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By Dr. Mercola

Could poor sleeping habits cause brain damage and even accelerate onset of Alzheimer’s disease? According to recent research, the answer is yes on both accounts.

According to neuroscientist Dr. Sigrid Veasey, associate professor of Medicine and a member of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, this is the first time they’ve been able to show that sleep loss actually results in the loss of neurons.

A second study also suggests that if you sleep poorly, you’re at increased risk for earlier onset of severe dementia.

Sleep Loss Linked to ‘Massive Brain Damage’

The first study in question, published in the Journal of Neuroscience,1, 2, 3 found that sleep is necessary for maintaining metabolic homeostasis in your brain. Wakefulness is associated with mitochondrial stress, and without sufficient sleep, neuron degeneration sets in.

The research also showed that catching up on “sleep debt” on the weekend willnot prevent this damage. To reach their conclusion, the researchers submitted mice to an irregular sleep schedule similar to that of shift workers.

Inconsistent, intermittent sleep resulted in a remarkably considerable, and irreversible, brain damage—the mice actually lost 25 percent of the neurons located in their locus coeruleus,4 a nucleus in the brainstem associated with arousal, wakefulness, and certain cognitive processes. As reported by Timemagazine:5

“The scientists believe that when the mice slept inconsistently, their newer cells would create more sirtuin type 3, a protein meant to energize and protect the mice. But after several days of missing sleep, as a shift worker might, the protein creation fell off and cells began to die off at a faster pace.”

 

 

Read the rest of the story: Sleep Loss Linked to ‘Massive Brain Damage’.

Tired of your fitness routine? Has it gone stale and lost its wow factor? Tired of posts that begin with questions?

Do like us at 10in30 and CHANGE SHIT UP!

Whether you’re doing a full body split, or body group split, you can change things such as the exercises, reps, circuit or not, rest times, and style. Do a whole month of a particular workout before changing it up. Even two months would be ok, but do not change it sooner than 30 days or it will be hard to track results and reach your goals.

 

A good example of changing shit up is:

Alternative Delts Workout.

Maybe you’re doing the 10in30 Gain plan and do delts on Friday along with your biceps and triceps. You’d be doing overhead press superset with upright rows, then seated Arnolds, then lateral flies supersets. BURN, I know. It’s a great workout that’ll leave you with an unholy pump in your arms that’ll scare the cat.

To change this up, get creative! Yesterday I did a 50 rep drop set of delt press on a machine you would not think of for delts—the standing calf raise machine. It works extremely well, has good form so it’s good on your delicate shoulders, and is super convenient to do drop sets since the weight stack and pin are right in front of you.

After 2 warm up sets of light delt presses on this standing calf machine, go real heavy so that you fail at 6. Wait 30 seconds and do 4 more. We have 10 so far. Then drop the weight substantially and do 10 more. 20 reps done. NO REST! Now drop it some more and do 10 more. 30 done, 20 left. Drop again, give me 10. LAST TEN!

Drop the weight and do your last 10 reps, trying to kill it and aiming instead for 12. If you can’t get to 12 at the end, no problem. We only needed 10, but we go for 12 to really make each one count, surpassing our goal of 50 back to back reps. Now rest 2-3 minutes and get water.

A whole alternative workout circuit for delts is the 10in30 Workout of the Week, Shoulder Poppers!

This is a 10in30 Premium workout video of a circuit that blasts your delts while burning fat and is FREE to members. Just press play and workout. If you aren’t a member already, join us to see the rest of the premium workout videos!

How about Chest?

Chest workouts are normally comprised of bench press or dumbbell press with chasers of cable crossovers. For one month, do none of those!

Instead, switch to the machine section of the gym and do the machine incline chest press, followed by pec dec, followed by seated cable press. This one requires a cable machine like this one:

Grab a bench, raise the backrest so that it is all the way up, position its back to the cables. Adjust the cables so that they are a foot higher than shoulder height and slightly wider than shoulder width. As you press, also make your hands meet at the middle, right in front of your face. For added crunch (the 10in30 way) twist them as described in my “Chest Twisters”. I recommend you do this shirtless in front of a mirror so you can see your inner pec fibers in action, not to mention your sexy badass self.

Return the cables slowly and controlled, then shoot them out again, preferably in a second or less. Be sure to keep your elbows near your body and not out to the sides so that you don’t strain your front delts.

 

 

Doing Legs?

Take a break from squats this month. Instead do Smith Machine One Legged Lunges. Why do I recommend the dreaded Smith Machine? Because we want to get a hell of a workout on the quads, hamstrings, and butt and if you’re freestyling it with one foot up on a bench behind you and a barbell on your shoulders, you’re going to be so concerned with trying to keep your balance that you’re going to get a shitty leg and butt workout.

The Smith Machine will keep you from falling, you’ll be able to get a great stretch at the bottom, and you can explode up without the fear of falling sideways and impaling someone’s foot. That would suck—Nikes are expensive.

The other alternative leg exercise I recommend is Pistols! Pistols are one legged ass to grass squats. Extremely difficult. You will work your way up by using your hand for assistance.

Stand on a box with one leg hanging and grab on to something like a machine at the gym, door, wall, etc. You should go all the way down to where your butt is actually resting on your ankle. You will use your hand to help you lift your heavy ass up with one leg.

Warm up by doing 12 quick pistols on each leg using your hands to completely help you up. Warm up is meant to get blood to your muscles in question and should be pretty easy. Do all reps on one leg before working on the other.

Two quick warm up sets: 12 hand-assisted reps on each leg.

Now for the actual exercise. Go down slowly taking 3 seconds. Try not to hang on unless you need to. Then go up quickly in one second, using your hand to only help you up a little. Don’t completely rely on your hand, and don’t bother pausing at the top, just go back down slowly (3 seconds).

6-12 reps depending on how studly you are.
3 sets each leg.

After you’ve done this Pistol training workout twice in one week (remember to skip at least two days in between) the next time you do it, add two 5 pound ankle weights on your shoulders or any other way to load 10 pounds onto your body. If going the backpack route, use two; one in the front, one in the back so you are balanced.

After two workouts of Pistol training with 10 pounds, add another 10 pounds totaling 20 pounds. Again, after warming up, only use your hands when absolutely necessary, most likely your later reps.

THEN, once you have completed two sessions with 20 pound bags, take them off and try doing Pistols without using your hands! Please post a vid of your awesomeness in the forum.

Go to the Forum and let us know what other alternative exercises you like to do or how you like these. Also if you have any questions or would like to post a vid, the Forum is where it’s at.

PEACE and  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

– bum