Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

Last week I wrote a bit about calculated risk, and how pretty much every decision that we make contains a degree of it. This week I'd like to share my approach to muscle mass, and the risks I've chosen to reject and embrace. I think the evidence is quite strong that resistance training is beneficial for the human body. Among the benefits of resistance training are: Increased bone density Increased muscle mass (great for counteracting the effects of aging) Improved balance Reduced risk of lower-back pain Increased resting metabolism (good for weight control) Improved glucose tolerance (reduce risk of developing diabetes, and/or reducing its severity) With all the benefits of resistance training, I think we'd all be wise to consider how to work 2+ days/week of resistance training into our lives. For years I considered my daily Yoga practice as sufficient resistance training. The teachers who taught me Modern Postural Yoga repeatedly claimed that yoga postures b

Some people have a lot of choices in their lives; what to eat, how to rest, what (if any) type of physical activity to pursue, etc. While not everybody enjoys the luxury of this much choice, a goodly number of people do. Within the possibilities afforded by all these choices, there is little that is assured. Given the available information, we are left with conflicting reports on outcomes. As a result, our choices almost inevitably take on a degree of risk. Hope for the best. I often work with people who are holding off on making lifestyle changes until they have  all  the accurate information. While I laud personal research and collecting a wealth of information, I don't believe we'll fully know many of the answers that we're seeking within our lifetime. Do we wait until we  know , or make the best decision that we can with the available information? As you can probably surmise from this lead-in, I'm of the belief that making the best decisions with the availab

When people speak about Yoga and its feel-good properties, they often suggest that slow, deep breathing is the reason that Yoga often feels good. While I cannot deny that an awareness or modification of breathing is indeed a defining characteristic of Modern Postural Yoga, I'm not convinced that Yoga's benefits are all about the breathing. Yes, the breathing's effect on the nervous system may be what makes us feel good after a Yoga practice, though it may turn out that Yoga stimulates the endocannabinoid system, increases the activity of the paraventricular hypothalamus (and stimulates the release of oxytocin), or activates another of the various feel-good systems that are embedded within the human body. I sure don't know, and I'm not sure that anyone fully understands why Yoga feels good. Buddy's vagal tone (and heart rate variability) appear to be elevated. What do we know about slow, deep breathing? In a Yogic interpretation of the Polyvagal T