Sleep!

It’s more important than most people think. Have you ever heard someone say, “I only need four hours of sleep”?

While they may think they’re being truthful, they are not exactly correct. The fact is, your body needs many hours of sleep in order to function at its optimum. If someone seems to be operating just fine on 4-5 hours of sleep, they will still be better off and even more productive if they were to get a full eight hours.

We physical fitness freaks have long known how important sleep is to recovery. We know that growth and repair only happens at rest; particularly when you sleep. Don’t get enough sleep and your gains go backward due to overtraining also known as under recovering. It is also understood that those who sleep less tend to be fatter, and have a harder time getting rid of body fat.

But what else does a lack of sleep impact besides your muscles, tendons, and body fat?

Recent discoveries have shown that not getting enough sleep can cause permanent damage to brain cells and that making up sleep in the following days is actually ineffective in reversing the brain damage.

Sleep is so important to every-day functioning that the The American Academy of Pediatricians has recently suggested that schools push their start times later in the morning due to the teen agers’ circadian rhythm.

“…anything less than 8.5 hours to nine hours a night on school days—can contribute to health issues such as obesity, diabetes, mood changes and behavior problems.”

Read more about the AAP’s suggestion for schools to start later as opposed to suggesting teens go to bed earlier:
Time.com: “School Should Start Later” Click here.

Read more about how the body and nervous system need lots of sleep for recovery from exercise.

Sportsmedicine.about.com: “Do Athletes Need Extra Sleep” Click here.

Bodybuilding.com: “The Importance Of Sleep!” And here.

“New York Times: “Sleep After Hard Workouts? You Must Be Dreaming” And also here.

How many hours do you get? How are your workouts? How about your alertness and ability to think? Let me know in the comments!

– bum

Fitness and health friends, if you could only get ONE piece of fitness equipment for the home, what would I recommend?

It would have to make a big difference quick, and work more than one body part. It would have to be convenient, easy to use and light so you can use it often.

Would you like to have toned arms, a defined back, and of course your six pack shining through?

Then I recommend the standard DOORWAY PULLUP BAR!

 

Get it at Amazon! Quick, they just dropped the price to $19.95! < Be sure to get this one as it comes with free ab straps.

If you can’t do a pullup yet, no worries! It’s all about progression. Start off by placing your feet on a chair to help you a bit. You can also attach a strong elastic band that you place your knee into so it can help you pull yourself up. You then lessen the help each week by either pushing the chair farther away or getting a weaker band. Keep doing that weekly ’til you can do 6 regular pull ups. Women, I’m talking to you too!

This will give you a defined back instead of a soft, shapeless, smooth looking back (back fat, yuck). It’s also great for your biceps. It’s marketed as being good for pushups, but in true, honest 10in30 fashion, I think they don’t do much for pushups. I mean, they might help you go a bit deeper, but you can get by with doing pushups on the floor.

I just leave it up there and switch between pullups, pushups, squat jumps, leg raises. Rest 1 minute. Repeat 3x.

Ladies, don’t worry about getting too much definition. This is the same as the common concern about “getting to muscular”. You have to actively try to get super muscular. The pros go through hell, don’t think you can get like them “by accident”. That’s a funny concept when you think about it like that, right?

Abs? Yes, it is great for abs.

You have to get the one that comes with free ab straps so you can hang from them when doing leg or knee raises. Once you can do many leg raises with the straps, progress to hanging by your hands like in the pic above. You can even do drop sets like I do: Start by hanging by your hands and do as many leg raises as you can, then immediately use the straps and do some more leg raises.

But be sure to do the correctly!

Don’t just lift your legs or knees, as you are only working your leg flexors (small muscles that raise your legs at the hip). What you want to do is CURL YOUR BODY at the abs after your legs are raised. Then use your abs to raise your feet to the bar. Be sure to come down slowly to make your abs work there as well!

To read more and watch some videos as well as other stuff to help you do your first pullup check my page:

https://10in30.com/gear/pullup-bar/

Thanks for reading! Please use the Share buttons down there so your friends can benefit too!

peace,

– BUM

By Dr. Mercola of mercola.com

Conventional medical authorities say that consumption of saturated animal fats is bad for you and causes heart disease.

But a hundred years ago, fewer than than one in one hundred Americans were obese, and coronary heart disease was unknown.

The Procter and Gamble started marketing Crisco as a new kind of food — the first commercially marketed trans fat. Crisco was originally used to make candles and soap, but with electrification causing a decline in candle sales,

Procter and Gamble decided to promote the fat as a “healthier” all-vegetable-derived shortening

According to LewRockwell.com:

“Feeding high doses of fat and cholesterol to omnivores, like rats and dogs, does not produce atherosclerotic lesions in them … 

In fact, it turns out that people who have highest percentage of saturated fat in their diets have the lowest risk of heart disease … 

The last word on this subject should go to Julia Child … Enjoy eating saturated fats, they’re good for you!”

The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953, when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. His theory turned out to be flimsy, to say the least, but the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued unabated ever since. Fortunately, the truth is finally starting to come out, as medical scientists have begun to seriously question Keys’ findings.

Newer Studies Debunk Keys’ Theory

The USDA’s lowered recommendation is illogical when you consider the evidence available today, which supports saturated fat as a necessary part of a heart healthy diet. For example, as discussed in the featured article, a number of indigenous tribes around the world are living proof that a high-saturated fat diet equates to low mortality from heart disease.

These include:

Tribe	Primary Diet	Percentage Saturated Fat
Maasai tribe in Kenya/Tanzania	Meat, milk, cattle blood	66 percent
Inuit Eskimos in the Arctic	Whale meat and blubber	75 percent
Rendille tribe in NE Kenya	Camel milk, meat, blood	63 percent
Tokealu, atoll islands in New Zealand territory	Fish and coconuts	60 percent

 

And then there’s human breast milk, which contains 54 percent saturated fat. Since breast milk is the most perfect diet in existence for developing infants, the presence of high amounts of saturated fat cannot easily be construed as a “mistake.”

Furthermore:

• A meta-analysis published last year, which pooled data from 21 studies and included nearly 348,000 adults, found no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
• Ina 1992 editorial published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. William Castelli, a former director of the Framingham Heart study, stated:
  
  “In Framingham, Mass., the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol. The opposite of what… Keys et al would predict…We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.”
• Another 2010 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a reduction in saturated fat intake must be evaluated in the context of replacement by other macronutrients, such as carbohydrates. 
  
  When you replace saturated fat with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, you exacerbate insulin resistance and obesity, increase triglycerides and small LDL particles, and reduce beneficial HDL cholesterol. The authors state that dietary efforts to improve your cardiovascular disease risk should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intake, and weight reduction.

I believe that last point is very important, and is likely a major key for explaining the rampant increase in obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And once you can pinpoint the problem, turning it all around becomes that much easier.

(cont)

Read the rest of the story: Saturated Fats are Good for You.

To slim down, it helps to get up early and see the light, study says

Apr 3, 2014 Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES–To maximize your chances of fighting flab, new research offers some simple advice: Wake up early and go outside.

People who loaded up on light exposure at the beginning of the day were most likely to have a lower body mass index, according to a study published this week in the journal PLOS ONE. That relationship between morning light and BMI was independent of how many calories the study participants consumed.

It may sound crazy, but there is sound scientific evidence to back up the link. Circadian rhythm plays an important role in regulating metabolism, and studies have shown that exposure to morning light can influence body fat and the hormones that regulate appetite.

In one study, for instance, sleep-deprived subjects whose levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin were out of whack saw those levels improve after being exposed to light for two hours after waking up. In another study, obese women who were exposed to bright light for at least 45 minutes between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. dropped some of their body fat after three weeks. And studies in animals have found that altering light exposure changed their metabolism, resulting in weight gain even when the animals consumed the same amount of calories as before.

Read the rest of the story at http://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-1500813#X3eQUqzBMPXhqR40.99via To slim down, it helps to get up early and see the light, study says | News & Features | ArcaMax Publishing.