3 Good Reasons To Go Swimming? Heart Disease, Diabetes & Obesity

For some of us (70%, to be exact), this conversation will start off with a trip to your local YMCA to get swimming lessons. I bet you’ll want to get those lessons asaptually (new word) when you read about all the health benefits of swimming. Ladies, forget about your hair getting wet and find a protective style that will allow you to dive into the deep end without splitting your loose ends. Brothers, let go of the life jackets and come get some of this knowledge. This aerobic activity improves cardiovascular health, controls blood sugar and helps in weight loss.

Where’s Your Heart At?

According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the number one killer of African Americans. Swimming might have an answer to this problem. Breaststrokes can help decrease your chance of having an actual stroke. When cholesterol levels are high, strokes can occur. This aerobic activity improves your cardiovascular health and lowers cholesterol levels.

It’s recommend that you swim 20 to 40 minutes at a brisk pace. You’ll want to exert yourself moderately enough to work up a nice heart rate. You can start off slowly, resting between laps. However, over time you’ll be able to work out longer, adjusting your speed and technique as you progress in the practice.

Swimming is also great because you won’t be exerting your heart too much while doing it. Unlike running and other sports, swimming places less of a demand on your heart. Your heart rate while swimming will be around 10-20 beats per second.

Diabetes

The loss of Phife Dawg at 45 and Doug Banks at 57 sent an alarm to our community, which is desperately in need of an intervention for diabetes. In addition to the many diabetes-related complications, diabetics also have a higher risk of heart disease. Swimming helps to burn calories which helps in weight loss, important for diabetes prevention and management.

Swimming helps to strengthen all the major muscles in the body which helps in lowering blood sugar. Because of the nature of diabetes and how it causes the blood sugar in the body to fluctuate, it’s recommended that you regularly swim to maintain the glucose control levels. Start off by swimming as much as possible. This can be 5-10 minute sessions, eventually working your way up to 45-60 minute sessions with 10-15 minute rest periods.

Weight Loss & Toning

Going to the pool and doing the regular lap routine is only a start. For weight loss and strengthening, you want to maximize your time in the pool by trying out the butterfly stroke, fast crawl, breaststroke, backstroke and sidestroke to burn a lot of calories. These high-impact strokes will help you lose weight and tone up in places that weren’t imaginable with your other aerobic activities. For ladies looking to lose inches around the waist, this is the perfect exercise.

I’m tired of going to pool parties in the summertime and seeing all these good looking people parlaying on the side and not in the pool. As heart disease, diabetes and obesity continue to be major life-threatening conditions in our community, we must think about new and creative ways to address these issues. Exercise isn’t only lifting weights and running. Add swimming to your list – for life.

Sparkling Water May Lead to Weight Gain

Sparkling water may be the reason you’re piling on the pounds, according to scientists.

Carbonated water is often viewed as a healthy alternative to sugary drinks or booze, but the fizzy drink may not be anywhere near as diet-friendly as it appears.

New research has suggested that sparkling water may actually be making you feel empty, encouraging you to eat more than you would otherwise.

The Daily Mail reports that the carbon dioxide, which gives the drink its fizz can trigger a hunger hormone, prompting us to scoff more food as a result.

This finding is based on a study of rats’ behavior, with researchers giving rodents different drinks and monitoring their relative weight gain.

Scientists from Birzeit University in the Palestinian West Bank also tested their findings on humans, noting that the hunger hormone ghrelin spikes in people after drinking sparkling water.

People who had sparkling water for breakfast were found to have six times the ghrelin level of those who had still water.

In tests on rats, scientists noted the rodents that drank fizzy drinks along with their normal diets ate more than rats who were given still water and "flat" soft drinks.

And those findings held true for rats given carbonated water, as well as for those which had zero-calorie versions of fizzy drinks.

Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: “The Department of Health must now curb the use of any chemicals that impinge on health and that should include carbon dioxide if this effect is replicated in further studies.”

But not everyone is as convinced by the study.

Gavin Partington, director of The British Soft Drinks Association hit back, saying: “There is no body of scientific evidence that carbon dioxide contained in soft drinks — or even beer — causes increased hunger or obesity.

“It is bad science just to assume an outcome from a study on rats will be the same for humans.”

Why Waking Up Early Could Help You Lose Weight

Researchers say early risers make healthier food choices than their night owl counterparts

Eating healthily and losing weight can be difficult tasks for anyone, but a new study shows that when you choose to go to bed and wake up can make a big difference.

Researchers from The Obesity Society (TOS) have found that consumers who wake up early and go to bed at a decent hour are more likely to have a balanced diet than those who stay up later. It is the first study of its kind to investigate what and when people with different internal clocks eat.

TOS spokesperson Dr. Courtney Peterson explains that early birds have an advantage over night owls when it comes to fighting obesity because they instinctively choose to eat healthier foods earlier in the day. She states that factors such as metabolism and our biological clocks play a big part in weight loss.

“Previous studies have shown that eating earlier in the day may help with weight loss and lower the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. What this new study shows is that our biological clocks not only affect our metabolism but also what we choose to eat," she said.

Early birds vs. night owls

The study analyzed data from 2,000 randomly chosen participants and looked at how their circadian and biological clock rhythm affected what they chose to eat and at what time they were most likely to eat.

The findings suggested that early birds are more likely than night owls to eat high-energy, healthy foods throughout the day. On the other hand, night owls were found to consume less protein and more sucrose and saturated fatty acids. These differences were even more pronounced on weekends, with night owls eating more often and at more irregular times. The researchers found that night owls also tended to be less physically active and have lower quality sleep.

"Linking what and when people eat to their biological clock type provides a fresh perspective on why certain people are more likely to make unhealthy food decisions," said lead researcher Mirkka Maukonen. "This study shows that evening type people have less favorable eating habits, which may put them at a higher risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease."

Weight loss implications

While the health implications are striking, the researchers believe that the findings could be particularly important to consumers who are seeking to lose weight. They say that health care providers could help consumers by directing them towards healthier options and specific meal times.

"Clinicians can help steer people to healthier options -- and suggest the optimal time to eat these foods -- based on what we now know about our biological clocks," said Peterson.

Obesity? Heart Disease? Diabetes? Cancer? Maybe it’s not your genes–it’s your lifestyle

For so long, we’ve been conditioned to think our genes are rigid and unchangeable; and they alone define our health and longevity. We expect chronic disease to be treated like the common cold. Take a pill and go back to work.

You can’t fix obesity or diabetes with a pill; some pills (like statin drugs) actually raise your risk of developing diabetes or having a heart attack, and if you consume the typical American diet that consists of over one hundred pounds of refined white sugar and corn syrup per year—you are actually enabling diabetes. And for diabetics who have been conditioned to think diet sodas and artificial sugar will keep your blood sugar stable—think again. Sugar substitutes are toxic chemicals that kill your nerves. Literally—it excites them to death.

We have been deliberately conditioned to look to someone outside ourselves for answers—when all we really need to do is look within. In ancient times, we had our tribe, our family, and our community. We passed our inherited knowledge from generation to generation, and everything that brought us joy, that healed us, that made us wiser and stronger—is encoded within our DNA. We must simply remember.

If you’re old enough to remember the incredibly popular “Marlboro Man” television advertisement campaign (1955-1999), you remember those smokin’ hot cowboys—that showed us that filtered cigarettes weren’t just for martini sipping housewives. When the ads first appeared in 1955, sales were $5 billion. Two years later, they were $20 billion. If you remember, those scientific studies on safety of smoking, conducted by none other than the same Phillip Morris tobacco company who sold the cigarettes—“PROVED” that smoking didn’t cause lung cancer. Of course, the studies were scientific– those trusted nighttime news anchors that reported the results wouldn’t lie to us. And then five of the cowboy ad “hunks” died of cancer and smoking related lung diseases. There were six total. Cigarettes became known as the “Cowboy Killers.” And maybe—just maybe the science was a little skewed—since the tobacco company had a huge stake in the outcome. And then we learned that even second hand smoke was bad for us. Remember coming home from a restaurant and your clothes and hair smelled like an ashtray?

But we learned our lesson didn’t we? We no longer blindly believe pseudo science, paid for and conducted by tobacco companies to sell us cancer-causing cigarettes; or pharmaceutical companies to sell us cancer drugs that give us cancer; or foods laden with pesticides that poison our gut. We learned right? And after all, we now have legit TV doctors to explain the latest research so we can trust the validity of new drugs and food safety.

We. Learned. Right?

The study of immunology is relatively new. Just a couple decades ago—no one understood the importance of the gut micro biome in the prevention of chronic disease. You could say the greatest predictor of true immune system health is the state of the gut. Trust it! The antibodies in your immune system contain the memory of all the diseases that your ancestors overcame. Everything you need to know is already inside you—made possible by the evolution of cellular DNA memory and your mother’s breast milk.

What thousands of epigenetic studies have taught us, is that merely possessing a specific gene, does not guarantee the expression of it. Telomeres are DNA pieces at the end of chromosomes that act as protective end caps. Every time a cell divides, the chromosome end cap gets shorter. Once a chromosome gets too short, it dies. This process has been associated with rapid aging and death. We now have the science to   show that people who consistently maintain high levels of physical activity have significantly longer telomeres than those with a sedentary lifestyle. High physical activity gives you a biological aging advantage of nine years over those who are sedentary!  (Study listed below)

Lifestyle choices can engage our cells to perform at their peak. All of us can consciously choose to engage in behaviors that enable our genes to heal us, not harm us.

In the words of Deepak Chopra and Rudi Tanzi:

“You will always have the genes you were born with, but genes are dynamic, responding to everything we think, say, and do. Suddenly they’ve become our strongest allies for personal transformation. When you make lifestyle choices that optimize how your genes behave, you can reach for a state of health and fulfillment undreamed of even a decade ago. The impact on prevention, immunity, diet, aging, and chronic disorders is unparalleled.”