Pose Swimming

http://www.posetech.com/training/archives/000169.html

What’s Really in Supplements?

By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS

Mark Matcho When Dan Gerkey was trying to get into better shape a few years ago, he tried out a dietary supplement from a local store that promised to help build his strength. At first, the stuff worked. But after several weeks the police officer, who lives in Fraser, Mich., started feeling exhausted, and his wife noticed a yellowish tinge in his eyes. Soon, Mr. Gerkey’s skin also yellowed, and it itched so fiercely that taking a shower or pulling on his socks became agonizing. Eventually, a liver specialist at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit figured out the pills’ ingredients list included the name of a steroid, which he linked to the liver damage that was the main cause of Mr. Gerkey’s symptoms. Mr. Gerkey, 40, ended up losing 35 pounds before he recovered. “I was shocked,” says Mr. Gerkey, who says he had avoided buying supplements online because of worries about what they might contain. The pills “seemed legitimate to me,” sold in a sealed bottle at a shop selling supplements that he’d visited before. Now, he won’t even take vitamins. Extreme cases like Mr. Gerkey’s are unusual. But dietary supplements have long raised safety worries, with high-profile examples including ephedra, the herbal weight-loss treatment pulled from the U.S. market in 2004 after it was tied to heart problems and strokes. Some doctors continue to be concerned about evidence of side effects from such herbal ingredients, including research highlighting possible concerns about kava and comfrey. And the issue is drawing new attention after recent reports from the Food and Drug Administration about allegedly natural supplements illegally containing performance-enhancing drugs and undeclared pharmaceuticals. For consumers, the upshot can be confusion and alarm. But people can reduce the risk that the supplements they take will endanger their health using a growing number of online information resources and certification programs, and some common-sense tactics. “Consumers need to be their own advocate, and read and understand what they are taking,” says Linda Katz, interim chief medical officer of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Nearly two-thirds of American adults take dietary supplements, a broad category that includes vitamins, minerals and herbal products, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition, an industry trade group. The most commonly used include multivitamins, calcium and omega-3, the group says. Allegedly natural over-the-counter treatments that promise to melt pounds, build muscle or boost energy are also widely used. Most supplements are consumed without raising safety concerns. Still, the products are much less closely scrutinized than drugs, which are tested extensively and must win FDA approval before going on the market. Supplements that are made from products that were on the U.S. market before 1994—as most commonplace ones are—can be sold without being reviewed by the FDA beforehand. Companies that include newer substances are supposed to inform the agency before they go on the market, but don’t have to wait for approval. Consumer advocates have long called for tougher rules. Officials at the Council for Responsible Nutrition say no new laws are needed, citing new FDA manufacturing standards for supplements, which are now being phased in, as well as a requirement for supplement makers to tell the FDA when they get reports of serious side effects, which took effect at the end of 2007. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans a hearing this month focused on dietary-supplement safety. FDA officials say they are boosting their enforcement efforts, but it is a challenge to oversee the large and fast-growing supplement industry. “We do the best we can with the resources we have available,” says Janet Woodcock, the head of the FDA’s drug center. “Consumers have to be vigilant as well.” Chuck Haugh, a mailing-equipment salesman in Lincoln, Neb., says he didn’t pay much attention at first when his teenaged son started taking dietary supplements as part of a new workout regimen last spring. But within a few weeks, Mr. Haugh and his wife say they noticed the then-high-school senior seemed far more irritable than usual, with a hair-trigger temper. Mr. Haugh says he secretly examined the muscle-building products he found in the teenager’s gym bag and mentioned their ingredients to a sports dietician he knew. Mr. Haugh says his friend warned that the products, which had been purchased locally without a prescription, might contain substances that could put stress on his son’s liver, among other concerns. A blood test, connected to a pharmaceutical the teen was also taking, showed he had elevated liver enzymes, an early sign of potential liver damage. The supplements might not have been to blame, but the boy quit taking the products and returned to normal, his father says. “It was just scary,” says Mr. Haugh. A 2007 survey of U.S. weight-loss and athletic supplements by the British lab HFL Sport Science, a unit of Quotient Bioresearch Ltd., found the undisclosed presence of steroids in at least trace amounts in 25% of the 52 samples analyzed. The survey didn’t include companies using HFL’s certification service. Anabolic steroids are controlled substances, and they are not supposed to be sold in dietary supplements. Some forms can be prescribed by a doctor as drugs. Last year, an article in the journal Gastroenterology, on a national effort spearheaded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to track drug-induced liver injuries, said that 9% of the 300 cases then recorded were potentially tied to dietary supplements, including some widely used weight-loss and herbal products. Mr. Gerkey’s doctor, Stuart Gordon, published last month in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology an account of Mr. Gerkey’s history and two other liver-damage cases that the authors tied to supplements that appeared to be laced with steroids. Zhen-Zhou Feng, a co-author of the article, says he has already encountered another patient who appeared to have the same problem. “It’s out there, it’s just not being recognized” by most doctors, says Dr. Gordon, partly because they don’t always know that their patients are taking supplements. Since last December, the FDA has issued warnings about more than 70 weight-loss supplements that included potentially dangerous ingredients. The ingredients included prescription drugs, and the agency said the side effects could include seizure, heart attack and stroke. In July, the FDA warned consumers to avoid bodybuilding supplements that claimed to contain steroid-like ingredients, but actually included steroids. The agency, which issued a general warning but also named some specific brand names, said it had received reports of men with serious liver injuries, stroke, kidney failure and pulmonary embolism potentially linked to such products. An FDA spokesman said the agency can’t comment on supplement makers’ intent. But Ed Wyszumiala, general manager of dietary supplement programs for NSF International, a nonprofit organization in Ann Arbor, Mich., that certifies supplements’ safety, says the drugs and steroids likely get into the products through a combination of deliberate spiking and inadvertent contamination. Andrew Shao, a vice president at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, says safety problems are a “rare occurrence,” but “there are some issues, we recognize that.” In the Gastroenterology publication, the share of liver problems tied to supplements may appear larger because the study didn’t include cases caused by acetaminophen, or Tylenol, he says. He questioned the HFL survey, which he called a “marketing tactic”; an HFL official said it was meant to “show there was reason for concern.” Mr. Shao says his group welcomes the FDA’s ramped-up enforcement efforts, and “consumers need to be savvy as well.” People who want to take a supplement should talk to a doctor, says Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a nonprofit that oversees drug-testing of American Olympic hopefuls and some other top athletes. He says he advises athletes that they take all supplements at their own risk. Along with talking to a physician, people can do their own research. Many herbs have been tested in major studies and shown no benefits. Some have been linked to side effects, even without the presence of undisclosed drugs. A 2007 article by a National Institutes of Health researcher in the journal Clinics in Liver Disease listed comfrey, chaparral and kava among other herbs potentially tied to liver damage. Before they take a supplement, consumers should also check for potential interactions between any herb, vitamin or mineral and their prescriptions. They should also be particularly sensitive if they have existing health issues. For instance, those with heart conditions should be careful about supplements that act as stimulants, which can involve ingredients such as bitter orange and guarana, in addition to caffeine. For information on evidence, side effects and interactions, try the National Library of Medicine’s medlineplus.gov, under “Drugs and Supplements.” The NIH has more information at nccam.nih.gov and dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov, which has fact sheets and a research database. Subscriptions at www.naturaldatabaseconsumer.com include effectiveness ratings. Consumers can also search for specific supplements before taking them at www.fda.gov, to see if they’ve been included in safety warnings. Some other tactics are common sense, like being suspicious of those that boast dramatic curative effects. Products that brag of steroid-like effects may actually contain versions of the drugs, and consumers should be careful with products that claim to be “herbal” versions of prescriptions. Consumers should closely read the ingredients. Potentially dangerous substances often won’t be disclosed. But sometimes they are—if you know what to look for. One step is to look for drugs banned for top athletes, or variations on those names. The World Anti-Doping Agency list is at www.wada-ama.org under “Resources for Athletes.” Certain suffixes in chemical names are common for steroids or tweaked versions of them. Among them are -one, -ene, -iol and -bol, though these can also appear in the names of legitimate ingredients. Some products also use versions of steroid names in their brands, like “tren” to connote trenbolone. But consumers shouldn’t necessarily feel secure just because a product doesn’t set off warning bells. Kicker Vencill, 31, a former competitive swimmer who is now a lifeguard living in Santa Monica, Calif., flunked an athletic drug test several years ago and claimed it was due to a dietary supplement. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that, as Mr. Vencill argued, a multivitamin that he took contained banned steroids, it was the supplement that caused him to fail the test, and that he didn’t know the capsules contained drugs. But he was still suspended from competition for two years. “The last one that I thought would be the culprit was the multivitamin,” Mr. Vencill says. A spokesman for Ultimate Nutrition Inc., which made the multivitamin, had no comment. Several services test supplements for safety and purity. They generally charge supplement makers, and they don’t always disclose when paying clients’ products fail. Nonetheless, the certifications are “useful,” and can provide evidence of a product’s reliability, says Paul Coates, director of the NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements. Professional sports organizations including the National Football League and Major League Baseball urge players to take only supplements reviewed by NSF, which lists products certified for athletic use at nsf.org under “certified for sport.” Other organizations checking supplements are HFL, which has a program called Informed-Choice,with products listed at www.informed-choice.org, the U.S. Pharmacopeia, at www.usp.org, and ConsumerLab.com LLC, which charges consumers for its reports. ConsumerLab also does some checks without being paid by the manufacturers. Finally, people should watch carefully for any symptoms that start after they take a new supplement. Among the warning signs cited by the FDA in its public-health advisory on products that may contain steroids are nausea, weakness or fatigue, fever, abdominal pain, chest pain, shortness of breath, yellow corneas and skin, and discolored urine. Most of those are signs of liver or heart problems.

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION If you are thinking of taking a dietary supplement, talk to your doctor. In addition, here are some resources for your own research.

SOURCES ON HERBS and VITAMINS To check the research into effectiveness and safety of herbal products, try the National Library of Medicine’s Medline Plus at medlineplus.gov, under Drugs & Supplements: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html You can also go to two other National Institutes of Health sites, one for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (http://nccam.nih.gov/) and one for the Office of Dietary Supplements (http://dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov/). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers background on vitamins here: http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/vitamins/ There’s a paid subscription service at www.naturaldatabaseconsumer.com. The supplements industry backs a site called Life Supplemented at www.lifesupplemented.org. For a safety-oriented focus, here’s a Consumers Union report: http://www.consumerreports.org/health/natural-health/dietary-supplements-to-avoid-1-08/overview/risky-supplements-ov.htm

SOURCES ON PRODUCTS If you are looking into a specific brand, here are some places to check. You can start with the FDA’s site, at www.fda.gov, where you can search to see if your product has been the subject of a warning letter or consumer alert. Another federal agency web site that may be worth checking is the Federal Trade Commission’s, at www.ftc.gov. Look under Internet Fraud and Safety, then click on Health. You can look at the prohibited-substance list of the World Anti-Doping Agency at www.wada-ama.org, under “Resources for Athletes.” Certification services can provide some outside verification that a product is safe. Here are their Web sites. The U.S. Pharmacopeia’s list is at: http://www.usp.org/audiences/consumers/#Dietary NSF International lists those it has certified for sport at nsf.org. Click on “NSF Banned Substances Program.” HFL Sport Science’s list is at www.informed-choice.org ConsumerLab.com LLC charges for access to its reports, at www.ConsumerLab.com.

Fitness Level

Bench 1.5 Times Your Body Weight

Upper-body strength is important for more than bench-press bragging rights. Literally being able to throw your weight around—plus half that of the guy standing next to you—is the ultimate sign that you’ll never have a problem hanging drywall, holding your ground in the post…or looking great in a tank top.

The Test: Use a bench-press machine and keep your feet flat on the floor during the entire lift. To get your score, divide the heaviest weight you can lift one time by your body weight.

The Scorecard:
Less than 1.0: Weak
1.0-1.49: Ordinary
1.5 or more: You rule on the bench

Boost Your Bench Press: The key to strengthening any muscle is lifting fast, says Louie Simmons, strength coach to five of the world’s top bench-pressers. Follow Simmons’s plan for 4 weeks to improve your own bench-press performance:

Using a weight that’s about 40 percent of what you can lift one time, do nine sets of three repetitions, with 60 seconds’ rest between sets. Lower and raise the bar as fast as possible, and alternate your grip every three sets, so that your hands are 16, then 20, then 24 inches apart.

Three days later, perform three sets of flat, incline, or decline barbell bench presses (alternate varieties each week) with the heaviest weight you can lift six times. Bonus tip: Press your head into the bench as you lift. You’ll activate the muscles called neck extensors, which help ensure that your spine is in a straight line. That’ll put your body in a stronger position.

Read more: http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/be_fit/Bench_1_5_Times_Your_Body_Weight.php#ixzz0Qhq03fMR

Juice for Today’s Athlete

Is ‘gene doping’ the next Olympic threat?

In this age of the doping athlete, even the least cynical fan of the Summer Olympics probably can’t help but wonder how many of the competitors are juiced. Last week, seven top Russian athletes were provisionally suspended after being caught in what one World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) official called a “systematic doping” scandal. Officials are taking unprecedented steps to keep these Olympics clean: over the next two weeks, there’ll be some 4,500 tests for banned substances, the most ever. But ridding the Games of illicit performance enhancers is a Sisyphean task, and the job promises to get even more daunting with the advent of “gene doping.” The newest—and perhaps most troubling—trend in the world of athletic enhancement, gene doping involves modifying an athlete’s DNA, or having them inject or inhale foreign DNA, to make them bigger, stronger and faster. It’s harder to detect than most drugs, which makes it all the more desired by cheaters looking to prosper.

Could this be the first Olympics in which athletes are discovered altering their own DNA? “It would not surprise me at all if this were to occur,” says Dr. Ted Friedmann, a leading authority on gene therapy and director of the Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Medicine. Friedmann, who in 2006 was named president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, is working closely in his lab with WADA, which was founded in 2000, to find ways to detect gene doping and, ideally, prevent it from becoming rampant.

With gene doping, a person’s genetic makeup is actually changed by injecting genes into muscle or bone cells, creating proteins that then enter the tissue or blood. If it all sounds futuristic, it isn’t. A German television report on the availability of gene doping in China, which aired just a few days before the Olympics, stunned anti-doping experts. In the documentary by ARD television, a reporter posing as an American swimming coach met with a doctor who is the head of the gene-therapy department of an unnamed Chinese hospital. The hidden-camera report shows the Chinese doctor, with his face blurred, offering gene-therapy treatment to the undercover reporter in return for $24,000. The reporter tells the doctor he’s seeking stem-cell treatment for one of his swimmers. “Yes. We have no experience with athletes here, but the treatment is safe and we can help you,” the doctor replies (his answer was translated by the news program). “It strengthens lung function and stem cells go into the bloodstream and reach the organs. It takes two weeks. I recommend four intravenous injections—40 million stem cells or double that, the more the better. We also use human growth hormones, but you have to be careful because they are on the doping list,” the Chinese doctor says. Friedmann, who was interviewed by the German TV crew for the report, says he wasn’t surprised by the discovery. “I don’t know how it was arranged, or what level of hospital this was, but it supports the idea that the world of athletics is very aware of gene doping and already pursuing it,” the scientist says.

In another case dating back two years, a German trainer named Thomas Springsteen was allegedly found to be looking on the Internet for a source of material for a sophisticated genetic procedure. According to Friedmann, Springsteen was apparently attempting to get Repoxygen, a virus containing a gene that, when put into tissue, can in principle increase the level of erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that activates bone marrow to produce more red blood cells. EPO is well known to many because it has been used as a performance enhancer by cyclists and other endurance athletes.

The arrival of gene doping can be traced directly to the cracking of the human genome and the emergence of gene therapy, which is used to treat a variety of diseases including cancer. According to Friedmann, WADA has established a research program that plans to design new tests for gene doping, based on technologies developed around the Human Genome Project. Historically, to discover genetic changes it was necessary to test the muscle or bone that had undergone the change. But after taking a close look at this in the lab, Friedmann believes there are effective ways of testing tissue, blood or urine to see if the body has been genetically altered. “There are interesting preliminary results, but I can’t expand on that,” Friedmann says. Just how soon this research will translate into a marketplace-ready test for gene doping is anyone’s guess. There is no timeline because there are so many different genes involved. “This idea still needs to prove itself,” Friedmann says. “But we’re all encouraged by the results, and WADA very much wants to be ahead of the curve on this and has funded a dozen or more labs on gene doping.”

Of course, the issue of genetics is always attended by a variety of ethical questions, especially when mixed with the questions of athletes and cheating. It makes for inevitable quandaries. For example, as gene therapy becomes more commonplace in medical treatment, many athletes will undergo such procedures legitimately, and that will show up on any test. Friedmann says these athletes should be allowed to apply for an exemption. “This is all very subjective, but the hope is that it will be a fair process that will allow the athlete who has had gene therapy for legitimate reasons to state his or her purpose for it,” he says. “The sporting authorities can then either accept or reject it.”

As these Olympics continue, the more “traditional” ways of cheating through doping are still what concern Olympics officials most. But gene doping is looming on the horizon. Because it is so new and complicated, it still poses great risks: a handful of patients who have undergone gene therapy for diseases like leukemia have died. So Friedmann insists that sporting authorities must err on the side of caution. “If gene doping is happening already, as we suspect, it’s being done unethically and with immature technology, and that makes it inherently very dangerous,” Friedmann says. “Most of the information is already published and in the medical literature, the opportunity is there, there is the pressure on these athletes to perform, and of course so much money is potentially involved. Few of us would be shocked if something were going on at these Olympics. But whether anything is discovered during these next few weeks remains to be seen.” Friedmann hopes the research he’s doing now will lead to such discoveries at future Games.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/151988

1 Repetition Maximum

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/1rm.htm

Before beginning any strength-training program, it is advisable that a lifter determine their one-repetition-maximum (1RM) to gauge their current strength level. Essentially the result of one-repetition-maximum testing will give a precise indication of how much weight one is capable of lifting for one repetition across a range of exercises, sport specific or otherwise.

Upon learning of their one-lift capacities, one can design their program around these maximal weights. For example, it might be suitable for power-training that 85% of a one repetition maximum is used as a training weight for the bench press, squat, and deadlift. For toning, or developing a defined body for the beach, 70%, or lower, might be more appropriate.

In addition to consistency and effort, precision is one of the keys to a successful training experience. 1RM will help to ensure that the amount of weight lifted is more precisely in line with ones program objectives.

Creatine Supplement

Will it transform me?

Creatine has different effects on every individual. Some people just don’t respond to creatine — it’s a genetic thing.

You should know in about a week – if your training volume increases, it’s working for you. If not, you’re probably a “nonresponder” — taking the powder isn’t going to help you.

Diet is important. Meat, especially herring and beef, has high levels of creatine, so vegetarians usually see a greater response, while those whose diets are highly carnivorous may see less change.

What kind of creatine should I take?

Powder is the way to go. Studies show that liquid creatine and creatine ethyl ester (CEE) are unstable and break down in your blood system. Don’t bother with them.

Kerksick recommends 100-percent pure creatine powder. Some companies add electrolytes and other ingredients, but tests indicate those do little to improve performance.

“Save money and buy creatine powder and [mix it with] fruit juice,” Kerksick says.

Fruit juice? That’s right — the sugar in the juice raises insulin levels, which helps increase creatine uptake into the muscle.

You need about 70 grams of simple sugars for every five grams of creatine, Greenhaff says. He suggests looking for a drink or supplement with 60 grams of carbs per 100 grams of product.

To ensure your body maximizes the benefits of creatine, buy the best stuff you can afford. It’s your body — this isn’t the time to get cheap.

You’ll know the powder is of poor quality if it’s hard to dissolve and there’s residue at the bottom of your glass after you drink it. You want the powder in your muscles, not in the glass. If this happens, try a different brand.

Alley Pond Park

http://www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=99344&ap=1&Flash

A Queens park has an adventure course that features a variety of unique physical challenges that add up to no walk in the park. NY1′s Roger Clark filed the following report.

In Queens’s Alley Pond Park, visitors can have an interesting way to start the day. Strapped into a safety harness, they can climb to the top of a 50-feet-tall wooden platform, make their way across a beam that might as well be a tightrope and then jump off and drop all the way back down.

“You were on something called a catwalk, and it’s an exercise in balance,” says urban park ranger John McCoy.

The catwalk is just one of the activities at the park’s adventure course, which opened two summers ago. Since then, more than 10,000 visitors have experience challenges like the swing shot, which raises people some 50 feet off the ground and then sends them into a free fall.

The course is not meant to scare people, but rather lets groups and individuals of all ages to work through physically and intellectually-demanding situations, promoting team building and problem solving skills.

“This is yet another way to come in an explore the park, and also learn something about yourself, and learn something about your group,” says Urban Park Rangers director Sarah Aucoin.

Not all the activities dangle people 50 feet in the air. Other activities are closer to the ground, like a boulder wall that goes vertically instead of horizontally.

There is also something called “Moby Deck,” where a group tries to balance itself on something that looks like a picnic table while tied in a human knot.

In another activity called the “Wild Woozy,” where two people shuffle across a thin cable supporting each other’s weight.

“We were trusting each other, you and I. If you let go, I would of fallen. If I let go, you would of fallen,” says McCoy.

Which eventually happened…If you want to give the course a try…there are free programs on Sundays through November…and it will also be open on Memorial Day. For more information, www.nyc.gov/parks

Cunningham MTB Trails

Public Transportation: F train to Jamaica/179th St. Ride bike east on Hillside Ave., turn left on 188th St. (Saul Weprin St.), right on 73rd Ave., turn left onto 210th St. Trailhead is at 210th St. and 67th Ave.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?om=1&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=113365394850255616768.0004383fcc30ff472117b

Map My Fitness Sites

http://www.mapmyfitness.com/

http://www.mapmyride.com/

http://www.mapmyrun.com/

http://www.mapmywalk.com/

Crossfit WOD – 07/21/2009

3 rounds for time of:
4 Turkish get-ups (50/35)
10 Walking lunges (single arm db at side)
15 Good Mornings
20 Thrusters (single arm)
- use the same weight dumbbell throughout the entire workout

35# 19:01