Sugar feeds cancer? Why building muscles can help fight cancer.

This morning I received a newsletter with a link to the following article. Attacking Cancer's Sweet Tooth.

I first read about the theory that Cancer Cells living and growing from their intake of sugar years ago. Cancer Loves Sugar

 The following is from that article:

"Every doctor learned back in medical school all about Otto Warburg's discovery; a discovery of humongous proportions, because way back in the thirties Otto discovered the main biochemical cause of cancer, or what differentiates a cancer cell from a normal, healthy cell. So big a discovery was this, that Otto Warburg was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Cancer has only one prime cause. It is the replacement of normal oxygen respiration of the body's cells by an anaerobic [i.e., oxygen-deficient] cell respiration. -Dr. Otto Warburg

But what else does Warburg's discovery tell us. First off, it tells us that cancer metabolizes much differently than normal cells. Normal cells need oxygen. Cancer cells despise oxygen. In fact, oxygen therapy is a favorite among many of the alternative clinics we've researched.

Another thing this tells us is that cancer metabolizes through a process of fermentation.
If you've ever made wine, you'll know that fermentation requires sugar.
The metabolism of cancer is approximately 8 times greater than the metabolism of normal cells.

Okay, so here is what we can put together knowing the above: The body is constantly overworked trying to feed this cancer. The cancer is constantly on the verge starvation and thus constantly asking the body to feed it. When the food supply is cut off, the cancer begins to starve unless it can make the body produce sugar to feed itself. 

The wasting syndrome, cachexia, is the body producing sugar from proteins (you heard it right, not from carbohydrates or fats, but from proteins) in a process called glycogenesis. This sugar feeds the cancer. The body finally dies of starvation, trying to feed the cancer.
Now, knowing that one's cancer needs sugar, does it make sense to feed it sugar? Does it make sense to have a high carbohydrate diet? 

The reason Food Therapies for cancer even exist today (beyond the fact that they work) is because someone once saw the connection between sugar and cancer. There are many food therapies, but not a single one allows many foods high in carbohydrates and not a single one allows sugars, BECAUSE SUGAR FEEDS CANCER."

This makes sense to me as the most obvious symptom of my wife's first bout with cancer was her level of fatigue. Our brains and liver require sugar (glucose) to function. The theory is that the cancer cells where using enough sugar that her brain wasn't getting enough sugar and this made her feel
tired.

This article from MD Anderson has some great info on sugar as well. Does Cancer Love sugar?

Their angle on this is that it is the obesity from too much sugar that can lead to cancer.

When you think about muscles do you picture a bodybuilder?

Or Grandma showing off her gun.

Why building muscles can help fight cancer?

Did you know that your skeletal muscles can store a lot of glucose (sugar)? Think of your muscles like a sponge. The bigger they are, the more sugar they can store. 
You can also think about this in the opposite direction. The smaller they are, the less sugar they can store. 

Why should you care? 

Picture you body after a meal. The sugars from this meal have to find somewhere to go. If you have lost enough muscle, where does that sugar go? Maybe it circulates in your blood until it finds cancer cells to feed.  Adding muscle to your body gives it a better chance to store it in these muscles instead of feeding cancer cells. 

Muscles < Sugar > Cancer Cells 

Your daily activities can help decide which direction the sugar goes. 

Does this article make you more interested in keeping and or building the amount of skeletal muscles that you have?

Guest Blog: Healthy Habits for Travelers

Today I am posting an article from a guest blogger. His name is Mike Manning. His blog is titled: mikemanningmusings.blogspot.com

Michael is a Fitness and healthy living enthusiast who tries to see the best in all situations.

Let Mike or me know what you think..

Traveling can cause interruptions in healthy activities. If you are a regular at your gym while home, you may find that travel interferes with your exercise routine. Additionally, eating habits from nutritional intake to regular mealtimes may also be compromised during travel. Rather than succumb to the routine-rattling affects of travel, take action before you leave to make healthy decisions that can improve your experience and help you return home healthy, relaxed and well rested.

Before you leave, consider how you can keep up your physical fitness during your trip. Make sure to do some research before booking a hotel. On a recent trip to San Francisco I was able to book a hotel that was great for my personal fitness needs because I searched through a travel reviews site. This site listed out the best hotels in San Francisco and I could scroll through and see what amenities were offered and the reviews of people who stayed there recently. If you belong to a gym with nationwide locations, you’ll find it easier to maintain your regular routine while on the road. Sometimes, however, your travel schedule won’t allow time for working out at the gym. Consider bringing portable fitness equipment such as an exercise band, an Exercise Bar or a jump rope along to facilitate workouts in your hotel room or on the go.

Once you get on that plane or hop into the car for your trip, you can minimize jet lag and other travel discomforts with a few other healthy habits. Always pack healthy snacks such as raw almonds, fresh veggies or fruit along with you for the journey. These will help you remain hydrated and avoid succumbing to unhealthy food options available on flights, in airports or at rest stops along the way.

Upon reaching your destination, take a few moments to get oriented to your surroundings. Locate the fitness center and other amenities at your hotel. In your room, take the time to unpack and organize your belongings before rushing off to meetings or activities. Also, spend a few minutes stretching or walking through a few yoga moves to relax and ground yourself.

During your stay, stick to healthy habits as much as possible. If your hotel offers a complimentary breakfast, choose options such as fresh fruit, whole-grain toast, boiled eggs or wholesome oatmeal instead of caloric pastries or fatty foods like biscuits and gravy. If you are traveling to a region that boasts legendary local cuisine, go ahead and indulge once or twice in these delights. Just remember to counter those indulgences with plenty of exercise and healthy snacks in your room.

By following these simple tips, you can successfully navigate through your travels. Upon returning home, you’ll be easily able to return to your regular, healthy routine.

Sensory Adaptation: Who cooked the bacon?

Do you smell the bacon?

Think about walking into a house after someone has been cooking. (Do I smell bacon? Insert whatever food you love to smell here) At first the smell is very strong. Did you notice that after a few moments you no longer notice the smell? That is sensory adaptation when it comes to the sense of smell. If the stimulus (smell of bacon) hasn't changed, your brain no longer pays attention to it because it (the smell of bacon) is not changing.

Another example is the sense of light. Enter a dark room after being in a brighter room. At first the room is very dark. Once your eyes adjust to the dark room you can now see a little in that room. Or think about going outside on a very bright day. At first you might partially close you eyes until your sense of sight adjust to the brightness.  This is sensory adaptation when it comes to your sense of sight.




When taking my first Anatomy and Physiology course the topic of sensory adaptation was one of my favorite topics. Since the muscular, skeletal and nervous systems where my favorite systems of the body to study I focused on how sensory adaptation applies to them.

I love to think about how sensory adaptation effects our bodies during the aging process. Those individuals that work on keeping as much muscle as possible while aging will have adapted by still being able to easily get up for their chairs, take the steps, work in the yard, etc. Those that haven't challenged their muscles as they age will be challenged by the weakness they have developed. It is all about how you adapt. Think about this: By not working on becoming stronger, more mobile, more steady on your feet, you are working on becoming weaker, less mobile and less steady on your feet.

It is all about the stimulus or lack there of that you ask your body to adapt to.

Would you rather be in her shoes

or Her's?

I have been reading a lot about how bad sitting is for our bodies. Why is sitting so bad for us. The body adapts to sitting by slowing our metabolisms down, slowing blood flow, relaxing muscles, etc.

Mayo Clinic article on why too much sitting is bad for us
"Researchers have linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns, including obesity and metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels."


Two things mentioned:

                                    "A nearly 50 percent increased risk of death from any cause"
                                     "About a 125 percent increased risk of events associated with cardiovascular disease, such as chest pain (angina) or heart attack"

I don't know about you, but those two things alone make me get out of my chair more often. The bad thing about all this sitting is that one hour of exercise won't reverse all the damage done by this sitting. The key is to make sure you get up every 30 - 60 minutes each hour. Get that blood pumping, muscle contracting.

You know the phrase use it or loose it. If you ask your body to rest too much, you will loose your health.

What stimulus's are you asking your body to use it's sensory adaptation to adapt to? I know that isn't the greatest way to end a sentence.  Science was always a much stronger subject for me than English.

 

Why you should care about your thoracic spine when it comes to your lumbar spine.

Our bodies have an amazing ability for one area to cause pain in another. An example of this is how our hips can cause knee pain.

Another example is how one part of our spine can cause pain in another. Today's topic covers how the thoracic spine effects the lumbar spine.
 
Since having the pleasure on injuring my lumbar spine around 5 years ago, I have learned a lot about how the whole spine effects the lumbar region. If you only deal with the lumbar region, you might not be dealing with the cause of your pain.

In previous post I have talked about how the lumbar spine should be stable and the thoracic spine more mobile. If you lose mobility in the thoracic spine your body might compensate by moving through the lumbar spine. Sometimes you won't know it. Sometimes you might wish it hadn't. If your lumbar spine decides to move too much you might get to experience the pleasure of back spasms. Back spams are our bodies way of controlling the spine if it tries to move too much.

Golfer's know they should rotate their thoracic spines.

Rotation:
Our lumbar vertebrae are only suppose to rotate around 3 degrees each while our thoracic vertebrae are able to rotate up to 8 degrees each. This might help convince you that you should learn how to rotate through the thoracic vertebrae instead of the lumbar vertebrae.

One of my favorite ways to work on thoracic extension

Extension:
Another dysfunction in the thoracic spine that can lead to lumbar pain is a lack of extension in the thoracic spine. If you use the lumbar spine to hyper-extend instead of extending in the thoracic spine, that can lead to pain. One the the best ways to make sure you don't hyper-extend the lumbar spine is by keeping the abdominal muscles tight.

One of the best exercises to teach you how to extend the thoracic spine is the overhead squat. A broom stick can be used to teach the proper technique.

If I had only learned how to overhead squat at her age.

Learning how to rotate and extend more though the thoracic spine will make thing a lot easier for your lumbar spine.

How well do you extend from your hips?

I am a firm believer that the solutions to most problems are very simple. The key is figuring out what the real problem is.

They say that 80% of all adults will experience this.

One of the best examples of this is figuring out what is causing back pain.  A few years ago I didn't know much about back pain. That changed one morning when getting out of bed. I went to get up and it felt like my pelvis shifted forward about half a foot. My back muscles went into spasms and I couldn't move in any direction without pain. Since my pelvis had moved too much, my brain decided that all the muscles around it should restrict any movement of the pelvis.  

After making a visit to D.C. Richard Novak it was determined that I had herniated the disk between my L3 & L4. He used Ultrasound and Electrical Stimulation to get the muscles in my lower back to relax.

After this bout of back pain I decided to learn as much as I could about our lower backs. The common theme from all the reading that I have done can be summed up by the following ideas. 

1. Lower Back pain has very little to do with the lower back. If you want to minimize bouts of back pain learn to keep the lumbar spine stable.

2.  One of the main causes of lower back pain is extending from the back instead of the hips.

3. Learning to extend from the hips will keep you from extending from your back.

My favorite hip extension exercises are:

1. Hip Hinges

A simple way to learn how to extend from the hips.

2. Bridging Hip extensions.

The basic version of bridging: Squeeze those glutes.

If you want to minimize your chances of developing lower back pain, learn to extend from the hips.

Next time I will write about the role that the thoracic spine plays in keeping the lumbar spine stable.

Why should you care about knee stability?

 

Why should you care about knee stability? Because your knees are suppose to be stable. Unstable knees tend to become painful knees. I don't know about you, but I don't like knee pain.

Ono of the main reasons I love being a personal trainer is because I am fascinated by how the human body is designed. In order to get the best training results, I focus on how the body is suppose to function. Many people still train like body builders in the sense that they try to train individual muscles. I use to train this way. (Bicep curls for the front of the arms) Our brains are not designed to understand this concept. They are designed to understand/control movements. Vern Gambetta his website, gambetta.com/  taught me this concept. (Train movements, not muscles)

A few years ago I learned the concept of that certain joints should be more mobile while others should be more stable. As you move up the body from the ground, a mobile joint is followed by a stable joint.  Example: Ankles should be more mobile, knees more stable and hips more mobile. We still want controlled mobility (stability) in the ankles and hips. Movement in a joint without stability leads to joint pain.

Ankle Flexion and Extension

Ankle Rotation

Hip Flexion and Extension

Hip Rotation

If you don't have enough mobility in the ankles or the hips, your brain will allow the knees to become more mobile and less stable than they should be. This in turn can lead to knee pain. Our bodies do a great job of creating movement in a joint that needs stability if the mobility of the nearest joint is compromised. In the short term this is ok, but not a great idea in the long term.

In 1983 I suffered a knee injury that required surgery. After the surgery, my rehab consisted of quad sets and straight leg raises.

Quad Sets

Straight leg raises

If this injury had occurred twenty years later, my rehab would have been a lot different. In 1983 the focus was on the knee cap and quadriceps muscles. Now the focus is on the hip muscles as well as the quadriceps. Imagine that the knee cap is the train (controlled by the quads) and the femur is the train track. (controlled by the hip muscles) It doesn't due a whole lot of good to focus on the train, if the tracks aren't stable enough.

If you want your knees to remain as pain free as possible, work on their stability. My favorite knee stability exercises are Peterson Step Ups, Standing Terminal Knee Extensions, and Monster Walks.

Peterson Step Up

Standing Terminal Knee Extensions

Monster Walks with a band around the ankles for added resistance

Why do I like these exercises? Because they develop controlled mobility in the ankles and hips while developing stability in the knees at the same time. 

Combining knee stability exercises and strength training exercises (my favorites are Bulgarian Squats and One Legged Stiff Legged Deadlifts) a couple of times per week with foam rolling exercises keep my right knee happy which makes me happy.