This time last year I wrote one of the most detailed articles about the damage of lock-downs for Covid-19 were causing to healthy people. Little did I know a year from now our governments are still enforcing these draconian restrictions on healthy people under the direction of “keeping us safe”. At no point during this entire pandemic has the government here in Melbourne Australia made any attempt to project the importance of eating healthy foods or exercise in strengthening your body’s immune system. As far as they are concerned it is irrelevant as the vaccine is the answer we all need. This ignorance to building a strong and robust body with the population of people who are not vulnerable (mainly people under the age of 50) has created a larger population of unhealthy people. And worse still, what is starting to be seen already is the development of auto-immune problems from excessive sanitising and cleanliness. For many years this was called the “hygiene hypothesis” that was often trashed by many experts as a theory that was not backed by science. However, this topic has more recently come up again and seen recently in young children and is referred to as “immunity debt. While I appreciate measures needed to be taken to control the spread of Covid-19, it is becoming clear our governments and health officials with their narrow minded approach to health may have exposed all of us to even bigger problems to come. I hope I am wrong.
As much as I love to exercise, I know that if I don't eat well my body will not allow me to do the tough things I love to do. Getting the right amount of vitamins and minerals from our food is essential and is one thing that many people, in particular the gym junkie ignores to their own demise. If you are like me and sweat a lot then you really can deplete your body very quickly leaving several important bodily functions to be compromised. Replenishing the body with the necessary vitamins and minerals is essential if you want to remain in great health. One mineral that is easily depleted yet extremely important to our health is MAGNESIUM. In this article, we will look at why it is so vital to your health, what happens if you are deficient, why older adults are more vulnerable to deficiency, and lastly what foods to eat to meet your body’s requirements.
In my recent article about core strengthening exercises I compared the value of using isolation exercises versus integrated movements, I posed the question how much strength do your abdominal muscles really need? Based on scientific research by McGill the answer to this question was on average about 10% of maximal voluntary contraction. The ability to fire first and maintain endurance of the core muscles for long periods was of more importance than the overall strength of the abdominal muscles. When you consider how many people devote considerable time to improving their abdominal strength via planks, sit-ups, roll-outs, and various other exercises the question I now have is can you have too much strength? For most muscle groups more strength is a good thing, but is this the same for the core? For as we discussed in the previous article, these muscles are not designed to function the same way and as you will see shortly, sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.