MAX:360

Sleep is something that many folks take for granted, but since it takes up about one third of our lives, it’s worth considering carefully.Besides the obvious benefit of providing time for cell regeneration and repair, eight hours of regular, sound sleep sets you up for optimal functioning of mind and body. It strengthens your immune system, improves your mood and sharpens your alertness and powers of attention.

Getting sufficient sleep lowers your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, and it makes us less susceptible to accidents.

Sleep also plays a critically important role in memory consolidation and creative thinking. A strategic nap is an effective way to heighten alertness and enhance performance, according to Mark Rosekind, Ph.D., and former director of NASA’s Fatigue Countermeasures Program.

Rosekind and his team found that aviators who took naps averaging 26 minutes improved their performance by up to 34%.

He advises limiting naps to less than 40 minutes to avoid grogginess, and most expert “napologists” also recommend napping prior to 5 p.m. to avoid interference with evening sleep.

In Take a Nap! Change Your Life , Sara C. Mednick, Ph.D., makes a compelling case for the benefits of napping, which in addition to raising alertness and improving your mood, help to sharpen memory and boost creative problem solving skills.

And did you know that relaxing the mind with meditation can also help you maintain youthfulness of mind and body?

“The effects of meditation can counter the effect of age,” according to Sara W. Lazar, Ph.D., and her colleagues at Harvard Medical School, whose work has shown that meditation practice improves memory and concentration (as well as correlating with positive physical changes in the thickness of the prefrontal cortex).

Moreover, research shows that stress is the single greatest contributor to the symptoms associated with aging, and meditation is a powerful antidote.

“If we can affect the stress response, we can affect the aging process,” reports Dr. Eva Selhub, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “There’s a reason why experienced mediators live so long and look so young.”

(If you want to get the benefits of meditation without years of sitting at the feet of a guru, you can tune your brainwaves to the same frequency experienced by advanced meditators using the Brain Sync program developed by my co-author Kelly Howell).

How do you strengthen your brain? That’s next…

Strengthen Your Brain as You Age with MeditationRegular meditation helps maintain your mind as you age, and documented benefits include:

- Helps oxygen be used more efficiently
- Reduces the perception of pain
- Helps oxygen be used more efficiently
- Regulates blood pressure
- Deepens relaxation and reduces muscle tension
- Lowers levels of cortisol and other stress hormones
- Improves breathing for asthma patients
- Strengthens the immune system
- Helps alleviate headaches and migraines
- Reduces symptoms of premenstrual syndrome
- Facilitates faster postoperative recovery
- Supports emotional stability and resilience
- Relieves symptoms of anxiety and depression
- Increases feelings of happiness, contentment and peace
- Improves memory and reaction time
- Develops coordination
- Enhances coherence of brain wave patterns that correlate with improvements in learning ability and creativity

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche — who designed the classic 911 in the 1960s that has defined the shape of seven generations of Porsche’s signature 911 sports cars since then died today in Austria at the age of 76, the company announced.

He was was the grandson of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the company in the 1930s.

His design with the low flat hood, bulging headlights and fastback roof remains the basic form for the current 911s and even lives on today in key design cues for Porsche vehicles as different from the sports car as the Panamera four-door sedan and the Cayenne SUV.

“The creator of the Porsche 911 has founded a culture of design in our company that distinguishes our sports cars even today,” Porsche CEO Matthias Mueller told the Associated Press today.

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche with the 1963 Porsche 901 (t8) he designed — later renamed the 911 because of a trademark issue with Peugeot (1990 photo released by Porsche).

Details from the AP obituary on the man and his design philosophy:

Porsche was the son of former Porsche Chairman Ferry Porsche, who died in 1998, and the grandson of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, who started the company as a design and engineering firm in the 1930s.

Born in Stuttgart on Dec. 11, 1935, F.A. Porsche was initiated into the family business while still a boy, spending time in his grandfather’s workshops and design facilities. He studied at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung in Ulm and joined the company in 1958, taking over the design studio in 1962.

In the 911, he created a larger, less cramped replacement for the company’s first model, the four-cylinder Porsche 356. The new car, with a rear-mounted, six-cylinder engine, was originally designated the 901, but the number was changed because French competitor Peugeot claimed a patent on car names formed with a zero in the middle.

Porsche left the operational part of the company with other family members in the early 1970s and in 1972 founded a design business, Porsche Design Studio, where he created eyeglasses, watches and pens.

As a designer, he had a reputation as a functionalist.

“A formally harmonious product needs no decoration, it should be elevated through pure form,” he once said — a motto reflected in the lean lines of the 911.

He served as chairman of Porsche from 1990 to 1993 and helped steer the family firm through a crisis as sales plunged in the late 1980s under pressure from global competition and a strong German mark that hindered exports.

Under his chairmanship, the company brought in a new CEO, Wendelin Wiedeking, who is credited with turning the company around as a business.

Porsche was to be buried in a private ceremony in the chapel at Schuettgut, the Porsche family’s estate in Zell am See, Austria.

Kony 2012 Isn’t Perfect, But At Least We’re Talking About Child Abuse

 Since its release on Monday, KONY 2012 has skyrocketed around the internet, becoming one of the most successful examples of the power of social media ever. The man behind it all, Jason Russell, said he just wanted to tell a story about the horrors taking place in Uganda brought on by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. In a matter of days, he has done just that–managing to get the world’s attention about the child abuse taking place in this country from turning young children into soldiers, slaves and murderers. But despite the awareness he’s raised, Russell has a number of critics now saying his approach to stopping this abuse is all wrong. But if we don’t bring attention to the issues, how can we put an end to abuse?

Consider this: After receiving pressure from Congress, President Obama announced that he had authorized the deployment of roughly 100 American military advisers to help African nations working toward “the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.” That was in October. And here we are, five months later and has that happened? No. As is typical in politics, it could take years before changes are made. Meanwhile, more children will suffer and lead a life that they don’t want to live anymore (as evidenced by one of main stars in the film who said he’d rather be in heaven with his brother than live this life any longer).

But since Monday, “KONY 2012,” has received an unprecedented 50 million views on YouTube and Vimeo. Their organization, Invisible Children, has also generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to help their cause of bringing Kony down.

Noelle Jouglet, a spokeswoman for the group, told the New York Times that people in their San Diego office have barely slept all week since the video hit:

It was unstoppable. It went internationally very quick. This is a game-changing event for our company.

But despite all of the attention, support and funds raised to help these children, Jouglet said some of the calls she received were from people who had previously pledged donations but now, after reading the criticism of Invisible Children, want their money back.

Many specifically take issue with the way that the video presented the fight against the rebels. Others don’t like how Invisible Children spends its money behind the scenes. And still others don’t think bringing all of this to light is the smart solution.

Yesterday, The Atlantic voiced their opinion on that topic and criticized Russell and Invisible Children for putting these crimes against humanity out there:

In theory, awareness campaigns should remedy that problem. In reality, they have not -and may have even exacerbated it. The problem is that these campaigns mobilize generalized concern — a demand to do something. That isn’t enough to counterbalance the costs of interventions, because Americans’ heartlessness or apathy was never the biggest problem. Taking tough action against groups, like the LRA, that are willing to commit mass atrocities will inevitably turn messy.

They went on to criticize the way the group is raising attention and money:

Campaigns that focus on bracelets and social media absorb resources that could go toward more effective advocacy, and take up rhetorical space that could be used to develop more effective advocacy.

But… they don’t go on to explain what “effective advocacy” is. How do we go from raising awareness about this violence to actually stopping it?

I think Russell and Invisible Children have done a very commendable job of bringing all of this to light. They’ve engaged the under-25 segment of our population in a way that very few other issues have (as a matter of fact, it was my 15-year-old who shared the video with me and insisted that I watch it). Despite all the criticism, bringing major attention to a human abuse is the only way to stop it. Even if every American doesn’t actually do something to support it, education and knowledge is still the most powerful start.

Max:360

The One Thing You Should Never Do At The Gym 

The worst machine in the gym

It’s interesting what money will make people do. I envision some inventor for a fitness equipment company sitting at his desk one day when his wife walks in to tell him what a nightmare her pap smear was. Then he starts thinking, “Hey, people go to the gym to torture themselves…”

And the hip adduction machine was born.

But that is not the worst machine in the gym; it’s merely useless. In fact, there are plenty of useless machines in the gym. There are others that are half decent. Before I go on my rant, I will say that I have occasion to use some of the basic machines.

I always start off with free weights. But you reach a point after several sets when you’re feeling pretty done for. The gas tank is low but not empty. Any further free weights are unthinkable, but you can pound out a couple more reps on a machine to finish things off and really earn that beer. I do that sometimes. See, you can use machines and not be a bad person.

But there is one machine that deserves to be soaked in napalm and hurled into an active volcano. This machine masquerades as being useful while is pretty useless.

What’s more, it will mess you up.

It is the 45-degree leg press, and you should never, ever use it again. Here is why:

Many people Use this machine instead of Doing squats

 Guys — big guys, even — love this machine.

They shouldn’t. We all know of guys who only ever work their upper body “bar muscles” and strut about on chicken legs because they hate doing legs. Hell, I used to hate doing legs, but I forced myself to anyway. Eventually, I learned to love it.

You must fall in love with the squat. It is a damn challenging exercise to get right. It demands perfect form. It takes everything out of you.

And yet it gives so much. When you master the squat and make it part of your regular routine, taking pride in your ability to do it well, you, too, will find the love.

Guys who hate squats but still want to do legs think they’re doing fine with the leg press, but they’re not. This is because…

It’s not a functional movement

Think of what you do with a squat. That is a functional movement. Now try to imagine something in real life when your entire back is anchored and you need to push hard with your legs.

I’m coming up empty.

But don’t just take my word for it. Dr. Stuart McGill is a professor of spinal biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. He literally wrote the book on low back disorders, appropriately called  Low Back Disorders.

I’ve interviewed Dr. McGill for my L.A. Times column before. In the aforementioned book, McGill said of the leg pres, “We still consider this a non-functional motor/motion pattern.”

In other words, you can stack a whole bunch of plates on that sucker to make yourself look cool, but you’re still accomplishing the square root of bugger all in terms of functional strength gains.

You will wreck yourself

I have experience with this. I didn’t do it on this machine — my low back tales of woe are long and boring — but know that I have two bulging discs in my lower lumbar and I wouldn’t wish them on Nickelback. Well, maybe them, but no one else.

This machine will destroy your low back. Believe it.

McGill explains in his book that this machine can put your lower lumbar discs in serious jeopardy of a posterior bulge. See, when you are in this machine, you are bent at the waist at a 45-degree angle to start with. This creates an anterior (front) pinch of the lumbar vertebrae and an opening of the posterior vertebrae. Between those vertebrae are those gooey disc things. Trust me that you don’t ever want anything bad to happen to those disc things. It will make your life hell.

Then add a crapload of downward force from the weight on the machine in the worst direction possible. Not only that, but as your legs come toward your chest, the angle increases and the opening of the vertebrae at the back increases as well.

It won’t happen all at once; it’s cumulative. Repeated uses just make it so that one day your low back is killing you and you don’t know why. Just because you can use it without a problem now doesn’t mean it won’t make you hate life in the future.

So ditch it.

If you really can’t do squats, try the hack squat instead, but focus on not letting your low back round outwards.

Monkees star Davy Jones dies at 66

Singer Davy Jones of The Monkees has died of a heart attack at 66, the medical examiner’s office in Martin County, Fla., has confirmed to NBC News.

A statement issued by the medical examiner’s office says that Jones complained Wednesday morning that he wasn’t feeling well and was having trouble breathing. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No suspicious circumstances surrounded his death, and his family has been notified. He is survived by his wife, Jessica, and four daughters.

The news was originally reported by TMZ.

Jones was most famous for his role in the pop group The Monkees, which was put together in 1965 for the TV show of the same name. With such hits as “Daydream Believer, “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer,” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and the “Monkees” theme song, the group sold more than 50 million records.

In 2008, Yahoo Music named Jones the top teen idol of all time.

After “The Monkees” disbanded in 1971, Jones sang solo as well as with various reincarnations of the group.

He also acted on stage and screen, with his most famous TV appearance as himself on “The Brady Bunch,” in an episode where Marcia Brady was the president of his fan club and tried to get the singer to appear at her school dance. He also starred in “Oliver!” on Broadway.