Sunday, February 21, 2010

Strong Kids Healthy Kids with Fredrick Hahn

Strong Kids, Healthy Kids: The Revolutionary Program for Increasing Your Child's Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week


 Listen to my Blog Talk Radio Interview with Fred Hahn on FitTalk




Fredrick Hahn
Strong Kids, Healthy Kids 
Serious Strength.com
During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, increasing more than four-fold among children ages 6 to 11. Today, nearly a third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. That’s more than 23 million kids and teenagers. 

If we don’t act to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic, we’re in danger of raising the first generation of children who may live sicker and die younger than the generation before them. Preventing obesity during childhood is critical, because habits that last into adulthood frequently are formed during youth. Research shows that an obese older teenager has up to an 80 percent chance of becoming an obese adult.

This is a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while, and I had the pleasure of having Fredrick Hahn, author of the best selling book, Strong Kids, Healthy Kids on my FitTalk show. 

Fred Hahn shatters the current ideas behind the child obesity epidemic and offers a simple and powerful solution to make your child strong, more athletic, healthy, lean and powerful. Fred has been a professional trainer for over two decades and is certified by the American Council on Exercise. He is the founder and head of the renowned personal training studio Serious Strength, Inc. and has been working with kids in his Mighty Tykes and Teens Program for the past seven years. He has been interviewed by Dr. Mehmet OZ and Bob Greene on Oprah and Friends, The Today Show, CNN, WABC-TV, and featured in Allure, Family Circle, Woman’s World and Time Out New York just to name a scant few. He blogs for the Huffington Post and is a featured contributor to the Nutrition and Metabolism Society.


Inactivity isn't the cluprit
The information being given about child obesity isn't scientifically sound.  The common idea that adolescent obesity is caused by eating too much fat and being sedentary is false.  Fred explained that it's not a lack of activity.  Often, TV, video games and such are blamed for the problem, but we don't blame reading books, practicing musical instruments, and building toy models.  We've latched on to a concept that is faulty because it sounds as if its true, when science and research tell us it's not.

"Overfat" children aren't overfat because they are inactive.  Research shows that overfat children are just as active as their leaner counterparts.

Fred uses the term "overfat" rather than "obese" when talking about overweight children.  This means that the child has too much body fat for his/her body size.

So what's really causing obesity?
One of the biggest contributors to child obesity is diet.  The biggest problem is that children, as well as adults, are consuming more sugar than ever and aren’t aware of the amount of hidden sugars they are getting in their diet.  


What really matters is not necessarily how many calories a child eats, (although to some degree it does matter), but the TYPES of calories your child is eating.  According to Fred, children are eating too many carbohydrates which increases the total blood sugar in your body.  If you have too much blood sugar in your body, then the body has to secrete a large amount of insulin in order to deal with that blood sugar.

Insulin and body fat
Fred explained that some people's bodies in response to what is a glucose challenge - meaning - having a lot of sugar roaming the body that has to be put into the cells - are insulin insensitive.  Here's the problem.  While insulin's main role is to regulate blood sugar, one of it's other main roles is to store body fat.  When you put a lot of carbohydrates into a child's body, and that child happens to be less insulin sensitive another, that child's body will store more of the calories taken in as body fat rather than be use as energy.

More carbs convert to more insulin you secrete – over time more insulin insensitive you become because there’s so much insulin being secreted, little be little in some children, as well as adults, they become obese because the body doesn’t know what to do with all the insulin, which in turn, causes the body to store calories as body fat rather than use it as fuel.  That’s why children who have a propensity to this, an hour later, say they’re hungry again.
Strength Training for Children
One thing I have always been an advocate of is strength training which Fred is.   You’re never too young or too old to strength train, however, I think when it comes to children, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about it.

Strength training is one of the most potent and powerful modalities of exercise for a child.  You can improve a child’s strength, bone density, muscle mass and athletic performance.  Strength training also improves your child’s resistance to injury when engaging in sports.

In his book, Strong Kids, Healthy Kids, Fred dispels the myth that strength training stunts a child’s growth.  This is absolutely false.  Impact forces can impair growth plates by breaking or damaging a bone.  You can’t play sports gently in a low force manner, however, you can lift weights in a low force manner while at the same time, build strength, bone density and muscle mass.  Strength training for children is recommended by several prominent organizations provided it is supervised and performed in a slow and controlled fashion - 5 seconds to lift the weight and 5 seconds to lower the weight.

How much time should a child strength train?
If you are a non athlete (not participating in sports), a minimum of two 20 minute strength training sessions per week is recommended.  For athletic kids, you’re better off having them strength train once a week for 20-30 minutes.  The reason for this is that the benefits of strength training comes when you’re resting.  Recovery is really when you’re gaining the benefits of lifting so that when your child is ready for the next session, he will be stronger and will be able to lift more weight.  Progressive strength training over time is what makes a child stronger and stronger.

Is your child ready to strength train?
The appropriate age for a child to strength train is more psychological than it is physiological.  For example, if a child is old enough to take instruction and pay attention to what you are explaining to them, than they’re good to go.

Fred used his daughters as an example.  He has two daughters.  One of them took to strength training at the age of 6, while the other daughter, at the age of 8 thinks the whole thing is silly.  Psychologically, she’s not ready.  She may be at the age of 10.

Making strength training a fun, positive experience
Fred suggests that you engage in the activity with your child.  Let your child see you doing push ups or sit ups and let them see you enjoy it.  With younger children, rather than count to five, you can say whatever their favorite characters are, so you can say, “Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man”.

Yes, your child will adapt to strength training.  Kids love their bodies and they love the concept that they are stronger, better, can run faster, etc.  You’re only doing this for 20/30 min twice a week so it’s not like it’s lasting long and you’re boring them.

The book will help you become your child’s personal trainer that will instill a good, healthy, habit for life.  Strong Kids, Healthy Kids, provides parents with all the  information they need on how to set up an exercise program for their child from “Choosing the Right Weight”, “upping the ante”, a list of basic exercises, and photos of children performing the exercise. 

Nutrition for you and your children
Fred recommends a a nutrient rich diet consisting of “real foods”.  What are “real foods”?  Anything that has ever walked, crawled, flew or swam, such as beef, chicken, fish, etc., or has grown in the ground naturally that you can pick and eat.

You can’t walk onto a wheat field, grab a few stalks of wheat and eat it.  If you have to refine or process it, then it’s a food you should avoid or eat very little of if at all.  On the other hand, you don’t need to do anything to an orange, apple, green bean, etc.

This type of eating is Paleolithic meaning that if you went back 1,000 years ago, foods were eaten in their natural state.

Today’s current food pyramid promotes carbohydrates as the main staple of food.  This is wrong.  The main staple of what we should be eating are real food choices such as meats, fish, poultry being your staple and seasonal fruits and vegetables.

High Fructose Corn Syrup – A Neurological Nightmare on Health Street
High Fructose Corn Syrup is something I have written about in my blogs.  It’s in everything and it’s making us fat.  Fred refers to it as a “Neurological Nightmare on Health Street.”  In just about anything and everything we eat, from condiments, salad dressing, sodas, fruit juice, breakfast bars; you name it, if it comes in a wrapper, can or box, it contains high fructose corn syrup.  It makes everything sweeter.  Your child is so exposed to High Fructose Corn Syrup that when he/she eats a piece of fruit, it won’t be taste as sweet and makes everything else taste like cardboard.  What is happening is that you lose your taste for what is sweet enough.  Your body becomes addicted to sugar – the quick fuel source.  It also wreaks habit on what we spoke of earlier, insulin sensitivity or the lack of. 

You really need to get in the habit of reading the ingredient labels.  If a product contains high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup or fructose, put it back on the shelf. 

Your children will want to know what happened to their favorite snacks and beverages when you start to replace them with healthier choices.  Fred says, rather than telling your children they can’t have it anymore, you want to educate your children.  Explain to them that you found out that it makes “your blood sad” and that this will make it better.  Kids are like sponges when it comes to learning things, particularly when it comes to their bodies. 

By the way, when you eat real foods, they don’t contain high fructose corn syrup.

Water, Water, Water
Strong Kids Healthy Kids goes into extensive detail about the importance of water.  For most children, their intake of liquids comes from sugary drinks like juices and sodas and barely any water.  The body needs a certain amount of hydration in order to function optimally.

Your child’s blood is 90% water, brain is 85% water, muscle is 75% water, skin is 71% water, bone is 30% water and body fat is 15% water. 

Fred and I recommend that you give your child water with some lemon, lime or orange in it for flavoring or you can get flavored sparkling water. 

The book also contains kid-ready recipes that are quick, easy and simple to make helping to take out some of the guess work about what type of food to prepare for your family.

Fred’s take away message:
I asked Fred what is the one message you really want to get through to people.  Here is his answer.  “Take the time to do your best to feed your child real food.  That is above and beyond exercise, although exercise is an important component, it isn’t any where nearly as important as feeding your children real food.  If you can do a kitchen/pantry makeover, get rid of the breakfast cereals, the grains and sugar.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner should be meats (beef, fish, chicken, etc.).  Proteins and healthy fats.  Give your child a healthy breakfast rather than feed them a box of cereal.

100,000 years ago we were eating real foods and that’s what we need to be putting on our children’s plates today.  Health problems are from feeding kids un-real foods.

We are what our bodies do with what we eat.

If you wish to contact Fred, he can be reached via e-mail at fhan@seriousstrength.com
















Disclaimer: Please note, Fredrick Hahn is not a doctor.  This information is intended for children who are considered healthy by their physicians.  It is not intended to treat children who suffer from metabolic abnormalities or diseases that are known to cause or contribute to weakness or obesity.  Although the information in this interview  will help any child, always consult with the appropriate physician for advice and guidance.  Always consult an appropriate and qualified physician prior to beginning any exercise or diet program for your child.


Sunday, February 14, 2010

Child Obesity Takes Center Stage


With Child Obesity in the national spotlight, this is an ideal opportunity to talk about some of the issues concerning it. 

It’s not baby fat, it’s obesity
According to an article published in the February, 2010 journal Clinical Pediatrics, research suggests that the "tipping point" in obesity often occurs before two years of age, and sometimes as early as three months, when the child is learning how much and what to eat.  The Clinical Pediatrics study suggests obesity prevention efforts should begin before age two, when children reach a "tipping point" in a progression that leads to obesity later in life.  This study indicates that we may need to discuss inappropriate weight gain early in infancy to affect meaningful changes in the current trend of obesity.

What could possibly be causing obesity in infants?  Could it be that they are being fed more calories than they need?  Food is given to crying babies to comfort and quiet them. For instance, if a baby is crying, a new mother’s instinct is to give her baby a bottle thinking it is hungry when perhaps it isn’t. 

Sugar, Sugar, Sugar
Perhaps baby food has evolved over the years becoming more and more processed containing corn syrup and more sugar?  No doubt more and more children are exposed to processed foods, snacks, fast foods and ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup over the past 10-20 years.  Do parents even bother to look at the fine print of ingredients in a product they are feeding their children?

NOW is the time to act
I’m not going to regurgitate all the child obesity statistics.  This is an issue about health. We know that today’s children are overweight, and that they are dealing with diseases that were once known as “adult diseases”. 

It is up to as a parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to take action now.  Children eat what we feed them and it’s up to us to stop feeding them fast food, sugary snacks and junk food. Get active with children.  Take them to the park to the playground, or go skating with them, play tennis, etc.  The list of activities you can you can DO with children are endless.


The Let’s Move Campaign
This past week, First Lady, Michelle Obama, launched her Let’s Move Campaign to help solve the child obesity epidemic.   This is certainly a step in the right direction to stop talking about the issue, but to take action and do something to help solve the problem. As a Fitness Professional/Natural Health Advocate, I applaud Michelle Obama for helping to bring SOLUTIONS to Child Obesity.

The Let's Move campaign has 4 Pillars.

1st Pillar-Helping parents make healthy family choices.  Parents need the tools to make it easier to understand how to help their kids stay healthy. Many parents know certain foods are bad for their kids, but don't know the solutions.

Children learn from the choices they see adults make.  If children see parents enjoying nutritious foods and physical activity, they’re more likely to do the same.   With greater understanding and opportunities for good nutrition and physical activity, parents can take simple steps so busy families can live healthier lives.

  • Empowering Consumers - By the end of the year, the Food and Drug Administration will begin working with retailers and manufacturers to adopt new nutritionally sound and consumer friendly front-of-package labeling to provide 65 million parents in America and other caregivers with easy access to the information they need to make healthy choices for their children.
2nd PillarHealthier Schools - Many children consume at least half of their daily calories at school. As families work to ensure our kids eat right and have active play at home, we also need to ensure our kids have access to healthy meals in their schools. With more than 31 million children participating in the National School Lunch Program and more than 11 million participating in the National School Breakfast Program, good nutrition at school is more important than ever. Let’s move to get healthier food in our nation’s schools.
·            Healthier US Schools Challenge Program establishes rigorous standards for schools’ food quality, participation in meal programs, physical activity, and nutrition education – the key components that make for healthy and active kids – and provides recognition for schools that meet these standards.
3rd PillarPhysical Activity - Children need 60 minutes of active and vigorous play every day to grow up to a healthy weight.(source) If this sounds like a lot, consider that 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 ½ hours to using entertainment media including TV, computers, video games, cell phones and movies  in a typical day, and only a third of high school students get the recommended levels of physical activity. 
4th Pillar - Accessing Healthy & Affordable Food - More than 23 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, live in low-income urban and rural neighborhoods that are more than a mile from a supermarket. These communities, where access to affordable, quality, and nutritious foods is limited, are known as food deserts.  Lack of access to proper nutrition is one reason why many children are not eating the recommended levels of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
Another issue is that healthier food choices are more expensive than unhealthy, cheap, processed junk foods.  As part of the President’s proposed FY 2011 budget, the Administration announced a new program – the Healthy Food Financing Initiative -- a partnership between the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services which will invest $400 million a year to provide innovative financing to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places such as convenience stores and bodegas carry healthier food options.  Grants will also help bring farmers markets and fresh foods into underserved communities, boosting both family health and local economies.  Through these initiatives and private sector engagement, the Administration will work to eliminate food deserts across the country within seven years.
If you are a parent, doctor, fitness professional, health advocate, check out the Let's Move website http://www.letsmove.gov/index.html and let’s do our part to ACT NOW and help make a difference to improve the health of our children.  This affects not only our children’s future, but our future and the future of our country.  
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Sunday, February 7, 2010

Pre-hypertension : A clear warning sign not to be ignored


What is pre-hypertension?  Frank Mangano, author of The Blood Pressure Miracle, defines pre-hypertension as a blood pressure reading of between 120 and 139 for the systolic measurement and between 80 and 89 for the diastolic reading.

Unfortunately, many people don’t take the warning signs of pre-hypertension seriously.  They shrug it off.  They’ll say that stress caused their blood pressure to go up.  It’s temporary and will go back to normal.  Prehypertension isn't a condition to ignore or passively monitor -- it's the first volley from a true enemy of health. The time to worry about blood pressure is when that number tips anywhere between 120 to 139. 
The Blood Pressure Miracle 
Roughly one-third of Americans, 30 percent, already have pre-hypertension, including teens and younger children. 

For those who think that blood pressure can’t hurt you until it drives over the 140/90 line and becomes full-fledged high blood pressure, think again. Studies have shown that, when the data is crunched, people with pre-hypertension alone are more at risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive problems, diabetes and kidney disease. Lowering your slightly elevated blood pressure lowers your potential for a universe of problems.

If you have pre-hypertension, this is clearly a forewarning that should not be shrugged off.  This is the time to take a good look at your lifestyle and choices you are making and take action to make lifestyle changes now before it’s too late and be led down a path of lifelong use of costly prescription medication.

If you aren’t already eating as healthy as you should be or getting enough exercise, you should make improvements to your diet and incorporate an exercise regiment.  Both diet and exercise play a major role in maintaining good blood pressure.

Salt - Salt is in just about everything. It's impossible to avoid. Restaurant food tends to be high in sodium. The New England Journal of Medicine ran an article stressing that salt consumption should be cut for reasons of heart protection and lower blood pressure.

Smoking - If you are a smoker, you should do everything you can to stop smoking.  It’s just not good for your health, particularly if you have pre-hypertension or high blood pressure.

Stress – We all experience stress in our lives from time to time.  However, ongoing  stress can cause health issues, including high blood pressure.  It’s important to find ways to control stress.  Some helpful ways to reduce stress are exercise, meditation, and hypnosis.

Take action now by making simple lifestyle changes to naturally alleviate pre-hypertension and be sure to keep monitoring your blood pressure.  

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Could Health Care Reform begin with the USDA?


We’ve all heard the news.  Health care costs are out of control.  We are spending millions and millions of dollars on disease management.  It’s not just adults who are battling diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, it’s children as well.  The old saying, we are what we eat couldn’t be more true and it’s smacking us across the face more than ever.

We are exposed to more and more toxins and poisons in the foods we eat than ever before with the pesticides and fungicides that are sprayed on the fruits and vegetables we eat.  Many of the fruits and vegetables we eat have been genetically modified (aka GMO’s) to give them a longer shelf life so they don’t spoil as quickly.  What this means is that scientists have created have created fruits and vegetables which is said to stay fresh for 45 days  -  three times longer than the conventional version. This is not natural.  Not the way nature intended it to be.  Much of the livestock we eat (beef, chicken, pork) are fed a diet of hormones and anti-biotics.  This is not their natural diet. Just about every packaged food you eat (breads, condiments, beverages, salad dressings, etc.) contain high fructose corn syrup.  It’s no wonder sickness and disease is more the rule rather than the exception. 

Six months ago, I bit the bullet and went organic. No doubt, organic foods cost more than “conventional” foods and it really shouldn’t be that way.  My health is important to me and I’d rather spend a little more on buying organic foods and livestock that are grass fed, than lose money in lost productivity due to illness, or spend my money unnecessarily on expensive prescription drugs or a visit to my doctor. 

Robyn O’Brien, author of The The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick - And What We Can Do About It, had some interesting things to say about the cost of organic foods in a recent article, which really is The Unhealthy Truth.
The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick - And What We Can Do About It
“Organic food costs more than its conventional counterparts because our taxpayer dollars are not used to support organic farms to the same extent that our dollars are used to support conventional farms. Under our current system, it is more profitable for farmers to grow crops laced with chemicals than organic ones because they will receive larger government handouts from the USDA Farm Subsidy program, more marketing assistance and stronger crop insurance programs.

If farmers do choose to grow organic crops, it costs them more because not only do they not receive the same level of financial handouts from the government, but they are also charged a fee to prove that their crops are safe and then on top of that, they are then charged a fee to label their crops as "organic." As a result, organic farmers have a higher cost structure -- with added fees and expenditures required to bring their products to market -- while our taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize the crops with the chemicals.


Wouldn't it make more sense to use our taxpayer dollars to subsidize the crops without chemicals given the increasing evidence pointing to the impact that these environmental insults are having on our health? What if our most powerful weapon in the war on health care is a farm subsidy?


Health care reform could begin at the USDA, with an equal allocation of our taxpayer dollars between organic and conventional farming. The USDA could continue health care reform by providing equivalent marketing assistance and crop insurance programs for organic crops and by eliminating the organic certification fee farmers are required to pay in order to label their crops as "USDA Organic".


If we invite the US Department of Agriculture to be part of health care reform, the USDA could level the economic playing field for the farmers, enabling more farms to grow crops free of chemicals, synthetic and genetically engineered ingredients which would, in turn, increase the supply of these crops in the marketplace -- which, as any good economist knows, would drive down costs. Organic food would be more affordable to more of us.”


We all make our voices heard with the way we spend our dollars.  With every dollar I spend on locally grown organic fruits and vegetables, or grass fed live stock that was raised locally, not only am I supporting my local farmers, I am casting a vote.  I am also taking control of my health by no longer exposing my body to toxins and poisons that are harmful to my health.  I will not support industrialized farming that doesn’t care about how they are harming our health and costing us billions of dollars in health care costs. The choice is yours.  Either way your dollars will be spent?  Do you spend them nourishing your body with healthier foods free of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc., or do you spend your dollars on prescription medications and doctor visits?  Personally, I think it’s a no brainer.



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