We’ve just added a few new products to our website….
At last, the shock rings are here. For those who don’t know, shock rings were standard with the first Soloflex Machines back in 1978. Some people (including Mr. Jerry Wilson) liked them better. And so, Shock Rings are back – available in 2.5, 5, 10, 25 and 50 lb weights.
We’ve also just added Variable Resistance bands, like the ones used in the Soloflex Hybrid video. They are available in light, medium and heavy resistance. Variable Resistance Bands, like weight straps and shock rings, are light-weight, easy to use, gentle on joints and tendons and will never crush your toes if you drop them. Use them with your Muscle Machine, Soloflex WBV or alone.
And lastly, we’ve got some t-shirts and sweatshirts available. They should be on the website later today.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Standing on a vibrating platform may sound like an odd way to pass the time, but a new research review suggests it may do the muscles and bones some good — particularly in older or sedentary adults.
Writing in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports, researchers detail the evidence for and against so-called whole body vibration training. WBV involves standing on a platform that sends mild vibratory impulses through the feet and into the rest of the body.
These vibrations activate muscle fibers more efficiently, it is claimed, than conscious contraction of muscles during regular exercise. WBV is often touted as a way to improve muscle power, jump higher or sprint faster.
The tactic is also being studied for its therapeutic potential, such as increasing older women’s bone mass.
And there is some evidence to back it up, according to Dr. Dennis G.
Dolny and G. Francis Cisco Reyes of the University of Idaho in Moscow, who conducted the review.
In 1 study of 28 postmenopausal women, for example, researchers found that WBV appeared to increase bone density in the hip. The 8-month training regimen required the women to stand on a WBV platform, in a squat position, for six 1-minute cycles, 3 times per week.]
Another small study of postmenopausal women found that over one year, WBV training seemed to inhibit bone loss in the spine and hip area.
As for the usefulness of WBV in enhancing athletic prowess, studies have mixed results, according to Dolny and Reyes.
A few small studies, for example, have found that performing squats on a WBV platform is slightly more effective than standard squats in boosting muscle power and jump height.
However, other research questions the added benefits of WBV in young, fit people, according to Dolny and Reyes. And it’s unlikely, they note, that WBV alone, with no “external load” to exert the muscles, would do much good.
On the other hand, WBV might hold promise as an exercise therapy for older adults, the researchers say.
“In sedentary and elderly subjects, there is greater likelihood for WBV to improve muscle performance to at least the same if not greater extent (as) traditional training methods,” Dolny and Reyes write.
However, they add, more research is needed. People with conditions such as heart disease or high blood pressure should avoid WBV until safety concerns are better addressed.
SOURCE: Current Sports Medicine Reports, May/June 2008.
Pfizer to Pay Record $2.3 Billion Fine Posted by: Dr. Mercola
September 26 2009 | 39,158 views
In the largest health care fraud settlement in history, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer must pay $2.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company illegally promoted uses of four of its drugs, including the painkiller Bextra. The other drugs were the antipsychotic Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the anti-epileptic Lyrica.
Once the Food and Drug Administration approves drugs, doctors can prescribe them off-label for any use, but makers can’t market them for anything other than approved uses. Pfizer subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn pleaded guilty to a felony violation for promoting off-label uses of Bextra. At the FDA’s request, Pfizer pulled Bextra off the market in April 2005 because of its risks.
In a statement, Pfizer senior vice president and general counsel Amy Schulman said, “We regret certain actions taken in the past, but are proud of the action we’ve taken to strengthen our internal controls and pioneer new procedures.”
Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, has just been slapped with the largest health care fraud settlement in history. The company must pay $2.3 billion for illegally promoting uses of four of its drugs, including Bextra, a painkiller that was linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and stroke.
The allegations, meanwhile, may have never come to light if it hadn’t been for Gulf War veteran and former Pfizer sales rep John Kopchinski, who filed the whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer some six years ago. The lawsuit prompted federal and state officials to investigate, and what they found was a felony violation for promoting drugs for off-label uses.
Among the allegations, Kopchinski told USA Today that Pfizer told him to distribute 20-milligram samples to rheumatologists and orthopedists, even though the FDA had approved only 10-milligram doses for arthritis. Kopchinski said in a statement:
“In the Army I was expected to protect people at all costs. At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives.”
The truth of the matter is this: drug companies will stop at nothing to sell their products when billions of dollars are at stake.
They are out to make a profit so enticing doctors to prescribe their drugs for as many uses as possible, regardless of whether or not they have scientific evidence to back them up, will only allow them to sell more drugs and make more money.
Pfizer is certainly not alone in this process. Off-label drug promotion and use is commonplace.
How Many are Suffering From Taking Off-Label Drugs?
While doctors can legally prescribe FDA-approved medications off-label for any use, drugmakers are not allowed to market them for anything other than approved uses.
Many physicians, however, rely on drug reps to educate them about the indications for drugs and what other leading physicians are using them for. Drug companies are not shy about suggesting off-label uses. Further, for many drugs it can be difficult for physicians to determine whether medications were not approved based on the Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) — the information given to physicians about drugs.
In fact, according to one recent study, it was impossible for physicians to determine the licensing status for one in five drugs … which means it’s even more likely they’ll rely on drug reps opinions and suggestions.
Again, off-label drug use is extremely common. According to studies conducted in Britain, when a “suitable alternative” did not exist, doctors used unlicensed or “off label” medicine in:
90 percent of babies in neonatal intensive care units
70 percent of children in pediatric intensive care units
Two-thirds of children on general medical and surgical pediatric wards in the UK
Two studies suggest that children taking these medicines face a higher risk of side effects, with one estimate suggesting they suffer up to three times more side effects as a result.
Drug Companies Commonly Use Deceptive Marketing Practices
Several years ago, Pfizer paid another settlement, this one for $430 million, related to a 1996 whistleblower lawsuit involving their epilepsy drug Neurontin (which was formerly owned by Parke-Davis). It was this debacle that reportedly inspired Kopchinski to come forward in the current Bextra lawsuit.
Neurontin was only approved to control seizures at the time, but was promoted for unapproved uses such as treating bipolar disorder.
Parke-Davis paying 14 doctors with honoraria and research grants anywhere from $10,250 to $158,250 from 1993-97 to peddle their influence to promote Neurontin to their peers.
Medical education and communications committees (MECC) running continuing medical education courses funded by drug companies that are held in conjunction with other meetings.
Through MECC scams, those influential doctors or assistants conducting conference calls with other doctors, and drug company representatives monitoring those conversations.
Drug companies funding small trials of their own drugs that would be published only if the news was good.
The drug company cartel spends an obscene amount of cash — an estimated $30,000 annually — to promote their worthless drugs to every doctor in this country, amounting to some $18.5 billion. Unfortunately, let me assure you the mega-drug companies aren’t throwing their money away, as they get a far better return on their marketing investments than you’d think.
The people who stand to lose in this equation, are unfortunately those who unknowingly take a prescription drug for a use that has never been thoroughly tested. Most would not agree to become guinea pigs for the drug companies just to increase their profits, but that is essentially what happens when you take a drug for off-label uses.
Fortunately, you can avoid becoming Pfizer’s, or any other drug companies, next victim by taking control of your health. Leading a healthy lifestyle and staying educated about drug-free and non-invasive treatment options are the keys to your well-being.
Most are not aware of the pervasive corruption that exists in the corporate drug world. You need to understand that any corporation’s primary and essential responsibility is to their shareholders — NOT to you.
Drug companies have accumulated so much wealth, power and government influence that so far they have been able to largely escape any consequences linking them to profitting from permanently disabling, crippling or even killing consumers.
However, what they hadn’t anticipated or planned for was the freedom and liberation that the Internet provides in exposing their corrupt plans. So please keep staying informed and opening your mind to the real routes to health and happiness.
As you age, it becomes harder to keep your muscles healthy. They get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures. New research is showing how this happens, and what to do about it.
Researchers have already shown that when older people eat, they cannot make muscle as fast as the young. Now they’ve found that the suppression of muscle breakdown is blunted with age. This may explain the ongoing loss of muscle in older people — when they eat they don’t build enough muscle, and in addition, their insulin fails to shut down the muscle breakdown that rises between meals and overnight.
However, weight training may “rejuvenate” muscle blood flow and help retain muscle for older people.
These findings fall into the category of common sense, along the lines of “use it or lose it.” As you age, physical exercise becomes an ever more important aspect of optimal health and longevity.
How to Prevent and Reverse Muscle Wasting
This study explains the biological processes that cause muscle wasting as you move into your senior years.
As you likely know, protein is essential for proper muscle growth and maintenance, but this study found that as you age, your body becomes increasingly less able to use the protein in your food for building muscle.
In addition, they found that, in seniors, insulin no longer prevented the muscle breakdown between meals and overnight as it normally does in younger subjects.
This double-whammy adds up to significant muscle wasting in sedentary seniors. And poor blood supply, which prevents proper delivery of nutrients and hormones to your muscles, may be an important factor.
Exercise is the natural remedy for poor blood circulation, and the team confirmed that three weight training sessions per week over 20 weeks rejuvenated blood flow in the extremities to the point that they were identical to those in the younger group!
How’s that for results!!
Beware of Drugs That Can Cause Irreversible Damage to Your Muscles
Before going any further, I also want to remind you of one very common cause of excessive muscle wasting, aside from a sedentary lifestyle, namely: statin drugs.
Statins are a class of drugs used to lower your cholesterol, and are among the most commonly prescribed medications in the world.
They have many dangerous side effects, one of which is a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition called rhabdomyolysis, which can be fatal (as your heart is a muscle, and can be affected by these drugs).
Statins such as Lipitor, Zocor, Pavacol and Mevacor lower your cholesterol by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase, a key enzyme in cholesterol synthesis. But they can also activate the atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.
One recent study showed that even low concentrations of these drugs led to atrogin-1 induced muscle damage. And the higher the dosage, the greater the damage.
The Importance of Weight Training for Optimal Health
Unfortunately, many ignore weight training when devising their exercise plan, thinking they don’t want to “bulk up.”
But gaining more muscle through resistance exercises is an integral part of any well rounded fitness program, especially if you want to lose weight.
However, weight training is not about vanity.
The intensity of your resistance training can achieve a number of beneficial changes on the molecular, enzymatic, hormonal, and chemical level in your body, which will help slow down (and many cases stop) many of the diseases caused by a sedentary lifestyle.
Therefore it’s also an essential element if you want to prevent common diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, or weakening of your bones (osteoporosis), limited range of motion, aches and pains, and yes, prevent excessive muscle wasting as you age.
I recently published an article on exercise for weight loss, so let’s take a look at some of the other benefits of exercise as it relates to maintaining optimal health well into your senior years.
How Weight Lifting Can Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes and Heart Disease
Your body has two types of fat: visceral and subcutaneous.
Subcutaneous fat is the fat located just below your skin, and is the type that causes dimpling and cellulite.
Visceral fat, on the other hand, shows up in your abdomen and surrounds your vital organs including your liver, heart and muscles. It is this visceral fat that has been linked to serious health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and stroke, among many other chronic diseases.
A key strategy to reduce your risk of heart disease (and a host of other chronic diseases), is to keep your inflammation levels low, and avoiding gaining visceral fat is part of this equation.
Exercise is a critical component for reducing heart disease risk because it both lowers inflammation in your body, and is one of the best weapons against visceral fat. For example, in one study volunteers who did not exercise had an 8.6 percent increase in visceral fat after eight months, while those who exercised the most LOST over 8 percent of their visceral fat during the same amount of time.
This occurs because muscle burns more calories, and it consumes calories around the clock, even when you’re resting and sleeping. So, as you gain more muscle, your body naturally increases the amount of calories burned each day, which reduces fat stores.
As for lowering inflammation, physical exercise accomplishes this naturally by lowering levels of a C-reactive protein (CRP) that is linked to inflammation.
High levels of CRP in your body is associated with a higher than average risk of cardiovascular disease, and has even been suggested as a better indicator of possible heart attack than high cholesterol.
How Strength Training Reduces Osteoporosis
Weight-bearing exercise is one of the most effective remedies against osteoporosis.
The last thing you want to consider is to take a drug to improve your bone density, as without question, that is more likely to cause long-term harm than benefit.
Your bones are actually very porous and soft, and as you get older, your bones can easily become less dense and hence, more brittle. Especially if you are inactive.
Resistance training can combat this effect because as you put more tension on your muscles it puts more pressure on your bones, which then respond by continuously creating fresh, new bone.
In addition, as you build more muscle, and make the muscle that you already have stronger, you also put more constant pressure on your bones.
A good weight bearing exercise to incorporate into your routine (depending on your current level of fitness, of course) is a walking lunge, as it helps build bone density in your hips, even without any additional weights. You can see the video at the top of the page on how to do that.
The video is from our new exercise site which we hope to launch later this year.
Keep Yourself in Motion!
Optimal health is dependent on an active lifestyle; eating fresh, whole foods, avoiding as many processed foods as possible, and addressing the stress in your life.
Ignoring any of these basic tenets of health will eventually lead to a decline in health and any number of diseases. So start moving, and don’t stop no matter what your age.
And do include strength training into your fitness routine. It is the number one way for you to remain strong, young, and independent well into old age.
We’ve just added a few new products to our website….
