Men's Health Australia October 2018

At Men’s Health our mission is simple: we set out to give men the tools they need to lead better lives. We want to help you take control of the most complicated issues in your life. Your relationships. Your careers. Your waistlines. But I’ve realised that philosophy is skewed in a particular direction. To put it bluntly, we focus on life not death. Should the Grim Reaper make a cameo appearance it’s either in a story about dodging his sinister embrace or in a flip headline (Live To 100 And Die Having Sex!). All of which makes the story on p84, Fear: A User’s Guide, especially important. In the feature, golfer Jarrod Lyle details his battle with leukemia. He’d twice beaten the cancer already, in 1998 as a teenager and again in 2012,…

While your faith in science is admirable, it would be nonetheless naive to suppose that we have reached the stage at which food is interchangeable with tablets. However, it appears that you are not alone – recent reports show almost half of us take vitamins daily, with sales now outstripping that of painkillers. What you need to know is that there’s a very good reason they’re called “supplements”. Popping a multivitamin with your plate of chips is no replacement for a proper meal. Aside from their lack of dietary fibre, kilojoules and fats, synthetic nutrients are not utilised by your body quite so easily as those from wholefoods. “Some pills disintegrate too slowly for your body to fully absorb the vitamins,” says nutritionist James White. However, using tablets as a daily top-up…

FOR RESTLESS SLEEPERS Magnesium For sounder shut-eye, you need to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. A magnesium tablet before bed will ensure you rest easy. FOR HARD TRAINERS Vitamins A & D Heavy lifting can weaken your immune system, so counteract this with cod liver oil, an all-in-one hit that’s a great source of both. FOR STRESSED WORKERS Rhodiola This medicinal herb is an adaptogen that adjusts to your body’s needs. If your levels of the stress hormone cortisol are too high, it will crush them.…

I’ve been working late and haven’t eaten yet. What’s the best thing I can pick up from Woolworths past dinner time? It depends. Have you done any training today? Not today, though I do go to the gym most days. Your muscles won’t need tons of fuel tonight. Try pre-cooked salmon on beans and a bag of veg. Add sweet chilli sauce if you think you’ll need extra carbs for tomorrow’s session. What should I be picking on training days, then? Again, it depends. A weights session requires more protein and carbs for repair than a jog. It’s usually an hour of weights, occasionally just a quick run. On strength days, a chicken pasta salad. For cardio, a three-egg Spanish omelette. Sorted!…

If you suffer a meltdown every time you leave your noise-cancellers at home, there could be many reasons for your separation anxiety. Perhaps you’re sensitive to background noise, or just find other people irritating. Most likely, you’ve become addicted to the mental stimulation from your smart device. But boredom has its benefits: “Focusing all your attention on what’s coming through your headphones gives your mind no space to wander,” says sports psychologist Victor Thompson. “Over time, this lack of headspace hinders both memory and problem-solving.” Neuroimaging scans show that our brains are more active when we’re daydreaming than when we’re focused on a task. Plus, Einstein claimed his best ideas came to him on his daily walk – and he wasn’t plugged into a podcast, was he?…

60 SECONDS TO ADD STAMINA TO YOUR BREAKFAST BOWL AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, you can’t move for bogus ‘superfoods’ crowding the supermarket aisles. Whether it’s another wonder grain of the ancients, a lesser-known cruciferous variety or just blueberries again, the abundance of rehashed PR health claims can often crowd out the new and far more interesting discoveries of genuine science. Exhibit A: the pomegranate seed. While the juice of the fruit has already soaked up its fair share of hype, work at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne has found that pomegranate seeds contain a molecule that improves a cell’s ability to recycle its mitochondria – its battery pack, in effect. They tested their findings by feeding mice a serum loaded with this substance and monitoring the rodents’ endurance while running. The…