Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?

Interesting concept that has been explored in depth on Marks Daily Apple and by Bill and Shawn Phillips.

Well - Tara Parker-Pope on Health
June 24, 2009, 12:26 pm
Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
By Gretchen Reynolds
Phys Ed
Getty Images

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The potency of interval training is nothing new. Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. But what researchers have been looking at recently is whether humans, like that second group of rats, can increase endurance with only a few minutes of strenuous exercise, instead of hours? Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit?

The answer, a growing number of these sports scientists believe, may be yes.

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.
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Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. “We describe it as an ‘all-out’ effort,” Gibala says. You’ll be straying “well out of your comfort zone.” That level of discomfort makes some activities better-suited to intense training than others. “We haven’t studied runners,” Gibala says. The pounding involved in repeated sprinting could lead to injuries, depending on a runner’s experience and stride mechanics. But cycling and swimming work well. “I’m a terrible swimmer,” Gibala says, “so every session for me is intense, just because my technique is so awful.”
Meanwhile, his lab is studying whether people could telescope their workouts into even less time. Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? Gibala is hopeful. “I’m 41, with two young children,” he says. “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” The results should be available this fall.

Link to Bailouts or Giveaways

Click blog title to go to link

Bailout money for executive bonuses. Treasury will not show what securities they took in exchange for the money.

Ridiculous!

What Makes a Country Successful?

Received this interesting analysis of why some countries are rich and others are poor from a friend who lives Fiji. The little Powerpoint slide show was meant for circulation on Fiji. However, I think the checklist should be reviewed to see how the United States is doing regarding those nine (9) essential items the author identified. Could the United States' current economic woes be related to us not executing those basic principals as well as in the past? How many of these principals does our government exhibit in dealing with its' citizens and other countries? What do you think?


To reflect and... Act.
The difference between the poor countries and the rich ones is not the age of the country.

This can be shown by countries like India & Egypt, that are more than 2000 years old and are poor. On the other hand, Canada, Australia & New Zealand, that 150 years ago were poor UK colonies exploited to provide cheap food for England, today are developed countries.

The difference between poor & rich countries does not reside in the available
natural resources. Japan has a limited territory, 80% mountainous, inadequate for agriculture & cattle raising, but it is the second world economy. The country is like an immense floating factory, importing raw material from the whole world and exporting manufactured products.

Another example is Switzerland, which does not plant cocoa but has the best chocolate in the world. In its little territory they raise animals and plant the soil during 4 months per year. Not enough, they produce dairy products of the best quality. It is a small country that transmits an image of security, order & labor, which made it the world’s strong safe.

Executives from rich countries who communicate with their counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant intellectual difference. Race or skin color are also not important: immigrants labeled lazy in their countries of origin are the productive power in rich European countries.

What is the difference then?

The difference is the attitude of the people, framed along the years by the education and the culture. On analyzing the behavior of the people in rich & developed countries, we find that the great majority follow the following principles in their lives:

1. Ethics, as a basic principle.
2. Integrity.
3. Responsibility.
4. Respect to the laws & rules.
5. Respect to the rights of other citizens.
6. Work loving.
7. Strive for saving & investment.
8. Will of super action.
9. Punctuality.

In poor countries, only a minority follow these basic principles in their daily life. We are not poor because we lack natural resources or because nature was cruel to us. We are poor because we lack attitude. We lack the will to comply with and teach these functional principles of rich and developed societies.

Double Standard

McCain and Kerry Blocked POW Investigation

Interesting little video regarding McCain and Kerry both blocking an investigation that many Korean and Vietnam American POW's were not returned to the US.

Did John McCain make 32 propaganda tapes for the North Vietnamese?

Why did John McCain oppose H.R. 3603 Truth Accountability Bill? Was it to seal his POW records to hide his actions?

I copied this from a website blog http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-70454 I could only access through the page cache since now the site is mysteriously listed as temporarily down though only this page is down (hmm...)

John McCain has always claimed to be a war hero. He says he is loyal to our troops. He says because of his military experience he is qualified to lead our country. But is it true. After doing many exhaustive hours of research I have come to the conclusion that this is not true. Here is some of the things I found our about Senator McCain during my research. You decide for yourself is Senator McCain a hero or a traitor.
Senator McCain has been criticized by many Veterans Groups for his voting record when it comes to taking care of and supporting our troops. Here are just a few of his votes.
In Mid-September 2007 McCain missed 10 of the last 14 votes on Iraq. But on one he actually showed up for he voted against the Webb Amendment calling for adequate troop rest between deployments.
July 2007- McCain voted against a plan to draw down troops in Iraq
June 2006- McCain voted against a resolution that Bush start withdrawing troops. But with no time line to do so.
May 2006- McCain voted against an amendment that would provide $20 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs for healthcare facilities.
April 2006- McCain was one of only 13 senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.
March 2006- McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical service funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid by closing corporate tax loop holes.
March 2004- McCain voted against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating abusive tax loop holes.
October 2003- McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for our troops in Iraq.
April 2003- McCain urged other senators to table a vote(which did not pass). The vote was to provide more than $1 billion for National Guard and Reserves equipment in Iraq. Related to shortages of helmets tents bullet-proof inserts and tactical vest.
August 2001- McCain voted against increasing the amount available for medical care for our Veterans by $650 million.
In 1992 McCain used his position on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs(1989-1993) to kill H.R. 3603-Truth Accountability Bill. This same bill passed in the House 401 to 0. He did not want his records of his POW days to get out. So he made sure that no ones records would get out. The bill was supported by Senator Bob Doran(R-CA) and Senator Bob Smith(R-NH). The bill was to get any and all records of POW's in Vietnam, Korea and all others so as to find any POW that might still be alive.McCain did not want that to happen because it would bring to light his record as a POW. McCain also made quiet a scene when he demanded that the records not get out as part of Vietnam's Diplomatic Recognition. On Senator commented that Senator McCain was bitterly opposed to finding any POW's left in Vietnam.
What is Senator McCain trying so hard to hide. And why is he being allowed to do it at the cost of our POW's and thier families. He has betrayed the military in countless ways. But this is truely the worst. There are over 2000 POW's from Vietnam still missing. And when thier families wanted accountability and wanted thier loved ones records released to see what measures were taken to bring them home. McCain basically single handedly told them no and made it that the records were sealed. Destroying any hope of finding out what happened to thier loved ones. Though the families are still fighting to this day to find out what happened to thier loved one. Even Nixon's staff said there were POW's left in Vietnam but McCain did not care. Here is part of an article wrote about Nixon's Defense staff and what they said.
Two former secretaries of defense under Richard M. Nixon testified Monday that the U.S. government believed in 1973 that many American fliers remained in enemy hands in Laos and were not returned with other prisoners at the end of the Vietnam War, despite Nixon's public assurances to the contrary.
"As of now, I can come to no other conclusion. (But) that does not mean there are any alive today," said former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, who also once served as head of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The sworn testimony by Schlesinger and Melvin R. Laird, Nixon's first Pentagon chief, marked the first time top-ranking members of the Nixon administration were questioned publicly about the fate of U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action almost 20 years after the United States withdrew from Vietnam.
In effect, their testimony before the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs corroborated earlier statements by Ross Perot, the Texas tycoon who has been deeply involved in POW-MIA activities since 1969. Perot told the Senate panel last month that the evidence was "overwhelming" that POWs were left behind after the Vietnam War ended.
The testimony also supports the judgment of many members of the Senate's special POW-MIA committee and is the most authoritative evidence so far of what was once an unthinkable conclusion -- that the American government essentially wrote off pending POW-MIA cases at the war's end in effort to close the book on the foreign policy disaster.
"I think it's quite extraordinary when two former secretaries of defense both give evidence documenting that they had information, or they believed personally, that people were alive and not accounted for in Operation Homecoming," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee.
McCain did not care about any of that all he cared about was protecting what ever secrets he has there at the expense of over 2000 of our POW's and thier families. He has broken the main code of the Military NEVER LEAVE A MAN BEHIND. To me as a Navy Wife he is a disgrace to the Navy and to this country. He is a Traitor.
Now that you have read this you need to make up your own mind. Is this the man you want to be your president. What will he cover-up. Will he leave our soldiers over in Iraq and anywhere else he will go to war with. Will he leave them and refuse to give our soldiers families answers. He has already once what will stop him from doing it again. So now you decide. Is McCain a National Hero Or Traitor

John McCain is War

John McCain was one of the few politicians I admired and respected. His positions on campaign finance years ago were exceptional for a main stream politician. He was notable for his sympathy to some environmental causes in contrast to his Republican brethren who are most typically on some kind of slash and burn agenda (hey look guys, the Native Americans have been subjugated by removing their access to food when we killed off the buffalo. psst... you won!). And, he used to maintain a reluctance to engage the US military unless needed and with clear popular support so another Vietnam type of engagement didn't replay itself.

Something definitely changed in Mr. McCain after 911 and it seems to have overwhelmed the clear reasoning he previously maintained. Or, maybe it just allowed us voting public to understand better what was there all along.

John McCain comes from a family of warriors. It is seemingly in their blood. Every generation of McCains back to 1776 has sent a son to war for the US. You can view that in many ways: 1) a family of American patriots from the start of our country until now 2) a family with lots of blood on its' hands 3) a family that knows duty and exercises it consistently. However you see it, one thing is clear - John McCain's family history has war as a central theme.

John McCain's father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., believed in the exercise of military strength and used to lecture his family on The Four Ocean Navy, the Soviet threat, and his favorite symbol of US power - a soldier walking through a rice paddy with a gun on his shoulder. So, we have a man here who has grown up believing in the inevitable use of US military power on foreign soil.

Regarding the country's ill-fated Iraq War, it is also clear that McCain was out in front of the Bush administration naming Iraq as a possible conspirator on 9/12 and advocating an Iraq invasion six months before the Bush White House. If you are a conspiracy theorist, it is easy to say McCain was in on the whole enchilada from 9/11 to Iraq and gave W the political cover in the beginning and a certain level of legitimacy with the public and other Senate and Congressional members.

If you believe that Iraq was based on good people making bad decisions on faulty intelligence then McCain was one of the easiest to convince with bad data. He made gut level decisions not based on evidence. He made decisions based on who he thought was the good guys and bad guys. The Axis of Evil was W's way of putting black hats on who the administration didn't like and make it easy to sell a gullible public on who they should fear and hate. McCain was with the program all the way and was really right out front leading the parade.

This leads me to my conclusion why I will not vote for the man I thought in 2000 was the best candidate. He would be the next War President. If we somehow get out of Iraq, he will get us into another war. It is in his blood, his psyche, and is part of the man. There is no separating him from finding places and reasons to exercise the US military (remember his 100 year Iraq War comment). The US has huge problems here at home and if we don't reign in military spending and rebuild our infrastructure and get our financial house in order, we will end up like all other previous empires.



Important link with many of the facts sighted above......
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mccain.html?ex=1376712000&en=9bdaf71416dba73f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

The Last Family Vacation (?) Part 2 - Planning

In the last post we had decided where we going in general and for about how long. I wanted to give that info to a travel agent and let them construct something wonderful and cheap and let me concentrate on all my petty life difficulties, job, investment management, exercising, sports, and spending money. I contacted an old friend whose wife is a part-time travel agent and while she was helpful with advice, I did not sense any desire to be our travel agent, which in hindsight I can understand. Looking at a Europe ski trip I did a couple years ago, I found the name of the local travel agent who put that together for a group of 20 people. He had done a pretty good job with hotel selections and transportation organization so I contacted him. He wanted a $100 just to talk!

I didn't understand that, so I decided to start looking for air fares and compare to on-line package deals. After using many different sites, I found that http://farecast.live.com/ was excellent. It gives you prices from several different websites including some of the biggies like Expedia and Priceline. It will also forecast (sometimes, if it feels like it) whether the prices will go up or down. There was also a feature on Priceline that made it easy to see how varying you departure dates for leaving and coming back affected prices. That helped immensely as well and made locking down our schedule to 23 days. I watched prices move lower and then about 5 months before our scheduled departure time, prices started creeping up about $20 per ticket, so I purchased at that time getting a San Francisco to London Heathrow RT ticket for $1064 each.

Now, we could start planning where to spend the time. I asked the teenage children to start researching where they wanted to go, what they wanted to do, and ideas of where to stay. I sent them links and talked with them. I "thought" they would really get into putting an itinerary together. And, I couldn't have been more wrong. After a couple months of nagging on my part and inaction on theirs, I enlisted the wife and we went to the local travel bookstore http://www.languagequest.com/. Even though their website does not seem to list travel books, they do have an extensive selection and a very knowledgeable staff who were eager to share their expertise and feedback from customers. We ended up with a Rick Steves for London, Rick Steves for Provence, Pauline Frommer for London, and Pauline Frommer for Paris. Also, walked out with a nifty %12.95 Berlitz French/English dictionary that came with an audio CD since our French consisted of my 17 year old's one year of French three years ago. Her retention seemed to consist of "wee" and "boinjer".

Now, armed, utterly confused, and overloaded with ideas, we got ready for the real fun part, though we didn't know it yet.