Cool(ing) technology: It’s 99 out and the humidity is even higher. You want to workout, you yearn to workout. On the other hand, you’re not big into heat stroke, either. Clever entrepreneurs have discovered this about you, which is why you’re starting to see an increasing number of PCDs — personal cooling devices — on the market. From the $50 Bex Runner cool pack that straps to your palm to the $189 Arctic Heat cooling vest by Cool Down Fire Up to $3,000 gizmo called CoreControl, devices abound to help you work out when it’s way hot.

But do they work? A July 20 Wall Street Journal article explores the issue. Read it here.

Hotter strategy: Even if it is 100 out and the humidity is somehow higher, you don’t necessarily need a $3,000 personal AC unit to survive. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, the folks at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine, a collaboration of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, say the key is to acclimatize. Scale back your workout as the temperature rises, then slowly bring it back up to speed. “It’s amazing how well the body learns to acclimatize,” the Morning News quotes cardiologist and Institute Director Benjamin Levine as saying.

Read more about thriving in, not just surviving, the heat, here.

Buff mice, brainy mice: In the mouse world, what separates the achievers from the alsorans? A half hour on the treadmill and a few laps in the pool, apparently. From the Saudi Gazette comes news of a study at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan that mice who spend more time in the gym — on rodent wheels, on mini-treadmills (really!) — scored better on their WMTs (water maze tests). Further, according to SG, “The mice who raced on the treadmills showed evidence of molecular changes in several portions of their brains when viewed under a microscope, while the voluntary wheel-runners had changes in only one area.” Said Chauying J. Jen, a professor of physiology and an author of the study, “Our results support the notion that different forms of exercise induce neuroplasticity changes in different brain regions.”

Read more about these brawny, brainy mice here.

Compression confession? When I first saw them on elite runners, I thought the tube sock was making a comeback. Then I discovered these new-fangled knee-highs were actually pricey compression socks, used by some athletes to boost circulation and maximize oxygen flow. But do they? A pair of studies presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual meeting last month suggest they may not be that effective.

Read on.

Today’s items were culled from the American College of Sports Medicine news aggregator.

Photo: That’s the fashion-conscious 1965 version of L.A. Laker’s coach Phil Jackson during his NoDak playing days.

It was hard not to. (And drat the telltale look that signals when thought is finally occurring.) It was Monday evening and we were among 30 or so others listening to author David Herlihy recount the adventures of cycling explorer Frank Lenz. Lenz was a Pittsburgh bookkeeper who became caught up in the early stages of a cycling boom that swept the country in the late 1800s. He started pedaling a “high wheeler,” participating in races on dirt (usually mud) roads and tracks that might draw 20 competitors and thousands of fans. Begrudgingly, he switched to a “safety bicycle” — the prototype for the modern bike — when that style began to curry favor. In the meantime, he was honing his skills as a photographer, and in 1892 convinced Outing magazine to back an ill-fated trip around the world. That trip is the basis for Herlihy’s  “The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance,” and constituted the bulk of his talk and slideshow Monday at Quail Ridge Books & Music.

It would be easy to romanticize Lenz’s worldwide journey on this exotic new machine through lands of which, even in the 1890s, little was known. Easy, if you didn’t listen closely to Herlihy. The roads Lenz traveled were not paved, they were dirt, and often of the loosely packed or wet variety. Lenz’s bike alone weighed 58 pounds, and then there was his gear, which included a 35-pound box camera. Many of the countries he rode through had never seen white people, let alone a white guy on a two-wheeled thing-a-ma-bob. There were no maps for many of the places he traveled. Cash was the currency of the day, and some countries didn’t have paper money: Lenz had to tote weighty coins for long stretches at a time.

This was not cruising paved highways on an 18-pound, 27-gear touring bike with just a change of clothes and a piece of plastic. Still, my face betrayed a lust for adventure.

Beginning in the mid- to  late 1800s and lasting into the following century, a profound sense of adventure had captured the imagination of the masses. In the U.S. alone, the Iron Horse was making its way west, opening vast expanses of territory for exploration, if not personally then through the eyes of adventurers, some financed by magazines such as Outing to lure readers. And this thirst for adventure hardly ended at our expanding borders: Explorers such as Ernest Shackleton, David Lingstone, Percy Fawcett, Richard Byrd, and others were pushing into terra incognita. And then …

And then, it seemed that we’d explored just about everything there was to explore here on Earth. Space was the final frontier, and I don’t know about you but I’ve yet to figure out how to pack for a trip to Canis Major. In fact, though, just because someone else has explored a place doesn’t mean we can’t. Reading about a place, watching a documentary, getting Tweets from out in the field, none of it is a replacement for being there. Great adventures await just out our front door, and that was why I had that look on my face. Riding a bike around the world had already been done: I didn’t have a couple years right now to spare anyway. But there was a local bike adventure I’d been contemplating, one more than three decades in the making that now, with a short detour or two, was within reach.

Riding my bike on greenway from Cary to downtown Durham.

In the early 1980s, a 22-mile rail line running south from downtown Durham into western Wake County was abandoned. Later that decade a plan was made to turn the corridor into a rails-to-trails project, opening the former rail line to a variety of non-motorized traffic. Today, the American Tobacco Trail is all but a bridge (over I-40) and a mile and a half of pavement from being completed. Meanwhile, greenways were popping up elsewhere in the Triangle; as the assorted stretches of asphalt grew in length, someone got the idea that they should become one big ol’ greenway throughout the Triangle — “Circle the Triangle,” the notion was called — with the American Tobacco Trail at its core. Listening to Herlihy and being touched by Lenz’s sense of adventure, while at the same time realizing that I was no Frank Lenz, made me realize that save for about five miles of road riding at the start, I could pedal most of the rest of the way to downtown Durham on greenway, safely segregated from my sometimes inattentive four-wheel brethren.

The next morning around 11, thought turned into action.

Monday: Thought turns into action.

If you’re of a certain age — that being the middle one — more than once, no doubt. And no doubt when one of the above happened you took it as further proof that your brain continues its rapid descent into the abyss. Well, Ha! You’re wrong!

This according to a new book by New York Times science writer Barbara Strauch which reports that while it may seem like your brain is slipping, it is in fact getting better. In “The Secret Life of The Grown-up Brain” Strauch reports all sorts of good news for folks in the 40-65 age range. The brain may shrink a little in spots, but we don’t lose anywhere near the 30 percent of brain cells we were once thought to lose (in fact, middle-agers are actually capable of growing new brain cells). Cognitive skills improve with age, and there are things you can do to actually grow the brain — like exercise and listen to Rush Limbaugh!

Listen to this interview with Strauch on this morning’s edition of NPR’s Morning Edition.

Katie Spotz rowed her boat ashore after 70 days, 5 hours and 20 minutes crossing the Atlantic.

And while you’ve got the headphones on, give a listen to a short interview from this afternoon’s The World radio show with Katie Spotz. Not that you shouldn’t feel good about that charity fun run you did last weekend, but Katie’s most recent exploit definitely redefines the notion of sweating for a good cause. (Spoiler alert: She rowed a boat 3,038 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to raise money and awareness for clean drinking water worldwide.)

Give a listen here.

• Don’t have a stroke. And if you’re a woman, you’ll be less likely to have one if you walk two hours or more a week at a “brisk” pace. This according to a study published in “Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association,” which found that women exercising at this level were 37 percent less likely to have a stroke of any kind than sedentary types. Further, these brisk-paced walkers had a 68 percent lower risk of suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and a 25 percent lower risk of suffering an ischemic stroke. The exact relationship between walking and reduced stroke risk is unclear. The study was conducted as part of the long-term Women’s Health Study, a long-term study of 39,315 female health professionals who are predominantly white and whose average age is 54. Read more here.
• Diet alone isn’t enough (again). More research, this time from the Oregon Health & Science University, shows that cutting back on calories alone isn’t enough to lose a significant amount of weight — you’ve got to exercise, too. In this latest affirmation of the need for diet and sweat, the school studied 18 female rhesus macaque monkeys. The monkeys were put on a high-fat diet for several years, then put back on a low-fat diet with a 30 percent reduction in calories. After a month, they exhibited no significant weight loss. During that time as well, the reduction in calories caused the monkeys to become less active. Another reduction in calories a month later saw the monkeys slack off even more. By comparison, a group of monkeys fed a normal monkey diet and trained to exercise for an hour a day on a treadmill did lose weight. The study offers further support to the belief that when the body receives fewer calories it tends to conserve what it’s getting. Read more here.
• Pregnant women don’t exercise enough. A study at UNC-Chapel Hill finds that fewer than one in four pregnant women get enough exercise — “enough” being at least 30 minutes a day, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or 150 minutes a week, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Physical activity during pregnancy … may help prevent gestational diabetes, support healthy gestational weight gain and improve mental health,” according to Kelly Everson, research associate professor of epidemiology in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and author of the study. The most common form of exercise for the moms-to-be who did exercise: walking. Read more here.
• Don’t let being critically ill keep you from exercising. Exercise even benefits the critically ill, according to a study done in the medical intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins. 57 critically ill patients were put through 30- to 45-minute exercise sessions, which “included any combination of either leg or arm movements while lying flat in bed, sitting up or standing, or walking slowly in the ICU corridors.” The exercise both sped up recovery times and cut in half the amount of prescription sedatives required per patient. Read more here.

Roland Smith

Smith’s adventures are born from a childhood of adventure, a childhood that was typical of most kids growing up in the 1950s. Smith grew up in Portland, Ore., walked most places, rode his bike when he wanted to explore farther than he could walk. At age 5, his parents gave him a typewriter; he quickly became taken by the “the sound and the look of the letters on the crisp white paper.” As an English major at Portland State University, he took a part-time job at the local children’s zoo. His work there would continued for 20 years and play a key role in informing his writing: Many of his novels involve the search for “cryptids,” critters such as Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster that are thought to exist, but haven’t been scientifically verified. His work has won a host of awards, most recently the 2009 National Parenting Publications Award and this year’s North Carolina School Media Association Young Adult Book Award.

Smith is in North Carolina this week to discuss his work at local schools, as well as at two public appearances (details follow the interview). We caught up with Smith at the small farm he shares with his wife, Marie, south of Portland to discuss his work.

GGNC: How did your childhood inform your writing? Were you like a particular character of yours? Or perhaps a composite?

Roland Smith: All the characters in my novels are composites.  They are made up of people I know, people I’ve read about, my imagination, and there is a small/large dose of me in all of the characters.  I think my main characters are idealized images of myself…meaning they are people that I would have ‘liked’ to have been when I was that age.

GGNC:I’m curious about how you come up with ideas for your books. Take “Peak,” for instance: A story in the current “Outside” magazine addresses the race to put the youngest climber atop Mt. Everest. Is this where the idea for Peak came from?

RS: The old adage “Write what you Know” is a misnomer.  I think you write about what is important to you, what interests you.  In the case of “Peak,” I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by mountains.  In my youth I was a climber, but not a high-altitude climber.  Years ago I saw an interview on television with a woman who was attempting to summit Everest for the third time (she failed the two previous attempts).  At the end of the interview the interviewer pointed out that she was a single mother of a 5-year-old daughter.  He asked her what she had done for her daughter in the event that she died on Mt. Everest.  The woman responded that she had written her daughter some letters.

This might have been one of the most outrageous responses I’ve ever heard.  I don’t know if the woman made it to the top or not, but if she died I’m sure her daughter would have much rather had her mother than a pile of letters.

I think climbing is a wonderful sport and that it can be done perfectly safely if you climb at the right time of year with the right gear.  The problem with Everest is that you don’t know how your body is going to respond to the rigors of oxygen deprivation.  And you cannot control the weather.  One of these conditions can kill you very quickly regardless of your conditioning.    Thousands of people have gotten to the summit of Mt. Everest.  Over 500 people made it to the top last year spending tens of thousand of dollars and weeks to get there.  And for what?  I guess so they can tell people they’ve been to the top, or for the egocentric satisfaction of telling themselves that they’ve reached the summit.

I understand why Sherpa’s climb.  They are at least supporting their families by doing so.  I think this might be worth the risk.  And to a much lesser extent I understand why expedition leaders climb.  They too are making a living.  But why do the “clients” do this?  In “Peak” I wanted to take a look at the “dark” side of Everest.  Most novels for young adults (and adults) are about conquering the mountain.  My novel examines the commercialization of the mountain.

GGNC: “Peak” is a good example for explaining how you research your books. Your account of the ascent is as vivid as any I’ve read from people who have actually been on the mountain. To what lengths did you go to create such an authentic, you-are-there feel?

RS: Again, I used to be a climber, but high-altitude climbing is very different than the sport I participated in.  I read dozens of books about climbing Everest. I know a few people who have reached the summit.  The trick with Peak was to use the climbing nomenclature so people who climbed knew that I knew what I was talking about, but not so much jargon as to detract from the story.  It took me a couple years to do the research and write the novel).

GGNC: How did your fascination with cryptids come about? And this is an obvious question, but I’ll ask anyway: How do you see these creatures as an effective way to pull kids into your stories?

RS: I grew up in Big Foot country. When I was young everyone was seeing Sasquatch in the PNW.  I even tried to catch one in my backyard (in the city) by digging a deep pit.  I caught my mother.  (A scene that I use in “Cryptid Hunters”.)
When I was growing up we believed in everything. Young people are a lot more skeptical these days. Looking for cryptids is not as much about the creature as it is about the journey.  If you aren’t out looking you can’t discover anything.
I was an endangered species conservation biologist for over a decade.  When I write about cryptids I’m really writing about endangered species. If one were to actually exist it would be one of the most endangered species on the planet. Using cryptids gives me an intriguing way to talk about conservation and endangered species biology).

GGNC: Do you have any personal cryptid experience?

RS: No.

GGNC: Your kid characters have great insight into how their parents and other adults think. How does that help in luring young readers into your stories?

RS: My characters are a lot brighter than I was at their age.  One of the interesting things about YA literature is that we have to get rid of the parents so our young protagonists can resolve their problems on their own and become the heroes of the stories.  In real life, if a young person has a problem they should it to take it to their parents and the parent’s resolve the problem. Of course this doesn’t work in fiction.  The stories would be about six pages long.  Therefore I (and all other YA authors) have to think of ways to get the parents out of the picture, or story).

GGNC: When we were kids, our parents would tell us to go outside in the morning and not come back until dinner. Today, parents are loathe to let their kids out of their eyesight. Is one of your goals to rekindle that sense of exploration and discovery, even if it’s looking for crawdads under a river rock and not Sasquatch in a lava tube?

RS: I was raised in the 50s.  The television was black and white [and had three channels].  I lived in Portland, but I never took a bus to school.  I walked or rode my bike, a three-mile round trip.  When I got home we played outside until dinner.  After dinner we played outside until dark.  On weekends we rode our bikes for miles, played with friends.  The “neighborhood” watched out for us.  We didn’t have fast food.  The closest burger place to us was four miles away.  If my parents decided to treat us to burgers we rode our bikes to the burger joint and rode back with our baskets filled with burger, shakes, and fries.  Like I said earlier it’s a different world now.  We didn’t wear seatbelts.  Our parents smoked and drank and all their friends smoked and drank.  I survived.  I didn’t feel as if I were in any danger because this is how we lived.  If we went on a long bike ride and something happened like a flat tire, we’d knock on the nearest door, and perfect strangers would let us use their phones to call home, or they would fix the flat tire, or they would throw the bike into the trunk and drive us home.

GGNC: You have a good kid perspective. How are you able to think young?

RS: I have children and grandchildren.  I don’t consciously try to get into the minds of my young readers. I don’t over-think the process.  I suppose I do pay close attention to people around me, but I’m not really aware of that, either. I just try to write the best novel I can by paying very close attention to the characters in that novel.

GGNC: What’s the main thing you hope to convey to young readers through your books?

RS: When I write a book I’m trying to create readers.  Being a reader is what made me what I am today. I can’t tell you how many gratifying emails I’ve gotten from parents and teachers saying:  “Bobby or Sue weren’t readers until they read your book.  Now they read everything.”  That’s the best reward and “award” there is.

Where he’ll be

Roland Smith will discuss his book at two events, both in Apex:

• Wednesday, 7 p.m., All Booked Up Bookstore, 104B North Salem St., Apex. 919.412.3135.
• Thursday, 6 p.m., Eva Perry Regional Library, 2100 Shepherd’s Vineyard Dr. 919.387.2100.

This morning, the February 2010 issue showed up on the kitchen table. I was waiting for the coffee to finish, I didn’t feel like going out in the rain to fetch the Sunday paper, so I started thumbing through. Here’s what I learned:

• The regional Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, 39 miles in two days, will be in Charlotte this year, on Oct. 23-24.
• “Plastic Surgery May Reduce Headaches,” p. 102. A study of 49 migraine sufferers who underwent plastic surgery found that 80 percent reported a significant reduction in subsequent migraine episodes, of whom 50 percent said the headaches disappeared completely. Bahman Guyuron, head of the plastic surgery department at University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University, believes the connection may have to do with the removal of muscles that cause the problem by compressing nerves.
• Antiaging? (“Antiaging? Really?” p. 102) Don’t believe it when a shampoo or nail polish makes the claim, says plastic surgeon Dr. Steven H. Dayan. Hair and nails are made of the protein alpha-keratin, not living cells. Basically, so-called “antiaging” products are spackling paste, smoothing over your ridges, ruts and divots.
• Goat’s-milk ice cream (“The Big Scoop,” p. 117) has half the fat of its cow’s-milk based counterpart. It also contains more calcium, magnesium and potassium.
• An 11-year study of 3,000 women by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that those who consumed two or more cans of diet soda a day “doubled their chances of accelerated kidney decline compared with people who drank less than one can a month.” (“Sip Wisely,” p. 118.)
• Eat a Mediterranean diet — one rich in olive oil, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, cereals and fish — and you’re less likely to get depressed, according to a Spanish study of more than 10,000 men and women. (“Eat and Be Merry,” p. 118.)
• “Does eating late at night really make you gain weight?” (p. 126). It’s not a matter of eating late, it’s a matter of how much you’re eating late. A study of 867 people by the University of Texas at El Paso found that people who eat more early in the day tend to eat less, people who eat late in the day tend to eat more.
• Nuts freeze well — as do a number of other healthy foods (“Frozen Assets,” p. 128).

I also learned that bootcut jeans can act as a “push-up bra for your butt.” (“How to Build a Better Butt,” p. 77), which isn’t so much about exercising your glutes as it is about finding the right jeans to mask a deficient derriere.

Not really germane to our discussion here at GGNC. But but good to know all the same.

Things to pay attention to. From the Mayo Clinic (where it’s 10 degrees right now)  comes tips on what to pay attention to when exercising in the cold. Our favorite: Pay attention to your extremities, your hands, your feet, your head, of which the clinic notes “30 to 40 percent of your body heat is lost through your head.” Read here.

Strenuous exercise and cold air. From Snowbiker.com comes  a referenced article on breathing cold air, how to recognize when you might be suffering the ill-effects of breathing cold air and how to survive breathing cold air. Read here.

Cold air and asthma. From Allergic Living: Breathing cold air is uncomfortable to some, dangerous to others, especially to those with asthma. Tips on breathing in the cold for folks with asthma. Read here.

Cold air and exercise for the geekish. From the National Institutes of Health comes this report for you exercise enthusiasts with a geeky bent. It’s titled “Cold air and exercise challenge — influence of minute ventilation” and it’s about how exercising in cold air affects “airway hyperresponsiveness.” See? Told you it was geekish. Read here.

Cold air and exercise for the slightly less geekish. And from Human Kinetics comes a somewhat less technical piece on the same subject: how cold air affects exercise performance. Read here.

Reading

“How to lose 10 Pounds in Your 30s, 40s and 50s,” Health.com. It’s not your imagination, losing weight becomes more of a challenge as you age. For one thing, your metabolism slows. For another … well, read the article.

“Exercise Improves Fat Metabolism in Muscle But Does Not Increase 24-h Fat Oxidation,” Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews. In this study appearing in the April 2009 journal of the American
College of Sports Medicine, researchers were surprised to discover that moderate exercise did not rev up one’s metabolism. The study focused on the short-term (24 hours) impact on moderate exercise (in one case, riding a stationary bike for less than an hour). The study did not look into how metabolism was affected by more intense exercise over a longer period. Read a non-technical report on the study here.

“Winter Exercise Can Lift Your Spirits,” National Institutes of Health’s Medline. “Not only can physical activity lift your spirits during days of limited sunlight,” say the folks at the NIH, “it can help make sure you’re in good shape when it’s time to pull out those shorts and bathing suits again.” Tips on working out in the cold, too.

Viewing

NIH's HealthDay offers short videos on health and fitness issues.

“Exercise and Brainpower,” HealthDay TV, National Institutes of Health. A study of 18-year-old Swedish men entering the military shows that those in better cardio vascular health scored better on cognitive tests. Other interesting ties between physical fitness and mental acuity in this short video.

Listening

“Man Outruns Obesity After Boss’s Ribbing,” National Public Radio, Jan. 1, Morning Edition, Storycorps project. Antonio Douglas weighed 275 pounds when he went to work for 70-year-old Frank Lynch (pictured together above). Lynch suggested Douglas could stand to lose some weight, so he challenged the 45-year-old to a race. Listen to what happened next.

Then turn ‘em into a salad!

For lunch yesterday, Marcy took leftover turkey, cut it into bite-size pieces, tossed it in with some arugula, walnuts and blue cheese crumbles. She added a dollop of cranberry sauce and topped it with dressing, which we pretended were croutons. Save perhaps for the dressing-as-croutons, it was a healthier use of leftovers than, say, putting a couple slabs of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy between two pieces of white bread and calling it a sandwich. It was also mighty tasty, and if you’re into point counting I’m guessing it had about a third the calories of a leftover sandwich.

So, what to read while eating your leftover salad? Well, in the January “O” — hey, it was right there on the dining room table and my latest “Manly Man’s World” was downstairs — is the first of a two-part piece by Paige Williams, an out-of-work magazine editor who is 80 pounds overweight, can’t sleep, has chronic headaches, had to move back in with her mother (in Mississippi!) and is, by her own estimation, a total mess. After hitting rock bottom (that would be the Mississippi/Mom, one-two KO punch), she enrolled in the 60-day Bikram yoga challenge. Her goal: To lose weight, yes, but beyond that to get her entire life — physical, spiritual, emotional, professional — back in order. January’s first installment is about how Williams got where she is and how her first 30 days of the Bikram challenge have gone. She’ll follow up in February with how she fared.

A good, honest read, especially for those of you facing a similar challenge as the new year approaches.

Source: About.com
This about About.com post is a year old, but the advise is timeless. Tips sent in by readers about how to avoid tubbing out over the holidays. Some you’ve likely heard elsewhere (“Eat a healthy snack before a big holiday party …”), others maybe not (“Go for a brisk run about thirty minutes before you go to bed, this is a refreshing way to end the day and it keeps your metabolism working as you sleep …”). Advice from the masses.

“Long-Term Physical Activity has an Anti-Aging Effect at the Cellular Level”

Source: Science Daily.
You have these things called “telemeres” — “the DNA that bookends the chromosomes and protects the ends from damage” — and they tend to get shorter as you age. According to a study reported in “Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association,” the telemeres of pro athletes and others who exercise intensely take longer to shorten, thus prolonging their telemeres — and lives. Read more in Science Daily’s report on the research.

Crunches: Proper Technique

Source: American Council on Exercise’s Get Fit Exercise Library.

Done right, crunches can do wonders for your abs. Done not so right they can be a painful waste of time. From the American Council on Exercise’s vast Get Fit Exercise Library, we pull this short tutorial intended to help you avoid the latter. An especially popular exercise as we battle to keep the waistline in check over the holidays.

“Wellness on Wheels”

Source: American Council on Exercise

Wanna get more out of your morning walk? Have a baby. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, found that exercise intensity increased 18 percent and calorie burn 20 percent for people who walked pushing a baby stroller vs. people who walked strollerless. More here.