Happy Monday!  Got my tech issues sorted out at last.  Now for the latest health news..

•Has the CrossFit / Gym Jones thing been done to death yet?  I don't think so.  In fact, every time I read about it, hear about it, or talk to people about it, I'm convinced that it's the direction that the fitness industry is headed.  True, maybe not everyone has the stomach to train at a facility named after the guru-leader of a mass-suicide cult (Jim Jones),   or whose mascot is a puking clown (that would be CrossFit), but I think the gym mega-plex  atmosphere is about as fresh and appealing as last month's bran muffins, that many such places are losing money, and that pretty soon, as the man says, something's gotta give.  

The question is, to what will it give over?  I just read a piece in Outside by their fitness lab rat Nick Heil (some supporting video is here) that once again extols the virtues of training on the edge:  old-school weight training, Olympic lifting, plyometric, and gymnastic movements done lickety-split at full intensity for very short, intense periods.  The idea is to build real-world strength and endurance, eschewing vanity and bulk for its own sake.  From all account, it's hard as hell, but it works.  

And it looks nothing like the stuff most people do in the gym.

Is everyone up for this kind of workout?  Again, probably not.  But dropping the chrome plating, plastic coating, utterly useless machines, and 360-degree mirrored walls, to my mind, would do everyone a world of good.  Are we working out here or are we preening about in all our near-extinct, exotically feathered--er, muscled-- glory?  

•The New York Times addresses the question of exercise during the current financial crisis.  The upshot?  Some people are doing more to ease the pain and stay on an even keel; others are falling into the vortex of resignation and panic.  You know where I stand.  

•Interesting counter-intuitive finding here:  heavier people may get less pleasure from food than slimmer people.  Dopamine, a pleasure hormone, is secreted in lower amounts in response to eating by obese people.  As the article notes, this effect is similar to what drug addicts experience as their addiction wears on:  they need more and more of their drug of choice to create a high.  

This is, I suppose, more evidence for the "slow down and enjoy your food" school of dieting, and more reason for me to feel guilty for wolfing down that entire large pizza while playing cards with my daughter this evening.  Doesn't the fact that I was bonding with my progeny make it okay?  Or was I in fact modeling bad eating habits and should feel doubly awful?  

•Finally, a med-school instructor finds that the Bee Gees song "Stayin' Alive" contains the optimal beat for giving unconscious patients their CPR compressions:  about 100 beats a minute.  Most students go too slowly, but the researchers found that when students gave a mannequin CPR contractions in time to the song--and then later on, while simply singing the preternaturally catchy tune to themselves--their contractions were almost optimally timed.  According to one of the study's subjects, 

"I heard a rumor that 'Another One Bites the Dust' works also, but it didn't seem quite as appropriate."

Buh-duhm!

Stay alive!