Does stress increase your need for vitamins?
Several years ago a major drug company claimed that its vitamin pills helped to relieve stress from the “complications of everyday life” and gave their products names such as “StressTabs.” The New York Attorney General forced them to stop their deceptive advertising, but many people still remember and believe this claim.
Orthotics
Orthotics are special custom arch supports that help to absorb shock and prevent foot pain. To see if orthotics are likely to help you, ask your podiatrist to strap your foot with a special taping procedure called a low-dye strap. If this reduces the pain, you probably will benefit from custom orthotics.
Lifting Weights Won’t Make You Musclebound
Training for strength improves coordination. Your brain is a master switchboard that coordinates your muscles. Lifting weights does not interfere with brain function; it improves coordination in events that require strength, such as playing sports, working as a carpenter, opening a stuck door or beating a drum.
Super Slow Training
Moving a weight very slowly in sets of ten causes the same amount of damage as moving a much heavier weight rapidly, and causes the same type of muscle damage. Lifting lighter weights slowly is far less likely to cause injuries than heavy lifting.
Muscle Stimulating Machines
Advertisements on television claim that you can wrap a special belt around your belly, plug it into an electric outlet, turn on the electricity, and then watch your belly muscles contract to give you rock-hard belly muscles. You can bet that the beautiful people who...
Spot Reduction Doesn’t Work
You'll see lots of exercise programs, devices and machines in television commercials that claim to get rid of fat from your belly. While they can strengthen your belly muscles, there is no such thing as spot reduction. When you take in more calories than your body...
Build Muscle and Improve Balance with T’ai Chi
T'ai Chi can help older people improve balance, which can protect them from falling and breaking their bones. It is also a safe way to build muscle strength. Older people lose coordination and are at increased risk for falling. T'ai Chi is a specific training program...
Electronic Ab Machines
Your brain does send an electrical impulse along nerves that enter muscles to cause them to contract. The electrical impulses generated by ab machines are so weak that they can’t possibly cause contractions that strengthen muscles significantly. If they did give you enough electricity to strengthen your muscles, they would give you a very painful shock.
Mamo Wolde, Olympian
Mamo Wolde died recently at age 71. At 36, He won the 1968 Olympic marathon and the 10,000-meter silver medal in Mexico City. He spend the last part of his life in prison. He was buried with a guard of honor of some of the greatest distance runners who ever lived. In...
Anabolic Steroids
When I look at today’s baseball players, I just can’t believe how big they are. They are larger and stronger than the best players of the 1930s to 1970s. Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived, was a fat elephant with relatively small muscles and a huge belly compared to the average player today.