Being sore after an active day or workout is a common experience for most of us. If you can believe it, medical professionals and researchers are still trying to figure out what actually causes muscle soreness. One popular theory is that microtears are created when you strain your muscles. Those microtears cause the pain that we associate with soreness.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is the soreness you develop between 12 and 24 hours after a new activity, but not during the exercise itself. While painful, DOMS is not dangerous.

DOMS usually goes away on its own, and there aren’t a lot of safe medical treatments for DOMS symptoms. In particular, the anti-inflammatory drugs a doctor may prescribe should not be used for long.

Fortunately, other remedies are available, and there is good research behind them!

Magnesium has been proven to help with symptoms and recovery after exercise, though it has only been studied on a short-term basis. Here are two studies demonstrating a significant benefit when magnesium was added to the subject’s diet: Study A and Study B.

In this study, saffron was found to be highly effective in treating DOMS symptoms. Those who took a 300 mg supplement of saffron were able to continue to exercise and recover faster than those who received the placebo. More studies are needed, but there is more about saffron later in this email.

What is the best (and cheapest) way to recover from DOMS symptoms? Move more (low intensity is fine). A long walk or swim may help if you are struggling with soreness.

Important note: Please pay attention if your DOMS symptoms last more than a week or are painful rather than sore, and reach out to a healthcare professional if necessary.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Recently, I found a group of studies that focused on the link between disordered eating in young people and vegetarian/vegan diets. Because we are seeing an increase in disordered eating, this is a topic worthy of discussion.

To start, let’s define terms:

Disordered eating, in this study, is any type of eating that restricts calories to under the bare minimum of what is considered healthy. It is almost always done without the help of a dietitian or doctor. Anorexia is an example of disordered eating.

Vegetarianism is the practice of not eating meat. For the purposes of this discussion, when I say vegetarianism, I am including vegetarianism and all its various derivatives (including veganism which forbids animal byproducts as well).

Here is something shocking: In 20 different study groups with over a total of 14,300 subjects, researchers found a significant link between disordered eating and vegetarianism.

While a strong correlation was found, researchers stopped short of saying that vegetarianism is in itself disordered eating. This is clearly not true; many people stay healthy on a vegetarian diet.

But, at a minimum, there is evidence that a lot of young people in particular who are choosing vegetarianism need more guidance because they are simply not eating enough. Remember that vegetarian foods in general tend to be low-calorie, and a large number of foods that are high in calories are not vegetarian-friendly.

Now, here is another more troubling hypothesis: some young people who struggle with disordered eating may be using vegetarianism as an excuse to explain why they may be refusing foods.

What do we take away from this? Here are some thoughts:

• If you are a vegetarian, make sure you are consuming enough high-calorie foods to hit your minimum caloric intake (1600-2000 calories/day). Remember that calories are not bad; in fact, they are a  measurement of energy.
• If you have children or other loved ones who are vegetarian, check up on them in a loving way to make sure they are getting the calories they need.
• If you have children who are vegetarian, be on alert for signs that they may be using vegetarianism to cover up a deeper problem like anorexia.

What you should not take away from this study is that vegetarianism is bad in itself or constitutes disordered eating. Remember that correlation does not equal causation.

If you wonder how many calories you should be consuming a day, try this handy calculator.

Photo by Magdalena Raczka on Unsplash

Many are writing about gut health these days, and I am going to jump on that train too. Let’s talk about what gut health really is and how you can make your gut healthier.

Remember that gut health is complicated, and I am not prescribing blanket solutions for all gut problems. Listen to your body, stay balanced, and take this advice (along with all other advice) as a suggestion.

Gut health refers to the state of your digestive system. This system is responsible for two things:

* Absorbing what your body needs
* Removing what your body doesn’t

While these two jobs seem simple, there is a lot that can go wrong, especially in the arena of bacteria. Your whole digestive tract contains a collection of bacteria, but that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, this bacteria is critically important, and your collection of bacteria is called your microbiome.

The key thing to know about your microbiome is that it needs to be balanced. There are many different kinds of bacteria (some good and some bad). You need lots of different strains of bacteria in the body.

Many things can contribute to what is happening in your microbiome, but there are two ways in particular that people try to control the balance: antibiotics (which are supposed to target/eliminate bad bacteria) and probiotics (which are supposed to replenish good bacteria).

Antibiotics do their job and have saved millions of lives, but often at the expense of eliminating good bacteria as well as bad bacteria, which creates an imbalance in the gut. The typical American diet does not help promote healthy bacteria either.

For these two reasons, probiotics are extremely popular. Probiotic capsules contain billions of good bacteria CFUs (colony forming units).

We sell probiotics of course, and the choices can be overwhelming. Check out this video from Greg where he discusses what you should be looking for when choosing a probiotic.

While probiotics can be very useful, bacteria is not the only gut health factor you should be concerned with. According to John Hopkins, when trying to improve your gut health, getting enough sleep, managing stress, and moving more are just as important as your diet.

That being said, your diet should have a healthy amount of fiber and good bacteria. Foods like Greek yogurt and kefir are chock full of natural probiotics. In general, fermented foods are rich sources of healthy bacteria.

But, if fermented foods aren’t your favorite, as this study shows, probiotics are a proven way to relieve gut issues and support a healthy change in microbiomes.

Photo by Jannis Brandt on Unsplash

I saw an article this week that detailed the sad story of a woman who took Ozempic for weight loss. Initially, things went great, and she lost a great deal of weight. However, when her price for the drug went higher, she had to quit taking it and gained all the weight back plus an additional 15 lbs.

Because we sell nutritional supplements, you probably expect me to get on an anti-pharmacy soapbox and say “I told you so.”

I am not going to do that.

I have not seen evidence that drugs like Ozempic are overly harmful in themselves. In fact, they are usually just appetite suppressants. Appetite suppressants help lower calorie intake, and that is a good thing. We sell appetite suppressants here too.

As an aside, I want to point you to this video I recorded a few months ago. It discusses the different categories of weight loss products and how they work. While it is fairly lengthy at 25 minutes, it may help you if you are in weight loss mode and considering supplements or drugs.

Back to Ozempic, here is my general thought: Ozempic does what it is supposed to do, but it cannot rewire the mind, and it cannot create the habits and discipline needed to change eating behavior once the drug usage is stopped.

In short, Ozempic is designed to only work when you are taking it. I am not saying that in a derogatory way; the same is true of our appetite suppressants too. It is pretty much true of every category of weight loss products.

This is why, while I talk a lot about weight loss here, I don’t talk much about the weight loss products we sell. I see weight loss products as a small part of the equation. Essentially, they can help you lose weight faster to get to your target weight faster. That is a positive thing; use appetite suppressants with my blessing, whether pharmaceuticals or supplements.

However, you should not depend on these kinds of products to maintain weight loss long term. Long-term weight maintenance does not require any expensive drugs or supplements. For most of us, it just requires a few wiring changes between the ears. Focus on that; that is what is going to make or break your weight management success.

I have friends who have exited businesses for large amounts of money, resulting in an instant retirement with no financial care in the world. Suddenly, they have tons of free time and can do anything they want to do.

That might sound enviable, but be careful what you wish for. In transparent moments, those friends will often admit that their new life has been challenging. They talk about loss of purpose, loss of identity, restlessness, and boredom.

Here’s why: Humans are designed to be busy, and we are happiest when we are busy and have tension in our lives. When we get bored, for better or worse, we tend to find a way to generate some excitement. In fact, if you stop and think about it, that is the role that sports plays in society. Sports provide humans with busyness and tension.

I bring this up because many of us are retired or thinking about retiring, and others are in jobs that are either not fulfilling or demanding. Some of us are now empty-nesters without the time demands of parenting. As a result, a lot of us probably face (or will soon face) the same restlessness and boredom that my wealthy friends face.

If you find the idea of doing nothing unappetizing, that is normal. There is simply not much fun or meaning in “killing time.”

If you are dealing with what I am talking about, I want to encourage you to be intentional about finding solutions. And, while hobbies are often denigrated in society as non-important, they are one of those solutions.

Hobbies are beneficial in many ways, including emotional and physical health, especially when aging. Here are just a few of the proven ways that hobbies improve your life during aging.

• Increased brain function
• Increased creativity
• Decreased stress
• Increased happiness
• Better relationships and more social connections
• Increased self-esteem
• Increased physical health

The benefits of hobbies have been widely studied, as discussed here in this article from Harvard. In fact, you can find enormous amounts of data about this topic on health websites across the web.

I get that there is a perception about hobbies as being unimportant. I get it: building furniture in the garage may not be as important as the work you used to do. But, don’t underestimate the importance of having that hobby, not just for yourself but for the people around you. Hobbies make the world a better place for all of us.

Give yourself permission to find some.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash