spiral downwards.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. Multivitamins: Does a Body Good?
2. 30 Things I’ve Learned by 30
3. H1N1: Looking Back 1 Year Later

Sadly, there are no “secret” approaches for building a better body. However, with even a basic understanding of human physiology you can figure out a pretty rock solid plan to keep the pounds away. Of course, this presupposes you have long since given up the charade of fat loss being a math equation (calories in = calories out) and accepted that excess body fat is predominantly a biochemistry/hormonal problem.

This guy knows a thing or two about weight loss

Once you accept that in order to create sustainable fat loss, you have to manipulate metabolism, diet and hormones to create the proper internal environment, you have a fighting chance of being successful with your body transformation efforts.

When I work with a new client, I like to tell them that weight loss requires a multi-factorial approach. In other words, to have success we have to address:

1. diet
2. exercise/physical activity
3. recovery

Most people have an appreciation that losing fat will require adjustments to diet and exercise, but very few understand how important proper recovery is in all this. So today I thought I’d write about the forgotten fat buster: sleep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… everyone knows they should get more sleep. But I bet you didn’t realize how stupid skipping sleep is if you are serious about positively transforming your body.

Let’s imagine you a busy individual who only sleeps 4-5 hours a night. Any idea of what that can do to your hormones? Thankfully I do and I’m going to share it with you right now! Below are the results of a neat little study that looked into the hormone changes (leptin and ghrelin) that are produced by just 2 consecutive nights of limited sleep:

• When leptin decreases: you experience a decrease in metabolic rate and increase appetite.
• When ghrelin increases: you experience increased hunger and appetite.

Wow… knowing that, those numbers look even worse than before! As you can clearly see, even a couple of nights of shoddy sleep will send our hunger control hormones (leptin and ghrelin) out of control!

Now imagine the real-world significance of these hormonal changes. If you were to act on a 30% increase in appetite for high carbohydrate foods, you might find yourself mowing down on a 300-400 kcal muffin or bagel, which would send insulin levels skyrocketing then plummeting, then a vicious cycle of hunger would begin…

See where I am going with this?

Making matters worse, if you only sleep for 4 hours, you’ve got a whole 20 hours to fall prey to those cravings. Needless to say, if you are not making sleep a priority, then you are seriously jeopardizing your body composition efforts.

Here’s some “secret” weight loss advice: turn off the television, email or your Blackberry and get to bed at a reasonable hour. It doesn’t cost you anything that the long-term benefits are priceless.

Seriously – you aren’t that important.

Just something to think for anyone looking for the “magic pill” that will cure your weight loss woes.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Related posts:

1. Rethinking Weight Control
2. Ladies, Cardio Sucks For Weight Loss
3. 30 Things I’ve Learned by 30

That being said, they aren’t the only green products that contribute to a great physique. Today I’m going to spotlight another great “green” product to boost your body transformation efforts: green tea.

Who says it isn’t easy being green?

What is tea?

Although many beverages are marketed as tea, most are actually “herbal teas” or tisanes. Real tea must come from the Camelia Sinesis plant. This means that only white, green, oolong and black teas are actually beverages that can be labelled as tea.

Since all teas come from the same plant, what makes them have different health properties and taste?

Basically it amounts to how the plant is processed. Leaves of the tea plant begin to wilt and oxidize, if not dried quickly after picking. Tea leaves turn progressively darker as their chlorophyll breaks down and tannins are released. This enzymatic process is a kind of quasi-fermentation. The next step in processing is to stop oxidation at a predetermined stage by heating the leaves, which deactivates the enzymes responsible.

In case you were wondering, each category of tea is made in the following fashion:

• White tea: wilted and unoxidized.
• Green tea: unwilted and unoxidized.
• Oolong tea: wilted, bruised and partially oxidized.
• Black tea: wilted and completely oxidized.

Although all varieties of tea have some similar properties (they do come from the same plant after all), each method of preparation results in a product with specific health benefits. And our interest today is to look at green tea.

Green Tea Composition and Health Benefits

First let me clarify a common misconception, a cup of tea DOES NOT contain more caffeine than a cup of coffee. A standard 8 oz. serving of coffee provides 80-120 mg of caffeine whereas a typical cup of tea contains 25-40 mg.

That being said, green tea does contain other caffeine-like compounds, theophylline and theobromine, that have properties similar to caffeine. However, in contrast to using caffeine, theophylline and theobromine ingestion tends not to result in the “crash” that can accompany caffeine ingestion.

Green tea also contains a number of polyphenols with contribute to its purported health effects. There is a body of research that suggest green tea can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, various cancers, kidney stones, while improving bone density and dental health as well as enhancing cognitive function.

An impressive list to say the least, although I’m not about to suggest that green tea is some magical “cure for what ails ya”. Obviously the impact of green tea consumption will vary between individuals but with so many potential benefits, green tea seems like a valuable addition to your diet.

The Mirror Test

Despite extolling the health benefits of green tea, many of you still won’t be convinced to start drinking the stuff. But what if I told you that green tea might help you drop a few extra pounds… would you suddenly take up a keen interest?

Although tea contains a number of chemicals, it is one of the polyphenolic compounds in green tea, epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG), that may play a particularly potent role in fat loss.

In a study published recently, researchers investigated the potential for EGCG to produce fat loss. Over 12 weeks researchers compared the effect of a beverage containing 625 mg of catechins + 39 mg caffeine to a control beverage containing only 39 mg caffeine and no catechins.

Participants (generally healthy, sedentary individuals BMI ~32 m/kg²) were asked to maintain constant energy intake (which they did) and engage in ~180 min/wk moderate intensity exercise, including at least 3 supervised sessions per week.

Basically, they were asked to workout 3 times a week for about an hour, quite a realistic, albeit sub-optimal, amount of training for the average individual.

After 12 weeks of drinking one of the beverages every day, what did these researchers find?

Maki et al. (2009). J. Nutr. 139: 264–270.

Surprisingly, even with this modest amount of exercise and no instructions to reduce caloric intake, both groups lost weight, which was good. However, the catechin/caffeine combo was far more effective in helping people lose abdominal fat, which is viewed as the most dangerous fat from a health perspective.

Overall, the catechin/caffeine group lost 1.2 kg more kilos (2 ½ pounds) than did the caffeine alone group. This isn’t an earth shattering difference by any stretch of the imagination, but given how little effort it takes to add green tea into your daily routine is there any reason not to adopt this habit?

What was particularly intriguing is that this extra weight loss was produced despite no actual diet advice or intervention being a part of the study. Kind of comforting to know that adding a simple habit like drinking green tea can significantly enhance the benefits of even a poorly designed exercise protocol.

Frankly, given how challenging it can be to produce sustainable fat loss, incorporating regular green tea seems like one of those “small change, big benefit” lifestyle modifications that make a whole lot of sense.

Green Tea Recommendations

The 625 mg of catechins in the aforementioned study provided about 215 mg of EGCG. But how much green tea is that in real world terms?

Tough to say with any certainty, since within green teas there is a wide variety of types and processing methods. A cup (8 oz) of most loose leaf green teas should provide anywhere from 60-180 mg of EGCG. This makes drinking 2-4 cups per day seems like a reasonable goal to shoot for.

A word of advice: not all green tea is created equally. Loose leaf green tea contains far more EGCG than does the green tea found in tea bags. Frankly, the green tea found in bags is of a vastly inferior quality and taste and I recommend only using it as a last resort.

Your best bet: delicious and nutritious loose leaf tea.

The same avoid warning goes for decaffeinated green tea. It’s got about 1/3 the amount of EGCG per serving as does regular green tea, so unless you are extremely caffeine sensitive, I’d advise opting for the real deal and just making sure you consume it well before bed time.

One of the best ways to markedly increase your green tea consumption is to brew up a large batch of green tea, then chill it and drink it as iced tea. You can tote around a 1 L water bottle full of green tea and drink it throughout the day.

Although flavoured, bagged green teas are garbage, flavoured loose leaf is not. I highly recommend picking up a mango/lime/cherry flavoured green. These teas are amazing both hot or cold.

Another point in favour of green tea, a 100 g bag costs about $7 and will make at least 20-25 cups. This amounts to only $0.28-$0.35 per serving, which is far, far cheaper than a can of coke, cup of coffee or bottled water.

Give loose leaf green tea a try; your taste buds, wallet and waistline will thank me.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean.

Related posts:

1. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 1
2. The Role of Exercise in Weight Loss: Part 2
3. Twinkies: Secret to Weight Loss Success?

Our national holiday marks the unofficial start to our all-too-brief summer season and what is more quintessential Canadian summer than rushing outside to soak up some rays?

But before you run off to the beach or up to the cottage, you mustn’t forget about protecting yourself from the sun, right? I mean, that’s the message we’ve had drilled into our collective psyches over the past 30 years, often through the use of creative ad campaigns.

Take Australia’s sun protection message that began in 1981: Slip-Slop-Slap. This campaign, which counsels people to “slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, and slap on a hat”, has been heralded as both ingenious and necessary, given that Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Clearly, governments around the world have decided there’s tremendous value in promoting the message: too much sun exposure = skin cancer.

Given how diligent we, as Canadians, seem to be about applying sun screen before any outdoor activities, it appears as though we’ve received the “protect yourself from sun message” loud and clear… only one small problem: this message is in stark contrast to the data.

Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself…

Remember when I mentioned that Australia started their Slip-Slop-Slap campaign in 1981? Well shortly after launching their sunscreen campaign, look at what happened to their skin cancer rates:

These data slides are taken from a presentation done by Ed Gorham and colleague from the Faculty of Family and Preventatitve Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. The following data slides come from their presentation on vitamin D, skin cancer and sunscreen (accessible at: Skin Cancer Sunscreen Dilemna).

Yowsa. That’s a pretty dramatic increase in skin cancer incidence. But one could argue these results are an aberration. Let’s see what other data is out there.

Off to the US where Connecticut, amazingly, has maintained a tumor registry ever since the 1930′s. Why they have such detailed records is beyond me, but I’m not complaining; it makes for a great analysis of historical trends. What do we see there?

Seems that up until about 50 years ago, synthetic sun screens of any kind were non-existent, as were skin cancer rates. Then in Connecticut, like in Australia, there is quite the damning evidence that once sunscreen use became more prevalent, skin cancer rates also rose dramatically. This is not good.

However, before we get too crazy, let’s acknowledge that this data is correlational. I suppose these relationships could be mere happenstance… except when you start to include controlled studies, you get a similar story.

Wow. At best, these data suggest that sun screen doesn’t work. At worst, they suggest that using sunscreen slightly increases your risk of developing skin cancer. Just what the heck is going on!?!?

Let’s consider the human-sun relationship logically for a second. Up until relatively recently on the evolutionary time-scale, humans were exposed to the sun’s rays pretty much 365 days a year without the benefit of sunscreen. We simply wouldn’t have been able to survive in cold climates, therefore we would have migrated to live in relatively warm climates with plenty of sun exposure.

But did our ancestors routinely die of skin cancer while living in warmer climates? Impossible to say, however, we need not only delve into historical speculation. We can actually test the sun exposure = skin cancer hypothesis today.

If sun exposure = skin cancer, if would be reasonable to expect that skin cancer rates would be highest in those areas of the world hovering around the equator, as they get sunshine year-round.

But when we look at these data, tell me what you see:

Data obtained from the Cancer Research UK website

It certainly doesn’t appear that people living in sunny areas of the world are particularly predisposed to developing skin cancer. Nor is it a slam-dunk argument that only fair skinned individuals get skin cancer, as Eastern Europeans and the Japanese are both quite fair skinned, yet exhibit low rates of skin cancer.

If anything, it seems as though nations that get less sun exposure, or whose vocations tend to be indoors, rather than outdoors seem to be at greater risk for developing skin cancer.

Hmmm… could it be that the fact that humans managed to co-exist with ample sunlight for millennia upon millennia without any problems should tell us something? Might routine sun exposure actually be health promoting? Might our recommendations for sun avoidance be grounded in folly?

If you answered yes, yes and yes, pat yourself on the back. The reason why sun avoidance and an over-prescription of sunscreen makes zero sense has to do with vitamin D production.

Our uncovered skin produces vitamin D following sun exposure. Specifically, our skin produces vitamin D after exposure to UVB light (the wavelength most prevalent between 10 AM and 2 PM). In as little as 20 minutes of UVB sun exposure, a human will produce anywhere from 10,000-20,000 IU of vitamin D.

I know our current recommendation for vitamin D is only 400 IU per day and that you fear producing 20,000 IU of vitamin D might cause you to overdose. I mean, who hasn’t heard that fat soluble vitamins, like vitamin D, are potentially toxic? That the sun’s rays between 10 AM and 2 PM are the most “deadly”? Thankfully, the reality is that you’ve got nothing to fear.

In theory humans can overdose on vitamin D supplements, but one lovely fact about our physiology is that we shut off vitamin D production once we reach an optimal level. Our bodies are pretty smart like that.

Well realizing that our bodies have evolved a mechanism of producing a critical nutrient from the sun and a natural mechanism to cease production when we have enough is certainly comforting. But what about the recommendations saying we only need 400 IU of vitamin D per day?

Turns out that that amount of vitamin D is enough to prevent rickets, but nowhere near the amount needed to optimize your immune system and hormone regulation as a whole.

Now I’ll be the first to caution anyone against deliberately cooking themselves to the point of getting a sunburn. However, even a mild sunscreen, SPF 8, will block over 90% of our vitamin D production.

For a northern nation where UVB sunlight is virtually non-existent from October through April, limiting our already brief window of natural vitamin D production doesn’t seem like all that smart of an idea.

Good Canadian… bad science

But what exactly does vitamin D do for us?

Vitamin D is actually a group of fat-soluble secosteroid hormones. Given that it is a hormone, vitamin D has a wide range of effects on the human system. Among the systems or conditions that benefit from vitamin D are:

• immune system function
• influenza protection
• heart disease
• stroke
• hypertension
• autoimmune diseases
• diabetes
• depression
• chronic pain
• osteoarthritis
• osteoporosis
• muscle weakness & muscle wasting
• birth defects
• periodontal disease
• and 17 types of cancer!

Phew. That list is quite extensive isn’t it? If you said that vitamin D positively affects every single meaningful healh condition currently affecting humankind, you probably wouldn’t be too far off the truth.

Obviously I’m going to draw your attention to the last point, that increasing vitamin D production protects against 17 types of cancer. Even if we could conclusively prove that excess sun exposure caused skin cancers (and from the data above, it doesn’t really appear that way), does it make a whole lot of sense to increase your risk for all of the above disorders in order to protect yourself from one of the most treatable forms of cancer?

Recently, Dr. Mike Eades (a bariatric doc and someone with a strong appreciation for evidence-based medicine) wrote a couple of brilliant articles about sun exposure and cancer rates. If you’ve got 5 minutes, I strongly recommend you check his most recent post: Heliophobe Madness.

Among the many valuable points he makes, is a stunning comparison between the mortality from skin cancer vs. breast, colon and prostate cancers, three cancers that are linked to a deficiency of vitamin D. He quotes data from the American Cancer Society which reports that in the US in 2009, 40,230 people died from breast cancer, 32,050 from prostate cancer and 51,370 from colon cancer. That makes 123,650 individuals who died from these cancers combined.

By contrast, 8,700 US individuals people died from skin cancer. So even if sun exposure leads to skin cancer, we are pushing an intervention, massive sun screening, to protect against one of the mildest and most treatable forms of cancer, in exchange of increasing people’s risk of developing far more deadly forms of cancer.

Makes sense to me… or not.

Since this post has already gone on forever, I’ll wrap it up here. But if you are interested in learning more about vitamin D and the misguided science behind sunscreens, I suggest you check out this short video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’ve got an interest in learning more about this important topic, I urge you to check out Ed Gorham’s excellent presenation on vitamin D production, sun exposure and sun screens:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alright now… go enjoy yourself some of the health promoting UVB sunshine. Just don’t try to get an entire summer’s worth of sun exposure in a day

Till next time, train hard and eat clean.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Supplements for Better Health and Physiques
2. Multivitamins: Does a Body Good?
3. Take Statins, Get Diabetes