Warning: Vaping Update

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A couple of months ago, I happened to read a story about a couple of graduate students who came up with a business plan to replace cigarettes with vapes; they wanted the nicotine from the vapes but none of the harmful chemicals in tobacco products. Turns out, the company in the commercial was their company 15 years later after a major investment by a tobacco company.

With a DVR, you can pretty much skip all commercials if you want to. But as I hit the fast-forward recently, I saw something that made me rewind. It said something like “Warning: the following product contains nicotine.” The bulk of the commercial was a testimonial from someone who quit smoking cigarettes by switching to an electronic nicotine delivery system or vaping, for short. The commercial ended with the name of the product found in many vaping stores.

The health questions that vaping presents haven’t been answered, especially the question implied by the commercial: does vaping help people quit smoking cigarettes? Further, do people who smoked tobacco and switch to vaping ultimately quit nicotine all together?

I’ll answer the first question on Thursday. What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Do Your Job

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Physical preparation. Mental preparation. The final thing that’s drilled in to the Patriots is to do their job and do it to the best of their ability. Don’t take it upon yourself to do someone else’s job because you want to help. Take care of your space, do what you’re supposed to do, and you will be in position to make the right play at the right time.

I’ve been in meetings where people took it upon themselves to suck the oxygen out of the room by talking out of turn and about things not in their area. Those are the type of meetings that lead to less than optimal results.

How does that relate to your health? The doctor does what he or she is supposed to do. The nurse draws blood, the lab tech runs the samples, and the data entry personnel make sure the results are input correctly. The medical team does everything they’re supposed to do.

You’re the final member of that team. You have a role to play whether it’s to eat a specific diet, take your medications at the proper time, or go to cardiac rehab or physical therapy. That job continues when you’re back on your own. It doesn’t mean you’re set for life; it means that now you know your role in getting and staying healthy. In that way, you can train to peak exactly when you need to peak.

Do your job! All you have to do is look in the mirror every morning and ask yourself one question:

What am I prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Peaking Mentally at the Right Time

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It’s not enough to perform your best physically; you also have to be able to peak mentally. While the physical does impact the mental, you can’t just wing it if the task is important to you. To me, that was the difference in the Super Bowl. But the Patriots in particular seem to be able to consistently peak at the right time, and that’s how they’ve won six Super Bowls.

In the lead up to the game, I watched a clip of the head coach Bill Belichick. I’m a long-time Bills fan, so he is definitely not my favorite person. The clip I viewed was Belichick talking with his defense, telling them to keep doing what they were supposed to do, and later in the game they would get the results they wanted. Defense is his specialty. Whatever the Patriots were doing on defense worked the entire game. Not so much on offense. Except for the touchdown drive. They used a formation they hadn’t used before, used it four plays in a row, and scored the touchdown that decided the game. They were ready to peak at exactly the correct moment, because it seemed like a different team on that drive.

No matter what you do, remember that physical training is just part of the story. You have to practice and prepare mentally to execute at exactly when you need to perform. The physical and the mental work in concert, and to ignore one puts the other at risk. There’s still one more thing you have to do and I’ll finish this up on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Peaking Physically at the Right Time

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The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl again. You can love them or hate them, but you have to respect what they’ve accomplished. In fact, you have to respect the physical preparation of both teams leading up to the game. No one seemed winded or gasping for air, and no one seemed to be cramping or suffering other physical issues.

Tom Brady’s physical preparation is well known; at 41, he’s the oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl. But both teams were physically ready to play, and they peaked at exactly the right time.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to do that? There are many paths that can get you there. On Super Bowl Sunday in my Super Bowl Webinar, I showed one way for you to have the energy to peak at just the right time. You can purchase the replay for the rest of the week and watch it any time up to two weeks after that.

But physical peaking is just one part of the story. You have to be prepared mentally as well and that decided the difference in the game. I’ll tell you why on Thursday.

What are you prepared to do today?  

        Dr. Chet

Plan Your Season

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Tomorrow’s Super Bowl Kick-off is set for 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The location was set years ago, and the day and time were set immediately after last year’s game. There were no secrets. Everyone knew. Every team, coach, and player knew the details. Every team had the same time to train. They all played the same number of games during the season to qualify. The teams in tomorrow’s game played the exact same number of play-off games. In fact, they both played overtime games to qualify. Things couldn’t be more even. Who will win? I have no clue.

Many of you may not like football and won’t watch the game (or the commercials). That isn’t the point. I’m asking about you: when will your season begin? It’s February 1st—how many 2019 events will you have to prepare for? When do you have to be at your best? Is it a specific time of day? Particular days of the week? Vacation? Conference? Presentation? When is your first game? Your first play-off? Your Super Bowl? If you haven’t taken the time to figure out when that is, how do you plan to be ready for it? Take the time today or soon to figure that out.

I want to emphasize that planning for your peak day or season isn’t just for athletes or executives. If you’re going to be the mother of the bride sometime this summer, that day is a marathon and planning now will help you enjoy it beginning to end. If you’re a student and you’ll be taking the LSAT or the MCAT this year, that needs to be your best day all year. If you’re an accountant or tax attorney, you’re already into tax season, but you can still learn how to be ready for the end-of-season crunch. All of us can learn to target our energy levels for whatever our peak season will be, no matter our current fitness level.


The 9th Annual Super Bowl Webinar

The Memos I’ve written this week give you information on why you should track your diet and fitness efforts, the top trends in nutrition and diet, and why you need to know when you need to be at your best. You can use the information to plan your 2019. If you’d like some direction in using the information to make 2019 your best year yet, join me for my annual Super Bowl Webinar tomorrow at noon ET. I’ve done the heavy lifting so you can benefit from what I’m going to teach you.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Top Nutrition Trends for 2019

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After the fitness trends I wrote about Tuesday, I thought I would see if there were any other surveys by nutritionists or dieticians on nutrition or diet trends. Turns out that The Pollack Communications in conjunction with Today’s Dietician just did their 7th Annual What’s Trending in Nutrition survey of registered dieticians. Not surprising to me is that the ketogenic diet ranked number one with intermittent fasting close behind. I get questions about those all the time.

We are alive today because our ancestors survived. While that seems obvious, it also means something else. Before we developed the ability to grow crops and animals, we relied on hunting and gathering. It also means our ancestors had to survive periods of famine when crops were poor and animals were scare. That type of survival resulted in genes that were efficient in storing fat. Today there’s no real famine in modern countries. In fact, quite the opposite; food is abundant. It’s not surprising people are growing—we’re the heaviest we’ve ever been.

Many blame processed foods or refined carbohydrates or artificial sweeteners or food additives or something else for the obesity epidemic. It’s not that complicated: we simply eat too much. Sure, quality counts, but eating 4,000 calories a day will still have the health effects of eating 4,000 calories a day.

Fasting has a role to play in helping us have the energy we need to perform our best exactly when we need it. So does the ketogenic diet. Both will be topics in the 9th Annual Super Bowl Webinar this Sunday at noon. Find out how to use both to your advantage by signing up today. Members and Insiders: log in to drchet.com before registering to make sure you get your discount.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Pollock Communications; Today’s Dietitian.

Fitness Trackers: Number One Fitness Trend

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The American College of Sports Medicine just released the list of top fitness trends for 2019. Top of the list is fitness trackers; second and third are group exercise and high intensity interval training. Fitness trackers taking the top spot surprised me because they’re not an exercise, they’re a tool to track exercise. But if they can help people keep exercising, I’m all for it.

What I think is really beneficial is the tracking itself. Some trackers are very sophisticated; they will include heart rate and even blood pressure. You can sync some with a scale or enter your body weight. Some track distance with GPS if you have an outdoor activity. Many will also track calories if you enter the food data. You can get readouts that are printable if you sync the device with your computer. That’s a great way to track patterns—if you take a look at the data. If you have one and use it, it’s a great tool to keep you on track.

When it comes to having energy when you need it, a fitness tracker can provide valuable information. I’ll cover how you can use any type of tracker to help you have energy exactly when you need it in this Sunday’s 9th Annual Super Bowl Webinar.

        Dr. Chet

Reference: ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal: doi: 10.1249/FIT.0000000000000438

G.O.A.T.

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The New England Patriots are playing in the Super Bowl. Again. They’re playing the Los Angeles Rams this time. There will be thousands of pages written about the game. Countless commentaries in all forms of media as well. Even though I’m a Buffalo Bills fan, I have to give credit to the Patriots. They’re the greatest of all time to date: GOAT. I qualify it only because there’s always the possibility another team will supersede their accomplishments. But it’s not likely.

I believe the reason they have been so successful is their consistency. Players have come and gone. Training techniques change as do offensive and defensive schemes. But they’ve been consistent in using the season to solidify their approach in preparation for the play-offs. In other words, they have trained to peak at exactly the right time year after year. They train to win the close games. They establish the mental and physical wherewithal to overcome any circumstance. The lesson is that every year the challenges will be different but the approach is consistent.

I make no predictions for the game but I can predict this: you can be your personal GOAT in health and other areas of your life, throughout this year or years to come. You just have to be consistent in your approach.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Is Consistency the Key to Health?

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As the new year progresses and you work toward your health goals, one thing that will help you just about more then anything else is being consistent in your effort. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But we have a ranking system in our heads of how we perceive the importance of everything we’re doing, and sometimes health habits don’t rank very high.

For example, measuring food. When we get in a hurry, we may not take the time to weigh or measure our portions. We may eyeball it. I don’t see a problem with extra vegetables, but when it comes to high-fat or calorie-dense foods such as salad dressings or nuts or even pasta, it’s important, especially in the beginning. Accept that you’re not good at estimating yet and for a while, you must measure every time.

The same is true for stretching. If we get busy, we may not always take the few minutes to stretch our legs before walking, or our shoulders to improve posture. We know how good it feels when we do it but when we’re rushed, we may skip it. The older we get, the more important stretching becomes.

Do you ever go to bed without brushing your teeth? Do you skip your meds because you’re in a rush? I’ll bet 99% of us always brush and always take our meds. Spend some time thinking about why that is and how you can make your hit-or-miss health habits into never-miss habits.

We could apply this to any action connected to improving our health. There will be times when we have to make that decision and go with that ranking system in our head. Just get back to it later in the day or as soon as you can. Your health is the result of what you consistently do to get healthy. It all depends on: What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Parachute or Backpack?

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You’re sitting on a plane. The person next to you says he’s conducting a study about parachute safety and asks if you would be willing to be randomly assigned to one of two groups: jumping out of the plane with a parachute or with an empty backpack at its current altitude and speed.

Yes, this is a real study. The researchers included both commercial and private aircraft. The researchers were able to enroll 23 subjects in the study after screening 92 people; 69 people were unwilling to participate or were otherwise excluded from the study. After randomization, the experiment was conducted in two locations in the U.S.; all subjects completed the study. The results indicated that no subject from either group was injured or killed. There were no differences between the groups using the backpack or the parachute.

What?

How is that possible? The subjects who were asked on commercial aircraft at 450 mph and 30,000 feet would not volunteer (and a couple who did were excluded due to mental health concerns.) Those who were asked on a stationary private aircraft at zero altitude and zero speed all agreed to participate.

The Purpose

The researchers wanted to highlight that with or without realizing it, clinical randomized trials can be biased by the subjects who are recruited and the way they’re recruited. You can determine this only by drilling down into the research to see how subjects were selected.

Remember the study on bitter orange and caffeine? All the subjects were young and healthy. That happens often in exercise studies when testing dietary supplements, but people of all ages are active and use products designed to improve performance. Aging brings many differences in muscle mass, hormone levels, and other system changes that may reduce or exaggerate the affects of the supplement. The generalizability to other populations is often limited.

This parachute study was done tongue in cheek; no one would let people jump out of a commercial airplane with just a backpack and no human subject ethics committee would ever approve it. But subject selection can impact results and that calls into question the whole concept of doing a randomized clinical trial in the first place.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

 Reference: BMJ 2018;363:k5094 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k509.