Sorry so late getting this in, but I was preoccupied with studying for my FAA test for my private pilot license. It paid off though. I got a great score!
 
Here is the recap from last Saturday's show:

Reading the “Nutrition Facts” panels on foods may not be as reliable an indicator of a food’s nutrients as you may think.

"Good Morning America" hired a lab to test a dozen packaged food products to see if the nutrients matched the labels.

The government allows foods to contain 20 percent more diet-damaging ingredients than the label lists before taking enforcement action, and all 12 products were indeed over in one way or another. Three were actually over by more than 20 percent, including:

-David's Sunflower Seeds with 23 percent more saturated fat

-Ritz Crackers with 36 percent more sodium

-Wonderbread with 70 percent more total fat

Meanwhile, manufacturers are allowed to list "0" on the label even if their product contains up to half a gram of the item in question. Despite a "0" on the labels, there were small amounts of saturated fat in Baked Lay's Potato Chips, Rold Gold pretzels, Special K Cereal and Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch, and trans fats in Nabisco Cheese Nips.

Pet peeve of the day: Fitness and nutrition “experts” who are overweight! When listening to an “expert” on weight loss or any personal trainer on fitness, first ask yourself, “does it seem to be working for them”? This can easily be assessed with a quick glance at their belly or hips! Also, why do the “well known” trainers look so good on their product ads, but when you see them in every day life, they don’t look so good? Could it be photo retouching? Inconsistent lifestyle? Getting in shape for the photo shoot? Things that make you go hmmmmm……

Next, is my pet peeve of the week and a response to recent media attention about proper hydration. I was so peeved in fact, I wrote a whole article on it for my X Gym members (and radio show listeners). Please read it below.

Do You Really Need To Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day?

By PJ Glassey, CSCS

            No! That’s not enough! I’m really irritated with a few quacks (“Dorkters” I like to call them) blithering on recently about how we don’t really need to drink 8 glasses of water per day. They are just trying to get press time and create a stir by going against current wisdom and sound, healthy advice. They are also merely following the Dorkter who initially came out with this story a few months ago to get himself in the press to promote his new book.

Following the lead guy is a common technique Dorkters use, because they don’t have to do any research or work of their own. They just rewrite the original story in their own words and then claim it as their idea. I have seen several Dorkters saying the exact same thing since this story initially came out a few months ago, so it’s obvious they are just riding on his coattails.

The interesting fact to me, is that these Dorkters don’t cite any reasons that drinking 8 glasses of water is bad! They make the false claim that there aren’t enough well designed research studies proving 8 glasses or more is necessary, but totally neglect to cite a single study that supports drinking less than 8 glasses a day. It took me all of about 10 minutes to find the 12 research studies listed at the bottom of this article to support my opinion. Anyone can Google Pub Med online and see for them self how many well designed studies are out there now.

Shouldn’t doctors be spending their time telling us about stuff that would harm us or help us, instead of wasting their time talking about stuff that doesn’t matter if it isn’t true? This just proves my point that they are pointlessly blithering because they know it will get them some attention. There are no health problems associated with drinking 8 glasses per day, but many serious health problems have been proven to result from drinking less than 8 glasses a day, including death! Shouldn’t the Dorkters err on the safe side if they are doing us a service and not try to convert people to hypo hydration and all of its proven risks?

So far every “expert” I have seen who has claimed that we don’t need 8 or more glasses of water per day has a little fat to lose themselves, and every layperson who has repeated this message to me has also been at least moderately overweight. If I am only hearing this message from those with excess weight, it sure seems to confirm the fat loss benefits of proper hydration.

I did run across one water-naysayer who appeared to be relatively thin (at least between the ears), but I could detect a little “pooch” in his stomach area despite his loose shirt. He stated he was proof that my claim in the preceding paragraph was false, so I just responded, “OK, I’ll count to three, and then we will both pull up our shirts and do a quick comparison of my 12-20 cups a day abs to your 5-7 cups a day abs.” I started counting, and by the time I got to 2, he had already turned around and stormed off.

Our brains are 85% water, so it figures that only the dehydrated people are preaching the less water message in spite of all the scientific evidence available. Even if there were no scientific proof for proper hydration, it would still make for basic common sense. I guess us smart, hydrated folks have to “dumb it down” for the dehydrated population. If you are one of the 75% of Americans who are chronically dehydrated, I’ll try to type slowly for the rest of this article so you can keep up.

With the lack of water intake, abundance of coffee, sodas, and alcohol, it’s no wonder everyone is always sick and overweight! The bottom line is that even if you doubt what I am saying here, the risk of getting too little water is much worse than the risk of getting a little too much. If I’m wrong, you are only making more trips the bathroom. If I’m right, your whole life changes, and I’ve seen that happen over and over! Let’s just look at a few of the most common general knowledge side effects of both sides of the coin:

Negative Side Effects of Chronic Dehydration         Negative Side Effects of Slight Over hydration       

Slow to no fat loss                                          More trips to the bathroom

Kidney stones

Headaches                                                      

Decreased strength

Decreased concentration

Muscle cramps

Indigestion

Heart problems

Liver problems

Elevated blood pressure

Irregular body temperature

More frequent illnesses

45 – to 79% increased cancer risk

Joint pain

Vertebral disk degeneration

Sodium retention

Water retention

Bad breath

Gallstones

Urinary tract infections

Gout

Osteoporosis

Skin problems/acne

More skin wrinkles

Chapped lips

Decreased circulation

Intestinal problems

Decreased endurance

Increased appetite

Slower healing and repair

Increased muscle soreness

Mood swings

Hormone regulation problems

Eyesight degeneration

Slower metabolism

            The low-water “Dorkters” also waste their time talking about the dangers of drastic over hydration. Drinking too much water to the point of upsetting your electrolyte balance (hyponatremia) is very hard to do. This would require drinking at least your weight in ounces over a 12 hour period, so hyponatremia really isn’t an issue for people without Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Some extreme endurance athletes and babies of stupid parents can fall victim to hyponatremia, but it takes such high water volumes to cause problems (especially in our high sodium culture), it’s hardly worth mentioning.

If you want to know how much water your body uses in a day, just weigh yourself right before bed, and then again right when you wake up. You will be 1-2 pounds lighter in the morning, simply from exhaling water vapor while you slept! This means that if you stayed asleep for 24 hours, you would breathe out 48-96 ounces of water in that time. This equates to 6-12 glasses of water right there! Now add normal daily activities with some conversation, and you are already over the traditional 8 glass recommendation even before exercise!

Our thirst mechanisms do not work right when we are chronically dehydrated. Our bodies are forced to pull water out of our food to keep us alive, and this teaches our system to tell us we are hungry when we are really just thirsty! I’ll restate this point for those of you who are dehydrated and may be falling behind by now: You have taught your body that it must get its water from food, so it craves food instead of water when it needs water!

If you don’t believe this, try drinking your proper amount of water for 3 weeks, and you will see for yourself that you get thirsty more often than you get hungry instead of vice versa. This is because when you are properly hydrated, and your body is getting its needs from water instead of extracting it from food, it just asks for more water! Many people have lost fat from proper hydration alone, because their food consumption goes down so much after their thirst mechanism gets dialed in properly.

Fat loss from proper hydration is also tied into your liver function. When you are dehydrated, your kidneys need help and your liver comes to their rescue. One of the liver’s main jobs is to extract fat out of your tissues to be burned off, and when the liver is busy helping the kidneys, guess which job it’s not doing anymore?

Water also keeps your immune system functioning optimally. When we are ill, we lose water at an accelerated rate because we are blowing our nose, sweating, coughing, expectorating, and in the worst cases, launching out one end and/or the other. Lots of fluid is being lost and it must be replenished quickly, because our cells are 70-90% water and this is where the war is waging between the good guys and the virus or bacteria!

Your blood plasma is mostly water. Plasma acts as a reservoir that can either replenish insufficient water or absorb excess water from tissues. When body tissues need additional liquid, water from plasma is the first resource to meet that need. Plasma circulation plays a vital role in regulating body temperature by carrying heat generated in core body tissues through areas that lose heat more readily, such as the arms, legs, and head. It’s pretty easy to see the damage done when you are dehydrated while you are sick with a fever.

Your skin is your first defense against infection. When you are dehydrated, your skin cracks and your lips chap. This provides nice little gateways for tiny little viruses and bacteria to sneak through. Mucus membranes are also one of your first lines of defense. When those are dried up from a lack of water, bad stuff gets by them too. White blood cells are the internal defense mechanisms that take care of the stuff that gets into your bloodstream. Guess what their main ingredient is? Yep, water. They can’t fight for you effectively if you are not hydrating them too!

Another reason we preach water so hard at the X Gym is because muscles are 75% water. When you train with us, you are breaking down your muscles, much like a tornado would break down your house (appropriate analogy don’t you think?). If you give your body a little excess water, you are providing excess building materials to rebuild. This is like Home Depot dropping off too much lumber to rebuild your house after the storm. You get to add on and make it better than before!

Most gyms make you buy your water so they can make more money off of you. If they do have free water, it comes out of a drinking fountain straight from municipal sources with all the toxic city chemicals included for your convenience. You probably don’t want to drink out of the fountain anyway because you just saw Bruno Barbell Head wrap his lips around the nozzle and then spit some back out to clear out the extra saliva production from the steroids he’s on.

 Instead of charging you for water, we pay for the best possible filtration process and give it to you free. Our WETCOOLERS.COM systems filter the water through three different stages, ending with reverse osmosis filtration, for the purest water available. Then it goes to a stainless steel holding tank, where it is sterilized by activated oxygen so you get pure, sterile, filtered water in your cup.

We have the best water system because we have the best workouts, and for you to get the best results, you need the best water absorption. We encourage members to bring extra water bottles so they can take this water home too, so fill up! It’s another benefit of being an X Gym member!

The only way you can depend on your thirst mechanism to accurately tell you when you need water (and not more food) is to be properly hydrated. To calculate your water needs, divide your body weight in half and then drink that many ounces of water each day. Some people under 100 pounds might need more, and others over 250 pounds might need less, but it’s a good general rule.

Another important point the Dorkters fail to mention is that heavy people, well-muscled individuals, and genetically heavy sweaters will suffer much worse effects from less than 8 glasses a day than those of “normal weight” and sweat rates. Under-hydrated individuals with weight problems will crave food to satisfy their broken thirst mechanism even more than normal weight people, which further perpetuates their weight problem.

Children are at greater risk for dehydration than adults due to their higher surface-to-mass ratio. Additionally, children have different thirst sensitivities and body cooling mechanisms than adults. Children differ from adults in total body water content, and boys and girls differ in body water content with maturation. Research in young adults shows that mild dehydration corresponding to only 1% to 2% of body weight loss can lead to significant impairment in cognitive function. Dehydration in infants is associated with confusion, irritability, and lethargy; in children, it even produces decrements in cognitive performance.

The research makes the case for proper hydration indisputable, and simple common sense verifies it. Water is free, so I’m not getting anything out of being on this soap box other than the satisfaction of seeing you succeed in your fitness and health goals. Just do it!

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