Let me start by saying that your body is smart, it has an 'intelligence' of its own, one separate from the one you use to consciously think with. And it uses this intelligence to respond to its environment by altering its physical characteristics and metabolic processes to adapt to the environment you expose it to. 

'Exercise' is a great example of this. Lift heavy weights, muscles get bigger. Run far, and you can run farther. Simple. Your body adapts. 

So why are so many of the people I see, even those who work hard at getting into shape, still unhappy with their body fat, weight, stamina, energy and with how they feel? Many spend an hour a day working out. They eat clean, and take care of themselves. And yet, they're not getting the results they were expecting, much less hoping for. 

The problem is that they are sending the wrong messages to their bodies, and their bodies, like the marvelous, smart machines they are, are doing exactly what they think is needed to 'survive and thrive' in the exercise environment they've been subjected to. 

A perfect example involves marathon runners Vs 100 meter sprinters: 

Below are pictures of Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world...

Below are pictures of Farah, the fastest 5K runner in the world (at the last Olympics)...

Both train hard every day.

Usain Bolt has the body we all want, muscular, low fat, and, under the hood, his heart and lungs are much stronger, his life expectancy is much higher than the average persons. 

Farah, on the other hand, has almost no upper body muscles; he has belly fat (noticeable from the side), and, under the hood, has a weaker heart and lungs, and he will likely die prematurely of heart disease. 

How can this happen? They both eat well and train every day with the best trainers in the world. It is simple. Usain's training is focused on explosive maximum effort, very brief high-intensity exercise, also known as 'high intensity interval training' (HIIT).

This approach is akin to the survival benefit of having to run away from a saber-toothed tiger, or chasing after a wild boar for dinner... brief spurts, maximum intensity... strain heart, lungs, muscles. Your body gets it. These brief spurts trigger a cascade of metabolic changes, including a huge burst of growth hormone, that build muscle and shed fat, improve insulin sensitivity, increase metabolic rate, burn more calories very inefficiently (which is great for weight loss) etc., and your body becomes leaner, more muscular, less fat, more energized as a result, by just adapting to your environment.

On the other hand, Farah's training is focused on long runs, moderate intensity, burning fat over a long period of time. This is analogous to a tribe of wanderers, on the go every day, or tending to fields, or other low intensity constant work. Your body gets this too. It becomes very efficient. Your body stores large amounts of fat to burn as fuel for these extended episodes, it becomes very efficient at burning fat, your metabolic rate goes down, everything you eat is stored as fat, AND your body will shed useless excess body composition such as upper body musculature. It will even shed lung and heart musculature if not pushed to the limit on occasion. 

This is why people come to me with body fat percentages of 35 or 40%. Even though they work out with trainers 3 times a week, jog every day, or spin, or Zumba, they cannot lose the weight. 

What do they need to do? Decrease the time spent working out, and workout smarter and more intensely! All the research is pointing to this now. Run away from a 'saber-toothed tiger' 5-6 times a day and you will look and feel more like Usain Bolt!

Just do the 100-meter dash at your maximum effort (say it takes you 3 times as long to run 100 meters as it does Usain), do it just 6 times and you will have spent 3 minutes exercising, which will bring about all the changes you need to really build muscle and shed fat.

The way I do this, practically, is to warm up for a couple of minutes. I then do my first dash. I let myself recover from the huffing and puffing (it may take 45 seconds to 2 minutes) and then I repeat this process until I've done it 6 times. VERY EFFECTIVE! 

And you do not need to 'run', anything will work that gets your heart rate up past its 'anaerobic threshold', eg past the sustainable heart rate whereas you get completely out of breath. You can cycle, do zumba, spinning, weight training, even brisk walking, especially if you are out of shape. The key is bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by rest and recovery. 

Until next time, Good Health is a choice... choose 'well'. 

Dr. Mark Rosenbloom MD
LIFEFORCE 
www.LIFEFORCEmed.com

Remember the old saying 'An apple-a-day keeps the doctor away!'? Today, apples are more likely to make you diabetic and contribute to heart disease than anything. 

Just from a nutritive perspective - 100 years ago an apple used to give you 33% of the RDA (or recommended daily allowance) of iron, now it gives you only about 1%, with similar numbers for calcium, magnesium, fiber and other vital nutrients. In other words, it should say:

'33 apples-a-day keeps the doctor away'

But in truth... even a few apples per day could actually make you sick from the genetically increased sugar content.

And it's even worse for other fruits and vegetables. Today's Corn for example has less than 1/1000th the vital minerals and other essential nutrients it had a brief 100 years ago. 

This is primarily the result of soil depletion; utilizing the same soil year after year. Using chemicals as fertilizers to trick the plants into producing beautiful fruits and vegetables is also a huge problem. These fruits and vegetables are on their way to becoming no more nourishing than flavored cardboard! Without the fiber!

Genetic manipulation is another problem. There are two versions of this, both of which cause problems;

1. The old-fashioned way, whereby we select mutant fruits and vegetables that have characteristics that increase profit by making them bigger, shinier, sweeter, add shelf life etc. This increases yield and attractiveness at the cost of nutrition and health; breeding up to 10 times the fructose content and adding to the diabetes and obesity epidemic. 
    One such example is the red delicious apple. Still a very red, very shiny, beautiful, huge apple. How disappointing to bite into it and find that it has almost no taste or nutrition whatsoever... just 'sugar'.
2. Then there are the genetically modified fruits and vegetables. For example, there is a new strain of apple genetically modified to not brown when exposed to air. This science experiment is about to be released to the population in the very near future, without regard for the potential health consequences of aborting a central process that mother nature had put into place for reasons not yet clearly understood. Imagine leaving a cut apple out for several days to a week, but when you go to eat it, it is as white as ever, so you don't have any way of knowing how long it has been out. Do you still think it would be safe to eat it after losing its protective skin and being exposed to air, light, heat, and bacteria for all those days?

​Finally, today's fruits and vegetables are riddled with chemicals, hormones, wax coverings, pesticides, growth factors, even drugs and other substances are taken up into the fruits and vegetables. 

What to do? This is a big problem without an easy solution. There are 3 ways to cope:

1. Eat 'organic' whenever possible. This is just smart, as it means you do not get excessive chemicals, hormones, pesticides, or (usually) genetically-modified foods (eg GMOs). However, if you go this route, you will also need to supplement your fruits and vegetables with carefully selected supplements, because even organic produce has still been depleted of essential minerals and nutrients through soil degradation. 

2. Ideally, start your own garden and grow your own fruits and vegetables year-round. Research the seeds carefully and make sure they will lead to fruits and vegetables with the nutritional breakdowns you want. And grow these fruits and vegetables in a nutrient-dense soil, with optimal soil regeneration techniques. Of course, this isn't practical for most people, so we also have option #3, which you might do separately, or in conjunction with options #1 and/or #2:

3. Find a farmer in your area who is doing options #1 and #2 on a larger scale, and support him or her in their efforts by ordering from them and spreading the word to friends and family. These are called CSA farmers. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. These farmers offer an excellent solution, and some of them even deliver. However, they are teetering on extinction, as this type of farming is comparatively very costly to the farmer and it is difficult for them to compete with grocery chains. So if you want this to be an option in either the near or distant future, you will want to act quickly while they are still in business. 

For those who live in the Chicago area, one such CSA farmer who offers top-quality produce, free-range poultry and eggs, honey, and grass-fed beef is 'Farmer Wayne'. He also delivers, and you can reach him, (or order from him) through his website: www.YourFoodFarmer.com 

Until next time, Good Health is a choice... choose 'well'. 

Dr. Mark Rosenbloom MD
LIFEFORCE 
www.LIFEFORCEmed.com
​

My patients frequently ask me why I keep saying that Bio-Identical hormones (especially estrogen and progesterone) are so much safer and more beneficial than synthetic hormones (conjugated equine estrogens and progestins).
An excellent literature review was conducted by Kent Holtorf and titled "The Bio-Identical Hormone Debate: Are Bio-Identical Hormones (Estradiol, Estriol, and Progesterone) Safer or More Efficacious Than Commonly Used Synthetic Versions in Hormone Replacement Therapy". The full text can be downloaded here.
It describes and summarizes 196 studies that investigated Bio-Identical versus synthetic hormones, specifically with a focus on breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. They chose these 2 diseases because of their primary importance and the confusion and controversy surrounding them and synthetic versus Bio-Identical hormones. (If they had also reviewed the literature regarding the many additional significant benefits of Bio-Identical hormones with respect to diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, colon cancer, osteoporosis, macular degeneration, etc., they would have had to review thousands of studies more).
The evidence is substantial and compelling.
Some of the conclusions:

1. Synthetic progestins (such as medroxy-progesterone or levonorgestrel) significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, while Bio-Identical progesterone decreases the risk of breast cancer.
2. Synthetic estrogens (such as conjugated equine estrogens) significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, while Bio-Identical estriol does not.
3. All estrogens have a very positive effect on lipids and reduce coronary artery spasm, which protects the heart, and may reduce heart disease by 50% when combined with Bio-Identical progesterone. Substituting a synthetic progestin, not only negates this protective effect but also increases risk of heart disease significantly.
4. Synthetic estrogens significantly increase the risks of blood clots, whereas transdermal Bio-Identical estrogen does not.
5. Synthetic progestins also significantly increase the risk of blood clots, whereas Bio-Identical progesterone reduces this risk.

If your doctor or anyone else tells you that there is insufficient evidence to support the use of Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy, just download this article and hand it to him or her.
I also encourage you to download this article and read it yourself if you have any concerns or doubts.
Dr. Mark Rosenbloom, M.D.

The study that was published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) last November 2013 "Association of Testosterone Therapy With Mortality, Myocardial Infarction, and Stroke in Men With Low Testosterone Levels" is profoundly misleading and causing millions of men currently needing Testosterone therapy to avoid this potently life-saving intervention, and others currently on Testosterone therapy to quit.

I believe that this was one of the worst, most misleading, poorly conducted and damaging studies in men's health that I have ever read in my career. … and I am not alone…
In a completely unprecedented action, over twenty-five medical societies have grouped together to petition JAMA to retract this misleading Testosterone study.
They claim that JAMA, in publishing this article, has knowingly disseminated "false information", "harmed public health, distorted medical science, and violated the trust between medical journals and the consumer." Failure to retract this study amounts to "medical literature malpractice."
Here is their statement:
The Androgen Study GroupBOSTON, April 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- In an unprecedented action, twenty-five international medical societies have petitioned the Journal of the American Medical Association to retract the article that precipitated recent concerns regarding cardiovascular risks with testosterone therapy, citing "gross data mismanagement" rendering the study "no longer credible." Twenty-two societies have added their names since the original petition was submitted to JAMA two weeks ago. The article by Rebecca Vigen and colleagues from the University of Colorado, published in the November 13, 2013 issue of JAMA, is entitled "Association of Testosterone Therapy With Mortality, Myocardial Infarction, and Stroke in Men With Low Testosterone Levels." The results were widely reported as new evidence that testosterone therapy is associated with cardiovascular risks, resulting in a Food and Drug Administration safety bulletin issued January 31, 2014.
​
The 25 medical societies represent US and international groups dedicated to education and research in endocrinology, men's health, andrology, and sexual medicine. These medical societies join more than 160 of the world's leading figures in urology, endocrinology, and andrology from 32 countries, from every continent except Antarctica. Individual signers include 8 emeritus professors, 9 journal editors, and 67 full professors. Societies recommending retraction are:

• American Society for Men's Health
• Brazilian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Canadian Men's Sexual Health Council
• Canadian Society for the Study of Men's Health
• European Society for the Study of the Aging Male
• European Society for Sexual Medicine
• Indonesian Andrologist Association
• International Society for Men's Health
• International Society for Sexual Medicine
• International Society for the Study of the Aging Male
• Italian Society of Andrology
• Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine
• Japan ASEAN Council for Men's Health and Aging
• Korean Society for Sexual Medicine and Andrology
• Latin American Society for Sexual Medicine
• Malaysian Men's Health Initiative
• Malaysian Society of Andrology and the Study of the Aging Male
• Men's Health Initiative of British Columbia (Canada)
• Middle East Society for Sexual Medicine
• Russian Society for Men's Health
• South Asian Society for Sexual Medicine
• Sexual Medicine Society of North America
• The Society for Men's Health, Singapore
• Society for the Study of Androgen Deficiency
• Society for the Study of Andrology and Sexology, Singapore
• Click here to see the full list.

"This is the first time in history a worldwide community of distinguished researchers, scholars, and clinicians has united to demand removal of a study from the literature," stated Abraham Morgentaler, Chairman of the Androgen Study Group, which submitted the petition to JAMA. "This unprecedented action is a complete repudiation of the false information published by JAMA that has harmed public health, distorted medical science, and violated the trust between medical journals and the consumer. Although science must always be open to new information and ideas, the wholly unreliable data in this study by Vigen et al categorizes these results as misinformation. JAMA has been complicit in creating a media frenzy regarding false risks, and is directly responsible for the new wave of medical malpractice cases against physicians. For the good of consumers, physicians, and science, JAMA should retract the article before it causes even greater harm, accompanied by a letter explaining how its editorial process failed and steps taken to correct it."

This article has already undergone two published corrections, and new revelations raise additional concerns. A first revision was published online November 12, 2013, six days following initial publication, due to the misleading presentation of results as raw data instead of complex, statistically derived estimates. JAMA's decision to wait two months before disclosing this was a revised version, on January 15, 2014, was an ethical breach. A second correction published March 5, 2014, revealed major errors presented in the article's text and figure. Specifically, in response to a letter questioning a group of 1132 men, the authors re-examined the data for this group and discovered the correct number of individuals should only have been 128, an 89% error rate, involving more than 1,000 individuals. The value for a second group was increased by more than 900 individuals. Astonishingly, this group included 100 women, meaning nearly 10% were the wrong gender for the study. New information raises additional questions and uncertainties regarding Figure 2 in the text, the key to their results.
"People find it hard to believe that JAMA would publish a study in which the percentages of men who suffered an adverse event was lower by half in men who received testosterone than untreated men, yet results were reported as if the opposite were true, thanks to absurdly complicated statistical manipulations of the data,"stated Andre Guay, MD, Clinical Professor of Endocrinology at Tufts Medical School. "Now we find out this is the gang that can't shoot straight. In my 40 years in medicine I've never before seen a paper that says, 'Here are our data, give or take a thousand individuals.' There is nothing believable in this study."
The percentage of men who suffered an adverse event (heart attack, stroke, or death) based on reported numbers was 10.1% (123 events in 1223 men) in the testosterone group and 21.2% (1587 events in 7486 men) in the untreated group. Those percentages do not appear in the text of the study.
"This article has caused enormous damage," stated Mohit Khera, MD, Associate Professor of Urology at Baylor Medical College. "This article created an unfounded negative perception of testosterone therapy. Physicians discontinued treatment for men who were benefitting from treatment. It harmed physician-patient relations, as patients ask why their physicians placed their health at risk. And a new field of medical malpractice has sprung up overnight, with plaintiff attorneys in the US advertising nationwide for patients who suffered a stroke or heart attack after receiving testosterone. And it's all based on pure nonsense."

"JAMA has violated the public trust," concluded Dr. Morgentaler. "Its peer-review process failed. It recklessly promulgated false information that created the perception of medical risks. It withheld news that the study had been corrected, for two months, until interest had waned. It undermined the academic process by allowing the authors to avoid answering questions posed in letters. The lead author didn't even sign the response to letters. It now stands by a highly statistical study after which it has been revealed that the statistics cannot be trusted. JAMA has left itself vulnerable to criticism that it promotes sensationalism to boost revenues, or is biased against the use of testosterone therapy in men. JAMA's continued support of this discredited study, defying the worldwide community of experts, represents medical literature malpractice. "
About The Androgen Study Group (ASG)
The Androgen Study Group is a newly formed multidisciplinary group of clinicians and researchers dedicated to education and accurate reporting regarding testosterone deficiency in men and its treatment.

For more information, go to www.androgenstudygroup.org.