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Too old for working out? When your body really starts going downhill

Working as a personal trainer here in NYC I get always questions like Am I too old to start working out or when am I starting to lose muscle mass?


MUSCLES start ageing at 30.

Muscle is constantly being built up and broken down, a process which is well balanced in young adults.

However, by the time we're 30, breakdown is greater than buildup, explains Professor Robert Moots.

Once adults reach 40, they start to lose between 0.5 and 2 per cent of their muscle each year. Regular exercise can help prevent this. That's why it is very important to exercise on a regular basis.

French doctors have found that the quality of sperm starts to deteriorate by 35, so that by the time a man is 45 a third of pregnancies end in miscarriage. But good news is that with working out and good diet you can reverse that process.

HEART starts ageing at 40.
The heart pumps blood less effectively around the body as we get older.
This is because blood vessels become less elastic, while arteries can harden or become blocked because of fatty deposits forming on the coronary arteries - caused by eating too much saturated fat. The blood supply to the heart is then reduced, resulting in painful
angina. Men over 45 and women over 55 are at greater risk of a heart attack.


Good news here again is that you do not need to eat crap to block your arteries, so you can have a healthy heart for a long time.


BONES start ageing at 35.

'Throughout our life, old bone is broken down by cells called osteoclasts and replaced by bone-building cells called osteoblasts - a process called bone turnover,' explains Robert Moots, professor of rheumatology at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool.

Children's bone growth is rapid - the skeleton takes just two years to renew itself completely. In adults, this can take ten years.

Until our mid-20s, bone density is still increasing. But at 35 bone loss begins as part of the natural ageing process.

This becomes more rapid in post-menopausal women and can cause the bone-thinning condition osteoporosis.

The shrinking in size and density of bones can lead to loss of height. Bones in the back shrivel up or crumble between the vertebrae. We lose two inches in height by the time we're 80.

No Matter How Old are you, you can get great benefits from weight training. Some people start weight training first in 5o's and end up looking great.
Let's list some of weight training benefits:

1. Weight training tones your muscles which looks great and raises your basal metabolism... which causes you to burn more calories 24 hours-a-day. You'll even burn more calories while you're sleeping.
2. Weight training can *reverse* the natural decline in your metabolism which begins around age 30.
3. Weight training energizes you.
4. Weight training has a positive affect on almost all of your 650+ muscles.
5. Weight training strengthens your bones reducing your risk of developing osteoporosis.
6. Weight training improves your muscular endurance.
7. Weight training will NOT develop big muscles on women....just toned muscles!
8. Weight training makes you strong. Strength gives you confidence and makes daily activities easier.
9. Weight training makes you less prone to low-back injuries.
10. Weight training decreases your resting blood pressure.
11. Weight training decreases your risk of developing adult onset diabetes.
12. Weight training decreases your gastrointestinal transit time, reducing your risk for developing colon cancer.
13. Weight training increases your blood level of HDL cholesterol (the good type).
14. Weight training improves your posture.
15. Weight training improves the functioning of your immune system.
16. Weight training lowers your resting heart rate, a sign of a more efficient heart.
17. Weight training improves your balance and coordination.
18. Weight training elevates your mood.

New York: Soon food from the farms in the sky

What if "eating local" in New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?

Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality.
Read more here

Yin and yang content of foods

I read daily a lot about different diet principles. Recently I am researching macrobiotic diet. I will share few principles about macrobiotic diet that I find very interesting. My friend Sachi is following a macrobiotic diet and she shared with me few principles of this diet.
Macrobiotic eating follows the principle of balance (called balancing yin and yang in China).
Macrobiotics holds that some foods are overstimulating and can exhaust the body and mind.
These are classified as extreme yin (stimulating) in their effects:
Sugar
Alcohol
Honey
Coffee
Chocolate
Refined flour products
Very hot spices
Chemicals and preservatives
Commercial milk, yogurt and soft cheeses
Poor quality vegetable oils
Foods that are considered to be concentrated, heavy and dense create stagnation.

These have yang (strengthening, but stagnating effects if over-consumed).
Poultry
Meat
Eggs
Refined salt

Foods that create balance are whole grains, vegetables, beans, sea vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. Foods such as these are used in a macrobiotic diet.
The above implies that macrobiotics encourages the use of foodstuffs which are themselves balanced, rather than balancing the intake so that the amount of yin and of yang foods balances out.

I think that we can learn a lot from macrobiotic diet and we can start to incorporate some elements of this diet into our western lifestyle.