If you're female, postmenopausal and sedentary, you have three reasons to keep reading.Here's why: you're at increased risk for osteoporosis. Luckily, there's a few things you can do about it.

1. Gain weight: Yes, it's true. Tipping the scales will increase the load that your bones have to bear. In the world of bone making, load = growth. That said, I'm not advocating a bacchanal and binge fest. Being underweight, small-framed and light footed increases your risk for developing brittle bones. However, getting fat is not the best solution, considering the side effects (heart attack, stroke, diabetes...)So I repeat, although gaining weight will help with bone density, I do NOT recommend it. For the love of your body, don't pull out the kettle corn and start watching a Twilight Zone marathon.

2. Exercise: This, is by far, a better choice than trying to gain so much weight you can file for disability (a la Homer Simpson). Unlike obesity, exercise can stimulate bone growth without causing 50 adverse side effects. All exercise is not created equal, though. You need to make sure it's "weight-bearing." Examples include running, walking and weight-lifting, all of which put stress on your bones and lead to increased growth.

3. Eat right: Milk, cheese, yogurt, green leafy vegetables (marijuana is not a green leafy vegetable), nuts and various beans contain calcium, essential for bone formation and maintenance. If you're part cow and like to graze, you're already set up to succeed. Just go for the kale, collards and spinach. If you're not into the greens try dairy but make sure you stay away from the frozen, creamy stuff (putting it on top of a split banana doesn't make it less fattening). If your diet doesn't take you far enough, make sure to add a calcium supplement, especially if you're pregnant or over 50.

Check out these resources for more information on osteoporosis and bone health:

NIH Site
Osteoporosis in Men

Nature hasn’t taken part in the equal rights movement—this includes an equal right to disease. According to a new study by the CDC, women in America make up 60% of all new cases of diabetes. Sorry men. According to Dr. James Anderson, a professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky, obesity is one of the major factors behind this alarming statistic. In fact, he points out that "80% of people with type II diabetes are obese" (emphasis mine).

Anderson adds that “Fifty-five percent of women in the U.S are considered overweight and 35 percent are considered obese. So basically, we’re talking about 60 million women.”

Anderson sums it up like this: “…inactivity puts women at a greater risk for obesity, which is often a direct precursor to diabetes…For every one percent of her body weight a woman gains after high school, her risk for heart disease increases about five percent. For every same one percent gained, that woman’s risk of developing diabetes increases by 10 percent. In other words, if you’ve gained weight since high school (and that’s probably pretty much everyone), your risk for heart disease and diabetes has increased.”

And how do we combat this? Simple: get off the couch, chair, bench, rock, or whatever you’re sitting on and start moving! Diabetes is serious business.

It's bad enough that the word "inevitable" is part of the English language. It's even worse if you use it often, still worse if you believe it. But what if some seemingly "inevitable" things were, in fact, evitable? Would a missing two-letter prefix be enough to change reality?

You might be too hung up by the word “evitable” to consider my question. But, there is such a word. In fact, it’s just as real as “maritorius”, “macaronic” or “mugwump.”

But we half-empty types seem to prefer uglier “realities”—things we supposedly can’t avoid. “Oh it’s just inevitable. His dad had it, his grandpa had it, his poodle has it. How can he NOT die of a heart attack?” Now, really. Let’s give belief a chance to make things right. There’s no changing age, sex or family history. Okay. But consider:

-Fat intake
-Blood pressure
-Smoking
-Physical activity
-Stress

All of these things are changeable (at least to some extent). But there’s still some of us who would rather remain helpless. It’s literally a "dogged" way of thinking, and one with consequences. Martin Seligman discovered this in the 1960's while studying conditioning in dogs. He "accidentally" discovered what he later called "learned helplessness", an extreme form of "I can't" behavior.

Initially, Seligman's dogs didn't start off feeling or thinking that they were helpless (hence the term "learned"). It was only after they got shocked repeatedly and couldn’t escape that they decided to give up. The twist, though, is that Seligman then made it so they COULD escape. He even showed them how to escape. Yet, the next time around the dogs just sat there. They had come to believe in the “inevitable.”

There was a way out for them, though. For the dogs it was getting up and walking to the other side of a shuttlebox. For the rest of us, it's believing that the possibility of a healthy life is something worth believing in. Then we got to get up and walk to the other side of the shuttlebox.

It seems that now you can keep your brain and use it too. At least that’s what researchers are saying about exercise and Alzheimer’s disease, the number one cause of dementia and the number six cause of death in the U.S. Although the results are preliminary, a number of studies suggest the exercise can help to prevent or even slow down Alzheimer’s by decreasing the amount of cortical loss associated with the disease. Translation: staying fit may keep your noggin’ from shrinking.

No one knows exactly how this works. It’s not even clear whether exercise simply prevents Alzheimer’s, decreases its impact, or both. There may even be some mysterious 3rd variable involved—perhaps better educated people are more likely to exercise their bodies AND their brains. This could account for both higher levels of fitness and lower rates of dementia. Kind of throws the “dumb jock” myth out the window, doesn’t it?

The evidence isn’t limited to humans. Laboratory mice that hit the gym more often have been shown to develop increased growth in the hippocampus, one of the main memory centers ravaged by Alzheimer’s.

As with everything worth knowing, the answer is usually that it’s "all of the above." Exercise and education about its benefits go hand in hand, that’s for sure. But exercise can also increase blood flow to the brain and keep that 3lb oxygen glutton happy…and a happy brain is a non-shrinking one.

Those of you who exercise know that it also keeps you happier. You also have the energy and drive to and are thus more likely to do things like Read, wRite, and do aRithmetic. That’s the “Three R’s” that educators say we can’t do without. Maybe those educators are right after all.

Okay. The delay is over. Here I am and so are you, so let’s get started on how exercising can change your life. My first feature post here will focus on diabetes because I consider it the gateway disease—invite diabetes and you’ll have a bunch of unwelcome guests crashing your party.

I’m all for scare tactics so allow me to use one now. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the prevalence of the disease went up by 14% in the 2 years between 2005 and 2007. That’s a couple of million new cases!

In total, 24 million of your family members, friends, and neighbors throughout the U.S. now suffer from diabetes. Believe me, this is one club you don’t want to join. And if you already joined, now’s the time to opt out.

Let me tell you why in just three words: steep membership dues. There’s a number of very nasty fees you’ll end up paying. These range from the 2 to 4 times increased risk of developing heart disease and stroke to the almost certain dues in high blood pressure and nerve damage. As if that wasn’t enough, some of the taxes levied against you may include blindness (24,000 cases), kidney disease (44% of members), and amputations (over 70,000/year).

So there’s the nasty news. Want to hear the good news? It doesn’t matter if you have diabetes or you’re at increased risk because everyone in your gene pool has or had it, you can do things to help yourself. Two of those things are a good diet and exercise. For more information on diet, you can check out THIS. Here I’ll focus on a few benefits of exercise for diabetes.

First, a little diabetes 101:
Too little, ineffective or non-existent insulin levels allow glucose (sugar) to stay in the bloodstream. This starves your cells of the energy they need and allows the freely floating glucose to wreak havoc on all of the body’s systems. This, in a nutshell is what diabetes does. Exercise can help to turn this around:

1. Exercise helps directly to lower glucose levels
2. Exercise also increases lean muscle which helps to pull the glucose out of your bloodstream and into your cells
3. Lastly, exercise ensures a healthy heart, mind and body. This helps to ward off the uninvited dinner guests that diabetes likes to bring with it.

So there you have it; another reason to exercise regularly. This is something all of the Beachbody programs help you to do, But if you or someone you know needs something more, you can check out Beachbody’s “Project You 2” It's a fitness AND diet program developed with and approved by Beachbody, a team of doctors and educators and the American Diabetes Association.

I'm touching in briefly to let you know that moving (and everything that entails) has put me into a state of suspended animation--no internet, no email, and no blog. I've also been off of WOWY which hasn't been easy to live without. It's almost like getting shunted back to the dark ages of working out solo--no accountability and no online community. It's weird how a seemingly insignificant piece of electronic connectivity can make that much of a difference.

Even now, over a week after my move, I feel like I'm still holding my breath. My family and I are still living in the eye of a hurricane, discovering socks in our utensil drawers and dishes in the clothes hampers. It's a great exercise in serendipity. It's also reminded me that moving isn't a one day event. It's a many day process.

That's the same way I've come to think of health and lifestyle changes. My experience tells me that big decisions--fitness or otherwise--fall into the same category of process. No magic bullet/pill/panacea. No one size fits all, cures-all, ends-all solution. Life is an endless string of mini-transformations. Sometimes you hit a u-turn, a hiccup here and a reversal there. But the overarching goal is that you continue in the trajectory that leads you to your goals.

For me right now, the goal is to keep up with my workouts and to find that missing drawer that contains my clean boxers. Chances are that's where I stashed the steak knives...

What I like about Beachbody is that it brings fitness to the people. You don't have to stand in line at the gym. And you definitely don't have to wait around for the 300pound hirsute hercules to wipe his sweat and slime off the bench--unless you're married to such a person (in which case you might want to invest in a squeegee).

For the rest of us, Beachbody is a great option. And I think because it lends itself to privacy and yet balances this with a kind of public connection (at a level you feel comfortable with), it's exactly what most of us need.

As a healthcare maven, I have come to the following conclusion: If Beachbody motivates just one person to set goals and get fit, it's done a service. It will have made a dent in the public health crisis. And it already has.

Sure that triumvarate of ill health-- obesity, diabetes, and heart disease--will continue its reign. But BB and efforts like it bring the countervailing forces of exercise, nutrition, and positive thinking into the mix. This can only lead to good things.

You might be wondering about the science behind all of this: HOW will BB help to turn the tide of illness and disease? AND, how will it help me? That's a great question... and... it deserves a great answer... Thought I was going to cop out with that one didn't you? I would never back down from a good question, but you'll have to wait for my next post to hear the answer.

So this Sunday I dedicated my workout space. My plan was simple: do P90x, take a shower, go to sleep. Well, what happened wasn't so simple. I think I ended up in a kind of walking coma after 30 minutes of non-stop pushing and pulling. After I finished coughing up my guts, Tony Horton (via the video) told me in his sweet maniacal voice that we would rest and repeat. REPEAT? This was beyond surreal.

A few bouts of nausea later, I finally finished. "Wassup now Tony, Wassup?" (taunting tone). No seriously, though, the guy is a beast. But hey, I'm on day 3 and he's on day 10,000 or something. That's gotta be like the equivalent of a triple grandmaster, 50th degree blackbelt.

Well, that's it for now cause even my fingers are a little tired. I'm just gonna end with a little message for Tony: I'm here buddy and I'm not going away. P90X is mine!

Let me just start off by saying that I'm no stranger to fitness. That doesn't mean that I don't have my down days or even down YEARS. That's certainly been the story for me as the intensity of my doctoral program kept me up late on the caffeine and calorie binges.

Since I graduated in May, I decided to do a kind of total body makeover. Yeah, I'm still at an ideal body mass and I don't look like I need to hit the gym with Richard Simmons vigor. I can certainly do without Richard Simmons spandex. So you might be asking why I'm part of Beachbody. What am I so worried about?

That reminds me of the Head and Shoulders commercial a few years ago. Someone asks the protaganist dressed in black (and I paraphrase) "You don't have dandruff. Why do you need Head and Shoulders for?" The other guy replies. "Exactly. I don't have dandruff BECAUSE I use Head and Shoulders." The same kind of logic applies here. I want to make sure I don't start looking like I need to exercise.

And it's not like there's no room for improvement. Relative to where I was at 25, I am one sad and sorry case. I once had a vertical leap of 42 inches, a max leg press of over 1000 lbs, and a bench press of 285. Now keep in mind that I've never been heavier than 140 lbs, which is quite normal given my genetics and the size and shape of my family members.

Nowadays, I can't climb the stairs without a respirator. I'm definitely starting to see more couch potato traits (or yam or whatever tuber metaphor you like) and I'm much weaker. The way I'm headed now, it could only get worse with that band of wicked bad genes trailing behind me. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke, diabetes., you name it my family has it..It's the real deal, but it's not inevitable.

So given, these hard but not unchangeable facts, I've decided to act. Number one, I decided to get on the Beachbody train. Number two, I set a goal and destination. Number three, I'm taking that train all the way and I intend to arrive healthier, happier and...this is a big "and"...more financially fit than I've ever been.

I'll keep you posted on my progress. But this isn't a spectator sport. The time is now, and the thing to do is Beachbody. So get up and get with it!