The number of Sub-2:10 Men Marathon Performers in 2013 by country (updated 9/12/13)

Whether we are riding our bikes, hiking a hill, walking around our suburb, or competing in some kind of race, what  really hits me is the lack of young people.

Within half an hour of school finishing, the frantic rush of SUV's is over and the streets are as good as deserted of youth, other than a handful hanging around the local superette.  Where have all the children gone?  Where are all the teenagers?  Its as if they have quickly scurried away to the safety of their burrows.

My impression is that the ACTIVE participants in outdoors activities - be they recreational or competitive - are mostly greying adults.  When we compete in a running or mountain bike race nowadays, the junior grades are definitely in the minority.  When hiking, it is mostly retirees who we meet along the way - rarely do we see youngsters.

I don't know about you but this trend is disturbing: It is disturbing because it signals we are witnessing the death of the traditional Kiwi outdoors lifestyle: It is disturbing because it signals deteriorating health as soft children get old: It is disturbing because it signals the end of New Zealand's proud tradition of excellence in outdoors sport.  We are following in the footsteps of Australia.

Case in point: New Zealand once all but dominated middle and long distance running.  No longer is this the case. 

# of Sub-2:10 Men Marathon Performers in 2013
Kenya	79
Ethiopia	47
Japan	7
Eritrea	4
Uganda	3
Morocco	2
South Africa	2
Qatar	1
USA	1
France	1
Brazil	1
Spain	1

Thanks for the list, Gavin Stevens.

Where is New Zealand and Australia?  The UK?  The US looks pathetic, despite its wealth and numbers.  Is their sole sub 2:10 runner an African import?  Its great to see Japan, with its proud love affair with the marathon, still managing to hang in there.

While there may be a strong genetic factor running through these ranks, I think the over-riding factor is the way children are being raised in developed countries.  After all; if you argue it is the African gene, well there are millions of people of African descent in countries like the US, UK, France and Germany, to name some.

The real differences are less than genetic: A soft Developed World upbringing versus a hard and often desperate one in a 3rd World country.  Plus a calorie rich - nutrient poor Western diet that produces fragile blobs, rather than lean, muscled athletes.  Plus the ubiquitous computer and gaming console that results in loss of limb function, other than the thumb.  Plus the motor car. Plus "Stranger Danger".  Plus the quad bike on the farm. Plus the incredibly versatile hydraulic digger.  Plus fear-mongering of the dangerous outdoors, including fear of the sun.   Then there is "Helicopter" parenting, driven by an irrational fear of everything!

There are similar patterns, to do with poverty, within New Zealand with regards to the production of first class rugby players: In the Wellington Region I can't see many (if any) emerging players coming out of the affluent Central City suburbs: The wealth of new talent that keeps the All Blacks on top and which enriches the Australian NRL is from less affluent places like Wainuiomata and Porirua - and the Pacific Islands - not Kelburn or Brooklyn.

So, what's the solution?

• Reject fast foods and get back to preparing foods daily from their basic ingredients.
• Reduce reliance on the motor car.  Walk, walk, walk - and ride a bike most other times.
• Walk children to and from child care or school and regardless of the weather.
• When you go hiking - take the kids!
• Restrict computer and gaming console use: Just an hour after school, then outside to play.
• Insist on shared physical family chores such as weeding the garden.
• Encourage neighborhood play.
• Reject the "Stranger Danger" myth.  The more people on the streets the safer it is for all.
• Accept that a child getting dirty and suffering the occasional lumps, bumps and bruises are part and parcel of a healthy upbringing.

Easier said than done.

• Streets need to be designed to be pedestrian and cycle friendly.
• Where and how we live needs to be physically designed so that people are brought together - not isolated in their private boxes.
• Work needs to be more family friendly so that parents have more time with children, in less of a rush and less exhausted.
• Fear sells (Better than sex).  We need to reject the beating up of FEAR to manipulate behaviour, to sell products and to raise money (Think: The war on cancer).

About this website 

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation. Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.

Candida and Fungal Infections? Gary Moller recommends you explore this programme: Click Here!

Kiwis Hand Hygiene Habits And Attitudes Worrying

Monday, 17 April 2006, 1:27 pm
Press Release: TNS Research 16 April 2006

Kiwis Hand Hygiene Habits And Attitudes Worrying Given Threat Of Viral Pandemic

New research indicates that New Zealanders are not cleaning their hands well enough to stop the spread of disease.

Gary Moller comments:
This is hardly a surprise, since the teaching and practice of hand washing during childhood is a farce. If people do not have this essential habit in place during their formative years, it is unlikely that it ever will be. The sad fact is that childcare facilities and schools are physically and financially unable to provide proper hand washing training for children.

Here is what I have written about hand washing in the past. Go to this PDF, download it and then click on the link to "I wash my hands - Yeah right!" Enjoy the read

How to teach children to fall properly

Falls (including slipping and tripping) across all age groups are the single largest cause of injury for New Zealanders - not just older adults, children and those with disabilities. During the period 1993 to 2002, nearly 380,500 people were hospitalised for an unintentional injury, of these 160,200 (over 40 percent), were falls-related. Nearly 2,500 fall-related deaths occurred between 1992 and 2001.

Falls are exceptionally diverse in terms of their multiple causes, location of occurrence and effective prevention across the life-span.
http://www.nzips.govt.nz/priorities/falls.html

Gary Moller Comments:
Injuries resulting from falls are a world-wide epidemic and the problem is set to get much worse. This is because of the Baby Boomers hitting old age and the problem being eaxcerbated by the widespread drugging of the elderly with all kinds of medications on a scale never seen before. Adding to the problem on a grand scale is the sad fact that children are no longer learning the art of falling properly through what used to be normal play - play fighting, climbing trees, or playing bull-rush and scrag in the playground.

My experience of children nowadays is that few are able to do a basic forward roll without bumping their heads and landing awkwardly. Few have the muscle strength in their necks to counter the head-smashing whiplash that happens when falling over backwards and few have neither the technique nor the arm strength to break a forwards or side fall without fracturing an arm or wrist.

The usual approach to preventing falls is to progressively wrap our citizens in layer after layer of cotton wool. Such an approach, while partially effective, is abhorrent to the FreeRanger. The better approach, beginning with children, is teach them how to fall properly and, therefore, safely - and to ensure that they have the strength to go with the technique. This same approach can be applied with success to the elderly with the added strategy of ensuring that they are as medication free as possible and that any they must be on are not causing poor balance and frailty. Further measures include ensuring best nutrition, proper eyecare and a relatively hazard free environment.

It is easy and safe to teach a child how to fall because the wee body bounces really well without injury and the rapidly growing brain soaks up new skills like a dry sponge.

Teach your child how to do a forward roll, wrestle on the floor. These activities teach kinaesthetic awareness (awareness of body position in time and space). Teach the "Flying Flambini" (carefully and progressively!). One way to strengthen a young body is to challenge them to do things like climbing the walls (Don't parents of young children do that?). Climbing the walls builds awesome strength to weight.

Take care: Be ready to catch because going up is much easier than coming down, or place something soft underneath like a very large cushion. Creeping up towards the ceiling and then dropping down from an ever increasing height teaches the child how to land and absorb impact without injury.

By teaching these kinds of skills and building strong muscles, bones and ligaments at the same time, you are preparing your child for an inury free life that is free of restrictive cotton wool.

Child nutrition at its simplest

With the help of his youngest son, Alama, Gary Moller demonstrates how easy it can be to provide good nutrition for a child.

Is the cough caused by too much sugar?

Gary,
I have been told my kid has a cough because she has too much sugar and had poor immunity.

All I can find on the internet are hundred of references to Dr Stolls claims that sugar does affect immunity.

I know sudden high levels are not advisable - sugar rush - adrenalin injection, etc.

any input appreciated

thanks
John
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Gary Moller comments:

Notes:

1. There is growing evidence that high intakes can weaken the immune system over time. I have no doubt and as parents we should err on the side of caution.
2. There are many ailments related to high sugar intake including diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
3. Sugar comes in many forms. All carbohydrates, other than indegiestible forms like starch, become simple sugars with digestion, so noodles, bread, corn flakes and most fat free foods are ultimately sugar.
4. With processed sugar and carbohydrate products comes many other potentially harmful things like colourings, flavourings, preservatives, stabilisers, trans fats and so on that may become toixic to the growing child.
5. It may not be the sugar that is causing the cough. A high sugar diet may be indicative of a diet that is low in the fat soluble vitamins. Vitamins A, D and E are essential for lung health. We can assume that she is low in these fat soluble vitamins unless she has been:
1. Eating organ meat regularly
2. Consuming whole milk, yellow butter, yellow cheese daily
3. Eating the yellow yolks of free range eggs often
4. Eating oily fish
5. Having fish head soup, beef bone broth and so on frequently
6. Taking cod liver oil
7. Getting lots of sun on her growing body
8. Getting plenty of Vitamin C which is also essential for lung health - A diet high in refined foods is usually very low in this.
6. Even quite young girls can complicate matters considerably by being picky eaters, becoming amateurish vegetarians and so on.

Possible solutions:

1. Implement all of the items detailed in 5 above
2. Supplementing the diet with a child's nutritional supplement like Floradix Kinderval, or Nutra-Life Nutrimon - plus some additional vitamin C
3. Dealing with the Picky Eater problem, if this is the case (Would some readers like to write in with their advice, please!)
   

Should I immunise my children and should I have the free influenza vaccine at work?

Hi Gary,
my work have just advised me that they will be offering free 'flu vaccinations.

Last year i did not get the flu, or a bad cold, and this year I am taking the supplements that you have been suggesting.

Will the vaccination have more probable benefits than costs?

"R" (NZ)

And:
"What's your take on immunizations? When the boys were born we had a doctor who was also a homeopath and he discouraged immunizations. I know he told us that the vaccines don't always work but they do hinder the development of the immune system so that if a person actually contracts the disease it can be much harder to treat.
We didn't avoid them completely. We've had the kids get the same immunizations I did, smallpox and polio. It seemed to me that those were both diseases that had once been very widespread and quite serious. But we backed away from measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, mumps and hepatitis B.

Some years back our original doctor moved away and the next one, not surprisingly, has a much more "mainstream" view of immunizations and has been after us to have the kids get the complete set. I'm not at all persuaded by his arguments for any of them except hepatitis B which does seem to be a pretty serious condition.

"R" (USA)
_______________________________________________
Gary Moller comments:I knew that this topic could not be avoided! The two "R's" have forced my hand. While I am not an expert on this matter, I am a parent and have followed the immunisation debate for a long time and agonised over the pros and cons again and again. I should add that I have participated in the Flu vaccine campaigns when they first came out, offering free shots to the companies that my business was contracted to provide corporate health programme to.

All four of my children have had minimal vaccinations, including the recent NZ$200+ million meningococcal B vaccination programme. Despite my children being theoretically in the high risk demographics for this terrible disease.

Here is how I understand things: All vaccines contain tiny amounts toxic metals, principally mercury and aluminium. These are highly toxic to the nervous system, particularly the developing brain. Other organs, including the pancreas which produces insulin, is extremely sensitive to mercury. Deposits of aluminum are thought by some experts to remain as an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime.

While it may be claimed that a vaccine contains "safe" or "trace" amounts of these toxic substances, we know that these metals are extremely toxic and they accumulate principally in fatty tissue, including the brain. While a single dose may, in fact be "safe" the effect is similar to what happens with x-ray imaging: The doses are cumulative and the average child may have 30, 40 or more shots of metal-laden vaccine by age 5. Besides; what really is "safe". We know that a small percentage of the population is very sensitive to mercury and what say your child is one of them?

Being cumulative, we must take into account exposure to these toxic metals from all sources, including contaminated foods, water and even cooking utensils and amalgam fillings. While no single source may be "unsafe" the sad fact is exposure from all sources can add up to being pretty damn scary!

Here is a calculator to work out how much cumulative mercury you and your children have been exposed to from vaccinations: http://www.909shot.com/Issues/HgCalculator.htm

We must also take account the synergistic interaction with other heavy metal contaminants, principally lead, and their cumulative effects on sensitive organs including the brain. Once in the body, these are not easy to get rid of and the health effects can be devastating. Incidentally, the non toxic metal magnesium is known to be a weak heavy metal chelator - freeing them so that they can be expelled from the body.

While we may not be able to do anything about many sources of contamination, it just makes good sense to reduce exposure to the "controllable sources" of contamination, including vaccinations.

Do vaccines per se cause harm, or is it the metal ingredients?
As you would gather from the above, I believe there is cause for parental concern about the metals that are found in vaccines and in increasing amounts from environmental contamination. I am not convinced that the vaccines themselves are the main risk of causing adverse effects. Having said this, there is a girl (Now a grown woman) living not far from us who is in a permanent vegetative state as a consequence of the MMR vaccine and the first patient ever assigned to me after graduating was in a wheel chair after the small pox vaccine prior to her big OE got into her spinal cord.

Should you vaccinate your child?
This is a really tough one for parents and one we agonise about constantly. In each case it is a matter of assessing the risks and making the appropriate decision. In our case, we have decided that a good diet, a warm home, good oral hygiene, hand washing, regular dental care, lots of sunlight and exercise and exposure to bugs early in life offset the risks of not being vaccinated. We prefer not to risk the brains of our children from excessive toxic metal contamination. This strategy has served us well for 24 years.

We ensured that each child received their mother's antibodies via her breast milk and we took every opportunity to expose our kids to childhood bugs including measles, mumps and chickenpox. The sooner a child is exposed to these the better. If a child's friend had chickenpox, we asked if our child could visit to play.

If, as adults, they decide to undergo vaccination for this or that, then that is their choice which we have given them. In one of our daughter's cases, she received several vaccinations when she enrolled in the army. That was her choice and the risk was presumably minimal, since she was a grown woman by then with a mature nervous system and robust immune system.

What about the free annual flu vaccine?Your first defense against influenza is a strong immune system and a vaccine should not be used to make up for the lack of one. This means (for adults measures such as):

• A fresh wholefoods diet that is rich in vitamins, minerals, protein and natural anti-oxidants.
• Plenty of natural vitamin A from natural concentrated sources including animal organs, cod liver oil, grass fed butter and free range egg yolk (Incidentally many of these are the wrongly labelled "unhealthy" foods!). Stay away from synthetic vitamin A.
• Ensuring that you enter winter with optimal vitamin D levels and ensuring that your winter diet is rich in high vitamin D foods (Generally the same foods that are rich in vitamin A).
• Taking herbal and nutritional supplements that augment natural immunity such as olive leaf extract and vitamin C 
• Taking about 2,000 mg of vitamin C per day
• Getting optimum sleep
• Avoiding excess stress that leaves you wasted
• Not over-exercising

There was a time I had the annual flu vaccines. I won't any more. I will add that I have been in great health since changing my lifestyle, including work and diet and that includes getting out in the sun which I had previously avoided. Most notably, I no longer get hammered by the bugs the kids seem to bring home from school every 2nd week.

Should I allow my injured child to have an Xray or a CT Scan?

"Let's play a new game: Its called Fry Teddy"

Fact: Repeated doses of x-rays from x-ray imaging do increase your risk of developing cancer. The most potent is CT scans, one session of which carries a 1/1,000 risk of developing cancer. The risk is greatest by far with children who have rapidly dividing cells (DNA is most vulnerable to damage during the process of cell division - mitosis).

If your child is injured, such as from a fall, a CT Scan may be ordered as a matter of course to assist with making an accurate diagnosis. An accurate diagnosis is most important, especially if internal injury to the abdomen or brain is suspected. However; those regions of the body are the last places one would ever want to irradiate, especially of a child.

I have written about this before and am writing about it again because the use of the CT Scan continues to be routine in this country and my questioning of doctors and radiologists shows an appalling level of ignorance and lack of any concern about the known health risks of CT Scans. This continues despite the facts and the availability of excellent alternatives.

You can curb the risk from excessive radiation by insisting on using other imaging methods that do not involve radiation these include MRI and ultrasound.

If you are asked to consent to your child undergoing a CT SCan, my advice to you is to refuse to allow it. Insist on readily available alternatives and do not allow yourself to be fobbed off by excuses about availability or extra cost, or flippant comments about how miniscule the risks are - this is your child's long term health that you are dealing with here!

Please read my earlier articles about this most important health issue.
Here and
Here is the original.

How modern lifestyle can ruin your child's vision

Children of all ages are constantly learning new things. The first 2 years of life are especially important in the growth and development of your child's brain. During this time, children need good, positive interaction with other children and adults. Too much television can negatively affect early brain development. This is especially true at younger ages, when learning to talk and play with others is so important."

For one of the most concise and informative articles on the issue of TV and child health, click on the linked title above. This article concentrates on how television, can affect child development including eyesight.

"In Singapore, 80% of 18-year-old men recruited to the army are short-sighted. This compares with 25% just 30 years ago. There has also been an increase in the number of people with extreme myopia, which can lead to blindness. In Sweden, 50% of 12-year-old children are short-sighted. That is expected to be 70% by the time they are 18".
...As kids spend more time indoors, on computers or watching telly, we are going to become just as myopic," said Ian Morgan. ". BBC News.

It has been long known that if, for example, we were to take a group of kids and place them in a submarine for a month, all would emerge with degrees of short-sightedness.

It is not the submarine or the TV that is doing the damage, what causes the damage is not allowing the child's eye and brain to focus on distant objects.

When was the last time your child looked at the moon and the stars? Has your child ever played "spot the airplane?" Has your child ever been bird-watching? Does your child play in open spaces daily? How often do you take your child to the beach or for a hike in the hills? Has your child a kite?

Or does your child start the day with television before being driven to school enclosed in a tinted glass case? Is the school play area an enclosed courtyard? If your child plays sport, is it indoors? Does your child watch several hours of television or play computer games?

The brain and the eye adapt to the conditions they find and, if that does not include constant daily use of long vision, then long vision simply does not develop. Once into adulthood that's it - no long vision - Ever! Your child has no choice. As parents you have taken it away and instead you have given your child a lifetime of expensive optometrists and the inconvenience of wearing glasses

I am so thankful to my Mum and Dad that I was raised in the country, spending more hours running about the fields than being indoors.

For your child, or grandchildren, the actions for ensuring healthy eyesight are obvious. It is time to act now.

Stomach surgery 'needed for teens'

"Surgeons are calling for children to be offered publicly funded stomach-stapling operations in a bid to treat soaring rates of extreme obesity.

New Zealand hospitals have been reluctant to consider weight-loss operations in young adolescents because of the risks of major surgery, and the potential for long-term complications such as nutrient deficiency.

However, growing numbers of teenagers are so overweight they are suffering diseases previously seen almost exclusively in adults.

These include type-2 diabetes, sleep apnoea, high blood pressure and gall bladder disease.
Some are at risk of heart attacks and strokes in their 20s.

Paediatric surgeons are saying it is time to make stomach-stapling surgery more readily available with the complicated health needs of morbidly obese adolescents now impacting on the care of other children.... The surgery can cost between $12,000 and $20,000 and about 400 a year were done, most on adults and only a handful publicly funded. "

To read the full article, click on the title above.
_______________________________________

Gary Moller comments:This kind of surgery produces a very uncomfortable feeling in my gut. The reason why is that stomach stapling surgery is an over-priced solution that, at best, only indirectly targets the cause which is the lifestyle of the positionally challenged. It is symptomatic of irresponsible, neglectful parenting, poor food choices and a societal bureaucracy that engenders a fear of all things natural, including the outdoors, sunshine and water.

There is an alternative to stomach stapling: I used to run rehabilitation programmes for long term Accident Compensation clients: people who had been seriously injured, incompletely rehabilitated following surgery, consequently losing their jobs and becoming unemployable due to ongoing health problems, loss of work skills, confidence and poor personal habits.

Rehabilitation focussed on gradually replacing old unhealthy habits with healthy ones. This was a challenging process that took 12 weeks to be successful. Successful it was, and almost without exception - and for a cost of from $3-$6,000. What was a constant frustration were the constant demands by the health and funding agencies to cut back on the cost of these programmes, the preference being to spend their money on high technology surgical solutions at quadruple the cost or more. These intervention programme were progressively reduced to about 5 weeks for several hundred dollars - effectively rendering them a complete waste of time.

The same model of gradual behavioural change can and should be applied in cases of extreme childhood and teen obesity and they need to involve the entire family. Costing probably no more than $6,000 and lasting 12 weeks, the outcome will be fit, strong and healthy families that play together.

This is a far better prospect than surgically turning out thinner teens who then face uncertain lives that are still a constant daily preoccupation with food and at serious risk of malnutrition-related ailments and shortened lives.

Note: The Google Adsense ads to the right of this article can interesting to peruse. You will see that there is quite an industry, involving drugs and surgery, surrounding obesity. It is no conicidence that the call by surgeons for public funding of this kind of surgery for teens comes at the time of year of greatest over-indulgence and just in time to capitalise on all the New Year's resolutions for weight loss. Am I just being too cynical?)

Some Australian childcare centres now requiring wearing of sunglasses

"Australian eye experts say childcare centres and schools should be keeping children in the shade in the middle of the day and teaching them to wear sunglasses as well as hats and sunscreen. "

"My children go to childcare. They have to wear hats outside and sunscreen and I think sunglasses should be part of that," said the father of Georgia, almost three, and Thomas, one."There's no reason they shouldn't be wearing them. There's no harm that will come to them from wearing them. It's all good for their long-term sight."

For more, click the hyperlinked title and the following: http://www.babybanz.co.nz/news.php

_________________________________

Gary Moller comments:

We are seeing an explosion of ailments that are associated with lack of sunshine. These include spontaneous childhood fractures (Gilchrist fractures), depresssion, a resurgence of tuberculosis, ulcerative digestive tract diseases, neurological diseases like multiple sclerosis and all manner of terrifying cancers, including breast, prostate and cervical cancer.

A single-minded attempt to terrorise entire populations, regardless of skin type, about the dangers of sunlight in order to prevent a single disease (melanoma) is contributing to this explosion of diseases - if not being the principal cause.

We know, for instance, that exposure of skin to sunlight during the adolescent years can reduce a girl's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer by up to 50%. Do you hear about that from the cancer prevention agencies? No!

Bright sunlight on the face during the morning hours suppresses the hormone melatonin which causes sleepiness and depression. Wearing dark glasses during the day upsets the body's natural day-night biorythms, including suppression of melatonin during waking hours. Should we be doing this to our children from their earliest years?

As an aside, large floppy hats and sunglasses on children prevent the proper development of peripheral vision which is essential for safety and sporting activities. If not developed during early childhood this ability is lost forever.

The Australian, New Zealand or US Cancer Society and the rest that are spear-heading this erroneous and scandalous campaign of terror and consequent illness have no credibility as neutral advisors on the matter. This is because of the fact that much of their revenue is reliant on the sale of commercial products including protective clothing, sunscreen, hats and sunglasses. They have no credibility, so my advice is to take their advice with a grain of salt.

Running - Being good racers in training and losing the plot

I don't think a lot of NZ coaches have really grasped the finer points of Lydiard’s coaching, I’m seeing young runners grinding out over the Waitakeres most weekends going flat out, I'm not hearing the message train don't strain, I'm hearing a message of mileage instead of time spent training.

A group of young adults goes out over the Waitakeres whether they are bent on competing I’m not sure, they go out together but come back down at one hang of a pace spread-eagled possibly racing each other back down. Their best is being given on the Waitakeres.
Our best results are coming from athletes trained by overseas coaches.

It’s the problem when a few coaches have all the talent under their wing, if they don't do a good job all the talent isn't developed properly.

There needs to be a message of balance, knowing when to ease off and listening to your own body rather than religiously following a coach.

Wayne

Photo: 1970's Canterbury, New Zealand Korean training camp when NZ was the Mecca for runners: the long sunday pack runs were part of a carefully managed buildup plan. There were no heroics.

______________________________
Gary Moller comments:
Wayne, These observations and comments are right on the mark and get to the heart of one of the reasons why New Zealand has lost the running plot after having been consistently at the top of the running world.

If you read my articles about Kenyan running, you will realise that Kenyans commence their running from a very early age, with brief bursts of intensity when playing games like soccer. This very much describes my own upbringing in rural New Zealand of the 1950's. It is only after a decade and a half later that the Kenyans, as young adults, are subjected to big running miles at pace and gut-heaving anaerobic work.

Lydiard alway worked on the basis that it took 8-10 years to build a champion. How right he was and how right he still is.

To take teenage boys and girls with the best of just a few years of running behind them and have them racing the lenght of the Waitakeres is really dumb. It is a recipe for disaster. End of story!

Biking to work too dangerous - cycling advocate

Cycling campaigners say fewer people are cycling to work because the practice is becoming more dangerous and difficult.

Figures from the 2006 Census show 38,000 people routinely bike to work, down from 41,000 five years ago and 51,000 10 years ago.
The Cycling Advocates Network says people are afraid to cycle because there are too many cars on the road, travelling too fast.
It says a large increase in funding for projects to encourage cycling is needed.
____________________________

Gary Moller comments:

What a child learns when young, he or she will be very likely to continue as an adult; even if there has been a long break. On the other hand; if a child does not participate in an activity and learn the basic skills, then he or she is unlikely to take up that, or similar activities later on.
Girls are by far the least likely to take up an outdoors activity later on - lack of basic skills, soft bodies, gender bias and stereotyping, fear of sunlight, fear of bugs and fear of strangers lurking the bushes see to that.
My little boy is the only child in the Central Wellington City suburb of Brooklyn to ride a bicycle to school which I feel very sad about.
This is the trend that is happening now and it is showing in activities like cycling. The majority of young adults have had little or no practice riding a bike. Riding on roads nowadays requires a high level of skill from Day One on the road and few youngsters are learning these. It is therefore no surprise that total numbers of cyclists is on the decline.

How do Kenyan runners train?

This is an interesting website page about how Kenyan runners train, including what is done with older school children.

The general gist of it is this: If you want to be as fast as a Kenyan then you have to train at about the lactate threshold (Don't worry about what this means, other than that you need to hike along most of the time!).

If you carefully read my earlier article about Kenyan Training Secrets, you will see I have a different angle on their training. It is what they (Kenyans) do from birth that produces the adult champions. As we can see from the current state of affairs of athletics in soft countrys like NZ and the US, our trying to copy them by following what is published by the "experts" is a disaster. We could learn a few lessons by reviewing Arthur Lydiard's pioneering work. When viewed macroscopically Kenyan training is very similar to Lydiard's structure that steadily builds an athlete to peak performance over 8-10 years .

If we want to beat the Kenyans then we need to start by toughening up our kids from birth by making them run and walk everywhere, preferably barefoot, doing chores about the yard and lifting heavy weights in between (This is low intensity endurance and strength work). When they have time off, they can play typical kids games like soccer and scampering away from adults with big sticks! (Speed and agility training).


After 15 or so years of hard labour they are then ready for all the fancy speed work - and who cares in what form that is because it is the early years that is the foundation of Kenyan running performance.

Vitamin D deficiency linked to tuberculosis, flu and other respiratory diseases

"..the researchers point to studies showing that in winter, colds, flu, and other respiratory diseases are more common and more likely to be deadly than they are in summer. During winter, ultraviolet-light exposure tends to be low because people spend more time indoors and the atmosphere filters out more of the sun's rays, especially at mid and high latitudes.
Cannell's group cites a 1997 study showing that the rate of pneumonia in Ethiopian children with rickets, and therefore a likely vitamin D deficiency, was 13 times as high as in children without that disease. The researchers also point to five studies since the 1930s that have linked reduced risks of infectious disease to dietary supplementation with cod liver oil, a rich source of vitamin D."
__________________________________________

Gary Moller Comments:

It has always fascinated me why, in summer, there is less flu, why we are happier and why more babies are conceived.
A boys' school in Palmerson North. NZ, has suffered a terrifying outbreak of tuberculosis that has spread like wild fire through the pupils. Cases are now turning up in a nearby girls' school. Doctors in sunny Waikato have recently reported an upsurge in cases of rickets while doctors here in Wellington recently reported disturbingly low levels of vitamin D in immigrant populations. Is there a link? How could third world diseases like these be turning up in a country like New Zealand?
"Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet light reaches the skin. This can add up to a deficiency in production of vitamin D, which might explain why respiratory infections are common and severe in winter." (Quoted from the same report above).
I believe these Drs are dead right: Keeping our children swaddled head to toe in clothes and not allowing them to go outside to play in the sun is at the heart of the problem. Whether it be the flu, TB, meningococcal disease, rickets, osteoporosis or depression, our first defence is ensuring that we have adequate vitamin D levels.
Back in the old days, the sickly (including those with TB) were sent up to the fresh air of the mountainside sanitorium. Was the real health benefits from the exposure to unfiltered UVB?
To date, every person who has consulted me about a chronic ailment and subsequently had a blood test of vitamin D levels, has come up as deficient, or dangerously close to being so.
Note: If you have a blood test and your Dr prescribes a vitmain D supplements, ensure that your blood levels are closely monitored because it is easy to overdose. Getting D from the sun is safe because the production mechanism turns off once levels get high - the body is very smart!

technorati tags: vitamin+d, tuberculosis, influenza, sunlight, meningococcal, sanitorium

Wrist fractures in children on the increase due to lack of sunlight

The following extract is from the newsletter of the Vitamin D Council. It relates to my concerns about the harm we are doing to our children by keeping them out of the sun, especially our Polynesian and darker-skinned citizens for whom skin cancer is a non-issue.

To work out what are your Optimum Vitamin D levels to reduce risk of heart disease, cancer and auto immune diseases, go here
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Photo: Jasmine and Alama Moller, dressing appropriately according to their skin type

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I have always been very protective of my children's health. I made sure they ate right, went to bed on time, and always wore sunblock. A few weeks ago, my 16 year old computer whiz son decided to start jogging instead of playing computer games all weekend. The very first day he came home with his right foot hurting and the doctor said the x-ray showed he had broken a bone in his foot, a "stress fracture," from jogging! He didn't step on anything or twist his ankle, it just broke for no reason. The doctor told him he should drink more milk but he drinks plenty of milk. What could have caused this?

April in Duluth, Minnesota

Dear April:

Your son had what I call a "Gilchrest fracture." About 30 years ago, dermatologists like Barbara Gilchrest at Boston University, began telling Americans, including children, to stay out of the sun, lather on the sunblock, and to "drink milk" if they are concerned about vitamin D. The problem is that your son would have to drink at least 40 glasses of milk a day to get enough vitamin D if he followed her sun-avoidance advice and it sounds like he did.

Gilchrest fractures are vitamin D deficiency fractures in healthy people that occur after normal activities. Two studies have clearly linked such fractures to low vitamin D levels. A recent Finnish study found Gilchrest fractures to be almost four times more likely in young soldiers with vitamin D levels below 30 ng/ml (75 nmol/L). An earlier study of Israeli soldiers showed the same thing. The surprising thing about both studies was none of the men were obviously vitamin D deficient, indicating - once again - that current lower limits of vitamin D blood levels are set too low and that serum 25(OH)D levels should be maintained at 50 - 70 ng/ml, year around.
Ruohola JP et al. Association between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and bone stress fractures in Finnish young men. J Bone Miner Res. 2006 Sep;21(9):1483-8.
Givon U et al. Stress fractures in the Israeli defense forces from 1995 to 1996. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2000 Apr;(373):227-32.

The rates of Gilchrest fractures, even in young people, have been steadily increasing over the last thirty years, since dermatologists have been handing out their pathological advice. For example, the incidence of fractured wrists in American kids went up 32% in boys and 56% in girls between the years 1970 and 2000.
Khosla S, et al. Incidence of childhood distal forearm fractures over 30 years: a population-based study. JAMA. 2003 Sep 17;290(11):1479-85.
A study in Great Britain showed a clear latitudinal variation with the lowest fracture rates in sunnier southeast England and the highest rates in of Gilchrest fractures in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
Cooper C, et al. Epidemiology of childhood fractures in Britain: a study using the general practice research database. J Bone Miner Res. 2004 Dec;19(12):1976-81.

The good news is that your son only suffered a broken foot by following Professor Gilchrest's advice. As you will see below, others have lost their lives.

Flat Head (Positional Plagiocephaly) is on the rise

What Is Positional Plagiocephaly?Positional plagiocephaly is a disorder in which the back or one side of an infant's head is flattened, often with little hair growing in that area. It's usually caused when a baby spends a lot of time lying on the back or is frequently left in a position where the head is resting against a flat surface (such as in cribs, strollers, swings, and playpens). Because infants' heads are soft to allow for the incredible brain growth that occurs in the first year of life, they're susceptible to being "molded" into a flat shape.

The number of positional plagiocephaly cases increased sixfold from 1992 to 1994, occurring in approximately 33 out of every 10,000 births. The reason for this dramatic increase is that in 1992 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) began its "Back to Sleep" campaign, which continues to recommend that babies sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)."

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Gary Moller comments:

My mother, Maisie, a retired primary school teacher, commented some time ago that this preventible deformity is much more common nowadays because of parents being told make their infants sleep on their backs to prevent SIDS. According to researchers she was right on the button. Do we really want to be producing a whole lot of kids with plates for heads?

A further problem associated with an infant spending excessive time on their back is slow development. Before a baby can roll, then, crawl, then walk; it must be able to lift its head and develop strong back muscles. To lift its head and to develop the postural muscles, the baby must spend plenty of its waking time lying on its tummy.

Here we see a further example of the dangers of prescriptive advice: fix one problem while causing a whole lot of new ones.

Here is some really sensible advice:

Because babies like to have something interesting to look at, they tend to turn their head to look out into their room rather than toward the wall. This way they can see you as you come and go.
Here’s how you can change the position of your baby’s head while still giving her the same ‘view’.

• One day, place your baby with her head at the head of the crib.
• The next day, place your baby with her head at the foot of the crib.
• Each day, alternate your baby’s orientation in the crib.
• Check to make sure that your baby is always looking out into the room.

And I will add the following:

• Have your baby with you when it is sleeping during the day and let it sleep on its tummy then or on its side (Incidentally, we raised our children in a bustling and noisy household. The adults ruled the roost. They quickly learned to sleep through just about anything!).
• When awake, place your baby on its tummy, so that it learns to lift its head.

As with most medical problems of our own making, the solutions are often ridiculously simple.

New products added to www.myotec.co.nz

A new range of products has been added to the myotec store. These are the Red Seal Floradix Tonics which provide rapid and complete absorption with nothing other than ntural ingredients, no preservatives, colourings or sweeteners:

Floradix Magnesium
Floradix Kinderval for children
Floradix Tonic and
Floradix Calcium and Magnesium

Also added is Red Seal's Crampbuster which is a special magnesium and potassium formulation for athletes to use during intense training and competition.

The Red Seal Effergize range is replaced by these delicious and natural formulations.

Purchase more than $50 worth of product and you will definitely save as compared to what you pay in the stores, including supermarkets.

Here is the direct link to these products for more information.

• Floradix
• Crampbuster

Some barriers to effective injury prevention in sports and recreation

Are we losing the battle for effective injury prevention in sports and recreation? Is this because of changes that are happening in society that are beyond our control? Are there things that we can do to wrestle back control?

I do not set out to offer any answers in this article. While I have opinions as to what can be done, my intention is to add fuel to the fires of discussion.

New Zealand Society

The erosion of the traditional weekend and the 9-5 working day

With more and more parents working longer hours and not having the traditional time off over the Saturday and Sunday, organised sport suffers terribly. This means children do less after school sport and less sport in the weekends. Fewer parents are available to help out, including coaching, refereeing and officiating.

This means we are producing unfit, poorly skilled kids who are at much serious risk of injury doing disorganised activity, like jumping off rooftops and riding bikes at breakneck speed down mountain-sides

The Break up of the family

This causes huge financial stresses on the family which means the children caught up in the mess are less involved in organised sport and recreation. The single parent charged with the bulk of care is pressed for time. Even if sport was an option, this may not happen because the weekends are the usual time for being shipped off to the non-custodial parent. A treat at MacDonald’s is more likely to happen than participating in obesity fighting organised weekend sport.

Absent fathers

Each day when I run alongside my little boy as he rides his bike to and from school, I ask, “Where have all the men gone?” Are they invisible? There is only one male teacher at his school and he is the Principal. Boys and girls need male role models, starting with fathers who are active, daily participants in their lives.

Fathers tend to do more rough and tumble activities with their children than their mothers. Like little bear cubs, little kids need this kind of boisterous activity to develop essential motor skills, as well as learning when to back off to avoid hurting themselves and others. It is all too common to see both young men and women who have not learned these essential behavioural limits. Fathers are very good at teaching this. But they have to be around.

Fathers are more inclined to throw a ball and to be involved in sports teams, clubs and coaching. Fathers are essential sports and recreation safety management role models for their boys and girls. Too many children miss out on this exposure. If Dad is not around to teach their child how to safely ride a bike down a steep slope, who will they learn from? What happens when the little boy grows up and buys his first motorbike? Mother was there but she was too busy driving them to and from school, doing the laundry and attending the second job to pay for the babysitting.

Coaching

The demise of the club

I was once told by a senior sports and recreation official that one club or society closes every day in NZ. This is disastrous. For example, the majority of tennis courts in New Zealand now sprout weeds or are now dotted with cheap apartments. Where have the children gone who used to populate the tennis courts after school and weekends?

As clubs disappear, so does organised sport and coaching structures. It is replaced by disorganised sporting and recreation activities that are without proper coaching programmes and safety management.

Busy parents and expensive programmes

Stressed, busy, financially pressured parents are not available to help organise sporting and recreation activities. This is causing an ongoing erosion of the volunteer base that is the backbone of NZ sport and recreation. It is being replaced only where those parents can afford it, by professionals, including commercial programmes. Many parents cannot afford to have their children participate in these programmes.

The dismantling of generic coaching certification

As of December 2006, SPARC shuts down the Coaching New Zealand Level One and Two coaching education and certification programmes. (It scrapped the impressive level Three course in 2002 and the rest is in a state of disrepair).

The responsibility for coaching education is being shifted from a centrally administered generic coaching course to individual sports codes to organise themselves. I do not agree with this. In SPARC’s defence, they did inherit a programme that had been steadily run into the dirt over many years and efforts to resuscitate it were going to require considerable time and effort. Effective coaching, including sports injury prevention, requires an army of volunteer coaches who have demonstrated competency in the basics of coaching. Shutting down this generic coaching programme is a mistake.

90% of coaching is generic. So, a good swimming coach could be a good rugby coach so long as he or she completes a couple of modules on the specifics of rugby. Clive Woodward, coach of the victorious English World Cup Rugby team, is switching to professional football. There is no need to repeat the educational modules on child development, nutrition, physiology, and psychology and safety management – other than the 10% that is specific to the sport in question.

Parents follow their children as they move from one sport to another and it is these parents who become the volunteer coaches. If parents are going to have to attend and pass (and pay) a coaching course that takes several days of their time each time their children swap sports, they simply won’t do it. They may be prepared to do it once and then give up a few hours once or twice a year to learn the 10% that is specific to the sport they are switching to.

The big sports like soccer and rugby have the size and the resources and international supporting structures to be able to look after their own coaching programmes. The same cannot be said of the majority of NZ’s sports codes which struggle just to survive. Coaching programmes that are developed today will mostly fall into states of disrepair as time passes. This is the nature of NZ sport, unless the programmes are maintained and driven by a central authority that also exercises responsibility for quality control.

I have had a lot of contact over the years with coaches and athletes in the USA. From what I can gather, the USA is a coaching disaster because there is no centralised structure. Everybody does their own thing and this applies to most sports. There is no consistency in practice, or in the way that knowledge and experience is passed on. They have serious problems and these show in their performances on the international stage. Outside of a handful of sports, the USA punches way below it weight for its population and rich resources. And where it does excel, this success is often reliant on talented imports.

For the sake of injury prevention, let alone anything else, let’s not go down the same treacherous path that has been taken by the USA.

Why did Myra take up mountain bike racing?

Wayne asks the following:
I was looking at Myra's CV, it was interesting to note that she was a high achiever in running, given the discussion that went on about the drop in numbers of runners, I wonder if a blog should be done about how Myra made a choice on to favour cycling over running., I"m sure that athletics is losing big numbers to other sports, obviously mountain biking was never a competing sport against running, there are so many other sports around now that never used to be around. what was it that Myra was looking for in a sport that mountain biking had that running didn't?

Gary Moller comments:
While I can't speak for Myra, I can offer a parent's viewpoint.
Yes, Myra was a talented runner and, like her brother and sister, were regular place-getters in junior athletics. This was with little in the way of hard training. I concentrated on giving the kids the skills to do a sport well and refrained from any hint of heavy duty training. The number one priority was to instil a love of physical activity - not to put them off for life as so often happens!

This development of skills included the use of professional coaches. However, the moment a coach started to get serious and begin asking the kids to start doing, say, early morning training sessions, I would ask them if they would like to do another sport. Their response was always highly approving. So, despite being proficient runners and swimmers at a young age, I switched them back and forth between various sports, including spring board diving, biking and soccer, to name some.

In addition to the development of a skills base at an early age and a love of sport, I also worked on the basis that a young person will gravitate to the activity that most suits them - so long as they are given a sufficiently rich sporting experience as youngsters. This is what happened.

In Myra's case, she showed a talent for riding bikes and, despite my competitive background as a cyclist, she was soon making me struggle to keep up when climbing steep Wellington hills. Myra is simply doing what she loves and what she is very good at.

I would add that this approach that I have taken with my children is in stark contrast to so called "talent identification" programmes that are getting much attention nowadays. Personally, I am sceptical about their suitability for the NZ temperament. Children will only stick at a sport if they love it. Otherwise, they will give it away first chance they get.

SPARC TO REVIEW CO-ORDINATION OF FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS

SSPARC TO REVIEW CO-ORDINATION OF FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS
(New Zealand Press Association Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Wellington, April 9 NZPA

Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sparc) has rejected a suggestion it is spending too much on elite sport to the detriment of the grassroots, saying it believes it has got the mix right. But Sparc chief executive Nick Hill agrees issues involving funding of schools' sport will have to be addressed.

Secondary Schools Association president Graham Young has said Sparc would do better to look at its own performance at delivering funding in a timely and reasonable manner, rather than focusing on how many medals New Zealand wins at future international games after a poor return at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

Sparc had predicted 46 medals from last month's Melbourne Commonwealth Games but New Zealand only won 31 -- its poorest haul since Brisbane in 1982.
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Gary Moller Comments
When a teenager, I played tennis with my two brothers just about every day – even in the rain. Every little community in New Zealand had at least one tennis club. Back then, New Zealand was a strong competitor on the international tennis scene. New Zealand Tennis, as I recall, concentrated most of its resources in its elite tennis programme – Davis Cup to be exact. Clubs were largely left to look after themselves with little input or assistance from the governing body.
By the mid 1980’s New Zealand Tennis woke up to reality: its base of clubs had fallen into a near terminal collapse of disrepair and declining numbers and, with that, their supply of talented new players had all but dried up. The consequence of this neglect is weed-infested tennis courts in just about every town and we had dropped right down towards the bottom of international rankings.

The peak of a sport's pyramid is dependent on the width of its base. Erode away the base and the peak will eventually be lowered. This is what has happened with tennis and we can see the same happening with other sports like athletics. Of course, the solutions are not simple and sports with a huge base will still struggle if the structures are not in place to nurture their youngsters through to the senior grades - NZ soccer would be a good example of this.

I agree with Graham Young that there is disproportionate funding going into the elite grades and not enough is being done to halt the catastrophic loss of clubs, or to ensure that structures are in place to nurture youngsters through to senior grades. We need to get a move on: As one senior sports and recreation official quipped to me a few years ago; "Sports clubs are closing at about the rate of one per day".