The Dangers of Visceral Fat

Is belly fat the same as visceral fat?

Is It Belly Fat or Visceral Fat?

The dangers of visceral fat are becoming known, but what isn't always known is how to tell the difference between regular fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat, which is stored between the muscles and the skin, is regular fat. That's the fat that we can grab a hold of, say around the stomach or thighs. Here is a good comparison between the two fats:

"In comparison to visceral cells, subcutaneous cells are greater in number. But the visceral cells are actually larger in size per cell. And they get to be so big that they atrophy themselves—at which point they constantly, 24/7, produce cytokines. Cytokines are a hormone with known inflammatory properties. "They promote atherosclerosis, tumor growth, aging, oxidation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease."

Visceral Fat is Linked to a High-Fat Diet

Science suggests that visceral fat is linked to a high-fat diet. According to Dr. David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum, "'Visceral fat may seem to be an inert lump of lard, but it's actually highly active and constantly pumping poisons into the bloodstream.' Visceral fat is known to cause inflammation in the colon and the artery walls, and is a major cause of heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer. Research even suggests that visceral fat affects mood by increasing production of the stress hormone, cortisol, and reducing levels of feel-good endorphins. So, along with killing you, visceral fat, it seems, can make you feel low."

Sounds scary, doesn't it?  So how can we keep our visceral fat low? By eating low-fat foods and doing regular, moderate exercise at least 30 minutes per day. Other things to be aware of are:

• portion size
• more fruits and vegetables
• more whole grains
• more lean protein
• less refined-grain pasta and breads

A few years ago I noticed that during my yearly medical checkup it became routine for my doctor to measure my waist with a seamstress tape. I wondered why she was always picking the part of my waist that stuck out the most. It turned out that to properly measure visceral fat, or the dangerous fats stored around the liver, you have to measure one inch above the belly button. I was surprised at where my measurement was in relation to the 35 inches considered normal for women.

So I've started taking regular exercise of between 30-60 minutes per day very seriously. If you are concerned with your level of visceral fat, it's not too difficult to do something to reduce it.

Classroom Discussion: Benefit or Detriment?

Taking the Discussion Outside the Classroom Keeps it Real

Does mandatory classroom discussion dumb down lecture content for students?

From research of the many over-40 classmates I've studied with during the past year, the consensus among boomers is that enforced discussion in college or university classrooms is dumbing down lecture content. At the typical college age, we were all "serious intellectuals" taking the discussion outside the classroom creatively and independently on our own, while receiving a full hour or 2-hour lecture from the prof as well. There wasn't a problem remembering the content. In most eras, students naturally discuss what they're learning in nightly gatherings outside the classroom, every era and place having its own hangouts. The dress and aspiration is also era-specific - perhaps young men in black leather bomber jackets and Lenin caps sit beside freedom-fighting women in earnest hippie dresses, all having written or with plans to write their novels or journal articles... or whatever. The main point is that outside the classroom no discussion occurs to get a better mark.

Institutionalized Discussion Curbs Creativity in Learning 

What causes a professor to institute discussion with students during a lecture that I'm paying for to learn knowledge from him or her? Does a prof condone the conformity in holding particular opinions as well, that used to be free to roam in a cafe without any institutional shaping whatsoever? Where no opinion is shaped by a need for a mark or a grade or a reference, but each idea just feverishly fascinating to learn about for its own sake? Why can't students just discuss on their own without the guidance of a prof? And leave the lecture to being a distilled, creative expression of a senior expert's interpretations and ideas on the topic we're learning about that they reference and allude to?

The Most Verbose Students Are Rewarded

At my own university course about a fascinating literary topic, I have decided to drop the course and continue studying the subject on my own. I dislike having to listen to other students for half of the lecture time at my university. It feels like a controlled, herded, prescribed group experience. Perhaps it is a conditioning for the conformity expected of everyone from the working world, where "collaboration" is now mandatory, which often means a quiet tyranny by the participants who like to talk the most. Preference isn't given to the proven participants who know the most or execute the best and most efficiently, but the ones who talk at and in the highest volumes.

I have decided I value a real college or university lecture, and don't want it dumbed-down or cut in half, to make room for currently mandatory classroom discussion. Just as I seek quieter "doers" in my professional environments who walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.

Cure Flat-Footedness With Ballet Exercises

It is possible to cure flat-footedness by building strength through ballet exercises

High Arches, Low Arches, or Flat Feet?

Since I've been walking to work for over a month now, I am very aware of having flat feet. And although I studied ballet for 16 years many years ago, I never knew that ballet is actually recommended to fix flat-footedness. Ballet exercises and stretches the foot and ankle - and to some degree, strengthens the arch. This can lessen the pain in feet when walking long distances.

Practicing Relevés Builds Foot Strength

Practicing relevés is the best way to build strength in feet. To perform a relevé, start with your weight evenly distributed between the balls of your feet and your heels. Slowly lift your heels and roll onto the balls of your feet, resisting the floor as though you are peeling each muscle away from the floor one by one. Then slowly lower your feet to the floor. Do this 10 times each day to build strength in your feet.

The Peroneus Longus Muscle Needs to Be Strengthened to Cure Flat-Footedness

The peroneus longus is the muscle responsible for maintaining the foot arch. If this muscle hasn't been used, it has to be strengthened. It is best to use the whole body to condition it in a wholistic way. One simple thing to correct is to be aware of where your weight is when you stand. If it's on your heels, try to correct this by balancing your body weight more on the balls of your feet.




Other tips for strengthening feet are:

• toe running
• toe walking: walk without touching your heels to the ground
• spread out toes of both feet and hold for 15 seconds
• point your toes and hold for 10 seconds, then release - do 5 times each day on each foot
• roll your feet inwards to stretch the muscles on the outer sides of each foot
• go barefoot as much as possible
• try pointing your toes without curling them

Even for professional future dancers, it is possible to correct flat feet. Check out these young dancers discussing their flat-footedness. Yoga Tuneup has other interesting resources on correcting flat feet.

Back to School Resolutions

Back to School Resolutions are the product of the mental reset button we feel each September

Back to School Resolutions Are All About Going Forward

Forget New Years resolutions - Back to School resolutions are the ones I always make. They do not necessarily relate to being a parent either, since my son is almost finished university and doesn't need me buying his clothes or packing his lunches anymore. They are about my own return to school, my own wellness over 40, and my own improvement in achieving wellness goals and maximizing life in a new age zone.

What are back to school resolutions, anyway? They are the product of the mental reset button we have from decades of closing the chapter of summer and embarking on a return to school. They are from our childhood excitement about starting a fresh new grade each September with a fresh new pencil case full of sharpened pencils and a new 3-ring binder with paper, dividers and a box of reinforcements on hand. (hmm, what I really mean here is a new laptop, cell phone, music and clothes...)

Being a Better Everything

I still get excited every September about starting something fresh! But now my resolutions are about passing to the next proverbial grade of life, not about passing from grade 7 to grade 8. I still think that my current resolutions are influenced by a mindset from three or four decades of deciding to be a "better everything" in order to have a good year - the year from September to June, that is.

Here are 7 quick ideas to kick start your own career, financial, environmental, or wellness aspirations:

• Whether you're a new grad or facing a working retirement, pursue the next level of your career by upgrading your skills in a way that's relevant to the marketplace as well as your own personality

• If you really want to get to work feeling grounded and able to take charge of your own productivity, walk at least part of the way to work

• Buy fresh food and cook it

• Whether you have kids yet or not, think about them and their kids of the future - reduce your car usage and if possible get rid of your car and use transit

• Save money painlessly by managing your personal cash flow

• Consider chemical-free skin care products - it's hard to believe that many of us smoked cigarettes at our office computers in the 80s; well, in the future people will look back incredulously at the amount of chemicals we put on our face daily when there were other alternatives out there

• Try something out of character and take up dancing

Health Benefits of Swimming

The health benefits of swimming include providing a good cardio workout and building core strength

Swimming Results in Trimmer Hips and Waistlines

Whether you swim in an outdoor pool, lake or indoor pool, the health benefits of swimming cannot be overlooked. Swimming not only builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism, it also gives a killer cardio workout if you do the freestyle stroke.

Swimming makes us feel and look younger

What I like about swimming is that it's a relaxing form of exercise and it's free.

It's hard to find an unhappy person at any outdoor swimming pool. There's something natural about using every muscle in your body while having a surreal weightlessness. It's one place that we can experience the sensation of floating.

Since swimming is good for every age group, it's also an activity that's multi-generational. It's not unusual to see retired people, business people, family people, children and babies all playing together in the middle of the city.

Swimming Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease, Diabetes and Stroke

Beyond the alleviation of stress and its relaxing effects, swimming has other hard-core health benefits:

• reduces our risk of getting heart disease, diabetes or stroke
• prolongs life
• improves flexibility and coordination
• improves balance and posture
• low risk of bone, joint or muscle injury due to weightlessness in water
• low-impact
• builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism
• builds core strength
• results in trimmer waists and hips
• makes us feel and look younger

Digital Media Defies Generational Boundaries

Learning Digital as a Tool of Communication

A new dawn of digital media would happen when everyone can use it expressively

Digital media, like a language, is a tool of communication and expression. What you say within it is still central to its value, and substance is still all. Although 'the medium is the message' to the extent that technology influences how messages are perceived, you still need to start with the message - and content is never dominated by one particular generation.

Is Learning Digital an Advancement or Conformity? 

Can digital marketing only be properly understood and managed by millennials because they been raised in a digital world? Just reading titles like this make we wonder whether learning digital is an advancement or has just become another way of being a conformist:

• "The Disconnect Between Aging Management and the Younger Workforce"
• "New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake"
• "Meet Generation C: The Connected Customers"

Managing Digital and Social Not a Competition Between Generations

Being connected and getting involved in social media doesn't have to be defined by age. Some studies indicate that it seems to be defined more by income and education than by generation. In a study published in the May issue of Poetics, a Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts, sociologist Jen Schradie found that "college graduates are 1.5 times more likely to be bloggers than are high school graduates; twice as likely to post photos and videos and three times more likely to post an online rating or comments." The digital divide isn't about millennials and boomers; it's more about the haves and have-nots.

Reduce Car Usage to Increase Wellness

Reducing car usage improves air quality and slows global warming

Reducing Car Usage Helpful for Wellness

Most of us are aware that wellness is linked to our car usage. A 2013 report from Toronto's Medical Officer of Health about the impact of transportation on health and the environment has urged this city to generate funds without delay for the proposed expansion of transportation infrastructure. Many people in the Greater Toronto Area cannot give up their cars because they have no other means of getting where they need to go throughout the normal course of their day. One wonders how the major city within the GTA region of 6 million people can still have only two subway lines to get suburbanites to the city core.

The study reports that "traffic-related pollution caused about 440 premature deaths and 1,700 hospitalizations each year in Toronto. Mortality related costs associated with traffic pollution in Toronto were estimated at $2.2 billion each year. A 30% reduction in motor vehicle emissions in Toronto that could be achieved through various measures that reduce reliance on the private automobile could prevent about 200 premature deaths and result in 900 million dollars in health benefits annually."  It goes on to say that "Physical activity associated with walking, cycling and taking transit reduces deaths related to chronic diseases and the risk of illnesses such as strokes, heart attacks, obesity, and diabetes, which are among the top ten causes of death in Toronto."

 In a recent commentary in the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders stated that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that the growing frequency and intensity of windstorms, floods, hurricanes and extremes of heat and cold is a consequence of higher levels of weather-system volatility related to a warming trend caused in part by human-generated carbon emissions." He also urged that pretending to fix the weather won't remove our responsibility to deal with the problem at its root.

Look to Ourselves For Transportation & Environmental Health Initiatives

Although we are not accustomed to having to put limits on ourselves in order to make a better world, we can each do our part in modifying our lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions, as well as consume less energy. Environment Canada reports that 24% of our greenhouse gas emissions are from the transportation sector. Without changes from us, the health and wellness of our families will be comprised tomorrow. We won't be here when ocean levels could rise to the point where our own coastal cities are destroyed, or our children's grandchildren lose family members to weather disasters or the health effects of fracking and other techniques that provide our energy.

Tough Environmental Issues Need to be Tackled

Carbon, air quality, water, waste, land use, and biodiversity are discussed in a report card on the state of health across the Greater Toronto Area. The report card states that with high growth rates expected to continue, congestion and air pollution will get worse unless we plan for higher density living and strong, well-funded regional transportation systems. The GTA grew by over 477,000 people between 2006 and 2011 (Census Canada), mainly in low-density suburban areas.

The GTA is behind New York, Stockholm, the City of Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney in its dependence on cars.