Gilles Beaudin

For the past few years, interval training is revealing itself as a time-efficient way to improve fitness and reduce risks of disease. Since the main excuse for not being active is lack of time, this seems like a win-win. A big reward for a short time investment. Still, people are weary of the method, thinking it may be too hard or risky. The important thing is to pace yourself. Don’t try to beat records from the beginning. Start where you are. Do what you can. The trick is working hard for a short time, like 20-30 seconds then rest. Research shows that even sedentary people can benefit from this type of training. Will it turn you into an elite runner? No. Will it improve your cardiovascular fitness? Absolutely. In case lack of equipment was your next excuse, you don’t need any equipment to get started.   You can easily do it with bodyweight exercises. Here’s one that I call the Stand up. It’s a modified push up followed by a lunge. It involves a lot of muscles a...

You’re exercising regularly and eating well. And you still have a hard time shedding those 15 lbs. You are getting frustrated and some people tell you it is to be expected. Everybody gains weight as they get older. Does it have to be the case? If this sounds familiar to you, read on. You will find out that there’s another tool that may help you fix your problem. For decades you’ve been told that the road to weight loss success is in eating well and exercising. And they are not of equal importance. One of my clients once asked me if she could eat whatever she wanted if she exercised. The answer is no. This is a common misconception. Proper eating habits are probably 75% of your success. And research is suggesting a third, very important factor. How long you sleep. A study published in 2010 (1) put 10 overweight participants on a calorie-restricted diet for 14 days. One group was allowed 8.5 hrs of sleep and the second only 5.5. The short sleep group lost less fat (0.6 vs 1...

Sleep is one aspect of health that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Sleep deprivation is linked to an increase in car accidents, diabetes, obesity, lower immune function, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Big, scary list right?  But wait, there’s more. In 2013, Björn Rasch and Jan Born published a review article about research on sleep and memory. It turns out that proper sleep improves memory and recall. Your brain needs the down time in order to make sense of all that you went through during the day. Without proper sleep, it cannot get the info from the temporary storage to a more permanent one.  Without proper sleep, your brain has a harder time creating new memories.  What does that make you think of? Alzheimer’s disease? In 2016, a study published in Trends in Neuroscience reported that sleep disruption is a component of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A lack of deep sleep would be part responsible for plaque accumulation in the brain. No...

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a strong marker of overall health. It involves the pulmonary, cardiovascular and muscular systems. CRF can be measured directly, with a VO2 max test, or estimated from exercise capacity, in METS. To give you an idea, sitting is equivalent to 1 MET. A leisurely bike ride is 4 METS and jumping rope is around 10. The higher the METS, the more demanding the activity is. And recent research has reported CRF to be a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD). A review article published in 2017 by Frank Booth and colleagues reported that when METS decreased from 10 to 4, the risks of early death increases 4 times. On the flip side, e ach increase of 1 MET reduces the risks of CVD. Booth F.W. et al, Role of inactivity in chronic disease: evolutionary insight and pathophysiological mechanisms. Physiol rev 97: 1351-140, 2017 And here’s the interesting part. Have you noticed that not every increment is equal? There’s a bigger payoff ...

I've been reading " There's no app for happiness " by Max Strom. And he talks about how our obsession with wealth and material accumulation is misguided. Here’s a paragraph that I found interesting. “Now the argument that might pop up in your mind is, “Couldn’t I do more for humanity if I were very wealthy?” My answer is, look for examples. Make a list of the most spiritually influential people in the last thousand years and then look at their state of materialism. The answer is self-evident.”

It's not your fault. You're wired for it. It's what helped your ancestors survive. That expectation of something bad can happen. That fear of trying something new. Our ancestors stayed within what they knew as much as possible. It kept them into a safe circle. But you know better. You don't have to be so restrictive, so closed. You can try new things without thinking it may kill you. Well, maybe skydiving. But you can venture further out without thinking that the world may end. But that primitive brain often holds you back. What if ?That fear is ingrained. It's the fear of being wrong. Fear of failure. Fear of looking silly. But think about it. How did you learn anything in the first place?As a baby, did you just go from crawling and nailed walking right away? No you didn't. You had missteps and fell a few times. Did you learn to ride a bike perfectly from the first try? Don’t' think so. As we get into adulthood, we limit ourselves by what we k...