Reducing Blood Pressure Through Exercise

A woman at work recently shared with me that she has had above normal blood pressure (BP) readings at her last few doctor's visits. Her physician is giving her several months to see if she can lower her BP through lifestyle changes before prescribing medication.

The American College of Sports Medicine makes the following recommendations for reducing hypertension through exercise:

• Perform mainly aerobic activities that involve large muscle groups.
• Exercise at moderate intensities (about 50-85% Max Heart Rate) seems to reduce BP as much as, if not more than, exercise at higher intensities. Click here for more information about calculating target heart rate.
• Frequency of aerobic training: 3-7 days/week. However, because blood pressure may remain reduced for several hours after aerobic exercise, working out every day may provide the most optimal BP control.
• Duration of training session: 30 to 60 minutes
• Resistance training is not recommended as the primary form of exercise training for reducing BP, but should be combined with aerobic training. Resistance training regimens should incorporate incorporate lower resistance with higher repetitions.

My Acupuncturist Thinks I'm Possessed

Last Saturday I tried acupuncture for the first time. What got me there was a combination of curiosity and convenience. When clients ask for my opinion of acupuncture, I want to have first-hand experience so I can speak intelligently about it. "Oh Stacey did that and she LOVES it," feels a little pathetic if people are asking me for advice and a professional opinion. I was intrigued, too, by the idea of lying around on a table with needles sticking out of me.

But as most know, acupuncture ain't free, and (oddly) the PGW bill is not dwindling, so scheduling an appointment "just to see what it was like" never seemed opportune. However, my massage therapist's wife, Marnie, is nearly finished a grad program at the Won Institute, which runs a student clinic featuring $30 acupuncture appointments. So I tried it...

The appointment lasted about 2 hours - this is standard anywhere you go for a first appointment. Marnie, assisted by another student, interviewed me for the first hour, taking a detailed physical and mental health inventory. Marnie now knows of my battle with depression, the three hip surgeries from my early teens, and the color of my menses. (Hey, she took it there, not me. And boys, they will ask you about your *area* too!) While I entered this treatment with no specific complaints, some people come to acupuncture with a certain need - i.e. please cure my headaches. Regardless, they are going to take a complete look at you. Western medicine will give you a pill for the headaches. Chinese medicine is going to dig a little deeper, so patience will be important.

After the interview, Marnie did a brief physical exam. She checked my pulse from somewhere near my wrist, though I understand this to be completely different from the heart rate I might check with clients. (Apparently, we have pulses that correspond to our other organs...pretty cool.) Then she looked at my tongue, don't know why. Later, she poked around my abdomen to see how my organs were doing - good! - and felt different parts of my body for temperature differentiation. Because this is a student clinic, a licensed acupuncturist came in to double check some of these tests, namely my pulse.

At this point, she left the room to draw up plans for my needle stickin'. The procedure she selected had a lot to do with our interview, though at the time, I had no idea what they were trying to do with me or what to expect. Emily (my gf) goes to acupuncture regularly to treat her allergies. She told me she can't feel the needles at all when they go in, so I am hanging out on the massage table, nice and relaxed...

Listen, I'm not gonna lie...the needles hurt me. They put seven in me, all in the front of my body. I was relaxed for the first one and terrified for the next six. I'm not typically scared of needles unless they're in my mouth, but because I was expecting the kind of needles you don't feel, the needle insertion process was an anxious one for me. Marnie said that the response is different for everyone. She herself winces a bit while Emily's sitting there like, "Is it in yet? Did you put the needle in?" Even I can say the three needles that went in my right side (my feminine side) hurt more than my left, which didn't bother me much. I wonder if there is an implication here that it hurts me to be lady-like...hmmm.

The needles stayed in for about 20 minutes. While the insertion of them was scary for me, the effects were sweet. Your body naturally releases endorphins in response to a treatment so I felt a little high. It's like taking codeine without the need to mask any pain in the first place. I remember feeling a certain lightness. Worries and thoughts passed through without me needing to stew on them - which, for me, is worth about 1,000 needle sticks! As nice as a 20-minute stress relief session is, it was what happened after the needles were removed that made me want to return to the clinic.

Marnie removed the needles, which I did not feel. (I remember thinking, "This is what I thought they would feel like on the way in.") She said she was going to grab her supervisor so that they could take another count of my pulse, and she walked out. Laying there on the table, I felt relaxed and clear-headed, and then all of the sudden, like a wave, tears started to pour from the inside-out. I wasn't trying to hold them back but I don't think I could have if I tried. It felt so cleansing to let them drain from me. Marnie and company came in to find me wiping my eyes, apparently not surprised by the results.

The treatment they performed was called Internal Dragons, used to rid the body of possession. I think this can be mistaken through a western viewpoint as a form of exorcism. But from my thorough research (cough - Google search - cough) and chatting with Marnie for a few minutes about it, it seems possession in my case had more to do with the stagnant state of my spirit and feeling as though I had little control over it. Indeed, in our interview I mentioned slipping into bouts of depression, brought on by something small, yet feeling unable and ill-equipped to lift myself out these moods. The Dragons treatment is used to drive out the "devils" that are possessing you. Perhaps my tears were a measure of relief that Marnie was through sticking me, or maybe it was the escape, the release, of whatever had a hold of me. In any event, I'm convinced that acupuncture will bring positive results for me. My next appointment is Friday...

PS - The picture shows my ankle with a pen mark where they stuck me. I know it's dumb and boring. I'll try to get Marnie to take one next week when all the needles will be in my back, making for a G-rated picture.

Office Stretching & Workstation Ergonomics

My girlfriend, Emily, recently moved from a very physically active day job to a fairly sedentary one. To make matters worse, the new job is located in a neighborhood that is not terribly safe, rendering walks at lunch time out of the question.

Having few options for a change of scenery during the day, she asked me (weeks ago, I've been slacking!) if I could post some stretches that can be done within the office to alleviate the tight muscles that come with repetitive work at a computer desk station.

I decided not to re-invent the wheel for this one... The Mayo Clinic presents a slide show on their website featuring 9 stretches that can be completed at your desk. One of the back stretches is displayed with this post. Clear here to view the complete routine.

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have a comprehensive website explaining workstation ergonomics. This will teach you proper positioning of your desk, chair, computer monitor and keyboard, phone, mouse, and much more, minimizing your chance of suffering repetitive overuse injuries of the neck, shoulder, back, arms and wrist. Click here for the CDC website.

February Book Review: In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food 

Michael Pollan

"I don't eat carbs after 3pm."

"I only drink skim milk because its fat-free."

"I drink Kiwi Snapple because I heard kiwis have lots of antioxidants." 

"I eat pine nuts because they have the 'good fats.'"

I've been hearing comments like these for years. While it seems my clients are expecting some sort of praise for their culinary deprivation and/or will power in the name of health and weight loss, I often find myself growing inwardly incredulous with them for these practices. I eat carbs at 9pm sometimes and I drink whole milk and I think Kiwi Snapple is disgusting and I eat pine nuts because they are good and WHO PUT ALL THESE CRAZY IDEAS IN YOUR HEAD ABOUT FOOD?! And how can I possibly shed light on what anyone should eat without writing a whole book about it?! 

Thanks to Michael Pollan, I don't have to. 

Throughout In Defense of Food, Pollan blames our confused notions about what to eat on "Nutritionism," the reigning American ideology that the nutrient components of food (i.e. fat, carbs, antioxidants...) are more important than food itself. Fueled by the powers of nutrition science, journalism, and the mighty billion-dollar food industry, we have been made to believe we need expert advice in deciding what to eat in order to consume the perfect array of nutrients. And since we can't see nutrients (only scientists can do that), we've become dependent on the experts to tell us what foods to eat so that we can stay healthy. If you don't see a problem with this, you should. 

All of the aforementioned industries stand to benefit financially from your confusion: nutrition science in the continued funding of research to find the perfect nutrient(s) to support health, journalism to use that breaking research for headlines, and the food industry to sell you food by making health claims according to the latest find in food science. The scariest part is, this research is often biased, the methods flawed, and the findings essentially meaningless. How can any researcher - no matter how good - study one food out of the context of its diet? 

So here we are...uninterested in whether a food will taste good or bad, fooled into eating "edible foodlike substances," processed foods pumped full of nutrients intended to make us healthy. And yet for all of our obsessing about diet, nutrition, and their effects on health, Americans are overweight and unhealthy. 

Pollan argues that the answer to the question, "What should I eat?" may not lie in reconfiguring the Western diet of overprocessed foods, of fortified cereals and pastas, of Vitamin waters and fat-free yogurts. "Nutritionism prefers to tinker with the Western diet, adjusting the various nutrients (lowering the fat, boosting the protein) and fortifying processed foods rather than questioning their value in the first place." Pollan questions their value throughout the entire book and offers suggestions on what and how to eat that are far more culturally intellectual than an Eat-this-food-for-this-Vitamin Nutritionism philosophy. He admits that 5 people could read his rules and come up with completely different menus, but their meals would likely all be healthier, and bring much more pleasure, than eating a menu of processed foods out of the car. I've pulled a few of my favorites (below) but I urge you not to substitute them for reading this book! 

Shop the Supermarket Periphery (Stay Out of the Middle): The middle of the supermarket contains all the processed foods. The perimeter contains the perishable items that should comprise most of what we eat: produce, meats, fish, dairy, freshly baked breads, etc. 

Avoid Products that Make a Health Claim: Pollan makes the point that a food has to have a wrapper to make a claim, meaning it has already been processed. Remember that big food companies have more money than farmers when it comes to advertising. The carrots in the produce section don't get a label that says, "High in Beta-Carotene!" but that doesn't mean drinking a Vitamin-fortified water is on par with eating a carrot where your health is concerned.  

Avoid Products Containing Ingredients that are a)unfamiliar b)unpronounceable c)more than 5 in number or that include d)high fructose corn syrup: Pollan analyzes the label of Sara Lee's Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread, a product containing over 40 ingredients, including mysterious names like azodicarbonamide and ethoxylated monoglycerides. Isn't bread supposed to be made of water, flour and yeast?!

Pay More, Eat Less: This is my favorite. I have to share an excerpt here: "While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any other industrialized society; surely if we decided that the quality of our food mattered, we could afford to spend a few more dollars on it a week - and eat a little less of it." 

Do All Your Eating At a Table: Pollan doesn't go into detail here (just to remind us that a desk is not a table) but I would imagine for many readers it is normal to eat breakfast in the car, lunch at a desk, and dinner in front of the TV, settings that don't make for very mindful food consumption. 

January Book Review: Mindless Eating

Vote for The Most Athletic Athlete

What type of athlete impresses you most with regards to athleticism?

A. Stunt Bikers

B. Boxers





















C. Figure Skaters







"It's like being really good at yoga. But on skates."
- Emily Teel

D. Gymnasts

February Weigh-In: Dan Dengel

"Weighing In" is a new monthly article I will be posting to the blog that features one individual's experiences with and perspectives on physical activity. Our personal health is linked to a unique history, upbringing, and exposure to resources. It is my hope that by sharing one another's realities, struggles, and successes, we can come to appreciate our own strengths, and be more forgiving of our perceived flaws. Perhaps learning from each other will breed self-acceptance and reservation from judging others. 

Dan is my best friend in the whole wide world. We met a little less than five years ago and forged a strong friendship largely over workout sessions at East Falls Fitness (EFF). Dan was a student at Temple, and I had a job that let me out at 2:30, so he would pick me up at "The Spot" (12th and Arch) and we'd cruise over to EFF. Early on, I remember teaching Dan how to lift weights body part by body part, showing the exercises that work certain muscle groups. But as the months went on, he became more self-sufficient with his workouts and less reliant on me for help. He did continue to ask me questions about new moves he'd seen others doing and suggestions for areas where he felt stale. Now he writes up his own workouts, balancing routines with the changing demands of his schedule. It makes me smile sometimes to see just how far he has come...

How old are you?

34

How was physical activity first introduced into your life?

I started running track as a boy and two of my brothers did the same. I tried baseball and basketball too, but found I was not very coordinated if a ball was involved, so stuck with running. In 8th grade, I added swimming. I was also a boy scout and the was pretty active with hiking and canoe trips a few times a year. I would say overall my family, specifically my siblings, helped keep things active.

In what type(s) of exercise, physical activity, or athletic pursuits do you currently participate?

I like to go to the gym and lift a few days a week. Outside of that I try to run the track at least 3 miles one or two days a week. Then, of course, Muscle Group!

What does fitness mean to you?

Fitness to me is a way of living. It is the recognition of what my body can do and how I take care of my body. I equate fitness with activity. This includes the activity of working out, but also what I eat, when and how much sleep I get, and my mental/emotional energy.

What is your favorite type of workout?

I love lifting! If I have a good lifting session I generally feel pumped and excited. I love working my biceps and triceps, lately been getting better with working legs and shoulders. I also love swimming but rarely get the chance, and when I do it does tucker me out, but I love it!

Speaking specifically, what is your favorite exercise? Least favorite? What is it that you like/don't like about these?

Fave exercise: Pull-ups (just fun to see how many I can do and feel the burn - like when my arms shake - so cool)

Least fave: Mountain climbers (they hurt my back and I get tired so quick)

What is your profession and what hours do you work? What time does that leave for exercise? How do you fit it into your day?

I am a psychologist and I work 9-5 weekdays with one late night a week. I like to exercise in the morning before work so I get pumped - I am there most days by 7am. I am not as good about working out on the weekends, but try to run when the weather is nice.

Who/what has supported you in your fitness pursuits?

I am supported by Lindsey Schweiger, who really helped me learn proper lifting form and helped me get over my gym anxiety...also by my brother, Greg, who I sometimes work out with - he is a good motivator. Early in life I had a running partner and that was great. I think I am mostly supported by friends who are willing to be active with me. I love OutFit's Muscle Group because everyone there keeps moving.

What factors play into your motivation the strongest? (i.e. friends, weather, money, work, scheduling, sleep, etc.)

If the weather is bad, it is easy for me to say, "Forget it." But I think the biggest motivator is a friend wanting to work out and pushing me to do so. I will always favor working out with a buddy than on my own. It just keeps me going.

Who are your health/exercise role models? What do they embody that inspires you?

Anyone who is active inspires me, but I am not sure I have a role model.

In what exercise settings do you feel comfortable? Why? What settings do you find uncomfortable and why?

I am not so comfortable in the big gyms with lots of muscular men all grunting and sweating and strutting about. When I have been in gyms that are more low-key and people just come in and do their thing, I tend to feel more comfortable. I prefer a place where a trainer is not working out right near me. My fave place was working out at the Johns Hopkins gym - the men and women would all be lifting and doing their own thing - staff and students - and people were friendly and seemed happy to be there (and this was at 6am so if there were smiles, they were genuine!)

Fill in this statement: I can't imagine exercise without __________________.

Music. Sometimes I love to just break from what I am doing and dance around a bit. I have only been caught once at the gym shaking my groove thing.

When it comes to exercise and health, what still remains a mystery for you?

How to eat right. I have a hard time with calorie counting and knowing how much I should take in and how much is in the foods, and then what is a good food versus a bad food. Besides the obvious - cake would be bad - well, if eaten too much. I think I just need to be better about what I eat, including portion size. 

What are your guilty pleasures when it comes to eating?

It would have to be chocolate chip cookies - and when in New York, the Black and White cookies. I am a cookie monster. (Ohhh, and sometimes cake too...)

What's your favorite OutFit?

Jeans and a T-shirt

January Weigh-In: Janet Harper