February 2024 If a Rose is a Rose, Is a Calorie a Calorie? Much has been written about the differences between certain foods and how they impact weight. Ever since the concept of “glycemic index” hit the airwaves, calculating the impact of carbs on how quickly our blood sugar levels rise, many have argued thatRead More
Real News
REAL News – January 2024
January 2024 Free Weights vs Machines: Is There a Difference? Ever since Nautilus gym equipment hit the market in the 1970s, the burning question among fitness specialists and researchers was, Can you get as strong and/or as hypertrophied on machine resistance (MR) devices as you can using free weights (FW) like dumbbells and barbells? WhenRead More
REAL News – December 2023
December 2023 Collagen Supplements: Real News or Not? It is hard to discern fact from fiction these days, especially when it comes to nutritional supplements. For one thing, they are so unregulated that producers can put all kinds of substances in a pill and make many kinds of non-medical claims due to federal legislation datingRead More
REAL News – November 2023
November 2023 Exercise Dermatology for Aging Skin Aerobic exercise (AE) is a proven modality for cardiovascular, metabolic, orthopedic, and psychological health. Resistance, or strength, exercise (RE) is a proven modality for improving strength, power, function, and even many of the above-mentioned systems benefited by AE. But skin? Come on now! However, one study has shownRead More
REAL News – October 2023
October 2023 The Weakening of Menopause: Another Insult Sarcopenia is the loss of lean muscle mass (LMM) that takes place as we age even if you do muscle-building exercises. Women are more apt to suffer the long-term effects of sarcopenia after menopause: reduced metabolism, greater risk of LMM-associated disability such as bone loss, fractures, moreRead More
REAL News – September 2023
September 2023 Too Sweet or Not To Sweet, Part I Rarely does the same topic make one side of the STEPS REAL News newsletter, but this is too sweet a topic to be ignored. According to the June 2023 Nutrition Action newsletter, a March 2023 article in Natural Medicine reported that the artificial sweetener (AS),Read More
REAL News – August 2023
August 2023 No Fear— Aminos are Here! A significant fraction of individuals in the world of exercise partakes in essential amino acid (EAA) supplementation. These little building blocks of protein promote muscle performance, muscle recovery, and muscular gains. With this in mind, could EAA supplementation aid in recovery from a total knee replacement (TKR)? ARead More
REAL News – July 2023
July 2023 Three (More) Cheers for Resistance Training A large meta-analysis of studies on resistance training (RT) exercise in adults found 16 that met the criteria. The overall conclusion was that RT conferred a “10–17% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), total cancer, diabetes, and lung cancer,” otherwise labeled non-communicable diseases (NCDs). ThereRead More
REAL News – June 2023
June 2023 How Exercise Might Delay or Prevent Cognitive Decline Raise your hand if the thought of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) scares you as much as it does me. A Journal of Physiology (Jan. 2023) article reports that short bouts of intense exercise – what is popularly known as interval training (high energy outputs followed byRead More
REAL News – May 2023
May 2023 Move Over, Cardio; Resistance Training Saves Lives For more than 60 years now, the world has come to recognize that being aerobically fit reduces your risk of many non-communicable diseases (NCD) like heart disease, diabetes, and even some cancers. The mechanisms have been studied down to the nearest DNA and RNA strands. WeRead More