The Sedentary Twins Had "Lower Endurance Capacities, Higher Body Fat Percentages, and Signs of Insulin Resistance, Signaling the Onset of Metabolic Problems."

Identical twins in Finland who shared the same sports and other physical activities as youngsters but different exercise habits as adults soon developed quite different bodies and brains, according to a fascinating new study that highlights the extent to which exercise shapes our health, even in people who have identical genes and nurturing.

*   *   *  

It turned out that these genetically identical twins looked surprisingly different beneath the skin and skull. The sedentary twins had lower endurance capacities, higher body fat percentages, and signs of insulin resistance, signaling the onset of metabolic problems. (Interestingly, the twins tended to have very similar diets, whatever their workout routines, so food choices were unlikely to have contributed to health differences.)

The twins’ brains also were unalike. The active twins had significantly more grey matter than the sedentary twins, especially in areas of the brain involved in motor control and coordination.

-from "One Twin Exercises, the Other Doesn't" in the March 4, 2014 digital edition of the NYT.

The study is published in the March 2015 Medical & Science in Sports & Exercise Journal.  The abstract is here.

I like the reference to more  "grey matter."  I need all of that I can get.  And I'm hoping this also applies to people who exercise but don't have a sedentary twin.

Living to 96?

The WSJ for this weekend has a worthwhile article (behind a pay wall) entitled, "The 15 Numbers Every Investor Should Know."  Among those numbers is one's life expectancy, that is, the age to which the subject should assume he or she will live.  (Obviously, savers and investors should be interested in this number.)  The article links to a website called "Living to 100," which includes a "Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator." By answering a few multiple choice questions, the calculator will give you the last anniversary of your birthday.  Mine is 96.

The site will give you not only the age to which you can expect to live, but also a set of comments and suggestions in light of your answers to the multiple choice questions.  Most of the comments and suggestions make sense, but there is one that is troubling.  Because I answered that I consume very few dairy products per week, there is a recommendation that I consume more to avoid osteoporosis.  Apparently, the author of the calculator, Thomas Perls MD, MPH, FACP, did not get Dr. McDougall's memo.  A diet full of vegetables and a life with periodic exercise should result in enough calcium to keep one's bones strong.

Yonanas for Father's Day?

Taking frozen bananas to the next level!
Go here.

Dr. Campbell endorses this, so it must work as advertized.

UPDATE:  Received this item from Carol for Father's Day and it works.

I also got a great card:

Front: "Happy Father's Day, etc.!"
 Inside:  "A nap has been taken in your honor."

And so it went on Sunday afternoon after church.

Iron Deficiency, Athletes, and Vegans

This topic has become interesting to me recently.  Here are some links.

What Every Vegetarian Needs to  Know about Iron, at the No Meat Athlete website.

Iron in the Vegan Diet, at the Vegetarian Resource Group website.  "Both calcium and tannins (found in tea and coffee) reduce iron absorption. Tea, coffee, and calcium supplements should be used several hours before a meal that is high in iron."

Iron Status and Exercise, at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition website.

What Every Vegetarian Needs to Know About Iron

What Every Vegetarian Needs to Know About Iron

What Every Vegetarian Needs to Know About Iron

What Every Vegetarian Needs to Know About Iron

Dementia as a Family Disease

This article by Gary Epstein-Lubow, in the April issue of the journal Health Affairs describes not just his mother-in-law's dementia but its affects on her husband of 55 years and the rest of her loving family.  From the article:

A recent Alzheimer's Association report estimated that more than 15 million Americans are providing unpaid care to a loved one with dementia.  .  .  .  A short-term plan is needed, with more attention to families.  We need care for the caregivers to be integrated into care for the patients.  When my mother-in-law was in the hospital, I was disappointed (but not surprised) that nobody stopped to ask my wife [the daughter], or anyone in the family: "How are you doing?"

Coffee Bad for You? Say It Ain't So!

Chronic coffee consumption has a detrimental effect on aortic stiffness and wave reflections by Charalambos Vlachopoulos in the June 2005 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found, “Chronic coffee consumption exerts a detrimental effect on aortic stiffness and wave reflections, which may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.”¹   This study shows that coffee causes its ill effects by impairing the function of the arteries, which increases the risk that these blood channels supplying the heart muscle will be compromised, leading to a heart attack.

Comments:

The results of studies on the effects of coffee drinking on the risk of death from heart disease are conflicting; however, the evidence seems to indicate that at high levels of consumption this popular drug is detrimental.  Besides the manner of harm found in this study, other mechanisms may account for more heart disease in coffee drinkers.  There are two substances found in coffee beans, cafestol and kahweol, which raise total cholesterol, “bad” LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides.²  On average, cholesterol is increased by 10%; but very potent boiled coffee can raise total cholesterol by as much as 23% (that could mean a 50 mg/dl increase for someone starting with an average cholesterol of 210 mg/dl).  Triglycerides may be increased by a similar amount. Coffee will raise the systolic blood pressure (top number) by 5 to 15 mmHg and the diastolic (bottom number) by 5 to 10 mmHg.³  People who are heavy coffee drinkers may also have a tendency to abuse themselves in other ways, such as consuming more heart damaging, high-fat, high-cholesterol foods.

Coffee drinking rightly deserves its reputation as “a bad habit.”  For more help with this addiction please refer to two previous newsletters found in my archives:  July 2004: Coffee - Pleasure or Pain, and October 2004: Tea Time Increases Life Time.

1)  Vlachopoulos C, Panagiotakos D, Ioakeimidis N, Dima I, Stefanadis C.  Chronic coffee consumption has a detrimental effect on aortic stiffness and wave reflections.  Am J Clin Nutr. 2005 Jun;81(6):1307-12.

2)  Urgert R, Katan MB.  The cholesterol-raising factor from coffee beans. Annu Rev Nutr. 1997;17:305-24.

3)  James JE. .  Critical review of dietary caffeine and blood pressure: a relationship that should be taken more seriously.  Psychosom Med. 2004 Jan-Feb;66(1):63-71.

 -from the McDougall Newsletter, July 2005

[The links are "live."]

Chicken nuggets: Please don't feeed them to my grandchildren.

Through a laboratory testing of chicken nuggets from two unnamed major national fast-food chains in Jackson, University of Mississippi researchers found that they contained just 40 to 50 percent meat, the remaining  50 to 60 percent comprised of bits of chicken-by-products such as fat, skin, connective tissues, blood vessels, nerve tissues, organ parts and ground bone fragments.

More here, including a video interview of the researcher.

Got Fruit Juice? Got Diabetes?

The fruit juice industry has essentially taken the 'apple-a-day' mentality and used it to sell fruit juices as healthy," said Barry Popkin, a professor in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Public Health.

Popkin and other experts would rather see people eating whole fruit. Because most juicing methods remove the produce's fiber, drinking juice omits one of the key benefits of eating fruit, while delivering huge amounts of sugar and calories.

"Every one of the long-term studies of the health effects of fruit juices shows that you increase your risk of diabetes and weight gain" with regular juice consumption, Popkin said.

One 2010 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology followed more than 43,000 adults in Singapore for five years and found that those who consumed two or more servings of fruit juice per week had a 29 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those who didn't drink juice regularly — not far behind the 42 percent increased risk for weekly soda drinkers.

-from "Fruit Smoothies Dangerous for Your Health?" by Abby Olena of the Chicago Tribune.  (In the Miami Herald home delivery edition today.)

The abstract for the study to which the article refers is here.

China Fouls Its Farm Lands

Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China's arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the "red line" of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country's 1.35 billion people.

Rural China's toxic turn is largely a consequence of two trends, say environmental researchers: the expansion of polluting industries into remote areas a safe distance from population centers, and heavy use of chemical fertilizers to meet the country's mounting food needs. Both changes have been driven by the rapid pace of urbanization in a country that in 2012, for the first time in its long history, had more people living in cities than outside of them.

-from a story in today's Weekend Edition of the WSJ, entitled "China's Bad Earth".

Among other things, the rice harvest is becoming increasingly toxic and in decline.

Not enough little girls and younger women, the air fouled by pollution, resulting in shorter life-expectancies, and now this. What is to become of China? Believe me, that bell will toll for us.

Lower Suicide Rates for Coffee Drinkers

These results from three large cohorts [of American adults] support an association between caffeine consumption and lower risk of suicide.

-The conclusion from a study published in the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.

A cup of coffee certainly lifts my spirits. Drinking coffee raises Dr. McDougall's eyebrows, however.  The plant-strong people don't like it either.

I have a list of spirit-lifting, physical activities.  Coffee drinking is up there, but certainly not at the top.

It would be helpful to know who funded the linked-to study.

Artificial Sweeteners, Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease, and Stroke

On NPR's Science Friday yesterday, Ira Flatow interviewed Susan Swithers, Professor, Behavioral Neuroscience,  Purdue University, (PhD from Duke), and author of an "opinion paper" published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism with the following thesis:  artificial sweeteners may change your brain's sweetness pleasure centers and cause "metabolic derangements."  (The abstract of the paper, entitled "Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements" is here and the full text is here.)

Here are excerpts from the NPR interview, the full text of which and the audio as well are at the link in the first line of this post:

FLATOW: I'm very interested in what goes on in the brain, and reading your opinion paper and from scientific studies we have done in the past on this, it seems like your brain and your body sort of get confused about what's happening when they taste artificial sweeteners.

SWITHERS: Exactly. That's what we think is the big problem. So if we think about a world there are no artificial sweeteners, when we taste something sweet, it's often a sugar, and that means when the sweet taste hits our mouth, our bodies, our brains, based on this experience can learn to anticipate that calories and sugar are going to show up. And as a result, we'll start to produce changes, physiological changes, like the release of hormones and the activation of our metabolism so that we can deal with the arrival of those calories in that sugar. And we think that's kind of a learning process, and that helps us not only regulate how much we eat but also to keep our blood sugar in a more healthy range.

And now if you introduce an artificial sweetener, what you do is you get this very strong sweet taste in your mouth, but you don't get the consequences that normally ought to show up. No calories show up. No sugar shows up. And so your body will then adjust to that new reality by saying wait a minute, I've tasted something sweet. I have no idea what's going to happen. I'm not going to release those hormones, or I'm not going to release as many of those hormones. And that's what we really think the confusion comes from.

*   *   *

[W]hat [the confusion is] doing is making it so that when people taste something sweet that does deliver sugar and calories, they don't have as strong an ability to deal with that. So they drink a regular soda or they eat a piece of fruit, anything that taste sweet and does provide the sugar and calories, and their bodies can't anticipate that those are going to show up. And if these physiological processes normally help us regulate things like food intake, then that's where you run into the problem. We eat a chocolate cake. We don't know what's going to happen. And so we end up with these negative outcomes.

*   *   *

[O]ne of the things that might be happening is that some of these same hormones that are released in response to sugar that help us regulate food intake are also implicated in helping regulate not only blood sugar but having cardio-protective effects. And one of the things we tried to do in this paper was to sort of use converging approaches, so looking not only at large epidemiological studies in people but use more basic research where we can get more directly at mechanisms.

And those studies, for example, have suggested that there's a hormone named GLP-1 that is thought to play a role not only in helping regulate blood sugar [ed.: think diabetes] but also in satiety [ed.: think obesity] and also to have cardio-protective effects. So if it turns out that these artificial sweeteners blunt the release of a hormone like GLP-1, then over the long term we're going to be losing out on those sort of protective effects.

The entire entire interview (which is very short) is well worth reading (or hearing).

Professor Swithers has done earlier work that indicates a link between artificial sweeteners and weight-gain.

Study: China's Policy on Air Polution Cuts Life Expectancy by 5.5 Years

“Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’s Huai River policy”

This paper's findings suggest that an arbitrary Chinese policy that greatly increases total suspended particulates (TSPs) air pollution is causing the 500 million residents of Northern China to lose more than 2.5 billion life years of life expectancy. The quasi-experimental empirical approach is based on China’s Huai River policy, which provided free winter heating via the provision of coal for boilers in cities north of the Huai River but denied heat to the south. Using a regression discontinuity design based on distance from the Huai River, we find that ambient concentrations of TSPs are about 184 μg/m³ [95% confidence interval (CI): 61, 307] or 55% higher in the north. Further, the results indicate that life expectancies are about 5.5 y (95% CI: 0.8, 10.2) lower in the north owing to an increased incidence of cardiorespiratory mortality. More generally, the analysis suggests that long-term exposure to an additional 100 μg/m³ of TSPs is associated with a reduction in life expectancy at birth of about 3.0 y (95% CI: 0.4, 5.6).

-the Abstract of a study paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, July 8, 2013.

NIH: "Only Half of U.S. Youth Meet Physical Standards"

And those standards aren't so high.

What ever happend to the President' Council on Youth Fitness?  Ike introduced that program in the mid-1950s.  I clearly remember our phys ed teachers talking about it.  It had a very important impact.

Well, it's morphed into something else.  And our phys ed programs in the public schools are being cut.

If, however, we fight our wars with drones from an easy chair and a joy stick, what difference does it really make?  Right?

We will become like the dreaded Kaldanes in Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Chessmen of Mars:

[T]the Kaldanes are almost all head, but for six arachnoid legs and a pair of chelae. Their racial goal is to evolve further towards pure intellect and away from bodily existence:

It is only your brain that makes you superior to the banth, but your brain is bound by the limitations of your body. Not so, ours. With us brain is everything. Ninety per centum of our volume is brain. We have only the simplest of vital organs and they are very small for they do not have to assist in the support of a complicated system of nerves, muscles, flesh and bone. We have no lungs, for we do not require air. Far below the levels to which we can take the rykors is a vast network of burrows where the real life of the kaldane is lived. There the air-breathing rykor would perish as you would perish. There we have stored vast quantities of food in hermetically sealed chambers. It will last forever. Far beneath the surface is water that will flow for countless ages after the surface water is exhausted. We are preparing for the time we know must come -- the time when the last vestige of the Barsoomian atmosphere is spent -- when the waters and food are gone. For this purpose were we created, that there might not perish from the planet Nature's divinest creation -- the perfect brain. 

-from the Wikipedia article on the Kaldane. 

Except, somehow, I don't think the rest of the world is going to sit back and let us evolve that way.  You see, we have this nice lunch set before us every day, and the rest of the world wants to eat it.

Besides, John Carter made short work of the Kaldanes.  He had a terrific body and knew how to use it.  (His girlfriends weren't half bad either.)

Retirement Kills

New research presented in this paper indicates that being retired decreases physical, mental and self-assessed health. The adverse effects increase as the number of years spent in retirement increases.

The results vary somewhat depending on the model and research strategy employed. By way of example, the following results were obtained:

• Retirement decreases the likelihood of being in ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ self-assessed health by about 40 per cent
• Retirement increases the probability of suffering from clinical depression by about 40 per cent
• Retirement increases the probability of having at least one diagnosed physical condition by about 60 per cent
• Retirement increases the probability of taking a drug for such a condition by about 60 per cent.

Higher state pension ages are not only possible (given longer life expectancy) and desirable (given the fiscal costs of state pensions) but later retirement should, in fact, lead to better average health in retirement. As such the government should remove impediments to later retirement that are to be found in state pension systems, disability benefit provision and employment protection legislation.

-Gabriel Sahlgren for the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, in his article "Work Longer, Live Healthier: The relationship between economic activity, health and government policy," describing the results of his research on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).  Thanks to the American Association of Individual Investors, in its June 2013 issue of the AAII Journal, for reporting on the Sahlgren research.

Urban Farming with Micro-Greens in the Heart of a Miami Warehouse District

The three-acre Miami Green Railway Organic Workshop, or GROW.  Crazy.

Christian Gnosticism showing up: Showing up on unhealthy bodies.

A 2006 Purdue University study first broke the news that religious people tended to be heavier than nonreligious, with "fundamental Christians" weighing in as the heaviest of all religious groups.  Lead researcher Ken Ferraro minced no words: "America is becoming a nation of gluttony and obesity, and churches are a feeding ground for this problem."

-from an excellent article in the June 2013 issue of Christianity Today, entitled "The Fitness Driven Church."

More from the article, written by the very gifted Leslie Leyland Fields:

"We've been teaching very little about 'body,' and when we do, it's primarily negative: don't get drunk, don't smoke or take drugs, and don't have sex outside of marriage," Gary Thomas, author of Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul, tells me. "Until recently, we've not known where to go from there."

After years of being a consumer of MSEM ("Mainstream Evangelical Media,") whether directly from the pulpit, in Sunday School classes, at conferences, magazines, etc., it has only been in the last several years that I awakened to what I describe as an aspect of Christian Gnosticism, an aspect that ignores the importance of what we put into our bodies and taking care of them.  Ms. Fields refers to the problem as "dualism".  Her article quotes 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, and that's one of many appropriate Biblical references:

¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

My kids will remind me that, years ago, when I taught a high school Sunday School class that each of them attended, I would bring to each class meeting a box of a dozen freshly baked donuts from Dunkin'.  Mea culpa.  On the subject of churches feeding children and young people bad food (not to mention adults), Ms. Fields reports:

An 18-year Northwestern University study released in 2011 found those who attended youth group as teenagers were 50 percent more likely to be obese by the time they were 50 than those who didn't.

(Two years I posted on a fine article in CT written by Leslie Leyland Fields on the matter of what church-goers eat.)

Better Late than Never for Wal-Mart and its Groceries

 Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is working to keep its produce aisles fresh, announced steps to improve the quality of its fresh fruits and vegetables.

The nation's largest grocer and retailer said Monday it is making more changes in its operations, training and sourcing as it looks to increase sales of bananas, lettuce and other produce and instill more confidence among shoppers looking for healthier choices.

-from an AP report in today's Herald.

Here's more:

But analysts say that despite Wal-Mart's pledge to make its food healthier, its produce often looks tired and well below the quality of rivals like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Costco and Kroger. C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, says that at Wal-Mart, some of the "produce is fresh, some isn't."

"It's not consistent," he says, describing some of the fresh fruit as "wilted."

Burt Flickinger III, president of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group says it's key for grocers to make sure they offer the freshest strawberries, cabbage and the like since produce carries 50 percent higher profit margins than canned fruits and vegetables. It also adds a halo to the store brand and fosters shopper loyalty.

"Consumers don't have confidence in Wal-Mart's fresh produce the way they have confidence in Whole Foods, Costco and other competitors," says Flickinger. He and others say that a big factor is that Wal-Mart has cut so much store staff that it doesn't have as many workers to stock the shelves in a timely manner.

Look at those profit margins on produce.  One can do well by doing good in the retail food business.  What a concept.

The comment about Wal-Mart cutting its staff is very telling.  I remember a successful businessman in my church years ago telling me that "You've got to have good people working for you, Paul." 

Later, a successful business consultant, my older son's father in law, told me that he had never met a lawyer yet who had enough help.  What he was referring to is the tendancy of "good" lawyers not to let things go, that is, not to delegate and to develop people who are competent to receive delegation.  (You can't bill for teaching, and we worship the billable hour.)  He made that observation just as I was leaving the big firm and opening the small one.

It was the best practice advice I have ever received, and it came at just the right time.  At the old firm, I had a paralegal, a half a secretary, and one half of an associate.  (Plus a gigantic staff for 300- 400 lawyers, a staff with its own inertia and inefficiency.) The firm would not allow me to hire anyone else.  (Their advice was to work harder, if I had more work than I could presently handle.)

Now we are six lawyers, three paralegals, one secretary, and a lot of technology - all growing from the same practice.  (Plus a staff of five, some part time, who are extremely efficient and nimble.)

CDC report: Illnesses linked to poultry, seafood rising.

Mary forwarded this from today's issue of the AMA's "Morning Rounds":

The AP (4/19) reports, "Bacteria commonly linked to raw milk and poultry is causing more and more food poisonings, health officials said." Over the past five years, the number of Campylobacter cases "grew by 14 percent," according to a report (pdf) released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the report, which the CDC refers to as "the nation's annual food safety report card," was "based on foodborne infections in only 10 states" (about 15% of the US population), it is considered to be a "good indicator of food poisoning trends."

        The Wall Street Journal (4/19, A3, Tomson, Subscription Publication, 2.29M) adds that the report also showed a 43-percent increase over the 2006-2008 rate of infections from Vibrio bacteria. Last July, cases of Vibrio, which has symptoms similar to cholera, prompted the Food and Drug Administration to issue a consumer warning against eating shellfish from Oyster Bay Harbor in Nassau County, New York. The Journal notes that an FDA spokesperson said the agency is accelerating its efforts to gain jurisdiction over how states implement plans to control for Vibrio contamination.

        The Los Angeles Times (4/19, Healy, 692K) "Booster Shots" blog says Vibrio and Campylobacter were "followed distantly by Shigella, Cryptosporidium, Escherichia coli, Vibrio, Yersinia, Listeria and Cyclosporidium," in the report. Of the "15,531 food-borne illnesses reported by the CDC's 10-site surveillance system in 2012, 4,563 resulted in hospitalization and 68 resulted in death." And although "Salmonella killed the largest number of infected patients, Listeria was the most deadly, killing 10.74% of the 121 patients who were infected by it."

        In its coverage of the CDC report, Bloomberg News (4/19, Armour) notes that the "Obama administration has been slow to fully enact the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, which was supposed to be the most sweeping overhaul of US food safety in 70 years." One of the "two regulatory proposals" the FDA released "Jan. 4 to carry out the core of the food safety act would give companies one year to develop a formal plan for preventing the causes of food illness. The second would force produce farms with a 'high risk' of contamination to develop new hygiene, soil and temperature controls."

        The CDC report is also covered by the Denver Post (4/19, Booth, 443K) "Daily Dose" blog, The Packer (4/19, Ohlemeier, 13K), HealthDay (4/19, Preidt), Medscape (4/19, Lewis) and MedPage Today (4/19, Petrochko).

 

        FDA commissioner requests more funding. Reuters (4/19, Clarke) reports Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, asked Congress on Thursday for more funding to enable the agency to improve food safety and importation oversight, as well as to design chemical- and biological-threat countermeasures. During her testimony at a budget hearing yesterday, Dr. Hamburg told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the FDA is reducing the amount of money allocated to travel expenditures and training to weather some $209 million in Federal sequestration cuts the agency faces. She also noted that the agency is funded in part, through taxpayers but that the bulk of the FDA's money is garnered through the user fees that pharmaceutical companies pay to accelerate new product reviews. Reuters quotes Dr. Hamburg as saying, "FDA is a true bargain among federal agencies."

Controlling the Extravagent Demand for Medical Care

The medical economist Rashi Fein observed in 1986 that there are only three ways to limit the extravagant demand for medical care: "Inconvenience," the practice used in the military, where one must wait interminably for care. "Rules," the third-party approach by which layers of rules and thousands of regulations are devised, most recently in a fool's quest to contain costs under ObamaCare. And "Price." This last option elicits gasps and chest-clutching from bien pensants who insist that all financial impediments to care must be removed. Yet it has one incontestably beneficial attribute: It requires the physician to study the true cost and benefits of a course of action, and then to present that data to the patient. Who is better suited than the patient to assess the value to him of the proposed treatment? Kathleen Sebelius? You gotta be kidding. [Link added]

-from "Reflections of a Medical Ex-Practioner", by Ed Marsh, in yesterday's WSJ.  (Thanks, Carol.)

Hand Injuries

It has been over a year since Carol and I started the fitness program at CrossFit Downtown Miami.  We feel better and are stronger, and we have enjoyed the process. 

I have fallen three times, however: twice during the box-jump exercises and once while running when I tripped on an uneven sidewalk.  On one of those occasions, I injured my right hand and on another my left hand.  Both of those injuries have healed without any sort of intervention.  In fact, I have learned that aches, pains, and even injuries are not uncommon.  I have also learned that I probably have some osteo-arthritis, definitely in my hands and probably in my feet. 

I visited a hand specialist recently about some pain that persisted in my left hand.  He identified an arthritic bump at the base of the thumb on that hand and said the pain could come from it.  He also said I could simply have stretched some ligaments.  He said that the treatment in either case is the same, and gave me a written “Hand Arthritis Treatment Form.”  This is what the form said to do:

      1.       Heat (e.g. Paraffin Baths)

2.       Medications:  (a)   Tylenol,  (b)  NSAIDs: Ibuprofen (Advil), Alleve, Celebrex,  (c) Glucosamine &  Chondroitin

3.       Foods:   (a)  Cherries,  (b)Blueberries, (c) Pineapple, (d)  Turmeric, Flaxseed (oil)

4.       Creams: Capsaicin, Arnica, Voltaren

5.       Splints: www.beabletodo.com (a very cool site)

6.       Whole Body Exercise (Endorphins)

7.       Cortisone Injections

8.       Surgery

Additional Information on Hand Problems:  www.handcare.org

Except for 7 and 8, one can treat himself.  With the first injury, when I fell off the box and injured my left hand, the physician's assistant fitted me with a splint (5).  I threw it away after a day's use, and I got better anyway, although possibly slower.  The physician did not encourage 7, because he said it was temporary.  As to 8, he said that doctors like him have all kinds of things they can do, but said it in a way to indicate that I should stay away from surgery if I can.