All Posts by this Author

Hiking as Exercise

Healthy Alter Ego goes to the mountain top! (At least the shirt did.) Last week while on vacation in Arizona with my girlfriend and co-fitness-ego, Robin, she had the insatiable urge to go hiking. Now mind you while on vacation the only urge I have is to lay on a raft in a body of water somewhere.  So we compromised and went hiking three different times. Not much of a compromise in my opinion. Arizona... [Read more]

I Have Seen the Future of Workouts – and they Vibrate

In a continuation of my series on whole body vibration, I have written on its effects on bone mineral density and a possible alternative for strengthening bones in the fight against osteoporosis. The reason I initially bought a vibration platform was for sports performance training. I will get into some of the study results on this in the following paragraphs, but first I will try to explain how the... [Read more]

Good Vibrations: New Method for Getting Stronger Bones

In my last post, Osteoporosis Drugs Cause Fractures of the Hip, I wrote on the effects of some of the leading osteoporosis drugs having a long term detrimental effect on bone density and strength, causing an increase in hip fractures in those that took the drugs longer than 4 years. Researchers revealed that the bone “strengthening” drugs worked well for the first four years or so and then the... [Read more]

Osteoporosis Drugs CAUSE Fractures of the Hip

The front page of the USA Today, March 11, 2010 issue brought to light some eye-opening effects of osteoporosis drugs known as biphosphonates.  At last week’s conference of the American Academy of Orthopedic  Surgeons, research was presented to show that long term use (greater than 4 years) of biphosphonates  by post menopausal women actually increased the incidence of hip fractures. The Drugs... [Read more]

Reflections of Olympic Village

The winter games are coming to a close and I feel they have been pretty spectacular, and I’m not speaking of our team USA medal count. As the winter games go on I wanted to give some insight as to what goes on behind the scenes at the Athlete and Olympic Village when athletes aren’t competing.  The housing is usually little chalets or cottages lined up by country. The rooms are set up in a... [Read more]

An Olympian remembers

The start of the Winter Olympic in Vancouver has stirred up a lot of memories of my own experience in a Winter Olympics. It reminded me of how surreal the experience felt and how important the support of our families and the country a whole was to our entire team. I thought I’d share a few of those experiences to give you an insider’s look at the Olympic Games and to remind you to root for the... [Read more]