ReVibe Fitness and Wellness

11/25/2025

There’s one thing for sure in this world, people will use fear to help them sell a product or a concept. We see it all the time in politics, and we look for it when people are selling something on an infomercial, but when it comes in many forms from other markets, it’s not so obvious.

That includes nutrition, and there are many myths about nutrition and health that swirl around the internet and regularly pop up in popular books and the mass media, many are simply untrue. Some have half truths and some may be legit.

A big one, even in the plant-based world of nutritionists, is that we should be alkalizing our body in order to stave off cancer. We are told that excess acidity is the root of all disease; however, let’s look at it a different way.

First off, too much acid in the blood is called acidosis. For those who’ve forgotten their high school chemistry, acidity and alkalinity are measured using the pH scale, which runs from 0 to 14. Zero is highly acidic; 7 is neutral and 14 is highly alkaline—also called “basic.” The pH scale is also logarithmic, which means for example that a pH of 3 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 4, and a pH of 8 is ten times more alkaline/basic than a pH of 7. Getting cold sweats yet recalling chemistry classes? No worries we covered it in biology too, so there ya go.

Anyway, there are two types of acidosis, each caused by various conditions. One is respiratory acidosis and the other metabolic acidosis.

Respiratory acidosis occurs when there is an accumulation of too much CO2. Now, normally the lungs get rid of a good part of C02 when you breathe out, but sometimes the body can’t get rid of it and then the Co2 begins to accumulate. This can happen if you have asthma, obesity derived breathing difficulty, drug misuse, muscle weakness in the chest, and/or nerve issues which affect the breathing muscles. In the case of respiratory acidosis, you need to be treated and going on an alkalizing diet will not do any good.

The other type is metabolic acidosis. Metabolic acidosis usually begins in the kidneys rather than the lungs. It is most often caused by very high sustained blood sugar levels, such as in diabetes; however too much diarrhea, excessive vomiting, alcohol abuse, COPD (lack of oxygen) and certain diseases such as cancer, heart disease can cause it too. The condition generally exists when the kidneys cannot excrete their acids into the urine.

Yes, exercise can build up lactic acid too, but this is for a short time and is cleared relatively quickly by a healthy liver (heart and brain).
Notice that conditions or diseases were present first. These conditions then caused the acidosis. So, for those of us who have been told that we must combat it by the micromanagement of our intake of alkaline-forming and acid-forming foods (or water), and even take alkalizing substances such as sodium bicarbonate, to make our bodies more alkaline, you have been misled.

So, how about that alkaline water then? The regular pH of water is around 7. So, to make it alkaline you need to add alkalizing agents to the water such as calcium, magnesium or any other trace minerals. This brings the water up to 8, 8.8 sometimes even 9.5 and higher. A bottle can run between $2-5, but you can achieve it by adding your own liquid minerals purchased from any vitamin store.

The myth that we need to “alkalize” our bodies then is flawed, even if we are trying to combat cancer. The idea is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human physiology. Look, the first place that water goes is your stomach. In order for your stomach to operate correctly it has to be at an acidic pH of around 2, rising to 4 or 5 after a meal. If the stomach becomes less acidic, we absorb less iron from our food, digestion takes longer, and food is not properly prepared for the small intestine.

The first place that alkaline water goes, of course, is your stomach.
Your intestines don’t need to be alkalized either. The acidity of the small and large intestines (except for the last part of the small intestine, which has a mildly alkaline pH of 7.4) is carefully maintained by various digestive secretions and also by beneficial gut microbes that produce lactic acid, short chain fatty acids and other acidifying chemicals from the foods we eat. This acidic environment actually prevents the overgrowth of pathogenic (disease causing) organisms. So, do you want to lower that acidity and expose yourself to more diseases?

Right, I thought not.

Still not convinced? Well, let’s talk about the fungus called Candida albicans. This is the fungus that causes thrush and other uncomfortable conditions. To work properly the candida fungus switches to a more virulent and dangerous form in a neutral-to-alkaline environment. Hopefully by now, you’ll be realizing that ‘alkalizing your body’ is not necessarily a good idea, and if you are acidic it’s a disorder already in bloom that is causing it and treating the condition is the cure, not drinking alkaline water.

One last point, the essential and life sustaining chemical activities occurring in your body occur within a narrow range of pH levels. Messing with them does not make you more healthy or more protected.

But what if you have cancer? Most of the people with a cancer diagnosis have read or heard that “cancer can’t thrive in an alkaline environment.” Right? That’s not entirely true.

Leukaemias and lymphomas do thrive in the alkaline environment of blood and lymph, which have a pH of around 7.4. In fact, there are essential, life sustaining chemical reactions happening in our blood continuously, and they can only happen in a narrow range of pH levels. Maintaining the right pH level is so important to our survival that if it drops below 7.35 or rises above 7.45, the body deploys numerous buffering mechanisms—involving blood proteins, phosphates, bicarbonates, and then the lungs and kidneys—in that order, restore the balance. Taking alkalizing water messes with that intricate system.

And by the way, anything able to overwhelm those buffering mechanisms which was also able to make the blood either too acidic (below 7) or too alkaline (above 7.7) would quickly result in your death.

Therefore, you cannot take alkaline water to be healthier, unless you are simply bringing minerals into the system to help the cells restore their normal function. That way you can make it easier for your body to maintain its different optimal pH ranges, as well as by making healthy food and lifestyle choices. For example, by eating a whole food, plant-based diet rich in fiber and resistant starch from vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains, you’ll provide your gut microbiome with the carbohydrates needed to produce short chain fatty acids that help maintain optimal pH in the colon.

Oh, and that oxygen tank you see on TV for recovery? Yeah, doesn't work either.

11/25/2025

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving 2025.

At this time of year I reflect on the history of Thanksgiving and what most people think it is, and what it really is....

Did you know that Thanksgiving was not an official holiday until nearly 250 years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, when Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation?

Did you also know that the original thanksgiving meal was not what you think it is? That's right. The first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 featured venison, wildfowl, and seafood, along with vegetables like squash, beans, and corn, prepared in various ways such as stews and porridges. It did not include common modern items like turkey, mashed potatoes, or pumpkin pie. The feast was a three-day harvest celebration shared between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people

You may not realize this but It’s wrong to believe that America was founded by capitalists, it was not. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace, eventually freedom and capitalism in order to survive.

One of the earliest and arguably most historically significant North American colonies was the Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. The original colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor; a contract if you will with all the Plymouth inhabitants.

The contract was based on everyone sharing all their wealth and prosperity with one another so that no one had more or less than someone else. Sound familiar? Words like share the wealth should, take from the rich, all the typical tried and failed systems that make people feel better but ultimately, like the Plymouth residents, led to universal poverty.

William Bradford was an English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland, and in the Plymouth Colony. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, an important historical document, while aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and he recorded the Plymouth plight for all who would listen and presumably learn.

He noted that the contract everyone signed was to share everything with one another. It sounds like it would be fair right? I mean that's what the modern democratic party especially are all about, sharing wealth (except their own). Problem was this "fairness" program ended up not going so well, and the lesson should have been a good one, even for those who apparently learned nothing from it.

As William Bradford recorded in his "Of Plymouth Plantation" book, a people who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground and mass starvation was the result. Hard working people stopped working hard because they felt everyone else should help, but no one did! As a result half the colony was lost. Why? Because where there is starvation, there is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The governor gave parcels of land to each according to their family size. What they grew they could keep. The colony survived and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated at that iconic Thanksgiving feast!

Which was shared!

I’m often asked myself why our current leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so often. They are, after all, very smart men and women. Don’t they know that collectivism will fail and always has?
The charter of the Plymouth Colony reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious thinking of the early 17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed in central planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property, centralized state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal family structure. For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child. This collectivist impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of Protestant Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers, mass movements of people who believed that property and income distinctions should be eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated and given to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the 1600s and is perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did not create a private property system. The lessons of the early years were harsh and unforgiving after all.

But the Pilgrims learned and prospered. And what they learned, we seem to have forgotten. Now, new waves of Platonists demand control of other people’s property and money and demand that all share all for the greater good. But it's a painful lesson for all historically then and in today's modern countries that have tried it, and like those of the past, failed. Collectivism violates the iron laws of human nature. It has always failed, it always will.

So as you sit and give thanks this Thanksgiving. As you open your dinner with prayer, and share your food with others, not because you have to but because you want to give back, remind all of what it is really all about. It's not so much capitalism as it is a celebration of freedom. But freedom cannot exist without capitalism. That pursuit of happiness due to capitalism allows all in our path too benefit. But the pursuit of collectivism pushes laziness and inactivity and eventually failure.

It's a good lesson we should all learn from. Happy Thanksgiving to all

11/24/2025

Leaky gut is a devastating condition that causes many symptoms. Some of the worst offenders that contribute to the development of a leaky gut in the first place are gluten and grains in general, NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: Advil, Motrin, ibuprofen), dairy products, fructose and plain general inflammation, chronic stress and lack of sleep.

Never consume grains, dairy, vegetable oils, legumes, sugar, yeast or NSAIDs when trying to heal your gut. Also do not start treating your gut until you have had at least 3-6 months on a Paleo type diet in which you also eliminate nightshade foods as a secondary precaution.

11/20/2025

According to the Journals of Gerontology, for middle-aged adults, eating plenty of dietary fiber (may) assist in staying healthy as one grows older.

Ok, so this is not rocket science we already know that eating 30 grams a day of fiber significantly reduces risk of heart disease. In this study researchers followed 1,609 49-year-old adults for ten years and found those who ate the most fiber were 79% more likely to avoid problems such as depressive symptoms, cognitive impairment, cancer, coronary artery disease, respiratory symptoms, and physical disability when compared with those who regularly consumed the least amount of fiber in their diet.

That means there might be direct correlations between amount of fiber eaten and disease. The authors of the study conclude, "These findings suggest that increasing intake of fiber-rich foods could be a successful strategy in reaching old age disease free and fully functional."

Keep in mind however that low fiber eaters are also processed food and fast food eaters too; therefore, it is likely that not only fiber dictates health but also the amount of processed foods eaten too.

Also we did not look at activity levels, which would play into longevity too.

The most important take home point here is that fiber is a pre-biotic. That means it feeds the gut bacteria and strengthens the immune system. Therefore, all of those immune based diseases would drop in risk due to the stronger immune system, as long as you were eating a whole foods diet.

10/31/2025

Just Move

Perhaps you have heard it before, perhaps not; Exercise is Medicine. Sure, exercise has many benefits, but movement is life, compared to constant rest. And the reason that moving is better than rest might surprise you.

I’m not here to tell you to go and exercise. We all know it will be good for you, but I want you to think a little differently about it. Rather than tell you that exercise is medicine, I want you to know that movement is medicine too. You might not know it, but the contraction of muscle, even at low intensity, even for short periods of time, is beneficial.

Let me tell you why. Now, going back into high school biology you learned about a tiny structure inside almost every cell called the mitochondria. These tiny structures make ATP, and ATP is life. In fact, if you run out of the ability to make ATP, you are dead. Get your attention yet?

On an extremely simple level activity forces muscles to contract and that prompts three processes. First calcium is pumped into the muscle so they can contract by taking the ATP made by the mitochondria. Then, as your muscle relaxes it pumps in magnesium, all the time depleting ATP. This process sets off a bunch of signaling pathways that force the cell to process glucose (blood sugar), and fat to make more ATP to keep you energized and moving. That action alone forces the body to absorb more glucose (sugar) from the blood, even without using insulin.

Why is that important? Because chronically elevated blood sugars cause inflammation. And chronic inflammation causes your body to produce more free radicals which ultimately oxidize cholesterol and promote plaque buildup. In addition, chronic inflammation has been found at the root of all disease. Did you catch the word all?

So keeping your inflammation down by keeping your blood sugar down is pretty important to being healthy.

That’s not all that happens of course. Because right in the middle of all this energy making, the body takes a key protein called AMPK, which acts as an energy sensor for ATP. As the ATP is used up, it stimulates something called PGC-1a, which is considered the master regulator of your metabolism. Yep, this PGC-1a increases your ability to burn fat, take sugar from your blood, and make more mitochondria.

A quick lesson on aging. As you age, especially if you are not active, and especially if you do not strength train, you lose 5-7 pounds of lean muscle per decade of life. This process generally starts around 35 years of age; and accelerates after 50. Along with that muscle loss (called sarcopenia), we lose the life-giving mitochondria. Add into the mix bad food choices (causing more inflammation and more free radical formation) and we have a recipe for rapid aging and increased risk of disease.

Now, back to PGC-1a. Activating it also activates the production of more mitochondria. If we exercise more, we also activate the mechanism that kills off bad cells and replaces them with fresh new ones, it’s called autophagy.

This whole process renews the mitochondria keeping your free radical production under control and your inflammation in check.
Did not know that activating muscles also activates proteins called myokines which actually control inflammation and stimulate the production of irisin, a myokine that tells your cells to burn fat, but only if you move.

Now, while some people exercise for an hour a few times a week to produce all the lasting effects of metabolic health, some of them go and sit behind a desk all day long, effectively undoing the good they have done. Muscle contraction, even on a low level, is paramount to your metabolic health. It keeps those blood sugars low (without the need for extra insulin) and keeps your inflammation under control (as long as you avoid too much sugar and processed carbohydrates).

So, movement is medicine. And yes, exercise does more for you, but constant movement is far better than inactivity, which increases inflammation and speeds muscle loss.

You do still need to keep your strength up though. After 50 you lose it rapidly without strength training, and by 75 your strength literally equals about half of what you had at 30. Don’t let that happen to you. Stay strong with your exercise and move more during the day. Muscle contraction is the deciding factor for keeping your body detoxed, removing excess sugar from your blood, building more mitochondria, and keeping disease at bay.

The average body is probably built to last at least 100 years. But what we do to it in that time, how we treat it, actually determines how long it lasts. It’s not so much that we die as it is that we kill ourselves with the lifestyle we chose to follow. Choose wisely, live a life of health.

10/22/2025

Did you know big pharma pays influencers $1000 per segment for talking out against the anti-vax initiative? Did you also know that doctors are paid more money by big pharma based on the percentage of people they vax? So, are they really advocating for health, or just a bigger paycheck?

10/22/2025

Life is good, live it to its fullest...but only if you take care of yourself! You see life will pay you in dividends if you are healthy, but not so much if you are not. Stop telling yourself you are getting older and that's why you hurt....Instead, see what fitness can do for you. After all what do you have to lose, other than your health?

10/17/2025

According to Tufts University strength training reduces arthritic pain by 43%

10/15/2025

Did you Know: Way back in 2009 a study revealed that people with stronger muscles were 40% less likely to die younger.

You were in fact 1.5 times less likely to die of any disease, 1.6 times less likely to die of a cardiovascular disease and 1.25 times less likely to die of cancer!

Why is this so?
Well, to start, if you strength train your approach to a healthy lifestyle obviously divorces you from a life of sedentarism. That part should be obvious.

But there's other reasons too, and a lot of them. The proposition in the study was because strength training drives down your insulin levels and exercise triggers apoptosis (programmed cell death), and it does all that and more.

Today we understand a little more about it. That is to say that high intensity strength training also triggers the release of myokines, an anti-inflammatory peptide that also retards cytokines, an inflammatory peptide. But that's not all.

If you exercise you sleep better, recover better, maintain your health better, Oh let me count the ways............

BMJ 337: a439; Ruiz, J. R., et al. 2009. Muscular strength

10/14/2025

Did you Know: Eating more fresh vegetables is one of the simplest choices you can make to improve your overall health.

A vegetable-rich diet can help protect you from arthritis, heart disease, stroke, dementia, cancer, and can even help slow down your body's aging process.

A recent study found that people who consume seven or more portions of vegetables and fruit a day have a 42 percent lower risk of dying from any cause, compared to those who eat less than one portion—and vegetables have the greatest impact.

But vegetables can also benefit you in some surprising ways. Did you know that certain vegetables can help reduce bloating, and others can give your skin a more youthful glow? They can even improve how you handle stress—and adapting to stress is critically important to your mental AND physical health!

09/09/2025

How many times have we been told that too much salt leads to high blood pressure? Yeah, if I had a dollar for each time…..ok, I won’t go there but here’s the thing, at it’s absolute worst, about 10% of the population are susceptible to developing high blood pressure if they take in too much salt, and that’s likely questionable. A study in the American Journal of Medicine 06;119(3)275, found that those who ate no salt at all or very little actually had higher cardiovascular risks. Now, about 77% or so of the salt in your diet comes from processed foods, and those are bad for your health and blood pressure, another 12% comes from naturally occurring salt in food and about 6% from table salt. That said, even if you go crazy with the shaker, but you avoid processed foods, you will be fine.

This means that the best way to avoid too much salt is to avoid processed foods, not table salt. But here’s the cool thing, if you ate more fruit and vegetables you would get more potassium and that would actually decrease any effect that salt has on hypertension!
But what if you crave salt? Ahh, then you might actually want to get your adrenals checked! Very often when they get fatigued, they fail to retain adequate amounts of salt in your body, and that’s why you crave it.

I would recommend sea salt or Himalayan salt over table salt because it’s minimally processed and contains other minerals essential to health; however, sea salt does not contain very much iodine, which your thyroid needs to remain healthy. Perhaps also I should mention that many additives such as fluoride (added to water) is an iodine blocker, which can lead to low energy and low thyroid function. But did you know that soybeans are also? Soy is often used in baby formulas, margarine's and salad dressings. You might also be interested to know that chlorine is also an iodine blocker. Wait, isn’t fluoride and chlorine routinely added to drinking water? Why, yes it is…………..

09/08/2025