Reducing the Risk of Cancer Through the Addition of Brussel Sprouts to Your Diet

Recently, the World Health Organization classified red meat as a probable human carcinogen.  The University of Oxford did a study of 500,000 men and women aged 40-69 from 2006-2010 and found that participants who ate four servings of red meat a week were 42 percent more likely to develop colorectal cancer than those who had one serving or none at all.  Participants who ate red meat at least twice a week were 18 percent more likely to develop this type of cancer than vegetarians.

What is a person to do?  According to Dr. Paul Talalay at Johns Hopkins University, eating broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts will reduce your risk of cancer.  Dr. Talalay directs the Laboratory for Molecular Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins, which in 1992 discovered the cancer risk reducing properties of sulforaphane glucosinolate.  This compound is found primarily in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, kale, cabbage and brussels sprouts. 

Sulforaphane has a potent anti-cancer effect and may have a role in the treatment of several types of cancer as well as numerous other anti-inflammatory and health-protective benefits. Sulforaphane is a sulfur compound which has been shown to kill cancer stem cells, thereby slowing tumor growth. Some researchers believe eliminating cancer stem cells may be the key to controlling cancer. Small human studies have shown that sulforphane may actually suppress the growth of tumor cells in several different kinds of cancer. The compound has been studied in breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer with promising results.

Broccoli sprouts, actually three day old sprouts, have between 10 and 100 times the amount the amount of sulforphane as mature broccoli and cauliflower.  By ingesting just a few ounces of broccoli sprouts on a daily basis offered significant activation of the phase II enzyme system, a person would have to eat close to two pounds of broccoli a day to get the same benefit.  Phase Ii enzymes are among the most potent defenders against damage in our bodies.

According to the Annals of Oncology, present analysis confirms that cruciferous vegetables have a beneficial role on the risk of various common cancers, in particular, those of the upper digestive tract, colorectum, breast, and kidney.  As Dr. Talalay  stated, people should eat a wide variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables, to get maximum disease-fighting bang from their grocery bucks.  Just remember to get the best bang for your buck, add three day old sprouts to your diet to reduce the risk of a variety of cancers, including those suspected of being caused by your eating of red meat.

Looking for Cost Effective Promotions for your Fitness Business? Here are the 5 Best Returns on Investment

Find the best value for your marketing dollars, especially for the small gym owner without a large advertising budget is a great challenge.  I know because I owned two medium sized gyms in South Carolina for a number of years. Below are five ways that I found  that will prove to be cost effective and effectively promote your gym business.

1. Get to know your local newspaper. If you are just opening your business, go and introduce yourself to a reporter.  Depending on the size of the newspaper, you may even meet the editor.  Talk with the local business reporter and let them know you are opening a new business and ask them to do a piece on your business.  They are usually searching for ideas to do articles.  If you are an established business, go back and reintroduce yourself.  Ask the reporters if they would be interested in news releases you may send them about member accomplishments, such as: weight loss, strength competitions, or race results.  Send them these press releases as often as you can to keep your name and business in front of them and their readers.  Press releases cost you nothing.  They are free advertisements so build good relationships with your local press.
2. Not only do people love free stuff but they really love to feel like they are getting a value added experience.  You need to show your members that you are genuinely concerned about their health and fitness.  In today’s super competitive market you have to separate yourself from the competition.  This is a great way to build solid customer relationships which, in turn, builds customer loyalty.  So when your newest competitor moves in, you don't lose your client base.  You can offer free personal training sessions to help the novice gym member feel comfortable in this new environment.  The more comfortable they feel, the more loyal they become.  Nutritional counseling is a great value-added service.  These two services pave the way for you to introduce them to paid personal training sessions.  The old standby remains strong – the free t-shirt or, as I like to say, the walking, talking billboard for your business.  
3. An inexpensive but time consuming enterprise is the flyer campaign. I personally put out over 10,000 flyers in the community in which one of my gyms was located.  I drove around on four consecutive Sunday afternoons with my son and put them in all of the individual home paper boxes we could find.  We did this every 3 months for the first two years we were open.  Make sure that the flyers have a catchy picture and phrase on them with an incentive to join with a deadline.  Make sure all of the essentials are on the flyer, name, address, phone number, time staffed and a map of your location.
4. Social media is growing in importance each day, probably better stated by the minute. Establish profiles, pages, and feeds to help build your brand online.  It is mostly free and yes, time consuming, but well worth your efforts.  To be blunt, your business will not make it without a strong social media program.  Websites, Facebook, blogs, newsletters, twitter, whatever is next; you need to be on it. This is how new members will be looking for you.
5. Look for the WOW! You have to find a way to give your members a WOW experience.  It begins with a real, caring customer experience.  Let the gym down the street treat their members as a number, but you make sure that you and your employees never do.  Go out of your way to help them, whether it is answering a question about a workout program, how to use a machine, showing them a new way to use a piece of equipment or helping them get their keys out of the car they just locked them in.  You may be asking: what am I going to get out of all this bending over backwards for my clients? The answer is: the best advertisement you can get the entire time you are in business and one that no amount of advertising dollars will ever get for you.  It is golden.  It is called Word of Mouth.  It is the most potent form of advertising known.  Going above and beyond what is required will not only separate you from your competition but it will earn you the trust and loyalty of your clients.  They in turn will reward you with the best advertisement known in the industry.

Using the 10-20-30 Method to Improve Performance

As a former gym owner, I am always interested in learning about new and innovative exercise models. When I opened Anytime Fitness in Lancaster, SC, I wanted to provide additional opportunities to meet the needs of the community so that they they can improve their exercise training, whether they were marathon runners or casual gym-goers. 

In a recently published article in the Journal of Applied Physiology,  a new workout called “30-20-10 training” (or 10-20-30) has shown significant results among moderately trained runners who followed the training for just 7 weeks. They improved their 5K times by four percent, dropping from 23:03 to 22:16.

The workouts not only appear to be performance-enhancing, but more importantly for the health conscious individual looking to improve their health, has shown the ability to lower blood pressure and LDL cholesterol. 

The study measured actual performance of eighteen moderately trained subjects (12 men and 6 women) which improved quite dramatically. The 30-20-10 runners, also lowered their 1500 meter times by six percent, from 6:09 to 5:49. They did this while decreasing their weekly training mileage by 50 percent.

Here’s how to do a 30-20-10 workout.

1. Warm up with easy jogging for about a mile. (The studied runners warmed up for just ¾ mile.)
2. Jog for 30 seconds, run normal training pace for 20 seconds, and sprint for 10 seconds. Immediately repeat this cycle four more times, producing one continuous five-minute repeat.
3. Jog for two minutes. Then repeat step 2 two or three more times. (The subjects in the JAP study did 3 x 5-minutes for the first four weeks, and 4 x 5-minutes for the next three weeks.)
4. Cool down with easy jogging for about a mile.

The researchers concluded: “Training with 10-second speed intervals can have a major impact on performance.” Also: “The 30-20-10 training led to reduced resting systolic blood pressure and blood cholesterol, suggesting a better health profile for already trained subjects.”

The Importance of Staying Hydrated, Especially During Winter

Most people who exercise in the summer months readily recognize the importance of staying hydrated due to the amount of sweat they are producing simply by being outside – especially in the humidity of the south, such as North and South Carolina. Simply stated – most of us think of dehydration as a summer problem. To compensate, we simply drink more water and our diet usually consists of more water-rich vegetables and fruits. We also tend to work out in an air-conditioned gym instead of outside. 

With the winter months soon upon us, people need to remember that it is just as easy to become dehydrated during this time of year. The reason it is so important to stay hydrated is due to water being vital to both organ function and digestion. Water carries nutrients and oxygen throughout the body, controls blood pressure and helps in the lubrication of joints. Water is needed by the brain to manufacture hormones and neurotransmitters, regulates body temperature, acts as a shock absorber for the brain and spinal cord, and allows the body’s cells to grow, reproduce and survive.

When we become dehydrated, our blood becomes thicker, causing the heart to work harder. It is easy for the body to become dehydrated because they body without exercise loses about eight cups of water a day. This water needs to be replenished. According to Dr. Jeffrey Utz, Neuroscience, Allegheny University, different people have different percentages of their bodies made up of water. In adult men, about 60 % of their bodies are made-up of water. Adult women, on the other hand, have more body fat than men — their bodies are comprised of about 55% water.

With the cold of winter soon upon us, we need to be aware of the dangers of dehydration. We may not notice the amount of water loss due to perspiration as we do in the summer, but just through normal daily activities water is being lost from our bodies and it is imperative that we replenish this vital liquid.

Understanding a Safe School Environment

As a Director of Safety and Security for a school district with seventeen schools, a major concern is the possibility of an active shooter gaining entrance into one of our facilities. 

As we plan, prepare and practice for any type of emergency situation, it is important to know as much as possible about the type of individual we may be dealing with.  It is also very important to understand, from a statistical standpoint, how often these types of situations are occurring in our nation’s schools. 

In a publication by the Federal Bureau of Investigation entitled, “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013,” the FBI identified 160 active shooter incidents that occurred in the U.S. between 2000 and 2013. During these incidents, 486 were killed and 557 wounded, resulting in 1,043 casualties.  The shooters were not included in this total. 

On average the United States has had 11.4 incidents annually, although the last seven years and has seen the average rise to 16.4 incidents.  70% of these incidents have occurred in either commerce/business or educational environments.  These active shooter tragedies have happened in 40 of 50 states and the District of Columbia.  School personnel should be aware that 60% of the incidents ended before police arrived.

The majority of the 160 incidents (90) ended on the shooter’s initiative - sometimes when the shooter committed suicide or stopped shooting, and other times when the shooter fled the scene.  In other incidents, it was a combination of actions by citizens and/or law enforcement that ended the shootings.  In 41% of the incidents, citizen engagement or the shooter committing suicide ended the shooting at the scene before law enforcement arrived.   In eleven of the active shooter incidents, unarmed principals, teachers, other school staff and students confronted the shooter to end the threat.

The study’s results indicated that the second most common incident locations were in educational environments and of most concern to schools, these incidents involved some of the highest casualty numbers.

The study did not focus on the motivation of the shooters; the study did identify some shooter characteristics.  In all but 2 of the incidents, the shooters choose to act alone.  Only 6 female shooters were identified.  12 of the 14 shooters in high school shootings were students at the schools, and 5 of the 6 shooters at middle schools were students at the schools.

The study helps to clarify the environment with regard to both the level of risk schools face and the speed with which the active shooter incidents occur.  A majority of the incidents ended on the shooter’s initiative before police arrived.  In 64 incidents where the duration of the incident could be ascertained, 4 ended in 5 minutes or less, with 23 ending in 2 minutes or less.

It is vitally important that school personnel recognize the increased active shooter threat and the swiftness with which active shooter incidents unfold.  The study supports the importance of training and exercise within our school community.  It is important that the training and exercises include not only an understanding of the threats faced but also the risks and options available.

An Open Letter to My Adopted Home, South Carolina

For the last few years, I've watched Lancaster, South Carolina flourish -- as many people from the Charlotte area are getting a taste of what South Carolina has to offer. I am a Tennessean by birth but have lived in a number of southern states besides Tennessee; Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina; and Louisiana.  In fact, my wife was living in the New Orleans area during Katrina and I joined her there shortly after the storm.  I witnessed the destruction of the Gulf Coast from Katrina and the reaction of many of the people in New Orleans. 

Like the rest of our nation, I have also  witnessed the reaction to civil unrest in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. Seeing these event transpire on television and the reactions that have followed, it is with great pride that I now find myself a resident of the great state of South Carolina and the ever greater people who populate this state. 

As everyone knows and remembers, South Carolina has had more than its share of tragedies in the last 7 months.  It began in April, when a white police officer shot and killed a black man who was fleeing from him.  The police officer said he stopped the black man for a broken tail light.  The white police officer is in jail without bond and charged with murder.  The citizens of North Charleston, South Carolina did not riot, burn businesses, assault anyone, or commit violent acts toward their own citizens.  They displayed their anger towards injustice, as we all should, when someone in authority commits an indescribable act toward one of their citizens. 

The citizens of North Charleston let our justice system lead the way.  They did not use this act as an excuse compound the pain and create other criminal acts. They should be commended for their restraint and belief in their elected officials to carry out the right action.

On June 17, a young white male went to a historically black church under the auspicious of joining in a bible study group.  He was received with open arms by the pastor of the church, a black man.  At the conclusion of the study, the young man opened fire.  He killed nine black parishioners including the pastor who had welcomed him to the study group.  After the agressor's capture, it was learned by his own confession that he was attempting to start a race war.  It didn’t work. 

Instead, the community came together, all races, to pray and console one another.  In place of  chaos, a mass show of support for this loss of life,which spanned the Charleston Bridge, instead occurred along with prayer vigils. Once again, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, did not burn, assault, kidnap, kill, or destroy.  No, they came together to mourn the loss of their own.

Then the October flooding hit areas of South Carolina from Columbia to Charleston.  19 people lost their lives along with millions of dollars in property.  The people of South Carolina have once again risen to the occasion in supporting one another through this tragedy, along with the grateful assistance of neighboring states.  And once again, the great citizens of South Carolina did not cause any civil unrest.  They did not loot, destroy, or assault their fellow South Carolinians in this time of need.  They came together, neighbor helping neighbor. 

For these reasons, I’m so proud of the great state of South Carolina and the people who call it home.