BOO HOO the FLU!

It is global, It’s in the United States, It’s here in California, It’s here amidst all of us. Many of you have already been stricken by variants, swine or otherwise, by this icky bug.

We at TRAIN are highly cognizant of our need to be extra vigilant in our highly trafficked environment. We are taking extra measures such as extra swabbing of surfaces, equipment and mats with alcohol and virucides. We are providing a plentiful supply of hand sanitizers, posting signs of flu awareness and admonishing our staff to stay home at the first sign of illness. Let’s all wash our hands more often, take our vitamins and stay healthy.

So if you look and feel like this guy, we don’t want to see you! If you are sick, please stay home and get your much needed rest.

Wash Your Hands!

Reprinted from the New York Times
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: September 14, 2009

It sounds so simple as to be innocuous, a throwaway line in public-health warnings about swine flu. But one of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase you first heard from your mother: wash your hands.

A host of recent studies have highlighted the importance and the scientific underpinning of this most basic hygiene measure. One of the most graphic was done at the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers focused video cameras on 10 college students as they read and typed on their laptops.

The scientists counted the times the students touched their faces, documenting every lip scratch, eye rub and nose pick. On average, the students touched their eyes, noses and lips 47 times during a three-hour period, once every four minutes. Hand-to-face contact has a surprising impact on health. Germs can enter the body through breaks in the skin or through the membranes of the eyes, mouth and nose.

The eyes appear to be a particularly vulnerable port of entry for viral infections, said Mark Nicas, a professor of environmental health sciences at Berkeley. Using mathematical models, Dr. Nicas and colleagues estimated that in homes, schools and dorms, hand-to-face contact appears to account for about one-third of the risk of flu infection, according to a report this month in the journal Risk Analysis.

In one study of four residence halls at the University of Colorado, two of the dorms had hand sanitizer dispensers installed in every dorm room, bathroom and dining area, and students were given educational materials about the importance of hand hygiene. The remaining two dorms were used as controls, and researchers simply monitored illness rates.

During the eight-week study period, students in the dorms with ready access to hand sanitizers had a third fewer complaints of coughs, chest congestion and fever. Over all, the risk of getting sick was 20 percent lower in the dorms where hand hygiene was emphasized, and those students missed 43 percent fewer days of school.

Young children benefit, too. In a study of 6,000 elementary school students in California, Delaware, Ohio and Tennessee, students in classrooms with hand sanitizers had 20 percent fewer absences due to illness. Teacher absenteeism in those schools dropped 10 percent.

Better hand hygiene also appears to make a difference in the home, lowering the risk to other family members when one child is sick. Harvard researchers studied nearly 300 families who had children 5 or younger in day care. Half the families were given a supply of hand sanitizer and educational materials; the other half were left to practice their normal hand washing habits.

In homes with hand sanitizers, the risk of catching a gastrointestinal illness from a sick child dropped 60 percent compared with the control families. The two groups did not differ in rates of respiratory illness rates, but families with the highest rates of sanitizer use had a 20 percent lower risk of catching such an illness from a sick child.

Regular soap and water and alcohol-based hand sanitizers are both effective in eliminating the H1N1 virus from the hands. In February, researchers in Australia coated the hands of 20 volunteers with copious amounts of a seasonal H1N1 flu virus. The concentration of virus was equivalent to the amount that would occur when an infected person used a hand to wipe a runny nose.

When the subjects did not wash their hands, large amounts of live virus remained even after an hour, said the lead author, Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, a professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne. But using soap and water or a sanitizer virtually eliminated the presence of the virus.

Frequent hand washing will not eliminate risk. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, a bystander might be splattered by large droplets or may inhale airborne particles. In a recent Harvard study of hand sanitizer use in schools, hand hygiene practices lowered risk for gastrointestinal illness but not upper respiratory infections.

Still, it is a good idea to wash your hands regularly even if you’re not in contact people who are obviously ill. In a troubling finding, a recent study of 404 British commuters found that 28 percent had fecal bacteria on their hands. In one city, 57 percent of the men sampled had contaminated hands, according to the study, which was published this month in the journal Epidemiology and Infection.

“We were surprised by the high level of contamination,” said Gaby Judah, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Ms. Judah added that many of the contaminated commuters reported that they had washed their hands that morning. They may have been embarrassed to admit they hadn’t washed, or they may have picked up the bacteria on their hands during their commute.

For all those reasons, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with other health organizations around the world, urge frequent hand washing with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizers. (They also repeat some advice you may not have heard from your mother: cough or sneeze into the crook of your elbow, not your bare hands.)

And as hospitals put stricter hand hygiene programs in place, absentee rates during cold and flu season also drop.

“Statistically, you can’t determine a causal relationship, but it’s very suggestive,” said Dr. Neil O. Fishman, infectious disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Our vaccination rates remained relatively stable, so what else changed? The only thing different was that hand hygiene rates increased.”

Fitness, Diet & Lifestyle Tips

By Zen Gray

As a fitness and lifestyle coach for over sixteen years, I’ve noticed some keys to successful living and it’s not as hard as you think! Little changes can go a long way to improving your health and happiness. Here are just a few tips to get you started:

1. Get a Personal Trainer
Obviously, I’m a little biased. But a personal trainer will keep you on track and make sure you are doing proper form so you don’t get injured-especially important if you are juststarting a workout regimen.

2. Measure
Before starting a program, you have to know your current state of fitness. Take measurements, do before pictures, and do body fat measurements. It’s fun to make yourself look as bad as you can in the before picture (i.e. no makeup, scowl, stick out your belly, make your hair really messy!)

3. Keep a food diary
If you can’t meet with a certified nutritionist, you can still be aware of food patterns. Write down what you eat, how much, and when. Then see where you can make improvements.

4. Keep a water bottle with you throughout the day
Most of my clients drink more water if they use a water bottle. I love to keep bottles of water in the car and whenever I’m driving, it’s easy to reach back and grab one. Read more

Dealing With Your Vices

By Zen Gray

In my all experience as a fitness professional, I’ve never some across one person that doesn’t have a vice. Usually it’s one of the following: sugar, alcohol, caffeine, salt, or just plain portion size. If you nodded your head to one of those, just know you’re not alone.

Personally, my vice is sugar. In the past, I felt like I had a dysfunctional love/hate relationship with sugar. But I’ve learned to control it with a strategy that lets me look forward to enjoying carrot cake without feeling guilty about it.

If you want to live a healthy and happy life, I think you’ve got to develop some flexible rules for yourself regarding your food. And you have to start with loving yourself. Stop beating yourself up each time you may “slip” in your diet because life will happen. Celebrations will happen. And giving up by saying, “Well, my office/spouse/friend/co-worker/children won’t let me eat more healthy food so I guess I’ll just have to be I’m unsatisfied with my health and my appearance…” is NOT the answer. You’ll get a little pleasure by indulging in those vices with the excuse that it’s someone else’s fault… but ultimately you will feel more pain by not developing a healthy strategy to deal with them.

First thing you need to do is to write down why indulging in those vices is harmful to you. What will happen 5, 10 or 20 years down the road if you DON’T change your eating habits? You really need to make this association painful. Get disturbed! Read more

Why Pregnant Mothers Must Exercise

By Tanya C. Evans

Prior to “Modern Medicine” no one had a problem with pregnant mothers being active. Families’ socio economical status and lifestyle would have prevented many moms-to-be from being sedentary. “Prevalence of the Victorian view, fear of malpractice, and unscientific assumptions encouraged doctors for many years to advise women to put their feet up for nine months.” says Dr. Raul Artal, professor of the Department of Ob/Gyn at SUNI Health Science Center at Syracuse, NY. “But with the exercise boom of the 80’s, questions started coming up about working out while pregnant” he says. Frustrations were felt both by the medical community, athletes, coaches and active women by the “old” restrictive guidelines of ‘84. Inpatient with the very restrictive low levels of exercise, that women were “allowed” to do, scientists started to examine pregnant women at much higher than recommended levels of exercise intensity. The new studies are coming out in favor of active moms. Read more

Exercise and Overtraining: What Every Athlete Should Know

Although many Americans suffer the negative effects of overly sedentary lifestyles and desperately need to begin a balanced and appropriate fitness and nutrition program, a surprisingly significant number of well-intentioned and seriously committed recreational athletes (an estimated 10 percent of the American adult population, according to the American Council on Exercise) suffer from overtraining syndrome. Overtraining can be defined as prolonged exercise volume and/or intensity beyond the body’s ability to sufficiently recover, causing performance impairment and stagnation, also known as ‘plateauing.’ Read more

The SKINNY on FATS – Manage the fats in your diet

by Lorenzo Watermark

We Need Fat – Oh Yeah

tFat has a some what undeserved bad rap: let’s set the record STR8 – you need fat in your diet. Only fat can preform some very important functions: * Some important nutrients can only be absorbed with the help of fat: vitamins A. E, D and K * Fat is used in connective tissue throughout the body * Fat aids in building out healthy skin and Hair

The Good VS Bad – Fat ThrowDown

The issue is more then unsaturated fat, the good guys VS saturated Fats, the bad guys. Some saturated fats are really good for you, like – coconut oil and butter. More importantly it is how the fats are processed or not processed. Hydrogenated oils or processed oils are the real culprits, a lot of good stuffed is destroyed in the processing like vitamin E. Natural fats in moderation are the ticket to good health and being satisfied when you eat.