My Website has Shifted!

I have upgraded and shifted. Please go now to my new and much more functional website and bookamark the new one:

garymoller.com

Read more!

E-Publications by Gary Moller and some other people

All of these e-publications are free for you to download and to pass on to friends and acquaintances. Please give due acknowledgment of their source. I am regularly adding to this list of publications and updating what is written, so please check back with this page now and then and refresh your copy.

Accreditation of Health Professionals who Prescribe Exercise as Therapy
This paper explores the need, or otherwise, for accreditation of health professionals who prescribe exercise as therapy and suggests how to go forward.

Anaemia, Pharmaceuticals and Seniors

Anaemia should be considered a critical health concern for everyone over the age of 50. This is especially so for those who are taking prescription drugs, because many of the best selling drugs on the market today have a side effect that you'll never see mentioned on the label: the impairment of essential vitamin and nutrient absorption.

Aqua jogging for health, fitness, rehabilitation and athletic cross-training

Aqua jogging is one exercise strategy for preserving your knees and other weight bearing joints like in the low back, ankles and hips. It is ideal for recovery after illness, injury or surgery and for managing many chronic ailments.

Arthur Lydiard's Training System
Lydiard began training according to the methods of the time, but this only confused him further. At the club library he found a book by F. Wesbter called "The Science of Athletics." But Lydiard soon decided that the schedules offered by Webster were being too easy on him, so he began experimenting to find out how fit he could get. Lydiard was not a particularly fast runner in his day, nor had he any formal education in his coaching or physiology. He had never been to college.

Blood Pressure Monitor Guidelines
Blood pressure and heart rate (pulse) are the two key indicators of the health of your cardiovascular system (Heart, lungs, blood vessels and circulation). As we get older, blood pressure tends to rise, if we do not take care. Stress, smoking, lack of exercise, overweight and a poor diet will pump the blood pressure to dangerous levels as the years pass. As many as ½ the population over 55yrs old may have significantly raised blood pressure. Blood pressure is the best indicator of cardiovascular and general health.

Weekly Blood Pressure Log
Use this log in conjunction with the blood pressure monitor guidelines to track your blood pressure and to monitor any interventions.

Cardiovascular disease: assessing history, signs and symptoms, assessing fitness and prescribing exercise
Deaths during gym-based exercise programmes in New Zealand are very rare. This may be due to the gym-going population being generally young and healthy. However, this makeup has been steadily changing over recent years with the trend for gym populations to become older and less healthy. This is because population demographics are shifting as the “Baby-Boomers” head into old age, people are much more aware of the importance of exercise and diet for maintaining health, and medical and insurance agencies are making increasing use of exercise for prevention, recovery and rehabilitation for ill health and injury.

Restoring strength and good posture with exercise

There are four basic postures (refer diagram below). Almost without exception, we commence life with perfect posture that steadily deteriorates as we become adults and the ageing processes begin to take their toll. Poor posture is mostly the result of neglect and occasional injury. It almost seems inevitable that posture worsens with age. In many cases, poor posture may become a serious health concern in itself as nerves get pinched, the lungs and other organs are cramped up and skeletal joints suffer excessive wear and tear. This need not happen.

The purpose of this article is to explain the essen

tial mechanics of posture and to show you how to correct and maintain good posture throughout life.

Correcting foot pronation (collapsing arches) with corrective exercise

Foot pronation is the most common foot problem affecting sports people and the population in general. As the foot and calf muscles tire, the arch of the foot steadily drops and the feet poke out like a duck’s.

The athlete may suffer excessively tired feet, loss of impact absorption, foot cramps, ankle pain and swelling, blisters and calluses, ankle tendonitis, heel spurs, shin splints and stress fractures. Furthermore, as the foot collapses, the knee caps squint inwards with the altered mechanics causing knee and hip pain. This alteration of foot mechanics may even be a factor in low back and even neck pain and headache!

Eight rules for peak performance
These are the presentation notes for a lecture that is for young athletes, their parents and coaches. Please bear in mind that these are notes only and do not convey the full meaning and detail of what is a 1.5 hour presentation.

Exercise and Pregnancy – Prenatal and Postnatal Fitness
Presentation notes for the La Leche League of New Zealand annual conference, September 2004. The following is a summary of 2 hours of detailed explanation. It is absolutely necessary to attend the seminar itself to gain a proper understanding of the complexity and detail involved in designing exercise programmes for special needs populations.

FreeRangers Newsletters Archive
Archive of many of Gary Moller's newsletters about health, fitness and lifestyle that were written under the FreeRangers name.

Glucosamine and chondroitin for pets and humans
Glucosamine is a natural joint component that the body produces, found in every mammal, that helps rebuild, repair and renew cartilage. It is natural, safe and extremely effective. The body distributes Glucosamine to joint and other connective tissue. Glucosamine does not hide or mask the pain, but rebuilds the joint cartilage that has been lost so there is less cause for pain. Glucosamine works, which is why glucosamine joint products are among the most widely used nutrition supplements today.

Guidelines for using glucosamine and chondroitin powder formulations
These powder forms of glucosamine and chondroitin are the affordable way to consume sufficient quantities of this nutritional product to have a noticeable and sometimes dramatic effect on joint health, including joint pain. These may also be beneficial for all collagen tissues of the body, including skin, hair and nails.

Guide to joining a gym
The benefits of a gym are many because you get access to hundreds of thousands of dollars of quality equipment, sometimes a pool and spa - and professional instruction. In NZ you should not have to pay more than about $20-25 per week to gain access to a good gym setup. If you attend twice a week or more on average, that’s a good deal – but that assumes you are going to do this. The average punter tends to join a gym full of enthusiasm; go for a few weeks or months, and then slack off for many reasons. This is not good, especially if you have signed up for a year or longer in order to get the good rates.

Guide to using creatine
It has been said that creatine is the largest selling sports nutrition supplement ever. This may be so and is probably due to there being much evidence that it works and probably mostly as a result of the hype generated by commercial interests in promoting its sale. In this paper, I have copied most of the information that is supplied by Nutra-Life Health Ltd. about Balance Creatine Monohydrate and then added some of my comments and observations to help you decide if supplementing with creatine is worth experimenting with and how to go about it.

Guidelines for using glucosamine and chondroitin powder formulations
These powder forms of glucosamine and chondroitin are the affordable way to consume sufficient quantities of this nutritional product to have a noticeable and sometimes dramatic effect on joint health, including joint pain. These may also be beneficial for all collagen tissues of the body, including skin, hair and nails.

Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis (HTMA) is an analytical test that measures the mineral composition of hair. It is regarded by many doctors, naturopaths and nutritional therapists as one of the most valuable screening tools available in everyday and preventative health care.

Honest food guide
An alternative to the healthy food pyramid. Not perfect; but maybe better than the official ones!

How to fit Formthotics Orthotics
Your foot shape is completely unique... but with the help of Formthotics®, you can custom fit your footwear to your feet in 6 easy steps.

Hypothermia and Sport Booklet
Hypothermia (often called exposure) is a well-known cause of distress and even death in New Zealand's mountain and water environments. Its implications in the organised field sports context, although not fatal, can be distressing to participants and increases their susceptibility to injury. Despite its prevalence, the effect of hypothermia on players of organised sport is not well known.

Nutrition Advice for preventing and managing heart disease
Everyone is familiar with the advice that we should eat a low-fat, high-fibre diet with plenty of complex carbohydrates and moderate amounts of protein. However, we can modify this advice in the light of the most recent research information.

Nutrition and the institutionalised elderly - should they eat cake?

The following article was published in 2003 as an opinion-piece in a local newspaper. It caused a real stir – mostly hostile and highly defensive from the “elder care industry”. From my point of view, it succeeded at the time to stir debate about how we care for our senior citizens who require institutional care, including what we feed them. We can and should do much better, beginning with spending much more on wages and training, providing quality food, quality dentures and getting away from an over-reliance on prescription medications

Nutrition for high performance sports
These are the handout notes for Gary Moller's workshop on nutrition for high performance sports.

Osteoporosis - The prevention and management of osteoporosis in elderly women
A leading cause of death in elderly women is the complications resulting from hip fracture associated with osteoporosis. A number of preventive measures include the use of exercise, increasing dietary intake of calcium and the use of calcium supplements. The impression the observer has of public health campaigns and commercial advertising is that the focus of prevention of osteoporosis is encouraging the intake of “adequate” amounts of calcium, primarily via the consumption of dairy products and calcium supplements.

Periodisation for Dummies
How to plan a year round athletic training programme without requiring a PhD

Preventing deep vein thrombosis in traveling athletes
Lecture notes by Gary Moller on the issue of deep vein thrombosis as it relates to sports people who may be at greater risk than the average person.

Prime Minister's Scholarship for athletes
The Prime Minister’s Scholarship for athletes may not be achieving its goal of producing educated high performance athletes. It is possible that athletes receiving scholarships under the present system achieve only mediocre athletic and academic results, for reasons associated with the organisation of the scholarship and may even be contributing to the loss of athletes overseas.

Rebounder Lymphacizer Brochure

Risks of Sudden Death during Exercise
Presentation notes of the lecture by Gary Moller on the risks of sudden death during exercise.

Safety guidelines for when children in sport and recreation
These guidelines are for parents, coaches and officials with children between the ages of 0-14 Years. In providing sport and physical activities for children, due regard must be given to the stages of growth and development between these years. In doing so, a number of key principles need to be kept in mind in providing activities that are suitable for children.

Stretching exercises for people who run
Here is a series of essential stretches that have been put together for runners. These illustrations are from the popular booklet about preventing running injuries that I wrote for the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) back in 1980. Over 100,000 were printed over several years. These exercises should be practiced about once a day and can be used as part of your warm up and cooling down routine.

Teach your child to ride a bicycle, quickly and safely
Here is one of the best guides you'll find anywhere about how to teach your child to ride a bike quickly and safely.

Toning and Mobility exercises for runners
A distance runner needs to have good total body tone and mobility while not building excessive muscle bulk which is energy sapping weight when running. The following work-out is a simple weight-free routine that covers the essential bases of a distance runner’s toning and mobility requirements. These can be incorporated into your pre-run/race warm up and cooling down routine. Make this routine a training session for easy exercise in the evenings and during rest days.

Read more!

Men and Women: Do you keep getting up in the middle of the night for a Pee?

"A study from Taiwan shows that a simple nasal spray controls nighttime urination in men who were not helped by drugs usually prescribed by physicians today. At night, the brains of most younger people produce a hormone called antidiuretic hormone that shuts down the kidneys.

However, as men age, most have to get up at night to urinate. Some men have to do this more than six times a night, which interferes with sleep and makes them very tired during the day. Doctors prescribe muscle relaxants and some patients find that they help. However, a very large percentage of older men go from doctor to doctor and are unable to find a drug that will control their night-time urination.

Researchers in Taiwan prescribed a nasal spray containing antidiuretic hormone to older men who urinated more than six times each night and had not been helped by conventional treatments (British Journal of Urology International, December 2005.) More than 85 percent improved in a very short time. Muscle relaxants that help some men include: Hytrin (terazosin), 1 mg to 10mg at bedtime; Cardura (doxazosin) 1 to 8 mg at bedtime; Flomax (tamsulosin) 0.4 to 0.8 mg once a day; Uroxatrol (alfuzosin)10 mg once a day.

Hormone blockers help only a little and are not as effective as doctors used to think. They include Proscar (finasteride), 5 mg once a day; and Avodart (dutasteride), 0.5 mg once a day. The antidiuretic hormone that was used in this study shuts down the kidneys temporarily and is effective for both men and women. It is called DDAVP (desmopressin) and is available as pills or a nasal spray, by prescription. The pills are given 0.2 to 0.6 mg at bedtime. The DDAVP nasal spray dose is one spray into one nostril at bedtime.

Do not take any fluids after 6:00 PM. Do not take any other medications that can raise blood pressure".
British Journal of Urology International, December 2005
January 8, 2006
___________________________________
Gary Moller comments:
Waking in the middle of the night is a huge issue that can impact on lives through disturbed sleep. The article above gives a few clues as to the natural therapies that can be used to manage and even eliminate the problem in many cases. The idea is to set out to do what the drugs with all their side effects attempt to do.

Get the into the groove!
The first action is to get the body's biorhythms working properly so that natural anti-diuretic hormones are secreted at the right time. The first step is to synchronise your daily circadian cycle which often becomes disturbed by modern living that isolates our lives from the daily influences of the sun. Once the body has resynchronised then it will produce the right hormones at the right time of the day - night. Including the hormones that reduce kidney function overnight:

• Carry out this circadian assessment and follow the guidelines
• Go to bed every night and be asleep before 11pm and be out of bed every morning by 7am even on days off.
• Exercise daily at the same time every day, preferably in the morning.
• Exercise in bright sunlight every day. This can be a brisk walk before breakfast or during your lunch break. Wear a hat; but leave the sunglasses behind.
  
• Eat meals at the same time every day.
• Have your last drink 2-3 hours before going to bed.

Produce those hormones with sunlight and fat
Among other things, your body requires cholesterol and vitamin D in order to produce the hormones that regulate the body - everything from healing to sex to peeing!

• Fat free is not healthy. This is why a fat free diet and/or cholesterol lowering medication can signal a general decline in health. Cut out more of the unhealthy fats like margarine, hydrogenated oils and excess animal fats and have more of the healthy fats like fish oil, flax oil, coconut oil and olive oil.
  
• Along with cholesterol, you need lots of vitamin D. With age, vitamin D levels tend to plunge. Cholesterol and vitamin D are integral for the production of most if not all hormones in the body, so it makes so much sense to ensure that there is ample of both available in the body, especially as we get older.

Relax that bladder!
Forget about the prescription muscle relaxants which, among other things, kills your sex life and do it naturally. If the smooth muscle of the body is not healthy, it will be in a state of tension. This often shows as erratic or raised blood pressure, difficulty with stress and heart problems like an erratic pulse. The most likely cause is a combination of mineral and vitamin deficiencies, starting with low magnesium and depletion of the B group of vitamins (A hair tissue mineral analysis is recommended to eliminate the guesswork as to supplement need).

By restoring balance to the body's chemical physiology, the muscles will be restored to their natural state of relaxation. A relaxed bladder has much greater capacity and can therefore hold much more urine overnight. Simple really! But good things take time and you mut be patient while these natural approaches have time to work their magic - months, if not years. But who cares when you have a lifetime ahead of you!

Anti inflammation the natural way

Did you know that vitamin D is a natural anti-inflammatory? So is various omega oils like flax seed, fish oil and especially evening primrose oil. Even garlic oil. So, if the prostate is swollen, it just makes good sense to get those things into the body, along with mineral like magnesium and the B vitamins. And we should not forget to ensure a steady 2,000 or so mg of vitamin C which also has an anti inflammatory and healing quality.

Body - heal thyself!

Why I recommend a hair tissue mineral analysis
A hair tissue mineral analysis determines exactly what chemicals are inside of you, including radiation, heavy metals such as mercury, food chemicals such as aspartame, pesticides and more. Generic medical lab tests don't identify deep tissue toxins or nutrient depletions. The hair analysis is the best tool out there. Having an analysis performed is one of the most accurate ways of detecting toxic metals within your tissues and determining your vitamin and nutrient imbalances.

The protein in hair fiber holds the composition of the body tissues for a permanent period. By analyzing the hair fiber composition, you can tell what toxins have accumulated in the body tissues and what vitamins and minerals are depleted or too abundant causing an imbalance in body function.

You first must identify the cause or causes of your health symptoms before you attempt to ‘heal’ them. By detoxifying unnatural chemicals and by replacing specific vitamins individual to your needs, proper health can be restored through nutrition. The human hair analysis can detail these levels.

Read more!

Please help! I have injured my knee!

"Hi Gary Me again! My old knee injury (sprained or damage to the anterior cruciate ligament & medial collateral ligament) appears to have flared up so was wondering if you could recommend anything to help with the inflammation? and whether you think i should go back to physio?

It is pretty minor compared to what i experienced years ago & was at its worst on Monday but has calmed down a bit thanks to wearing a stocking all day/night. The inside of my knee seems a little swollen & it feels tight at the back to the point that it is hard to completely straighten or kneel. I could still run quite happily on Tuesday but after realising my knee was a bit swollen have decided to stop until its back to normal. In terms of the cause I am not sure as have not had a sprain as such. However, my knee did start to 'click' a lot more (& is clicking quite a bit now) when I started to do single leg extensions where my leg/knee is at a 90degree (sitting on a gym machine) & I lift a 5kg weight with toe slightly pointed out.

This exercise is part of the program that my trainer at the gym (Chek Practitioner with Diplomas in Rehabilitation & in Sports Medicine from Otago Uni) designed & apparently works to strengthen the inside of my knee. She also just started me on a new exercise with the swiss ball where my torso is on the ground but lifted up in the 'bridging' position & my calves are on the swiss ball & i have to lift one leg up at a time & hold it for 5 seconds so as to apparently strengthen my core, butt & hamstring. i have found this exercise really hard & pretty much strain the balancing leg so i can keep the lifted leg up in the air.

The trainer is convinced that these exercises could not have caused my knee to flare up unless i was incorrect in my technique & suggested it might be a hamstring insertion (whatever that is!)& thought i should try antiflam cream & seeing a physio in a few days if it had not self-corrected. but as she has overrided my old physio exercises & your advice to do 1/4 squats (she got me doing full squats with minimal weight)

I'm now confused as don't know if i can trust that she knows what she's talking about or who i should ask....except you! all i know is that my knee has been fine for the past 5 years & now its not!

Pretty gutted as i ran 9k for the first time in 5 1/2 years last week! any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."
"R"
Gary Moller comments:
"R", The swelling is telling you that your knee has been injured somehow and the swelling is your body's way of restricting movement.

Knowing your history of knee injury, it is possible that the damage to your knee ligaments previously and possibly to the knee cartilage makes the joint vulnerable to further damage.

It is possible that some of the exercises that you describe doing could have irritated the knee joint.

Your anterior cruciate prevents forwardsliding of the tibia on the femur, especially when the large quadriceps contract. The medial ligament prevents the knee from buckling inwards. Between all of them, the ligaments hold the knee joint snug and secure. The articular cartilages form a shock absorbing dish between the bones of the knee joint (tibia and the femur). It is possible that you damaged one or two of these cartilages when you sprained your ligaments.

When you are doing any kind of strengthening exercises using the big thigh muscles you should be weight bearing. This is because the knee bones are held firmly in place in the dished cartilages. If you do leg exercises such as leg extensions on a leg extension weight machine, the lower leg will be hanging free, gapping the joint and throwing stress on already damaged or stretched ligaments. The joint cartilage is vulnerable to further damage as the joint is gapped and twisted.

I would be very careful of the Swiss Ball bridging exercise that you describe because the knee could gap and twist. If you want to work the hamstring and butt, do standing dead-lifts with a barbell or dumbells; but make sure you get expert instruction in safe technique, lest you do your back in!

Stick to weight-bearing exercises such as squats and never go beyond right angle knee bends when under pressure. Deep knee bends may strain the ligaments and pinch the cartilages. The best machine in the gym for you for strengthening the quads is the incline leg press. Avoid the hack squat, including wall squats with a Swiss Ball behind your back. These throw excess strain on the front portions of the knee, including the undersides of the kneecaps. You don't need this.

Always get professional instruction by a weights expert and review your technique regularly.

Ice may help with the swelling but I am not a fan of it. Elevation, plus rhythmic exercise is best. Massage the knee, thigh and calf.

Exercise in warm water to manage swelling and to maintain strength, endurance and flexibility.

Take a glucosamine and chondroitin formulation and MSM and take generous doses for as long as there is pain and swelling. Use these in preference to pain killers and anti-inflammatories. Add 2,000mg of vitamin C per day. Copious amounts of fish and flax oil and especially Evening Primrose Oil have natural anti inflammatory qualities while not compromising healing. These natural supplements will assist healing. Continue normal doses for at least three months after the knee has settled.

Contact me if the knee does not settle significantly by next week.

Read more!

When it comes to vitamins and minerals, is the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) sufficient

Many people are under the impression that, if their intake of nutrients meets the RDA, then they are getting enough to stay healthy.

However, as Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner, once said;

"RDA for a vitamin is not the allowance that leads to the best of health for most people. It is instead, only the estimated amount that for most people would prevent death or serious illness from overt vitamin deficiency.

Values of the daily intake of the various vitamins that leads to the best of health for most people may be several times as great as the values of the RDA".

Meeting the RDA for nutrients is the bare minimum for maintaining optimal health throughout our life. Optimal nutrition requires much more than the RDA and this does not decline as we grow older. In fact, the need for optimal nutrition increases and it certainly does not decrease as one would get the impression if one were to examine the typical diet fed to our elderly in institutional care. As we grow older our caloric expenditure declines, so we eat less. At the same time illness, decline in digestive efficiency and medications combine to cause states of chronic malnutrition that is widespread in elderly populations.

When levels of a nutrient are low in the body, merely achieving the RDA will, at best, stem further drops in body levels. A good example is low iron levels which affect up to 50% of some populations like young women and the elderly. If a person is told their iron levels are low then it is necessary to consume several times the RDA to bring about an appreciable improvement in body stores. It can take several months, if not a year or two, of steady supplementation to build stores of iron in the organs to optimum levels. Of course, regular blood test or, better still, a Hair Tissue Analysis will guide the supplementation.

It is more difficult than ever to get the essential vitamins and minerals from our food, despite improvements in "quality" and freshness. This paradox is due to the selection of plants for their nice taste and speed of growth, rather than nutrient density. The same can be said of animal sourced foods such as the succulently soft battery chicken. Furthermore, the nutrient density of our agricultural soils continues to steadily decline as only those that are necessary for plant growth are replaced.

Like it or not, the case for supplementing one's already good diet with various vitamins and minerals grows stronger by the day. If you are not sure of your nutritional needs, then investing in a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis or an Active Elements Assessment helps you to take out the guesswork.

Read more!