drink it?

I love olive oil as much as the next person. And I'm hoping to be around for a good, long time. But I'd sooner drink cat pee daily than live to be 120.

A daily glass of olive oil keeps the doctor away
Posted Feb 22nd 2008 10:03AM by Marisa McClellan
Mariam Amash, a woman living in an Israeli village, recently astounded officials when she filed for a new identity card, declaring an age of 120 years old. She says she was born in 1888, when the Turks still ran the holy land. Her secret to long life? Walk regularly and drink a glass of olive oil every day. Al Dente did the math and figured out that she has consumed at least 43,800 glasses--roughly 2,737 gallons of olive oil.

Studies have found that the monounsaturated oils in olive oil not only help reduce blood cholesterol, it also "cause less production of the bile acids in the digestive tract that promote colon cancer development." Additionally, it is less likely to generate free radicals in the body than other fats, it strengthens the anti-inflammatory effects of omega-3 fats and blocks the activation carcinogens. With all the olive oil she's consumed over the years, it's no wonder she's lived such a long life.

you say you want a (dance) revolution

I like that schools are giving kids more options in PE and that there are group activities that are about personal skill and not as likely to be hijacked by team dynamics. But I wonder what will happen when the fad fades (although this one's been going for some time).

Dance Dance Revolution
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: April 30, 2007

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.

In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”

Bill Hines, a physical education teacher at the school for 27 years, shook his head a little, smiled and said, “I’ll tell you one thing: they don’t run in here like that for basketball.”

It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.

Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade. Born nine years ago in the arcades of Japan, D.D.R. has become a small craze among a generation of young Americans who appear less enamored of traditional team sports than their parents were and more amenable to the personal pursuits enabled by modern technology.

Incorporating D.D.R. into gym class is part of a general shift in physical education, with school districts de-emphasizing traditional sports in favor of less competitive activities.

“Traditionally, physical education was about team sports and was very skills oriented,” said Chad Fenwick, who oversees physical education for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where about 40 schools now use Dance Dance Revolution. “What you’re seeing is a move toward activities where you don’t need to be so great at catching and throwing and things like that, so we can appeal to a wider range of kids.”

A basic D.D.R. system, including a television and game console, can be had for less than $500, but most schools that use the game choose to spend from $70 to $800 each for more robust mats, rather than rip apart the relatively flimsy versions meant for home use.

In a study last year, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that children playing Dance Dance Revolution expended significantly more energy than children watching television and playing traditional video games. West Virginia, which ranks among the nation’s leaders in obesity, diabetes and hypertension, has sponsored its own study and has taken the lead in deploying the game, which requires players to dance in ever more complicated and strenuous patterns in time with electronic dance music.

As a song plays, arrows pointing one of four directions — forward, back, left, right — scroll up the screen in various sequences and combinations, requiring the player to step on corresponding arrows on a mat on the floor. Players can dance by themselves, with a partner or in competition. (Though the game, which is made by Konami of Japan, began in arcades, it is now most commonly played on Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles.)

As a result of a partnership among West Virginia’s Department of Education, its Public Employees Insurance Agency and West Virginia University, the state has committed to installing the game in all 765 of its public schools by next year. Almost all of its 185 middle schools already use it.

The mastermind behind the project is Linda M. Carson, Ware distinguished professor at West Virginia University’s School of Physical Education and director of the state’s Motor Development Center.

“I was in a mall walking by the arcade and I saw these kids playing D.D.R., and I was just stunned,” she said. “There were all these kids dancing and sweating and actually standing in line and paying money to be physically active. And they were drinking water, not soda. It was a physical educator’s dream.”

In February, Ms. Carson and her main collaborator, Emily Murphy, a doctoral candidate at the university’s School of Medicine, announced results of a multiyear study. They found significant health benefits for overweight children who played the game regularly, including improved blood pressure, overall fitness scores and endothelial function, which reflects the arteries’ ability to deliver oxygen.

None of that would come as a surprise to Maureen Byrne, mother of two boys in Chesterfield, Mo., who introduced the game to her local school district after seeing its impact on one of her sons.

“My oldest son, Sean, used to have love handles; he was kind of pudgy, and I’ll be honest: we were worried about it,” she said. “We had heard of D.D.R., and I got it for him for his birthday. We put limits on the other video games he plays, but we told him he could play D.D.R. as much as he wanted. And now it’s like he’s a different kid. He’s playing sports and running, and we see D.D.R. as like his bridge to a more active lifestyle.”

Ms. Byrne and her family demonstrated the game for the local parent-teacher organization in the hope of convincing it to underwrite a test at school.

“I remember going to the P.T.O. meeting and getting in front of all of them without my shoes on and doing the moves, and that was kind of funny,” said Sean, now a 12-year-old sixth grader.

Today, eight schools in the Parkway School District, based in Chesterfield, have their own D.D.R. systems, and three other game systems circulate among various schools in the district, said Ron Ramspott, the district coordinator of health and physical education.

“Our teachers are really buying into D.D.R. as a way to promote both physical health and learning,” he said. “When you’re playing the game you really have to process the information and then also do the moves physically, so we think it can help with brain development as well.”

As Leighton Nakamoto, a physical education teacher at Kalama Intermediate School in Makawao, Hawaii, put it: “The new physical education is moving away from competitive team sports and is more about encouraging lifetime fitness, and D.D.R. is a part of that. They can do it on their own, and they don’t have to compete with anyone else.”

Mr. Nakamoto said that he had used the game in class for four years and that his school had also installed the game in its “Active Lifestyle” room, where students are allowed and encouraged to play in their free time.

Dave Randall, the educational specialist for coordinated school health for the Hawaii Department of Education, said Hawaii was trying to put together a program like West Virginia’s to get the game into all of the state’s 265 public schools over the next three years.

Back in West Virginia, Anna Potter, 12, and Mikayla Leombruno, 13, were not concerned about all of the academic theories as they shimmied and bounced to the beat in Mr. Hines’s gym class.

“I like that you get to listen to music and you don’t have to be on a team or go anywhere special to play,” Anna said after their song. “If you do baseball or basketball, people get really competitive about it.”

Mikayla chimed in, “And you don’t have to be good at it to get a good workout.”

song of the cookies

I already chew gum at work. It keeps my mouth full, so that I don't graze on the chocolates, cookies, and other goodies that manage to end up in my office.

But if this stuff makes it to market, I would probably get some for that mid-afternoon period when I'm starting to get hungry and the cookies are calling out to be eaten.

Chew gum to help you slim
By Jo Willey
15/01/07

AN appetite-suppressing chewing gum which will stop the soaring obesity epidemic and save millions of lives is being developed by British scientists.

They have identified a drug, based on a natural hormone, which mimics the body’s “feeling full” response.

In what will be seen as a huge step towards curbing the spiralling scourge of obesity which threatens to cripple the NHS, researchers have fast-tracked the development of the drug.

They intend to produce a form which can be absorbed in the mouth – and then add it to chewing gum.

The hormone will also later be incorporated into a nasal spray, and an injectable treat-ment – similar to the insulin jabs used by diabetics – will be available in just a few years.

The research has huge significance for tackling the nation’s obesity crisis and will revolutionise the way that Britain, and the rest of the world, wages the battle of the bulge.

The leader of the research team, Professor Steve Bloom, has already admitted that a safe, effective treatment which can be given to a broad range of overweight patients – not just the seriously obese – is a potential goldmine.

The study was welcomed by the National Obesity Forum, which said the research into the hormone, pancreatic polypeptide, was “an exciting development”.

Chairman Dr Colin Waine said: “Pancreatic polypeptide is a naturally occurring substance and therefore one would expect that it would be relatively free of side-effects.

“This looks like a potentially exciting development.”

Early tests have shown that moderate doses of pancreatic polypeptide can reduce the amount of food eaten by healthy volunteers by 15 to 20 per cent.

Mice given the drug have lost 15 per cent of their body weight in one week.

Development of the hormone has now been given a major boost, with a £2.2million research grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Globally, there are now more than one billion overweight adults, according to the World Health Organisation. This includes at least 300million who meet the clinical definition of obese.

Money spent in Britain on anti-obesity drugs rocketed to £38million in 2005-6, up from £30million in 2004-5, with 23.5 per cent of women and 23 per cent of men classed as obese.

Forecasts warn that one in three British men will be dangerously overweight by 2010, with a total of 14mil-lion children and adults classed as obese.

In England alone, more than 30,000 deaths a year are caused by obesity, mainly due to heart disease and diabetes, and cost the NHS £1billion annually.

The epidemic shows every sign of growing worse as people continue to eat too much of the wrong foods and take insufficient exercise, meaning that the NHS faces a “ticking timebomb”.

The research team, from Imperial College London, is one of the first to benefit from a £91million initiative by the Wellcome Trust to help turn promising scientific ideas into real treatments.

The human body produces pancreatic polypeptide after every meal to ensure that eating does not run out of control.

But there is evidence that some people have more of the hormone than others, and becoming overweight reduces the levels produced. A vicious circle then results, causing appetite to increase.

Prof Bloom has studied a group of patients with a particular pancreatic tumour which causes them to generate more of the hormone.

Their bodies are kept permanently thin, yet they appear to suffer no ill-effects from the additional levels of the hormone.

“These people may have had high levels of pancreatic polypeptide for 10 or 15 years without showing side-effects,” said Prof Bloom. “In that sense, they have provided us with a natural experiment that suggests excess levels are safe.”

totally engorged

This article about a man's personal journey of discovery, as precipitated by a late-night Bowflex infomercial, just slayed (slew? whatever.) me.

A Better Body in 64 Payments
By STEVE FRIEDMAN
HERE'S how an infomercial works: One day life is good, and I'm munching on a sugar-coated, low-fat blueberry Pop-Tart in front of my television at 1:30 a.m., weeping quietly at Tony and Maria's first meeting in "West Side Story" because I know that staggering pain and death await them and all of humanity.

Between that moment and dawn's early light, for 20 minutes I remember only dimly, I stare slack-jawed at a television advertisement for a Bowflex home-exercise machine.

A few days later, five small-coffin-size cardboard boxes are crammed into my one-bedroom apartment, cutting off some of my favorite television viewing angles, tripping me on my late night sorties to fetch Fig Newtons from the fridge, unsettling me so much that I'm forced to add a pint of reduced-fat frozen yogurt to my Pop-Tarts, to soothe my nerves.

I call my friend Jack to complain. I do this because I blame him for my predicament. Jack is a voice-over actor who works out at a health club every morning and eats oatmeal for lunch.

A few days earlier we had been sitting at a Greek diner in the middle of the afternoon, because for the last five years neither of us has had what Jack calls "a no-win contract with the Man" and others refer to as "steady jobs."

We had been chatting about Venezuelan-style populism, Britney Spears and male-pattern hair loss. I was snacking on a cheeseburger and milkshake.

"You're Shamu," Jack said. "Don't you think you'd be happier if you'd eat like a human being instead of a tree sloth and start working out every so often?"

"I think tree sloths are vegetarians," I said.

"Who cares what tree sloths are? You're a whale! You've got to do something!"

But what? My knees are arthritic, so I can't play basketball or jog anymore. The pool at my fitness club is always crowded. It's too cold for bicycling. Sit-ups? On my hardwood floors? Why not just ask for serious spinal injury and months, if not years, of excruciating and expensive rehab.

And then I saw the Bowflex infomercial. "Pumped arms. Ripped abs. Legs of steel," it said. "Twelve pounds of muscle in six weeks," and "Results are easy, with just one simple workout, 20 minutes a day, three times a week." All for $25 a month.

Bowflex spent $16 million for paid programming on national cable channels in 2005, more than any other company spent on a piece of home exercise equipment, according to the Infomercial Monitoring Service.

I can understand why. Its message is clear and life affirming, potent and simple. I have heard similar exhortations from evangelists over the years and, more recently, from a girlfriend right before she dumped me. To wit: just because I'm an overweight, lazy, greedy, at times selfish, overeating, occasionally self-loathing and chronically underearning daydreamer, doesn't mean I'm beyond salvation.

Redemption is as easy as surrendering my will and a little cash to a higher power. Or springing for flowers and shaving more often and taking Katharine to a nice restaurant every once in a while. Or, in the case of the Bowflex, simply punching a few buttons on my telephone.

A week and a half later, after I have realized that assembling the Bowflex Xtreme 2 requires an advanced degree in biomechanics, after I have called the Bowflex folks to send someone over to put the thing together for me, and after I have learned that assembly costs an extra $200 or so that the infomercials don't mention, I open the owner's manual and fitness guide, searching for the easy-to-follow map to a world where no one will call me Shamu.

Instead, on the first page, I find this: "Please take your time to read through the entire manual before attempting to use your Bowflex Xtreme 2 home gym. You should understand how to properly set up and perform each exercise before you do so using Power Rod resistance." Slight problem: The manual is 69 pages. There are 75 different exercises. I feel a mood coming on. I fetch a few Pop-Tarts.

This isn't fair. One Bowflex magazine ad promised me "rock-hard abs, a sculpted chest, and powerful arms" as a result of exercising "just 20 minutes a day, three days a week." It didn't say anything about hours spent memorizing "success tips." And it certainly didn't mention the "Bowflex Xtreme 2 Body Leanness Program," which I found on Page 55, where I learn that "for maximum fat loss," I ought to stick to a daily diet of 1,500 calories. If I could stick to a 1,500-calorie diet, would I be sharing my living quarters with a machine that is nearly seven feet tall and looks like a mechanical octopus? I take out my fury on a pint of peanut butter cup ice cream, which I have stored for just such an emergency.

I wake the next morning filled with resolve and anticipation. I do three sets of bench presses, then seated shoulder presses, lat pull-downs and biceps curls. Afterward I am sweating a little, grunting and feeling extraordinarily fit.

"Behold the new me," I say to Jack, whom I have invited over to admire the Bowflex Xtreme 2. Jack inspects the resistance rod technology.

"I see you have it set on 'girl,' " he says.

The booklet offers seven training regimens, ranging from the 20-minute, three-day-a-week "better body workout" to the six-day-a-week, hourlong "body building" plan. I choose "advanced general conditioning," which means exercising 35 to 45 minutes, four days a week. On those days I also spend 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym. At the end of a week I have taken my belt in a notch. After two weeks I have lost five pounds. I don't wheeze quite as much on my trips for Fig Newtons. Also I now use bowflex as a participle.

"What are you up to tonight?" Jack asks one afternoon at the diner, where we are mulling over Villanova's prospects in the forthcoming college basketball season, the heavy toll globalization exacts on the poor and who is a better dancer, Christina Aguilera or Shakira.

"Not much," I say. "I'm just going to grab a salad, maybe watch a little TV, then do some bowflexin." I drop the g because I think it makes me sound more muscular.

In the middle of Week 3, when I look in the mirror, my arms are bigger and my chest and shoulders are more defined. I refer to my arms as guns now, as casually as possible and at the slightest opportunity.

"How have you been?" a magazine editor I used to date asks me when I run into her on the street one day.

"Not bad," I reply. "But the guns are kinda sore."

She frowns, pursing her lips.

"Probably because I've been doing so much bowflexin," I say.

She steps back.

I scream during my crossover high rear delt rows. (Don't ask.) I grow a goatee, which I think is slimming. I start slipping the word engorged into conversation.

"Don't you think," Jack asks one day over our afternoon coffee, "that December's a little late in the year to be wearing nothing but a T-shirt?"

"The guns need to breathe," I say.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I'm getting healthy. And speaking of health, do you have any idea how many calories are packed into a bowl of oatmeal? Maybe you ought to think about that."

"I miss the old you," Jack says. "Plus you're never going to last on that thing."

But I do. I last, and I thrive. I have worked out with free weights before, and on Cybex machines and Universal equipment. I find the Bowflex Xtreme 2 a perfectly satisfactory alternative, solid and challenging. (So do legions of Bowflex users I encountered online, who seem to find success with the Bowflex in direct proportion to how much they use it.)

Virtually every exercise I have ever done with weights, or on a machine in a gym, I can do on my Bowflex. And the power rod resistance turns out to be a rather ingenious way that the Bowflex brains have figured out to simulate weight by pulling against heavy plastic rods. So what if I have a mechanical octopus as a roommate? It's working.

True, the heavy-duty plastic mat that the Bowflex is supposed to sit upon is an "accessory" that is an additional $99. True, the "satisfaction guarantee" refund offer would entail my disassembling the Bowflex Xtreme 2, packing it into its original boxes and paying for its shipment back to Bowflex. True, the manufacturer recalled more than one million devices in 2004 after reports of broken seats and collapsed benches on its Ultimate and Power Pro models. True, the Bowflex Xtreme 2 costs $1,599.

True, when a woman I'm dating discovers that I have ordered a machine advertised on an infomercial, she says, "I don't know what your mother did to you and I don't want to know, but don't call me anymore." True, the infomercial universe is filled with companies selling belts that promise to melt away pounds while you're lounging on a couch, miracle diets that will make you slender while you're slumped at your desk and other goofy sounding, if not fraudulent, gizmos and gimcracks. Can something called a Bowflex that comes from that same universe possibly be legit?

"As long as you stress the musculature in a similar manner, it doesn't matter if you're using a Bowflex or free weights or a similar device," said Glenn A. Gaesser, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Virginia.

"The bottom line is they all work if you use them," Dr. Gaesser said, "But there's a caveat with the machines that make promises. If you work out 20 minutes, three times a week, yes, there will be a new body. But don't think it will look like a body builder or Lance Armstrong."

Keith Cinea, the senior education coordinator for the National Strength and Conditioning Association, said a better physique was part of a package deal. "It's resistance training, aerobic conditioning and your diet," he said. "Especially if you're looking at the body transformation they mention in their sales pitch, with just the machine, no, it won't work."

It won't? I need to change my diet, maybe even increase time on the elliptical trainer? This disappoints me. This makes me sad. I feel a mood coming. But I do not grab for a pint of ice cream, or reach for a box of Pop-Tarts. Those sad, fatty days are over. Shamu doesn't live here anymore. There's no room, not in my apartment. For this I salute the Bowflex Xtreme 2. As I salute, I check the mirror. The guns? Totally engorged.