Why do we gravitate to famous quotes or sayings?  I think there are several reasons but most obvious to me is that every once in a while we need to search out and find a daily nugget of wisdom to help us  tweak the way we see things.  It’s one of those “ah-ha!” moments when we just read or hear something that triggers a chain reaction of thoughts, which in turn fuels us on a new path of action.  To hopefully inspire you to take action and implement health and fitness into your everyday lives, I’ve compiled 21 amazing quotes all about health, fitness and wellness.  Enjoy!  And please feel free to post any other of your favorite quotes in the comments section.

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year. ~ Franklin P. Adams

I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more. ~ Dr. Jonas Salk

I still need more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently. ~ Ernest Hemingway

If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself. ~ Eubie Blake (On his 100th Birthday)

If you don’t do what’s best for your body, you’re the one who comes up on the short end. ~ Julius Erving

Inspire me with love for my art and for thy creatures. In the sufferer let me see only the human being. ~ Moses Maimonides, The Physician’s Oath

It is in human nature to relax, when not compelled by personal advantage or disadvantage. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Learn to relax. Your body is precious, as it houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy. ~ Izaak Walton

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

No rest is worth anything except the rest that is earned. ~ Jean Paul

Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them. ~ Hippocrates

Older people shouldn’t eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get. ~ Robert Orben

Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it. ~ Unknown Author

Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother. ~ Voltaire

Rest is the sweet sauce of labor. ~ Plutarch

Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

Tactics, fitness, stroke ability, adaptability, experience, and sportsmanship are all necessary for winning. ~ Fred Perry

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded. ~ Goethe

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. ~ Jim Rohn

Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009]

Alex Jones addresses one of the darkest modes of power the globalists have used to control the population– food. The adulteration of the planet’s staple crops, genetically-altered species and intentionally-altered water, food and air all amount to a Eugenics operation to weaken the masses and achieve full spectrum domination…

Alex Jones addresses one of the darkest modes of power the globalists have used to control the population– food. The adulteration of the planet’s staple crops, genetically-altered species and intentionally-altered water, food and air all amount to a Eugenics operation to weaken the masses and achieve full spectrum domination.

People the world over, but especially in the United States are under chemical attack. Deadly and dangerous toxins ranging from Aspartame to Fluoride, GMO, Mercury-tainting, pesticides, cross-species chimeras, plastic compounds in chicken, high fructose corn syrup, cloned meat, rBGH and new aggressive GM species of salmon have all entered into our diets and environments– whether we want it or not.

Many of these substances knowingly cause or are linked with sterility, low birth weight, miscarriages, smaller or deformed offspring, as well as organ failure, cancer, brain tumors and Death itself, what you DON’T know about on your grocery shelves can hurt you. Further, Alex demonstrates that a pattern of buried studies, fraudulent statistics and a will reduce global population all point to the deliberate criminal poisoning of the food and water supply.

Suffer no fools and warn those you love about need to stop their food from being used as a Depopulation-weapon against us all. Please share this important video with everyone, so the truth about these substances can be known.

Well I did it again.  Tore some muscles in my lower back, more specifically a couple of the muscles that are important with S.I. Joint mobility.  I was doing what I love – lifting heavy weights and felt a pop! And being the typical guy I shrugged it off thinking, “now that was weird”.  When I went to increase the weight and add to the load I knew that it was more severe than I had first thought.  10 days later I still have a bruise that radiates from my lower back down to middle of my butt.  Nasty!

I’m happy to report I’m well on the mend though.  Three massage therapy treatments, 2 chiropractor manipulations and adjustments, stretching galore, and a bunch of pain killers and relaxants, I’m about 60% better.  Tomorrow I’ll get my x-ray results which I’m sure will be positive – I know it is isn’t a joint issue, just tissue damage.

My message to all the kids out there, “don’t be a showoff, lift smart, and listen to what your body tells you – it knows best!”

Here’s a couple of great resources for lower back injuries and the types of therapies that will speed recovery:

• Spine-Health.com
• Avoid back injuries with proper lifting techniques
• Dealing with chronic back injury
• What is the S.I. joint and why it sucks to hurt it!

The BMI considers this guy borderline obese - what do you think?

There’s more to measuring  fitness than gender, height and weight.  Being FIT, no matter where you’re at in life, can be based on many more accurate methods.  For years I have been telling people that the BMI is not an accurate indicator of health and fitness.  As of late, I’ve seen some reputable sources quote the Body Mass Index as a way to gauge your health and fitness levels which I find laughable for several reasons.  Most blatantly obvious is the fact that I’m considered borderline obese based on this index.  Do you know what your BMI score is?

Below is an amazing article, written by Patrick Vuong, entitled “BMI:  A poor predictor of health and fitness” as posted on the Fitness Town Blog.

As we move into the 21st century, and the health and fitness of Western populations and populations throughout the world are getting worse, it is important that fitness consultants, experts, and doctors are able to accurately measure the health of the uninformed public.  An inaccurate measure of health could promote negative self-esteem amongst the healthy and can lead them to pursue unnecessary diets.  On the other hand, those who are unhealthy may be mislead to think they are completely healthy.

The most popular method of determining health and obesity is the Body Mass Index (BMI) due to its simplicity and affordability.  BMI measurement ranges are separated into categories of severely underweight, underweight, average, overweight and three classes of obesity.  BMI is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters.

The problem with the BMI method is its inaccuracy in assessing individuals with a lot of muscle mass or a large frame.  The BMI method loses much of its validity because it does not take into account one’s body composition including proportions of fat, water, bone, etc.  As more and more health professionals and clinicians are using this method to assess the health of populations and individuals, we ask ourselves: how did we end up with such a faulty statistic?

History of BMI

The formula first came up when Adolphe Quetelet published a study to define the “average man” in 1832.  This study was not meant to determine obesity or obesity-related diseases.  In his study, he found that a person’s weight varied not in direct proportion to a person’s height but the square of his height.

In the early 1900s, it was generally agreed by most medical professionals and organizations that people with too much adipose tissue (fat) were more likely to develop diabetes, hypertension, and other coronary heart diseases.  Large scale studies were being carried out by health researchers and insurance companies throughout the century.  It wasn’t until 1972 when Ancel Keys published his “Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity” to examine which height to weight formula correlated best with body fat %, that he found out the best indictor came from Quetelet’s formula, which Keys renamed the “Body Mass Index.”  However, Keys warned against using this formula for individual diagnoses as the equation ignores individual factors like gender, age, body composition and how BMI affects health.

Limitations

One major shortcoming of the BMI equation is that it is over-simplistic.  The formula is derived from population studies and the majority of people today lead very sedentary lives.  Therefore, BMI assumes a lower lean body mass and higher relative fat or adipose content for the average person.  This error in calculation leads to an overestimation of adiposity in people with a greater lean (fat-free) mass like muscled athletes.  Likewise, BMI calculations underestimates adiposity on individuals with lower lean body mass like the elderly.

A further shortcoming is related to aging.  As one ages and gets shorter and their weight stays the same, their BMI will actually increase.  The standard BMI chart does not apply to everyone.  Separate BMI charts and standards are needed for special populations.  The BMI classifications for a “healthy” person are different for children and people who live in different countries.

In an analysis of over 40 studies involving a sample size of over 250,000 people, it was found that those with a lower BMI (<20) showed a greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease than people who were classified as normal (BMI 20-24.9).  People classified as “overweight” (BMI 25-29.9) had the lowest incidence of total mortality and cardiovascular mortality.  This study concluded that BMI is a poor evaluator and predictor of cardiovascular mortality.  Their findings show that BMI fails to differentiate between body fat and lean mass.

Conclusion

While the BMI may be an okay indicator for large populations in epidemiological studies, it should never be used to diagnose individuals.  There are many better clinical applications that can be used to assess body composition and health.  The waist to hip ratio, waist girth measurements, and body composition analysis using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) or other methods are far more accurate techniques to evaluate a person’s health and fitness.

About this talk

William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor.  The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.

William Li heads the Angiogenesis Foundation, a nonprofit that is re-conceptualizing global disease fighting.  Also, be sure to check them out on Facebook.

Original video can be seen here.

So what now?  Well, to start with, I’m commencing a 90-day fitness challenge on April 1st, 2010.  This challenge, which is being offered by Fitness Town, is an event of unprecedented magnitude to the like-of which Western Canada has never experienced.  A bold statement – yes, I know – but true.  You’re wondering how.  For starters, all registration fees go to 1 of 6 charities – you choose.  Further more, you get a welcome kit which includes hat, water bottle, Fitbook training journal, and a enviro-friendly tote bag!  This alone has a $75 value and when coupled with the online meal planning and training services for 90 days, it works out to over $500 in value for only $20 bucks!  Crazy!

What’s got me most stoked is that I’m already seeing a community start to form around the challenge.  A group of people all with something in common – a desire to incorporate health and fitness into their lifestyles.  Its amazing.  So what do you think – you up for the challenge?  A chance to start a new program and hold yourself and others accountable to their fitness goals?  I am.

Remember, “if you fail to plan, plan to fail” – day 1 is coming and I’m super stoked for the challenge.  I’m looking forward to sharing progress updates with you all.

I love quotes.  All quotes, whether they be sayings, a famous expression, or just a little off-cuff remark caught by some looming reporter.  Little inspirational (or not so inspirational) words shared by people from many different molds, which are sometimes just want we need to hear to keep our own momentum moving forward.  These are just a few of my favorites which I thought you might find entertaining, inspirational, or just good for a laugh.  Enjoy!

Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.  ~Edward Stanley

If it weren’t for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all.  ~Joey Adams

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.  ~Plato

Fitness – if it came in a bottle, everybody would have a great body.  ~Cher

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.  ~Thomas de Quincey

The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, side-stepping responsibility, and pushing their luck!  ~Author Unknown

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states.  ~Carol Welch

A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.  ~Joan Welsh

The word aerobics came about when the gym instructors got together and said, “If we’re going to charge $10 an hour, we can’t call it jumping up and down.”  ~Rita Rudner

I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I’m doing.  ~Marsha Doble

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.  ~A.A. Milne

I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.  ~Chauncey Depew, also sometimes attributed in slightly different wording to Mark Twain

I really don’t think I need buns of steel.  I’d be happy with buns of cinnamon.  ~Ellen DeGeneres

Commit to be fit.  ~Author Unknown

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.  ~Marcus Tullius Cicero

My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.  ~Phyllis Diller

Aerobics:  a series of strenuous exercises which help convert fats, sugars, and starches into aches, pains, and cramps.  ~Author Unknown

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body – it just wears it out.  ~Norman Mailer

Exercise is a dirty word.  Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.  ~Author Unknown

An hour of basketball feels like 15 minutes.  An hour on a treadmill feels like a weekend in traffic school.  ~David Walters

I consider exercise vulgar.  It makes people smell.  ~Alec Yuill Thornton

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught,
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
~John Dryden

People say that losing weight is no walk in the park.  When I hear that I think, yeah, that’s the problem.  ~Chris Adams

If the poor overweight jogger only knew how far he had to run to work off the calories in a crust of bread he might find it better in terms of pound per mile to go to a massage parlor.  ~Christiaan Barnard

I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street.  ~Neil Armstrong on jogging, in an interview with Walter Cronkite

If your dog is fat, you’re not getting enough exercise.  ~Author Unknown

I am pushing sixty.  That is enough exercise for me.  ~Mark Twain

Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.  ~Barbara Ehrenreich

Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.  ~Robert M. Hutchins

To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world’s “Blue Zones,” communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100.

Full transcript below:

Something called the Danish Twin Study established that only about 10 percent of how long the average person lives, within certain biological limits, is dictated by our genes. The other 90 percent is dictated by our lifestyle. So the premise of Blue Zones: if we can find the optimal lifestyle of longevity we can come up with a de facto formula for longevity.

But if you ask the average American what the optimal formula of longevity is, they probably couldn’t tell you. They’ve probably heard of the South Beach Diet, or the Atkins Diet. You have the USDA food pyramid. There is what Oprah tells us. There is what Doctor Oz tells us.

The fact of the matter is there is a lot of confusion around what really helps us live longer better. Should you be running marathons or doing yoga? Should you eat organic meats or should you be eating tofu? When it comes to supplements, should you be taking them? How about these hormones or resveratrol? And does purpose play into it? Spirituality? And how about how we socialize?

Well, our approach to finding longevity was to team up with National Geographic, and the National Institute on Aging, to find the four demographically confirmed areas that are geographically defined. And then bring a team of experts in there to methodically go through exactly what these people do, to distill down the cross-cultural distillation.

And at the end of this I’m going to tell you what that distillation is. But first I’d like to debunk some common myths when it comes to longevity. And the first myth is if you try really hard you can live to be 100. False. The problem is, only about one out of 5,000 people in America live to be 100. Your chances are very low. Even though it’s the fastest growing demographic in America, it’s hard to reach 100. The problem is that we’re not programmed for longevity. We are programmed for something called procreative success. I love that word. It reminds me of my college days.

Biologists term procreative success to mean the age where you have children and then another generation, the age when your children have children. After that the effect of evolution completely dissipates. If you’re a mammal, if you’re a rat or an elephant, or a human, in between, it’s the same story. So to make it to age 100, you not only have to have had a very good lifestyle, you also have to have won the genetic lottery.

The second myth is, there are treatments that can help slow, reverse, or even stop aging. False. When you think of it, there is 99 things that can age us. Deprive your brain of oxygen for just a few minutes, those brain cells die, they never come back. Play tennis too hard, on your knees, ruin your cartilage, the cartilage never comes back. Our arteries can clog. Our brains can gunk up with plaque, and we can get Alzheimer’s. There is just too many things to go wrong.

Our bodies have 35 trillion cells, trillion with a “T.” We’re talking national debt numbers here. (Laughter) Those cells turn themselves over once every eight years. And every time they turn themselves over there is some damage. And that damage builds up. And it builds up exponentially. It’s a little bit like the days when we all had Beatles albums or Eagles albums and we’d make a copy of that on a cassette tape, and let our friends copy that cassette tape, and pretty soon, with successive generations that tape sounds like garbage. Well, the same things happen to our cells. That’s why a 65-year-old person is aging at a rate of about 125 times faster than a 12-year-old person.

So, if there is nothing you can do to slow your aging or stop your aging, what am I doing here? Well, the fact of the matter is the best science tells us that the capacity of the human body, my body, your body, is about 90 years, a little bit more for women. But life expectancy in this country is only 78. So somewhere along the line, we’re leaving about 12 good years on the table. These are years that we could get. And research shows that would be years largely free of chronic disease, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

We think the best way to get these missing years is to look at the cultures around the world that are actually experiencing them, areas where people are living to age 100 at rates up to 10 times greater than we are, areas where the life expectancy is an extra dozen years, the rate of middle age mortality is a fraction of what it is in this country.

We found our first blue zone about 125 miles off the coast of Italy, on the island of Sardinia. And not the entire island, the island is about 1.4 million people, but only up in the highlands, an area called the Nuoro province. And here we have this area where men live the longest, about 10 times more centenarians than we have here in America. And this is a place where people not only reach age 100, they do so with extraordinary vigor. Places where 102 year olds still ride their bike to work, chop wood, and can beat a guy 60 years younger than them. (Laughter)

Their history actually goes back to about the time of Christ. It’s actually a Bronze Age culture that’s been isolated. Because the land is so infertile they largely are shepherds, which occasions regular, low-intensity physical activity. Their diet is mostly plant-based, accentuated with foods that they can carry into the fields. They came up with an unleavened whole wheat bread called notamusica made out of durum wheat, a type of cheese made from grass-fed animals so the cheese is high in Omega-3 fatty acids instead of Omega-6 fatty acids from corn-fed animals, and a type of wine that has three times the level of polyphenols than any known wine in the world. It’s called Cannonau.

But the real secret I think lies more in the way that they organize their society. And one of the most salient elements of the Sardinian society is how they treat older people. You ever notice here in America, social equity seems to peak at about age 24? Just look at the advertisements. Here in Sardinia, the older you get the more equity you have, the more wisdom you’re celebrated for. You go into the bars in Sardinia, instead of seeing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, you see the centenarian of the month calendar.

This, as it turns out, is not only good for your aging parents to keep them close to the family; it imparts about four to six years of extra life expectancy, research shows it’s also good for the children of those families, who have lower rates of mortality and lower rates of disease. That’s called the grandmother effect.

We found our second Blue Zone on the other side of the planet, about 800 miles south of Tokyo, on the archipelago of Okinawa. Okinawa is actually 161 small islands. And in the northern part of the main island, this is ground zero for world longevity. This is a place where the oldest living female population is found. It’s a place where people have the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. They have what we want. They live a long time, and tend to die in their sleep, very quickly, and often, I can tell you, after sex.

They live about seven good years longer than the average American. Five times as many centenarians as we have in America. One fifth the rate of colon and breast cancer, big killers here in America. And one sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease. And the fact that this culture has yielded these numbers suggests strongly they have something to teach us. What do they do? Once again, a plant-based diet, full of vegetables with lots of color in them. And they eat about eight times as much tofu as Americans do.

More significant than what they eat is how they eat it. They have all kinds of little strategies to keep from overeating, which, as you know, is a big problem here in America. A few of the strategies we observed: they eat off of smaller plates, so they tend to eat fewer calories at every sitting. Instead of serving family style, where you can sort of mindlessly eat as you’re talking, they serve at the counter, put the food away, and then bring it to the table.

They also have a 3,000-year-old adage, which I think is the greatest sort of diet suggestion ever invented. It was invented by Confucius. And that diet is known as the Hara, Hatchi, Bu diet. Simply a little saying these people say before their meal to remind them to stop eating when their stomach is 20 percent full. It takes about a half hour for that full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain. And by remembering to stop at 80 percent it helps keep you from doing that very thing.

But, like Sardinia, Okinawa has a few social constructs that we can associate with longevity. We know that isolation kills. Fifteen years ago the average American had three good friends. We’re down to one and half right now. If you were lucky enough to be born in Okinawa you were born into a system where you automatically have a half a dozen friends with whom you travel through life. They call it a Moai. And if you’re in a Moai you’re expected to share the bounty if you encounter luck, and if things go bad, child gets sick, parent dies, you always have somebody who has your back. This particular moai, these five ladies have been together for 97 years. Their average age is 102.

Typically in America we’ve divided our adult life up into two sections. There is our work life, where we’re productive. And then one day, boom, we retire. And typically that has meant retiring to the easy chair, or going down to Arizona to play golf. In the Okinawan language there is not even a word for retirement. Instead there is one word that imbues your entire life, and that word is “ikigai.” And, roughly translated, it means “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.”

For this 102-year-old karate master, his ikigai was carrying forth this martial art. For this hundred-year-old fisherman it was continuing to catch fish for his family three times a week. And this is a question. The National Institute on Aging actually gave us a questionnaire to give these centenarians. And one of the questions, they were very culturally astute, the people who put the questionnaire. One of the questions was, “What is your ikigai?” They instantly knew why they woke up in the morning. For this 102 year old woman, her ikigai was simply her great-great-great-granddaughter. Two girls separated in age by 101 and a half years. And I asked her what it felt like to hold a great-great-great-granddaughter. And she put her head back and she said, “It feels like leaping into heaven.” I thought that was a wonderful thought.

My editor at Geographic wanted me to find America’s Blue Zone. And for a while we looked on the prairies of Minnesota, where actually there is a very high proportion of centenarians. But that’s because all the young people left. (Laughter) So, we turned to the data again. And we found America’s longest-lived population among the Seventh-Day Adventists concentrated in and around Loma Linda, California. Adventists are conservative Methodists. They celebrate their sabbath from from sunset on Friday till sunset on Saturday. A “24-hour sanctuary in time,” they call it. And they follow five little habits that conveys to them, extraordinary longevity comparatively speaking.

In America here, life expectancy for the average woman is 80. But for an Adventist woman, their life expectancy is 89. And the difference is even more pronounced among men, who are expected to live about 11 years longer than their American counterparts. Now, this is a study that followed about 70,000 people for 30 years. Sterling study. And I think it supremely illustrates the premise of this Blue Zone project.

This is a heterogeneous community. It’s white, black, Hispanic, Asian. The only thing that they have in common are a set of very small lifestyle habits that they follow ritualistically for most of their lives. They take their diet directly from the Bible. Genesis: Chapter one, Verse 26, where God talks about legumes and seeds, and on one more stanza about green plants, ostensibly missing is meat. They take this sanctuary in time very serious.

For 24 hours every week, no matter how busy they are, how stressed out they are at work, where the kids need to be driven, they stop everything and they focus on their God, their social network, and then, hardwired right in the religion are nature walks. And the power of this is not that it’s done occasionally, the power is it’s done every week for a lifetime. None of it’s hard. None of it costs money. Adventists also tend to hang out with other Adventists. So, if you go to an Adventist’s party you don’t see people swilling Jim Beam or rolling a joint. Instead they’re talking about their next nature walk, exchanging recipes, and yes, they pray. But they influence each other in profound and measurable ways.

This is a culture that has yielded Ellsworth Wheram. Ellsworth Wheram is 97 years old. He’s a multimillionaire, yet when a contractor wanted 6,000 dollars to build a privacy fence, he said, “For that kind of money I’ll do it myself.” So for the next three days he was out shoveling cement, and hauling poles around. And predictably, perhaps, on the fourth day he ended up in the operating room. But not as the guy on the table; the guy doing open-heart surgery. At 97 he still does 20 open-heart surgeries every month.

Ed Rawlings, 103 years old now, an active cowboy, starts his morning with a swim. And on weekends he likes to put on the boards, throw up rooster tails.

And then Marge Deton. Marge is 104. Her grandson actually lives in the twin cities here. She starts her day with lifting weights. She rides her bicycle. And then she gets in her root-beer colored 1994 Cadillac Seville, and tears down the San Bernardino freeway, where she still volunteers for seven different organizations. I’ve been on 19 hardcore expeditions. I’m probably the only person you’ll ever meet who rode his bicycle across the Sahara desert without sunscreen. But I’ll tell you, there is no adventure more harrowing than riding shotgun with Marge Deton. “A stranger is a friend I haven’t met yet!” she’d say to me.

So, what are the common denominators in these three cultures? What are the things that they all do? And we managed to boil it down to nine. In fact we’ve done two more Blue Zone expeditions since this and these common denominators hold true. And the first one, and I’m about to utter a heresy here, none of them exercise, at least the way we think of exercise. Instead, they set up their lives so that they are constantly nudged into physical activity. 300-year-old Okinawan women are getting up and down off the ground, they sit on the floor, 30 or 40 times a day.

Sardinians live in vertical houses, up and down the stairs. Every trip to the store, or to church or to a friends house occasions a walk. They don’t have any conveniences. There is not a button to push to do yard work or house work. If they want to mix up a cake, they’re doing it by hand. That’s physical activity. That burns calories just as much as going on the treadmill does. When they do do intentional physical activity, it’s the things they enjoy. They tend to walk, the only proven way to stave off cognitive decline, and they all tend to have a garden. They know how to set up their life in the right way so they have the right outlook.

Each of these cultures take time to downshift. The Sardinians pray. The Seventh-Day Adventists pray. The Okinawans have this ancestor veneration. But when you’re in a hurry or stressed out that triggers something called the inflammatory response, which is associated with everything from Alzheimer’s disease to cardiovascular disease. When you slow down for 15 minutes a day you turn that inflammatory state into a more anti-inflammatory state.

They have vocabulary for sense of purpose, ikigai, like the Okinawans. You know the two most dangerous years in your life are the year you’re born, because of infant mortality, and the year you retire. These people know their sense of purpose, and they activate in their life, that’s worth about seven years of extra life expectancy.

There’s no longevity diet. Instead, these people drink a little bit every day, not a hard sell to the American population. (Laughter) They tend to eat a plant-based diet. Doesn’t mean they don’t eat meat, but lots of beans and nuts. And they have strategies to keep from overeating, little things that nudge them away from the table at the right time.

And then the foundation of all this is how they connect. They put their families first, take care of their children and their aging parents. They all tend to belong to a faith-based community, which is worth between four and 14 extra years of life expectancy if you do it four times a month. And the biggest thing here is they also belong to the right tribe. They were either born into or they proactively surrounded themselves with the right people.

We know from the Framingham studies, that if your three best friends are obese there is a 50 percent better chance that you’ll be overweight. So, if you hang out with unhealthy people that’s going to have a measurable impact over time. Instead, if your friend’s idea of recreation is physical activity, bowling, or playing hockey, biking or gardening, if your friends drink a little, but not too much, and they eat right, and they’re engaged, and they’re trusting and trustworthy, that is going to have the biggest impact over time.

Diets don’t work. No diet in the history of the world has ever worked for more than two percent of the population. Exercise programs usually start in January, they’re usually done by October. When it comes to longevity there is no short term fix in a pill or anything else. But when you think about it your friends are long-term adventures, and therefore, perhaps the most significant thing you can do to add more years to your life, and life to your years. Thank you very much.

Well another year has come and gone and like masses of Canadians you probably find yourself afflicted by a viral strain of procratinitis majoris. It seems to favor the healthy, well-meaning Canadian between the ears, with symptoms that include prolonged paralysis in front of televisions and/or the consumption of large amounts of calories…

Tongue and cheek? Yes – but not really. The January 1st phenomenon is nothing new. In fact, over 80% of Canadians will resolve to improve fitness levels and lose weight in 2009. The sad thing is that 65% of these people will discard their resolutions before February 1st. So this begs the question; “why do we set ourselves up to fail?”

There’s a number of excuses people will use to justify quitting, but I would need a very, very long blog to list even half of them. Interestingly enough however, the one common denominator affecting anyone starting a fitness program is momentum. A New Year’s commitment to fitness is a big endeavor, and the first step is always the hardest, so why would anyone want to start their climb from the bottom of the hill when they could start from the top? Here is the top 10 list to get yourself atop the hill:

1. Set an achievable goal.
2. Choose a date to reach your goal. Remember to keep it challenging, yet attainable – i.e. lose 15 pounds by June 1st, 2009
3. Set milestones and celebrate your victories. I encourage my clients to reward themselves with something special for every 5 pounds lost, example would be a hockey game or spa treatment. Just keep in mind it should be something that motivates you to keep on track.
4. Take before photos. There will be days when you will be faced with the choice of cheesecake or exercise and you need to remind yourself why you want to choose the latter.
5. Tell family and friends about your fitness goals. Let them know what you are going to attain and ask them to hold you accountable. But more importantly, make sure you hold yourself accountable.
6. Plan your meals. Don’t eliminate all the foods you enjoy, just limit the intake. Try to eat more whole, unprocessed foods such as fish and vegetables. These will fill you up and satiate your appetite at the same time. And in planning your meals you ensure you are eating regularly and always burning calories. Try running your car without gas in the tank – you can only make it so far on fumes. *TIP – I recommend cutting back on sugar and caffeine intake, allowing for more consistent energy levels and improved alertness throughout the day. Another positive is that your blood sugar levels will remain more stable and you won’t feel that need to have the mid-afternoon sugary snack to get your through the rest of your workday.
7. Plan your workouts. Make sure you are including these 5 areas in your exercise program: Cardiovascular training, strength training, core conditioning, stretching and balance. These areas will allow you to burn calories, increase energy levels, up your metabolism, increase bone density, assist in alleviating back and neck pain and improve brain stimulation and body awareness… bottom line, you’ll just feel better!
8. Get a journal and write everything down. It doesn’t have to be fancy, a simple dollar store calendar will do. If you fail to plan, then you might as well plan to fail.
9. Revisit your goals, your before photos and journal daily. As the old adage says, “out of sight, out of mind”, so you’ll want to ensure that you’re reviewing your daily, weekly and monthly goals regularly. I recommend doing it at breakfast and then right before bed. This will keep you focused on the prize ahead.
10. Sleep. Studies have shown that we need minimally 6 hours a night of R.E.M. sleep for optimal performance. Your body and mind needs lots of rest so you can stay the course and hit your goals.

Ellen DeGeneres once said “Procrastination isn’t the problem, its the solution. So procrastinate now, don’t put it off.” Simply said. If you plan to NOT make 2009 your healthiest year yet, don’t put it off, just do it.

The Sacroiliac Joints are located at the bottom of the back. You have one either side of the spine. The Sacroiliac joints help make up the rear part of the pelvic girdle and sit between the sacrum and the ilia.

There are torsional or twisting forces applied to the pelvic girdle when the lower limbs are moved. These limbs act like long levers and without the sacroiliac joints and the pubic symphysis (at the front of the pelvis) which allow movement, the pelvis would very likely be subject to a fracture.

These joints can often get stuck or in some cases one half of the pelvis can glide forwards or backwards, which is often referred to as a twisted pelvis. When this occurs it often irritates the Iliolumbar ligament which results in Inflammation. This is usually indicated by tenderness around the bony lumps which you can feel if you place your thumbs either side of your lower back.

Inflammation of the sacroiliac joints and associated ligaments are very common, especially following pregnancy where the hormone relaxing is released and this results in the relaxation of ligaments in preparation for childbirth. In most cases the causes of sacroiliitis are mechanical, however there may be other medical inflammatory conditions present such as Ankylosing Spondylitis as well as others which will need attention.

Symptoms include:

• Pain located either to the left or right of your lower back. The pain can range from an ache to a sharp pain which can restrict movement.
• The pain may radiate out into your buttocks and low back and will often radiate to the front into the groin. Occasionally it is responsible for pain in the testicles among males.
• Occasionally there may be referred pain into the lower limb which can be mistaken for sciatica.
• Classic symptoms are difficulty turning over in bed, struggling to put on shoes and socks and pain getting your legs in and out of the car.
• Stiffness in the lower back when getting up after sitting for long periods and when getting up from bed in the morning.
• Aching to one side of your lower back when driving long distances.

Specific assessment tests:

• The Stork test – to assess whether the sacroiliac joint is moving correctly.
• Leg length difference measurements – both straight leg and bent leg assessments.
• Ilia rotation - this assesses whether the ilia is rotated on one side creating imbalance.

What can a sports injury specialist or doctor do?

• Use diagnostic tests to discover the cause of the problem.
• Eliminate medical diseases such as Ankylosing Spondylitis.
• Treat the cause as well as the symptoms.
• Prescribe anti-inflammatory medication (e.g. ibuprofen) and rest.
• Use electrotherapy equipment to treat affected tissues.
• If indicated and safe to do, level the pelvis via manipulation.
• Articulate sacroiliac joint and restore normal function.
• Sports massage will help relieve any soft tissue tension in the area.
• Use injection therapy.
• Advise Ice and cold therapy to reduce inflammation.

What are the similar or related injuries and conditions?

• Ankylosing Spondylitis
• Myofascial pain
• Low back pain

The above was taken from John Williams’ website, the Sports Injury Clinic.  Check it out here for more amazing information on various sports injuries.