The composition of your body (Lean Body Mass: Fat Mass) is a big
component of health from many perspectives. The amount of muscle you
carry is vital for multiple processes throughout the body; some we’re
only just beginning to recognise. One key function of muscle is to
assist the immune system; if you lose your muscle, you lose your body
defence system. Consequently the loss of
muscle opens up the body to a whole host of maladies from infection
through to cancer. This is one reason why the health of a person who has
aged typically degenerates into dysfunction and disease as the loss of
muscle allows excess oxidative stress and chronic inflammation to
pervade the entire body.
In addition to loss of muscle, which
alone is devastating, the accretion of excess body-fat is also very
damaging. Space only allows me to give one or two examples, so let’s
look at the lesser known consequences of being overweight - dementia. A
number of population-based longitudinal studies show that midlife
overweight (BMI* 25-29), and all obesity (BMI 30 and above), multiplies
the risk of dementia.
We know that diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, hypertension and metabolic syndrome are all intimately linked
to dementia, and high body-fat often co-presents with these
dysfunctions. However, there are a small population who do carry extra
body-fat but do not immediately display, on the surface, the usual
symptomatic alterations in health. But just because the usual markers of
disease are not as evident in a small population of overweight
individuals, doesn’t mean that there isn’t damage being done silently
under the radar.
The now famous Swedish Twin Study showed
conclusively, that overweight at midlife increases the risk of
Alzheimer’s, and vascular dementia, independent of diabetes and
cardiovascular diseases. Simply being overweight (BMI 25-29), without
any other apparent health problems, almost triples the risk of later
life dementia.
Part of the reason is the chronic inflammation
that accompanies excess body-fat; I’ve shown in previous articles how
chronic inflammation underlies almost all of the degenerative diseases
that plague humanity. But new studies are revealing how overweight and/
or poor diet triggers the degenerative changes in your brain that lead
to dementia.
I’ve explained before that our adipose (fat cells)
are not simple storehouses of fat, rather more and more we are
discovering that it is a neuro-endocrine organ that sends out multiple
hormonal signals to the body. One of these hormones is Leptin. Leptin is
intimately involved in your metabolism, but either through overweight
or poor nutrition and lifestyle it becomes dysfunctional. Being
overweight means that you have more fat cells that can secrete leptin,
so beyond a certain threshold (18% Body-fat in men and 22% Body-fat in
women) it becomes excessive and the system starts to break down. Recent
studies have revealed that leptin is vital to regulate beta-amyloid and
tau protein both of which are integral components of the changes in the
brains of those with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. If the leptin
system becomes dysfunctional, as it does in overweight individuals, it
cannot perform its regulatory role on beta-amyloid and tau, which then
allows brain degeneration to continue unabated.
Over at the
HPC-UK website there are a few calculators that can give you a bearing
on your level of body-fat (once you know this you can use it to reveal
your biological age in that regard too). As mentioned above if your
body-fat percentage is above 18% (men) or 22% (women) you may want to
consider taking steps to bring this down to below these levels.
You can find these calculators here http://www.hpc-uk.net/5.html
*Although BMI has its faults, it is a simple test that is a fair
measure of overweight status in a relatively sedentary populace. More
active members of society (such as those who train regularly) ideally
would use more direct measurements of body-fatness such as skin-folds,
bio-electrical impedance or if accessible, the bod-pod or underwater
weighing.
Best selling author and Columnist for 'The New Yorker' Malcolm Gladwell
has, for the past few years, been forming an assault on one of USA’s
most heart held passions – Football. I say assault; really he is just
pointing out a fairly obvious issue with a fundamental feature of the
game; that feature being collisions, more precisely head collisions.
Malcolm Gladwell has been exploring
the link between the repetitive sub-concussive blows players experience
on the field during games and practice and Chronic Traumatic
Encephalopathy (CTE); a progressive neurological disorder. Malcolm
Gladwell is not ‘making’ this connection; he isn’t qualified in the
relevant areas. As a very popular journalist he is however in a very
powerful position to highlight what a body of research, which is
currently growing rapidly, is suggesting. That suggestion is that
repeated head trauma (even very slight trauma such as gently banging
your head against a brick wall) causes the brain to be injured which
results in the aforementioned umbrella term CTE.
CTE manifests
as a reduction in brain mass across a broad range of regions. As well as
atrophy (degeneration) of brain tissue due to neuronal loss, CTE also
presents as dysfunctional neurofibrally tangles formed by a defective
form of tau protein and as the accumulation of plaque formed by
beta-amyloid, both of which prevent the brain from communicating as the
neurons are unable to effectively relay information. If these sound
familiar, you’d be right, they are two of the changes that are present
in brains of those with Alzheimer’s.
Others with CTE have
symptoms of motor neuron disease symptoms which appear to mimic
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ((ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease)
and also Huntington’s disease. Progressive muscle weakness, balance and
gait problems are some of the earlier symptoms of individuals who had
verified CTE, so here we’re looking at overlaps with individuals who
develop Parkinson’s and similarly related degenerative diseases such as
progressive supra-nuclear palsy which is often misdiagnosed as
Parkinson’s.
As you can imagine damage to the brain not only
results in physical functional issues, but also cognitive, behavioural
and emotional changes too. These symptoms are diverse, including
depression, anxiety, aggression, memory, and executive function deficit
to name but a few. Which symptoms appear depends on which area of the
brain is most affected by the damage, although they often co-present in
various ratios due to the often global effect of the process.
Malcolm’s choice of football isn’t, I believe, because of a deep seated
hatred for the sport, but more because of the very obvious evidence of
head collisions, and in part because using football as the focal point
of the discussion will emotionally gain more attention due to the deep
love of the game in the U.S. He could have chosen any sport where
similar incidences of collisions and especially head trauma are an
integral part of the activity such as ice hockey and combat sports; in
fact CTE was previously known as dementia pugilistica, due to its
prevalence in those who participate in boxing. Combat outside of sport,
such as those serving in the armed forces are also at risk of CTE,
especially, but as we’ll see probably not the main reason (this will in
all likelihood hold true for the football players and other athletes
too), via blast injuries. In fact, you don’t have to be physically
insulted at all to initiate the process that is part of the CTE
condition, in which case even the less physically combative of us may
also be at risk.
If you receive a blow to the head, even one
that doesn’t seem particularly offensive such as heading a football
(soccer), your body will switch on specific genes to defend itself from
the stress. The switching on of these genes increases the production of
messenger signals called cytokines which initiate an inflammatory state
to deal with the damage caused by the physical trauma. The cytokines
then proceed to stimulate specialised cells in your brain called ‘Glia’
which have multiple roles in maintaining the function of the brain. One
of their roles is to produce nitric oxide, which is a vital chemical for
health especially of the brain as it is a necessary messenger for the
flow of transmissions through neurons. The problem is when levels of
nitric oxide become excessive such as when it is induced by stress
(physical, chemical or emotional), and the chronic inflammation that
accompanies this environment.
Although taking multiple (or even
a single hit to the head if it’s sufficiently hard enough) can create
this nitric oxide tsunami, there are other situations that cause this
too, and I think this is where the perfect storm that is contact sports
becomes problematic.
As mentioned above, there doesn’t need to
be a physical insult to cause an increased production of nitric oxide,
you can do it with a simple, and even unconscious, thought. Heightened
feelings such as rage or fear cause the brain to produce increased
levels of nitric oxide; the reason is fairly simple when you think about
it in the right context. During our evolutionary past, throughout the
lineage, right back to our distant reptilian forebears, our ancestors
had to develop processes that would allow them to survive in a much more
hostile environment than we do today. Nitric oxide was built into this
system to speed the signals in the brain when our ancestors needed to
fight or take flight, hmmm….just the kind of emotions and circumstances
that are heightened on the field of play and war.
We still have
the legacy of this design today which continues to serve us very well
in the right circumstances, such as when are in actual physical danger
or when we use this increased processing horsepower in sport. Problem is
most of us tap into the system on a daily basis, generally when we are
not even in immediate danger. As Spidey’s Uncle Ben (Parker) said ‘with
great power, comes great responsibility’, and the nitric oxide system is
very powerful, so we need to be very responsible in how we use it,
otherwise it will result in brain deterioration on an accelerated scale.
And that’s not even taking into account the even bigger problem caused
by excess glutamate, which is even more damaging, and like nitric oxide
is released by strong negative emotions.
I’ve shown in previous
articles* how your perception of the world governs to a large extent
your reality, so even if you don’t put yourself in harms way, those
amongst us who are quick to become annoyed, enraged or can’t let things
go, are simply hastening their own demise, as well as not enjoying the
little time they have here on Earth to boot. We're getting pretty good
at keeping bodies patched together, even after we've allowed them to
become diseased. Brains, not so much. If you'd like to maintain your
brain lifelong, you’d be wise to learn how to change that situation**.
http://humanperformanceconsulting-uk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-real.html
** There are ways to reduce the damage caused by the fall-out of excess
nitric oxide beyond limiting the amount of knocks you take to the head,
however I’m unable to give a blanket account of the methods used due to
the wide range of individual differences in, not only your brain
structure, but also your personal lifestyle dynamics and history; a
one-sized fits all approach is really a one-sized fits none.
Your skin is the largest organ in your body which has multiple
functions. Besides its own vital roles, the skin can also be used as a
loose marker for other non-directly related systems in the body.
Two of the most prevalent proteins in your skin are collagen and
elastin; collagen provides structural strength and integrity and is
supported by elastin, which as the name implies
provides the skin with its elastic properties. To give you an idea of
how these two proteins work in combination, think about a willow tree in
a strong wind; the willow tree has a remarkably resilient structure,
not because it is completely rigid, but because it bends and gives
enough to buffer the force of the wind. Your skin is similarly designed,
it has just enough rigidity to act as a physical barrier, but also the
elasticity to be physically deformed (to a certain extent) without
breaking.
These two proteins are very important in other areas
of your body too, such as the arteries that act as part of the transport
infrastructure for your blood. Your heart creates pressure to generate
the force needed to pump your blood around the body. To withstand this
pressure the blood vessels that supply the body with blood need to be
strong enough to resist this force, which is where collagen comes into
play. Just as important though is the need to be flexible, which is the
main role of elastin, so that you don’t spring a leak every-time the
pressure raises sufficiently high. Elastin also has a neat trick of
being involved in harnessing elastic strain energy which is part of a
genius solution called pressure wave propagation that Nature has hit on
to minimise the energy cost of being able to circulate your blood.
With poor lifestyle and average ageing these proteins are not
incorporated optimally in the arterial vessel structure and therefore
the system gradually becomes more and more dysfunctional. This will have
wide ranging consequences throughout the entire body and can be
manifest in many ways such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke or
arterial aneurysm, amongst others.
A really quick and simple
test that acts an adjunct to other markers is the skin elasticity test.
The test takes less than a minute, follow this link to the test
instructions and result calculator http://www.hpc-uk.net/5.html
Many of you already know that death isn’t as a result of the passing of
years; there’s no mechanism for the passage of time to cause a person
to die. There’s no such thing as ‘dying of old age’. Death only occurs
by damage, dysfunction or disease. To the extent that you can prevent
these three factors, you are essentially immortal.
One way we can measure these
factors is through Biomarkers of Ageing. Biomarkers of ageing are
various measurements that can give you an idea as to the level of
degeneration of your body. In some we have sufficient data to be able to
determine a measure called ‘Biological Age’. As opposed to
‘Chronological Age’ (how long you’ve been here on Earth), biological age
is a measurement of the physical state of your body.
We all
know people who look after themselves very well by eating nutritious
food and exercising regularly who appear to be much younger than the
candles on their Birthday cake suggests. We also know those who eat
poorly, smoke, burn the midnight oil regularly and do not exercise who
look decades older than other people of their chronological age.
To be able to age well biologically, you need to know where you stand
presently. By knowing your health status you can then assess your
biological age compared to your chronological age. If your biological
age is higher than your chronological age, you should consider taking
remedial action fairly promptly to address the situation. Even if your
biological age is younger than your chronological age, you shouldn’t be
too complacent, but ensure you are maintaining good habits (or start
incorporating them if you haven’t already) to keep this score low. A
good age range to try to maintain or re-attain is somewhere under 35,
preferably 30.
I’ve put the first of a series of biological
calculators over at the HPC-UK website; the first one is based upon
blood pressure, a measure many of you will have probably had tested
recently. It’s an important one as heart disease is still the number one
cause of death in the UK.
I will try to put up calculators
for a battery of tests that can be taken easily at home or obtained from
your Doc’ or local chemist. Some tests do not have sufficient data to
be able to generate a biological age score, but I will make those tests
into a traffic light format so you will have an idea of whether the
score is good (Green); meh (Yellow); or maybe start dialling for an
ambulance (Red)…
The blood pressure calculator can be found here: http://www.hpc-uk.net/5.html
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our
blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of
collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Current calculations put the Big Bang as occurring about 13.7 billion
years ago which was the beginning of the primordial Universe that was
composed of hydrogen, helium and a little
lithium. From these elements the first stars were born, which in their
interiors the heavier elements found in Nature such as carbon were
created. Given sufficient time, and depending on the size, these stars
ended their lives in a spectacular fashion by exploding and thus seeding
the Universe with their components. These elemental components through
an elegant dance began to amalgamate into various mixes which form the
Universe that we see today.
One particularly varied
combination of elements coalesced into a planet which allowed for a
certain mix of elements to organise into a form that could replicate
itself. Over millennia these replicators become more and more complex by
learning to incorporate more of the mix into itself and use it for
increasingly elaborate functions. The result (so-far) of this process is
us and all the life-forms upon a collective home, called by us, Earth.
Although you may feel separate and fairly permanent, a key idea to
grasp is how connected and impermanent you actually are. Your body is a
temporary composite of the ancient material that continually, instant by
instant, flows through you in the form of solids, liquids, gases and
vibrations. Some of this material is fairly long haul others are more
fleeting day trippers. Who you are now is the reflection of this flow.
The skin you see in the mirror is mostly made of the flow in and out of
you during the previous two weeks, the blood in your veins from the flow
of the last 4 months, even your bones who almost completely anew from
this flow once every 7 years. Moment by moment you are reconstructing
and exchanging yourself with the Universe.
If you look at the
image alongside this piece you will see that far from what you are told
annually by the popular media the key to a healthy and high performance
body and mind is not the latest flavour of the month super-food or
supplement, but a precise mix of ancient substances that make up the
human body.
By simple arithmetic you can see that three
quarters of your body are made from just two elements – oxygen and
hydrogen, mostly combined together in the form of water. The second
largest substance that makes you and me is carbon (oxygen is the first
with hydrogen being third) which is certainly the basis of life (as we
know it) on this planet, if not throughout the Universe (although
silicon has the necessary properties too). If we include nitrogen into
this mix, at three percent, then this combination of four elements
account for over 95 percent of your body.
These four elements
are provided by the air you breathe, the water you drink and the
protein, fats and carbohydrates that you eat. If you’re getting these
basics wrong by breathing in polluted air, drinking impure water and
eating foods that do not contain the correct types of protein, fats and
carbohydrates, then no matter what you do, or how much you spend, wish,
hope, pray or will it to be, it will amount to nought because you’re not
creating the basic structure for the remaining few percent to integrate
optimally.
The remaining few percent of your body are mostly
minerals which are in descending order of amount calcium, phosphorus,
potassium, sulphur, sodium, chloride and magnesium. Combined with the
above four elements (CHON), these eleven substances make up 99.9 percent
of your structure. Thus to build and maintain your framework optimally
you need to seek these substances via your food choices. And because
they occur in different proportions in different sources you need to
make sure you’re covering your bases by eating a wide variety of foods.
Although all of the rest of the nutrients combined only account for 0.1
percent of your structure they are no less important. Iodine, for
example, is only required in the amount of 150-300 mcg (micrograms).
Just for clarification, a microgram is a millionth of a gram; pretty
tiny. But without regular inclusion of this miniscule amount into your
structure, your body becomes rapidly dysfunctional and diseased. So, on a
daily basis your body sorts through all of the food you eat, the air
you breathe and the water you drink to locate this, for all intents and
purposes, invisible substance, which it then incorporates into your
structure so that it can continue to function and exist.
This
simple premise should underlie almost your entire approach to nutrition,
if not life. You should attempt to provide yourself with the
environment so that you can optimally enable this flow of ancient
substances through your body in the correct proportions and in the least
contaminated way possible. That way, the DNA that resides within you
can express itself in response to the environment to which it evolved.
Given the right environment the abilities that lay dormant within each
of us can begin to be realised; abilities that will astound even the
most pessimistic of us.
In the previous pieces in this series we have seen that the three main
symptoms that in combination give the bumpy appearance associated with
cellulite are excess fat, circulatory insufficiency, and connective
tissue architecture. In the last instalment we also saw that the
epidermis (the upper surface of the skin) can often mask cellulite even
if all the other factors are present; so
we looked at a basic protocol overview of how to begin thickening the
skin to provide this effect. As with all things in the body we have to
bow down to nature and respect physiological dynamics, so this protocol
will take at least 6 months of regular application to have an effect of
allowing enough turnovers of the cells to develop an increased protein
content. Although this will help to improve the ‘appearance’ of
cellulite it does nothing to change the factors that really create the
cellulite situation.
Cellulite usually occurs at a few periods
in life; knowing this we can then gain an insight into the mechanisms
responsible for its development. The main period when cellulite becomes
apparent is puberty, a time when the hormonal milieu kicks into high
gear. Because cellulite is more commonly a female issue this points
straight away to estrogen being a key player. The whole hormonal network
is fairly complicated and thus space prevents us from exploring all of
the interactions, so we’ll just skim across the area to pick up the main
gist of what is going on.
Estrogen is the pivotal player in
cellulite by propagating many of the features of cellulite. It underlies
the abnormal architecture of the connective tissue that forms the mesh
in which the fat cells poke through. An imbalance in estrogen either as
an excessive total amount, or disproportionate levels relative to other
hormones is a key feature of people with cellulite. This can be caused
by many factors but the key ones are excessive body-fat, stress,
alcohol, smoking, and exogenous sources of estrogens such as birth
control pills and exposure to environmental xeno-estrogens.
As
well as promoting the formation of irregular connective tissue, an
estrogen imbalance promotes the formation of fat, which will further
feed back into the production of estrogen. So one major factor in
reducing the environment that causes cellulite is to address hormonal
balance, which as stated above is way beyond the scope of this piece. To
give you an idea of the complexity, in the HPC-UK Lean for Life Program
it takes 12 weeks to cover the basics of the hormonal cascade for fat
loss. The major hormones involved in cellulite are, as already stated
estrogen, as well as progesterone, prolactin, thyroid, insulin and
cortisol.
Besides the specific hormonal environment (although
as with everything in the body, there is massive interplay) the other
causes of cellulite are inactivity or inappropriate activity. Even in
people who do not have a hormonal imbalance that propagates an irregular
connective tissue matrix, the act of gaining body-fat too quickly will
create a cellulite condition, as the connective tissue cannot maintain
pace to provide the necessary scaffolding to hold the structures in
place, so the excess adipose (fat) spills out through the established
collagen strands.
Inactivity hits you from multiple angles.
Modern life has provided us with many creature comforts, but one that is
seemingly innocuous is our chairs. Depending on your occupation, I
would hazard a guess that at least half of your waking hours are spent
in a seated position. Being in this position for hours on end creates a
situation where the area around your thighs is relatively inactive which
not only reduces circulation due to lack of muscular contractions, but
also compresses the tissues underneath and to the sides of your thighs
which further increases the herniation of the adipose. This should also
reveal the wisdom of any kind of wrapping treatment and excessively
wearing tights or leggings.
Because circulation is reduced the
normal flow of nutrients and metabolites cannot occur in the area, so
the fat cells can’t effectively liberate their fat to be used as fuel,
nor turnover the cells properly to ensure maintenance. This situation
further compounds the issue as the tissues begin to accumulate damage
which then increases localised inflammation and with it fluid retention.
The inflammation issue itself, which is a pivotal feature of cellulite,
is dependent on your nutritional makeup, your physical activity (amount
and type) and many other lifestyle factors. Excessive inflammation also
adds to the lipogenic (fat creating) environment which hastens the
development of fat in the area. So for many reasons daily exercise and
regular non-exercise movement throughout the day is essential to reduce
the environment that creates cellulite.
However, even in those
people that do exercise, they are unfortunately given poor advice as to
the kind of exercise best used to help the situation. I’ve shown before
how excessive reliance on aerobic type exercise actually reduces your
ability to remain lean as it increases your efficiency at metabolising
fat, which on the surface appears oxymoronic. And even in those people
who do sufficient exercise to out-weigh the efficiency (as long as they
continue to exercise), the negative effect it has on the hormonal and
metabolic environment is still unhelpful.
You can’t cheat it
off either; not covered in the previous piece on current treatments,
liposuction is often promoted as a cellulite cure by sucking out the
excess adipose tissue. No way. Liposuction removes the deeper levels of
fat that actually provide a cushion for the more superficial cellulite.
By removing that softer layer, the cellulite rests closer to the firmer
muscle tissue and becomes even more obvious.
The only way to
permanently reduce cellulite is to lose the excess fat that is pushing
through the mesh of connective tissue, support the re-modelling of the
connective tissue and improve the health of your skin, which although
not covered here is a major contributor to the production of hormones,
especially testosterone in females. This requires an integrated approach
where you improve your daily nutrition to optimise your structure,
exercise regularly to signal the correct expression of your DNA to
produce a lean body, and regulate your hormones to help create healthy
and vital environment. All of this takes a little time to accomplish, as
you have to wait for the old cells to die off and be replaced with
newer more appropriately constructed cells. Look at a minimum of 6-12
months as the time period for this to occur. Each day is an opportunity
to support the revision of the condition or contribute to the worsening
of it.
If you are looking at that timeframe and are balking at
the idea, remember this - The time will pass regardless, the key factor
is how you choose to utilise that time.
www.hpc-uk.net
Free radicals are highly reactive chemicals that in excess are linked
to DNA damage, depressed immunity, muscle damage and fatigue.
Antioxidants assist in neutralising the destructive fallout from these
chemicals.* Research out of Iran found that an 8 week weight training
program increased antioxidant enzymes in red blood cells (superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidise).
Summary- Weight training can help to protect against free radical damage and improve metabolic health.
Reference
International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 23: 230-236, 2013
* Find out more about oxidation here (‘Breath of Fire’) http://wel-ness.blogspot.co.uk/
