The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Can exercise detoxify the body? Health experts are skeptical Posted: 17 Dec 2012 03:39 AM PST  File photo shows joggers running in Vancouver, British Columbia. Health professionals are sceptical of claims that exercise can detoxify the body. – Reuters pic Yoga teachers regularly speak of detoxifying twists, aerobics instructors of detoxifying sweat, dieters of detoxifying fasts. But health professionals are skeptical. "If you start talking about exercising to detoxify, there's no scientific data," said Dr Elizabeth Matzkin, chief of women's sports medicine at Harvard Medical School. "The human body is designed to get rid of what we don't need." The same applies to fasting. "No good scientific data supports any of those cleanses, where you drink juice, or (only) water for a week," she said. Exercise is important, Matzkin added, because it enables our body to do what it is made to do, but the kidneys and colon get rid of waste. The role of exercise in that process is unclear. "In general exercise helps our lungs; kidneys get rid of things that can cause us onset of disease," she said. A healthy lifestyle – eating healthy, drinking plenty of water and exercising – is important to detoxifying because it enables our body to do what is intended to do. "As for specific yoga moves, I'm not so sure," she said. Yoga instructor and fitness expert Shirley Archer, an author and spokeswoman for the American Council on Exercise (ACE) said the theory behind the effectiveness of detoxifying twists in yoga is that they squeeze the organs, which push the blood out so fresh blood can rush in. "Better circulation equals better health," said Archer, who is based in Florida. "If detox means to eliminate from the body what it no longer needs, then certain yogic practices can help." She said yogic deep breathing with strong exhalations can empty the lungs of unneeded carbon dioxide and allow for a fresh breath of more oxygenated air. "This nourishes all of our cells," she said. "It is also a method of cleansing because better circulation equals better health." Meditative movement practices, such as yoga and tai chi, she added, can detox your attitude because they require staying in the present moment and discourage dwelling on the past. Last summer, celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson began taking groups of 40-odd women on what she calls Detox Weeks, which involve at least three hours of workouts each day, as well as lectures on fitness and nutrition aimed mainly at encouraging lifestyle changes. Similar weeks in other cities are planned for 2013. "Women work out and think 'Why can't my love handles, muffin tops go away'?" said Anderson, creator of the Tracy Anderson Method and a co-owner, with actress Gwyneth Paltrow, of fitness centres in Los Angeles and New York. "The most important thing is if you can become a consistent exerciser." "A good workout is not five to 10 yoga poses," she explained. "You have to learn to scale up your endurance. If you can only jump for five minutes straight, we'll go to 10 minutes, then 20 minutes." Anderson said she uses the term detoxification broadly to include everything from working up a good sweat to clearing the mind of destructive thoughts. "Detoxification is a big topic," she said. Nancy Clark, a registered dietitian in Boston, Massachusetts and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, said the body generally does a fine job of detoxifying itself through the liver and kidneys. Sweating has nothing to do with it. "When you sweat you really don't detoxify anything," she explained. "If someone goes on a crash diet, then maybe toxins are released but then the body would take care of them. When you sweat you lose sodium." – Reuters |
| Never mind the Mayans: US ‘preppers’ ready for anything Posted: 17 Dec 2012 01:02 AM PST  Canned food including preserves from fruit grown on the Blevins's property is seen in a pantry December 5, 2012 in Berryville, Virginia. Jay Blevins and his wife Holly Blevins have been preparing with a group of others for a possible doomsday scenario where the group will have to be self sufficient due to catastrophe or civil unrest. – AFP pic In the basement of their comfortable home in this small town in the Shenandoah Valley, an hour's drive from Washington, there's a walk-in pantry packed with canned and preserved foods as well as medical supplies. "We could survive for quite a while just on this stuff," Blevins said. Out in the backyard where fruits and berries grow, barrels of fresh water stand under the eaves. Safely locked away is a small arsenal of pistols and semi-automatic rifles, all the better to hunt game and scare off looters. And if the Blevins should have to make tracks, every member of the family has their own "bug-out bag" – a backpack filled with on-the-road essentials from a katana samurai sword to toys and games for the kids. "I don't think we've spent too much money. I don't think we've gone overboard," father-of-three Blevins, 35, a business consultant and former deputy sheriff and SWAT team officer, said. IT IS JUST LIKE INSURANCE "We have our normal life, and then we have this thing on the side. It's just like insurance – if we ever need it, we'll use it." Blevins is a "prepper," one of a growing number of Americans making big plans for bad times, be it economic chaos, climate change, terrorism, natural disasters like the recent Hurricane Sandy or just a very long power outage. In contrast to go-it-alone survivalists, preppers have embraced social media, blogging and self-publishing in a big way to share knowledge and build networks in the event of TEOTWAWKI, or The End Of The World As We Know It. Some of the more outgoing members of the movement, like Blevins, feature in season two of "Doomsday Preppers," a National Geographic Channel reality TV series, now airing worldwide. "It's kind of this natural homegrown American thing that's just catching on with more suburbanites," said Mike Porenta of the American Preppers Network, an online forum for local prepper meet-up groups all over the United States. Prepping enjoys a degree of tacit government endorsement: the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), on its ready.gov website, tells citizens to put together a basic disaster kit with food and water for three days. But why stop there? Preppers can shop online for everything from a year's supply of food for one person (from Walmart) to pre-fabricated underground bunkers to sit out a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. In California, the Vivos Group markets luxury bunkers for anyone from a family of four ("discreetly installed just about anywhere in one week") to a community of 1,000 people outfitted for a year of survival. "Members need to only arrive before their facility is locked down and secured from the chaos above," it says. On a more modest and practical scale, 1-800-Prepare.com peddles a range of made-in-USA survival kits for individuals, families, offices, even dogs and cats – and in the aftermath of Sandy, it's seen its sales explode ten-fold. "My typical client is the everyday American, the mainstream consumer," said its owner, New York area volunteer firefighter Paul Faust, who turns over a slice of his post-Sandy profits to a disaster relief charity. James Stevens, 73, alias Dr Prepper, who lives on a secluded hilltop outside San Antonio, Texas with five years' supply of food and his own water supply, has been prepping since 1974. That was the year of the Arab oil embargo, which put paid forever to many Americans' belief in a bottomless supply of cheap energy as they lined up for hours to fill up their cars. "You prepare for the lifestyle you'd like to maintain when things over which you have no control take control," said Stevens, who's sold 800,000 copies of his "Family Preparedness Handbook," now in its 12th edition. The Mayan end of the world? "It's the last thing I'm worried about," Stevens said by telephone. "I'm more concerned about the economic, political and moral situation." Despite its guy-thing image, mother-of-two Lisa Bedford, whose blog TheSurvivalMom.com gives useful tips on how to weather a disaster with a brood of boisterous kids, considers prepping "a very natural fit" for women. "We start preparing for a baby even before we start getting pregnant," said Bedford, who keeps a three-month supply of Spam, chili and peanut butter in the house, plus a survival kit in the car to hold out for 72 hours with kids. "I want my family to be less vulnerable, no matter what happens," she added. "There is power in being proactive." Back in Berryville, Blevins – whose own mother knows a thing or two about survival, having lived through war in her native Vietnam before coming to the United States – acknowledges "a fine line between preparation and paranoia." But he puts his passion for prepping into context. "Since 2000, in this state (Virginia), we've had 17 major disaster declarations, everything from the September 11 terrorist attacks to earthquakes to hurricanes to blizzards," he said. "As a husband and a father, I want to make sure that my family is prepared, really, for anything that will come." – AFP/Relaxnews |
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