It is possible to train too hard!

Believe it or not, if you train very hard everyday, your times will actually get worse. This is called overtraining. When you push your body to the limits every practice and don't give yourself time to recover, your body will go into survival mode conserving its energy for vital functions, and not for whatever you are training for. Soon, your body will get confused when you don't stop the training, causing messed up blood levels and extreme fatigue. EXtreme fatigue, I know from personal experience, to the point of sleeping on metal bleachers in the sun, only getting up when you have to run your event. As the fatigue comes, so does the lack of apetite, overtrained athletes eat a whole lot less, propogating the cycle even farther. Naturally, when your body is in all of this havoc, your times will become horrible. If you are a high-school athete like me, your coach will just push you even harder, even though that just drives the times even higher. So, stop the cycle of overtraining, and maybe you won't end up in the ER like I did (abnormal blood levels). Here are the signs
1. extreme fatigue (i.e. going to bed at 6pm every night)
2. abnormal blood levels (only a doctor with a needle can tell you that)
3. poor performance (even though you are training harder than ever)
4. loss of happiness with the sport (huge desire for season to end)
5. fear of competion (more than normal nervousness, full internal panic)

new project...

One really interesting genetic disorder is Klinefelter's syndrome. In Klinefelter's syndrome, a guy has two X chormosomes and one Y chromosome instead of the normal XY that they are supposed to have. These poor guys have large breasts, small umm... male organs, and have a tendency to resemble girls. This is because of their defect on the germinative chromosomes, they have 3 instead of 2. There is hope for guys with Klinefelter's syndrome though, they can be prescribed testosterone to help with their male development. Pretty much everybody can get Klinefelter's syndrome.

Yet another germinative genetic disorder is Turner's syndrome. These girls are only born with one X chromosome instead of the usual two. They are generally short, and have a really hard time developing their ovaries and other female organs. Unfortunantly, doctors can't do much about this disorder except prescribing growth hormones to counter-act the height change, and in-vitro ferilization to the individuals who would like to have children.



There are some interesting autosomal disorders however, like cri du chat, a disorder where part of chromosome 5 is deleted. Individuals with cri du chat can't cry because of their deformed larnyx, all thProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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can make is a mewing sound. Children with cri du chat also have deformed faces, like low set brow-ridges and wide-spaced eyes. Cru di chat also effects the development of the children, making it hard for them to develop muscularly and speech-wise. However, cru di chat can be combatted with plastic surgeries and a variety of therapies.




Have you ever seen "The Grinch?". Well, if you have hypertrichosis, you will look
a lot like him. Hypertrichosis is a rare autosomal disorder on chromosomes 24 to 27. These individuals body hairs grow in the way that animal fur does, giving them the appearence of werewolves. There have only been a few cases of hypertrichosis, so nobody knows if a certain race is more predisposed to it than others. The only treatment for hypertrichosis is shaving or advanced hair removal treatments.



Some children "grow up to fast", but for kids with Progeria, an autosomal defect on chromosome number one, they literally start aging at 1 year old. Kids with progeria (they normally don't live until 13) have beaked noses, wrinkly body and low body fat and bear a striking resembalence ot the elderly. They also go through arthritis and weak bones. As progeria is so rare, we still don't know who is predisposed to this mutation. Currently there is no treatment for this rare disease.



Dwarfs are not magical creatures. In fact, some babies are born with primordial dwarfism, an autosomal defect on chromosome number 23. These people never grow to above 4 foot 11, and are perfectly porportioned, just miniture. Problems with the bones, like sclerosis have been reported but were not disabling. Anybody can be born with primordial dwarfism, it is pretty rare though. Doctors have no cure for primordial dwarfism, but it is not very hazardous.



A video about the girl in the picture

Some people are born with freaky looking eyes and teeth. These people have Rieger's syndrome, another autosomal defect affecting chromosomes 4 and 13. Individuals with this rare disorder have strange cloudy looking eyes and defected teeth. As this disorder is not very seriuos, nobody has researched if anybody is predisposed to it, or if there is any cure.

Why Usain Bolt is fast and Lance Armstrong never stops

Some people have been given the gift of running insanely fast (Usain Bolt), while others have been given the ability to run for a really long time (your marathoners). The difference between the two is how many slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers they have. Fast twitch muscle fibers can contract reallly fast, allowing the person to fly down the track, or bench 300lbs. When you excersize your fast-twitch muscle fibers, they grow and grow, thats why some people bulk up really easily, they have lots of fast-twitch muscle fibers. But fast-twitch muscle fibers get tired extremely quickly. Thats where slow-twitch muscle fibers come in. They can keep of contracting for hours if you try hard enough, which is why you can walk around Busch Gardens all day and still not be too tired. But no matter how much you work them, they don't get much bigger, you normally end up just losing the fat around them, making them more defined. Most of us have a happy medium of muscle fibers, about half fast twitch and half slow twitch, which is perfect by evolutionary standards. Yay for muscle fibers!

Stop being scared of Genetic Engineering

You've all heard about how "dangerous" genetic engineering is, haven't you? They are big fat liers who are against anything different. Genetic engineering is the tweaking of certain genes to make crops resistant to disease or to make chickens grow faster. Eating a modified tomato is not any different than eating a normal tomato, your body can't change its own DNA based on what you eat. In fact, genetically modified foods are reducing hunger and poverty worldwide by providing cheaper, more robust food.

So screw those other people!!!!!

Oylmpic mile champion doped

This guy named Ramzi won the Oylmpic Men's mile in 2008, with a time of 3 minutes and 32 seconds. However, after lots of testing, he was tested positive for "doping", or using drugs to enhance performance (like taking 20 painkillers, or steroids). He is going to be stripped of his medal and it is going to be given to Asbel, from Kenya.

the TRUTH about anorexia

Anorexia. Believe it or not, anorexia is about a lot more than just trying to look like a human skeleton. It isn't a "satan spawn of the media". Anorexia is more like a coping device for life. When most people get mad they call up their freinds, play a game of football, or just scream into their pillow. But what if, just what if, you can't get those releases and just feel the pressure build up inside you, like a balloon, ready to burst. Life isn't going to change for you, the pressure keeps coming, and you feel like you are scum of the earth. There is one thing you can change though... what you eat. Suddenly, you have a purpose, something you can do that releases that big balloon of stress, lose weight. With every hunger pang, every extra sit-up there comes a bit of gratification "I am succeeding, nothing can stop me!". The pressure goes and your whole life revolves around trying to skip meals and fit in extra workouts. Your appearence becomes emaciated, and people start to notice. You feel like you are actually pretty for once, but there is always that little bit of fat on your arms that needs to GO. Happiness and thinness start to mean the same thing, and you are suddenly never satisfied. There is an unsatiable appetite to lose weight, to feel HAPPY again, with every bite you eat, you feel like you are letting yourself down. The happiness never comes either.


i just really want people to relate with anorexics a little better... sorry for writing it in 2nd person POV!

Chocolate Milk is the New Gatorade

Studies show that chocolate milk actually helps atheltes recover better than gatorade, muscle milk or powerade. Milk has natural B12 vitamans plus the optimum ratio of protiens to carbohydrates, in order to help your body recover faster. Plus, since chocolate milk is natural, it is cheaper to purchase and easier for our bodies to absorb (after all, we've been drinking milk since caveman times!).
Oylimpic Medalist, Micheal Phelps drank chocolate milk in between his races, look how well it worked for him. I drank chocolate milk after my 7 mile practice today and I still had the energy to write this blog...
Also, chocolate milk is WAY more delicious than those weird carbo recovery slushy things...

How overtraining REALLY works...

Have you ever lifted hard 10 days in a row? Or upped your mileage by 10 miles in one week? Then you've probably felt the beast of overtraining. Overtraining is when somebody feels intense fatigue and other symptoms caused by pushing their body to the brink. But... how does that happen?
It is said that overtraining effects the automatic nervous system, which is responsible for heart rate and blood pressure. There are two parts, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system.

What the sympathetic nervous system does in response to overtraining.
-Increases resting heart rate
-Increases blood pressure
-Increases caloric needs
-Causes lack of apatite
the sympathetic nervous system seems to be preparing the body for a time with little food and lots of stress...

What the parasympathetic nervous system does in response to overtraining
-Early fatiguing
-Rapid heart rate after exercise
the parasympathetic nervous system is preparing our body to be lazy whenever it can, which is good for survival, but not for soccer

Hormones are also tweaked out in times of bodily stress
-Cortisol increases (and slows recovery)
-Testosterone decreases (slowing recovery even farther)
In fact, this flip-flop of cortisol and testosterone make it so that the body eats its own muscle for energy, which would be vital in a life-death situation.

Muscle cells are among the most effected by overtraining however
-Muscle tears increase (muscle tears are the leading cause of soreness)
-Lactic Acid builds up (the other cause of soreness)
-The muscles have less oxygen delivered to them
-Gylcogen and Creatine stores become depleted (the sources of energy in exercise)
This is caused by the body essentially giving up on the muscles, and focusing on the internal organs and brain.

The body is under so much stress during overtraining that it even decreases the body's antibodies, greatly supressing the immune system. Thats why so many athletes get colds all the time. So overtraining is actually a preprogramed bodily response, that is good for surviving, but not so good for trying to get that state championship.

WHAT THE **** IS GENE THERAPY/IMMUNOTHERAPY?

Gene therapy is an experimental mainly medical procedure where doctors can either
a. introduce a new gene into an organism (like one that resists salmonella)
b. replacing a mutated gene with a healthy one (like replacing a mutated earlobe gene with a healthy one)
c. selectively massacre genes that are dysfunctional (like extra fingers and toes)


Immunotherapy is basically like slowly closing a room in onto a clausterphobic person; because in immunotherapy, small amounts of an allergy (like peanuts) are administered to a poor soul (allergic to peanuts) that does not want his/her allergy anymore. As the shot amount starts to increase over time, the individual feels a lot less of the symptoms when he is given the allergen (or force-fed peanuts). It is pretty primative, but it reduces allergy symptoms.

Lactic Acid Scapegoat?

Nearly every athlete knows that the muscle soreness from their workouts is caused by lactic acid buildup. This is in fact true. However, the lactic acid disapears from the cells less than 3 hours later. Then why are we sore DAYS after strenous excersizes? The real culprit of the pain are tiny microscopic tears in the muscle. You can't help these, only your own cells can. So they swell like bruises and take days to heal causing the muscle pain we all know.

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google: tooble
in order to put youtube videos on your ipod/computer

google: free youtube to mp3 converter
in order to put the sounds from youtube videos on your ipod/computer

Stem cells

Stem cells are cells that are taken from embryos and coaxed into a variety of different adult cells in a labrotory. Stem cells may also be derived from adult skin cells although this is not certian. It is thought that stem cells can cure diseases such as Parkinson's and cancer, but this is not proven yet. Lots of information on stem cells can be found at http://www.bedfordresearch.org/stemcell/stemcell.php?item=stemcell_faqs#11. Many people think that ideology shouldn't drive science, and I think that this is true to an extent. There are some things that science should not be allowed to do, just because it goes against morals that humans have held for centuries. Even the harshest gangs like The Aryan Brotherhood forbid their members from killing children. In my opinion, an embryo is the beginning of a child and should not be killed for scientific purposes, especially because there is a very real possibility that adult skin cells can be used instead. However, I find no harm in taking the umbilical cords from births, or the spinal cords from stillbirths in order to save lives. To me, it seems completely illogical to kill the beginnings of a human being when you could just develop adult skin cell possiblities instead. Many research industries however, use embryonic stem cells because the technology is developed and they are extremely flexible. Embryonic stem cells however, are often rejected as foriegn tissue, and have ethical issues. Adult skin cells have very few ethical altercations, but the technology still has to be developed for them to be used. Science can be a very dangerous weapon, or a miraculous blessing, so I think that our nation's policy should drive it, so science doesn't become corrupt. We may miss out on some discoveries, but I think that the misuse that will be avoided will make it all worth it.

Blogger is being difficult

it is extremely hard to embed certian videos in blogger. i reccomend that they put in a program so we can just put in the url and video will be inserted.

reasons for empathy

Reasons for empathy. Geographic location, family ties and how they got into the situation. That's why we feel more sorry for the homeless man on the corner, than the starving children in Africa. We are also way more likely to help out our brother in hard times than some dude in Canada. We feel way worse for the man who has been scammed by a charity organization and lost everything, than the man who bought high risk stocks and lost everything. Us humans need restrictions on our empathy so we don't sacrifice our own fortune over others. We evolutionaryly need some though, so we can help eachother survive

why we like unhealthy food.

http://www.livescience.com/history/080208-hn-sugar.html

Many of us humans die of obesity caused heart disease every year. Mainly because our bodies prefer unhealthy food. But why?
When we were cavemen, the swet fruits were more nutritious, so we generally preffered the sweet taste. The brain also need glucose to function. Unfortunantly, this later led to us growing sugar cane and developing type 2 diabetes to satisfy our sweet teeth.

people carry millions of bacteria. and they are nice!

This research is part of an emerging effort to study human microbial ecology. Dr. Blaser's laboratory has previously examined the bacterial population in the stomach and the esophagus. "Many of the bacteria of the human body are still unknown," he says. "We all live with bacteria all our lives and occasionally we smile, so they're not that bad for us."

The most numerous cells in our body are microbial--they outnumber our cells 10 to 1. The body has microbes native to the body, including the skin, and these populations change according to how we live, he says. "Ultimately what we want to do is compare disease and health," says Dr. Blaser. Keeping bacterial populations in our body stable may be part of staying healthy, he says.

so, don't goop on all that sanitizer because bacteria are as important as human cells

Running makes people high

When person runs, swims, cycles and performs any other strenuous exercise, pituitary gland releases endorphins: chemicals that release feeling of euphoria and that block sensations of pain. Endorphins are very closely linked to addictions, they were even discovered by accident when scientists were carrying out research on addictions and drugs. Researchers discovered that human brain contains its own neuro-chemicals, which are far more potent than heroin, opium and morphine. They also discovered that endorphins release in times of stress – in case of runners: after strenuous running. Endorphins make runner feel great after exercise and this effect is often referred as 'runner's high'. And it doesn't stop there: endorphins are also motivational. They namely help runner to feel energized throughout their whole day.

so... I think thats why people like to run

if you are ever kidnapped this will be useful

help solve world hunger for free

all you have to do is play an online vocab game, thats almost like jeapordy
for every question you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to people in need.
freerice.com

runners

if you want a sweet website this is where to go
www.runnersworld.com