Why the hell did Dinosaurs get so big?  How could they?  Wouldn’t it be impossible given Galileo’s square-cube law?

In what has become known as the dinosaur paradox, a few key issues have plagued scientists.

1. Inadequate bone strength to support the largest dinosaurs
   
2. Inadequate muscle strength to lift and move the largest dinosaurs
   
3. Unacceptable high blood pressure and stress on the heart of the tallest dinosaurs
   
4. Aerodynamics principles showing that the pterosaurs should not have flown

I’m only going to focus on number two, as this is the most relevant to what we do here on this blog.  (If you want to read more about why dinosaurs were able to get so big, you can read my post at my other blog: sapien games.)

Sometimes (often) in science, something that at first appears to be a “paradox” is in fact not one at all.  Instead, the original facts of that case were simply misunderstood.  And once the facts become clear, the one-time paradox fades away.

In worst cases, these facts were misunderstood simply because scientists in different fields don’t pay nearly any attention to what others scientists are doing in other fields.  Something of that sort is happening here.

Here is a paragraph from the article on the dinosaur paradox at dinosaurtheory.com:

The relative bone strength and the relative muscle strength are grouped together because they are similar scaling problems. For both, strength is function of the cross-sectional area. If we look at the longest length of a bone or muscle and then imagined cutting this length in half, the newly exposed area is the cross-sectional area. The strength of either a bone or a muscle is directly proportional to this cross-sectional area, so both bone and muscle strength are two dimensional attributes. Yet body mass is a function of volume, a three dimensional attribute. In accordance to the Square-Cube, as we look at increasing larger animals the mass of each animal increases at a faster rate than the cross-sectional areas of either the bone or the muscle. Thus, larger animals have less relative muscle strength and less relative bone strength than that of smaller animals.

The bold is mine – these statements are false.

Any undergrad in exercise science would know that strength is NOT directly proportional to muscle cross-sectional area, but a professional paleontologist might not.  This is not to disparage the paleontologist (there is plenty of info in their field that exercise sci people wouldn’t know).  But, sometimes this lack of understanding can lead to paradoxes that aren’t paradoxes. 

To most people, when they see a big bodybuilder, they assume that they must be one of the strongest men on the planet.  After all, they LOOK strong.  They are so big; they have so much muscle.  The top pro bodybuilders are literally the most muscular men to have ever walked the earth.  But, they are decidedly NOT the strongest.

The cold-hard truth is that the size of muscle is NOT directly proportional to strength and is therefore not a 2-dimensional attribute. (That is, when size goes up strength goes up and vice versa – think of a simple Cartesian graph.)  It IS true that as mass goes up it becomes harder to be as relatively strong.  But, does that mean that dinosaurs weren’t strong enough to hold themselves up?  No. 

When it comes to building strength, we can call muscle size (it’s cross sectional area) the “weak” force.  And we can call motor unit activation and fiber types the “strong” forces.  All of which are more complex than you might expect.

The statements above are predicated on a single fallacy of both science and logic.  It goes something like this:

Statement A:  Strength goes up if and only if muscle size goes up

This statement is really the conjunction of two statements:

A1:  If Strength goes up, then muscle size goes up.

A2:  If muscle size goes up, then strength goes up.

Let’s start with A2.

It IS true in a weak sense that if muscle size goes up, then strength goes up.  But, not as much as one would think.

The size of muscle is dictated by a lot of things, among them being contractile proteins and sarcoplasm.   Contractile proteins are the little guys that actually do the mechanical work of moving your body around.  The sarcoplasm is the fluid in your muscle cells.  Believe it or not, the size of your muscle has as much to do with how much “water weight” you’re carrying as it does with how many contractile proteins you have.  Yes, more sarcoplasm does correlate with more strength, but not as highly as with more contractile proteins. 

Even with a “maximum” amount of both of these, this still doesn’t mean you will be as strong as someone half your size.

Which leads me to A1.

The first of the strong forces is much more complicated, and it is at least part of what accounts for the fact that top middleweight powerlifters and olympic weightlifters are SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than the worlds top bodybuilders, in spite of the fact that they are half their size.

Just because you have (for the sake of argument) 10 muscle fibers, doesn’t mean that you use all 10 every time you do something.  In fact, most people won’t be able to activate all 10 even in their moments of greatest need (like when lifting a really heavy weight).  The reason is that the body is all about efficiency.  Using all of your muscle fibers all at once is taxing as hell.  This is why the more advanced you get in strength sports, the longer your rest periods have to become, because you’ve literally worked harder than someone who is just beginning can possibly work.

What we’re saying here is that it is perfectly possible to get a whole lot stronger without ever getting much bigger, simply by training your muscles to actually work at the top of their capacity. 

OK …  is that it?  Nope.

We also have the difference in fiber types.  There are lots of them (and the list seems to get bigger every decade), but to keep things simple as all hell, we’ll just go with two groupings of them: fast twitch fibers and slow twitch fibers.

The fast twitch fibers are the ones you use when you want to go … fast (surprised?), and the slow twitch fibers are better at going the distance.  The fast ones are more efficient at bursts of energy that result in both speed and strength.  The slow twitch ones are more efficient at avoiding burnout. 

So if you go for a long hike up a mountain, you’d better hope you have an abundance of slow twitch fibers in your legs so that it doesn’t burn the whole way! (Trust me, I hate hiking for a reason …)

Now imagine two ladies, each with identical cross-sectional area of muscle in their thighs.  But one has an over abundance of fast twitch fibers and the other has an over abundance of slow twitch fibers.  They are the same size, but the first is going to be a ton stronger. 

There’s more to all of this, of course, including the neuromuscular coordination problem and the importance of leverage as dictated by limb-length, tendon and ligament attachment points, etc;  but, I’m not even going to get into that.

The “paradox” regarding dinosaur size includes statements about the lack of muscle strength adequate enough to support their weight.  But, this assessment is based solely on the myth of Statement A, above.  Clearly, that statement is false.

OK, I know what you’re thinking, “Nick, for heaven’s sake!  You’re talking about mammals, and humans particularly.  The author above is talking about dinosaurs!  OMG!”

True.

But, hear me out. 

We have NO fossilized evidence of what the muscles of dinosaurs were like.  So, speculation based upon available current animals is all we have.  Further, we DO know that dinosaurs are closest related to modern-day birds, and bird muscles function in the same way as ours.  That is, among animals, a muscle is a muscle in the broad sense, and species “pick” which configuration they can most use from the available options (as discussed above).  (Well, natural and sexual selections “pick” for them.)

We also know that these beasts DID exist, and they WERE huge.  So, clearly they were able to stand up and hold their own weight.  Part of the many reasons (see here for more) that they were able to do this is likely because of a muscle-configuration-distribution that made that possible.  We know that Statement A is false with regards to mammals, and by Occam’s Razor, it was probably false for dinosaurs.

They had big legs, but they also must have had strong legs – not the same thing.

Over at Evidence Based Fitness, Bryan Chung reviews a study that looked at whether manipulating rest periods can aid in hypertrophy. 

Rest 2 minutes, or less than 2 minutes, that is the question!

He explains the methods:

The subjects were then randomly assigned to do an 8-week lifting program in which the rest period was either constant (2 minutes between sets for 8 weeks) or decreasing (2 minutes between sets in week 1-2, and then decreasing every week to end up at 30 seconds between sets in week

The program was 6 workouts a week, alternating between a workout A and B, Monday to Saturday. Both groups had the same exercises. In weeks 1 and 2, both groups resting for 2 minutes between sets. From week 3 onwards, the decreasing rest group got less and less rest between sets each week.

I particularly liked this paragraph, as it makes a point about the proper way to read a research article:

I think it’s important to pay attention to the characteristics of subjects in a study as it has direct implications as to whether this research might apply to any particular consumer. There were 20 subjects in this study (10 in each group). The subjects in this study group were, on average, in their 20′s, somewhere around 5’10" tall and 160lbs. What does this tell us? Well, for one, in terms of a study about hypertrophy, we know that it’s likely that of all the guys that could have been in this study, these guys were in the demographic of men most likely to build muscle. So, from a sample selection point of view, this is a trial designed to succeed (which isn’t some underhanded thing, since ALL trials should be designed to succeed).

Here’s the conclusion:

The Bottom Line: When it comes to hypertrophy, it’s pretty unlikely that resting 2 minutes or resting less than two minutes has much of an effect on how fast or big your muscles get. Resting for less time may make your workouts shorter though. Mostly, though I wanted to review this study because it just goes to show that it’s NOT impossible to measure hypertrophy directly.

Bryan goes into far more depth here.

My own reaction is curiosity of exactly what exercises were used, as rest periods are largely contingent on what you are doing.  Do biceps curls and you don’t need much rest.  Do tire flips and you fall over for 5 minutes, puke for 10, slowly sip water for another 5 minutes while sobbing sweet man-tears, and then crawl your way back for another set.  Exercises matter.

They tested 1RM on the bench and squats at both the beginning and the end, so I am assuming that they used those exercises in the routine … but you know what happens when you’re assuming?  You make an ass out of you and “uming”!

Check out this article on the physics of the shot put.  (The original paper can be found on the Arxiv, if you want to see the actual math – I promise it’s fun!)

For more than 30 years, sports scientists have puzzled over why the optimum angle of release for a shot put is not 45 degrees.

One of the stranger Olympic sports is the shot put, an event in which an athlete throws a grapefruit-sized sphere of metal as far as possible, using a strange throwing motion specified by the rules.

Now here’s a curious puzzle of biomechanics: at what angle should the shot be released to maximize the distance of throw?

I’ll just overlook the “one of the stranger Olympic sports” comment, for now. 

The Basic Physics

The article does bring up some interesting ideas that a shot putter (or “rock putter” for all you Highland lads and lassies out there) may want to pay attention to. 

The first is one everyone who engages in the sport already knows:  the height of the thrower matters.  I’m only 5’6’’ and am at a distinct disadvantage vs my lifter Chris who is over 6 feet.  If we each applied identical force, at an identical angle, his would go farther simply because it started higher.  (Think of the extreme case of a guy throwing from the ground or from the top of a 30 story building.)

But, that isn’t all.  Additional arm length also matters.  There are likely a few reasons for this.  The first is simply that a longer arm increases the time the weight is under force before released.

The second reason is that the point at which you let go of the weight is the real height of release – not the shoulder.  If we have two people with identical shoulder heights, identical technique, and identical ability to put force on the implement, but with the first having an arm that is 2 inches longer; then the first person will be releasing the weight at a different height than the second.  The longer armed thrower will release just a touch higher – and therefore throw it farther.  All it takes is half an inch to win.

However, it turns out that the real height is determined by the angle of release and the velocity squared.  The velocity is basically the force you put onto it during your driving phase right before release.  That is, it’s all the work you did.  Since this parameter is squared, then you’re getting more “bang for your buck”. 

This is probably the reason the shot put technique has evolved the way it has over time – with shorter athletes preferring the spin technique which increases the time under tension, adds centrifugal force, and gives you a longer amount of time to accelerate.  They are compensating for a lack of release height by increasing velocity on the weight.

[By “shorter” athlete I mean under 6’ 5’’.  Seriously, these folks are monsters.]

The down side of increasing the force on the implement is that it tends to lower the angle of release. But, again, since you have velocity being squared, it’s a worthwhile trade off – especially if you don’t have the natural height.

Lack of Experience Showing

Now … this is where things in the article get ugly, and silly. 

Finally, Lenz and Rappl say it has long been known that world records in bench-pressing are significantly higher than for the clean and jerk. This implies that athletes have greater power at their disposal when the angle of release is 0 degrees compared to other angles. This effect also means that a smaller angle of release could send the shot further.

The bold is mine.  That implication is false.  This isn’t to say that a lower angle of release doesn’t provide more power.  But, if true, their “implication” isn’t the reason.

It’s paragraphs like this that cause so many coaches and athletes to outright dismiss research and theory all together.  It shows an obvious lack of understanding of the very basics of shot put technique, bench technique, and what is happening in a clean and jerk.  And that is a shame, as there is a lot coaches and athletes can learn from well-designed research.  Practice and Science should be complementary.  Imagine if doctors just ignored science … it’d be the middle ages all over again (leeches!).

You DON’T drive with your arms and upper body in the shot put as your primary generator of force!  It’s a leg exercise.  Your upper body is in a purely supportive role.  Yes, upper body strength and power is very important, but not nearly as important as leg power.  Not even close.  

This is the reason throwers have long known that if you had to pick between only doing bench, or only doing clean and jerks, you’d pick the clean and jerks.  Why?  Because the bench is an upper body exercise while the clean and jerk is fundamentally a leg exercise that (just like the shot) uses the upper body only in a supportive role.  More over, like the shot, the clean and jerk is an explosive exercise that builds and develops power, where the bench is a slower pure strength move.  (Every coach knows the difference between strength and power.  Sports scientists should too.)

The reason bench press numbers are so far above that of clean and jerks isn’t because of the “angle”.  It’s because of bench shirts and a drastically lowered range of motion via arching. 

Those 1000 pound benches you see are ALL shirted. 

Raw (no shirt) bench presses are about 700 pounds.  Top clean and jerks are about 250 kilo’s or 550 pounds. 

But, again, the bench technique used in contests has a massive arch in it which dramatically reduces the range of motion.  How much?  Well, one of my own lifters holds world records in the bench press and has a range of motion in that exercise of less than 2 inches … yes, 2 inches! 

I’m not against that.  That’s the sport.  That’s the technique.  And that’s fine. 

But, let’s not pretend that the numbers seen in competitive bench presses are related – in any way – to the way one goes about throwing a shot. 

And by the way, by adding in an arch like that to the bench you decrease the angle to as far as –45 degrees from the shoulder (less than zero degrees)! Imagine throwing the shot with a negative angle! 

But, fundamentally, the technique of the two exercises with regard to angle is beside the point.  What is important is that benching is an upper body exercise – and shot put isn’t.

When you shot put, you are driving at maximum speed with your legs, ending in a full triple extension of the hips, knees, and ankles (especially for shot putters who use the “glide” style – see videos below).  Your upper body is held tight so that you don’t absorb any of the force generated by your legs and it is instead transferred into the weight, and your arm is used only at the last moment (just like a jerk) at the very top of the movement to give it a little extra push. 

Think of pushing a car.  You can’t possibly push-start a car by only pressing with your arms.  In fact, most people will keep their arms stationary and drive hard with their legs to get the car going.  Only once the car is up to speed do the arms start to move – giving that little extra “nudge”. 

The jerk is the same.  You drive with your legs like you would in a powerful vertical jump, and only at the top, when the arms are already 1/2 to 3/4 extended do you drive with the arms.

If the authors had ever done these three exercises – bench, shot put, and clean and jerk – they would never have said something so ridiculous.  And their article might get read by people who DO do these exercises.

They’re lucky I have a math degree and like research.  The truth is, the original paper is good, very interesting, and applicable.  But, by showing their glaring lack of real-world knowledge and experience they are turning off a large potential audience – the very people who would benefit most from the information.

Spinners

Take a look at this video of shot put “spinners” and tell me why the bench makes sooo much sense for them:

Gliders

And here are the “gliders”:

[Hat tip: Beth]

Check out this article at a fantastic blog I just found, Evidence-Based Fitness, written by Bryan Chung.  It’s about chocolate milk as an after workout drink.

I think we would all like to believe the pre, intra and post-workout nutrition are very important. We’ve seen one example of how pre-workout protein probably doesn’t really make any difference large enough to warrant the extra cost of consuming it. While there have been studies supporting the idea that post-workout nutrition is important and results in better recovery (a fairly vaguely defined term) and better results (an even more vaguely defined term), the debate around WHAT to consume after a workout takes most of us down a path of debate that I believe counts as pure, unadulterated intellectual masturbatory minutiae.

But, don’t let my opinion count for much of anything.

Let us assume for the purposes of this review, that post-workout nutrition DOES matter. And furthermore, let us assume that post-workout nutrition matters for the non-elite typical gym go-fer.

What do we know about chocolate milk? We know it contains both protein and carbohydrate. We know that in head-to-head comparisons, it tends to do just as well, or better than carbohydrate drinks alone. However, we’re not sure whether the fact that in previous comparisons, the drinks weren’t calorie controlled might explain why it did so well or whether it actually does affect recovery insofar as we can measure it.

Since most of my readers are not the typical “non-elite typical gym go-fer” and are (I’m sure) training the way I advice on this blog – that is, like an athlete – then post workout nutrition DOES apply to you.  If you’re training up to 6 times a week, and hard, then anything you can do to up your recovery is mandatory, even if it isn’t great (though, I’m still of the mind that post workout recovery makes a large difference, not a small one, and that that difference grows (at least linearly) as your workout intensity and volume grow).

He goes on:

Results

The average age of the players in this study was 19 years (SD 0.3 years)

Overall, there weren’t any notable differences between the carb-only drink and chocolate milk. Creatine kinase levels rose (predictably) with both drinks, although it did not tend to rise as much when the players had chocolate milk instead. The players tended to perform just as well whether they had a carb-only drink or chocolate milk.

What I find important here is that chocolate milk performed AS WELL as the carb drink.  Why this matters is that so many athletes will spend a fortune on stupid supplements for post-workout nutrition when they might do just as well by drinking cheap-as-dirt chocolate milk.

So what can we take away from all of this?

I think there are a few points that most readers of this blog can take away:

1) Unless you’re a 19 year old Division I soccer player, this study shouldn’t be the reason why you choose to drink anything after your workouts.

2) Any study that excludes subjects after having already analyzed the data should be under high suspicion of biased information. In this case, it probably didn’t matter, but we’ll never _really_ know.

3) I suspect that it doesn’t really matter what you drink after your workouts, if anything at all. If there are any applicable links between this study and you, the numbers suggest that you can pretty much do what you want and you’ll still play and test about the same.

So in the end, there isn’t anything magical about chocolate milk. If you’re drinking it anyways, good for you. If you’re not, there’s no reason for you to rush out and get any. Just do what you’re doing. Simplfy what you can, and rest assured that you’re not missing out.

His approach to the article was from the standpoint that chocolate milk is getting too much positive press, and that it isn’t a big deal – it only did as well as a carb drink of similar calories, and probably won’t do much of anything for the casual person in the gym.

I’m coming at it from a different angle.  As I mentioned above, athletes are suckers for supplement advertising and I regularly have to convince them that chocolate milk is just as good as the $75/bottle BS they’re buying. 

Second, I don’t train the average joe in the gym who only does average workouts.  I train athletes who are tearing it up and need anything and everything they can get their hands on to recover well.  My people DO train as hard as division 1 soccer players, yet many don’t have luxury of youth to mask bad eating habits.

As an aside: while I love chocolate milk as a recovery drink, I think it is better as a base for a more substantial recovery drink.  I think the most important factor is simply getting in enough calories after your workout.  Since most of my lifters pack more into a 1-1/2 to 2 hour workout than most people put into a week, they need a LOT of calories.  Just 20 oz of Choco ain’t gonna cut it. 

Here’s a suggestion if you train like I want you to:

Chocolate Milk – 16 oz

Protein powder – 50g worth (I don’t care what kind, go cheap – don’t believe the hype!)

Ice Cream – 1/2 to 1 cup

1 frozen banana

Blend it up, and there you go.  Calories, carbs, protein – mmm …

(Please, if you DON’T train like a maniac in the gym, then don’t do this!  That’ll likely be your entire days worth of calories.  This is only for athletes who NEED those calories badly).

Two new studies add points to the Superset corner.   For most of my non-Olympic Weightlifters, I vastly prefer supersets to straight sets. [a super set is: do one exercise, rest a bit, do the second, rest a bit, go back to the first and repeat.  A straight set is: do one set of an exercise, rest, repeat.]  These studies just confirm it for me:

Reciprocal supersets produced greater exercise kJ.min, blood lactate, and EPOC than did [traditional weight training].

EPOC stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption.  This is the system that causes your body to continue to burn calories long after you’ve stopped your workout (from 12 to 48 hours depending on how hard your workout session was – imagine how intense the EPOC is for Guergui Gardev in the above pic!  That’s intensity!). 

1. Kelleher et al. The Metabolic Costs of Reciprocal Supersets vs. Traditional Resistance Exercise in Young Recreationally Active Adults. JSCR 2010 Mar 17. [Epub ahead of print]

2. Paoli et al. Effects of three distinct protocols of fitness training on body composition, strength and blood lactate. JSMPF. 2010 Mar;50(1):43-51

[hat tip: A.C.]

A new paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that women who strength train score higher on cognitive tests.

Older women who did an hour or two of strength training exercises each week had improved cognitive function a year later, scoring higher on tests of the brain processes responsible for planning and executing tasks, a new study has found.

The Women (ages 65 to 75) were all put on a strength training program for a full year.

A year later, the women who did strength training had improved their performance on tests of so-called executive function by 10.9 percent to 12.6 percent, while those assigned to balance and toning exercises experienced a slight deterioration — 0.5 percent. The improvements in the strength training group included an enhanced ability to make decisions, resolve conflicts and focus on subjects without being distracted by competing stimuli.

Notice that the control group still exercised, but only did “toning” and “balance” work and saw a slight deterioration in cognitive function.  This is the kind of stuff you’d do in a Yoga class, or even an aerobics class.  Those things are great (even essential).  But, without a dedicated strength training program, you’re selling yourself short – apparently even your brain!

Gruber J, Tang SY, and Halliwell B came out with a study in 2007 showing that Resveratrol, the substance in red wine that is thought to be the major cause of the “French Paradox”, excerts it’s life extending effects at a cost to early life reproductive capacity in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans.  This didn’t affect didn’t exert itself at later stages of life.

Don’t think this is necessarily bad.  If it’s also true in humans, then resveratrol may help extend life, and reduce teenage pregnancy!

Calorie restriction works in much the same way, but is hard to implement with athletes who need large amounts of food just to survive. 

Ice Cream Sushi!

Great news for Athletes trying to pack on muscle mass.  A new study has shown that eating saturated fat can increase your appetite and trick you into thinking you need more food.

Since THE major factor holding back athletes who are looking to add large amounts of muscle (or even to maintain what they have–marathon runners, I’m looking at you!) is their inability to eat enough, this fact may come in handy.

My suggestion? Eat ice cream.  It’s high calorie and loaded with saturated fat which will apparently make you hungrier.  You get two for the price of one!

Of course, the article I found this tid-bit on was most worried about the implications of saturated fat on our overall health profiles.  But, that isn’t your problem.  You’re too skinny, and you need to muscle up.  That takes more calories than you can eat comfortably.   Science (and Ice Cream) to the rescue!

Below is the abstract to the  actual study (I hate that most articles don’t do this, especially when they are on the web).

Insulin signaling can be modulated by several isoforms of PKC in peripheral tissues. Here, we assessed whether one specific isoform, PKC-θ, was expressed in critical CNS regions that regulate energy balance and whether it mediated the deleterious effects of diets high in fat, specifically palmitic acid, on hypothalamic insulin activity in rats and mice. Using a combination of in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, we found that PKC-θ was expressed in discrete neuronal populations of the arcuate nucleus, specifically the neuropeptide Y/agouti-related protein neurons and the dorsal medial nucleus in the hypothalamus. CNS exposure to palmitic acid via direct infusion or by oral gavage increased the localization of PKC-θ to cell membranes in the hypothalamus, which was associated with impaired hypothalamic insulin and leptin signaling. This finding was specific for palmitic acid, as the monounsaturated fatty acid, oleic acid, neither increased membrane localization of PKC-θ nor induced insulin resistance. Finally, arcuate-specific knockdown of PKC-θ attenuated diet-induced obesity and improved insulin signaling. These results suggest that many of the deleterious effects of high-fat diets, specifically those enriched with palmitic acid, are CNS mediated via PKC-θ activation, resulting in reduced insulin activity.

Normally your bodies cells are told to stop demanding food by a couple of hormones, leptin and insulin. This study suggests that certain saturated fats, particularly palmitic acid tell your brain to send signals to your bodies cells instructing them to ignore leptin and insulin.  And therefore, you can be “objectively” full, but not feel like you are.  So, you keep eating.

Clearly, if you want to lose weight, this is bad news.  Keep your saturated fats down, and stick to unsaturated fats if you can like fish oils and olive oil.

But, if you are trying to gain size, this is GREAT.  More ice cream, fried chicken, bacon, and even more ice cream!

(The image above is from SushiGallery.net.  Very cool.)

References

Benoit, Stephen C, Christopher J Kemp, Carol F Elias, William Abplanalp, James P Herman, Stephanie Migrenne, Anne-Laure Lefevre, et al. 2009. Palmitic acid mediates hypothalamic insulin resistance by altering PKC-theta subcellular localization in rodents. The Journal of Clinical Investigation 119, no. 9 (September): 2577-2589. doi:10.1172/JCI36714.

John Hawks reviews an article by Roni Caryn Rabin on the connection with glucose metabolism and age related cognitive decline.

The original authors made clear that we remember:

Previous observational studies have shown that physical activity reduces the risk of cognitive decline, and studies have also found that diabetes increases the risk of dementia. Earlier studies had also found a link between Type 2 diabetes and dysfunction in the dentate gyrus.

But John Hawks worries:

Here the causality is not necessarily clear. Maybe people who have healthy metabolic profiles are more likely to be active and less likely to exhibit cognitive declines. In that scenario, you wouldn’t necessarily benefit from changing your activity pattern.

I disagree with him here.  In our society people do not (generally) exercise because they find it fun, or because it’s something they are naturally good at.  People exercise because they believe the have to.  There is a strong cultural pressure that leads people to feel like they should work out regardless of how natural it feels.

Nearly all of my clients come to me wanting to change how they look.  They know they need help from me, a trainer, precisely because they don’t find exercise natural.

Because of this, I think that the causal link is more robust.  Most exercising Americans are far from athletes with great natural metabolic profiles.  But, exercising does improve their metabolic profiles, and can bring them up to the level of those lucky few (very few) who have it naturally without working out.

Research at the Seoul National University has suggested that the inorganic phosphates in a whole host of processed foods can increase the growth of lung cancer tumors.

According to Dr. Myung-Haing Cho, D.V.M., Ph.D who (along with his colleagues) conducted the research:

“Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell proliferation in lung tissue, and disruption of signaling pathways in those tissues can confer a normal cell with malignant properties,” Dr. Cho explained. “Deregulation of only a small set of pathways can confer a normal cell with malignant properties, and these pathways are regulated in response to nutrient availability and, consequently, cell proliferation and growth.

“Phosphate is an essential nutrient to living organisms, and can activate some signals,” he added. “This study demonstrates that high intake of inorganic phosphates may strongly stimulate lung cancer development by altering those (signaling) pathways.”