April | 2014 | Healthy Runner Wife

Today’s #Tasteoff was sponsored by Yoplait, but the winner was my honest choice.

I was given the opportunity to be part of the Yoplait Tasteoff. The Tasteoff was between Yoplait Greek 100 Strawberry Yogurt and Chobani Simply 100 Strawberry Yogurt. Being 35 weeks pregnant, I jumped on the opportunity to try a healthy protein packed snack! Plus I know all of you are always looking for these types of snacks as well.

This is the Chobani

This is the Yoplait

Yummy! Loving the yogurt, but which one did I choose?

Chobani was the winner! Here’s my reasons:

1. Thick Greek yogurt texture
2. Has mild strawberry flavor with some pieces of strawberry in it
3. Is great to dip fruit into
4. Isn’t loaded with sugar

Consumers across America participated in a national taste test and results show that they prefer the taste of Yoplait Greek 100 Strawberry yogurt to Chobani Simply 100 Strawberry.

Yoplait is giving you the chance to be heard! Take the taste test with friends and let us know which yogurt you prefer!!

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I absolutely loved the knowledge of the author in this book, The End of Back Pain: Access Your Hidden Core to Heal Your Body. I was also impressed that he doesn’t just want to perform major back surgery on patients that could potentially be unnecessary. He thoroughly explains how to treat back pain with exercise. I highly recommend this book for anyone with back pain, personal trainers, doctors and physical therapists. This book can change your outlook on proper treatment of back pain.

This book is scheduled to be released this week on Tuesday, April 8, 2014 in both print and ebook. Here’s the link to purchase it: http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Back-Pain-Access/dp/0062197746

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

The Power of Exercise, Yes, and The Power of YOU
By Patrick Roth,
Author of The End of Back Pain: Access Your Hidden Core to Heal Your Body

Perhaps, the most significant hurdle we need to cross in our battle with back pain is in accepting the realization that the solution lies in the hands of the sufferer and not the provider. This is a realization must be accepted by both providers and sufferers, moreover.

A recent NPR special featured a back pain “boot camp” in the Boston area. In this camp, patients with back pain have the opportunity to unlearn their pain. This boot camp is the product of a physiatrist named James Rainville M.D. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Rainville. During our conversation, he kept saying “we don’t help the back pain, our patients do”.

I couldn’t agree more.

In the boot camp, exercise is the medium through which back pain is mitigated (notice I didn’t say “cured”).

I thought that this would be an opportunity to mention three effects of exercise that you wouldn’t necessarily think of.

Most of us understand exercise as potentiating a classic adaptive response from the body. If our muscles are stressed by exercise, the small damages inflicted will result in repairs that leave our muscles slightly bigger, more energy-filled, and stronger.

Exercise does much more, however.

Exercise can help us unlearn pain. In my book, “The End of Back Pain”, I address this through a psychological concept called embodied cognition. This concept reminds us of how our body and brain are inexorably interwoven. It is true that we smile when we are happy, but we are also happy because we smile. Try it yourself, Simply smile and you will feel slightly happier. Likewise, exercising our back will alter our brain’s concept of what our backs are capable of. It can convince us that we can use our back without pain or with less pain. It is the old “bait and switch”. Bend your back without pain during exercise and you will soon be with less pain in life.

Exercise can help us learn new things. Exercise is now known to cause our brain cells to produce more dendrites and connections to other nerves. It even causes our brain cells to regenerate — something that we thought couldn’t happen. Exercise can even potentiate our children’s learning in school.

Exercise can affect our actual genes. If you subscribe to the calorie in- calorie out philosophy of diet, you believe that weight loss comes from either eating less or exercising more. But exercise can bring about actual changes in our genes that have an influence on fat metabolism. One of the way that is mediated is through gene methylation, which is the addition or removal of a cluster of carbon-hydrogen molecules onto the gene. This structural change will change the way the gene operates. A recent study looked at the fat of subjects before and after a six month exercise block. The genes that controlled the fat metabolism were different after six months. This suggests that exercise contributes more than just logging “calories out”.

The idea here is not simply that exercise can help your pain — although it can — or that exercise can do more than make our muscles stronger — although it can — the idea here is that you can control your pain with exercise.

Author Bio
Dr. Patrick Roth, author of The End of Back Pain: Access Your Hidden Core to Heal Your Body, is a board-certified neurosurgeon in New Jersey and the chairman of neurosurgery at Hackensack University Medical Center. He is the director of the neurosurgical residency program and is dedicated to the teaching and training of future neurosurgeons. He is a founding member of the North Jersey Brain & Spine Center.

I was in no way compensated for this review, the opinions here are my own.>