Migratory birds, it seems, instinctively understand the link between food, health, and physical performance.
During other times of the year, migratory birds eat primarily insects and seeds. During migration, however, they eat deeply colored berries.
Why the change? Deeply colored berries are loaded with antioxidants, which have been shown in animals and humans to negate the oxidation exacerbated by bad diet, environmental pollution, and physical exertion.
Oxidation creates the inflammation that can lead to aging and disease.
One of the things I love about writing a health-and-fitness column is reading what could be called out-of-the-blue research. For instance, who would've thought that yawning was a sign of anything other than fatigue or boredom?
But many now believe that the primary function of yawning is to increase alertness and better absorb information by cooling the brain.
In order to regain the 24 pounds of weight I lost during a rather serious bout of infectious mononucleosis at the start of my junior year in high school a weight gain my doctor decided was essential in order for me to participate in the upcoming basketball season he gave me this advice: End each day by downing a pint of ice cream.
Talk about total teenage bliss. And a potential malpractice suit.
We prefer fast food. They prefer good food which leads to better health. How else can you interpret the numbers used by Peg Moline, in her Editor's Letter in the June issue of Natural Health?
"The U.S. uses 16 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for health care and Americans spend just under 6 percent of their income on food," she writes. "In contrast, Europeans spend as much as 18 percent on food and just 8.6 percent on health care."
Score one for truth in advertising. Even if the gap between the truth and the ad spanned 19 years.
And the commercial lacked specifics.
The 1991 version of the "Milk, it does a body good" television commercials shows a well-built young man drinking milk and holding a remote. As he tells you that "Milk is sure helping me to get stronger," he plays a video clip of himself from when he started high school and two kids pushed him around, "just because I was smaller."
But then he explains that he has been working out, drinking milk, and developing muscles.
The original discovery in 2009 was so significant that the researchers all became Nobel Laureates. What they determined was the tiny pieces of DNA at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres had a job similar to aglets, the plastic or metal sheaths at the ends of a shoelace.
In the same way aglets keep laces from fraying as they are pushed through a shoe's eyelets, telomeres keep the active ends of chromosomes from being exposed.
I'd like to think that each week this column is chocked full of good advice and an equal measure of something else.
Hope.
And because of this, I hope that you come to see your health-and-fitness failings as I see mine: as patterns or habits that can almost always be altered by a combination of information, common sense, and resourcefulness.
There is no Nutrient Partitioning lobby, so I can't be in their back pocket. It's just that when a weekly health-and-fitness columnist argues for readers to construct their diet around those principles way three times in four weeks that's the conclusion you could reach.
But I had no intention of writing about nutrient partitioning again today. Honestly.
Marcus Aurelius, The Roman emperor better known as a Stoic philosopher, is credited with saying, "It is a wise man that learns one thing from another."
Now that doesn't mean only wise men have the ability to assess one situation and apply it elsewhere. It means you become wise at least momentarily anytime you recognize the similarities in things and act accordingly.
