… or a more closer look on the other side of  the coin

Isn’t it amazing how science and its view on the body changes over the years, decades and centuries. Just to give you some examples: Neurones and nerve tissue were considered to be without any potential for regeneration, the muscle cell was coined as a cell without abilities to multiply and adapt, and adipose tissue still has got this negative flavor of being a burden (aesthetic view) and health hazard (medicinal view) only. Fashion on the one hand and medicine on the other hand stand for these extreme positions.
And now the breaking news: Adipose tissue is an endocrine and immunologically highly active organ. Some of you may know already that the adipocytes are producing and secreting a broad spectrum of soluble mediators that engaged in the regulation of appetite and weight. But what may be brand new to all of us who are not specifically involved in this topic of research, may be the fact that adipose tissue connects the immune system with metabolism, an interesting aspect for athletes by the way, who in many ways got a quite hysterical attitude towards fat. Fat is still seen as an inactive mass of cells that we need as energy supply in austere times only.

And now science comes in, and everything should be different? Yes, it is. More and more scientists realize, that  the body is one functional unit, and so, fat is an integral part of it. Very recent scientific data suggest that adipose tissue secretes a wide variety of hormones and proteins that regulate whole body homeostasis (balance) involving nearly all organs and cells. Scientists discovered molecular pathways that connect the adipose tissue with the immune system, and vice versa. they found out, that so many active molecules that have been assigned to the immune system only are secreted by adipocytes too. Nice to observe for me that step by step scientists who themselves erected the walls within the body are tearing them down themselves realizing that the borders they were defining are artificial, not applicable and suitable to explain the phenomenon body. Now walls have been destroyed between the nervous system and the immune system the process has expanded to the adipose tissue. Maybe fat is getting more positive attention soon.

I am not talking about obesity in this article. I want create awareness and address to those who want to be lean and perform on top level. To talk about the disease-inducing aspects of obesity is of course very important and has to do with the interdependency between body fat and immune system as well. Obesity is pushing the body into an inflammatory condition with a sincere consequence for the vessels and the body’s metabolic situation (diabetes-2 etc.). But now back to physiology, and details on pathophysiology another time.

Adipose tissue is directly connected with innate immunity, it is involved in all inflammatory and healing processes.
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Endurance sports are very trendy and, so is triathlon for example. But how do we all who are busy all day long achieve the training volumes of 12 to 14 hours per week, a minimum that is assumed necessary to race a long distance triathlon race or a marathon? There are different approaches to what is considered efficient training. Some of the elite athletes are convinced that long training cycles are necessary to get into good form, while others favor qualitatively high-intensity training sessions. The proof of concept is still missing, because there are athletes in either group who are successful, as there are those who are not.

In my opinion, here we stumble into the same troubles as everywhere, if we want to define one rule for everybody. I know athletes who train comparatively very little and achieve a lot. Whether this is a concept for everyone is not known, I myself. I doubt it. But there are studies on the way supporting high-intensity interval training. I have digged one that indicates that high-intensity interval training may compensate up to certain extent for long training session of low intensity around 65% V02 max.

It is an exciting perspective reading that 2.5 hours sprint units at ca 90% Vo2 max per week compared to 10.5 hours low-intensity running may be as efficient in outcome. (more…)

Sports are dominated by all kinds of machinery that measure body parameters to improve and control performance. More and more devices are construed to give more and more detailed information about our body’s condition. Nevertheless body sense is a term that in the end always comes into the game if parameters are not conclusive, and in many ways they are not.
I found an article in the Psychology Today Blog that underlines the importance of the body sense and the ability to assess the condition of well-being. It goes very much along with an article I myself wrote about this topic, and may encourage you to a less structured training program that takes the body sense more into consideration.

One of the sentences that athletes and coaches love to say is: “The most important thing you can do to recover quickly is to listen to your body. If you are feeling tired, sore or notice decreased performance you may need more recovery time or a break from training altogether. If you are feeling strong the day after a hard workout, you don’t have to force yourself to go slow. If you pay attention, in most cases, your body will let you know what it needs, when it needs it.”

The problem for many of us is that we don’t listen to the warnings of overreaching or over-training as there are general malaise, fatigue, mood instability, lack of motivation, loss of appetite, fragmented sleep, delayed muscle soreness, disturbed body temperature regulation etc… or that we are misinterpreting body signs.

The good thing about this post is that it brings body sense into the loop of understanding exercise physiology. Body sense herewith is accepted as a biological and not only psychological phenomenon. We know a lot about metabolism and muscle during and after exercise but less focus is placed on how exercise feels in our bodies. Learning to feel the body during any type of activity enhances the body’s ability to most effectively marshal its resources to enhance health and well being.

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Biestmilch enthält eine Reihe wichtiger Wachstumsfaktoren und eine sehr große Konzentration an Immunfaktoren. Diese Beobachtung hat dazu geführt, Biestmilch/Colostrum bei Menschen einzusetzen, bei denen unterschiedliche im Rahmen von Immunfunktionsstörungen deregulierte Immun-Prozesse vorliegen. Eine große Anzahl an Studienergebnissen belegt einstweilen, dass Biestmilch/Colostrum das Potenzial besitzt, regulierend in vorhandene Störungen der Immunität einzugreifen.  Auch die Funtkionsmechanismen, wie das geschieht, werden zunehmend klarer.
Zu den bisher relativ systematisch untersuchten Bereichen zählen die Behandlung von Darminfektionen, die Unterbindung gastrointestinaler Schäden durch nicht-steroidale Antirrheumatika (NSAID) wie beispielsweise Diclofenac und die Reduktion von Infektionen des oberen Respirationstraktes. Dies sind allesamt für Athleten mit hohem Trainingsaufwand relevante Anwendungsbereiche.
In jüngster Zeit wurde Biestmilch/Colostrum zunehmend eingesetzt, um bestehende, wenngleich mit einem konventionellen Immunstatus schwer nachweisbare Störungen der Immunität bei Athleten zu kompensieren. Wichtig ist in diesem Zusammenhang zu wissen, dass eine Stabilisierung der Immunfunktionen in jedem Fall mit einer Leistungssteigerung und einer verbesserten Regeneration einhergeht. Unsere Erfahrung aus den letzten 10 Jahren bestätigt diese wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse eindrücklich. (more…)