Author: Paul Handover

Back to dogs!

And back to The Conversation.

I was discussing with Mr. P. (he of Wibble) yesterday the pros and cons of republishing material from The Conversation and I noticed this recent essay there.

It’s a very positive message but I will let you read it in full.

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Anthrax vs. cancer – researchers harness the deadly toxin to cure dogs and hopefully people

Dogs with terminal bladder cancer improved with this new modified anthrax treatment.
Lucky Business/Shutterstock.com

R. Claudio Aguilar, Purdue University

Can the feared anthrax toxin become an ally in the war against cancer? Successful treatment of pet dogs suffering bladder cancer with an anthrax-related treatment suggest so.

Anthrax is a disease caused by a bacterium, known as Bacillus anthracis, which releases a toxin that causes the skin to break down and forms ulcers, and triggers pneumonia and muscle and chest pain. To add to its sinister resumé, and underscore its lethal effects, this toxin has been infamously used as a bioweapon.

However, my colleagues and I found a way to tame this killer and put it to good use against another menace: bladder cancer.

I am a biochemist and cell biologist who has been working on research and development of novel therapeutic approaches against cancer and genetic diseases for more than 20 years. Our lab has investigated, designed and adapted agents to fight disease; this is our latest exciting story.

Pressing needs

Among all cancers, the one affecting the bladder is the sixth most common and in 2019 caused more than 17,000 deaths in the U.S.
Of all patients that receive surgery to remove this cancer, about 70% will return to the physician’s office with more tumors. This is psychologically devastating for the patient and makes the cancer of the bladder one of the most expensive to treat.

To make things worse, currently there is a worldwide shortage of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, a bacterium used to make the preferred immunotherapy for decreasing bladder cancer recurrence after surgery. This situation has left doctors struggling to meet the needs of their patients. Therefore, there is a clear need for more effective strategies to treat bladder cancer.

Anthrax comes to the rescue

Years ago scientists in the Collier lab modified the anthrax toxin by physically linking it to a naturally occurring protein called the epidermal growth factor (EGF) that binds to the EGF receptor, which is abundant on the surface of bladder cancer cells. When the EGF protein binds to the receptor – like a key fits a lock – it causes the cell to engulf the EGF-anthrax toxin, which then induces the cancer cell to commit suicide (a process called apoptosis), while leaving healthy cells alone.

The EGF-anthrax protein binds to bladder cancer cells triggering apoptosis or programmed cell death, which is a regulated process leading to the death of cell.
Soleil Nordic/Shutterstock.com

In collaboration with colleagues at Indiana University medical school, Harvard University and MIT, we designed a strategy to eliminate tumors using this modified toxin. Together we demonstrated that this novel approach allowed us to eliminate tumor cells taken from human, dog and mouse bladder cancer.

This highlights the potential of this agent to provide an efficient and fast alternative to the current treatments (which can take between two and three hours to administer over a period of months). I also think it is good news is that the modified anthrax toxin spared normal cells. This suggests that this treatment could have fewer side effects.

Helping our best friends

These encouraging results led my lab to join forces with Dr. Knapp’s group at the Purdue veterinary hospital to treat pet dogs suffering from bladder cancer.

Canine patients for whom all available conventional anti-cancer therapeutics were unsuccessful were considered eligible for these tests. Only after standard tests proved the agent to be safe in laboratory animals, and with the consent of their owners, six eligible dogs with terminal bladder cancer were treated with the anthrax toxin-derived agent.

Two to five doses of this medicine, delivered directly inside the bladder via a catheter, was enough to shrink the tumor by an average of 30%. We consider these results impressive given the initial large size of the tumor and its resistance to other treatments.

There is hope for all

Our collaborators at Indiana University Hospital surgically removed bladder cells from human patients and sent them to my lab for testing the agent. At Purdue my team found these cells to be very sensitive to the anthrax toxin-derived agent as well. These results suggest that this novel anti-bladder cancer strategy could be effective in human patients.

The treatment strategy that we have devised is still experimental. Therefore, it is not available for treatment of human patients yet. Nevertheless, my team is actively seeking the needed economic support and required approvals to move this therapeutic approach into human clinical trials. Plans to develop a new, even better generation of agents and to expand their application to the fight against other cancers are ongoing.

[ Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today. ]The Conversation

R. Claudio Aguilar, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Purdue University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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So I republished this from The Conversation in accordance with their republishing rules. As they put it:

You are free to republish this article both online and in print. We ask that you follow some simple guidelines.

Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author, their institute, and mention that the article was originally published on The Conversation.

Regular readers of this place may notice some subtle differences because up until now I had just copied and pasted the article as posted.

How to live with uncertainty.

Another essay that is nothing to do with dogs!

I have long been a subscriber to The Conversation. They seem to be politically neutral as well as giving permission for their essays to be republished elsewhere.

This particular essay chimed with me because for some time, one or two years sort of time-span, the number of people agreeing with the statement, “It’s a strange world“, has measurably grown. At first I thought it was a question of politics, both sides of The Atlantic, but I have recently come to the opinion that it is deeper than that.

This encapsulates the idea perfectly.

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How CEOs, experts and philosophers see the world’s biggest risks differently

By   Professor of Ethics and Business Law, University of St. Thomas

January 27, 2020

We live in a world threatened by numerous existential risks that no country or organization can resolve alone, such as climate change, extreme weather and the coronavirus.

But in order to adequately address them, we need agreement on which are priorities – and which aren’t.

As it happens, the policymakers and business leaders who largely determine which risks become global priorities spent a week in January mingling in the mountainous resort of Davos for an annual meeting of the world’s elite.

I participated in a global risk assessment survey that informed those at the Davos summit on what they should be paying the most attention to. The results, drawn from experts in a broad range of disciplines including business, happen to be very different from what company CEOs specifically see as the biggest threats they face.

As a philosopher, I found the differences curious. They highlight two contrasting ways of seeing the world – with significant consequences for our ability to address societal risks.

Wildfires in Australia have destroyed more than 3,000 homes and razed more than 10.6 million hectares since September. AP Photo/Noah Berger

Two perspectives on the biggest risks

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report consolidates the perceptions of about 800 experts in business, government and civil society to rank “the world’s most pressing challenges” for the coming year by likelihood and impact.

In 2020, extreme weather, a failure to act on climate change and natural disasters topped the list of risks in terms of likelihood of occurrence. In terms of impact, the top three were climate action failure, weapons of mass destruction and a loss of biodiversity.

The specific perspective of corporate leaders, however, is captured in another survey that highlights what they perceive as the biggest risks to their own businesses’ growth prospects. Conducted by consultancy PwC since 1998, it also holds sway in Davos. I’ve been involved in that report as well when I used to work for the organization.

In sharp contrast to the World Economic Forum’s risk report, the CEO survey found that the top three risks to business this year are overregulation, trade conflicts and uncertain economic growth.

President Trump’s trade war and other economic concerns tend to be the focus of corporate CEOs. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Economic or ethical

What explains such a big difference in how these groups see the greatest threats?

I wanted to look at this question more deeply, beyond one year’s assessment, so I did a simple analysis of 14 years of data generated by the two reports. My findings are only inferences from publicly available data, and it should be noted that the two surveys have different methodologies and ask different questions that may shape respondents’ answers.

A key difference I observed is that business leaders tend to think in economic terms first and ethical terms second. That is, businesses, as you’d expect, tend to focus on their short-term economic situation, while civil society and other experts in the Global Risk Report focus on longer-term social and environmental consequences.

For example, year after year, CEOs have named a comparatively stable set of narrow concerns. Overregulation is among the main three threats in all but one of the years – and is frequently at the top of the list. Availability of talent, government fiscal concerns and the economy were also frequently mentioned over the past 14 years.

In contrast, the Global Risk Report tends to reflect a greater evolution in the types of risks the world faces, with concerns about the environment and existential threats growing increasingly prominent over the past five years, while economic and geopolitical risks have faded after dominating in the late 2000s.

A philosophical perspective

Risk surveys are useful tools for understanding what matters to CEOs and civil society. Philosophy is useful for considering why their priorities differ, and whose are likelier to be right.

Fundamentally, risks are about interests. Businesses want a minimum of regulations so they can make more money today. Experts representing constituencies beyond just business place a greater emphasis on the common good, now and in the future.

When interests are in tension, philosophy can help us sort between them. And while I’m sympathetic to CEOs’ desire to run their businesses without regulatory interference, I’m concerned that these short-term economic considerations often impede long-term ethical goals, such as looking after the well-being of the environment.

An uncertain world

Experts agree on at least one thing: The world faces dire risks.

This year’s Global Risk Report, titled, “An Unsettled World,” depicts on its cover a vulnerable earth in the shadow of a gigantic whirlpool.

The cover photograph of the Global CEO Survey, which reported the lowest CEO confidence in economic growth since the Great Recession, shows an incoming tide beneath looming dark clouds, with the words: “Navigating the Rising Tide of Uncertainty.”

Between the covers, however, the reports demonstrate a wide gap between two influential groups that need to be on the same page if we hope to resolve the world’s biggest threats.

Last century, in the same year that World War II drew to a close, Bertrand Russell proclaimed that

Bertrand Russell. Naci Yavuz/Shurterstock.com

the purpose of philosophy was to teach us “how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.”

In the 21st century, philosophy can remind us of our unfortunate tendency to let economic priorities paralyze action on more pressing concerns.

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]

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Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher. Well he was that and much more. Wikipedia remind us that he “was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.”

He died at the age of 97 on the 2nd February, 1970; fifty years ago as of yesterday.

I’ll close with another quote from the great man:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. …”

Picture Parade Three Hundred and Twenty-Three

A wonderful collection of pictures of dogs

Taken from the AKC website.

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More in a week’s time.

 

This is just amazing!

A YouTube from 2002.

It’s just six-and-a-half minutes long. Please watch it!

Then ponder on how these dogs were trained up to such a high standard!

Here’s the introduction to the video.

Hooked On Swing

World renowned dog trainer Mary Ray performs her “Hooked on Swing” routine at Crufts in 2002 with a couple of dancing dogs, Quincy and Kizzy as her dance partners. Since some of the tunes are Glenn Miller songs Mary is dressed in an authentic uniform from the World War Two era. A great performance that both Dance Fans and Dog Lovers should find entertaining.

Incredible!

The GR7 by Tom

Another republication of the Spanish walk by Tom and Chica.

There was such a wonderful response to the post on the 28th January that I decided to republish another one. This time I have started at the beginning.

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The GR7

The road less travelled…..

If you tell someone you’re planning a long walk in Spain, they will mostly assume you’re talking about the Camino de Santiago pilgrim trail across northern Spain. Tom being a bit of a misanthrope said he’d rather go somewhere less crowded.

We are familiar with a part of the GR7 as it runs through the Serrania de Ronda where we have spent a few recent winters. After more research it was decided that this would be the most interesting.

The GR7 starts on the south coast at Tarifa, near Gibraltar, and then runs up through the Los Alcornocales, a beautiful forest of cork oaks, then into the Grazalema National Park before reaching the city of Ronda. Dramatically perched above a deep gorge, Ronda is our favourite city.

From there the route turns eastwards towards Antequera and passes through the Parque Natural del Torcal whose bizarre rocky outcrops form one of the most impressive karst landscapes in Europe.

Shortly beyond, the route splits and Tom and Chica will be taking the southern variation through many small villages into Las Alpajarras. Then it heads up into the Sierra Nevada and there it may get tricky depending on the snow level. Chica isn’t keen on being belly deep in snow!

As the route heads north inland from the east coast, it is all new territory for us. There should be a couple of visits to both our charities near Alicante and Valencia and then due north to the border with Andorra. The final stop for recuperation will be with good friend, Kate, in the Pyrenees.

Day 1: Chica’s Challenge begins!!

Chica’s Challenge started today at Playa Chica.

At last, after a fair few hitches and glitches, Tom and Chica took their first steps on a journey that will take them right across Spain to Andorra on the GR7 route. The start is at the aptly (and purely coincidentally) named Playa Chica, which is the most southerly point of mainland Europe. From here, you have the Med to the east, the Atlantic to the west and Africa on the horizon. It’s an epic trip and one that only around five people complete every year. It should cover a variety of landscapes, starting today with the beautiful beaches of Tarifa and the surrounding area. As it’s a Saturday, with a good strong breeze, the kite surfers were out in force. It’s quite a sight!

Kite surfers at Valdavaqueros

Today was a short toddle, by comparison with what will follow – just 11k in about 2.5 hours. The route was almost entirely on the beach and Tom shed his shoes and walked barefoot. It might be the only time that will be possible.

Given that he is recovering from flu an easy start seemed a good plan – definitely so as it’s now raining! Chica, however, needs to understand that stopping to investigate every interesting smell would mean the walk would take several years.

We will be posting a blog every day of the walk, with information on the route, the scenery and the flora and fauna. Tom isn’t able to carry field guides – too much extra weight – so identification from any of our followers would be appreciated, starting with these shells found on the beach today. These pics will be posted on our instagram page too.

Shells found on the beach at Valdevaqueros

As well as posting our position, hopefully using Viewranger (we’re working on this) we will also give our position using What Three Words. Tonight’s are: tigress, asked, varies. This is fun and will be another way of ensuring that the back up team (me) can hook up with them.

Stay with us!

Just this far to go….

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This is an incredible journey and I’m so pleased that Tom is happy for me to share it with you.

And, please, do follow Tom and Chica directly.

Personal protection dogs

From someone who knows!

From time to time I have an offer of a guest post. That is a person who wishes to write for Learning from Dogs. In nearly all cases I say ‘yes please’.

So it was with Adrian.

On the 15th January this year Adrian emailed me:

Hi Paul,

My name is Adrian and I am reaching out on behalf of Scott’s Police K9. I’ve followed your Learning from Dogs blog for a while now!

We write content for the family protection dog industry and love to share our expertise.

I’ll keep it short, I think I could be a valuable contributor and I would love to provide additional content to your site!

Please let me know if you are interested, I will send you a couple suggestions to choose from, which I feel would resonate with your readers’ interests. We’re also open to topic suggestions that you might want to touch upon on.

Thanks for your time and we hope to hear back from you soon.

Adrian Brito
On Behalf of Scott’s Police K9
https://scottsk9.com/

I replied to say that I would love a guest post, and here it is!

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How to Get Your New Protection Dog Adjusted to the Family

By Steve Scott

If you’re the new parent of a protection dog, congratulations! You just made one of the best purchases for you and your family’s well being. Personal protection dogs are loyal animals that will happily become one of the “pack” and put all of its training, skills, and intelligence to work in looking after your family.

Should you be on the verge of bringing home your new family member, you’ll likely be wondering how to help them adjust to life at their new home. Read on for the best tips and tricks for a smooth adjustment for your trained K9 companion.

Visits with the Family

Dogs, even intelligent ones, prefer to be familiar with their surroundings, people, and environment. When your protection dog is being raised and trained, it will be beneficial to visit and begin bonding with the dog.

Bring each member of your family, and any important people your protection dog will be in charge of protecting once you take them home. If you have another dog and the trainer or foster allows it, provide some time for your protection dog to play with your current family pet.

Getting to know your protection dog before the big day when you take them home will help them, and you adjust to the new living arrangement. They will begin to associate you with someone they enjoy being around and when it comes time for you to train with the dog and the trainer, you’ll be a step ahead.

During this time, the dog shouldn’t leave the trainer or foster parent to spend time with you. Instead, you should visit the dog in the environment and surrounding it knows best with the trainer present.

Time of Day

When the big day comes, and it’s time to bring your personal protection dog home, plan to do so early in the day. Great protection dogs are raised to protect you and they’ll want to get a good look at their surroundings.

Moving a dog at night will cause a greater sense of unease and anxiety.

Introduce them to unfamiliar territory when there is plenty of daylight and the opportunity to explore together. Show them your house, the surrounding, and if you live in a place with property, walk the land with your new pup.

This will help them get oriented with the place they have sworn to protect and settle them in right away.

Be Ready for Their Arrival

When you bring your personal protection dog home, be ready for their arrival. Have their food bowl ready and filled. Ensure they have fresh water and a comfortable place to sleep. Acquaint them with their belongings, toys, dog bed, and everything related to their personal ownership.

Be prepared to spend most of the day with your dog, getting him used to your house, property, and your family. It’s important that you don’t bring your dog home then leave shortly after.

Adjusting your dog to your home and family takes time and is a crucial part of the bonding process.

Establish a Routine

All dogs thrive on routine. Help your new protection dog get to know yours. It’s a good idea to bring your protection dog home when life is normal, and you’re not planning on going on vacation in the following week.

Give them time to adjust to your routine. Protection dogs like knowing what to expect, what type of work they’ll regularly do, and the way your “pack” functions so they can better serve you.

Will you take them with you to work? Start taking them right away and put routines in place, so your protection dog knows this will happen regularly.

Will you leave them with your spouse and child at home? Have a ritual of letting them know you’re leaving and make sure they know that their job is to take care of your loved ones.

Plan regular times of continued training, running and playing daily after work and on the weekends. This will help them smoothly fit into the regular ebb and flow of your family’s work, school, and routine schedules. Also, protection dogs love to remain active.

Supervision Required

As you show your new protection dog around the house, yard, property, and introduce them to friends and family members they haven’t met, keep in mind that supervision is required.

They will still be getting used to their new location and the people they are supposed to protect, and introductions are best done in person with you by their side. Supervision is especially important when it comes to spending time with small children for the first several months.

Are You Ready?

Introducing your protection dog to its new home is an exciting and fun time. You alone have the opportunity to make its first impression the best one possible. How you begin life at home for your protection dog goes a long way in setting the tone for how it lives with you, your family, and your friends.

Are you ready for your protection dog to make its grand entrance?

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I asked for some background and this is what was sent:

Steve Scott – After his service in the Army, Steve pursued a career in Law Enforcement, earning honors as the head trainer of his Police Department’s K9 Unit. Steve’s real-world police K9 experience is what sets Scott’s Police K9 apart from other protection dog companies. With Steve’s dog training expertise and his access to the top European kennels, our Family Protection Dogs and trained Police Dogs are second to none.

This is a fabulous piece of advice. From, I have to say, someone who jolly well knows what he is talking about!

More please!

This is a walk and a half!

An outstanding walk.

Tom came to Learning from Dogs a short while ago and signed up to follow the blog. As is usual, I went across to his blog in order to leave a thank-you note. I was flabbergasted at what I saw. Tom and his two dogs were walking across Spain. He called his blog Chica’s Challenge and this is what he wrote on his home page.

First, Tom decided he wanted to do a long walk.
Then he thought Spain would be nice as it has to be in winter.
And he’d like to take Chica, our podenco.
As an afterthought, he said, “Maybe we could raise some money?”
“Who for?” I asked.
“Well, as I’m taking Chica and it’s in Spain, I guess for Spanish podencos.”
“Great idea! I’ll write the blog!”

I wanted to follow his posts and did so.

Then I wanted to republish a post and asked Tom if I had his permission to so do.

“Of course”, came the reply.

So I am going to republish the post that was Day 7 of the walk.

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Chica’s Challenge

One dog and her man walking across Spain, raising money for their podenco friends.

Day 7: Jimena de la Frontera to Cerra de la Fantasia 20k

The last two days were non-walking days, one for bad weather and another to move base again. Now we have the luxury of being in a house for a while in Jimera de Libar, a village we know well.

So the day started with the drive back to Jimena and the weather looked reasonable. Again, Merlin refused to be left so the three of them set off up the path, climbing steadily for the first hour and a half.

Climbing path
Spanish Fir / Pinsapo (Abies Pinsapo) in the background

The path eventually levelled out and passed beneath the rocky outcrops of the Altos de Paneron and Cerro de Marin. After a bare rocky sections where the route was harder to determine, they went into dense forest of oak and Spanish fir (we love these and call them lollipop trees because of their shape). Both dogs in great form, but Tom was mean and moody :).

Dark clouds were gathering from all directions but the view to the coast was still impressive. However, it wasn’t long before the rain began and the temperature dropped.

Looking south – you can just see the sea

Fortunately the rest of the route was on a well-defined and signposted track, winding down through the cork oaks in the midst of the Los Alcornacales. It was here deep in the forest that I eventually picked them up. I had forgotten that smaller Spanish roads aren’t always roads as I know them and the last five and a half miles I was driving along a rough track with no mobile signal, not at all sure I was in the right place. Even though we have a 4×4, I made very slow progress and it was with considerable relief that I found them, damp but completely unconcerned.

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In the original some of the photographs were side-by-side but in copying them across I chose to enlarge them.

The start of Tom’s walk may be seen here and I thoroughly recommend that you read it in full.

I shall continue to follow Tom’s walk and may republish another post.

This has nothing to do with dogs!

But everything to do with staying fit and healthy.

There are many things that I read first thing in the morning before I am dressed. Ninety-nine percent of them I don’t share with you.

But the following caused me to a) reflect on whether I was guilty of doing this, and b) how many others know of this.

One of the results of having 4,000 (bar 25) followers of this place is that I feel a certain obligation to share certain news.

It was published on The Conversation and is free to reproduce.

So here goes:

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The serious consequence of exercising too much, too fast

Exercising too much, too hard can lead not only to burnout but sometimes to a serious condition that can harm the kidneys.

By , Associate Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Wayne State University, January 24th, 2020.

Every 365.25 days, when the Earth completes a full orbit around the Sun, we humans have the opportunity to hit the reset button and become fitter, finer versions of ourselves. As usual for January, social media is humming with advice on how to eat better, exercise regularly, lose weight and remain healthy. We feel particularly invincible at this time of year, armed with renewed vigor and motivation to purge ourselves from previous indulgences and our couch-potato ways.

The New Year is also the time when our overzealous, instant-gratification selves emerge, and we do too much exercise too soon to make up for lost time. Exhaustive muscular work, especially following a period of inactivity, can cause mechanical and chemical disruptions to muscle cell membranes which trigger the muscle cells to burst.

I am an exercise physiologist and sports medicine specialist who studies exercise-associated collapse. I am seeing and hearing of more incidents of skeletal muscle ruptures that are causing harm in other parts of the body.

This information is not designed to scare people back onto the couch. The key take-away from highlighting these cases is to remind athletes, coaches and mere mortals that the desired physiological response to a training stimulus requires both a gradual buildup period and period of recovery in between training sessions.

A cross-section of the human kidneys, which can be injured when muscle cells rupture and send toxic chemicals into the bloodstream. crystal light/Shutterstock.com

More than muscle injury

The medical term for skeletal muscle cell rupture is “rhabdomyolysis,” or “rhabdo” for short. When muscle cells rupture or explode, the intracellular contents are released into the bloodstream. These cellular contents include enzymes, such as creatine kinase; electrolytes, such as potassium; and proteins, such as myoglobin.

Myoglobin, in particular, is a big, red protein that can block the kidney filtration system, or renal tubules, that serve as kidney plumbing. It also can dissociate into toxic byproducts that injure kidneys. In rare cases, too much myoglobin in the bloodstream can stop kidney function altogether, as happened with a 27-year old marathon runner who died from kidney failure.

In a study we conducted on college swimmers, we saw a cluster of rhabdomyolysis, in which six out of 34 swimmers were hospitalized after participating in a 20-minute or so “arm competition” to see how many pull-ups, rows and bench presses they could complete. Cases of “symptomatic rhabdo,” or those needing medical treatment, appear to be increasing within collegiate sports teams at an alarming rate, with the characteristic appearance seen in football players returning to January practice after a season-ending holiday layoff.

To date, 17 cases of team rhabdo have occurred from doing “too much, too soon, too fast” and include a variety of sports such as football, swimming, lacrosse, soccer, track, basketball, softball, volleyball and golf.

Noncompetitive athletes affected too

So, what about us mere mortals trying to get back in shape? Any physical activity that is either new or excessive can cause symptomatic rhabdo. Excessive gardening, weightlifting, CrossFit type activities and even a routine Army physical fitness test have triggered symptomatic rhabdo with kidney injury.

Over 90 cases of rhabdo have been documented after spinning, while 119 high school students in Taiwan ended up in the emergency room after their teacher made them complete 120 push-ups within five minutes. Thus, harmful muscle cell rupture can occur after any degree five minutes to 36 hours of exuberant and/or unaccustomed physical activity.

In combination, gradual training and appropriate recovery allow beneficial muscular, cardiovascular and body composition adaptations to occur, such as building muscle, increasing fitness and losing body fat. Our research confirms that a two-week gradual introduction into training after a layoff is required for muscle cell membranes to fully adapt to training stress.

Subclinical rhabdo, or muscle breakdown without acute kidney injury or debilitating symptoms, is common and represents the typical response to training which does not require medical treatment. However, hard exercise, especially following a layoff, with the following signs or symptoms within one to two days requires an appropriate medical examination:

    • excruciating muscle pain that does not resolve over time
    • muscle swelling with limitations in movement
    • nausea or vomiting, or both
    • very dark (looks like Coca-Cola) or sparse urine.

There are risk factors which increase the likelihood of developing rhabdo following a workout. These risk factors include exercising in the heat, dehydration or overhydration, binge drinking, excessive coffee consumption, extreme dietary practices (vegetarian or high [protein] https://doi.org/10.1097/JSM.0000000000000310)) and possessing the sickle cell trait. Both men and women can develop symptomatic rhabdo, although we see more cases in men. Smaller arm muscles appear more susceptible to rupture after five to 30 minutes of exercise than bigger leg muscles for reasons that remain unclear.

Although symptomatic rhabdomyolysis is uncommon, this emergent complication of exercise should be on everyone’s radar since cases are on the rise. We coaches, trainers, scientists, practitioners and others encourage everyone to reap the joys and benefits of regular exercise training. However, we caution against exercising too much too soon. Self- (or coach-) inflicted skeletal muscle cell explosions are fully preventable with adherence to smart, physiologically sound approaches to training.

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Now there’s an element of me not really understanding this (and I haven’t yet watched the video) but that’s no reason not to share it with you.

What do you think? Wiser to share it or too much a case of worrying? Tamara Hew-Butler certainly knows all about this.

I will never tire of writing about dogs!

This is another astounding article about a dog.

It happens to be in Georgia but from the dog’s point of view it could be anywhere in the world.

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Dog Stops Traffic So Group Of Kids Can Safely Cross The Street

Such a thoughtful pup.

By
Published On 01/22/2020

Photo Credit: Beqa Tsinadze

Unfortunately, there are still some drivers out there who apparently don’t know how to treat pedestrians with the respect that they deserve.

But this little dog is doing his best to set them straight.

The other day, Beqa Tsinadze happened upon a curious scene in the town of Batumi, Georgia. There, at a clearly marked crosswalk, a group of young kids were waiting for cars to yield so they could safely cross the road.

Photo Credit: Beqa Tsinadze

Regrettably, though, it seems that many drivers weren’t eager to extend that courtesy without being told to.

So, that’s exactly what this dog did — taking on the role of crossing guard on the kids’ behalf. The moment was captured on video.

The thoughtful dog tackled the situation like a pro. But apparently this wasn’t just a one-time thing.

Tsinadze shared another video of the same dog stopping traffic and escorting yet another group of kids across the street.

Photo Credit: Beqa Tsinadze

Though it’s unclear why the pup came to adopt the role of crossing guard, it may be as a way of saying thanks.

According to Georgian media, the dog arrived to the area as a helpless stray a few years back, and has since endeared himself to members of the community who have taken it upon themselves to care for him.

The report above states that the dog goes by several names among folks in the neighborhood who know him — but there’s no doubt that you’d be safe in calling him a very good boy.

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Another wonderful report.

I’m sorry, I ought to write more but I would only be waffling!