Talk to the People in Your Circle

And while some weakness is a normal result of aging, many problems for older people are due to neglect. That's why taking steps to maintain, and then build, strength become important objectives for people over 50. We are living through tumultuous times. That makes the truth about truth, and lies, more crucial than it has ever been. The truth about food for human well-being is really remarkably simple and should be perfectly clear. There are no legitimate reasons for confusion about it. There should certainly be no need for yet another article on the topic to sort things out - this one, or any other. But there is just such a need. Because while there are no reasons for legitimate confusion about food, there are bountiful, legitimate reasons for illegitimate confusion about food. While giant pandas reliably get bamboo - humans just as reliably get bamboozled. Everyone knows that giant pandas eat bamboo. Bamboo is notoriously poor food. The numbers are small. So far, they have had 11 deliveries, including three sets of twins, and one ongoing pregnancy. They say they have more than 250 clients (excluding the cancer and medical patients), each investing $10,000 to $13,000 for egg retrieval, $400 for the first year of storage, and $75 annually thereafter. An Extend spokesperson told potential clients at a March 2009 meeting in Manhattan that they accept credit cards, so you can get a lot of miles. Not everyone is gung-ho. Many doctors, including a few potential competitors, say it's too soon to turn frozen eggs into a moneymaking enterprise. Dr Pasquale Patrizio, director of Yale REI and Fertility Center, says, If you asked me a few years ago, I would be disappointed to have companies making money since the procedure was still highly experimental and few births were reported. Today the technologies are much more advanced, and the numbers of births from frozen/thawed oocytes have been increasing.

I am, however, still unsure of what is the right price tag. Some companies are selling frozen eggs with a high price tag per egg, as much as $2,000 an egg. Because of muscle weakness, many of my older patients begin to struggle with seemingly simple everyday tasks, like climbing stairs and getting up out of chairs. Balance issues and falls can also result, leading to hip fractures and other life-threatening injuries. The fear of falling affects confidence and the ability to engage fully in life. Perhaps most frustrating to many older people is the need to abandon long-loved hobbies, like gardening and golf, due to the physical limitations that a weaker body creates. The good news is that the HIIT strengthening routines included in this article can help you avoid that fate. Also called resistance exercises, or calisthenics, they use your own body weight (although you may progress to using light weights eventually) to improve muscle strength--even in very elderly adults. They create the strong muscles and tendons that protect your joints, and they stress your bones, which prompts them to absorb minerals to get stronger and helps prevent osteoporosis and compression fractures of the spine. The strengthening exercises included in this article target the upper body, the lower body, and the core. They're compound exercises, which are very efficient at strengthening many different muscles and joints at once. Performed one to three times per week, these exercises can reduce pain from muscles and joints, decrease frailty, and reduce the risk of falls. Giant pandas eat it because it is, obviously, THEIR food. They are creatures that adapted to take advantage of the availability of bamboo as a food source other creatures were neglecting. Were giant pandas not adapted to eat bamboo, they would be something other than giant pandas. Were bamboo not the preferred food of the pandas, it would doubtless be the preferred food of some other creature, evolved to occupy that empty ecological niche. Some version of this story accounts the relationship between every kind of creature and the food they eat to thrive. Imagine the outrage if the staff at SeaWorld tossed jelly beans or multi-colored marshmallows to their increasingly obese, listless, diabetic dolphins as part of their complete breakfast. Imagine if, in response to public outrage, their answer was: but they like it! We tolerate no such abuse of dolphins (leaving aside the issue of their containment), but we do exactly this to human children.

We can't see the obvious truth about food because entire industries profit by confusing us, confounding the issues, and concealing that truth from us. Why, How, Who? People should realize that not every egg you freeze makes a baby. It's more like one in ten, and this scientific fact should be taken into consideration. Critics worry about women being sold a raw deal. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine considers egg freezing experimental and in 2007, much to the dismay of the frozen-egg entrepreneurs, said egg freezing should not be offered or marketed as a means to defer reproductive aging because not enough evidence confirms its safety and efficacy. Charisee Lamar, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Neuroendocrinology Program, agrees: For adult men, sperm banking is tried and true. If you are an adult female and you are with someone who can be a sperm donor, embryo cryopreservation is tried and true. Everything else for adult women is experimental, including freezing whole ovaries, pieces of ovaries, and eggs. There are options that are becoming available but women need to be cautious. Skeptics worry about long-term effects on babies born from frozen eggs. There have not been any large-scale trials. The strength-training exercises can also increase confidence, reduce stress and anxiety, improve mood, and keep you active and engaged long into your twilight years. In addition, because they're done in a HIIT aerobic exercise format, they can also give you all the incredible medical health benefits we've talked about already. Your body continues to burn calories after you've finished your workout, while you're resting on the couch. This is referred to as afterburn, also known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC). The demanding nature of HIIT creates a situation in which the body must continue to work to restore itself to its pre-exercise state once you've finished your workout. Many studies report that this continued burning of calories is more significant after high-intensity and resistance-type workouts, two components frequently found in HIIT programs. What this means to you, of course, is a body that continues to lose weight after you've finished your workout, kind of like money in the bank earning interest while you sleep. As the authors of one study put it, .

Are you starting to see why you need to exercise? Do you still think you don't have enough time for it? It is not enough to know the truth about food; We must know how we know it. We must know why we know it. We must know how and why to deny alternatives to it. We must act like we know it. We must be proud and declare that we know it. For that, we must overcome the lies. The lies told by everyone who stands to lose when the truth about food sets us all free from the prevailing exploitations. Who, for instance? Those who sell us hyper-processed food perhaps most flagrantly, but they are in abundant company. Reproductive entrepreneurs scoff at the naysayers. They compare egg freezing to the early days of IVF, when doctors and patients worried about the medical, ethical, and moral ramifications. Copperman, director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City and an Extend Fertility partner, says, It has the potential to be the most liberating advancement for women since the birth control pill. The pill allowed women to decide when they did not want to become pregnant. This is allowing women to decide when they want to become pregnant. Except for one thing: success rates are still depressingly low. The issue, Debora L.

Spar explains in The Baby Business, is not whether to sell frozen eggs but whether to regulate the sales. Egg freezing is a new science, she adds, that screams for regulation but bumps up against a medical community and public that hate being regulated. I hope not. If you're convinced that the quality of your health is at stake and you're ready to get started, then let's move on and learn how to exercise the right way. While some studies demonstrate that the benefits of HIIT can be even greater for an older age group, and though it's not necessarily riskier to your health than moderate forms of exercise are, there are some special considerations for those of us over 50. No matter who you are, but especially if you're not well conditioned to exercise, you need to check in with your doctor and get medical clearance before embarking on any new physical fitness program. While this is true of all programs, it becomes especially important when the program includes high-intensity exercise levels. And don't let the shorter duration of these routines fool you: They're demanding, and you need to be sure you can handle them physically. To avoid injury, it's important to receive a physical examination and clearance from your medical physician, particularly if you have a heart condition, are pregnant, have cancer or other serious medical illness, have osteoporosis, have had joint replacement surgery or other orthopedic problems, or have had other surgeries. Your doctor can also provide some baseline health-status measurements (see Fitness Assessment on article 28) so you can look back later and see how you've improved after starting your HIIT program. To prevent injury, it's important to prepare your body before engaging in exercise. I've treated thousands of middle- to older-age people over the course of my career, many of whom began an exercise program--walking, cycling, or working out at the gym--at the request of loved ones and cardiologists, only to be sidelined soon after by pain and injury. We are sold food that makes us sick to feed the profits of one industry, and drugs to treat disease we never needed to get to feed the profits of another. Confusion about the truth makes for a seller's market in information - or misinformation - and preferably, a never-ending sequence of both. Sound familiar? All of this begs a question: why FOOD? Why is the truth about food so easy to obscure? There is no single, decisive answer so far as I know, but there is a batch of very good candidates. We have all heard that familiarity breeds contempt. Contempt for actual expertise about diet and health, and the misguided notion that all opinion on the topic is comparably expert, are certainly widespread.