Exercising with back pain - Fitness truths

Fitness Truths: stretching, good or bad for you?
Improve your posture 

Posture is the way that we hold ourselves both statically, when standing still, and dynamically, when we perform tasks that involve bending, lifting and so on. When posture is good, the vertebrae in the spine are correctly aligned and loaded and we move efficiently. In some circles the issue of posture is perhaps overplayed, especially for those with otherwise healthy structures, but if we can improve our posture, both statically and dynamically, we are likely to be taking a significant amount of load and stress off our bodies.

Some postural improvement can be brought about through corrective exercise, although my suggestion is that posture is as much, if not more, about neural adaption, than muscular. In other words, much of our postural behaviours are habits and are a product of patterns that we have learned, rather than muscles that are either tight and short or long and weak. I'm not suggesting musculoskeletal factors are not important, far from it, but I think we should look at it as a systemic issue.

Focus on corrective exercise will also help, but improving efficiency of movement, especially in the gym, will probably yield greater changes. If we take the time to do some movement re-education training and learn how to move and exercise in the right way, whilst perhaps also targeting some specific muscles, we will probably find that this this will go a long way towards alleviating any symptoms, as the right muscles start to become more active and our body becomes systemically stronger.

Carbs-vs.-Fats Debate? the last words

Some specific findings
The result of this methodology was a set of findings that are about as reliable as findings get in the area of diet and weight control. Here are some of the significant bits.

After one year, the low-carb subjects had shed an average of 8 more pounds than the low-fat folk. Members of the low-carb group also lost notably more body fat, and although the study did not include any exercise or physical activity requirements, they experienced a gain in lean muscle mass. In contrast, the low-fat dieters who lost weight lost more of it in the form of muscle than fat.

The low-carb group enjoyed these results even though saturated fats made up 13 percent of their daily calories (the American Heart Association has been recommending a limit of 6 percent), and even though fats of all kinds made up 40 percent, compared to the generally recommended limit of 30 percent.

The low-carb group also saw striking reductions in their triglycerides and inflammation indicators, and a greater increase in good HDL cholesterol than the low-fat group.

And finally, there is the Framingham Risk Score, which is too detailed to explain here but which is an algorithm that is used to estimate the risk that an individual will develop a cardiovascular disease within the next ten years. You can probably guess where we’re going with this:

The low-carb people actually lowered their FRS over the course of the year, while their low-fat counterpoints saw no similar improvement.