I had the chance to go to the Phillies-Red Sox game last Wednesday, and despite the outcome, it was a great day to be at the ballpark. The Red Sox have always been my favorite American League team, and this was the first time I got to see them in person. While I was in my seat for most of the game, I did take my two sons for a walk around the park to grab something to eat. It was during this walk that I had a pleasant surprise – one of the food stands was selling vegan hamburgers!

Many of you are aware of my decision to follow a vegan diet; I have been doing so for over a year and a half, and I am fairly certain I will stay committed to this diet for the rest of my life. I do not know what it was like to be a vegan 20 years ago, but I have found it quite easy to follow such a diet today. Grocery stores sell vegan versions of many popular foods, such as pizza, chicken, and meatballs. I have also had no difficulty sticking to my diet when I go out to eat. Thai restaurants (like Heng’s right next door to FT!) and Mexican restaurants have become my favorites, and there are even vegan cheesesteak and chicken cheesesteak sandwich places in Philadelphia that are quite tasty! The two foods I thought would be the hardest to give up were pizza (we have had it every Friday night for the past 26 years) and cereal. As it turns out, there were simple solutions. I now order my pizza with green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and no cheese – it is quite good. As for the cereal, I switched to almond milk, and I found I actually liked the taste better than when I used regular milk.

Why am I telling you this? My intention is not to convert you to a vegan lifestyle, but to provide you with information you may find helpful with respect to your food choices, vegan or otherwise. There is no denying that the vegan diet has become popular. Oprah recently went through a 21-day vegan diet (which you can read about here), Ellen Degeneres recently had the authors of “Skinny Bitch” (a book about the advantages of being a vegan)

on her show, and the last time I went to Borders, it seemed like the number of books devoted to veganism had quadrupled.

While I could go on and on about what I believe are the benefits of such a diet, I thought I would provide you with what I believe is a thought-provoking article on the topic. This particular article is written by Kathy Freston, the individual who was providing guidance to Oprah during her 21-day vegan diet. You can read the article by clicking the link below:

One Bite at a Time: A Beginner’s Guide to Conscious Eating

I urge you to read the article, and to give it some thought. Even simple changes in your diet can go a long way towards not only improving your personal health, but the health of the planet as well.

I am also reading Kathy’s book, “Quantum Wellness”, and plan to devote one of my future newsletters to a review of the book, which has been quite enlightening.

If you have any questions about the article or the vegan diet, feel free to send me an email or ask me at the studio. I’d welcome the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with you.

To your health and happiness.

I just read a fascinating, and encouraging, article I wanted to share with you. The article discusses the surprising results of a study that was designed to look at the effects of diet, exercise, and stress reduction on prostate cancer. The study found that besides the expected benefits of these lifestyle changes, the participants were actually able to change the expression of hundreds of genes by engaging in such activities! The researchers, led by the renowned Dean Ornish, were quite excited by the results, but also indicated that the results raise more questions than they answer. You can read the article below for more details.

My favorite line from the article is, “… these findings suggest that you’re never too old to make changes that can positively affect your health.”

That is also our philosophy at Fitness Together, and our trainers are committed to helping you establish and maintain a healthy lifestyle. To find out more about our programs, visit our web site or give us a call at 610 355 0935 and ask about our summer specials.

Lifestyle Changes Affect Cancer Genes

By Serena Gordon

HealthDay Reporter Tue Jun 17, 7:02 PM ET

TUESDAY, June 17 (HealthDay News) — Genes may not fully control your destiny when it comes to cancer risk, according to a new study of men with prostate cancer.

New research suggests that stringent dietary changes, getting more exercise and practicing stress reduction can change the expression of hundreds of genes. Some of the changes positively affect genes that help fight cancer, while others help turn off genes that promote cancer development, according to the study, which is in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These findings are very exciting. They counter the genetic nihilism I hear so often. People say, ‘It’s all in my genes, there’s nothing I can do,’ but actually you can do quite a lot,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Dean Ornish, president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Previous epidemiological studies have found that the incidence of prostate cancer is significantly lower in areas of the world where people eat a more plant-based, low-fat diet instead of the higher-fat, higher-protein diet often consumed in the United States. Because of these findings, Ornish and his colleagues initially set out to see if altering diet and lifestyle could decrease the amount of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in men who’d been diagnosed with early prostate cancer. PSA is a blood marker for prostate growth.

In September 2005, they reported that after intensive lifestyle changes — consuming a vegan diet with about 10 percent of calories from fat, walking 30 minutes six times a week, and practicing stress management one hour daily — men with early prostate cancer lowered their PSA scores by 4 percent, while men in the control group saw their PSA score rise by 6 percent.
But, the researchers didn’t know what the mechanism behind the change was, according to Ornish. The current study was designed to elucidate the reasons behind the improvement.

Thirty men diagnosed with early prostate cancer were enrolled in the study. The men were predominantly white (84 percent), with an average age of 62.3 years, and an average PSA score of 4.8 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Their Gleason scores — another measure of the severity of the cancer — were an average of six.

All of the men had already declined immediate surgery, hormonal therapy or radiation. Instead, they chose to have their tumors periodically monitored to ensure that they remained slow-growing.

The lifestyle interventions began with a 3-day residential retreat, followed by weekly telephone consultations and a one-hour group support session each week. The study participants were provided all of their food and were asked to follow a plant-based diet containing about 10 percent of calories from fat.

They were also told to walk for 30 minutes a day, six days a week.
Additionally, the study volunteers practiced stress management for 60 minutes a day. Stress management techniques included yoga-based stretching, breathing exercises, meditation, imagery, and progressive relaxation. The study volunteers were also given additional soy, three grams of fish oil, 100 units of vitamin E, 200 milligrams of selenium and 2 grams of vitamin C daily.

The researchers compared genetic expression from baseline samples to those taken after three months of study intervention and found positive changes in more than 500 genes, according to Ornish.

“I thought younger people with milder disease would show the most improvement, but neither age nor disease severity made as much difference as adherence,” said Ornish. That means that the more people are able to change, the better. And, these findings suggest that you’re never too old to make changes that can positively affect your health.

“It’s encouraging to see that by going on a very low-fat diet that you can change gene expression in the prostate itself, but just because changes can happen, you don’t yet know if it would mean anything for cancer risk,” said Dr. Simon J. Hall, director of the Deane Prostate Health and Research Center, and the chairman of urology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Hall said he’d like to see them follow these men for a long time to see what these genetic changes eventually mean.

Ornish said this study’s findings were “very unexpected, and we’ve raised more questions than we’ve answered.”

In any case, Hall added, it’s clear that if you can make lifestyle changes like those in the study, you can definitely improve your cardiovascular health.

To your health and happiness.

This week’s wellness tip focuses on sleep, more specifically, what is the ideal amount of sleep. I found the findings of the research studies surprising, since I had always thought at least 8 hours was the ideal amount of sleep to get each night. Hope you enjoy the article, and have a good night’s sleep!

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

By LAURA BLUE, from Time
Sleep is one of the richest topics in science today: why we need it, why it can be hard to get, and how that affects everything from our athletic performance to our income. Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., has looked at the most important question of all. In 2002, he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. To many his results were surprising, but they’ve since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia. Kripke explains.

Q: How much sleep is ideal?
A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 6.5 hours, they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hours. Sleeping 8.5 hours might really be a little worse than sleeping five.
Morbidity, or sickness, is also “U-shaped,” in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses – with depression, with obesity, and therefore with heart disease and so forth. But the ideal amount of sleep for different health measures isn’t all in the same place. Most of the “low points” are at seven or eight hours, but there are some at six and some even at nine. I think diabetes is lowest in seven-hour sleepers, for example. But these measures aren’t as clear as the mortality data.
I think we can speculate about why people who sleep 6.5 to 7.5 hours live longer, but we have to admit that we don’t really understand the reasons. We don’t really know yet what is cause and what is effect. So we don’t know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don’t know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier. We’re hoping to organize tests of those questions.

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is OK. We’ve all been told you ought to sleep eight hours, but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep eight hours or nine hours, so they spend eight or nine hours in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and they wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem of insomnia is lying in bed awake worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the United States, Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you’re not sleepy, and restricting your time in bed, actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and they become confident that when they go to bed they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.

To your health and happiness.

Starting today and continuing every Wednesday, we will be sending out short emails containing one or two tips focused on health and wellness. Today’s tip looks at the importance of changing your behavior before you start on any fitness program. Whether you are an existing client who struggles with your food choices or finding time for extra cardio, or someone who has not yet made a commitment to one of our programs, you should find some useful guidance in the article below. At Fitness Together we are committed to helping you achieve your health and fitness goals, and holding you accountable to those goals. To find out more about our programs, visit www.ftnewtownsquare.com

I hope you enjoy the article!

Behavior first step of fitness plan

Scot E. Long
Special to The Clarion Ledger

As an exercise physiologist who has been in the personal training business for many years, one of the most frequent questions I receive is, “What is the best way to begin a fitness program?”

My answer is always that fitness begins with a behavioral change that helps initiate the desired physical change.

The very first thing that needs to be done in the quest for fitness is to make a commitment to yourself. The fact is most people who start a fitness program quit within six months. The reason most often cited is a lack of time. In the 24 hours of every day, it is simply up to each individual to decide what to do with this time.

I’ve heard every excuse in the book. I have to take care of my children, or my job gets in the way. When it gets warmer, cooler, after deer season – whatever. I’ve heard them all. Yet, despite this, I know single moms who raise several children working multiple jobs who take time to exercise three, four or five times a week. I know people in wheelchairs who workout. I know people in their 80s and children younger than 10 who regularly exercise. If you want to get fit, then start by making that first step in the form of a mental commitment – a behavioral change to make time (not try and find the time) to exercise and eat right.

Perhaps you should start with a short walk three or four times a week. Maybe 20 to 30 minutes each time. Then you could change that sugary soda you drink two or three times a day to water or diet soda. Before you know it, you will look and feel better. Maybe then you could join a local softball team or take those karate lessons you’ve always wanted to. By this time next year you might even be running 10Ks and marathons.

Start smart. This means checking with your family physician before beginning to ensure your safety. Consult a college-degreed fitness professional for a quality program designed just for you and your goals.

And finally, learn to forgo all the excuses of why you can’t workout. You’ll be a happier, healthier person if you just put your mind to it!

To your health and happiness.