Researchers also found a correlation with toothbrushing frequency and other risk factors, as people who brushed the least were the likeliest to be obese, smokers, the least active and have the lowest income. But the results were consistent even after adjusting for all other risk factors.  So, it appears that those with the healthiest teeth are the likeliest to be healthy. This is confirmed by several other studies that examined tooth health and all cause mortality (death by any cause). Several authors have suggested that this suggests that people who are the healthiest are the likeliest to have healthy teeth. Previous studies analyzing the association between gum disease, flossing and CRP suggest that the most likely culprit is actually the bad bacteria in your mouth, which causes systemic inflammation (indicated by elevated CRP).  Combined with the study on brushing frequency, it suggests that those with the healthiest mouth hygiene are likely to be the healthiest. With clear associations between diet and tooth health, it would also suggest that excessive sugar consumption would play a role in this equation. Not forgetting that the bad bacteria in your mouth actually feed on sugar—something we all have “known” since grade school.

Research in this area has exploded in recent years, producing a barrage of interesting studies. The greatest and latest seems to be about Green Tea consumption. With the plethora of research on the many health benefits of at least 1 cup of green tea per day, including weight loss and prevention of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, researchers decided to see what else it may help. As it turns out, the “active ingredients” in green tea are also antimicrobial (kill bad bacteria and viruses) and antifungal, and even go as far as preventing the surviving bacteria from attaching to your teeth. Green tea consumption may help prevent all forms of periodontal disease including cancer of the mouth.

So in short, brush your teeth at least twice per day. Floss every day. Visit your dentist twice per year. Eat a low sugar diet. Drink your green tea and you will have healthy teeth be less likely to die from all disease, particularly heart disease, which is the number 1 cause of death in the US.

But before we get into the details, I need to state a clause:

-If you have wide hips and narrow shoulders you can workout like a mad woman and you will not likely put on a lot of upper body muscle (but you will lean down and likely loose weight).  You will put on some muscle in you legs and hips (but again you will lean down).

-If you have narrow hips and wide shoulders, you will respond “better” to exercise as it will be easier for you to put on muscle and lean down than most women. It is most notable in your ability to add upper body muscle.  That being said, it is still highly unlikely that you are the one in 100,000 women that can indeed build muscle as well as a man (without a bit of “hormonal help”, meaning a massive dose of steroids).

Okay, lets get to the good stuff. Men and women both have a hormone response to exercise and to some extent it is to different types of exercise. I am going to focus primarily on women for this post. Women can temporarily increase their Human Growth Hormone levels by about 100% for approximately 6 hours after a workout if they do the right workout. This increase is where you get the most benefit from your exercise. For 99% of women, that means that you lean down considerably while adding small amounts of muscle. To put things into perspective a man can get an 800% increase in Human Growth Hormone Levels and a 75% increase in testosterone (which is about 10-15 times higher at baseline than yours and you get no increase). This is why men have a far greater ability to build muscle than women. Interestingly, women actually have their greatest response in middle age (must be nice, we peak at 18-20). Think about it, how many times have you seen a 45 year old soccer mom that looks great and is kicking some 20 year old’s tail in the gym. Often enough to be noticeable if you are paying attention. Most of the time we just shrug it off as more discipline and dedication. That is part of it, but the other part is double the hormone response, which means double the improvement, and that means double the motivation.

Now you just have to do the work, which leads me to my next point. What kind of work, and how much? The good news is that the primary stimulator of this response is Blood Lactate, or lactic acid in the blood. That is also the bad news. The simple version is that high intensity work causes lactic acid to build up in the muscle. As that approaches toxic limits the body will begin to remove it from the muscle to process it systemically (blood lactate) and if needed will begin to off load it in the stomach to vent it (regurgitate). So why did I say that it was also the bad news? You have to work a lot of muscle at one time (exercises like squats and deadlifts performed for 10 sets of 10 produce the best results), and do a lot of it. There are two ways to do this but both have to be intense. For example, you could do multiple sets of 10 at a 10 rm on squats (about 45-60 seconds and heavy enough to keep you from going over 60 seconds) or you could run 300-400 meters as fast as you can (again 45-60 seconds at a speed that you can’t sustain longer than 60 seconds) multiple times. 1 set will not build up enough to cause significant blood lactate increases, and if your rest is over about 90 seconds you will begin to buffer it out forcing you to do even more sets to accomplish your goal. This is why large exercises performed in a circuit are beneficial for weight loss. For example you could do 30 yards of lunges, 30 squat jumps, 30 push-ups, 10 chin-ups, run 100 meters rest 1 minute and repeat 6 times. Or you could do 10 sets of 10 on squats. If you wanted to lean down you would do the circuit If you wanted to lean down and put on a little muscle you would do the squats (a typical women trying to put on muscle is lucky to add 3-4 pounds of muscle per year which is barely noticeable if spread over the entire body as it would be with this type of work).  There are a number of combinations that you can use but they should be goal derived.

The next trick is not to undermine it with a poor diet. Your workout and diet should work together, but they can easily work against each other. For example carbohydrates in excessive amounts, will increase your insulin. When your insulin is high it blocks the growth hormone receptors at the cellular level, meaning lots of growth hormone and nothing for it to do. So it is very important to eat the appropriate amount of carbs for your body and activity level. This amount can vary greatly from one person to another but is 60-90 grams per day on average. It is also important for you to eat adequate protein as the growth hormone is made of amino acids which must be eaten to sustain optimal levels of the hormone. The most important times for you to eat protein are immediately post workout (research suggests that 30 min pre-training is good as well) and about 30 minutes before bed as post workout and night time is when your growth hormone is highest and most responsive to amino acid loading. A glutamine (5-15 grams) drink during the workout will help as well.  I know that many of you think that you shouldn’t eat before bed, but what you eat is the important part. Cookies will make you a fat insomniac that pees all night. Turkey will make you sleep like a baby and help you lean down (and not pee all night…test it for 2 weeks- meat and veggies for dinner, no fruit or sweets and 4 ounces of turkey or cottage cheese 30 minutes before bed, you should notice progressively improved sleep in the second week). As a note, you do not produce urine in a deep sleep, and growth hormone helps induce deep sleep.

So ladies, put all of this together and in a few weeks you should see the beginnings of a leaner, healthier, more rested, more energetic you. Most will not start to plateau until 8-14 weeks and that is where some more advanced workouts progressions come into play.

Here is your chance to attend a live talk by nationally-recognized Age Management Specialist, Dr. Mickey Barber.

Dr. Mickey Barber will discuss the importance of an integrated approach to maintaining your healthy edge and will focus on how you can be proactive in living a better life today. Please join Dr. Barber and learn how to tackle the aging process head on!

Title: Stop the Clock – Slowing the Aging Process

Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Time: 7:30 AM – 8:30 AM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

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So unfortunately, we have another diet myth busted, and is demonstrated once again that there is no magic pill. Though it was demonstrated rather well that a 500 calorie/day diet is very effective for weight loss. This is of course, unreasonable for any extended period of time, and based on other research, I would suggest that quite a bit of muscle was lost, but effective none the less.

Until a magic pill is actually discovered, my advice is to keep your diet relatively strict (reasonably so) and try to get at least 20 minutes of daily exercise. Eat lots of vegetables and most importantly, listen to your body and try to feed it what it responds to, as everyone’s body is different.

Live Strong

First, what are the proposed advantages of adding HCG, in small daily doses, to a diet? Supposedly it has an appetite suppressing effect. This is great if it is true, as it would make sticking to the diet much easier. I always tell patients “calories effect your weight, the type of calories will decide what the weight looks like”, which means that if you want to drop weight (and do not care if it is fat or muscle), drop your calories. If you want to loose a lot of weight quickly, you aren’t particularly concerned with your long term health, cutting your calories to 500 per day will certainly do the trick. In this instance, anything that suppresses appetite will help.

So question is: “Does HCG actually suppress appetite?”. The answer….maybe. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that HCG, when directly introduced to a cell, does increase Leptin. Leptin is a hormone that tells you that you are satisfied and encourages fat to be burned as energy. A few studies even suggest the when directly introduced to fatty tumors, cell size is reduced. This is very promising and does suggest that HCG would aid in achieving the desired results, assuming that it has the same effects when used systemically (effect on entire body).

That is the question that we will address in part 3: Does HCG have a systemic benefit for weight loss?

What is the HCG diet anyways? As far as that goes, what is HCG? HCG is also known as Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, and is a hormone that has similar function to Luteinizing Hormone (it has many functions including increasing testosterone). The diet incorporates a very low dose of daily HCG with a very strict 500 calorie per day diet. In addition to an ultra low calorie diet with virtually no fat intake, lotions or creams containing lipids are not allowed either. As you can imagine, the diet alone will result in quite a bit of weight loss (with or without exercise).

According to the sources, the addition of the daily HCG will help curb hunger and may reduce the typical metabolism reduction associated an extremely low calorie diet.

In my next post, I will discuss the science behind these claims. As you can imagine, with anything that is half of a century old, there is plenty to discuss.

Internally, the body looks even worse. As hormone levels change, and time and stress take their toll, the body’s well-being diminishes. A build-up of fat and loss of energy leads to higher blood pressure and cholesterol. The heart grows weaker, and even the brain loses its function. Bones get brittle and dowager’s humps form. And the risk for diseases such as cancer, hypertension, and diabetes skyrockets. Ugh.

The good news is that science is making the aging process a lot easier to deal with, inside and out. Americans spend billions of dollars each year fighting the effects of getting old…

Read the full article here.

Names of sports heroes

Dr. Barber, CEO of Cenegenics South Carolina an age management institute based in Charleston, “says With John McCain, who if elected would serve as the oldest president ever in office, and Barack Obama, one of the youngest candidates to run, the issue of health and aging is front and center in this election.”

She offers this advice to the next Commander in Chief to avoid accelerated aging:
“Hormone levels are something traditional doctors typically do not monitor yet if they are less than optimal it can have dramatic impacts on your mental emotional and physical health ” says Dr. Barber. “Obama for example has a family history of prostate cancer. The lower your testosterone levels the more aggressive prostate cancer can be which is a good reason he should have his hormones checked.”

Balance Your Hormones
She also notes that McCain’s verbal gaffes, which have been attributed to age, could also be due to unbalanced hormone levels. “Common effect of unbalanced hormone levels can be poor memory and recall ” explains Dr. Barber.” Just because he is 71 doesn’t mean he has to be forgetful or in poor health.”

Find Time for Romance
“One of the key indicators of good health is regular sex ” says Dr. Barber. “We can deduce a lot just from the answer to the question “˜How is your sex life?” She recommends both candidates make time in their busy schedule for physical interaction with their spouses which she notes has both physical and of course emotional benefits.

Drink Half Your Weight in Water
“It sounds like a lot but these men probably should drink half their body weight in ounces of water a day ” says Dr. Barber. And with our Commander in Chief spending significant time on Air Force One it’s even more important to remain hydrated. Dr. Barber notes that for every hour of flying time a person should drink eight ounces of water.

Get Sweaty
“Thirty minutes of exercise a day will give them extra energy and boost their immune systems”, says Dr. Barber. “Whether you’re a busy executive, like many of my patients, or President of the United States, energy is an absolute must just to complete everything that needs to get done in a day.”

She points out that the current president is a great example of someone who has aged well, thanks in part to physical fitness. “President Bush has always made time for exercise and relaxation two key contributors to health and vitality” she says. “And it shows. He’s in great shape and has not aged so dramatically over his eight years in office.”

Unfortunately, says Dr. Barber, Bush is not typical. Many presidents, such as Bill Clinton who had heart bypass surgery several years ago, experience a decline in health while in office. “Bill Clinton was a walking disaster with an expanding waistline and poor eating habits, she says. “An ounce of prevention, the philosophy we maintain at Cenegenics, could likely have stopped such serious heart problems.”

Says Dr. Barber, “I just hope that whoever wins in November will enjoy the same level of health and vitality that our patients experience through Cenegenics. By making these simple changes in their lives, I hope this will chart a healthy course for their future, and thus our country’s.”

About Cenegenics Carolinas
Cenegenics Carolinas is a Charleston-based medical institute that helps patients manage the aging process through a customized regimen of exercise nutrition and hormone optimization to improve their quality of life and feel healthy and years younger than their age. Headed by CEO Mickey Barber, MD, a board-certified anesthesiologist and former assistant professor at Tulane University Cenegenics Carolinas is one of only five Cenegenics centers in the country. For more information, call 843-724-7272 or visit www.cenegenics-carolinas.com.