Tag: health

Happy Marriage 101: Don’t raise your voice, yell at your spouse

April 15, 2016by Douglas Ernst5 Comments

I was eating lunch with my wife a few days ago when she said that in hindsight she is thankful for a rule I established early on in our relationship. I told her many years ago that I would never raise my voice with her, but that I would expect the same treatment in return. I said I was willing to end the relationship if she could not abide by the rule.

This seems like a common sense condition, but it does not take long to realize that many people do not follow it — even in public. In fact, some people claim that yelling adds “passion” to a relationship. I would argue that screaming at a spouse and calling the ordeal an aphrodisiac is a form of denial; it is dysfunction masquerading as love.

When a person raises his or her voice in an argument, it is a sign of desperation. It indicates a loss of control. The couple immediately enters an emotional realm that is conducive to mental and physical violence, which is why it is exponentially embarrassing if the man is the one who raised his voice first.

Yelling at someone does not add legitimacy to an argument, but for some reason many individuals think increased decibel-levels magically perform such a function.

Raising your voice does denote anger, but a healthier way of conveying that feeling is to simply say, “I am angry.” If you say what you mean and mean what you say with your spouse on a regular basis, then that statement alone will be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

As was already mentioned, a man should never yell at his significant other. The vast majority of men are physically stronger than the women in their life, so ending a disagreement by introducing the specter of violence — even if the man has never physically harmed his wife — is cowardly, wrong, and ipso facto detrimental to the long-term health of the relationship.

“Anybody can become angry,” Aristotle wrote. “That is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not … easy.”

Anger is a natural feeling, and in general there is nothing wrong with feeling anger. The key is to channel that anger in healthy ways. If you struggle with this task, then I suggest checking out the book “Overcoming Sinful Anger,” by Rev. T.G. Morrow. It is a short book, but one filled with advice that will leave you happier and healthier if you take his words to heart.

At 70, bodybuilder Sam ‘Sonny’ Bryant, Jr. stays young with the right mindset

February 13, 2014February 14, 2014by Douglas Ernst2 Comments

Sam “Sonny” Bryant Jr. is 70 years old and he looks better than men half his age. That’s because he realizes the importance the mind plays in every aspect of life. Whether you succeed or fail, age gracefully or become “old” at 50, how you think about the things you think about plays a crucial role. It sounds like common sense, but most people never realize the sheer power their thoughts possess. Our thoughts, very much like wind or rain or the natural elements acting on a rock face, can bend reality with applied pressure and time.

Here is what Mr. Bryant Jr. told the Augusta Chronicle:

People ask me when I’m going to retire. I say “never.” I say “most people die retired than they do on the job working.” I love to work. I love to work out. …

I’m 70 years old if that means anything. I’ve been doing this for 27 years. I started out when I was 44. I was in a bad marriage. And so to relieve stress I went to the gym. …

I didn’t know anything about working out, nothing about lifting weights — nothing. But I went there and stayed and stayed. Eleven months later a guy told me “Sonny, you ought to go to a contest and complete.” I said “you think so?” He said, “Yeah. You look like you’re ready.” So I went to Columbus, Ga. It was my first contest. … I won third in the novice and forth in the masters, and I was just like a crack addict. I was hooked. I had two trophies — never won anything before — and I couldn’t wait to get back to the gym and start body building. I was just working out before. …

People have the misconception that age makes you old, but I realized that it’s a state of mind that makes you old. Age is just a number. In a year most people — the majority of people — give a reason not to do anything, you know? I hear a lot of people telling me to wait until I get their age, and then I tell them how old I am and then it’s kind of embarrassing. I tell them to make a point — that the inactivity and the thought process is what makes them old. … Your subconscious mind reads your conscious mind. If you start thinking you’re old, subconsciously your conscious mind is going to grab hold of that. Then you’re body is going feel that it’s old. Then you’re going to start acting old, feeling old — and you’re old. …

Honestly, I never feel like I aged since I started body building at 44. I don’t feel no different. I just want people to recognize me for what I am and what I’m doing and realize that it can be done. They could do it. I just want to be some kind of model for them, for people to see … I’ve seen a lot of young guys “older” than me because their lifestyle — that’s what they chose to do. Go home, sit around watching TV all weekend…sit around doing nothing. I can’t do that. I can not sit in the house that long.

Sam Bryant Jr. demonstrates quite nicely that “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” but it’s his understanding of how our thoughts can directly impact our reality that is truly impressive. The saying goes that whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. It’s true.

Mr. Bryant’s philosophy has implications that extend far beyond the world of weightlifting. He essentially says that we make a conscious decision about how we view age, and then the reality in our mind manifests itself into the physical world. Another wise man touched on this debate, and his name was Ben Franklin. You may have heard of him.

“There are two sorts of people in the world, who with equal degrees of health and wealth and the other comforts of life, become the one happy, the other unhappy. Those who are to be happy fix their attention on the pleasant parts of the conversation, and enjoy all with cheerfulness. Those who are to be unhappy think and speak only of the contraries. Hence they are continually discontented themselves, and by their remarks sour the pleasures of society, offend personally many people, and make themselves disagreeable. If these people will not change this bad habit, and condescend to be pleased with what is pleasing, it is good for others to avoid an acquaintance with them, which is always disagreeable, and sometimes very inconvenient, particularly when one finds one’s self entangled in their quarrels.” — Benjamin Franklin

Every day you can consciously decide to look at the bright side of things, or to focus on faults. Every day gives you the opportunity to choose to be a positive or negative person. Every day you can either be the light or the darkness in the world around you. What do you choose? I choose to cast my lot with Sam “Sonny” Bryant Jr.

Elliott Hulse’s great advice for older men in the weight room: Stop trying to slay dragons that don’t exist

January 28, 2014January 28, 2014by Douglas Ernst23 Comments

I was talking to an old friend the other day and she asked if I was still doing “crazy weightlifting challenges.” The answer: No. Not really. The conversation got me thinking of just how much my mentality has changed over the years in regards to exercise, the goals I set for myself and how I treat my body. As I close in on 35, my approach to the weight room is not what it once was. For older men who plan on staying active I highly suggest checking out Elliott from the YouTube Strength Camp videos. He puts it perfectly: Stop trying to slay dragons that no longer exist.

From Elliott’s “The Truth about Muscle Building for Older Guys”:

When you’re young and you’re in full warrior mode and you’ve got that sword in your hand and you’re slaying dragons — as you should be — look, if you haven’t slayed your dragons at this point, you’re 40 years old and you haven’t slain the right dragons yet, you’re going to live your life in a constant state of sympathetic overload, stressed out trying to slay dragons that don’t exist.

The only dragons left are the dragons inside us at that point. … What are you going to do? What do you have to prove anymore? There comes a point where if you haven’t proved yourself to yourself — because that’s all that really matters — (young guys, write that one down) the only one you have to prove yourself to is yourself. But I get it. You have to prove yourself to daddy and the world. Okay. I did it. I understand. But you need to get to a point where you’re done proving yourself.

You [need to get to a point where you] can just relax and breath. Just take your time. Enjoy life. You’ve got to become a lot more Yin in your behaviors and attitudes. That place of low stress, high integrity about of the choices you make about your nutrition and the rest that you give your body will … preserve the foundation of vitality that was there when you were young … that allows you to do that you to do a select amount of physical activity that you deem important to you and your self development.

Don’t do things you feel you “have to” do. You don’t have to gain 50 pounds of muscle when you’re 40. Again, you have nothing to prove. And if you still have something to prove at that point then you’ve got deeper issues than building muscle. Engage in things that you enjoy that will support your health.

Boom. Amazing advice. And it doesn’t just apply to the weight room. Living and working in the nation’s capital, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met over the years who are searching for dragons that no longer exist. They drive themselves crazy trying to prove themselves to their mom, their dad, their brothers and sisters, fellow industry professionals and God knows who else when the only one you ever need to prove yourself to is you.

Elliott continues:

“What kind of story are you telling yourself? [T]he most resourceful stories that I tell myself and that I see in the older men that I train tell themselves is: ‘I’m not necessarily getting older and that means I lack vitality. What’s happening is that I’m becoming more sensitive and my body requires requires that much more attention to detail.’ This is what begins happening: When you’re young you can beat the fuck out of yourself. You can eat whatever you want to eat. You can be nasty. You can stay up all night … [When you’re older] you have to make better choices. You can’t eat double-cheeseburgers dipped in gravy after you’re hungover and play football the next day. …

… Structural integrity means more to me than squatting 1,000 pounds. … Structural integrity should be a word that you brand into your brain. … Consider what that means. Consider what it means when [I say] ‘instantaneous access of rotation of all joints.” That basically means that you’ve got balance throughout all of your joints, namely those around your hips and shoulders. You’ve got to stretch.

Forced to pick between brute strength and flexibility, I’d pick flexibility every time.

Look at your friends and family and loved ones who allow themselves to go into a state of disrepair well before it has to be that way. When you lose the ability to squat down and pick up those keys that fell off the dresser … when your can no longer reach that high shelf to grab a good book … when you can no longer bend and twist with those sheers to trim the bushes on a perfect summer afternoon, you lose independence. As humans, we are addicted to freedom and when we lose it — when we really begin to lose it — our spirit starts to yearn for greener pastures.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Elliott when I first ran across his videos, but over time he’s grown on me. He’s got a wealth of information at his disposal and he dispenses it to anyone who wants to listen — for free. He’s always positive and he gives it to his audience straight. If you want to build a better you, Elliott’s videos are worth your time.

The cup is full, so stop pouring. The same advice goes for your bowl of Coco Roos.

July 17, 2013October 21, 2015by Douglas Ernst3 Comments

Years ago American families were quite large. While we can discuss the many different factors for that reversal, the bottom line is that we’re not having kids at a rate that is conducive to the long-term health of the nation.

A recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services bears this out.

The number of births declined 1 percent in 2011 to 3,953,590. The general fertility rate also declined 1 percent, to 63.2 per 1,000 women 15 to 44 years.

The teenage birth rate fell 8 percent to 31.3 per 1,000. Birth rates declined for women in their twenties, were unchanged for women 30 – 34 years and rose for women aged 35 to 44 years.

The total fertility rate (estimated number of births over a woman’s lifetime) declined 2 percent to 1,894 per 1,000 women.

The odd thing is, while the birth rate continues to decline our obesity rates seem to be getting worse. It’s so bad, in fact, that the AMA recently decided to categorize obesity as a disease — even though it’s not.

The reason? In short, they’ve taken the “Umm, let’s do ‘something’ approach.”

The American Medical Assn. voted Tuesday to declare obesity a disease, a move that effectively defines 78 million American adults and 12 million children as having a medical condition requiring treatment.

The nation’s leading physicians organization took the vote after debating whether the action would do more to help affected patients get useful treatment or would further stigmatize a condition with many causes and few easy fixes. …

Recently I was in Wal-Mart with my wife and I became fascinated by jumbo-sized bags of cereal. They reminded me of the dog food bags I used to stock as a college student working Target’s overnight shift. While I’ve been aware for years of the jars of mayonnaise that would last me a decade or the bags of rice better suited for restaurant owners, I still couldn’t help but stop and stare.

As a conservative, the question “What American family with one or two children needs to buy giant bags of ‘Coco Roos’ every week?” is simple: “It’s none of my business.”

Indeed, from a freedom and liberty perspective it is none of my business. Buying in bulk is cheaper and there are thousands of other reasons why a family might feed their children like they feed the family pet. However, I still can’t help but think the only people who would need to regularly buy such quantities of cereal would be those who consume unhealthy amounts of it and women like GloZell.

The 9th Verse of Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” tells us:

To keep on filling
is not as good as stopping.
Overfilled, the cupped hands drip,
better to stop pouring.

Sharpen a blade too much
and its edge will soon be lost.
Fill your house with jade and gold
and it brings insecurity.
Puff yourself with honor and pride
and no one can save you from a fall.

Retire when the work is done;
this is the way of heaven.

America has always been about bigger, better, faster — and that’s great — but at one time it was also about prudence and common sense. Somewhere along the way we seemed to abandon the principles that kept everything in balance, and it is reflected in our national debt, our waistlines and our mental health.

We are fat and we are falling. That combination is recipe for disaster.

When the cup is full, stop pouring. The same advice goes for your bowl of Coco Roos.

CDC on salt: We were wrong (i.e., Michael Bloomberg and his friends are thugs)

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013by Douglas Ernst9 Comments

Remember the old food pyramid? The one that encouraged all Americans to eat a diet heavy in carbohydrates? I do. The federal government got it ass backwards, and then guys like NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg went nuts trying to control the will of entire city populations. Now the CDC gives us another example why we should not take general consensus among scientists as a green light to start regulating the food you eat, down to the number of grams of salt you consume each day. It turns out that your body needs salt — something sane people, who don’t live to become government bureaucrats, have known for quite some time.

From preventdisease.com

A recent report commissioned by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reviewed the health benefits of reducing salt intake and the take-home message is that salt, in the quantities consumed by most Americans, is no longer considered a substantial health hazard. What the CDC study reported explicitly is that there is no benefit, and may be a danger, from reducing our salt intake below 1 tsp per day. What was absent about the report was is the difference between healthy mineral salts and iodized table salt.

It may be that we’re better off with more salt than less, up to 2 or even 3 tsp per day. How did it happen that such standard medical advice drifted astray, then went un-corrected for so long?

This review by the National Academies Institute of Medicine (IOM), commissioned by CDC, considered dozens of studies, from cross-cultural (less reliable) to prospective, randomized with control (most reliable). Most studies showed no relationship between salt intake and any health outcome. Some seemed to indicate that more salt had a beneficial effect.

Hotair’s Mary Katherine Ham nails it:

As with so many bad public health ideas, the idea of cutting salt found its national footing thanks to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose primary public service as head of the largest city in America has been to ban and discourage as many delicious foods as possible. In 2009, Bloomberg started the National Salt Reduction Initiative, led by the New York City health department in an effort to push major food companies into “voluntary” lower-sodium standards. The goal was to reduce sodium intake by 25 percent.

There was push-back on the initiative from the scientific community here and there, but that didn’t stop Bloomberg’s strong-arming quest. …

Bloomberg, in concert with the American Heart Association and other alarmists, got more than 20 food companies to cut their sodium in February.

The federal government, its scientists and the media might as well just consolidate and work under a new name: “The Fear Factory.” Every day researchers find new ways to get you paranoid. Some new food gives you cancer while a previous item thought to be dangerous is taken off the list.

Newsflash: On a long enough timeline we will all get cancer. Instead of freaking out about it or trying to control the behavior of hundreds of millions of free Americans, a better option is to live a healthy lifestyle, find a way to exude love and kindness wherever you go, use common sense and ultimately come to terms with death.

And if you don’t? Then you can continue to let guys like Brian Williams scare you about prostate cancer, which might (or might not) happen if you take supplements daily. “Someone get Michael Bloomberg on the phone, pronto! We need to curb the amount of omega-3 fatty acids people can buy.”

The talking heads are now worried about fish oil, which means politicians will seek to control its use. Ten years from now they'll conclude otherwise, but the regulations will stay in place. Do you really want to live you life in fear? Turn off your television and get out more. — The talking heads are now worried about fish oil, which means politicians will seek to control its use. Ten years from now they’ll conclude otherwise, but the regulations will stay in place. Do you really want to live your life in fear? Turn off your television and get out with your loved ones more often.

I would argue that living in anger and fear is much more likely to give you weird health problems than fish oil. If you watch television daily you’re exposed to programming geared towards pitting you against your fellow man. Watch the “news” too much, and it’s a good bet you’re irrationally living in fear over any number of things, from sodium consumption to what your neighbor will think of you if you don’t buy the newest cell phone on the market. Turn off the television more frequently. Your body, mind and spirit will thank you.

The Runner King

May 6, 2012October 21, 2013by Douglas Ernst4 Comments

Alone together on a Sunday morning, the track and the runner form a unique relationship, one where they are simultaneously king and subject. At that moment the track exists for him. As the sun rises and the dew glistens in the grass he determines what the workout will be. Will it be a long slow run that he’s done countless times before? Will he run sprints? Or, will he glide along at a brisk pace that leaves him pleasantly winded — the kind of breathing that really lets him know he’s alive without overly taxing his body.

Any king worth his salt will always find ways to humble himself. He needs to know that there are forces out there that can bring him to his knees. He needs to know that life is temporary, and that one day he will die. The humbled man allows respect to flow through his veins, which often carries with it things like kindness and discipline, foresight and a sense of purpose.

And so, knowing this, the Runner King will often submit himself to a workout that leaves every ounce of his body screaming for mercy. The lessons he learns by testing his limits are taught to him by the track, thereby establishing it as his master. It would be easier to “jog” around the course, smile with and pride think about how much “better” he is than those still sleeping in, tucked in all snug in their beds — dreaming of doing. But the Runner King knows the he is not better than anyone else, and he reminds himself of this by running faster and faster and faster, until the burn in his bones and his heart and his lungs melts his smug sense of superiority away. Then, when it’s gone, in its place is a little diamond of thought: You came from dust, and to dust you will return.

Upon leaving, the Runner King is thankful. He is thankful for the track. He is thankful for his health. He is thankful he is alive. He is tired, but he is invigorated. And most of all, he is inspired to share the lessons he’s learned with his friends, his enemies, and the ones he loves.

Related: Why we run