Last night’s yoga class was all about strengthening our core muscles — the abdominals and other muscles that help us maintain good posture. Holly Wagner, RN, took a page from a recent issue of Yoga Journal, and had us focus on our rectus abdominis and transversus abdominis muscles. These are the two sets of muscles that give someone “six-pack abs.”

The rectus abdominis and transversus abdominis muscles (Wikipedia)

While it’s relatively easy to find and engage the rectus abdominis — it’s what we use when we do sit-ups or crunches — the transversus abdominis is harder to isolate. It comes in from the side of the body beneath the rib cage, and runs underneath the other ab muscles. Holly had us feel around for it, so we could get a sense of what muscles we were supposed to be using, but I couldn’t find mine. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.

A variation of happy baby pose, from Yoga Journal

The most effective pose for me was the first one, a variation of “happy baby pose.” We laid back on our mats and lifted our legs with knees bent at 90-degree angles, and moved our legs back and forth just a few inches at a time, for 30 seconds at a time. I became well aware of my transversus abdominis muscles then, because they were on fire! Such a tiny movement had a huge impact on my core muscles.

So if I do this for 30 seconds every day, will I have six-pack abs? Well, no. (Even if I could, nobody would be able to see them. There’s a lot of fat — er, ample curviness — sort of blocking the view.) But what benefits would I get? According to Yoga Journal:

It’s important to persevere, but don’t work to exhaustion… Plan on doing just a few repetitions each day, and your body will respond quickly. The result of all your hard work? A stronger core, more ease in your poses, and a more powerful you.

My body has already responded — my abs are sore today!

You can see the full routine here. We skipped the handstand at the end, thank goodness!

I mentioned when I drew up my vision board that one of my health goals is to better understand what causes migraines, and learn how to prevent them.

The Faculty and Staff Wellness Program is offering a Lunch & Learn event on diet and migraines on May 14. I signed up, and I see from the Web site that spots are still available.

Nobody knows the exact cause of migraines, but certain foods appear to trigger migraines in some people. So I would like to learn more about the clinical research in this area and how I can prevent my own migraines.

Here’s the event description:

DIET AND MIGRAINE - Is Your Food Making You Sick? 12:00 Noon - 1:00 P.M.

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009

Location: Research Foundation, 1960 Kenny Road, Room: 113

Details: Inflammation is part of the body’s defense against microbial invasion, but what if your body thinks food is the enemy? New advances in technology shed light on painful conditions previously thought to be merely functional or psychological. Explore new therapies pinpointing these enigmatic triggers of migraine symptoms.

Instructor: Michal Hogan, RD,LD,CLT, Nutrition Results

Here’s what I know from talking to my doctor: migraine pain is caused by inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain. The inflammation is caused by blood vessels dilating. This is the opposite of a tension headache, in which the blood vessels constrict. Migraines also bring symptoms that tension headaches do not, such as nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. People often see little flashes of light, called auras, just before a migraine starts.

I’ve suffered migraines since I was a teenager. When one’s about to strike, I do see auras — they look like little flashes of lightning out of the corner of my eye — but I also smell a certain smell. It’s a very strong, sweet smell — sort of like a cross between burnt sugar and gasoline — and it comes in little bursts, like the lightning.

As much as I hate migraines, I think it’s sort of neat that my brain produces these sensory hallucinations in response to blood vessel behavior. And in a way, I’m lucky that I get these little warning signs — it’s my brain’s way of saying “Medicate — NOW.”

While I can often pre-empt migraines by taking an anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen before the pain starts, that doesn’t always work. So my doctor gave me a prescription for a vasoconstrictor. This is a drug that forces my blood vessels to constrict, thus shutting off the migraine. At least, that’s what it feels like. I feel a flush, and then the throbbing in my head just stops.

Not everybody can take this kind of drug, though. People with high blood pressure, for example, can’t take a vasoconstrictor. There are other migraine drugs that work in different ways. So, as the commercials say, talk to your doctor.

I was actually afraid to ask my doctor for migraine medication. I thought she might suspect me of fishing for narcotics. But today’s migraine drugs aren’t painkillers — they work by other means, like my vasoconstrictor.

While I’m glad to have pharmaceutical science on my side, I would still like to prevent migraines from happening altogether. If I can make small dietary changes that help, well, I’m all for it.

Sign up for Lunch & Learn here.

WebMD also has an excellent Web site all about migraines.

I had a good time at yoga last night with Holly Wagner. Just before savasana, we formed a laughing circle.

Here’s how it works: everyone lies back on their mats, and someone starts the circle by laughing once (”Ha!”). The second person laughs twice (”Ha ha!”) and so on around the circle.  Eventually, someone loses count, and then everyone has a good laugh.

Unless I’m in the circle, in which case “eventually” becomes “almost immediately.”

Holly: “Ha!”

Student: “Ha ha!”

Next student: “Ha ha ha!

Next student: “Ha ha ha… ha!”

Me: “Bwaaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

So Holly started the circle from the other direction… and it happened again. Clearly I was the weak link in the laughing circle. But it was great fun, and we all reaped the benefits of deep breathing and relaxation.

Holly pointed me to Laughter Yoga International for more information. What do you know, World Laughter Day is May 3.

Laugh on! Here’s a video to get you started.

My husband just gave me an early birthday present: a heart rate monitor and accessories so that I can accurately measure the intensity of my workouts and the calories I’m burning.

I am often confused by the way different exercise machines present their data. Every machine, it seems, has a different way of telling me how much work I am doing. What on Earth, I have always wondered, is a “Met”? And different machines seem to give wildly different measures of the calories I’m burning for the same activity. Could one brand of elliptical machine really make me burn 100 more calories than another?

When Matthew Garver, a doctoral student in health and exercise science, gave me my exercise prescription, he explained some of the more confusing elements. He said, for instance, that Mets are a measure of metabolic rate, or energy expenditure. My VO2max rating of 24.5 could be expressed as 7 Mets.

He suggested that a good way to know whether I was exercising at the optimum rate was to look not to Mets or even calories, but to the number of watts I was generating. Watts are a measure of power, in the amount of energy per second that I expend while I’m on the machine. Then I can check my heart rate (on the machines that offer this option) to gauge how hard my body is working to generate that amount of power.

He suggested that I aim for 40 watts. Based on my resting heart rate and peak heart rate during my fitness test, I know that my heart rate should vary between 138 (warming up) and 167 (working hard) if I want to stay in the right “zone” for burning calories. About.com has great instructions on how to calculate your own cardio zone.

Now, I may write about mathematical sciences for a living, but I’ve reached my limit on what I want to calculate on my own. Hence the heart rate monitor. It will not only give me more accurate data than an exercise machine (because it is directly measuring my heart rate the entire time I’m working out), it will let me upload the data to my computer for analysis. At that point, I’m happy to let the computer do all the work!

I’ll try these out for a while, and will post a product review.

In Rethinking Thin, New York Times reporter Gina Kolata follows a two-year diet study that compares the low-carboydrate Atkins diet with the low-calorie, low-fat LEARN diet.

Rethinking Thin was published in 2007, and when I set out to review it, I was hoping that the results of this multi-institution diet study would have been published by now. They haven’t. Kolata ends the book just as the study is ending, and we are left wondering what the researchers ever concluded.

But we don’t have to wonder what Kolata concluded: weight loss is hard, and it may not be possible.

While the diet study provides the backbone for the book — Kolata clearly spent a great deal of time getting to know both the researchers and the test subjects, and she gives us a book full of rich detail — the real message of the book is best supported by the historical background that she provides. She chronicles dieting throughout history, and we discover that all the fad diets of today have actually been fad diets many times over. In fact, some have been around for centuries. We discover that whenever a culture has valued thinness, people have been trying to lose weight — unsuccessfully.

We also learn that genetics plays a important role in our ability to gain and lose weight. Overweight people have more fat cells than thin people, and they have bigger fat cells. Their bodies tend to convert food to fat. The only way for such people to become thin, the book suggests, is to make diet and exercise a full time job.

The book also delves into the psychological ramifications of dieting. Overweight people must eat less than their thin friends do, and exercise more than their thin friends do. And they still might never be thin. And they will be forever misjudged by their thin friends, who will accuse them of not trying hard enough.

Kolata is calling for us to focus not on being thin — because most of us simply can’t — but on being healthy. We must find other measures by which to judge ourselves.

To learn more about the book, check out the New York Times book review, or this review in Salon.

The most valuable thing about yoga is that it teaches us to pay attention to our breath and the effect it has on the body. And if I learned any lesson from my refresher course the other day, it’s that I need to breathe more deeply.

In my comprehensive fitness evaluation, I learned that my endurance, or VO2max rating, was below average. It’s a measure of how much oxygen my body uses per minute, divided by my weight. So I know that if I lose weight, I will automatically boost my rating. Since the body uses oxygen to make energy, losing weight will make my body more energy-efficient.

But yoga caused me to look at the other side of the equation, to the amount of oxygen that I normally take in. When I’m exercising, my lungs breathe deeply because they are on auto-pilot, but I wonder: how much oxygen am I taking in the rest of the time?

Holly guides me through downward facing dog in my living room. I kept squinching my shoulders.

As the lesson began, Holly noticed that I was breathing shallowly through my chest. She suggested that I visualize my lungs as a glass of water. As you pour water into a glass, the bottom of the glass fills up first.  So she told me to fill the bottom part of my lungs first by breathing down into my belly. Then to exhale, I reversed the process. After a few minutes of this, I felt very relaxed.

Then she had me perform a series of stretches at my own pace, determined by how fast I was breathing in and out. Deep breathing takes longer than shallow breathing, so moving through the different stretches forced me to consider how quickly and shallowly I was breathing.

Once we began doing seated poses, my previous yoga experience paid off, as Holly thought my posture was “stunning.” She had me do eagle pose to loosen up my shoulders (see a video of how to do seated eagle here). This is a pose I can do at my desk.

Then it was onto a standing forward bend to stretch out the backs of my legs, and finally to a sun salutation (explanatory video here), featuring downward-facing dog. As with my posture during eagle, I’ve got the right form — I just need to develop the endurance to hold the poses longer. I pushed myself a bit, and experienced the wonder of gravity as my face hit the floor. That was a good lesson. Yoga is about exploring our natural limitations and becoming comfortable with them, not pushing ourselves until we do a face-plant.

Holly offered to compose a ten-minute routine for me — something that I can do on my own, every day.  She is a huge inspiration to me in that regard. She just earned her license as a registered nurse, and is working to become a nurse practitioner. When she’s not caring for patients at OSU Medical Center, she’s studying. And yet she finds time to squeeze in her own yoga practice, and teach it to others. If she can do that, I hope I can dedicate 10 minutes a day.

The way I look at it, yoga is the enabling technology for the rest of my fitness routine. It will keep me stretched and relaxed, so I don’t get worn down by all those trips to the gym.

My vision board. Click for full-size PDF.

I love my vision board!

Last night’s Lifelong Learning class was fun. The instructor, Melissa Lawson of Joyful Living Life Coaching, led us in a guided meditation in which we visualized our “true selves.” While my classmates and I were all there for different reasons, this was a general-purpose meditation that helped us all zero in on changes we wanted to make in our lives.

I saw myself in an Italian villa on the sea. The house was bathed in sunlight, and bedecked inside and out with things that I made myself. I saw colorful abstract frescoes that I had painted, and a blanket that I had crocheted. And lots and lots of books. When I saw myself in the house, I was making jewelry at first, and then writing, and then making jewelry again. I went back and forth between these two activities whenever I felt like it. And I was happy and laughing a lot. I suppose I *was* fit, but only as an afterthought.

So I decided that my vision board should depict the balance that I would like to see in my life: good food, lots of fun exercise, less stress, and more creativity.

Melissa set us loose on boxes of magazines, and we clipped images and words that resonated with us. After some quick work with the glue stick, this is what I had.

At the end of class, we took turns committing to our life change by declaring it to the class and explaining what was on our vision board. Everybody clapped, and I have to say that it felt really good!

I’ve shown the board around the office, and everyone has pointed out that the two most striking images are naked women. I also inexplicably clipped the headlines “Drive like a pro” and “How to talk to difficult people.” Since this collage is supposed to help me visualize my goals, I guess I must aspire to get naked while driving like a pro and talking to difficult people.

Other themes include eating a balanced diet, reducing stress, and having fewer migraine headaches. Oh, yeah — and getting some exercise once in a while.

The latest video feature from our New Media unit highlights a yoga class for cancer survivors, as well as Ohio State’s unique Integrative Approaches to Wellness minor for undergraduate students.

Web editor Kristen Convery writes:

When Daniel Snider’s aunt was dying of abdominal cancer, Snider wanted to get to know her better and help her deal with her disease.

So he created a yoga routine for her.

Read the full story here.

Materials for a vision board. (Photo by deb roby, via Flickr. Click on image to see larger.)

One of the advantages of working at Ohio State is that I get to hear about public classes offered by cities in the Columbus metropolitan area, such as Upper Arlington. I’ve signed up for an Upper Arlington Lifelong Learning class on making a vision board. (If you’ve never taken an Upper Arlington class before, here’s how to register online.)

A vision board is a poster that you make yourself, with inspirational pictures and quotes that help you visualize a goal and keep you motiviated.

Here’s the class description:

Vision Board: Visualize Your Future

with Melissa Lawson, Life Coach

Experience this engaging and powerful process and create a personal vision board enabling you to identify and define your dreams and goals and then visually represent them in a concrete and enlightening manner. Guided imagery is used to focus on your future self and pinpoint what it is you really want. Learn basic techniques to put together images, power words and quotes that inspire you. When your vision board is complete, you will be amazed at how accurately it reveals your true self. Take it home to hang in a spot where it can motivate you on a daily basis. This is a great class to take with a friend, spouse or partner. You can become accountability buddies by encouraging each other to keep moving forward toward your dreams, offering support if your vision starts to fade and celebrating your successes along the way.

I’ve never made one before, but the idea appeals to my crafty side. If I am going to harness all of my science writing skills toward living a healthier life, then it makes sense that I would use my creativity as a tool as well.

Class is Wednesday night; I will try to post a picture of my vision board on Thursday.