Too Soon For an Ebola Joke?

This is the text from an email I sent my coworkers. It turned into more of a writing project than I thought it would, so I thought, "Hey, I haven't written on my blog in a while, I think il post it there." Boom. So here you go. 

---x---

Hi everybody,

I had an awesome time in Italy. I learned a lot about why Europe has such a lower rate of diabetes and other lifestyle-related diseases, despite most people not giving two craps about whether or not something has gluten or sugar in it. I also learned something about the bread in Italy that makes a big difference when it comes to gut health. I can't wait to tell you all about it!

On the airplane home, I sat next to a really annoying lady who started talking to me even though I was trying to watch like five movies back to back. So that was fun. I got so obsessed with trying to finish my Seth Rogen movie marathon that I forgot to shut off the recycled air jet thing that one can only assume is put there to spray viruses and other nasty pathogens in your face under the guise of keeping you cool. I will admit it felt nice to have a cool breeze cutting through  the tepid thickness of the cabin air full of strangers' hot farts as we flew over the Atlantic for what seemed like an eternity. But now I am paying for it.

Thursday I had a sore throat and runny nose. Seems like a 1-day thing, right? I kept flashing back a few days to a gritty street in Naples, where I vividly remember seeing a man sneeze in what seemed like slow motion. I could see the cloud of water droplets swirl outward from his scrunched-up old-man-sneeze-face, and Elizabeth cringed as spit-water droplets fell on her arm. I have no idea what Italians say to someone who has just sneezed, and I did not say "bless you," as I would to someone who actually speaks English. Looks like karma didn't like that.

Friday, I felt a little better, so I went out to eat with my wife and her parents at the Elegant Farmer. During dinner my nose started running, and I feared for the safety of my deviled eggs and family. I ran to the bathroom every five minutes to evacuate my nasal passages, but I'm sure it just looked like I had the green apple quick-steps to the room full of socially-conscious east Memphians (who no doubt had well-developed palates) who were also eating there that night. A well-dressed woman sniffed her glass of wine as if to taunt my inability to smell, as I walked by her table on what must have been my eleventh trip to the bathroom.

Saturday, I felt so much worse, which chest congestion making me wonder if pneumonia could happen that fast, or maybe it was just the flu. A hemorrhagic flu. I started to think about that crazy nurse woman from Maine who, after visiting West Africa to treat Ebola patients, refused quarantine! The hubris of me!

Elizabeth made me take cough syrup after I refused to use the Neti pot. If you don't already know about Neti pots, imagine pouring salt water up your nose and then watching all the funk come out. Didn't seem fun in that moment. Although I usually steer clear of Western Medicine, I sipped that sizzerp like I was Three 6 Mafia. Or maybe I chugged it like Miley Cyrus when she thinks her dad is looking. I feel much better now, and it would be safe to assume that what I'm writing now is powered by cough syrup.

I'm back at work tomorrow, because if I'm not better after 5 days of jet-lag-induced yuck, there is something seriously wrong and you better call the Ebola police. Thankfully my sessions are light and it's more phone calls and emails than anything else. So if you don't see me much tomorrow, chances are I'll be in an office drinking cough syrup and sending insane emails. 

- GB

P.S.

I don't have Ebola.

Probiotic FAQ + DIY Kombucha #fixyourleakygut

Probiotics are the blushing starlet of the holistic health world right now. Why? Duh, because they're sexy. Well, not really, but it's easier to feel your best when your bowels work correctly. It's because they are awesome. Ever have indigestion (or rip a loud, juicy fart) at an inopportune time? Although your digestion is technically working, it really isn't supposed to do that.

New research is pointing to the benefits of probiotic foods and supplements. Some of these benefits include relief of Autism Spectrum Disorder symptoms and leaky gut, improved metabolism, as well as decreased bloating, cramping and constipation during digestion. 

Probiotics are living organisms that live in the digestive system. There are hundreds of species, and certain ones help actually produce essential nutrients, while others boost immune function by controlling harmful bacteria.

When people think of probiotic foods, we usually go straight to yogurt and then zone out. Other probiotic-rich foods include sauerkraut, tempeh, miso, pickles, yogurt, kefir (pronounced keff-ear, not like the first name of the star of the television series, 24), and kombucha. 

Things like heat and exposure to light and certain metals kill the probiotic cultures, so even though probiotics can occur in some of these foods, not all of the above are probiotic all of the time. For example, many pickles are heated and/or pickled with vinegar, which kills good bacteria with the bad. Also, many yogurts are heated and pasteurized, which pretty much wipes out the entire population of good bacteria. Even for those who eat probiotic foods every day, it's always a good idea to take a high-quality probiotic supplement to round out the roster of cultures in the digestive tract. Diversity is a good thing.

Kombucha is full of cultures that rebalance digestion, support detoxification and help the body regulate blood sugar. No kidding. I really don't want to get science-y here, but there is a ton of info out there on kombucha's benefits. Try Wikipedia first. 

Most probiotic-rich foods are so easy to make that anyone can and should try at least making some of the simpler recipes (the easiest by far is kimchi).

For the past 4 years, our home has been a kombucha-shiner's den, with bottles, mason jars, cane sugar and organic green tea becoming pantry staples. The process is easy, with the only drawback being the jelly-fish-like SCOBY culture that floats in the brew and causes the tea-sugar mixture to ferment into the what tastes like the effervescent love-child of champagne and sweet tea. That and when people ask what's up with the big jar or horse urine on the countertop (I tell 'em "don't worry about it").

If you live where I live (Memphis), booch can be gotten by the bottle in places like Otherlands and Cosmic Coconut. Many mainstream grocery stores carry kombucha - Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and even Kroger all sell it. FYI: Kroger will rape you on the price, up to $1.50 more per bottle than WF. 

The best thing to do is make it at home, which works really well until you get lazy and decide to not make it. It's really easy, here's a play-by-play:

1. Fill a Dutch oven with water and dump in 1-1/2 cups of unrefined sugar.

2. Bring it to a boil, stir, then cut off the heat.

3. Throw in 8 bags of green tea. Steep for 15 minutes or so. Make a joke about tea-bagging - you know, because you're funny like that.

4. Remove the tea bags and let everything cool to room temperature. You will probably chuckle thinking about the tea-bagging joke you just told yourself. Or maybe not because you don't think anything is funny anymore because it's all just so played-out. #boredwithlife #hipsters #wingnuts #robot

5. Pour into a giant glass container, add kombucha starter bottle or SCOBY. Cover with a paper towel and hold in place with a rubber band. Kind of like castrating a bull, but not really. At all. Just another opportunity to keep the third-grade humor going.

6. Let the mixture ferment for about a week. The time it takes really varies, so you will need to taste-test your brew to get the flavor just right. When it is ready, bottle it up. You can add juices to it at this stage for the second ferment. After a few days to a week, your kombucha will be fizzy and (unless you royally screwed up) delicious.

FYI don't use square bottles. They will randomly shatter. Science, yo.

Enjoy your brewing. 

2 balls, electrical tape and scissors

So you're probably wondering where this is going based on the title. Just a guess. We'll get there, friend. But you should probably buy me dinner before we get to that. 

So let's kill time and talk about your shoulders, shall we? Shoulders are the most complicated and amazing joints in the body. When the shoulder is not being referred to as a pain in the ass, it is often described as a triple hinge. 4 joints make up the shoulder, so that means a lot of things can go wrong with shoulders. In addition to that, when something is wrong with the shoulder, we look at the next joint up & down the kinetic chain. Chances are there is something restricting movement in the upper back, which is composed of 11 joints between 12 vertebrae. That something I'm speaking of is usually a lack of mobility in those 11 joints. This lack of mobility leads to all kinds of B.S., because the stiff joint's laziness and inability to do it's job overworks all the other other joints involved in a movement. Here's an analogy: Water always wants to run downstream to the ocean, and if it washes out a riverbank or breaches a levee, SFW, get over it. The body wants to do the work that it is given, and it doesn't care how many joints it overtaxes to do it! And that's why people blow out their rotator cuffs, for example.

One of my favorite reads in 2013 was the oh-my-god-those-crossfitters-are-crazy, instant classic, functional mobility bible, Becoming a Supple Leopard, by Dr. Kelley Starrett, a physical therapist and Crossfit gym owner who in the past few years has developed a huge following through workshops and seminars, and with his website www.mobilitywod.com. Why do I love this book so much? Thought you'd never ask, my friend! Let me tell you why I'm so In love with this book:

Layman's terms. Most books about health and fitness read like instructions for a bookshelf from Ikea, and not just because it has been translated into every human language, but especially the rarest Scandinavian languages so Vikings at the North Pole can put together a Grundtal valet stand to store  wooden shoes. I'm convinced that more than a few titles in the the exercise & fitness section of your local Amazon website were written a cardboard cut out of John Kerry. Yeah, they are that boring usually. Unless you're a nerdy trainer like me or have found that roofies no longer work on your dates, reading a book like The Core: Look at These Photos of Abs That Are Just OK will induce a lobotomy-like state in even the most paranoid, insomniac meth addict.

Call me old-fashioned (but not in a steam-punk, handlebar mustache, anchor-tattoo-like-the-rest-of-Portland way), because I think information that is accessible is more likely to have an impact than arcane musings by people with more letters after their names than relevance to a wider audience than academia. 

One of my favorite parts in the K-Starr (Starrett's gangsta name) book is an overview of the peanut, or double lacrosse ball, which is two lacrosse balls held together with electrical tape. The uses for double lacrosse ball are for joint mobilization and to release trigger points. This frees up jammed nerves and tissues, so the body can function properly. One of the biggest benefits to using this method is to relieve back pain, when combined with the right stretches and exercises.

Many of my clients and fellow trainers are using methods we read about in Supple Leopard. The ones who aren't afraid to look like total weirdos. That's what commitment looks like, and weirdos are a good thing! In fact, it was a trainer I work with who introduced me to this kind of mobility training. So thanks to my buddy Chris Williams, I get to teach you to make a peanut!

Here's the tutorial on how to make a double lacrosse ball. It's easy to do, mine took just a few minutes.  

Supplies:

• Scissors
• Electrical tape
• 2 lacrosse balls (regular size)

Step 1:

Hold tightly and begin to wind the tape around your balls. I love cheap laughs... and winces, too.

Step 2

As you wrap, start to rotate the balls so the tape starts to cover in one direction, slightly overlapping the edges and completely overlapping on both ends for a neat look. 

Continue wrapping till all you see is an electrical tape replica of the Graf Zeppelin. Your double lacrosse ball should look factory-made-by-robots if you follow these instructions well. 

Now pretend that your creation is what would happen if the planet earth had a baby with Mr. Peanut. Because it has no legs, it would fall over onto its side. Cut the tape, but make sure the cut is on the equator, not over Chicago.

Step 3

Begin wrapping electrical tape around the equator, instead of going north-south like before. Be careful not to wrap too tight too soon. It will make your innocent peanut look a bit more BDSM than it should.

Step 4

Once the peanut is all wrapped up, and the middle section seems firm enough, make sure the tape is on the equator again. 

Cut the umbilical cord, and your back's new best friend is born!

All done. 

Here are some articles about methods of breaking up matted down tissues to restore movement to the body.

http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/07/clear-the-t-spine-now-we-can-start-talking-shoulders/

http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/4-great-tools-for-stretching-and-mobility

Video for mobilizations using the peanut. 

http://youtu.be/SWrkZUn_xnI

http://youtu.be/iDIpEWASS3g

For some of you, all of this anatomy and physiology can be pretty overwhelming, while to others this probably looks like a how to wipe your butt blog. It is all about taking steps in the healthiest direction possible. It's a process. And to sum it up, a quote one of my favorite yoga gurus, Dave Romanelli - enjoy your journey. 

-GB

5 Questions About Exercise

Today I have 5 questions to ask my readers about exercise. Let me give a little backstory.

I hate most sports. I've never been good at things like soccer, football, and baseball, possess an extreme lack coordination under pressure, and have a hard time keeping up with all the moving parts of the game in order to keep up. Basically, that means falls and head injuries are a big part of anything that ends in -ball. That doesn't mean that I am sedentary, though. There are ways of getting movement that I like (walking, lifting weights, yoga), and even though some parts of my exercise routine are not my favorite (anything that's not dead-lifts), for the most part, I enjoy what I do.

Some people just don't like exercise. That's OK. You might think that I shouldn't say things like that, that it might not be in my best interest because then no one would train with me. But americans will be out of shape and need help whether or not I speak my mind. I'm not putting myself out of work. I wish I had that problem.

I want to find out more about how other people like to exercise. Take a few minutes to complete this 5-question multiple choice survey and help me find out what you like to do to stay healthy. Help me figure out how to eventually be unemployed. ;-)

Take the survey! <------ Do it

Blaming the Obese

I'm sure everyone has wondered at some point, "Why do people get fat?" I know I have many times. Once was at a baseball game. I was a teenager then, and I was eating a corn dog (a nasty habit I kicked not too long after I stopped using heroin).  I looked over and saw a fat guy who was eating a corn dog, too. His belly was enormous, spilling out of the bottom of his untucked blue polo shirt. He gnawed my corn dog's identical twin from under his baseball cap. I wondered why he was so fat. We ate the same. "He just eats more than me," I figured and went on with my skinny, attractive life. And since I was good looking and normal-sized, I eventually lost my virginity. But this is not letters to Playboy, and I realize I was lucky to not have y poor health show on the outside. I would find out years later what eating the same as that fat guy at the baseball game does to somebody on the inside. It's not pretty. But that is another story for another time.

We are told that obesity is the cause of disease. But what if disease is the cause of obesity?

I'm a fitness professional by trade. My occupation allows me to meet with hundreds of people every year, and find out where their heads are at when it comes to lifestyle, nutrition and exercise. Where is the average person's head? Up their ass, usually. It's not the person's fault, and I don't want to give the impression that it is. I just want to find out what they know. One thing I make sure of is to ask people to walk me through a day in their life, as if they ate and exercised perfectly, just for one day. That way I can see what someone thinks I want to hear. Unfortunately, it's usually not what I want to hear!

My wife shared Peter Attiya's TED video with me yesterday, and I watched it with my jaw on the floor. This video is a great example of exciting new ideas in the health care and health & fitness industries - two fields that traditionally have been separate, but should not be anymore.

Attiya's talk highlights unsuccessful attitudes toward weight loss. Attitudes I see every day from doomed-to-fail gym members who tell me why they are going to do exactly the same thing that didn't help them before. Attitudes I have heard from doctors and trainers and dietitians. No wonder Americans are fat, sick and confused! Not to be a spoiler, but his story about his own health was something that hit home for me. This video should motivate anyone working in health care, fitness, or dietetics to learn more about the obesity epidemic. It is a challenge to everyone to change the way we think, and to question everything we think we know.