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Showing posts from June, 2020

Eating Seaweed Salad May Boost Immune Function

Eating seaweed salad may boost the efficacy of vaccinations and help treat cold sores, herpes, Epstein-Barr virus, and shingles. Billions of pounds of seaweed are harvested each year, the consumption of which “has been linked to a lower incidence of chronic diseases,” both physical and mental. For example, women who eat more seaweed during pregnancy appear to be less depressed and experience fewer seasonal allergy symptoms. There’s a problem with these cross-sectional, correlational studies, however, in that they can’t prove cause and effect. Maybe seaweed consumption is just an indicator that people generally are following “traditional Japanese dietary customs,” which have lots of different aspects that could protect against disease. To know for certain whether seaweed can modulate immune function, you have to put it to the test. As I discuss in my video How to Boost Your Immune System with Wakame Seaweed , typically, researchers start out with in vitro studies, meaning in a tes...

The Virtual Training Experience

I have enjoyed training in gyms as a profession for 27 years. This year, all New York gyms were forced to close by order of the State of New York. While it was damaging to the fitness industry all over the country, New York’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was particularly devastating to businesses, especially gyms, which are still ordered to remain closed since mid-March. Personal trainers such as myself had to pivot quickly to find another direction in which to train our clients. My wife and I call it a Blockbuster Video moment for gyms. It has become evident that this is a moment of transition for the entire fitness Industry. If we don’t apply the necessary changes with crucially swift decisiveness, parts of our industry may end up with the same fate that Blockbuster Video experienced at the hands of a changing and growing streaming industry. With our backs against the wall, we decided to alert and persuade our clients to a new path of one-on-one, virtual training. For Appl...

Put Down the Sparklers and Pick Up Our Double Chocolate Skewers This 4th of July

This 4th of July we wanted to keep things simple. These double chocolate skewers require five ingredients and can be prepared in less than 15 minutes. That means more time to enjoy your 4th of July. Enough from us, check out the full recipe below! NUTRITIONAL INFO Double Chocolate Skewers [...] from The Bloq https://ift.tt/ZW7Dv6

How Good Is Your Sexual Fitness?

  Sex and fitness go together like, well, sex and fitness! Test your sexual know-how with 10 true-or-false questions taken from our past online articles.   True or False: An unlikely team of scientists and porn actresses banded together with a variety of vibrators to find the exact location of the fabled G-spot. After months of tedious research, the team discovered that every woman has a tiny button of pleasure located on the upper right side of the vagina.   True or False: Day or night, sex is good for your health.   True or False: While the male hormone testosterone boosts a man’s carnal appetite, it does nothing to increase a woman’s sex drive.   True or False: Sex prevents the common cold.   True or False: While body piercing may be very sexy, it can lead to serious medical complications that are not so sexy.   True or False: Citizens of the United States have more sex than citizens of other nations.   True or...

Pill-Free Ways to improve Your Sex Life

“Sex is important to health,” according to the Harvard Health Letter. “Frequent sexual intercourse is associated with reduced heart attack risk.” But, as I discuss in my video Do Men Who Have More Sex Live Longer? , that seems to be the perfect case of reverse causation. They’re implying that more sex leads to healthier arteries, but isn’t the opposite more likely—that is, healthier arteries lead to more sex? Blood flow in the penis is so reflective of blood flow elsewhere that penile Doppler ultrasound can predict cardiovascular disease. However, low frequency of sexual activity may predict cardiovascular disease in men independently of erectile dysfunction. This suggests that sex may be more than “just fun” and may also be therapeutic, or at least so says an editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine and colleagues in discussing whether or not “frequent sexual activity can be prescribed” to improve general health. In men, they suggest it’s because more sex means more testosteron...

Best Exercise to Shape Your Butt

PERSONAL TRAINER Q&A By Mia and Rich Finnegan Q: What’s the best exercise to help build, shape and tone the butt? Are there more than one you would recommend? A: This is a great question for us because we not only love a nice butt, but we love training butt. If you ask most personal trainers, they’ll probably say “the squat” is A#1 in their book for training glutes, but we disagree. We don’t disagree that the squat is a great compound exercise for the legs and glutes combined, but for targeting the three muscles of the glutes (gluteus maximus, medius and minimus), you need a variety of hip extension and hip abduction-type exercises. The glutes are one of the largest muscle groups in the body and saying that one exercise is enough to target them would be like saying all you need for quads is leg extensions. Getting back to the question, our favorite combination of butt exercises is: 1) hip extensions or glute kick-backs; 2) hip abduction or side leg lifts (both done with a ...

25 Tips to Stick to Your Diet

When it comes to staying on track with your  diet , it can be easy to get sidelined. And it doesn’t matter if you’re new to fitness or a seasoned  fitness competitor  — dieting can be a challenge for everyone. The best way to keep on track is to be consistent! There is no magic pill, special workout or fad diet that can take the place of hard work and  healthy eating ; you must change the way you eat,  work out  and live your life to see change! Make a commitment to your workout and your  meal plan  and you will set yourself up for success. Here are 25 diet tips to help get maintain a lean and toned body all year long! 1. Take Responsibility for Your Diet.  Only you can control what goes into your mouth, so exercise some willpower with your food choices. Skip the  salad dressing , avoid the cream in your coffee and watch the spoonfuls of  peanut butter ! Limit your  cheat meals  to once per week. 2. Set Realistic...

Chia Seeds vs. Flaxseeds

  What effect do chia seeds have on weight loss, blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, and inflammation? We’ve been eating chia seeds for more than 5,000 years. Historically, they are one of the main crops grown in the Western hemisphere. They are exceptionally high in fiber and omega-3 fatty acids, though, like flaxseeds, it’s better to grind them up. As you can see at 0:26 in my video Which Are Better: Chia Seeds or Flaxseeds? , eating two tablespoons of whole chia seeds every day for ten weeks led to no change in omega-3 levels, but consuming the same amount of ground chia seeds did lead to a significant increase in blood levels of both short-chain and long-chain omega 3s. “Ingestion of…milled chia seed compared to whole chia seed or placebo… appeared to have no influence on inflammation or disease risk factors,” though. As well, there was no change in body fat, blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, C-reactive protein, or any of the other markers of inflammat...

3 Day Refresh Reformulation

If you’re one of the million-plus people who have experienced the cleansing awesomeness of 3 Day Refresh , you know it’s a perfect way to clean up your nutritional act from time to time. The specially formulated shakes, fiber drink, and whole foods eating plan are a great way to realign your eating, help break bad habits, and even lose a few pounds – without resorting to juice fasts or other deprivation-based tomfoolery . You’re probably wondering how and why the heck we decided to make 3 Day Refresh better. Basically, it’s because Beachbody’s R&D team never ever rests on its laurels. Just because we’ve created a successful product doesn’t mean that we file away the secret formula and move on to the next big thing. We keep our eye on the ball for all kinds of reasons. Government guidelines change. Sourcing resources change. Science changes. And we’re constantly receiving thought-provoking feedback from our customers. With this in mind, we’re continually figuring out how to ma...

Want to Live Longer? Go For a Walk

From burning calories to easing joint pain to strengthening your heart, the health benefits of walking are seemingly endless. According to the American Heart Association, just 20 minutes of walking each day can increase life expectancy. Walking not only has physical benefits, but it can also enhance your mood, help relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression, and even improve your sleep. Whether you’re just getting started or have always been a walker, the health experts at Envolve , an integrated health care solutions company, have put together five ways to maximize your daily walks so you not only enjoy the fresh air, but reap as many health benefits as possible.   Lead With Lunges. A steady, even-paced walking pattern will increase your heart rate and help you stay fit. But replacing a few of those steps with forward lunges is a great way to keep moving and maximize stretching your muscles. Start with a typical lunge by taking a wide step forward and dipping down until your ...

HIIT Fat-Burning Workout

There is a militant camp that believes  high-intensity interval training  (HIIT) is the absolute best means of achieving  fat loss , accounting for total energy expenditure over a 24-hour period. It certainly works well for some people. But recent findings suggest that the extra calories burned during  HIIT  may not be coming from stored fat, and that HIIT training doesn’t make the body a 24-hour fat-burning machine compared to  steady-state cardio  (SSC)— meaning the intensity is moderate and doesn’t vary during the exercise session. Both HIIT and SSC improve fitness as measured by exercise capacity and  VO 2  max . 1,2  The effect is very similar, nearly equal in fact. If one were to compare  sprint performance , vertical leap or some other power-based measure, HIIT would likely be better due to the training style. HIIT also has an  appetite-suppressing  effect, partially due to lowering circulating concentration of th...

How to Survive a Pandemic: Paperback Pre-Order

I’m thrilled to announce that after being released only in audio and digital format, my newest book, How to Survive a Pandemic, is now available for paperback pre-order and will be out on August 18. Pre-order it today! (As always, all proceeds from my books are donated to charity). My videos on pandemics and COVID-19 are currently rolling out on NutritionFacts.org. But, if you want to see them all at once, you can get the digital download FREE for a limited time. Download the videos here . If you haven’t seen it yet, we’ve put up a resource page all about COVID-19 with videos, links to my pandemic blog post and special Q&A sessions, my DIY hand sanitizer recipes, and more. Check it out  here . I’ve also continued to do a bunch of interviews, with Dr. Neal Barnard of PCRM, and  Rich Roll .   Last Day to Register for B12 Webinar My next webinar on my latest vitamin B12 recommendations is happening June 26 at 2pm ET, and registration closes tomorrow, June 19....

Booty Blast for Tight Butt

Overstuffed pie booty…cottage cheese container…flying squirrels…bat wings…these are just some of the terms I hear when asking my  over 40 female clients  which areas they would  LOVE  to improve. Care to take a stab at what the most griped about areas are? If you guessed, butt, arms, belly, back fat and thighs, you would be right. While these are the most frustrating areas for women as we age, today, I am going to focus on the  BUTT . As we age, some seem to head south, some head east and west, but rarely do they ever head further north. Well, that is, unless we really work at it, right? Let’s face it, the older we get, the more our skin loses its elasticity. Not only do we fight the battle of losing muscle mass, we also get to look forward to our skin no longer being tight as a baby’s bottom! So, what’s a gal to do? It just so happens that I have a few tricks up my capris! Okay, so they aren’t really tricks, just good ole fashioned weight training to help...