HEY SAM: My doctor recently told me that I’m at risk for high blood pressure and placed me on blood pressure medication. What’s the best way to augment my workout routine in this situation?

A: People who participated in a regular yoga program experienced a natural drop in blood pressure, according to new research from the Washington University School of Medicine. The study, published in HIV Medicine, followed 60 HIV-positive adults over the course of a supervised, 20 week yoga program. Resting systolic and diastolic blood pressures were reduced more in the yoga group than in the control group, despite no greater reduction in body weight, fat, or overall quality of life.The best part? T4 levels were not adversely affected.

Practicing yoga is an intelligent idea for other reasons, too. (more…)

I was recently diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. I still have feeling in my fingers, but I’ve lost most of the feeling in my toes. Do you have any advice on ways I can manage this condition through exercise or supplementation?
—Lee, Cheyenne, WY

Peripheral neuropathy causes pain (sometimes described as tingling or burning) and numbness in the hands and feet. While HIV is one cause of the condition, it’s certainly not the only one. Diabetes and cancer treatments (such as radiation or chemotherapy) are also common causes. Sometimes the condition improves with treatment of the underlying cause, sometimes it doesn’t. (more…)

Courtesy of LA Times

Modern evangelist Marianne Williamson was one of the presenters at  LA Times Magazine’s “Conversations on Health & Wellness” at Terranea Resort. The conference was a nice break from my mind, which has been mired in thoughts about mom’s cancer. I was glad to see that Marianne was one of the speakers, since her book, A Return to Love, influenced our coming back together. Whether you’re well or ill, her remarks are worth a listen:

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve likely been “tagged” with this Internet meme, in which you’re supposed to share 25 things, facts, habits or goals that your friends don’t know about you. Like a chain letter, you choose 25 people to be tagged, (tagging the person who tagged you). If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

Here’s my list:

1. I moved to Los Angeles 12 years ago, and while I’ve found so much success and happiness here, I miss living in a smaller town.
2. I’m trying on the idea of a life without shame.
3. A quote that’s really stuck with me:
   “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” (Eleanor Roosevelt).
4. I’m planning to enter a bodybuilding competition this year to uncover what’s physically possible if I honestly cleaned up my nutrition. I’m using a great website to track my nutrition (thanks, Eric).
5. At 6-foot-3-inches and 230 pounds, I’m somewhat clumsy and struggle with spatial awareness. Like, this week while training a client, I nearly tipped over backwards when I tripped over my own foot. Luckily, I caught myself.
6. After eight years bleaching my hair, I’m making a conscious choice to embrace the gray, a la Anderson Cooper.
7. Sex, sunsets, Bronson, and licorice. What more does a guy need?
8. I love film scores, and they’ve formed the soundtracks to many periods of my life. A few of my favorites: Brokeback Mountain, Moulin Rouge, and Run Lola Run.
9. I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich pretty much every day.
10. My favorite food used to be chicken fajitas, but it’s been replaced by my mother-in-law’s slum gullion, which is sublime.
11. I consider myself a Zen Christian, a term coined by my college journalism professor Michael Kirkhorn (R.I.P.) On that note, I believe that a historical person named Jesus existed, but I don’t believe he was the only manifestation of the divine. I believe there are many names for what we call “God” and that no one religious sect has a corner on the truth.
12. Speaking of college, I attended Gonzaga University in Spokane, known for its basketball team. After graduating with a double major in speech and journalism, I made ends meet working as a funeral singer.
13. I’ve performed in the following operas:  Die Fledermaus, the Ballad of Baby Doe, and La Boheme.  I’ve auditioned for both the Metropolitan and Los Angeles Opera companies.
14. The habit I’d most like to break is biting my cuticles.
15. I found a copy of Playgirl when I was 5, and shoplifted a red Speedo at age 13. Seven years later, at age 22, I came out as a gay man. I was diagnosed HIV+ at 29, after a year of performing in adult films. I’m not implying any kind of cause and effect—that’s just the timeline.  I have no regrets.
16. For the last five years, I’ve been working full time as a personal trainer. My decision to become a trainer was directly informed by my desire to take my health and fitness more seriously in the wake of the above diagnosis. But, I’m not perfect and I’m always trying to find balance and get out of my own way.
17. If I forget my headphones in the gym, I’m screwed. I work out almost every weekday, but I don’t do enough cardio. As a way to keep me accountable, I started posting photographs of the LED screen from my time on the cardio machines to my Facebook profile.
18. I’m rethinking how I feel about the terms “fag” and “queer.”  I get the whole “reclaiming the word” thing, but I reject that the words ever belonged to the gay community in the first place. How can a pejorative term ever be reconstituted as positive?
19. The physical accomplishment of which I’m the proudest is completing the 2000 AIDSRide from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which took 7 days and a whole lot of Gatorade.
20. The first book I remember reading is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, but I don’t really like fiction.  I have a tattoo of  the main character, “wild” Max, on my right shoulder.  My second tattoo (the word “Discipline” across my back) took four hours. The tattoos taken together represent for me the dynamic tension of my life experience.
21. The last book I read was Where’s My Fifteen Minutes by Howard Bragman—a really great read.
22. My favorite sound are “I’m home,” which is tied with the sound of a rainstorm pounding against the roof.  The two together?  Heaven.
23. My favorite quote of all time:
    “I want to beg you, as much as I can, be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves—they are like locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you now because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live some distant day into the answer.” (Rainer Maria Rilke,  Letters to a Young Poet).
24. I don’t agree with Rush Limbaugh or Dr. Laura, but I listen to both of them. Show me an absolutist and I’ll show you a hypocrite.
25. Everyone should work in a bar at least once. It’s a microcosm for the whole world. Also, there’s no place on Earth more humbling than a porn set.

Don’t ask me why, but I used to be pretty certain that I would die young. Sadly, the belief was only perpetuated when I came out of the closet 12 years ago.  It wasn’t until 2003 that I came face to face with being HIV-positive, determined not to let the diagnosis suffocate me.

In the years since, I’ve met a couple of men in their 90s, one of them is Jack LaLanne, the father of fitness and a pretty major inspiration to me personally. And then there’s Val Lewis, the patriarch of the Lewis family of San Francisco, who embraced me with open arms when I first met him 11 years ago.

Of course, I don’t know how long I’m going to live, but both of these men have inspired me to re-think my own intention of what’s possible in old age. And now I intend to live to see my 100th birthday.

This cool aging calculator says I’m pretty much on target. I just gotta floss more.

You bought a Prius. You recycle. You carpool. But do you drink green?

If you’re a regular reader, you know I rarely endorse products (especially supplements). Having spent 18 years in Utah, I’m quite familiar with the nutriceutical industry and its claims to “change-your-body-in-30-days-or-your-money-back.”

So I’m being straight with you when I say: Miracle Greens is one of the best products I have found on my decade long journey to fitness. I really can’t imagine my life without it, especially during the last four years since my HIV diagnosis. Every time I’ve needed a healthy kick in the ass, Miracle Greens has been the staple. Paul introduced me to it about ten years ago. At the time I scoffed, actually standing in the aisle at Wild Oats Market, telling him “I’m not paying $35 for powder!” Well, I ate my (more…)

I’VE HEARD THAT TAKING THE AMINO ACID glutamine with creatine can have positive effects in people who are HIV-positive. But there doesn’t seem to be much information about these sports supplements and any potential interactions with HAART therapy. Can you shed some light on this? —John, West Hollywood

You’re right. Studies on the role of micronutrient supplementation in people with HIV are ripe for further research, according to Dr. Alice Tang, associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, and an expert in the area of supplementation and HIV. A few of these studies have examined glutamine, primarily for its muscle-building effects. To my knowledge, there are no published studies on creatine in people with HIV. (more…)

I’VE HEARD THAT TAKING THE AMINO ACID glutamine with creatine can have positive effects in people who are HIV-positive. But there doesn’t seem to be much information about these sports supplements and any potential interactions with HAART therapy. Can you shed some light on this?

You’re right. Studies on the role of micronutrient supplementation in people with HIV are ripe for further research, according to Dr. Alice Tang, associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, and an expert in the area of supplementation and HIV. A few of these studies have examined glutamine, primarily for its muscle-building effects. To my knowledge, there are no published studies on creatine in people with HIV.

When it comes to sports supplements and their potential interactions with HIV meds, the answer is inconclusive. While no adverse affects have been reported using glutamine, other supplements such as St. John’s Wort, have illustrated the complexity of adding “natural” substances to a HAART regimen. Kathleen Squires, MD, says it’s best to avoid products that have documented interactions and communicate with your doctor about all the supplements you’re using. That way, he/she can take them into account if you develop any side effects or your viral load response is not appropriate.

Med interactions aside, the larger question is: “What potential benefits does supplementation with glutamine and creatine have for the person with HIV?” Wasting, (the loss of lean body mass), is a concern for all HIV-positive individuals. Since even a five or 10 percent loss of lean body mass is associated with early mortality and susceptibility to opportunistic infections, products such as Juven (which contains glutamine, taurine and HMB) are useful weapons in your pro-lean body mass arsenal.

Every study I’ve encountered boldly demonstrates that glutamine will build and preserve muscle mass. In one double-blind study, participants who took 2 doses of Juven twice daily for eight weeks gained almost six pounds, compared to a loss of almost two pounds by the participants receiving placebo. Glutamine doses of at least 20g/day has also been shown to improve the absorption of nutrients in the lower intestine.

My personal take is: “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and supplementing with glutamine is a smart way to keep your lean body mass up. Creatine may also have a place in the mix, but your doctor should be able to help you balance the benefits of these sports supplements with your overall treatment regimen.

Heavy drinking may speed up the time to developing AIDS, possibly by damaging the immune system, new animal research suggests.Reporting in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, researchers from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center set out to determine how chronic binge drinking might affect the progression to AIDS.For 12 weeks, they fed alcohol to 16 rhesus macaques (often called rhesus monkeys) for five hours, four consecutive days per week to simulate chronic binge drinking. They fed another 16 rhesus macaques a sucrose solution under the same conditions.Then they injected eight of the rhesus macaques in each group with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a virus that mimics what happens to humans affected with HIV.The researchers found that chronic binge drinking accelerated the time to AIDS in the rhesus macaques infected with SIV, with the average time to end-stage disease decreasing from 900 days in the control animals to 374 days in those exposed to alcohol.”Because SIV infection in rhesus macaques is so similar to what happens in HIV-infected humans, we can expect that alcohol would have similar consequences in humans,” study author Gregory Bagby, professor of physiology and medicine, said in a prepared statement. (HealthDay News)