Walking for Exercise Again

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How did you do with the Summer Kickoff Challenge? Let’s start with exercise. Did you get at least a 15-minute walk or some other activity done—especially if you’ve been sedentary? As I said last week, this was my first attempt at walking with a purpose since my knee replacement surgery. Of course I’ve been walking around the house and doing spring yardwork, but walking to exercise is different: heel through toe, step after step, keeping some form of pace.

I have a half-mile loop across the street from my house. The first day, I finished two laps in 19:12. I didn’t really notice anything unusual in terms of pain or discomfort the rest of the day. I walked the reverse route the next morning; I was a little stiff but finished in 18:34. The rest of the day was miserable—every muscle in my lower body was stiff and sore. All of that and I was never even breathing hard during the walk! I took the next day off to stretch and let the muscles recover.

How did you do? Let me know, especially if you changed your mode of exercise. Why would walking have such a dramatic effect when we’ve been exercising with other modes for so long? That was the topic of the very first Super Bowl webinar I ever did, and I’ll tell you that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Summer Kickoff Challenge

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This weekend kicks off the summer holiday season: cook-outs, concerts, backyard cornhole tournaments, the beach. And of course, the food: barbeque, hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad, ice cream sundaes and pies—more foods than I can name.

Here’s my challenge to you: how about making a couple of small changes? First, get a little exercise if you aren’t exercising now. Go for a 15-minute walk every morning during the weekend (or in the evening if you’re not a morning person); I’m starting mine this weekend as well. That’s enough time to help you start to lower your blood sugar if you’re pre-diabetic. Enlist a friend or your kids and grandkids to make it more fun.

And second, prepare your summer foods in a healthier way. Impossible? I think it’s possible, and I’ll give you some examples along with the possible outcomes.

  • Whole grain buns: maybe the extra fiber in the whole grain feeds the correct probiotic, which will then destroy the salmonella bacteria you ate in the potato salad—no food poisoning.
  • Ketchup: maybe using ketchup instead of mayo on the burger provides the phytonutrients that prevents the extra dense LDL-cholesterol from being produced, and you don’t get the damage to your arteries that causes a stroke in two years.
  • Watermelon: maybe eating watermelon instead of ice cream provides additional electrolytes that help lower your blood pressure. No downside here. And it’s good for your dog as well.
  • Apples: maybe the apple provides the quercetin that helps reduce your allergic response while you spend the entire weekend outside.
  • Dry-rub ribs: sweet or hot paprika, cumin, chili powder, garlic and onion powder, and on and on. Skip the sugary sauces and use a Carolina vinegar sauce. The number of phytonutrients you’ll get together with the reduction of fat from the slow cooking is a better way to go.

There’s no better time to experiment with changing habits for the better than right now. We do what we’ve come to expect during the summer based on past experiences. Let’s kick off with some small changes so we end up having our best summer even as we get healthier.

And once you prove to yourself that you can make those healthy changes, go all in and buy the Optimal Performance download. You can train your body for targeted energy, plus losing weight and burning fat.

I’ll be back next week with the next Memo. Enjoy the experiment. And don’t forget the sunscreen!

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. Insiders and Members, the new Straight Talk on Health is posted; Dr. Evan Parks talks with me about how to deal with the increased anxiety we’re all feeling these days.

Distress Is Normal!

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We’ve experienced ever-present stress over the past three years, from pandemics to politics to prices of just about everything. It hasn’t slowed down, and that can take its toll—if you let it. Am I saying that stress is normal? I already said that in the last Memo. The objective is to train the body to adapt to stress.

I’m not going to review the entire general adaptation syndrome, but put simply, you expose yourself to a planned stressor, such as exercise, to train the body to adapt to the hormones released during stress. That way the body is trained to respond to stress hormones when you’re exposed to other types of stress.

The Stress Response

The most extreme yet common example of the stress response I can think of for almost everyone would be this: did you ever almost have a car accident? I mean within seconds, you’d have been severely injured and maybe dead. Remember that first minute afterward? If you had sensors to test yourself, your heart rate and blood pressure would be sky high. You’d be breathing heavily. You’d most likely be shaking. All the hormones that caused those reactions would still be coursing through your body; it would take time for your body to normalize. That’s the extreme, fight-or-flight, type of stress response.

When you exercise regularly, you train your body to deal with that hormone surge, although the results aren’t as extreme as when you’re exposed to life-threatening stress. How you respond is at least partially in your control.

Dealing with Stress

I interviewed psychologist Evan Parks again to ask him how a person can deal with the anxiety caused by today’s stress. Here are his recommendations:

  • Stand outside your body and take a survey of what’s going on. Is there anything you attribute the symptoms to? Are you feeling stress in response to something specific, or is it just a general feeling of anxiety?
  • Does talking about it with a spouse or a friend help clarify things for you?
  • Can you center your thoughts from doom and gloom to a realistic perspective by prayer or meditation?

If these steps help, great. If not, it may be time to seek professional help.

Psychology isn’t my area of expertise. You can hear the interview in Straight Talk on Health on drchet.com if you’re an Insider or Member; it will be posted no later than Monday. Dr. Evan Parks does a great job of explaining all of it in more detail.

The Bottom Line

Distress is normal, so you’d better get used to it. One way to do that is to use a positive stressor such as exercise to help you prepare your body. Yes, eating a better diet and eating less may help as well. Use planned distress to your advantage by preparing your body for the unpredictable stress of today’s life.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Living in Anxious Times

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A psychologist I’ve interviewed on my local radio show on WGVU-FM, the Grand Rapids NPR affiliate, called me recently to talk about a wave of anxiety that seems to be impacting people: increased visits to doctors and ERs for chest pain, headaches, high blood pressure, and many more symptoms that don’t have a physiological explanation. Without a physical explanation, the symptoms may be our response to the stressful times in which we live.

Think about it. Things seem to be out of control. We’re exiting a pandemic that has changed the way society interacts. On top of that, every day there seems to be another major act of violence, such as the one recently in my home town of Buffalo, NY. Inflation is talked about incessantly. Supply chain issues are having serious effects on our lives—there’s nothing more serious than being unable to feed your baby. If we’re on social media, we can’t escape it. The stress of life is having an impact on every single one of us.

I think what’s happened over the last few decades, at least in the U.S. and Canada, is that we’ve come to believe that a happy life is one free of stress. We’ve gotten to believe that those stress feelings are not good. Is stress bad? I’ll discuss that as well as how to cope with stress on Saturday.

This month’s Insider Conference Call is tomorrow night. The call is where you can get your product and health questions answered. I’ll have a research topic or two that I’ll talk about, and then it’s on to your questions.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. A reminder that the Optimal Performance Program has gone digital: you can you can buy and download the four audios and the workbook. My keystone energy-building, weight-management, and fitness product is still available as CDs and a bound workbook, but if you are more accustomed to listening to MP3s and you don’t like paying for shipping, this deal is for you. I’m introducing the download version only for only $29.95; Member and Insider discounts apply. Regardless of age or current fitness level, you can achieve Optimal Performance. Get your copy today!

My Nutrition Questions for This Next Year

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Is 100 years a long time? How about 10,000 years or a million? The answer: it depends on the reference point. In human terms, 100 years is a long time, but in terms of changes within a specific type of food or in terms of the microbiome, maybe not.

In the next year, there are three major questions and several smaller ones I plan to research and, I hope, come up with some answers.

Where Is the Nutrition “Sweet Spot”?

How much vegetables and fruits do you need to eat to offset some foods considered not as good? For example, cabbage is a great cruciferous vegetable; not everyone likes it cooked, but they often like coleslaw. Here’s my question: how much sugar and mayonnaise can you add to cabbage in your coleslaw before it’s not a healthy food? Real mayonnaise and sugar can be adjusted in the dressing recipe, so you’re getting the flavor but not quite as much sugar and fat.

Berries with ice cream? Carrots with brown sugar? Ketchup on French fries? Cucumbers and lettuce with Italian dressing? On and on. We need the phytonutrients. How much good cancels the bad?

Can We Get All The Nutrients We Need from a Well-Balanced Diet?

This has been my question for almost 25 years; now I’m trying a different approach to getting the answer to that question.

Has the Microbiome Changed Significantly Since We’ve Changed the Food Supply?

Plant and animal husbandry have resulted in plants and animals with more desirable traits while eliminating others. Have the microbes been modified in response to what we’ve done?

There are more questions, such as does our inability to make vitamin C impact the ability to metabolize other nutrients or medications? Are the LDL-cholesterol sub-fractions more important than the total-LDL number?

The Bottom Line

My objective to answering my questions is to make it reasonable to modify diet, exercise, and supplements to achieve the best health we can at any age. But I do know the answer to one: what’s the most important factor in obtaining good health? The answer to this question is, as always:

What are you prepared to do today?

New: The Optimal Performance Program Goes Digital!

Starting today you can buy and download the Optimal Performance Program audio and workbook. While I’ll be back on the road starting this summer, I’ve decided to go digital with my keystone energy-building, weight-management, and fitness product—not only because so many of us prefer digital, but also because shipping costs preclude the product from being offered around the world. From the semi-ketogenic meal plan, eating at timed intervals, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT), you can train to have the energy you need exactly when you want it.

I’m introducing the download version only for only $29.95; Member and Insider discounts apply. Regardless of age or current fitness level, you can achieve Optimal Performance. Get your copy today!

        Dr. Chet

I’m Alive: V2.53

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When I opened my eyes this morning, I knew I had another year to do what I was created to do: teach people how to be healthy and fit. For those of you who are new readers, here’s the story: when I wake on May 10th every year, my superstitious belief is that I have at least one more year to live. My dad died on May 10, 1969. In case you’re wondering, I’m version 2 (my father was the first Chester John Zelasko), and it’s been 53 years since my father died. It makes no sense in the real world, especially for a guy who’s a scientist, but every May 10 is a milestone for me.

If you’ve been reading the Memos for the past couple of years, you know that I’ve focused on the issues surrounding aging, hence the webinar Aging with a Vengeance. If you haven’t purchased the 2022 Super Bowl Webinar, do it now, because there’s a lot more we need to learn to live our lives the way we want to live them. Then in Saturday’s Memo, I’ll cover the questions I’m researching this year.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Knowing Your Health Patterns

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The reason it’s important to track health variables is to find any patterns in the results. Remember the study on hs-CRP and cancer? Paula immediately looked up her CRP levels and found two things. First, it had gone down consistently over several years. Second, she hadn’t had it tested every year, but she will from now on.

Remember my blood pressure? I tracked it from that point (five weeks post-surgery) through today. From 177/107, it has come down appreciably though not in a consistent way; it’s consistently around 130/80 before exercise and 110/70 after exercise. That’s two patterns.

There are some other patterns that may be more relevant. For example, perhaps you’ve had heartburn after eating. Tracking what you eat may show a pattern that the higher the fat content, the worse the heartburn seems to be; the same may be true with constipation.

In short, you may find that one thing leads to another, but only under certain conditions. It’s knowing which conditions that’s most important to finding an answer to your health issue.

Patterns for Disease States

Many conditions have patterns of events that can be predictive of disease. For example, as bone density declines, your risk of a bone fracture increases. As blood pressure goes up, so does the risk of stroke. For type 2 diabetes, as blood sugar and HbA1c rise, so does the risk of prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and all the accompanying complications.

Those types of patterns can be predictive of disease. Or they may not. As we’ve learned in the Memos, risk factors set the odds but they’re not cause and effect. But there’s another reason.

Your Pattern

The reason tracking to establish patterns of response is important to you is that it may just be your unique pattern—because while we’re all the same in many ways, we all have our unique variations. You may not know what’s unique about you because you haven’t tested it or tracked it to find your pattern. But whether it’s your blood pressure, your blood sugar, your response to foods, or some other variable, it simply may be your individual pattern and may be indicative of nothing.

That doesn’t mean you don’t get the issue checked out by a healthcare professional, but it may mean you don’t have a disease or condition as a general response would indicate. And since you know your pattern, you can track the results of any medication or other intervention your doctor prescribes.

The Bottom Line

Tracking variables to detect patterns is useful to us all. While it won’t help everyone who tries it, the goal is to know yourself better. You won’t have to do it forever, but if you’re concerned about a specific condition, this is a way to help yourself.

And it won’t necessarily be bad news; Paula was relieved to find her hs-CRP had been going down, and you may find an encouraging pattern as well. Even if the results are not what you’d hoped, better to know than not know, right? Because now you can take action.

If you have no idea where to begin, become an Insider or Member at DrChet.com. You’ll have exclusive access to me by email or phone, and I can guide you in checking out whatever factors could be related to the health issue you’re concerned about.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Track Your Health Issue

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Over the past few months, I’ve written about my blood pressure increasing from being sedentary for five weeks after my knee replacement. I’ve also written about hs-CRP in the study on inflammation and cancer. In addition, I’ve gotten questions about the impact of foods on the digestive system and the variation in blood sugar readings throughout the day.

While the questions vary, my answer is always the same: track it for a while. Whether it’s on a fitness watch, on a spread sheet, an app, or a notebook, record it somewhere. Doesn’t matter how you do it—just record the numbers along with other pertinent information, such as:

  • Date and time of day.
  • What you ate, if it’s important to the issue such as gastroesophageal reflux, or if you’re restricting calories for weight loss or longevity.
  • When you took your meds and supplements.
  • How well and how long you slept.
  • If it’s your blood pressure, record your anxiety or stress level as well as reading in relation to exercise.

The combination of factors is endless, and not every factor will be as obvious. If you continue to track it, you’ll have an edge determining what is and isn’t related to what you’re tracking.

Could this be a lot of work? Yes. Will you find an answer? Maybe, maybe not. What it can do is allow you to discover something that’s useful and I’ll talk about that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Causes and Risk Factors

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Rather than making this a statistics Memo, I’m going to use a couple of examples that illustrate the problems with establishing what prevents or causes disease.

Back in the late 1940s to early 1950s, there was a significant increase in cardiovascular disease. Trying to establish a single cause was complicated because there were so many variables to consider.

The Low-Fat Diet and CVD

If you read any background on the ketogenic diet, you’ll read about two factions: one that claimed a high-fat diet was the problem, while the other claimed carbohydrates from grains were the culprit. The high-fat diet faction won. While many suggest that era was the point when obesity and heart disease increased because of the explosion of carbohydrates, that was never true. They point to the Dietary Recommendations by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Nutrition, which focused on vegetables, fruits, and grains as the best sources of those carbohydrates. But without a decent Public Health Education Program, the recommendations were doomed to fail. The food industry flooded the market with simple carbohydrates and sugar; after all, they were carbohydrates.

Numerous randomized studies were conducted, and the largest ones failed because people didn’t follow a low-fat diet. The goal for one study was to reduce fat intake from an average of 38% to only 20%. It dropped to 24% after a year, but by six years fat had climbed back to 28%. Yet even last year, a ketogenic diet advocate was still claiming the low-fat diet failed and the study lied about the results; what the study really proved was that both reducing fat intake to 20% and increasing fruits, vegetables, and whole grains were difficult.

Cholesterol and CVD

The second story is about the relationship between levels of blood fats and CVD. It began with total cholesterol; that was the big deal for years. Then triglycerides became important based on large epidemiological studies. After that, it was LDL-cholesterol that really mattered. Then it was the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol. The latest big thing is the size of the LDL cholesterol: fat, fluffy LDL doesn’t seem to be harmful, but small, dense LDL cholesterol does. I’d wager that tomorrow, there will be something else that will be The Big Thing.

The Bottom Line

The first story is about nutrition, and the second is about testing cholesterol. Can we predict with certainty whether you will get CVD if you follow the low-fat or high-fat dietary recommendations? No. Can a cholesterol test diagnose it? No. As the carbohydrate intake goes up, so will the risk of CVD; as blood cholesterol goes up or down, the rate of disease follows the same pattern. There’s no cause and effect. They seem to be related in some way, but they’re not predictive; they’re risk factors.

If you think back to Tuesday’s Memo when I gave the trillions of potential components that led to all the potential combinations, you can see why methods of prevention or causes of many diseases may never be known for sure. But it doesn’t change the approach to trying to find a solution: we can only know what we know today. With a methodical and rigorous approach to the scientific method, we’ll know more tomorrow.

Even if science veers in a new direction next week or next year, the only responsible course of action is for each of us to use the best knowledge we have today. And then be prepared to pivot if necessary. That’s how science works.

So what can the average person do with the flood of sometimes conflicting health information? One possibility is to let someone who understands science help you understand what’s significant and what’s not—which studies really mean something, and which are hopelessly flawed. That’s my job and my commitment to you: to sort through it all and keep you up to date on the best ways to improve your health.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

What Is Science?

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Along with all the disagreements and conflicting info about covid-19, there has been some confusion about science. Many people seemed to think anything science discovered about covid was complete and final, but that’s not how science works. Science is a constantly changing body of knowledge, or as the Science Council puts it:

Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.

We very rarely reach the end of the search. When does something become accepted science? When the evidence is irrefutable. For instance, it’s been proven beyond any doubt that polio is caused by the polio virus, but science rarely reaches that kind of definitive answer.

Does that level of certainty exist as to what causes or prevents other serious diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and so on? The question is complicated. I don’t think we have—nor will we ever have—complete answers about what prevents or causes these diseases, and here’s why:

  • Each of our bodies contains trillions of cells, with 20 to 100 times more microbes in the microbiome.
  • We each have an enormous number of genes in our genome, somewhere between 25,000 and a half-million genes—we don’t even know the total number yet.
  • Add to that thousands of environmental factors.
  • And all of the above can interact.

The best we can do is to apply the scientific method and see where it leads. And while we do that, we need to keep an open mind and be prepared to adjust what we think we know.

I think the best way to explain it is to use some examples to demonstrate the complexity, and in that way, explain the difference between risk, cause, and established science. We’ll do that on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://sciencecouncil.org/about-science/our-definition-of-science/