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.

Do you belly breathe?

Are you looking for an easy way to improve your health with very little effort?

Consider changing the way you breathe.

For some reason we begin breathing more from our chest and less from our bellies as we age.



Just because we do this doesn't mean it is a great idea. 

http://www.normalbreathing.com/index-chest-breathing.php#.UUd6KFe1Wvk



Some of the reasons listed in that article:
 1.   Chest breathing reduces blood oxygenation
  2.  Chest breathing causes lymphatic stagnation  
  3.  Thoracic breathing means hyperventilation and low oxygen levels in cells
 
 What is a better way to breathe?

Belly Breathing

 

This is a very powerful and very simple technique.  It teaches you slow breathing from the "diaphragm" or belly.  It relaxes you and directly reduces many of the symptoms of fatigue.

Plan to practice Belly Breathing once a day, starting with two minutes.  Then, gradually increase the time up to about 5 minutes.

Here's a good way to learn Belly Breathing:

Lie comfortably on your back, with a pillow under your head, your knees bent and your back flat.  You can stretch your legs out if that's more comfortable.  Place one hand on your belly.  Once you're comfortable, you can start the exercise.

Inhale while you slowly count to 4.  Expand your belly as much as you can – like a balloon.   You know you're doing "belly breathing" right when you can feel your belly expand.  Then, exhale to the slow count of 4, just letting all the air out of the balloon.  As you exhale, just feel yourself letting go of tension. 

Keep repeating the belly breathing to the slow count of 4.  When your mind wanders, just gently bring your attention back to the counting and belly breathing. 

After you have practiced this exercise for about a week, try doing your Belly Breathing when you are sitting.  Then, try it at different times during the day, even when you are standing.  Notice that it is very relaxing.

Once you have mastered your Belly Breathing, you can use it when you are exercising.  Also, during exercise, people tend to breathe from the chest instead of from the belly.  Breathing rapidly from the chest increases anxiety.  Breathing slowly from the belly lowers anxiety and reduces the stress we feel while exercising.

Focus on how to improve your health by changing the way you breathe.

We are all body builders

We tend to blame genetics for a lot of the physical traits that we posess. (the shape of our ears, nose, the color of our hair, bone structure etc.)

The three main body types.

Genetics may make it easier to be one body type than another. Blame your parents. It is still up to you to determine how how look.

One thing we can't blame genetics for is the shape we are in. (What we put in our mouths, how we use our bodies have more to do with how we look)

If I ask you to picture a bodybuilder most of you think of someone like this:

But what if you begin to think about everyone being a body builder?

What I want my clients to focus on is how their bodies work. This is also determined by how you treat the body you are given.

Want to have great posture? Work on it.

Are your legs too weak? Learn how to strengthen them. How strong or weak they are is determined by what you ask your legs to do.

What a lot of people chalk up to getting older has a lot more to do with what kind of body they have built. A lack of exercise will help you build a frail body.

Odds are he didn't work on keeping his fast twitch motor units working.

Exercise can build you a strong body.


What kind of body are you building to handle the challenges of getting older?


It is your body, build it the way you want. Build it for the results you want.

Sarcopenia (and why you should care what it is)

Sarcopenia refers to the loss of skeletal muscle due to aging. (and the lack of proper exercise and diet to maintain this muscle) Why should you care? IMO, Sarcopenia is the main reason our bodies quit functioning like they did when we were younger. This muscle loss (about 1/2 of pound per year) starts in our 20's. You won't notice the effects until you reach your 60's or 70's.   The good news is it doesn't have to be debilitating if you work on keeping as much muscle as you can. You want the fountain of Youth? Do what it takes to keep your muscle mass as you age. This takes work. The following is an article from Ronenn Rounbenoff, MD, MHS; and Carmen Castaneda, MD, PhD. SarcopeniaUnderstanding the Dynamics of Aging Muscle   Ronenn Roubenoff, MD, MHS; Carmen Castaneda, MD, PhD Sarcopenia is not a disease but rather refers specifically to the universal, involuntary decline in lean body mass that occurs with age, primarily due to the loss of skeletal muscle.1 Sarcopenia has important consequences. The loss of lean body mass reduces function, and loss of approximately 40% of lean body mass is fatal.2-5 Sarcopenia is distinct from wastinginvoluntary weight loss due to inadequate intake, which is seen in starvation, advanced cancer, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Sarcopenia also differs from cachexia, a cytokine-driven loss of lean body mass that occurs despite maintenance of weight, which is seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure, or renal failure.6 However, sarcopenia is the backdrop against which the drama of disease is played out: a body already depleted of protein because of aging is less able to withstand the protein catabolism that comes with acute illness or inadequate protein intake.7 Protein stores in humans have at least 2 important functions. First, unlike fat, which is truly stored in the sense that it is in reserve for times of starvation, body proteins are in use as contractile proteins in muscle, antibodies, enzymes, etc. Thus, loss of protein means loss of function. Second, during illness, nitrogen must be mobilized from muscle to provide amino acids to the immune system, liver, and other organs. If adequate nitrogen cannot be provided, either exogenously from diet or endogenously from muscle, the body's capacity to withstand an acute insult declines, andat about 60% of baseline nitrogen throughputthe body ceases to function.2-5 Thus, it is likely that some of the explanation for the poorer outcomes observed with nearly all diseases in older persons relates to their lower body protein stores. Muscle is the major source of protein for functions such as antibody production, wound healing, and white blood cell production during illness. If the body's protein reserves are already depleted by sarcopenia, there is less to mobilize for illness. The determinants of sarcopenia include genetic and environmental factors,8 with a complex series of poorly understood interactions. Amino acids and proteins are the primary substrates for skeletal muscle mass maintenance. Therefore, knowledge of amino acid kinetics and the balance between protein synthesis and protein breakdown is pivotal to understand how sarcopenia develops. Until now, most studies have indicated that muscle protein synthesis declines with age, suggesting that sarcopenia is due to failure of muscle protein synthesis.9-11 In this issue of THE JOURNAL, Volpi and colleagues12 report findings from the largest reported study to date to examine basal muscle protein synthesis, as well as the first direct measures of protein breakdown and net muscle protein balance in a group of healthy older men. The three-compartment model developed by this group of investigators uses amino acids labeled with stable isotopes to examine the rates of inward and outward transport of amino acids in muscle and to determine the rates of muscle protein synthesis and breakdown and the size of the intracellular free amino acid pool. Contrary to the notion of reduced protein synthesis with age, muscle protein synthesis was slightly higher in healthy older men compared with healthy young men. Basal net protein catabolism was not statistically different between the groups. These observations strongly suggest that sarcopenia is not due to inadequate basal (fasting) protein synthesis. More likely, aging muscle fails to respond to stimuli that are anabolic to young muscleeg, diet and exerciseperhaps because of hormonal or immunological changes that occur with age and no longer favor anabolism.8 For example, an earlier study by Volpi et al13 suggested that the anabolic response to a mixed glucose-amino acid meal was reduced in older men. Taken together, these 2 studies implicate insulin resistance or immune factors, such as catabolic cytokines or other hormonal or immunological factors, acting primarily in the postprandial state as an important cause of sarcopenia. These observations also suggest that interventions aimed at treating or preventing sarcopenia should maximize the response of muscle to anabolic stimuli, such as diet and exercise, rather than trying to increase basal protein synthesis. Since the latter may be impossible to achieve or require potentially harmful doses of anabolic agents, such as growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1, or testosterone, the results of the study by Volpi et al appear to be good news indeed. However, several limitations of this study should be considered. First, only men were studied, and it is possible that sarcopenia is regulated differently in men and women. Second, these were remarkably lean, healthy older men, and the generalizability of these data to the more typical overweight, sedentary population in many developed countries remains to be determined. For example, if insulin resistance were partly responsible for sarcopenia, then studying lean subjects would tend to bias the results toward the null, as was the case in this study. Third, the major advance of this investigation over earlier studies is the measurement of protein breakdown and synthesis. Yet, this technique is still very new, and it is unknown how sensitive it is to factors such as changes in diet and physical activity. Additional studies would help to clarify whether the increase in basal protein synthetic rate via enhanced entry of amino acids into muscle observed in the older subjects represents the end result rather than the process by which skeletal muscle compensates for the gradual loss of muscle mass. The study by Volpi et al indicates that sarcopenia cannot be explained by differences in basal rates of muscle protein turnover between young and older men. The authors acknowledge additional work is needed in the older population to determine the individual and combined effects on muscle mass of specific stimuli, such as protein and energy intakes, physical activity, sex hormones, and growth hormone. For the clinician, the most important message is that sarcopenia exists in all older individuals. In the face of acute or chronic illness, maximizing muscle mass and protein stores through adequate nutritional support, aggressive physical therapy, and exercise programs becomes all the more important if muscle function and quality of life are to be preserved in the older population. Author/Article Information Author Affiliation: Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston, Mass. Corresponding Author and Reprints: Ronenn Roubenoff, MD, MHS, Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111 (e-mail: Roubenoff@hnrc.tufts.edu). Editorials represent the opinions of the authors and THE JOURNAL and not those of the American Medical Association.   REFERENCES 1. Rosenberg I. Summary comments. Am J Clin Nutr. 1989;50:1231-1233. 2. Roubenoff R, Roubenoff RA, Ward L, Stevens MB. Catabolic effects of high-dose corticosteroids persist despite therapeutic benefit in rheumatoid arthritis. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;52:1113-1117. MEDLINE 3. Baumgartner R, Koehler K, Gallagher D, et al. Epidemiology of sarcopenia among the elderly in New Mexico. Am J Epidemiol. 1998;147:755-763. MEDLINE 4. Kotler D, Tierney A, Pierson R. Magnitude of body cell mass depletion and the timing of death from wasting in AIDS. Am J Clin Nutr. 1989;50:444-447. MEDLINE 5. Winick M. Hunger DiseaseStudies by Jewish Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons; 1979. 6. Roubenoff R, Heymsfield S, Kehayias JJ, Cannon JG, Rosenberg IH. Standardization of nomenclature of body composition in weight loss. Am J Clin Nutr. 1997;66:192-196. MEDLINE 7. Castaneda C, Charnley J, Evans W, Crim M. Elderly women accommodate to a low-protein diet with losses of body cell mass, muscle function, and immune response. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995;62:30-39. MEDLINE 8. Roubenoff R, Hughes V. Sarcopenia: current concepts. J Gerontol. 2000;55:M716-M724. 9. Yarasheski K, Zachwieja J, Bier D. Acute effects of resistance exercise on muscle protein synthesis rate in young and elderly men and women. Am J Physiol. 1993;265:E210-E214. MEDLINE 10. Welle S, Thornton C, Josefowicz R, Statt M. Myofibrillar protein synthesis in young and old men. Am J Physiol. 1993;264:E693-E698. MEDLINE 11. Balagopal P, Rooyackers O, Adey D, Ades P, Nair K. Effects of aging on in vivo synthesis of skeletal muscle myosin heavy-chain and sarcoplasmic protein in humans. Am J Physiol. 1997;273:E790-E800. MEDLINE 12. Volpi E, Sheffield-Moore M, Rasmussen BB, Wolfe RR. Basal muscle amino acid kinetics and protein synthesis in healthy young and older men. JAMA. 2001;286:1206-1212. ABSTRACT  |  FULL TEXT  |  PDF  |  MEDLINE 13. Volpi E, Mittendorfer B, Rasmussen B, Wolfe R. The response of muscle protein anabolism to combined hyperaminoacidemia and glucose-induced hyperinsulinemia is impaired in the elderly. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2000;85:4481-4490. MEDLINE