We have been working our socks off to get health and fitness projects up and running for the Hertfordshire Partnership University Foundation Trust.  We opened a gym on the Aston Ward (Mental health inpatient unit) at the Lister in Stevenage Hertfordshire in February 2013 and have also begun a project at the QEII which includes an exercise class timetable.

On Friday 7th June we had an open day launch for the service, which we provided a smoothie bike, fitness challenges and our instructors were onsite to meet Service Users and staff from the wards and head office.  We also met with people from charity MIND and HertsSportsVillage.

I have attached the article that has been written up on the Scheme below.  We will keep updating the website on how the service is going……….

New fitness classes launched at QEII

A fitness scheme designed to make patients at the Mental Health Unit at QEII Hospital feel better – both physically and mentally – has just been launched.

A timetable of exercise classes including Zumba, Pilates, boxing circuits and more is available to patients and staff six days a week, with three sessions taking place each day.

At the launch, staff and patients made their own smoothies using the smoothie bike and tested their stamina on the rowing machine, as well as finding out about the classes on offer.

The fitness programme is the next step in offering physical activities to service users – a similar project is running at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, where patients have access to a gym.

The initiative is part of the Fresh Start scheme, run jointly by the Trust and Reinvent Lifestyle. The first phase of the project is designed to encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Lisa Hunt, the Trust’s Interim Chief Operating Officer, said: “It’s lovely to see service users and staff having fun together. It is these small steps that really make a difference.”

Warwick Wyatt, company director of Reinvent Lifestyle, said: “There is a strong link between physical exercise and mental wellbeing. When you start exercising, the endorphins kick in and it makes you feel better.

“We want to build a link between the unit and the community, to encourage people to get involved with exercise when they leave the unit and return home.”

Tabetha Darmon, Modern Matron at the QEII, said: “The fitness scheme is proving a great success with service users and staff. It plays a great part in helping them work better together, as well as improving their health and wellbeing.”

Water is so important; we need it to assist with millions of chemical reactions within the human body to keep the body in homeostasis. A lack of water can cause huge problems, without it for a few days could even cause death.

There have been many studies into finding out how the balance of water in the body affects bio chemical mechanisms, one says “Dehydration can affect consciousness and can induce speech incoherence, extremity weakness, hypotonia of ocular globes, orthostatic hypotension and tachycardia. “ -European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2010) 64, 115–123; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2009.111;

This shows the magnitude of keeping your water levels at optimum.

How much water can you afford to lose?  If you have just a 2% drop in body weight water your aerobic capacity can drop by 10-20% and sports performance significantly impaired, which could be some of the reason that some days you feel that the exercise session you have completed feels easier one day and hard another even though it is at the exact same intensity.  A 4% drop can result in 20-30% drop in resistance training performance and continued exercise at this decrease in bodyweight water can lead to nausea, heat exhaustion, vomiting and possible diarrhoea.  The reactions get worse as you lose more water and at 12% you could be in a position of going into a coma and death from circulatory failure, these stats have been taken from Saltin 1973.

You obviously need water then!  So how can you get it?  There are many sources of water, including mineral water, Spring water, bottled water, tap water, filtered water, purified water, fruit, veg, and carbohydrates to a certain extent!   Dr. F. Batmanghelidj talks about in his book the bodies many crys for water that the earths water comprises of 98% salt water and 2% fresh water we actually can drink!

The best source that we can purchase in my view would be mineral or purified and without BPA’s (Bisphenol A) from the plastics which you can use specific bottles or glass bottles which you can buy that you could carry around with you during the day. Food, like melons, apples, oranges, courgettes are great sources too.

You should consume water throughout the day, how much depends on a few factors, but as a general guideline Paul Chek recommends drinking 0.033x bodyweight in kilograms, which will give you the amount in litres, that you need to consume; for example, my weight calculation would be 0.033 x 72 kg = 2.376litres of water per day to keep myself hydrated, but I would add personally that I only I am partake in vigorous activity where I am sweating profusely most days and lose a lot of body water.  Most individuals will need to drink around 1.2l per day and get the rest from their food as described in Human Nutriton- M.E. Barasi.  Some people suggest to count caffeinated drinks as part of their daily fluid intake, but when you over do it and have too much +300mg a day the diuretic affect will become an issue.  I suggest for each coffee you should drink 3 small glasses of water. I warn you that in a study of a major coffee chain four had more than 200mg in a single cup, with the strongest having more than 300mg, the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Food and Function reports.

Training and sports hydration

In my personal experience I have felt the pain of marathons and competitive races and sometimes got the right amount of liquid and electrolyte balance and other time have not.  There are many sports drinks out there in the market which include Hypotonic (Low carb concentration) Isotonic (equal carb and electrolyte- blood) Hyper tonic (high carb content) Glucose polymer drinks.  With these different products how do you choose which ones to use?

Before a training session/race the ACSM recommends that you consume around 500ml of water 2 hours before to allow for excretion of excess water and 125ml just before. You could also consume a small amount of hypotonic which has a low carb content but enough to give you a slight edge.

During exercise for around an hour of intense work, a hypotonic is probably best, but anything over an hour you may need something with slightly higher carb content like an Isotonic.

After exercise if you have worked extremely hard it may be suitable to have a hypertonic which would have a high carb content 40-80g per litre.

One of the problems with sports drinks is that they are expensive but you could make your own!  The products are all very similar and are easily made with products you probably already have.

To make a Hypotonic you can simply mix 20g sucrose to litre of warm water with a 1g of salt and good quality squash. For a Hypertonic you can mix 60g sucrose, 1g salt, 1litre of water and good quality squash.  When I say good quality you need to look at the back of the squash label, ideally the product should not have aspartame in it (Another blog subject!) and be made of organic fruit, you can buy these from decent health food shops.  I also said that you should include salt which is a according Chek is vital for the excretion of excess acidity in the cells of your body, a strong antihistamine and aid in prevention of muscle cramps to name a few benefits. When purchasing salt buy the best quality sea salt for its mineral balance in particular magnesium chloride, which has many benefits for digestion and hydration.

It’s a hard task getting it right sometimes but as long as you realise when you begin to get thirsty then you need to drink or eat something that has a good water content to stay hydrated.

All the best in health,

Warwick Wyatt

Nutrition is a funny beast, most of us want to have a leaner body and sometimes see others around us achieving such amazing results from little effort and either controlled calorie dieting, shake dieting (you know the brands!), the red and green diet and many others. But when you try them sometimes you have a decrease in body fat but a lot of the time it just feels too difficult to stick with it.

So I am posting this to tell you it doesn’t have to go that way, you can achieve better bodies, more sustainable energy and increased mental clarity. 

The system I use is called metabolic typing, and I have been using the system for a while now and I feel hugely better from implementing the changes.  It analyzes your fundamental homeostatic control mechanisms from a series of questions on a lengthy assessment that usually take an hour and a half, you are then provided a diet plan specific to your type, this is based on many years of research by Dr. Kelley from the United States.  In the 1960′s he compiled this data into forms and finally created a computer generated program, which William Wolcott has carried on the work. 

So what does the assessment analyze?  Well, it will take your information of physiological traits, Physical Traits and Diet related traits and use an algorithm to determine your dominance type. The ‘type’ could be; Sympathetic, Parasympathetic, Balanced, Fast oxidizer, Slow Oxidizer and Mixed.  These systems are known as the autonomic nervous system and the oxidative system. It also works out what endocrine type you are too, which allows us to advise on foods that may hinder your efforts for achieving optimal health. 

It goes without saying that to get healthier we need to eat clean, buy local grown veg, grass fed meat and wild caught fish, doing a few simple steps like these will massively change your wellbeing but to get a detailed program of not only what to eat but also how to live I fully advise getting your metabolic type assessed.

But just to help you get going on achieving the body and health you desire here are my top 5 basic tips

1. 1.            Eat plenty of non-starchy vegetables, they are low in sugars and high in fiber, which will give you energy over a longer period of time but also help with digestion and provide many vitamins. Did you also know that you can get all vitamins that are in fruit in vegetables too?
2. 2.            Eat high quality meat, eggs and fish to provide you with great profile of amino acids (The building blocks), which will help you, burn fat, increase muscle and tissue repair and improve sex life!
3. 3.            Prepare your meals every night for the next day or for 2 days, which will give you extra time to take that walk at your break time instead of rushing to get food or completely missing out on it!
4. 4.            Include fish oils in your diet, these will help the maintenance of triglycerides; improve mental clarity and joint function to name a few.  Try to have cold-water fish oils.
5. 5.            Think about your blood sugars, if you have a high glycemic food, why would your body decide to use it’s own fat stores as energy, check out this video for an amazing talk by Dr. Lustig.   http://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM

Have a look at this interview with Paul McCambridge of Perfect Balance Personal Training.

You will learn about losing fat, why certain products could be potentially cancerous, how to eat to be healthy and great info and references on cholesterol on what we need it!

http://youtu.be/JNpCnIXjmiI

When I changed from being employed to running my own company, I was trying to reinvent my lifestyle as most of my work had previously included huge bouts of driving long distances, resulting in laziness, poor posture, achy muscles, muscular imbalance, lower aerobic threshold, increased resting heart rate and probably a little extra fat.

In the past two years of getting back into personal training and getting to my fittest point, I still hadn’t put in a long walk, but it was time last week to go, so on the muddy shoes went, and got my 2 year old ready with my fiancee and off we went into the wilderness of the woods.  The clean air hit me straight away and a great feeling of freedom surrounded my consciousness.

So the first reason that I walk is to enjoy family time, it’s a superb way of interacting with loved ones as there are no distractions, especially if you go into the woods, local park or green area.  It’s all too easy to get caught up in daily life in the house or local town; get yourself out into nature!

The second reason is that walking is a great way of achieving a fat burning heart rate zone, usually of around 65% max heart rate. If you go for an hour walk then yo could use around 200-300 calories.  This shouldn’t be the only concept of your fat loss training regime but certainly part of it.

Thirdly, having a good walk is great for your postural muscles, starting with the foot.  You should try to land you heel first, then the outside of your foot and push off from your big toe.  It’s best if you are able to move your feet though! So try to have flexible soles so your feet can bend as needed.

While walking it may be of benefit to do some deep breathing to encourage the diaphragm to flatten and contract so your lungs can have maximum inflation.  You’ll be amazed of how much air you can get in when you let the belly push out as your Diaphragm drops down.  The flush of good oxygen into the blood will refresh your muscles with new nutrients and encourage lymphatic flow.  Deep breathing should be part of ALL stress reduction programs but also be included in daily routines too.

Start this week with a good trudge in the fields, woods, park of even local town or city.  Take a phone, but don’t look at it!  Just enjoy a simple walk. It’s good for you.