The best medicine Quote by Hippocrates

Let the food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

-Hippocrates

How to treat a torn calf for a fast recovery

How to treat a torn calf for a fast recovery

For any athlete being healthy is the foundation for a good preparation, good recovery and good performance.  Part of the equation of being healthy is staying injury free.
One of the most uncomfortable injuries is the torn calf. A torn calf does not only put a hurdle in your training plans, but it also can affect day to day activities, since walking becomes very painful.

I have injured my calf twice and the last time I achieve the fastest recovery I could have expected. Recovery time from injury to first run = 9 days.

I will share step by step what I did to accomplish this.

1) As soon as you "suspect" you torn your calf, stop, and do not stretch. The "stop" portion is the easy part, since you will not be able to walk and the pain will be such, you will be cursing or crying. And again, do not stretch at that point.

2) Apply ice as soon as possible. This is one of the most important steps in your recovery.  I would recommend that for the next 4 days you apply ice (religiously) every 2 hrs for a period no longer than 15 minutes. Blood flow to the injured area is the most important factor in recovery, since all the required nutrients and building blocks are carried in your blood. By applying ice to your injured area, you help control the inflammation and increase blood flow.
After you are finished with your 15 minutes of ice, gently massage your calf, with the only purpose of help some more blood moving into the area.

You can do this while at work. This is what I did:  I took an ice pack and an elastic bandage. put the ice on my calf and secure it with the elastic bandage, after the 15 minutes were over I would put back the ice pack in the fridge, and then I would repeat the process throughout the day.

3) Drink plenty of water and eat properly. It is important that your body has all the right nutrients through the day (proteins, minerals and vitamins) all those building blocks are necessary to rebuild your injured muscle. Water is going to be the carrying agent (along with your blood) delivering the building material and eliminating what has to be eliminated.

4) Stay fit. The number 1 preoccupation an athlete has, is not being able to stick to his training program. This can be easily overcome by looking at all the options we have in order to keep our fitness. I personally used swimming and weight lifting during my injury. You can get excellent workouts that will help you keep your fitness with these activities. They Key here is: do not use your calf muscles.

5) After the 4th or 5th day your calf should feel very good, you might be able to walk normally, maybe you will feel your calf, very, very sore, but that is a good sign. At this stage what I did was to do some light stationary bike, This helped me get my calf muscles moving a little (helping with the blood flow), Do this only if you do not feel any pain. Do not get overconfident, you might have the temptation to test your calf, do not do it. Stick to your swim, lift, bike routine.

6) Massage: day 6 and 7 will probably be painful, your calf will be sore and you will feel some knots in your calf, those knots are the scar tissue created as a result of the injury and "reconstruction" of your calf. Massage your calf.  It is going to hurt like hell, even a small touch might cause you a lot of pain. The purpose of this massage is to: get blood flowing through the muscle and help with the alignment of the scar tissue.  Do this as often as possible through the day. At least 4 times a day, but if your pain tolerance allows you to do it more often, go for it.

7) Stretch: once you feel your muscle has healed, try to start stretching, do not over do it, go gently,

8) Apply heat to the injury, at this stage ice is not required any longer, apply some heat and continue with your gentle massage

9) day 8. Go for a bike ride, easy, no pushing, get the blood flowing

10) Go for a run!:  but before you do, warm up properly, if you have a stationary bike, ride it for 10 min, then do some gentle stretching, then walk for 5 minutes and then start running at a slow pace, be very aware of your calf and how it feels, do not push it to the limits, this run is to get your confidence back. 2 or 3 miles should be doable.

after that you should be ready to ramp up your running.

I hope this help all the athletes, triathletes, runners, and normal Joes who might experience this type of injury

Benefits of Green Tea

Green tea is rich in catechin polyphenols, such as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is an antioxidant with cancer fighting powers.

Studies have shown it can aid in protection against various forms of cancer including esophageal, gastric, skin, ovarian, lung, and colon cancer. Studies have also shown that drinking 2-3 cups per day can lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and decrease the risk of heart attack.

Not only does green tea contain immune boosting antioxidants, but it can also protect your teeth. Tea has bacteria killing properties to fight plaque, gum disease, and bad breath. Tea contains fluoride, which can protect against cavities.

Green tea has gotten a couple of knocks for it's fluoride content, despite the positive attributes, since too much fluoride can be bad for you. It is recommended that a person receive no more than 10/mg of fluoride per day. Loose leaf green tea only contains about 0.3 mg of fluoride, so unless you're drinking about 30 cups per day, don't worry.

Studies suggest that the polyphenols in green tea can help reduce and prevent rheumatoid arthritis. One study found that regular tea drinkers reported to have stronger bones and were less likely to develop arthritis. Those who drank tea regularly for 10 years or more had higher bone mineral density in their spines than non-tea drinkers.

How to burn fat in 15 minutes

We all have heard that doing low intensity cardio (like walking) for more than 45 minutes is ideal to burn fat....but what options do we have if we do not have 45 minutes or more to do our cardio?

Well the answer to this is High intensity cardio. High intensity cardio means that you are going to work your heart at bout 75% to 85% of your maximum heart rate. On the other hand low intensity cardio works your heart at about 55% to 65%.

With high intensity cardio, you burn more calories quicker. To illustrate this, let's say that you walk (low intensity cardio) for 20 minutes and burned 100 calories, about 50 of this calories will be coming from fat stored in your body. (50 calories is about 5 grams of fat).

Now if you were doing high intensity training for 10 minutes, you could burn up to 160 to 180 calories. 40% of these calories will be coming from fat stored in your body. This means that you will burn 64 to 70 calories from fat in only ten minutes or better yet you will be burning 6 to 7 grams of fat.

As you can see you will be burning more fat in less time. Low-intensity exercise only burns calories while you are actually exercising. That means the moment you stop exercising, your caloric expenditure goes back down to nearly baseline levels. Within minutes, you're not burning many more calories than if you hadn't done anything at all.

High-intensity exercise, on the other hand, continues to boost your metabolism long after you're done (often up to 24 hours after, depending on the length and intensity of the training session). This means you're continuing to burn many more calories all day long!

Also it is worth mentioning that high intensity cardio stimulate more your muscle, helping in some cases to develop more.......and we know that the more muscle and better tone, the more calories that we burn while we are not exercising.

Here are some examples of high intensity training.

On a Bike,
ride your bike for 2 min at a easy pace, then increase the intensity, either by increasing the resistance or the speed and ride the bike this way for 1 min. then go back to the easy pace for 1 min, and then after 1 min go back to the higher intensity pace. Try this for ten minutes and you will see the difference, besides it is a fun activity since you will be challenging yourself.

If you have 20 min for your exercise, try different time intervals, for example start with 4 min easy pace, then 2 min at a higher intensity and 30 sec at at even higher intensity then go back to the easy pace. The combination are endless and the only limit is your imagination, the key is to get your heart to 75-85% of your maximum heart rate.

How much food to eat when trying to lose fat - Portion sizes

How much should we eat if we are working out?
A good way to measure the amount of food that we need to eat is to measure with our hands.
We know that all our meals should have a combination of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. We use our hands to measure the amount of protein and carbs that we need to it. The assumption here is that we are trying to lose fat, so, to keep it simple we need to eat the same "palm" size portions for proteins and carbs. Example, a palm size portion of protein (fish, meat, eggs) and a palm size portion of carbs (rice, or potatoes, etc). Since we know that fats are more calorie dense that the proteins and carbs, what we do is take a teaspoon of fat, (peanut butter, olive oil, etc).
This quick tip should help on keeping things easy when it comes to measure how much food to eat.

Limiting your cravings when losing fat

Fats are a very important tool to limit your cravings while trying to lose fat.

yes, in order to lose fat you have to eat fat!

I am talking about good fats, not the fats that come in pizzas or hot dogs. The good fats are the ones that come from peanut butter, olive oil, almonds fish, etc). Fats are broken down slow, helping us in avoiding cravings for "bad" food.



Make sure as well that you are having frequent meals. Having frequent meals helps keep the blood sugar levels from drooping to low. When the blood sugar decreases or brain send signals to find food and it is at this moment when we are tempted to eat any sugary meals that can get the blood sugar back up.
For this reason keep having your small 6 meals during the day this will help you avoid cravings for "bad" food and will also help you on burning the fat you want to get rid of.