I keep hearing about the mercury in vaccines and how this may be a health issue or not. At one point people with autistic kids were blaming the mercury in the vaccines for causing autism as well as other health issues but now I believe that this same group is now targeting the vast number of diseases that are being protected against in a single vaccination. As we become better at protecting against more things I guess we need to watch out for the delivery system of these vaccines.

Anyway, I have often wondered about the amount of mercury in vaccines and why this is an issue and in knowing that mercury is poisonous and stays in the system I could not understand why it is being used at all in vaccinations.

Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s. The kind of mercury that is used is called Ethyl mercury from the vaccine preservative thimerosal.  Ethyl mercury leaves the blood 10 times faster than methyl mercury, on which current risk assessments are based. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

My daughter got diagnosed with Asthma last week and it got me thinking about all of the times that she has had colds and been sick over the years. Of course the asthma was an even bigger deal right now with H1N1 hitting the headlines and 5 hour plus lineups here in Calgary Canada for H1N1 flu shots.

Nearly one-third, or 28 percent, of adults and children hospitalized with H1N1, also known as swine flu, have asthma. That’s more than any other chronic condition, according to a recent analysis of cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Asthma was the most common underlying medical condition that we saw,” says Seema Jain, M.D., a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jain’s team analyzed 272 people who were hospitalized with swine flu for more than 24 hours between April and June.

Twenty-five percent were admitted to the intensive care unit and 7 percent died. Overall, 29 percent of children and 27 percent of in adults in the study had asthma, while only about 8 percent of the U.S. population has asthma, according to Jain. Read the rest of this entry »

We have all watched Jillian for years on the Biggest Loser and now it seems we will be seeing her on TV even more. Jillian has a new show that will be on in the fall called Losing It with Jillian Michaels. The show is expected to start sometime next Spring and will not just be a diet and exercise show like you would expect, instead Jillian will be moving in with families and providing Super Nanny style coaching.

NBC has ordered eight episodes of “Losing It With Jillian”.   In the series, which will make its debut next year, Ms. Michaels will help families “make life-altering changes,” NBC said. She will be joined by the celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who will cut unhealthy foods from the family diet. Reveille, the production company responsible for “Biggest Loser,” will also produce “Losing It.”The focus won’t be just on weight loss and fitness, although that will be a key part of it. Jillian will also examine family dynamics, finances, career goals and how the parents relationships are with children at home.

“We’re essentially rebooting them,” Jillian Michaels said today during a media conference call.

“It’s not about fat to thin,” Jillian Michaels later added. “It’s about being stuck and getting unstuck.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a new term for me today but apparently I missed the memo that had to do with a cytokine storm and the flu. Actually the cytokine storm has more to do with health and seemingly healthy people dying of illnesses that their immune system should be able to fight but it is being brought up with the deaths of the H1N1 virus and it first came up with trying to figure out why so many seemingly healthy people died (maybe 100 million) from the H1N1 virus back in 1918.

A cytokine storm is when your body is overwhelmed by it’s fighting of a virus. One of the things that will happen when you get some kind of virus or infection is that your body will fight it with it’s immune system. What will happen is that your body will fight and you will get a fever and then everything is good and your body goes back to normal. During a cytokine storm what will happen is that your body will overfight the virus and in essense your immune system will go into overdrive and this will end up killing you. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been asked before how to gain weight fast. Most people that are weight lifting at one time or another, usually in the winter, try to bulk up and gain a lot of muscle for the summer, of course there is the diet down afterwards but we can deal with that later.

How to gain weight fast is a question that many people that are dieting to lose think is insane but I know from personal experience that many people would like to gain weight but do not really know how. I have a former weightlifting partner who had a really hard time gaining muscle no matter what he tried.

Here are some tips on how to gain weight fast that I think would help almost anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: christmas, diabetes, energy, food, junk food, microwave

While some individuals are strictly interested in obtaining muscle for aesthetics, for most people, this isn’t an interest. Instead, you’re more interested in knowing what health benefits weight lifting will have for you…

Far too many people overlook the many health and fitness benefits that weight training has to offer, and because of this, experience problems down the road with their body such as decreased bone density, a slowed metabolic rate, increased stress levels and other negative consequences that are associated with constant stress.

Increased Bone Density

Weight lifting, being one of the best weight bearing exercises you can do, will increase your bone density and help ward off osteoporosis or stress fractures in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

Almost anyone that’s picked up a set of weights has or will experience symptoms of over-training at one point in there muscle building program. Over-training can lead to serious injury, chronic fatigue, and even muscle loss.

Over-training is very common amongst athletes and particularly bodybuilders, since they figure that training as much as possible is the fastest way to massive muscle gains.

This couldn’t be any further from the truth however…

Training too much, or at too high of an intensity will lead to over-training.

Now this doesn’t mean you don’t have to put plenty of effort in to see some decent results… Whether you are a bodybuilder, athlete, or just someone that wants to add some additional mass to your frame, you need to train hard and be consistent-that’s a given. In order to get the most out of your genetics, you have to progressively overload the muscles by increasing the weight and / or intensity of each weight training workout. Read the rest of this entry »

I found a couple of posts around the internet that spoke of a study at McMaster University that showed that hard exercise for a shorter period of time is better than a long workout at a lower level of intensity. I found the article at the Journal of Physiology but you really need to be a scientist to decipher what they have to say.

When it comes to cardio exercise, less appears to be more.

That’s the conclusion of researchers who discovered that extremely short bouts of high-intensity exercise produce the same improvements in muscle health as longer, more moderately paced workout sessions.

In the two-week study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Physiology, 16 college-age men, all recreational exercisers, were asked to exercise on stationary bicycles three times a week. One group cycled for 30 seconds all-out, followed by four minutes of recovery, or pedaling at a slower speed while keeping the heart rate somewhat elevated. They repeated that several times for a total of about 20 minutes a day. The other group cycled at a moderate pace for 90 to 120 minutes a day.

At the end of the study, the men’s muscles were tested for an enzyme that’s “an indicator of the muscle’s ability to use oxygen,” says lead author Martin Gibala, associate professor of kinesiology at Canada’s McMaster University. In both groups, the enzyme level increased by about 25% to 30%. He adds, “You can think about that as being able to produce energy more efficiently, being able to go at a faster pace and exercise longer.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: cardio equipment, energy, football, hockey, Institute for Hockey Research, Martin Gibala, McMaster University, Michael Bracko, same principles to cardio equipment, sports physiologist and director, sports physiologist and director in Alberta, volleyball

Over the last week I have been living in an airport in Toronto and a hotel that is connected to an airport and working really long days. This situation is a very dangerous one for your health as it seems to take a lot of control out of your hands as far as healthy lifestyle choices are concerned.

Because of the hours and the proximity to the hotel I have no car or even a need for a car and have been handcuffed as far as food choices go so I wanted to give a few tips for travel and eating and exercise for those that have not a lot of these choices.

1. Finding fresh fruit and vegetables – First thing that I did when I got booked into the hotel was ask where the nearest market was to get some fruit and veggies. This is an automatic for me whenever I travel but I got a very vague “Its a long ca ride away” and “The restaurant can make you some vegetables” so I knew there would be no help there. Instead I prowled the airport and found a coffee bar that sells apples and oranges. I get an apple, bran muffin and coffee for breakfast every morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Filippa Hamilton is a famous 5-foot-10, 120-pound French model who you would recognize from all the pictures you have seen on the covers of fashion magazines. Filippa at 120 pounds has now been fired for being too fat.

Ralph Lauren, who she modeled for had a pic of Filippa Hamilton altered a Japanese print ad by putting her head on another models body and has claimed she was fired from Ralph Lauren in April because they thought she was too fat.

“They fired me because they said I was overweight and I couldn’t fit in their clothes anymore,” Hamilton, 23, told the NY Daily News.

Filippa Hamilton said of the Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, which features a funhouse mirror-like slimming of her hips: “I was shocked to see that super skinny girl with my face; it’s very sad, I think, that Ralph Lauren could do something like that.” Read the rest of this entry »