Knowing the Market

Recently yet another super-heavyweight Iron Immortal died from a heart attack at age forty-five or thereabouts. Typically, when I read of these tragedies I search my memory banks and then write some sort of tribute. Rather than eulogize yet another fallen warrior, for whom it’s too late, and at the risk of sounding presumptuous, I thought a slightly different approach might be appropriate and perhaps even helpful in preventing a future tragedy. It is my contention that a shockingly large percentage of retired national and international-level powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters eat too much, do nothing insofar as cardiovascular training and as a direct result unnecessarily risk premature death.

Retired super heavyweight lifters are particularly susceptible to this fatal phenomenon. Typically, the ‘at risk’ big-man lifter reduces or quits weight training - but doesn’t quit the enormous eating habits that got him big enough and dense enough to handle world record poundage. Super-heavyweight powerlifters consume too many calories and in particular they eat way too much saturated fat.

Food is broken down for energy within the body. A gram of fat contains nine calories. A gram of protein or carbohydrate contains four calories per gram. For a man intent on bulking-up as large as possible as fast as possible, fat calories, dense and compact, are the ticket. Fat calories pack twice the caloric bounce-per-ounce as protein or carb calories and boy do they ever taste good! Allowing taste to dictate our diet can be fatal. High fat food is delicious and it gives food a wonderful, seductive flavor. The bulking lifter can eat twice as many calories when they choose fat over protein or carbohydrates.

The problem is that dietary fat is easily converted to body fat. To use an automobile analogy, the big lifter develops a body akin to that of a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado - but the heart muscle of the lifter does not enlarge to accommodate the increased bulk. Metaphorically, the lifter has a heart designed to power a 1967 VW Beetle but his 65-horsepower heart motor now motivates a 5000-pound Cadillac body: what an incredible strain on his little blood-pump. For a few short years, hugeness is okay: the human body is incredibly resilient, but if the lifter doesn’t pare the pounds eventually the little heart muscle can suffer a blowout. Or will wear out from overuse.

The miraculous heart muscle pulsates 60-90 times a minute, sending blood coursing through the veins and capillaries to receptive muscles and organs with the precision and regularity of a fine Swiss watch. A hundred pounds (or more) of extra bodyweight will stress the tiny heart to the breaking point. It’s a hell-of-a dilemma; to reach the top of the powerlifting game the lifter needs density in relation to their height.

Ever notice how few tall Powerlifters reach the international level? To achieve the requisite density a tall lifter (over six-foot) would need weigh 400-pounds to match the density-per-inch the typical under-six foot super heavyweight achieves. Most people who meet top powerlifter are amazed at how short they are in relation to their weight. To maximize leverage, lifters need density-per-inch-of-height and super heavyweights, unencumbered by weight divisions, always have an effective avenue available to increase their density-per-inch: eat more food and get bigger.

Big men feel they need dietary fat, ‘dirty’ calories, in order to gain the sheer bulk necessary to compete at the national and international level. As my old coach Hugh Cassidy used to preach, a serious super-heavyweight lifter can always “eat his way through a sticking point”. Of course when Hugh retired he dropped from 300-pounds to 190-pounds bodyweight inside a year. Cassidy was no dummy (a powerlifting genius) and had the sense to reduce his caloric intake when the whistle sounded and the game was over. A lot don’t and the consequences are apparently disastrous.

That giant lifter who happily scarfs down saturated fat, motivating that Eldorado body around with that VW engine, eventually has a second deadly complication rear its ugly head. Saturated fat produces plaque and as it floats through the bloodstream plaque adheres to the arterial walls leading to and from the heart. Over time the tube diameter becomes constricted with plaque buildup and when it clogs completely (assuming you don’t die from heart spasms) a roto-rooter (angeoplastsy) balloon procedure or by-pass surgery is required to open constricted passageways.

It’s a dastardly double whammy: the lifter’s diet adds bodyweight - creating a stress-load on the over-taxed heart pump and the fat in the lifter’s diet reduces the efficiency of the already taxed heart by constricting the blood flow. It’s a deadly one-two combination. Often the whole situation is further complicated when the lifter ceases hard training. Now sedentary, his high caloric intake accelerates body fat accumulation at an astonishingly fast rate. If left unchecked this scenario will lead to health problems as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

I once helped a 350-pound super heavyweight take second place at the USPF Nationals and thereby secure a slot on the IPF world championship team. He was elated and afterwards we decided to have room service send up victory pizza. I was staying on the second floor and the elevators were acting up so we decided to walk the four mini-flights to the second floor. It was an easy climb but our IPF-destined lifter was gassed like he’d just climbed Mount Everest without using an oxygen tank. He was far more blasted from the 22-step walk-up than his 881-squat or 750-deadlift. He heaved and gasped like a coal miner with black lung after smoking a Camel and took a full thirty minutes before he recovered.

I remember how when the Pizzas came he knelt down on the floor at the foot of the bed. He took his Pizza Hut extra-large, set it on the bed, opened the box, still kneeing, placed his elbows on the bed and commenced to chow-down. His huge distended stomach hung all the way to the floor and there was no daylight showing between his gut and the sunlight shining in the open window behind him. Looking like a pregnant rhino, his face hovered a scant six-inches above the pizza box as he devoured the entire thing in 10-minutes flat, steam shovel style, like he was strip mining a hill for coal. He gobbled his pepperoni and sausage and then went scavenging for leftovers from the other three boxes. Feeling better he took a nap.

I once asked George Hector how it felt to be able to squat 975 and deadlift 840 weighing 360. “For two days a year, at the National and World championships, it’s great - the other 363 days a year it sucks!” George ran into health problems (phlebitis) reduced down to 242 and set a slew of world records. But wise men like George and Hugh and John Kuc are the exceptions, not the rule. Too many huge guys are attached to their ’sea food’ diet and it comes back to bite ‘em at some point.
And it needn’t be that way. Incorporating two lifestyle changes, substitution dieting and light cardiovascular training, can spell the difference, literally, between life and death.

DIET: Rather than try and get a red-blooded powerlifter on a fancy-dan bodybuilder diet - one which they won’t adhere to anyway - we offer the substitution diet for your consideration. All of us have bad foods we naturally gravitate towards (those high in fat and sugar) and we all have some good foods (high in protein) that we like. The idea is to identify the ‘good’ foods and substitute them for the ‘bad foods’ you currently consume in quantity. The beauty of this approach is that you never feel hungry because anytime you have a craving for bad food you eat a substantial amount of good food in its place. You smother the hunger and satiate the desire.

Plus, every time you replace a fat food with a protein or carb food, you can eat the same volume of food while cutting your calories in half (9 calories per gram of fat versus only 4 calories per gram for protein). A gram is a gram and if you previously ate a quart of Ben & Jerry’s or a sixteen-ounce pizza, you now may eat an equal volume of protein or carbohydrates and eliminate artery-clogging saturated fat while simultaneously cutting your calories in half. It is a good deal: you reduce the deadly saturated fat with muscle-building protein or natural carbohydrates and still reduce overall calories. Don’t eat flour carbs like cakes, bread or pastry. Stick to grains, rice, vegetables and potatoes.

Clean protein actually stimulates the basal metabolic rate, causing the body to burn more calories as it gears up to meet the challenge of digesting protein. Dietary fat, on the other hand, is easily compartmentalized into fat storage. A note of caution: avoid protein foods that are loaded with saturated fat. Fish, chicken (minus the skin), lean beef, goat, turkey, organ meats, egg whites, skim milk and protein powder are great sources of clean protein.

Man-made carbohydrates like bread, pasta and pastries will cause the body to secrete insulin. Insulin spikes cause carb calories to be converted and compartmentalized into fat storage instead of being used for energy. Avoid them. Natural carbohydrates have a far lesser impact on insulin and are recommended as the preferred carb sources. Fiber carbs actually dampen insulin spikes and a diet high in clean protein and fiber, low in refined carbs and moderate in starchy carbs, is the fastest way to lose lard.

CARDIO CONDITIONING FOR POWERLIFTERS: Powerlifters take a dim view of cardio training - aerobics - and contemptuously consider cardiovascular training effete, irrelevant and at odds to their stated purpose: maximizing size and strength. And there is a good case to support that viewpoint. But we are talking aerobics for health, not strength.

Aerobics, it is widely felt, weakens a competitive powerlifter and any benefits are offset with negatives. Few hard core lifters would be caught dead riding an exer-cycle, walking a treadmill or jumping up and down on a stair-stepper. The broad consensus among the power elite is that cardio is counterproductive to the stated goal. Yet, it has been scientifically and medically proven that three to five, twenty-minute sessions at 60% (or more) of age-related heart rate maximum per week will perform miracles for the heart, lungs, internal organs and glands.

Cardiovascular training flushes the human plumbing system: capillaries, veins, tubes, heart and lungs all benefit from regular aerobic exercise. Internal organs strengthen and improve function when subjected to regular, systematic doses of aerobic exercise. There is a compromise solution for the lifter intent on losing lard. There is a type of aerobic exercise that provides great cardio stimulation without being so intense as to interfere with strength building - walking.

LOW STRESS AEROBIC ACTIVITY: A big man with little or no background in cardio training can hit 70% of their age-related heart rate maximum with a brisk walk around the block. And that’s all that’s needed. No need to join a health spa, no need to purchase an expensive exercise bike or treadmill, forget all that stuff and get outdoors and take a brisk walk. Walk outside for ten minutes as quick as you can then put a forefinger on your carotid artery or wrist pulse and count the beats for six seconds. Multiply this number by 10 to determine how fast your heart is beating. Then compare this to your age-related heart rate maximum to determine your aerobic intensity. What’s the formula? Simple: 220 minus your age are your 100% heart rate maximum. Then determine 70% of this number.

AGE		30		40		50
100%		190		180		170
70%		133		126		119
60%		114		108		102

Start with a ten-minute walk at 60%. Put on a WalkMan, get outside and take a good fast walk. Do this three of four times a week on days that you don’t lift. If you no longer lift, get back in the saddle. Add a few minutes per walking session until you are hitting twenty minutes per session. When you can walk for twenty minutes at 60% try to bump that up to 65% and eventually 70% or more. Increase the intensity by walking faster and swinging your arms a little more. Suck in that good outdoor oxygen and push a little. 3-4 sessions a week at 60-70% of age related heart rate maximum would do wonders for the internal plumbing of a cardio-challenged lifter. Walking avoids the bone-jarring pain of jogging or running - no rips or tears from walking. Don’t po-pah walking - I have had occasion to interview bodybuilding dominator Dorian Yates for Muscle & Fitness and one thing struck me : Yates’ aerobic program often consisted of a brisk walk around his posh neighborhood with his dogs. In the off-season Yates would walk for thirty minutes three or four times a week. Weighing 300, he had no problem hitting 70% of age related heart rate maximum using a brisk walking pace. Unlike his American competitors, many of whom spent two hours a day on bikes and stair-steppers, the bull-strong Yates felt that too much cardio affected his weight training and he preferred to confine his aerobics to off-day walks. Wise advice that is applicable to the massive powerlifter who wants to incorporate some health-preserving cardio into their training.

Lifters who walk in conjunction with powerlifting report improved recovery and better digestion along with a nice increase in appetite. The metabolism kicks up when you undertake a brisk walk as this stimulates the digestive process. Food is processed better and when saturated fat is cutback the athlete sees an almost over-night improvement in the way they look and feel. If fat calories are replaced with ‘clean’ calories muscle is retained while the life threatening effects of body fat and artery constriction are improved. Confine cardio training to low-impact walking done on off-days and no strength loss should occur: on the contrary, the lifter will be able to train harder and longer as a result of their new-found endurance and improved nutrient assimilation. All around it’s a good deal - particularly when the alternative is so dire and bleak. So take a chance and take a walk. Hell, no one even need know you’re doing ‘aerobics’ or going on a diet: as far as anyone is concerned, you’re just taking a walk. You can literally walk away from death if you just get off the strata-lounger, exchange that cheeseburger with Mayo on Wonder bread for a lean steak and a salad and then go outside and take a walk!

Marty Gallagher is a former fitness columnist for washingtonpost.com. He is also a former world champion powerlifting coach. Marty’s work has been featured in magazines such as Muscle & Fitness, Muscle Media, and Powerlifting USA. His website, http://www.martygallagher.com, assimilates years of accumulated knowledge from the athletic elite and makes them accessible to the common person. The “Purposeful Primitive” methodology has been proven effective time after time after time for complete physical transformation, losing fat, building muscle, and getting stronger.

News flash, “Carbohydrates don’t make you fat! Eating too much makes you fat. Carbohydrates will not make you gain weight any faster than eating the caloric equivalent of either protein or fat. Have you ever heard the expression, “What weighs more a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?” Obviously they both weigh the same, but its funny how many of us say a pound of bricks. Likewise, which of the following has a higher probability of making a person gain more weight, 3000 calories of chicken or 3000 calories of cupcakes? The answer is that there is no difference. 3000 calories is 3000 calories no matter what constitutes the source. Energy doesn’t just disappear because it came from something other than carbohydrates, our body has to metabolize it one way or another. The law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed only transferred. So either that energy is used to conduct physiologic processes or it is stored.

So why all the hype about low carb diets? Mainly it has to do with the quick fix trend. Everyone wants instant gratification without having to pay the price of dedication and hard work. In general we as a society are lazy and we spend most of our waking hours being sedentary. Who has time to be concerned about exercise and watching what we eat, we have long work days, and have families to care for. This is why low carb diets are so appealing. They are easy to follow and work relatively fast. There is no denying you can lose a large amount of weight quickly on a low carb diet. However, what many people may not know is that water constitutes the majority, roughly 75%, of the weight, leaving only 25% of the weight loss resulting in actual fat reduction.

Besides the illusion that you’re losing fat, there are also many undesirable side effects that these “low carb professionals” fail to mention when suggesting that we eat like carnivores. First, as I mentioned above, most of the weight loss is not fat loss, it’s actually mostly water weight. Second, it is very possible that you can slow down your resting metabolism. Third, when neglecting important foods such as fruits and grains you are putting yourself at risk for becoming deficient in many important vitamins and minerals. Lastly, if you are an athlete you will greatly reduce your ability to perform at your highest potential.

When you take into consideration that our bodies are capable of storing 300 - 600 grams of carbohydrates or even as much as 1000 grams in individuals who are either extremely muscular or obese. Our bodies need three grams of water for every gram of carbohydrates stored. That adds up to anywhere from 900 - 3000 grams (2 - 6.6 pounds) of water weight alone. When you lose 5 - 7 pounds of body weight the first week on a low carb diet, you can expect that only two pounds of that is fat. So when we start a low carb diet and exhaust our carbohydrate stores we also lose water because the water is no longer necessary for storage. It is practically impossible to lose more than three pounds of fat in one week unless you are morbidly obese. There are approximately 3500 calories in one pound of fat. So to lose three pounds of fat in one week you would have to find some way to eliminate 10,500 calories (3500 calories 3 lbs of fat = 10,500 cal). So in order to lose 3 lbs of fat per week we would have to eliminate 1,500 calories from our diet per day (10,500 7days = 1500 cal/day)! See how it is not possible. What happens when we start eating carbs again? Simple, we gain all that water weight back. Our weight fluctuates up and down.

Carbohydrates are very important substrates for many physiologic mechanisms throughout the body. Most importantly, carbohydrates are an energy source for the central nervous system including our brain. When carbohydrates are no longer available our body needs a back up generator. That back-up generator is a process called gluconeogenesis which means the body begins to manufacture carbohydrates from other materials in the body such as muscle proteins, or breaking down lean tissue in order to supply other tissues with energy. Thus we turn our bodies into catabolic factories. Our metabolism may even begin to slow since you are destroying muscle, one of the most metabolically active tissues in the body. This makes us especially vulnerable to future weight gains. In times of carbohydrate deprivation the body will also resort to producing ketone bodies from fatty acids. This is great for losing fat weight, however, this can lead to a dangerous condition known as ketosis which causes disturbances in the body’s normal acid-base balance. There is even research that suggests that ketosis and low carb diets may even lead to osteoporosis, kidney problems, and don’t forget bad breath.

Additionally, Foods that are rich in complex carbohydrates are important sources of vitamins and minerals essential to your well being which you deny your body while on low carb diets. Fruits and grains contain important anti-oxidants which are necessary for disease prevention. There have also been numerous studies that suggest high intakes of fruits and vegetables are associated with decreased risks of some forms cancer and heart disease. There are also high levels of vitamin B found in many grain foods such as bread. B vitamins are important in many metabolic and neurological processes. These are just to a small handful of reasons not to deprive your body of whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and the list goes on and on.

Low carb diets can lead to decreased athletic performance. In any athletic event, the majority of energy expended comes from carbohydrates. An athlete is unable to perform at full potential without the immediate availability of carbohydrates. Without adequate carbs the body has to rely on creating the carbs before they can be used for energy. In turn the body has to work at a lower rate as to not exceed the rate of carb manufacturing.

Are there good and bad carbohydrates? The answer to that question is undeniably, yes. Fortunately, you can look forward to my next article which will discuss how to differentiate between “good” and “bad” carbs and when it is ok to have “bad” carbs.

In the mean time, practice keeping your diet well balanced, and eat in moderation. The Food Guide Pyramid is a good source for creating a meal plan. The purpose of the Food Guide Pyramid is to make sure that we are getting all our recommended daily allowances of essential nutrients. Good luck! If you have any questions regarding this article just send me an email.

I have been working in the fitness industry for well over 12 years. I know that this is something that I will continue to pursue for the rest of my life. I believe that fitness and health should be a major component in everyone’s lifestyle and should be a life priority. Good health affects every aspect of our lives including relationships, jobs, and functional capacity. The path of life is a much easier tread with a healthy body.

Myocardial infarction is a technical term used to describe an irreversible injury to heart muscle. It is normally used as a synonym for a heart attack and will be so used in this essay. Myocardial infarction is normally related to progressive atherosclerosis (blockage of the arteries.) Essentially the heart is slowly starved of oxygen and stops functioning properly causing irreparable damage and even death.

It is no surprise that much of the developed world suffers from heart disease because of diet and other lifestyle habits. In the United States heart disease remains the number one killer among adults and demonstrates similar statistics in many other modern countries. The surprise comes in knowing that the majority of heart disease is avoidable yet educated people continue to ignore the dangers and promote lifestyles conducive to cardiac damage. Though many factors contribute to heart disease the current essay will focus on one, in two parts. First we will consider the relation of fish consumption and myocardial infarction. Secondly we will consider the effects of dietary supplementation with omega-3 and vitamin E for those who had previously survived a heart attack.

Fish consumption and heart disease has been a topic of innumerable studies. One research project combined data taken from several such studies including the Chicago Western Electric Study, the Zutphen, Rotterdam and Swedish studies and the Study of U.S. Physicians among others. The goal of this research was to examine the relationship between fish consumption and the 30-year risk of death from coronary disease.

The participants of the study included 1,822 men between the ages of forty and fifty-five who were free of cardiovascular disease. For the first ten years annual examinations were given and mailed questionnaires and/or telephone interviews were used for the next fifteen years. Death certificates were used to classify cause of death for each patient.

During the 30-years follow up there were a total of 430 deaths from cardiovascular disease with 293 due to myocardial infarctions. Of the latter 196 were sudden, 94 were non-sudden and the remaining three could not be classified as either. Almost all of the sudden deaths were caused by myocardial infarction.

Detailed dietary history was kept on each participant with daily fish consumption as the primary focus. Each participant was categorized into one of four groups. The first group reportedly consumed no fish. The second group consumed between one and seventeen grams of fish per day. The third and fourth groups measured consumption as eighteen to thirty-four grams per day and greater than thirty-four grams per day respectively.

Predictably the results demonstrated an inverse relationship between fish consumption and the occurrence of myocardial infarction. In particular the participants who ate at least 35 grams of fish per day had a 42% lower death rate from heart attack compared to those who ate no fish at all.

The findings of these combined studies were consistent with other data concluding that diets high in fish demonstrate a reduced occurrence of death from coronary heart disease. This is especially true in relation to deaths that are of a non-sudden nature. That is not to conclude, however, that fish consumption does not inversely affect the risk of sudden cardiac death. Other studies have verified that such a relationship exists. Those studies are, however, beyond the scope of this essay.

But why does fish consumption improve heart health? It could just be the fact that people who eat fish eat less of other harmful foods. To focus a little more closely on the beneficial causes of fish consumption it is important to consider at least one study that isolated omega-3 intake via dietary supplements regardless of diet. The interesting thing about this study is that it was concerned with the effects of omega-3 and vitamin E supplementation on patients who had already experienced a heart attack.

The GISSI-Prevenzione trial, as it is known, hoped to establish any relationship that might exist between omega-3 and vitamin E as combined agents in the fight against heart disease. It was a randomized trial involving 11,234 patients who had survived a heart attack within the previous three months at the time the study began. The participants were divided into four groups. Group one received one gram of omega-3 supplements daily. Group two received 300mg of vitamin E every day. Group three received both while the control group received neither. Each participant received clinical examinations with blood samples taken and were asked to fill out diet questionnaires at the outset of the experiment and at six, twelve, eighteen, thirty and forty-two months.

The data were analyzed using two methods. A two-way analysis was made comparing omega-3 supplementing and no omega-3, as well as vitamin E intake compared to no vitamin E. A four-way analysis was also conducted comparing the combination of omega-3 and vitamin E with omega-3 alone and vitamin E alone. The effects of the combined supplements were also compared with the group that took no supplements.

The results of the test demonstrated a 14% decrease in death from any cause for the two-way analysis and a 20% drop in death rate for the four-way analysis. Concerning only death due to cardiovascular disease, the two-way analysis showed a 17% reduction of risk while the four-way analysis revealed a 30% decrease. Though vitamin E is known to be a powerful antioxidant, the group that supplemented with the combination of omega-3 and vitamin E showed no life-expectancy advantage over the group that supplemented with only the omega-3.

The overall conclusion of the GISSI-Prevenzione trial was that supplementing with omega-3 provided long term benefits in lowering risk of death for patients who had experienced a myocardial infarction.

Greg holds degrees in science, divinity and philosophy and is currently an I.T. developer.

http://www.optimal-heart-health.com/fishoils.html