Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

The Portfolio Diet: Lower Cholesterol Without Statin Drugs?

Find out whether the Portfolio Diet can help you lower cholesterol naturally through diet  … without Statin drugs.

Could dramatically lowering your cholesterol simply be a matter of eating the right combination of foods?

Dr. David J.A. Jenkins thinks so.  And if his research is right, it might actually be possible to cut cholesterol significantly just by eating the right foods, in the right combinations.

Jenkins, a nutrition and metabolism expert at the University of Toronto and the “Father” of the gylycemic index, calls it the “The Portfolio Diet” and the concept is actually quite straightforward: By combining a variety of foods that have been shown to lower cholesterol on their own, it may be possible to lower serum cholesterol naturally without resorting to prescription statin drugs.   

Besides having profound public health consequences, this approach to eating and cholesterol control also promises to lower the cost of treating high cholesterol, potentially saving millions in prescription drug costs and health issues that arise from the side-effects of prescription statin drugs.

The Portfolio Diet: The Sum Is Greater Than The Parts?

For more than a decade, researchers have known that certain foods like oatmeal and soy can help lower blood cholesterol levels. However, until recently these foods have been viewed more or less independently of each other.

Dr. Jenkins decided to take a look at how combining a variety of foods that have been shown to reduce cholesterol might collectively work together, providing more bang for your buck.  

Jenkins’ study took a look at forty-six healthy, middle-aged adults who had high cholesterol. The subjects were divided into three groups:

1.  One group was placed on a whole-grain and low-fat dairy diet that was low in saturated fats;
2.  The second group followed the same diet, but also took a lovastatin, a cholesterol-reducing statin drug;
3.  The third group ate a diet high in plant sterols, ”sticky” fiber, soy and almonds.   

All groups experienced a reduction in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), and not surprisingly, the statin group experienced the most dramatic drop — a 30.9 percent reduction.

However, what did surprise researchers was the reductions seen in the porfolio diet group, which experienced a 28.9 percent reduction in fasting blood cholesterol levels, making it nearly as effective at cutting cholesterol as prescription statin drugs.

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Three Bean Salad Recipe | Healthy Recipes and Snacks

This Italian version of the classic Three Bean Salad Recipe uses cannellini beans, kidney beans and garbanzo beans to make a high-protein, high-fiber and low-fat cold bean salad with an extra healthy twist.

3-Bean Salad is a staple of American potlucks and picnics. A breeze to assemble, portable and easy to make ahead and keep in the refrigerator for up to a week,  it makes a great cold side dish – especially in the warm summer months.

But did you know that Three Bean Salad is also a nutritional powerhouse?

Loaded with heart-healthy soluble fiber, complex carbohydrates, protein, and some healthy monounsaturated fats, Three Bean Salad is a fantastic whole-food source of energy and fiber — exactly what you need to fuel your workouts and stay lean and healthy.
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Interval Training (HIIT) | Get Leaner with Less Cardio?

Can Interval Training help you strip off body fat faster? Learn how adding High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your cardio routine can reap big rewards in strength, power and fat loss.

When most people think of cardio, they think of endless hours on a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair stepper or jogging. But unless you enjoy distance or long-duration cardio (for example, if you are training for a marathon or are a running enthusiast) , many gym-goers dread climbing on that hamster wheel each day in the hopes of burning off that 400 calories and maybe losing a little body fat along the way.

But what if there was a way to burn nearly the same amount of calories in 30 minutes that you do in 60 minutes, stimulate fat burning after your cardio is complete, boost your stamina and endurance, and actually increase lean muscle in the process?

There may be.

It’s called Interval Training — also known as “High Intensity Interval Training” or “HIIT“, for short — and it uses periods of high-intensity cardio coupled with lower-intensity recovery periods in succession to shave time off your cardio workout and possibly more fat off your midsection than long duration cardio. And even more promising, Interval Training seems to do a better job than long-duration cardio of preserving lean tissue (muscle) while still burning fat.

Interval Training: What Is It?

Simply put, Interval Training is a method of cardiovascular training that has you perform the same amount of total work that you would perform in a longer session of cardio, but in a much shorter period of time by increasing the intensity of your workout.  

Interval Training is considered an advanced form of training and is popular with everyone from elite Olympic and professional athletes to body builders, fitness enthusiasts and recreational runners.  While the technique is advanced, it can be successfully modified to work for beginners as well, provided you are in good health and are free of any cardiovascular disorders that could make the routine unsafe.

Interval Training relies on the principle of rest and recovery to allow your body to do more work in less time. By alternating higher-intensity activity with short rest and recovery periods, you are able to cumulatively do more work in less time. And more work translates into more calories burned in a 30 minute session of cardio than if you did the same duration of cardio at a lower intensity.

Examples of Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training can be applied to nearly any cardiovascular activity, whether that’s walking, running, rollerblading or biking.

For example, if you are fit and regularly walk as part of your exercise routine, you might incorporate short periods (between 1-2 minutes) of jogging into your walk between lower-intensity periods of walking. If you are less fit, you might simply walk faster for a few minutes, allow yourself to recover and than repeat the higher intensity walking. If you are more highly conditioned, you might add in sprints to your daily run or treadmill work.

The Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training has a number of benefits that make it an effective addition to your existing cardiovascular training. These benefits include:

• Burning more calories in less time
• Improved cardiovascular endurance
• Possible increases in whole body fat burning (fat oxidation) versus solid-state cardio
• Reduced risk of Metabolic Syndrome
• Decreased muscle catabolism/increases in lean muscle mass
• Improvements in arterial elasticity
• Reduced boredom with your current cardio routine

Let’s take a closer look at each of these potential benefits, including some of the research behind them.

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MRSA: Is Antibiotic Resistant Staph Lurking At Your Gym?

MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, killed more people last year than the AIDS virus. Find out the symptoms and treatment of MRSA infection and how to protect yourself at the gym from this “super bug.”

It’s silent, invisible and potentially deadly.

And it could be hiding out at your gym, health club or local fitness center.

It’s known as MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (also called “staph”) and it has public health officials worried.  Once limited to people with compromised immune systems and people in health care facilities like hospitals, nursing homes and dialysis facilities, epidemiologists have grown increasingly concerned about a new phenomenon: MRSA that has spread outside of health care facilities and seems to infect normally healthy individuals.

Of particular concern is whether MRSA can be spread on surfaces in common shared facilities like public restrooms, schools, dorm rooms and yes … gyms.

What Is MRSA and Why Is It So Dangerous?

So what exactly is MRSA?

MRSA is what’s often referred to in the media as a “super-bug” — a strain of bacteria that can resist the effects of antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria have become increasingly common over the past several decades. While some mutations that result in antibiotic resistance happen as part of natural cell reproduction,  there is increasing evidence that over-prescription or improper use of antibiotics has accelerated the development of “super bugs.” Indeed, researchers believe that the development of the MRSA bacteria likely was accelerated by overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics. 

It’s important to understand that Staphylococcus aureus  is a common micro-organism that is typically present in the nose and on the skin of one third of all people. 

There mere presence of the bacterium does not ensure infection, and in many cases, people come in contact with Staphylococcus aureus on a daily basis.

About 20% of people are long-term carriers of Staphylococcus aureus and may show no symptoms. However, if infection does takes hold it can result in everything from mild skin infections like pimples or impetigo, to more serious conditions like pneumonia, meningitis, Toxic shock syndrome (TSS), or septicemia. Staphylococcus aureus is one of the leading causes of post surgical wound infection in hospitals.

The problem with Staphylococcus aureus is that it’s particularly adaptable to antibiotics. In fact, it was the first bacteria to be found to be penicillin-resistant.  It showed resistant to penicillin in 1947 — a mere four years after penicillin became widely available. Since then, the bacterium has continued to evolve resistance to each new class of  antibiotics — most recently Methicillin.  

Cases of Staph MRSA Growing: MRSA Statistics and Facts

The statistics around MRSA are sobering.

A 2007 study from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, estimates than cases of MRSA treated in hospitals had more more than doubled in the past six years, from 127,000 in 1999 to 278,000 in 2005, and deaths increased from 11,000 to 17,000.

Even more alarming to health care professionals in the emergence of something known as CA-MRSA (Community-Acquired MRSA) which is spread not in healthcare facilities among the immuno-compromised, but within larger communities of otherwise healthy individuals, including within correctional facilities, newborn nurseries, among military recruits, and even athletic teams.

This has focused additional attention around whether gym equipment and surfaces in fitness and health centers are providing a perfect environment for breeding and spreading MRSA among otherwise healthy individuals.

But how much of a risk is MRSA to the average gym-goer and fitness buff? And should you really be worried?

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