Increase your spine’s flexilbility

In Part 1 I introduced the concept of foam rolling and explained what it is.  In part 2 I want to give you my tips and techniques. How long should you foam roll? For general maintenance, each muscle should be focused on for up to 2 minutes at a time.  I know many of my readers are highly educated and now there are over 600 muscle in the body – don’t worry you don’t need to foam roll them all!  You focus on the ones that feel tight and in need of the foam rolling. How to use a foam roller if you hunch over your desk all day? To open up your chest you can lay on the foam roller so it is underneath your spine – for about 10 minutes and this will open up your back & chest. Any more tips? You can essentially foam roll any part of your body.  You just start and place with the movement, speed and pressure to see what works for you.  But don’t expect it to feel comfortable – those tender spots are the ones that need the help most.  I would suggest you start off slowly and build up time, speed and pressure slowly. The outside of the thighs (or IT bands) are an area of tightness for runners and cyclists and its highly accessible on a foam roller.  The larger muscles in the legs, quads (front of thighs), hamstrings (back of thighs), calf musles are very easy to foam roll.  

As someone who from time to time stuggles to digest wheat or more specifically gluten which in the past has created holes in my intestine walls (leaky gut syndrome), I was interested in a recent piece of research. Like a lot of people if I eat too much wheat or gluten then I start to bloat and get digestive issues.  Researches have discovered that the reaction that some people have could be caused by fructans (the sugars in wheat, barley and rye).  The researchers from Monash University (in Austrialia) suspected that the sugar cold be the real cuplrit because people with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) still have some of the symptoms even after following a strict gluten free diet. In a 2013 research project, they noticed that the symptoms of people with gluten intolerance didn't change whether they ate food that was rich in gluten or not. They took 59 people with gluten intolerance and gaven them a different cereal bar to eat each week.  Although the bars all looked the same, one contained gluten, another fructans and the third had neither ingreditant.  The fructands bar increased bloating by 15% and gastrointestinal propblems by 13% and neither the gluten bar nor the one without either ingreditant had any effect. If frutans are the real problem then people with a gluten intollerance could use soy sauce as its low in sugars. While this research is interesting.  For me its a bit of a light bulb moment.  The reason is that I find that I can eat organic sourdough bread and I tollerate this much more.  Organic sourdough bread has gluten but due to the backing process it sis very low in fructans. Reference http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(17)36302-3/abstract

There is an old wives saying, feed a cold and starve a fever, but what does the latest science say? Although eating less when we are ill can sometimes help us to recover faster.  The loss of appetite when we have an infection is a biological "trick" that simply allows bacteria to spread.  Eating nutritious food when we have an infection can reduce its severity and recover time say researchers. Researchers have tracked the health of laboratory mice infected with the Salmonella bacteria and found that natural loss of appetite helped the bacteria spread from the intestines to other tissues.  By comparison, mice fed extra calories lived longer. This discovery could lead to new ways to tackle bacterial infections that don't rely on antibiotics. Reference Rao, Shelia et al, 2017, Pathogen-Mediated Inhibition of Anorexia Promotes Host Survival and Transmission, Cell, Volume 168, Issue 3, 503 - 516