World Series champs!!! How great was it watching the Phils celebrate after winning game 5. The pure joy that comes from accomplishing your goals and living your dream. Particularly satisfying was listening to Charlie Manuel and Jamie Moyer talk about how much this meant to them after all their years in baseball.

Many of you have experienced the joy that comes with reaching your fitness goals, and the trainers and I are just as happy as you are. We are thrilled when we see you feeling better, losing weight, getting stronger, having more energy, and gaining confidence in yourself. Such successes are a testament to the virtues of hard work and commitment.

This past weekend I had the chance to attend a two-day seminar on the latest trends and research in the field of fitness and nutrition. While attending the conference was essential for helping me to earn continuing education credits necessary to maintain my personal trainer certification, the true value was in the knowledge that I learned and just spending time with like-minded individuals.

I will use next week’s newsletter to talk about some of the things I learned at the conference, but let me just say be on the lookout for some unusual pieces of equipment around the studio as well as some unique exercises as we strive to keep things fresh and on the cutting edge, but grounded in sound fundamentals.

In the meantime, enjoy the Phillies celebration, and perhaps I’ll see you at the parade on Friday!

To your health and happiness.

I know, it’s Thursday, and I’m just getting around to sending out this email. Blame it on the Phillies. I got so caught up in watching last night’s game that I simply forgot to write my weekly newsletter. So the tidbit for this week is an appropriate one; it looks at the benefit of regular aerobic activity on brain function. Perhaps I need to increase my cardio workouts…

Aerobic activity may reverse mental decline

NEW YORK (Reuters Health, Oct. 17, 2008) – Regular aerobic exercise can not only stave off the decline in brain function that often comes with age, it can also help turn back the clock on brain aging, two experts in the field report, based on a critical review of published studies.

Age-related deterioration in the all-important white and gray matter in the brain makes a number of high-level “executive function” tasks — such as planning, scheduling, working memory and multi-tasking — much more difficult, Drs. Arthur F. Kramer and Kirk I. Erickson explain in the latest issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Yet a substantial body of research shows that these are the very processes that are most responsive to physical exercise, note the authors from the University of Illinois Beckman Institute, Urbana.

In people with or those without signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, regular moderate physical activity, enough to make a person breathless, has been shown to boost not only the speed and sharpness of thought but also the actual volume of brain tissue and the way in which the brain functions, Kramer and Erickson note.

For example, in a 6-month study Kramer and colleagues conducted, adults ages 60 to 75 who walked briskly for 45 minutes a day three days a week not only improved their aerobic fitness but also their mental fitness — particularly their ability to perform executive function tasks – compared with a control group who engaged only in non-aerobic stretching and toning exercises.

These results suggest that regular moderate aerobic exercise can “reliably reverse age-related cognitive decline,” Kramer and Erickson write, and that the aging brain retains its capacity to grow and develop.

Other researchers, they note, have found that physically fitter adults have less evidence of deterioration in gray matter (critical to thinking) than their less physically fit counterparts.

Still others have found that physically fitter older women going through menopause — a time of declining estrogen levels and memory trouble — have more gray brain matter and perform better on measures of executive control than their less physically fit peers, whether or not they are taking hormone replacement therapy, which can boost cognitive function.

Summing up, Kramer and Erickson point out that “many questions remain unanswered” regarding the effects of exercise on the brain. However, “we can safely argue that an active lifestyle with moderate amounts of aerobic activity will likely improve cognitive and brain function, and reverse the neural decay frequently observed in older adults,” they conclude.

SOURCE: British Journal of Sports Medicine 2008.

Perhaps I’ll rename the front of our studio the “brain station”!

To your health and happiness.

How great have the past few days been for Philly sports fans? The Eagles got back to their winning ways and the Phillies are on the brink of heading to the World Series (perhaps by the time you read this they already are!)

I am trying to get this newsletter finished before I plop myself down in front of the TV for the next couple of hours to watch the Phillies. While I have never heard of any health benefits to be gained from watching TV, I did just read an interesting article that talked about the possible health benefits of one of my favorite activities – surfing the web.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles studied people doing Web searches while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.

“What we saw was people who had Internet experience used more of their brain during the search,” Dr. Gary Small, a UCLA expert on aging, said in a telephone interview. “This suggests that just searching on the Internet may train the brain — that it may keep it active and healthy,” said Small, whose research appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

To read more about the study, you can click here, and in keeping with the topic at hand, I thought I would provide you with 10 of my favorite health, wellness, nutrition, and personal development web sites for you to check out.

About.com: Exercise – a comprehensive web site that looks at all aspects of exercise, including strength training, cardio, and nutrition.
The China Study – the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and the startling implications for diet, weight loss and long-term health.
The Food Revolution – how your diet can help save your life and our world.
Quantum Wellness: a practical and spiritual guide to health and happiness.
Eat to Live: the revolutionary formula for fast and sustained weight loss.
Food and Sport (the 80-10-10 diet): This is perhaps the most radical of all of the nutrition web sites. This is the one I try to follow most closely, but not perfectly (at least not yet…).
Steve Pavlina – the leading personal development web site; covers a wide variety of topics.
Zen Habits – another one of my favorite personal development web sites.
Yahoo!Health – the latest health news as compiled by Yahoo, updated throughout the day. Has categories such as Everyday Wellness and Diet & Fitness.
The Onion – laughter is the key to good health, and I find this to be a consistently humorous web site.

If nothing else, clicking on these links may be good for your brain! Now it’s off to watch the Fightin’ Phils…

To your health and happiness.

Yesterday, the Federal Government issued its first-ever Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. They describe the types and amounts of physical activity that offer substantial health benefits to Americans. The major conclusions noted in the guidelines are as follows:

• Regular physical activity reduces the risk of many adverse health outcomes.
• Some physical activity is better than none.
• For most health outcomes, additional benefits occur as the amount of physical activity increases through higher intensity, greater frequency, and/or longer duration.
• Most health benefits occur with at least 2 hours and 30 minutes (150 minutes) a week of moderate-intensity physical activity, such as brisk walking. Additional benefits occur with more physical activity.
• Episodes of activity that are at least 10 minutes long count toward meeting the Guidelines.
• Both aerobic (endurance) and muscle-strengthening (resistance) physical activity are beneficial.
• Health benefits of physical activity occur for children and adolescents, young and middle-aged adults, older adults, and those in every studied racial and ethnic group.
• Health benefits of physical activity are attainable for people with disabilities.
• The benefits of physical activity outweigh the risks of injury and heart attack.

To read a brief summary of the guidelines, please click here, and for a great set of FAQs related to the guidelines, please click here. To me, the guidelines are must reading, and I strongly encourage all of you to learn more about them, since after all, who does not want to know more about what it takes to be healthy.

At Fitness Together, we want to be your partner in helping you to not only meet these guidelines, but to exceed them. As noted above, additional health benefits do occur with more physical activity beyond the basic guidelines. We have always focused our efforts on both aerobic and strength training activities for our clients, and these guidelines are just further confirmation of the benefits of consistently engaging in a well-designed fitness program.

I would also encourage you to share these guidelines with your parents, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and anyone else whose health you care about. The easiest way to do this is to simply forward this email on to those people by using the link at the bottom of this email; they will thank you for thinking of them.

To your health and happiness.

I hope this email finds you well and ready to make October your best month of the year. Before I talk about this week’s wellness topic, I wanted to share a couple of items with you.

First, I have to brag about one of our trainers, Dan Finck. Dan competed in a Fitness Fundraiser this past weekend known as the Crossfit Fight Gone Bad. Dan not only raised money in support of Prostate Cancer research, he came in first in the Crossfit competition! Congratulations to Dan on this great accomplishment, and to his wife Mary, who also competed in the event. Dan is a great example of someone who practices what he preaches. You can read more about this event by clicking here and scrolling down to the Photos and Results.

Second, I went to a seminar this past weekend in New York City held by Doug Graham, author of The 80-10-10 Diet. Doug is another individual who walks the walk. He has been a low-fat, raw vegan for over 25 years, and has advised Olympic and professional athletes. The 80-10-10 diet refers to the percentage of calories that should come from carbohydrates/protein/fats. His talk has motivated me to continue to learn more about nutrition and to make more conscious decisions about what I eat. If you are interested in finding out more about the 80-10-10 diet, feel free to send me an email.

The wellness article for this week looks at the importance of exercise as one gets older. While this has been noted in previous newsletters, this article also stresses the importance of adding variety to your workouts. Exercising the same way week after week leads to adaptation, which will result in diminishing returns each time you continue to train the same old way. In addition, variety keeps an individual interested in exercise, not always an easy task. It should also come as no surprise that the article talks about the importance of including cardio, flexibility, and strength training as part of a well-designed fitness program.You can read this brief, yet informative article by clicking here. I hope you enjoy it.

To your health and happiness.