Not that we need to cover this topic, but its always worth a refresher.  VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen that your body can consume during intense exercise.  High oxygen consumption is one of the key characteristics of great endurance runners, cyclists, rowers and cross-country skiers etc. 

The best runners have a VO2 max of 75 to 85 ml/kg...though compared to a thoroughbred horse with a VO2 of 150ml/kg we still have room to evolve.  Lance Armstrong reportedly has a VO2 of around 83ml/kg, while Lemond's was 93!  And if you think that's impressive, get ready to break out your xcountry skiis.  28 Year old Norwegian xcountry skier, Espen Harald Bjerke, holds one of the highest recorded VO2 in all sports at 97ml/kg!  If you'd like to read more about how Bjerke has optimized his training, this is a great read...it might surprise you on the approach he takes to intensity training (Article HERE).

So, where does this leave you and me?  Without dumping down some gas money on a lab to test your own VO2 (which there are many around here and we will explore in an upcoming blog), what are your options?  Well, as luck would have it there is a rather inexpensive test called, The Astrand 6 Minute Cycle Test.  With a proper indoor trainer, HR monitor and Stop Watch - you can come fairly close to determining what your estimated VO2 is.

In order to do the calculations and test, we've provided a link to the site.  Check it out and if you've done a professional lab testing, consider droping a note on the degree of accuracy.  Here's the LINK.

Remember, VO2 MAX is called MAX because its a defined ceiling.  Genetics play an important role in yours and although you can optimize against it through training, you cannot actually change the optimal value. 

An abstract on optimizing High Intensity-Integerval Training (HIT) and the effects on well trained endurance cyclists.  In summary, supramaximal HIT can significantly improve 40-km time trial performance, however proper mention of recovery needs to be made.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of three different high-intensity interval training (HIT) regimens on endurance performance in highly trained endurance athletes.

Methods: Before, and after 2 and 4 wk of training, 38 cyclists and triathletes (mean +/- SD; age = 25 +/- 6 yr; mass = 75 +/- 7 kg; [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak = 64.5 +/- 5.2 mL[middle dot]kg-1[middle dot]min-1) performed: 1) a progressive cycle test to measure peak oxygen consumption ([latin capital V with dot above]O2peak) and peak aerobic power output (PPO), 2) a time to exhaustion test (Tmax) at their [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak power output (Pmax), as well as 3) a 40-km time-trial (TT40). Subjects were matched and assigned to one of four training groups (G1, N = 8, 8 x 60% Tmax at Pmax, 1:2 work:recovery ratio; G2, N = 9, 8 x 60% Tmax at Pmax, recovery at 65% HRmax; G3, N = 10, 12 x 30 s at 175% PPO, 4.5-min recovery; GCON, N = 11). In addition to G1, G2, and G3 performing HIT twice per week, all athletes maintained their regular low-intensity training throughout the experimental period.

Results : All HIT groups improved TT40 performance (+4.4 to +5.8%) and PPO (+3.0 to +6.2%) significantly more than GCON (-0.9 to +1.1%;P < 0.05). Furthermore, G1 (+5.4%) and G2 (+8.1%) improved their [latin capital V with dot above]O2peak significantly more than GCON (+1.0%;P < 0.05).

Conclusion : The present study has shown that when HIT incorporates Pmax as the interval intensity and 60% of Tmax as the interval duration, already highly trained cyclists can significantly improve their 40-km time trial performance. Moreover, the present data confirm prior research, in that repeated supramaximal HIT can significantly improve 40-km time trial performance.

Its hard to imagine a better reason to have more than one form of latex below your waistline, but in this modern day and age it may do more for your stamina than you know. 

How does another 5-8 Watts sound to you?  With marginal victories in the low single percents, adding up to 5% improvement on a group ride could be a world a difference.  That's the potential of adding just 10$ latex inner tubes!

Ready to start your annual tithing for a new frame, set of aero rims or some other costly, speculative performance enhancement?  Before making that splurge, you've certainly heard of the 'power to weight' ratio, well its time to think in terms of  'cost to power'.  The easiest and least costly improvements often go overlooked to the buxom improvements of a new shiny frame or deep dish rim.  Well what about those whitewalls?

In this study, we are exposed to the rolling resistance over nearly all major road tires out there.  This should be given heavy consideration on a replacement next time you draw a flat.  Who knew that certain tires could produce such staggering differences in watts per wheel...in some cases, up to 10watts!

So check out the full study <HERE> and see where you're coming up 'short'.  It could mean the difference of many seconds, victories or simply aid in recovery from those Sunday battles through less output.

Note: I hope there weren't too many innuendos...I swear, they were unintentional until I reread.

Part II in the series on what makes better athletes.  This is a rather interesting twist to hand size.  No its not what you're thinking, although in a sense it does relate.  Check out the following article by Rita Rubin on a recent UK study.  Maybe you have more room to unlock and inner potential?

(Full Article HERE)

Palm readers may not be the only ones who can tell a lot about people by examining their hands.Recently, scientists in North America and Europe have looked to the relative lengths of index and ring fingers for clues about a variety of characteristics, including musical ability, athletic prowess and, in a study just released, osteoarthritis risk.

The researchers believe that the difference between the two fingers' lengths signifies the level of testosterone exposure in the womb. The longer the ring finger compared to the index finger, the thinking goes, the higher the exposure.

Scientists express the fingers' relative lengths as a ratio, computed by dividing index finger length by ring finger length. Men tend to have longer ring fingers than index fingers, or ratios less than 1, and women tend to have index and ring fingers of equal length, or ratios of 1.

Video HERE

Interesting Read:

The world-record pace for the marathon continues to improve for both men and women. For men, the record pace for the marathon is now about as fast as the record pace for the 10,000-meter run just after World War II. Today, champion athletes are running more than four times farther at speeds of well under five minutes per mile. How can this be? Are humans simply built better or is there something else behind the mind-blowing speeds on the racetrack?

Michael Joyner, M.D., an anesthesiologist at Mayo Clinic whose research interests extend to exercise science, says that a combination of factors are leading to new world records in track and field and other sports. He attributes the improved records, not necessarily to genetics, but to training harder and longer, improved medical care and the fact that people from throughout the world now participate.

In studying the world records of sporting events like the marathon, the mile and 10,000- and 5,000-meter races throughout the last 125 years, Dr. Joyner says there are key primary factors at play. Prior to World War I, athletes didn't train every day. They trained three to four times per week out of concern they would "overtrain" or become stale. By the 1920s, athletes were training more often and by the 1950s, especially in Eastern Europe, athletes were training daily for hours at a time.

By the 1960s, more people from other countries were involved in competition than ever before. Up until then, most champion athletes came from European countries, the U.S., Australia and Canada. Since then, however, athletes from the developing world have been able to participate. Since the 1960s, some of the most successful athletes have come from the East African countries of Ethiopia and Kenya.

"So we've gone from maybe one-fifth or one-sixth of the world's population participating to where we now have a huge pool of people in the Olympic Games," Dr. Joyner says.

Does this mean we've reached a plateau in terms of speed?

"At some level we've reached a physiological plateau. In general, the champions of today don't have dramatically better treadmill times as compared to elite athletes of earlier generations. What I think we are seeing is a small effect due to better racetracks, shoes and improved sports medicine. And, people are participating longer, so you have more competitive depth which leads to better races and races designed to set world records," Dr. Joyner says.

The Physiology of Performance

In endurance sports such as running a marathon, there are three physiological determinants of performance: maximal oxygen uptake (also called VO2 max), lactate threshold and running economy (sometimes called running efficiency).

Maximal oxygen uptake is the maximum capacity for oxygen consumption by the body during peak performance. It is also a measure of aerobic fitness. Generally, the higher the VO2 max during peak performance, the better the cardiac output - which means the heart is bigger.

In a treadmill test of two young men - one, an athlete, and the other, not - the athletic male generally has a VO2 max value of between 70 and 85 milliliters (ml) of oxygen per kilogram per minute, as compared to 45 in the sedentary male, Dr. Joyner says.

What fraction of your VO2 max you use over a period of time can depend on your lactate threshold, which is considered a marker of maximum steady-state performance for athletes in endurance events.

"The lactate threshold is highly related to how people perform in an event like the 10,000-meter race, marathons or a bicycle time trial. The physiology and biochemistry behind it is complex and controversial, but it's a good marker of when the regulatory and physiological control systems of the body are in balance," Dr. Joyner says.

Old Wives' Tales - The Lactate Threshold

Intense exercise causes lactic acid levels to build up faster than the body can metabolize it. For athletes, this can be good because in the process of generating lactic acid, energy for muscle is also being generated. However, Dr. Joyner says, there are some misperceptions about lactate levels. Specifically:

Lactate is not synonymous with muscle hypoxia: "The first misperception is that somehow people don't have enough oxygen when they are making lactic acid. That certainly can be true because lactic acid can come from a lack of oxygen, but under most circumstances the athletes have plenty of oxygen and there is plenty of oxygen in the muscle."
Lactate is gone from the muscle in the 15 to 30 minutes after exercise and does not make you sore: "The second misnomer is that lactic acid hangs around in your muscle for long periods of time. You may hear things like this individual is sore or not performing as well today because they have a lot of lactic acid in their muscle from yesterday's event. Well, you can have very high levels of lactic acid in muscle, but it's gone 15 to 30 minutes after exercise - so lactic acid doesn't hang around a long time."
Breathing oxygen on the sidelines does not help enhance lactate levels: "Breathing oxygen on the sidelines really doesn't help - there's no evidence that it works."
Running Economy

How well your muscles use oxygen and how well they can metabolize glucose without producing a lot of lactic acid in the skeletal muscle (which can contribute to fatigue) are both important for performance, Dr. Joyner says. However, how much speed you can generate at the lactate threshold is also important. This is known as running efficiency or running economy. Runners with good running economy, for example, can generate more speed per given oxygen uptake. The legendary Olympic champion Frank Shorter had outstanding running economy and this likely contributed to his success. Lance Armstrong also showed marked improvements in his efficiency when he returned to bicycle racing after beating cancer and that clearly helped him win the Tour de France seven times.

Most world-class athletes have a high VO2 max or, as Dr. Joyner says, "They all have big engines and high lactate thresholds because they've been training hard for a long time. Their muscles have adapted to run very fast without releasing a lot of lactic acid.

"In cycling for example, when Lance Armstrong came back from cancer, he became much more efficient - he could generate more power per given oxygen update. That is the same as a runner being able to generate more speed per given power. When you look at this small pool of elite athletes of runners, cyclists and rowers, all of them have a high VO2, all have a large engine and all of them have skeletal muscles that are designed not to produce a lot of lactic acid. So the question then becomes who is the most efficient," Dr. Joyner says.

The Aging Athlete

At 41 years old, nine-time Olympic medalist Darra Torres will be one of the oldest female Olympians at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. It is not unheard of for a professional athlete to complete into his or her 40s, but it's unusual. Torres, a swimmer who specializes in sprints, depends more on muscle power and technique, not necessarily aerobic capacity.

Torres is not the first to compete into her 40s. Carlos Lopes was in his late 30s when he won the Olympic marathon in 1984. Jack Foster of New Zealand was in his 40s and he placed highly in the marathon in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games.

How can some athletes continue to compete into their late 30s and early 40s?

"Your VO2 max typically starts to decline in your 30s, but a highly trained athlete can delay that decline until they are in their later 30s or even early 40s. An average sedentary person loses about 10 percent per decade starting at about age 30, but for someone who is able to continue to train very hard into their 40s and 50s, they only lose about half that much - primarily due to the fact they continue to train hard," Dr. Joyner says.

The older athlete is redefining what normal aging is and what's possible for people who are middle age or older."

It's Cultural, Not Genetic

"Nobody becomes a great athlete without prolonged intense training," Dr. Joyner says. "As scientists search for genes and the determinants of performance, they keep drawing a blank. There have been no major gene discoveries saying that this gene really confers championship status or the potential for championship status of one person."

Sports are complex behaviors for biologists, he says. Many genes contribute to performance, but it isn't likely that one individual would have the right combination of all genes that would give you a natural competitive edge, he says.

"It can be very deceptive to say that since the Kenyans, and perhaps Ethiopians, are dominating distance running, it must be genetic. In fact there have been periods of time when other cultures have dominated distance running. Before World War II, the Finns dominated distance running. After World War II, the Eastern Europeans dominated distance running. They were just as dominant as the Kenyans are now," Dr. Joyner says.

Dr. Joyner points to cultural influences in sports. "I think what the Kenyans and Ethiopians have shown is the value of altitude training. They are physically active their entire lives, they live at high altitude, they run to and from school, they play soccer after school - all at high altitude (6,000 to 8,000 feet). There are not a lot of economic opportunities, so there is a tremendous incentive for people to run and train hard," he says.

"So what the Kenyans have added is altitude training, hard training and large numbers of highly motivated people, but their physiological data is not dramatically different from other people. I think you can make the same argument for the Eastern Europeans after World War II. If you were a pretty good athlete, the government offered you and your family incentives to train in an otherwise bleak economic landscape," Dr. Joyner says.

Doping

"One of the sad things in last 30 to 40 years of sport has been the emergence of the pharmacological arms race, or doping," Dr. Joyner says.

Creating reliable tests for these illegal compounds has been difficult. Several recent studies show that testing in humans for both steroids and erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that induces red blood cell production, is very difficult. In testing for EPO, for example, a study suggests the tests are ineffective unless administered shortly after having taken EPO, because EPO doesn't have a long life in the body. But EPO's effects can last for months.

Another study suggests that it is very difficult to detect the use of some steroids through urine tests in some ethnic groups.

"Researchers have started to test the tests and have raised questions about the accuracy of the existing tests. They've shown that if you don't do the test soon after people take the drug, it may be very difficult to detect (especially if EPO is take in low doses)," Dr. Joyner says.

The Bottom Line: Keep Moving

"Remember, while it's fun to watch sports and while we will all be tempted to sit in front of the TV to watch the Olympics. The really important thing is to get out and move. One hundred and fifty minutes of physical activity a week is really the most powerful medicine anybody can prescribe. No matter what your level of fitness - even if it's just walking - try to be as physically active as you possibly can because that's the way to be a healthy old person and get more out of life," Dr. Joyner says.


Athletes, The Physiology Of Performance, And More. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/07/080731173157.htm

Who needs time away from the sedentary life, when you can sit longer, do less of anything and just let time pass you by...ahhh....

Researchers experiment with a chemical compound that they say can produce the benefits of aerobic activity without the work.  The drug appeared to change the physical composition of muscle, essentially transforming the tissue from sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones, the same change that occurs in distance runners and cyclists through training, according to research released Thursday.  Full article <HERE>

Ever get that swollen feeling?  Maybe your rings are a little tight, the doors in your house don't close as snug or your legs feel like they're pumping molasses through their veins.  If you're like most, this often comes during the hotter and in many areas, more humid months of summer.   Ahh, but what a relief it is to soak in a nice pool, maybe the ocean or a good ole' fashion Ice Bath!

I was first introduced to this concept over 10 years ago by a Physical Therapist in Southern California.  At the time, I was suffering from a Piriformis overuse injury, typical cyclist issue which brings out a lot of sciatica like problems.  Though I finally realized how critical seat height was (another topic), I learned a few valuable lessons in taking ice baths as an aid injuries and recovery.

Having fallen out of the practice for many years, I was recently reminded by a fellow athlete on its value.  Interestingly, he was given this same advice from a massage therapist Mike Toomey, who also happens to be the husband to elite runner, Jen Toomey.  So I decided to pick up the art of ice cold immersion, again.

While sitting idle, I've found nothing better to do than research its actual effectiveness.  The first article I came across from The British Journal of Sports Medicine, was not setting the mood.  "On one sit-to-stand test, the ice-water bath actually made things worse." 

Next was an ironic finding from the BBC.  I don't know why I kept coming up with UK studies, but this one, though lacking in science, suggest: "When you get into an ice bath for five to 10 minutes, the icy cold water causes your blood vessels to tighten and drains the blood out of your legs. After 10 minutes your legs feel cold and numb...[when exiting] the bath, his legs fill up with 'new' blood that invigorates his muscles with oxygen to help the cells function better."

Amongst all my findings were numerous personal accounts via blogs, message boards and athlete/coach websites.  In total, I could find no conclusive evidence for or against their use (please share if you do).

So where does this leave us other than still sitting with my swim trunks on in freezing cold water.  If you're up for the challenge, there are some recommendations: Sit in the tub with a pair of swim shorts or underwear and depending on the time of year, a top.  Prepare some Green Tea or Coffee for a little inner warmth.  Allow the water to fill gradual, ie: do not do the step in immersion.  If your water temps aren't low enough or you're feeling brave, have some extra ice on hand.  You're going to be sitting their for about 10min, so you better find a distraction.  If you don't meditate, grab the iPod, computer (outside tub), book or have your 4 year old splash you while asking what the H$%# you're doing. Once complete, I personally grab a pair of pajamas, sweet pants or some form of lite covering.

There is no gaurantee your personal ice bath results will prove effective but I can personally admit that it is equal to if not better than most of the recovery drinks I've used of the years -- certainly more cost effective.  If it doesn't work for you there's little lost other than 15min.  So consider giving this a try in your weekly, monthly or injury specific routine.

Raw Foods That Increase Athletic Performance, by Triathlete Brendan Brazier

(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Raw Food Summit which can be found at (http://rawsummitarchives.com) . In this excerpt, Brendan Brazier shares information on his interest in nutrition as an athlete and also the research he's done on food and the body that can benefit all of us.

Raw Food Summit Excerpt with Brendan Brazier, triathlete thriving on living foods, author, speaker and the creator of a meal replacement formula.

Kevin: So, Brendan Brazier I would like to welcome you to Raw Summit.

Brendan: Thanks Kevin.

Kevin: Bren, there are a bunch of things that I want to talk about today, but first let's start with just a little bit of background about you.

Brendan: Sure. I actually got into nutrition and just trying to achieve peak performance through nutrition back when I was around 15. That was all I cared about when I was 15. I was getting into track and field and I knew then that I wanted to try and become a professional athlete. I just really enjoyed running, I enjoyed swimming, biking, all those things. I realized pretty soon into the game that obviously I'll have to do a lot of training. I got a hold of some of the top athlete training programs and then I also looked at some average athlete training programs. What really surprised me was that they hardly differ at all.

And so, then of course I wonder, well, what make some athletes Great? And I realized that it had to do with recovery because the quicker you can recover, the faster you improve. I found that 80% of recovery has to do with nutrition. So that's what got me going down that road.

Kevin: Wow! So, for recovery even if someone is a light exerciser or a heavy exerciser, what are some of the things that we need to do to get ourselves in a top shape and continue to perform at the top level?

Brendan: Well, one of the big things is having high quality food right after a workout because really a workout is just a form of stress. You break down your body tissue, muscles and cells, and ligaments, tendons and if you don't give yourself good food to reconstruct that, then your body has no
choice but to take the food you give it and build new body tissue.

Eating the high quality good raw plant-based foods right after a workout is going to be the best way to do that and you stay strong, you improve quickly as an athlete and you stay healthy as well.

Kevin: So, at the end of races, you go to so many things and you see people eating jelly doughnuts, pizza and there's all this "junk food." What is that doing and what are some of the best foods that people can eat after a race for recovery?

Brendan: Yes, it's funny. That's one of the things that seems to be common is after a workout or a race, people think that eating junk food is fine. They think, "Well, I've done workout today." But actually, that's the worst time to eat junk food.

So, for recovery what I started doing was making smoothies, liquid form of course so that really helps speed digestion. So, I would make my own smoothie, I'll use ham protein, greens, flax and nuts and then I actually started just having that evolve over the years. It became really good and just really healthy and then I developed it as a product and called it Vega and that came out a few years ago, but it's something that was born 15 years ago.

Kevin: Did you notice the difference in your recovery times and your results when you started to eat some of these different foods?

Brendan: Absolutely, yes. It was very noticeable. You know one of the things that I find interesting with a lot of people now is that they expect things to be instant. And we're in that kind of culture of sugar and you know if you drink a cup of coffee you feel the energy immediately.
And healthy foods are not that way. They're not stimulating; they're nourishing, so you don't feel the energy immediately.

But over time, six to eight weeks or so, if you've cleaned up your diet, you're really going to start feeling better and I just encourage people to stick with it.

Kevin: Well, when you exercise you're causing a lot of stress on the body and you're letting go of muscle glycogen. What's the correlation between the muscle glycogen replacing it and the sugars? And why is that not necessarily the best thing?

Brendon: Well, definitely you want to stay away from any kind of refined sugar. Like white flour, for example, takes a lot of energy to breakdown and digest because your body has to build digestive enzymes to break that down and a healthy body can do that, but it takes work.

So if you're spending all that energy to try and get energy, the amount of energy you're left over with is very low. I used to be under the impression as most people are that if you eat more calories, you'll have more energy, and it seems logical. But I was getting really tired and I was eating a plant-based diet, but I was eating also peanut butter and bread and things that are very high in calories, but very low in nutrition. And the body just had to work so hard to digest those things.

So when I switched to more raw food, lots of leafy green vegetables, lots of fruit, getting carbohydrate from fruit as opposed to grains, I noticed a huge difference and that was a big point for me.

I think just the whole calorie thing is so flawed and that it just doesn't take into account what source the calorie is and how hard your body has to work to digest that and assimilate it.

Kevin: Yes. What sort of fruits were you eating that you found were the best for you?

Brendan: Pretty much any fruit works well for me, usually banana and the smoothies, dates and berries. I try and eat and fuse them as much as possible, so I'll eat a lot of local berries. I like grapefruit a lot. I like apples, oranges. I like some tropical fruits too -- mangoes, papayas, dates. Dates are a great source of quick energy.

Kevin: Sure.

Brendan: Really good during long races just to have a date or even make an energy gel. I'm sure people -- a lot of people are familiar with energy gels that you can take during a long run. And a lot of them, all the commercial ones as far as I know, are really highly processed and not so healthy, but it's very easy to make your own and I have a recipe for those in the new book, the Thrive Diet. You just take agave nectar, a couple of dates, blend them together with a bit of lemon and lime juice, grate off lemon and lime, mix them with a little sea salt, and that's a great gel. You just put that in a gel flask and that's high energy that will keep you going strong throughout the race. It tastes good. It's refreshing and it's a really simple solution, of course, 100% raw and natural end process.

Kevin: That's incredible. When you're exercising for even 40 minutes or maybe even longer, two hours, six hours, what are some of the nutrients that are depleted and then what are some of the specific things that you can take to bring them back?

Brendan: Well, the body burns carbohydrate, that's its first choice for fuel. So you want to make sure you're getting enough carbohydrate. When a lot of people think carbohydrate, they think starchy foods like the pasta and rice and bread. I hardly eat any complex carbohydrate. I get almost all of my carbohydrate from fruit, which is simple carbohydrate and the advantage of that is that the body cannot use complex carbohydrate without first converting it into simple carbohydrate, into sugar. So it's one less step for your body.

And one of the other things that's good for good quality carbohydrates are pseudo-grains. Pseudo-grains are technically seeds. So quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, and wild rice, they're all seeds...

You can make really simple snacks from them, even just sprouted quinoa with some avocado with lemon juice and some sea salt, just really plain simple taste that's really good.

Kevin: You touched on protein there and I think a lot of people feel that they need to really overdo it on protein. And what does that do with the body and why might that not be the best thing to do?

Brendan: Yes, excess protein is very common. It's bad quality protein, what a lot of people eat and drink. Whey protein has been very well marketed and it's the staple of so many athletes. It's unfortunate. It's incredibly acid forming, so therefore, the body, to keep the blood neutral for survival's sake will pull calcium from the bones, and calcium is very alkaline. So, over the course of a decade or two, that leads to weaker bones and it's bad for the immune system. It creates inflammation and something I learned recently was that, in North America now, the chance
of getting osteoporosis is so much greater, and it's happening younger and younger in life for people.

And it was originally thought that it was because our diet didn't have enough calcium. But as it turns out, that's not the case. We're leeching calcium out of our bodies by eating too many processed acid forming foods. And if we were just to eat more leafy green vegetables, more raw foods, basically the less processed the food, the more alkaline it's going to be.

Kevin: When you talk about acid building up in the body over... let's talk about this over a day. Someone wakes up in the morning. They drink a cup of coffee. They exercise. They have their whey protein shake after. What's going on in their body in terms of acid, I mean how low is the pH actually getting?

Brendan: Yes, it's critical. It's turning people into very, very sick people and it's become a very serious problem. You touched on coffee too, which I think is really interesting. What I found when I was researching this was that stress is the root cause of pretty much all problems and the minor problems that are the first signs of stress, there comes a red flag. We have to really, really focus on and not try and suppress them and treat the symptoms but really be opened to them and know how to actually get to the root cause of each problem.

For example, when your body gets stressed, stress response affects the adrenal glands and cortisol, the stress hormone, goes up and when cortisol is high you actually don't get into a deep phase of sleep. It's called delta and that's a really deep rejuvenating sleep. That is when your body recovers and that's vital because if you don't get in that form of sleep, which 95% plus of North Americans don't, when we wake up we feel tired and we crave coffee and sugar, because coffee and sugar
are stimulants.

If we clean up our diet, we can actually help reduce cortisol levels. Therefore, we will get into that deep delta phase of sleep and sleep efficiently. And therefore, we'll wake up and feel ready to go. And also too if we sleep efficiently, we don't need to sleep. People say all the time, "I wish I had an extra hour a day," and in a way you can have an extra hour everyday if the diet is highly raw, plant-based and really stress relieving.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access other experts on health, nutrition and raw foods, just like Brendan Brazier, please visit (http://rawsummitarchives.com) .

About the authorKevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.