Healthy Lifestyle For All

Oh My Aching Back: Helping Back Pain with Exercise

When your back hurts, everything seems to hurt. By the age of 45, most people will have experienced some form of lower-back discomfort. Other than the common cold, lower back pain is the most common reason people miss work in the United States. Lower back pain is also one of the main health obstacles to maintaining a regular fitness program.

There are three common types of back problems. One widespread back problem is a strain – an injury to a muscle or tendon of the lower back. Other common problems include sprains – injuries to the ligaments supporting the spine, and herniated disks – small, round cushions between the vertebrae of the spine are displaced.

Your back is made up of three main areas: the upper portion of your spine (the cervical), the middle portion (the thoracic), and the lower portion (the lumbar). The lower back connects your chest, arms, and upper body to your hips, pelvis, and legs – your lower body. The strength and mobility of your lower back is crucial to basic daily activities including: sitting, standing, walking, lifting, twisting, turning, and bending.

Lower back pain and injury is usually caused by one of several factors:

• Poor posture.


• Improper body mechanics.


• Prolonged sitting.


• Sudden, quick movements that damage ligaments.


• Muscles or tendons that have become overly tight due to a lack of core conditioning.

In my book, The 10 Minute Total Body Breakthrough, I explain in detail how to move your body the "4-3-2-1" way to help prevent lower back pain. In this article, I'll share some simple steps to get you started.

Consult your doctor. If you are experiencing lower back pain, discuss your condition and your current fitness level with your doctor. If your back pain is serious, work with your doctor to create an action plan to help you get moving again. Remember, inactivity has been shown to make back pain worse and increase your discomfort.

Perform aerobic exercise safely. After you get your doctor's go-ahead, choose aerobic activities that are easy on your joints, such as walking or stationary cycling. Get moving for 10–30 minutes a day, at least three days a week. You may also want to consider exercising in a pool to relieve the strain on your back. Avoid performing any exercises that are jarring to the joints such as jogging, running, jumping rope, or jumping jacks.

Begin resistance and core training. Develop a resistance and core program to improve your overall body strength. In resistance training, you'll need to avoid some movements to prevent further injury. Skip any exercises that involve raising a weight above your head or placing weight on your back. For example, don't do dumbbell or barbell shoulder presses, barbell squats, or resistance band overhead presses. Also, skip any exercises with twisting motions. Then, remember to perform resistance training movements in a slow, controlled motion.

Perform movements involving the upper and lower body, such as wall pushups or wall squats. Or, use a resistance band and do stationary lunges or arm curls. Try a stationary back or side plank to strengthen your core muscles, which include your abdominals, back, and obliques. Also, one of the best tools to help strengthen your core and overall body during your workouts is a stability ball. Aim for one resistance and core training session three days a week on alternating days.

Stretch regularly. Stretching provides many benefits for your body, which include increasing muscle flexibility, strengthening tendons and ligaments, increasing joint mobility, improving posture, decreasing back pain, and many others. Stretch every day to alleviate lower-back discomfort and prevent further injury. Stretches such as a seated forward bend, seated arm reach, or chin-to-chest stretch are all examples of static stretches you can do. Hold each stretch until you feel mild tension for 15–30 seconds, and do them as often as you like throughout the day.

Sean Foy, M.A.
President, Personal Wellness Corporation

Turning Off Your Genetic Risk

As you get older, certain diseases often follow. Diseases typically associated with aging include heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, obesity, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, and joint problems. It's a long list, but don't be discouraged. Optimal health is all about delaying and helping to prevent your experiences with these diseases of aging.

All of these conditions are caused by interactions between our genes and the environment in which we live. Cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attacks and stroke, is one example. We know that our lifestyle – including smoking, physical activity, and diet – are major factors in our cardiovascular health. We also know that genetics play an important role, because a family history of heart attacks before the age of 60 is a significant risk factor for heart disease.

The good news is that you can make changes to reduce your genetic risk for these diseases of aging. Although you cannot change the genes you inherited from your parents, you can change the way your genes work to make your body healthier.

Nutrition is one of the strongest determinants of how your genes behave. Scientists now know that some of your genes have variations that alter their behavior. For example, a gene can be influenced to produce more or less of a certain chemical over time. The goal is to reduce the output of genes that produce chemicals that can be harmful, such as plaque-producing genes that can clog your heart's arteries.

This is where the exciting new science of nutrigenomics takes center stage. In nutrigenomics, we are working to discover which genes in your body are affected by certain nutrients. For example, what do the bad saturated fats do to the machinery of your body – your genes? This does not mean that you should have a customized diet, since the science is nowhere near making that a reality. But there are ways today to classify people into a few genetic patterns, and you can learn to make better use of certain nutrients and supplements.

What we can learn now from nutrigenomics is that you may be able to modify even the genetic risk factors for diseases associated with aging, with a healthy diet – risk factors we once thought were irreversible. Nutrigenomics gives you yet another compelling reason to strive for a healthy diet in order to live your life in optimal health.

Kenneth Kornman, D.D.S, Ph.D.
President and Chief Scientific Officer, Interleukin Genetics

Nutrigenomics: Where Diet and DNA Meet

Nutrigenomics: Where Diet and DNA Meet
Dr. Duke Johnson, M.D.
Medical Director, Nutrilite Health Institute

In the last decade, scientists have found that the effect of our diet on our bodies is far more complex than we ever imagined. These findings have opened up an exciting new area of science called nutrigenomics – the study of how diet works in our bodies at the molecular level.

In the past, we had a good idea of the ways the food we ate was used by our bodies, but we didn't understand the process completely. For many years, we have known our digestive tract breaks down food to its smallest building blocks, allowing the food to enter the bloodstream. For example, fats are reduced to fatty acids, and carbohydrates become simple sugars. These basic components – along with vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients – enter the bloodstream from the digestive tract, pass through the liver for processing, and are then transported to every living cell in our body.

Today, we know much more about what happens to those nutritional building blocks once they enter our cells. Not long ago, scientists believed these nutritional components did most of their work in the region of the cell located outside the nucleus called the cytoplasm. We knew these nutritional components were needed to produce energy and help with many other cellular functions. But, we were unaware these basic nutrients actually influenced our genetic code as well.

Recently, a significant amount of research has shown many of the nutrients we eat actually enter the cell nucleus and affect our genetic code, known as DNA. The nucleus is a special compartment inside the cell that holds our DNA. Another term for DNA is genome, and by combining the words "nutrients" and "genome," we get "nutrigenomics," the study of how the nutrients we eat affect our DNA.

The relationship between our diet and our DNA is quite complex. DNA is made up of genes, which are the "blueprints" of proteins responsible for running the reactions in our cells. Some genes make good proteins known as enzymes, and other genes make proteins that can be harmful to our health in large amounts. It is also important to know that all of our genes aren't always turned on. Genes are like a light switch. We turn them "on" or "off" with our lifestyle choices.

Nutrigenomics is helping us understand how nutrition affects our health better than ever before. For example, unhealthy foods may actually switch "on" some of those harmful genes. On the flip side, healthy foods that provide good nutrients can likely switch "off" those bad genes.

Though the science of nutrigenomics is relatively new, it is already allowing us to expand our knowledge of nutrition. As you can see, it is also strengthening the case for healthy eating – showing you that the food you eat has a tremendous effect on your health and disease risk, even at the genetic level.

Special Note: Fad diet promoters often have no knowledge of nutrigenomics and commonly recommend foods that turn on bad genes. Since we work with some of the most knowledgeable people in the field of nutrigenomics, you can feel confident that my recommendations concerning food take this field of science into consideration with your best health in mind.

Dr. Duke Johnson, M.D.
Medical Director, Nutrilite Health Institute