The thought of a bad back strikes fear into all of us.

We know people living with bad backs and it's painful just watching them live their daily life.

My wife hit the wall with her back in too many falls as a short-track speed skater in Japan. She has chronic pain from fractured vertebrae. To be honest, I can't image how hard it must be to live with that every day. 

As it turns out, the source of common back pain is a bit of an enigma.

We most often think of injuring ourselves during heavy lifting. But statistically 95% of people experience a back injury as a result of something like bending over to brush their teeth !

Last week ABC TV (Australia) ran a program on their Catalyst series of science programs revealing how we can all "improve our healthspan by making simple changes to the way we live our lives" (watch or download the program here).

The show featured retired newsreader Ian Henderson on a quest to find "the secrets of ageing healthily" - a subject close to my heart. I must say that as someone well-versed in the "secrets" I heard only one new one, which I'll explore below. But it is fantastic to see these ideas put out into the mainstream and made more accessible to everyone. I enjoyed his discoveries and his enthusiasm, and the more of these kind of practical education shows the better.

I'll summarise his key findings here, accompanied by my own insights in also discovering and applying these things over the last 20 years. That might help fast-track you to picking up on those which appeal to you most and also those which give you the most bang for your exercise buck.

What I knew about my eldest brother (Harry) was relatively little. Only that he'd had a brutal upbringing - at the hands of  both our mother and our father. He'd learnt to box at an early age at the Botany Boys Club and this catalyzed in him an intensely deep-seated sense of manhood.

He went on to ride motorbikes before he had a license, knocked out two of my father's front teeth in one of their confrontations, and had been stabbed in the back by a large kitchen knife thrown at him by my mother as he ran from her rage.

He left home before I was born, was in trouble with the law, spent time in Pentridge Prison. and had fled to work in New Britain (Papua New Guinea) for 15 years in about 1960 (shortly after Mum died - after spending time in a psychiatric institution).

You're consistent with your training, but losing your motivation because you've hit a plateau.

Sound familiar? If you are consistent it should, because it happens to us all. I've noticed over the last 20 years of training that as we get older the plateaus get longer. I've had a few people lately express frustration with their plateaus, but don’t give up - all will be well. It's by perseverance that your fitness will get to the next level of reward for you.

Unfortunately stress and anxiety are the hallmarks of the 21st century. Just before Xmas 2018, on a local TV show, 3 soccer moms were discussing their plans in the lead-up to Xmas. What kind of shocked me was when they all agreed that there was "so much pressure, so much stress". 

Objectively, Xmas is a neutral event. It is not inherently stressful nor without stress. It is our beliefs and reactions which are "stressful", not the event. But knowing that that wouldn't help the three moms. The tips in this post will help to relieve this type of stress, which is an outcome of our beliefs.

In addition to these societal changes it is well know the rate of depression increases as we age. This is a complicated process with some key factors driving it being imbalances in neurotransmitters, atrophication of the amygdala - the region of the brain most important for controlling mood - and a shrinking hippocampus. Research shows that the hippocampus is smaller in some depressed people.  These factors are all "natural" by-products of aging.

Here's the good news. You can slow the rate of aging and combat some of the effects of stress and depression - whatever the cause - using the following four techniques.

Joining a "Men's Challenge" obstacle course race last weekend was great fun. I haven’t had such a good excuse to play up to my armpits in mud since I was a kid. 

Being me, I was particularly curious about how this group of 50-year olds and I would compare in overall fitness - me being 20 years older. I found two key differences, and one encouraging lesson.

Arterial stiffness occurs as a consequence of biological aging and arteriosclerosis. What is often not well appreciated is that exercise can make a significant contribution to reducing arterial stiffness, and thus mitigating the adverse health consequences. 

How does that work?

​Exercising makes the heart work harder and this sends more frequent pulses of blood out into the arterial system. These "pulses" are not just pushed along by the force of the heart, as in a pump pushing water through a hose. The blood is pumped along by the muscles in the arteries contracting and squeezing like squeezing toothpaste.

This exercises the arterial and vascular muscles! The exercise reduces their "stiffness', just like other muscles. 

And in addition, as you exercise your heart it becomes stronger and able to pump out bigger pulses of blood with each stroke. That's why your resting heart rate drops as you get fitter. These bigger pulses make the arterial and vascular muscles work even harder to push the bigger pulses of blood along, and they get even less stiff.

I only started running at Xmas time 2018, so that's about 15 months ago. I'm probably not what runners call a runner. I run 5km twice a week to supplement my gym exercise program.

And although I've perused many articles online, I've never read a running book.

I'm a curious person. Running For Women popped up as a suggestion in my Thriftbooks app (because of the many other exercise and fitness books I've bought).

I thought to myself, why not learn more about running, and also from a woman's perspective to see what differences are important to know (and might give me extra knowledge to help others).

I'm glad that I did. It's a very practical book. I notice on Goodreads it only has 4-stars, but I gave it 5-stars.

Here's a summary of things I think it covered really well.

You've heard a lot about superfoods. Often it is an exotic list of foods that you might try once, but are unlikely to add to your regular diet e.g. ginseng, pomegranate, quinoa. 

Here is a list of "everyday" common foods that contain some superfood qualities that are great for your body. These are among the healthiest foods that you'll see on your everyday supermarket shelves. There is no doubt that these foods all either contain important and hard-to-find nutrients OR have high levels of what’s called nutrient density. Nutrient density refers to how much nutrition you get in a given number of calories. Foods that have a lot of nutrition in a really small number of calories are considered ‘nutrient-dense’.

Add as many as you can to your weekly diet, and you'll be taking advantage of their unsung benefits for your health.

Measuring your waist sounds like a very simple and perhaps innocent activity. But in fact it can tell you much more about your health than standing on the scales. After all, when you think about it, weighing yourself tells you very little. It tells you nothing about your body composition and nothing about what risks you have from, say, fat deposits in high risk areas (where you carry fat on your body is extremely important).

On the other hand, a waist measurement tells you important details about the location of fat and has proven correlations with future health risks. It reflects both health and nutritional status, and when associated with the shape of your body generalised health outcomes can be predicted. The reason is that under the skin of your tummy the intra-abdominal fat builds about around your organs, and this is what leads to the health problems (so-called metabolic fat). ​