Saturday, February 26, 2011

Using Ice Wraps to Loose Weight...For Real

Below is an interesting recap of a recent Dr. Oz Show with guest Tim Farris of The 4 Hour Work Week fame.  The part that is relevant to this blog is using ice/cold to loose weight. Tim has certainly come up with another use for ice wraps. I have highlighted the portion related to using ice wraps to loose weight in case you don't want to read through the entire post.


Dr Oz did a segment called 4 Hours To The Perfect Body with Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek.  Tim Ferriss joined Doctor Oz to teach us three cutting edge techniques to lose weight including Ice Therapy, Eat 30 Grams of Protein Within 30 Minutes of Waking Up, and Pig Out Once a Week.  Sounds too good to be true, right?  These are definitely some weight loss and fat burning techniques worth checking out!


Dr Oz: Timothy Ferriss 4-Hour Body

Dr Oz 4 Hour BodyDr Oz said that Tim Ferriss spent the past 15 years testing out every diet, product and weight loss premise to figure out what really works with the minimal amount of effort.  Could it really be possible to lose 20 pounds in 30 days and increase your fat burning potential by 300% by making simple changes?  Ferriss had been called a Life Hacker and teaches people how to triple the fat they lose with ice baths, how to get Michelle Obama arms with three 5 minute workouts per week, and how to enjoy wine and coffee while still losing fat.


Dr Oz: 4-Hour Body

Dr Oz asked Ferriss what is a 4- Hour Body?  Timothy Feriss said that it is about making the smallest changes in a consistent way that result in the biggest desired impact.  The idea is to not spend a lot of time and effort but to achieve profound changes.  Dr Oz said to Ferriss that critics say that his approaches are not medically sound, so how does he respond to this?  Tim Ferriss said that he is not a doctor, but he has worked with many doctors and most of his critics are trying to sell products that conflict with the suggestions in his weight loss plan called The 4 Hour Body.  Dr Oz said that he had his medical unit check all of the ideas in The 4-Hour Body, and almost everything checked out for medical soundness.


Dr Oz: Ice Therapy: 4-Hour Weight Loss Strategy #1

Dr Oz asked Timothy Feris what is Ice Therapy and how does it work?  He said that Ice Therapy triggers hormones that are helpful for fat loss.  You can do something as simple as a cold ice pack on your upper back and your upper chest for 30 minutes when you watch tv at night.  Then you can buildup to taking a cold shower the next morning.  And Ferriss said that the final step, which is what he does, is to take an actual Ice Bath up to your waist for 10 minutes, three times per week.  But take it slowly – you should not go from doing nothing straight into an Ice Bath.


Dr Oz: Why Do Ice Baths Make You Lose Weight?

Dr Oz said that he checked out this theory of Ice Therapy and that when you are cold, your body has to do a lot more work to do the same things as when it is warm – so you burn much more fat.  You have something called Brown Fat that is located around blood vessels and keeps your blood warm.  By cooling off with ice, your body is forced to burn a dramatically larger number of calories.  I have heard that sucking on ice cubes or drinking cold water also helps you to lose weight because your body has to use energy to bring the cold water or ice up to your body’s temperature.  Sounds like a similar phenomenon!


Dr Oz: 30 G Protein For Breakfast: 4-Hour Weight Loss Strategy #2

Timothy Ferris said that the next fat burning tip is to eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up.  For example, you can eat 5 eggs, turkey sausage, or protein shakes made of unflavored whey protein.  Ferriss says that this is critical because it starts your day off with the right fat burning hormones.  Dr Oz said that eggs are a safe way to get protein and generally do not increase your cholesterol unless you have a genetic pre-disposition.  Tim Ferriss said that this will also help you not to get a mid-afternoon slump after lunch.  You should always follow how you feel as an indication of how much fat you are burning.


Dr Oz: Pig Out Once A Week: 4-Hour Weight Loss Strategy #3

Dr Oz sounded slightly hesitant about this tip, but Ferriss said that by spiking your calories once a week, you improve your thyroid output (which is especially good for mothers), and it makes the weight loss plan more sustainable so that you will be strict the other 6 days.  You can limit the damage to your body from this once-a-week eating extravaganza by drinking grapefruit juice and doing squats after the big meal.


Dr Oz: Grapefruit Juice & Squats

Ferriss said that you have roughly one hour from when you eat junk food to drinking grapefruit juice and doing the squats to counteract the “mistakes” you make on your diet.  Dr Oz said that when you have grapefruit juice and do squats, you open up all of your receptors in the muscles so that the sugar goes into your muscles to become fuel rather than the sugar being deposited as fat around your belly.
Dr Oz and Tim Ferriss demonstrated how to do an Air Squat by putting both arms out in front of you for balance.  Make sure to sit slowly in a pretend chair until your thighs are parallel with the ground (or as far as you can go).

Friday, February 25, 2011

Using Viso Flushing to Relieve Knee Pain

Below is an excerpt from Charlie's Diary -The blog of Charles Stross that talks about a technique called vaso-flushing to relieve muscle pain. This method would work well to relieve pain in the knee and surrounding area as well.


Second, I'll tell you how to relieve muscle pain.

This technique is called vaso-flushing and I learned it from my wife, who makes her living doing sports massage. It works best on injuries that happened more than 48 hours earlier, and it's also good for chronic pain (including my own.)

It's simple: First, you apply ice to the painful area for three minutes. Then, you apply heat for one minute--this is best done by immersing in a hot tub or jacuzzi if you can swing that. After that minute of heat, you go back to three minutes of ice, then another minute of heat, then ice and heat again.

When the three rounds are done, you finish up with a minute or two of ice. That's it. I do this at my gym to take advantage of their giant ice machine and jacuzzi, but I've used an ice pack and electric blanket at home. It works surprisingly well.

Using and electric blanket is a great idea for the same reason that body part specific ice wraps are superior to a a general purpose ice pack, zip lock full of ice cubes or bag of frozen peas, it is able to contour to the body to ensure continuous, even contact over the entire area. A knee ice wrap is the ideal device to use if you are trying to relieve pain in the knee or surrounding muscles.


 You can find the complete post at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/02/lets-be-practical.html