Sorry for the long title to this blog post. Unfortunately I was very creative today while writing this. But I did have a few random things I wanted to post for our readers. I wasn't sure each one would be enough for a post of its own, but hopefully you can get some good information from these topics.
Quick Fix For Runners With Knee Pain:
First up is a simple fix for those who experience knee pain while running. If you are a serious runner or recreational runner, there is a good chance that you have had knee problems at some point. You may even be still dealing with this problem. Now this pain may be coming from a number of different issues from your sneakers, muscle imbalances, improper gait pattern, orthopedic issues, and many other possible causes. If this pain has been chronic, I always recommend getting it checked out. A medical professional will be much better at diagnosing your problem than a blog post can.
That being said it won't hurt to try this one simple thing. Try increasing your step rate or step frequency. A study from Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, showed that when step rate is increased in will decrease the forces placed on the knee. There was also less forces placed on the muscles as well, which may reduce risk of injury to the muscles involved in running like the hamstrings, quads, and calves. So if you are trying to run faster take shorter, quicker steps instead of longer ones.
Probiotics To Treat Fatty Liver Disease:
I'm sure you have heard at least a minimal amount of probiotics. Probiotics are microorganisms that help improve the health of their host. We essentially have good and bad bacteria in our digestive tract. Probiotics help improve the balance of our intestinal micro flora. There are many potential benefits of taking probiotics including better weight management, improve immune function, relieving constipation, improving digestion, increasing nutrient absorption, and now helping with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I wrote a blog post in the past about this condition that increases your risk of obesity and type II diabetes. You can read more about it here: http://premiertraining.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-your-liver-making-you-fat.html. To sum it up, our liver helps metabolize carbs, fats, and proteins. When it gets overworked it will get backed up and develop fat deposits. This will result in slowing down metabolism and reducing insulin sensitivity.
By increasing your probiotic consumption you may be able to help improve this. There is promising evidence showing that taking probiotics through foods or supplements help with fatty liver disease, reducing the risk of metabolic syndrome, and increases insulin sensitivity.
You can get probiotics in fermented foods with live active cultures like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir. If you don't like those types of foods you can also take a probiotic supplement. Here is one that we recommend and take ourselves.
Is Your Diet Deficient?:
Often when we are trying to lose weight we get caught up in calories and nothing else seems to matter. We may pay attention to macronutrients (fats, carbs, proteins), but is that enough? We often forget about micronutrients and how they help our body function better. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that we must have in order to live, workout, or do anything to our full potential. When you are deficient in certain vitamins it will lead to a long list of health issues.
If you are currently on a diet or have dieted in the past, there is a pretty good chance that you are deficient somewhere. Here are four popular diets and how they are deficient (courtesy of aarr):
Quick Fix For Runners With Knee Pain:
First up is a simple fix for those who experience knee pain while running. If you are a serious runner or recreational runner, there is a good chance that you have had knee problems at some point. You may even be still dealing with this problem. Now this pain may be coming from a number of different issues from your sneakers, muscle imbalances, improper gait pattern, orthopedic issues, and many other possible causes. If this pain has been chronic, I always recommend getting it checked out. A medical professional will be much better at diagnosing your problem than a blog post can. That being said it won't hurt to try this one simple thing. Try increasing your step rate or step frequency. A study from Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, showed that when step rate is increased in will decrease the forces placed on the knee. There was also less forces placed on the muscles as well, which may reduce risk of injury to the muscles involved in running like the hamstrings, quads, and calves. So if you are trying to run faster take shorter, quicker steps instead of longer ones.
Probiotics To Treat Fatty Liver Disease:
I'm sure you have heard at least a minimal amount of probiotics. Probiotics are microorganisms that help improve the health of their host. We essentially have good and bad bacteria in our digestive tract. Probiotics help improve the balance of our intestinal micro flora. There are many potential benefits of taking probiotics including better weight management, improve immune function, relieving constipation, improving digestion, increasing nutrient absorption, and now helping with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I wrote a blog post in the past about this condition that increases your risk of obesity and type II diabetes. You can read more about it here: http://premiertraining.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-your-liver-making-you-fat.html. To sum it up, our liver helps metabolize carbs, fats, and proteins. When it gets overworked it will get backed up and develop fat deposits. This will result in slowing down metabolism and reducing insulin sensitivity. By increasing your probiotic consumption you may be able to help improve this. There is promising evidence showing that taking probiotics through foods or supplements help with fatty liver disease, reducing the risk of metabolic syndrome, and increases insulin sensitivity.
You can get probiotics in fermented foods with live active cultures like yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir. If you don't like those types of foods you can also take a probiotic supplement. Here is one that we recommend and take ourselves.
Is Your Diet Deficient?:
Often when we are trying to lose weight we get caught up in calories and nothing else seems to matter. We may pay attention to macronutrients (fats, carbs, proteins), but is that enough? We often forget about micronutrients and how they help our body function better. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals that we must have in order to live, workout, or do anything to our full potential. When you are deficient in certain vitamins it will lead to a long list of health issues. If you are currently on a diet or have dieted in the past, there is a pretty good chance that you are deficient somewhere. Here are four popular diets and how they are deficient (courtesy of aarr):
- The Mediterranean-type diet is 55% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 15 our of 27 essential micronutrients.
- Low fat diets (DASH) was 51% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 14 out of the 27 essential micronutrients.
- Low carb (Atkins) was 44% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 12 out of the 27 essential micronutrients.
- Low carb (The South Beach Diet) was 22% sufficient providing 100% of the recommended levels of 6 our of the 27 essential micronutrients.
So the best option was still barely half way to completely sufficient. So using whole foods sources all four diet programs failed to get all proper levels of essential micronutrients. Six micronutrients were consistently low or nonexistent in all four diets. These included biotin, vitamin D, vitamin E, chromium, iodine, and molybdenum. While you may lose weight on these popular diets, you might be damaging your health in the process.
No diet will be able to hit 100% of all essential micronutrients without consuming a very high calorie number so vitamin and mineral supplementation may be a good option. If you do not want to a multi-vitamin, then it is at least a good idea to take these six previously mentioned micronutrients that are lacking in most weight loss diets. Or you can examine your current diet and find out where you are deficient. This will take some time and effort though. Here is a multivitamin that we current recommend and take ourselves.
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