Muscle loss and Aging

Think that muscle loss is inevitable???  Harvard has another take on it.

"No matter how many birthdays come and go, muscles perform the same type of action. But as muscle mass in the body shrinks with the passing years, strength also declines. Sarcopenia—the gradual decrease in muscle tissue—starts at around age 30. The average 30-year-old can expect to lose about 25% of muscle mass and strength by age 70 and another 25% by age 90.


Some of these changes stem from the physiological effects of aging, but disuse plays a bigger role than many people suspect. Studies of older adults consistently prove that a good deal of the decline in strength can be recouped with strength training........:

Myofacial Pain Syndrome -- Have you ever heard of it?

Seems like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who has muscle pain.  Muscle pain is pretty common -- most of us have experienced it and likely will again.  But what about those you know who have muscle pain that just doesn't seem to go away?

Fibromyalgia is getting a lot of press in the last few years (mostly because they have some new drugs to treat the pain).  But what if you aren't meeting those diagnosis criteria?  Perhaps you feel like you have chronic muscle knots -- they might move around but they're always somewhere -- and they hurt!  What are they and what can you do about them?  Myofacial Pain Syndrome is often misdiagnosed as tendinitis or fibromyalgia. 

Trigger point therapy is used to treat the more mild cases.  With a little knowledge and know how -- chronic muscle pain could be a thing of the past!

Inefficient packaging

I just came across this article on inefficient packaging.  The design idea is that if something has annoying packaging, the user will have a diminished experience and therefore might not engage in the activity.  --That is why so much time and money is spent on product design -- if you want people to buy and use your product, make the experience pleasurable for them.

Obviously, the cigarette manufacturers will not use this design for their product -- they WANT to sell it.  Same goes for junk food manufacturers -- they will not make their packaging LESS convenient -- they want to sell their product.

But what if you changed how the packaging worked on your bag of chips to make it more difficult/less rewarding to eat.  That is one reason I am a proponent of NOT buying trigger foods just to have on hand.  It makes them less pleasurable to eat if you have to go to the store to get them when you have the first inkling you want them.

And what about the positive habits you are trying to create?  Would it help if you packed your gym bag in a more convenient way -- say bought a second set of shampoo, conditioner, razor, make-up -- whatever -- to keep in there so you didn't have to keep packing and unpacking the bag?

Is there an area you can put this idea into positive use?

I am a HUGE advocate of you being your best you!

But this author has put it more eloquently than I have been able to.  Enjoy!

Just to make you laugh....

Sit More, Die Sooner women.webmd.com



Sit at leisure, die at haste. In a 14-year study, those who spent at least 6 hours of their daily leisure time sitting died more often than those who sat less than 3 hours.

How could they die more often?  Aren't we all going to get one shot at that?


I saw this on one of the sites I visit.  It really is a study published on WebMD -- but I thought the comment said something about how our society deals with studies and common sense.  The study and common sense agree that people need to move around -- at least a little bit.  Whether it is so you get your blood (or bowels) moving or just so you increase the likelihood of running into people you like (because odds are they won't just happen to walk in front of your TV set day in and day out) -- people who are engaged (a verb/action word) in life live longer and have greater contentment with their lives.

So...move a bit more today (and decrease your chances of dying more often :)

The Most Effective Tool to create Behavior Change

Write it down.  -- both the change you want to make and what you are actually doing each day.  Or another way to put it is "Journal, Journal, Journal!"

Want to decrease your spending on lunches per week?

Increase the number of steps you take per day?

Drink more water?

Cut down on TV time?

Find a new hobby to enjoy?

It doesn't matter what behavior change you are trying to make happen in your life -- If you write down what you are doing each day to get you to your success point -- you are more likely to achieve it.  And maintain the behavior.

You don't need any specific kind of journal -- just something small enough to be convenient -- post-it notes that you add into a spiral bound notebook will work if it works for you.

There are also great online goal/journal tools that you can use (or add to your Facebook page -- to give you added accountability).  Try this one!

The point is -- if it is written down, you can clearly see what you are doing without either under- or over-estimating your success.  Want to read about the research?  Click here -- this is an excerpt from a Log that I particularly like.

The Dangers (and biological rush) of Multitasking

Here's an interesting article from the New York Times on how multitasking (and the technology that supports it) is effecting our lives.  It's fairly long -- I hope you can stay engaged enough to finish it!

I found it super interesting but had a little bit of trouble keeping focused because I could actually feel my list of morning reading piling up as I went off on this Times Tangent.

Leave a comment and let me know how you did with it!