You Can't Get Too Much Sleep. Don't listen to the headlines—you need more than seven hours of sleep to play hard.

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bodywork/the-fit-list/You-Cant-Get-Too-Much-Sleep.html

Seven is the new eight. That’s what the headlines have been saying recently, in the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s report that the Centers for Disease Control is rethinking how much sleep we truly need to optimize our health. If you’re an athlete, however, think again; seven is not your lucky number.

While many athletes barely skim that seven hour mark, their performance improves remarkably with more sleep. A lot more sleep. 

After Stanford University basketball players spent five to seven weeks sleeping at least 10 hours a night (when they had been sleeping six to nine hours), their performance shot up like they’d doped. They had faster sprint times and shooting accuracy. They also felt their overall physical and mental well-being improved during games and practice.

The body’s major restorative functions "like muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormone release occur mostly, or in some cases only, during sleep," Harvard Medical School explains. It makes sense that athletes who tax their muscles more than the average person need more sleep to fix the damage. It appears that extra, above eight-hour sleep benefits athletes rather than contributing to an early demise. "You can never get 'too much' sleep," University of Pennsylvania sleep researcher Dr. Sigrid Veasey wrote Outside in an email. "When you have had enough sleep you will wake up." 

(And you'll be more alert and have improved cognitive function if you're getting eight hours, she adds)

So where does the seven-hour ideal come from? Support for the less-is-more position has been building since 2002, when researchers published a study involving more than 1.1 million people. In it, scientists concluded that people who sleep about seven hours a night live longer than those who get more or less zzz's. In fact, sleeping longer than eight hours a night, the researchers noted, is associated with health issues such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.  

"It is important to understand that this 7 vs. 8 hours finding was not a carefully controlled study but is an association found retrospectively…this pertains only to longevity," Veasey wrote. It’s entirely possible that illness caused people surveyed to sleep longer, not the other way around. 

Bottom Line: How much is "enough" varies from person to person. While some people may thrive on seven hours of sleep, others may need nine to shine. If you’re active, science says you should aim for at least eight. But if you get more, you’ll likely be doing your athleticism a favor; Lebron James and Roger Federer reportedly sleep 12 hours a night. And, you know, they’re pretty good. 

Pemi Loop

I finally had a chance to make it back up to the Pemi Loop this past weekend.  I had been up there about four weeks ago, but bailed at Galehead as I needed to get home to let the dogs out, the Partial Pemi.

I ran the typical counter-clockwise direction, hitting Bondcliff (4265'), Bond (4698'), South Twin (4902'), Garfield (4500'), Lafayette (5260'), Lincoln (5089'), Liberty (4459'), and Flume (4328').  I ended up with 29.2 miles and 9,060' of gain over the span of the loop, with a total clock time of 8:40 and a moving time of 7:44 (too many stops?). 

Photos
Strava - Pemi Loop

The Lincoln Woods lot was pretty full when I pulled in around 6:30am.  Despite this, the trails were pretty empty for a Saturday.

I took it easy as I headed up the Wilderness Trail.  I have learned that running this 4.5 mile section fast will come back to haunt you.  I ended up arriving at the entrance to the Bondcliff Trail in a little over 45 minutes. This section marks the beginning of the 4'ish mile climb to Bondcliff.

I did not pass anyone on the way up Bondcliff and did not see my first hiker until I was almost at the top of Bond.  This would be the only person I would see until the top of South Twinway.

I arrived at the Gailhead hut about 20 minutes slower than four weeks ago.  This was fine as I was told there had been a lot of showers the day before, which had made the trails incredibly slippery.

The section to Garfield was about as bad as it gets.  There is a fair bit of angled slabs which I was not able to get any traction on.  I also nailed my left toe and took one good digger, which as luck would have it, threw me into a soft section of ground.

I regretted not topping my water bottles off at the Garfield spring, as I had downed more than I expected during my one plus hour trek from Gailhead to Garfield. I should have known better as I seem to always run out of water by the time I arrive at Flume.

As is typically the case, I got my second wind after I cleared the summit of Lafayette, which is always packed. There were a few large groups of hikers on the ridge line, but I was able to make really good time to Flume.  I was extremely hungry at this point, but was also out of water, so decided to forgo eating the nut butter I had brought along.

The trip down the Osseo Trail went by quickly. Shockingly, I did not pass a single person.

The 1.6'ish miles back on the Wilderness Trail to the start were as painful as ever.  It is a short distance, but is fairly straight and seems to take forever.

I hope to get back up one more time before fall, which hopefully more vertical under my belt.  I would love to break 8 hours, but am woefully out of shape for that kind of performance.

The Truth About Cholesterol

http://gizmodo.com/the-truth-about-cholesterol-1618109844

For years conventional medicine has told us that high cholesterol levels contribute to heart disease, and as a result, doctors have instructed patients to keep cholesterol levels low – at nearly any cost. Recent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that this all-or-nothing approach to cholesterol and heart disease is short-sighted, and could result in some unintended adverse consequences.

Facts

Cholesterol (in a nutshell)

A waxy solid, cholesterol is both a lipid (fat) as well as a sterol (steroid alcohol from which steroid hormones are produced). It moves throughout the bloodstream, attached to triglycerides and phospholipids, and together the three are known as a lipoprotein.

HDL and LDL

There are two types of lipoproteins – high-density lipoproteins (HDL) and low-density lipoproteins (LDL). The former have a higher protein to fat ratio, while the latter have a lower one.

LDLs transport cholesterol throughout your body to the cells and tissues that require it, while HDLs collect any excess cholesterol and deliver it to the liver, which may use it to produce bile, or otherwise recycle it.

If there is extra fat and cholesterol in the system, there will be too many LDLs, and rather than delivering necessary cholesterol, they will begin to deposit extra cholesterol in the arteries – potentially causing atherosclerosis, blockages and heart attacks. (See: How a Heart Attack Works)

The body makes its own cholesterol.

Necessary for a variety of functions, nearly every cell in the body can produce its own cholesterol. Regulated by certain proteins, when cholesterol levels are low, one protein signals the cell to produce two other proteins – one type that makes cholesterol and another that works with LDLs to help them retrieve the cholesterol.

Although the cells can make cholesterol, the liver is the body's primary producer, and it makes enough to share with other parts of the body.

What the body needs to make cholesterol is carbon, the most basic building block of life present in a wide variety of foods, including fats, proteins and carbohydrates. In fact, you can have a completely cholesterol-free diet, and your body can still make tons of cholesterol.

Cholesterol is necessary for the production of Vitamin D and sex hormones.

In order to turn sunlight into the Vitamin D necessary for a healthy immune system and strong bones, your body keeps a form of cholesterol in your skin, which absorbs the sun's radiation and converts it into a substance that the liver works on to make hydroxyvitamin D. This latter is then sent to the kidneys, which convert it into usable Vitamin D.

Similarly, the sterols in cholesterol (steroid alcohols) are essential building blocks for creating the human sex hormones (which are steroids), these include estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.

Cholesterol is necessary to form the outer coating of cells.

An major component of the plasma membrane, or outer coating of cells, the rigidity of cholesterol helps support the cell's structure and can affect its fluidity, even preventing membranes from freezing.

Cholesterol is integral to the production of bile, itself necessary for the digestion of food.

The body converts cholesterol into bile salts that are secreted into bile.

Bile breaks down fats in the digestive tract, turning fats into bite-sized morsels suitable for interacting with digestive enzymes, and also helps the small intestine absorb fats.

Myths

Cardiovascular disease primarily afflicts people with high cholesterol.

According to cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, fewer than half of the people who enter hospitals with cardiovascular disease have high cholesterol.

Having high "good" cholesterol means you are less likely to have a heart attack.

Not necessarily. In a 2012 study published in The Lancet, it was revealed that when a person has high HDL simply due to genetic predisposition, he has no lower risk of a heart attack.

Statin drugs are completely benign and prevent deaths from heart disease.

Patients complain of a variety of unwanted side effects from taking statins including muscle pain, fatigue and forgetfulness.

In addition, although one study showed lower mortality from heart disease in women who took statins, most research shows no difference between those who take statin drugs, and those who do not.

In fact, the only group for whom statin drugs have consistently shown a beneficial effect are middle-aged men who have previously suffered a heart attack.

Eating high cholesterol foods increases cholesterol in your blood.

Although years ago people with high cholesterol were warned off of high cholesterol foods like eggs and shrimp, better understanding of nutrition has revealed that cholesterol in food has far less effect on blood cholesterol than other types foods, particularly saturated fats.

High cholesterol means a short life.

In a 2003 study looking at 4,521 men and women age 65-94, rather than high cholesterol being culpable for shorter lifespans, it was found that low cholesterol was correlated with a higher risk of early death.

Bonus Potential Facts

Inflammation, rather than LDL, may be a better predictor of heart disease.

Research has repeatedly shown a link between C-reactive protein (CRP), a "marker for inflammation in the body," and heart disease. And although the jury is still out, many believe that CRP may be a better indicator for developing heart disease than high "bad" cholesterol (LDL) levels.

The biggest contributor to inflammation (and heart disease) may be high-glycemic carbohydrates.

Carbs that are the easiest to digest, like those found in most processed foods as well as sugars and commercially available breads and sweets, are termed "high-glycemic," meaning they turn into blood sugar (glucose) quicker than lower glycemic foods.

Recent scholarship is beginning to identify a strong link between consumption of high-glycemic foods and heart disease, and the culprit, many feel, is that the additional spike in glucose stimulates inflammation, fat production and insulin resistance.

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Melissa writes for the wildly popular interesting fact website TodayIFoundOut.com. To subscribe to Today I Found Out's "Daily Knowledge" newsletter,click here or like them on Facebook here. You can also check 'em out on YouTube here.

Ketogenic diet speeds weight loss and starves cancer, say experts

http://www.examiner.com/article/low-carb-ketogenic-diet-aids-weight-loss-and-starves-cancer-say-experts

The ketogenic diet has various health applications, including accelerating weight loss, reversing type 2 diabetes, curbing epilepsy-induced seizures, and preventing cancer, Dr. Dominic D'Agostino said on a July 29 podcast with fitness author Jimmy Moore.

"The ketogenic diet has such a tremendous track record, for seizures, type 2 diabetes and other emerging diseases," said Dr. D'Agostino. "It's a very effective metabolic therapy."

D'Agostino is an assistant professor at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology. He has made headlines for his groundbreaking research on the use of the ketogenic diet to manage advanced metastatic cancer.

Moore is a health blogger and author of Keto Clarity, which many call the definitive guide to the ketogenic diet. But Jimmy didn't just research the ketogenic diet; he used it to lose 180 pounds and turn his life around.

Moore, who once tipped the scales at 410 pounds, now weighs around 230 and has never looked or felt better. He is convinced the ketogenic diet saved his life and feels others can also benefit from it.

KD Reverses Type 2 Diabetes and Prevents Epiletic Seizures

Moore and D'Agostino join a growing list of health experts who say unprocessed saturated fat does not cause obesity, diabetes, or heart disease.

To the contrary, research suggests that following a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic-style diet actually promotes weight loss and prevents heart disease, diabetes, and even Alzheimer's.

The ketogenic diet has proven effective for preventing epileptic seizures in children who don't respond to drugs, but D'Agostino's research shows its seizure-inhibiting qualities work equally well in adults.

Since 2007, Dr. D'Agostino has worked with the Office of Naval Research to assist the Navy SEALs by developing ketogenic diet strategies to protect them from the undersea environment. He found that a ketogenic diet prevented Navy SEALs from getting seizures during rigorous underwater training exercises.

On top of its disease-fighting properties, Dr. D'Agostino said a ketogenic diet may be beneficial for many people, because restricting carbs makes weight management easy and staves off almost all degenerative diseases.

Ketogenic Diet Starves Cancer

According to Dr. D'Agostino, we are only as healthy as our mitochondria, which are the power sources of all our cells, so if we keep our mitochondria healthy, we can stall the onset of age-related chronic diseases. D'Agostino's research during the past four years confirmed that a ketogenic diet successfully manages even advanced cancer.

"We've found that diet therapy can be effective in prolonging survival in mice with aggressive metastatic cancer," D'Agostino told me in an exclusive interview.

This is because nearly all the healthy cells in our body have the metabolic flexibility to use fat, glucose and ketones to survive, but cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility and require large amounts of glucose and cannot survive on ketones. So by limiting carbohydrates we can reduce glucose (and insulin) and thus restrict the primary fuel for cancer cell growth.

Seyfried: KD Beats Chemo for Almost All Cancers

D'Agostino's colleague, Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College, told me the ketogenic diet beats chemotherapyfor almost all cancers.

Seyfried's decades of research indicate cancer is a metabolic — not a genetic — disease. And his research shows the ketogenic diet effectively treats advanced cancer in mice.

These same anti-cancer properties have also been observed in human cancer patients and reported in published studies. Today, there are about a dozen studies that are investigating the use of the ketogenic diet to manage all kinds of cancer. Those results will determine whether the medical community will adopt metabolic therapy to treat cancer in the future.

For now, both D'Agostino and Seyfried are encouraged by the growing mainstream acceptance of the low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet as a way to combat obesity, diabetes and heart disease. D'Agostino is optimistic the keto diet will emerge as a useful tool for cancer prevention and treatment.

"I have no doubt that ongoing research and clinical trials will show that the ketogenic diet slows or suppresses tumor growth," said Dr. D'Agostino. "Nutrition is the foundation of health. I hope universities will recognize this and incorporate nutrition into the medical curriculum."

Skimping On Sleep Can Stress Body And Brain

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/17/332058265/skimping-on-sleep-can-stress-body-and-brain

"The lion and calf shall lie down together," Woody Allen once wrote, "but the calf won't get much sleep."

That's pretty much the connection between stress and sleep, researchers say, and NPR's own numbers suggest the same thing. In our recent poll on stress in America, conducted in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, about 70 percent of those who reported experiencing a great deal of stress in the previous month also said they had trouble sleeping.

"Under stressful circumstances, and when people are haunted by life, they cannot sleep very well," says the University of Pittsburgh's Martica Hall.

“Sleep isn't a timeout. Everything — all the sadness, all the fears, all the angst that you have — follows you into sleep.

- Martica Hall, University of Pittsburgh sleep researcher

And no wonder. When you're feeling stressed, Hall says, your body marshals its famous fight-or-flight response. Stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenalin, are pumped out, your heart rate goes up, sugar is released into the blood, and more blood is sent to your brain and muscles. Hall says it's really hard to stay asleep through all that biological activity. She has found, for example, that cortisol — which surges to deal with that deadline or cope with that car payment — stays elevated throughout the night. So, even if you're sound asleep, cortisol is constantly nudging your brain to wake up, deal with danger — real or perceived.

"Daytime stress follows you into the night," Hall says.

Mareba Mack, a 42-year-old Air Force veteran who is now an education specialist with the Department of the Navy, says she typically wakes up four to six times a night. She'll fall asleep quickly and soundly, but be wide awake and worried a couple of hours later.

"I'm typically consumed with a thought or an idea of what I need to do," she says. "They can be work-related, or personal or just a litany of things."

Often it's a litany of stressful events. Mack recently moved from her home in Florida up to Washington, D.C. She's also a single mother of a 7-year-old with cerebral palsy. Mack feels up-rooted, anxious about her daughter, worried about work.

Throughout the night. Night after night."I'll sleep for a couple of hours, and then I'll wake," she says, "then sleep a couple of hours, and then I wake."

This kind of interrupted sleep prevents a stressed person from ever feeling well-rested.

"It's not like sleep is a timeout," Hall says. "It isn't a timeout. Everything — all the sadness, all the fears, all the angst that you have — follows you into sleep."

All adults, whether stressed or not stressed, typically wake up multiple times in a night, each time very briefly. Scientists call these moments "mini-arousals." Unstressed people go right back into deep sleep in a matter of two or three seconds. But people who report feeling lots of stress have mini-awakenings that last much longer, Hall has discovered — sometimes many minutes longer.

Most adults need between seven and eight hours of sleep every night, says Harvard Medical School's Charles Czeisler, who is chairman of the board of the National Sleep Foundation. Any less than that (if it happens regularly) is a "sleep deficiency," Czeisler says. And when we're not sleeping well, that deficiency follows us right into the next day, making it hard to handle the slings and arrows that come our way.

"The exhaustion associated with that places a physiologic burden on us," Czeisler says, "and we actually are much less resilient."

A woman I met named Amanda (she doesn't want us to use her last name because she's worried about her job) feels that burden every day. She's 34, the mother of a toddler and an infant, and gets up at 5 a.m. each day for a long commute to a full-time job as a social worker helping vets find housing in San Francisco.

"It's very rough," she says. "I've missed a lot of work because of lack of sleep." You can hear the distress in her voice. The lack of sleep, she says, makes her not only exhausted but forgetful, moody, overwhelmed.

And get all the gadgets — cellphones, computers, TV — out of the bedroom. The short-wave light that these screens emit suppresses melatonin.
Researchers do have some practical suggestions to help: Go to bed and get up at the same time every night, even on weekends. This will train your brain's biological clock to release the sleep hormone, melatonin — key to us getting that seven or eight hours we need.Some mornings, she says, after only two or three hours of sleep, "I'd wake up and my hands are shaking — and I know I can't do it."

Your Body on Brain Doping

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bodywork/the-fit-list/Inside-Red-Bulls-Project-Endurance.html

A sharp bang, like a rifle shot, echoes off the walls of the converted warehouse. There's a brief silence, then everyone heads for their bikes, checking to see whose tire has blown. I'm more worried about the guy slumped in a dentist's chair at the far end of the room, dripping sweat and dangling wires, who's getting zapped by a brain stimulator that looks like a ping-pong paddle with two heads. Did we just blow out Tim Johnson's brain?

I'm at Red Bull HQ in Santa Monica for the second iteration of Project Endurance, a boundary-pushing five-day training camp-slash-science experiment. Five world-class cyclists and triathletes will be prodded, zapped, and repeatedly pushed to their physical limits by a multinational swarm of several dozen researchers who will measure their every twitch and palpitation. The big question they're hunting: What role does the brain play in setting our physical limits? And can we change those limits—break through to another level—by trickling a small electric current through the brain's motor cortex?

To find out, Red Bull enlisted Dylan Edwards and David Putrino, a pair of Australian neuroscientists at the Burke Rehabilitation Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, to devise a five-day testing protocol—three days at Red Bull HQ in Santa Monica, two at the StubHub velodrome 20 miles down the 405 in Carson—using electric and magnetic brain stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation, EMG, EEG, and an array of other measurement tools to tease apart the effects of central (in the brain) and peripheral (in the muscles) fatigue as the athletes are pushed to the breaking point again and again. 

"I think of my brain as a tool," Johnson, a six-time national cyclocross champion, had been explaining to me a few minutes before the bang. Fortunately, it turns out that his tool is fine. If anything, it's the other way around: Johnson's brain has somehow blown a circuit in one of the brain stim machines. Testing halts for a few hours while a replacement machine is rushed into place, and I seize the opportunity to quiz Holden MacRae, a sports medicine professor at Pepperdine University who also serves as Red Bull's chief physiologist, about the project's ultimate goals.

In the late 1990s, South African researcher Tim Noakes proposed that a "central governor" in the brain prevents us from getting too dangerously close to the absolute limits of our bodies. Physiologists have been arguing ever since about the brain's role in determining truly "maximal" effort, but the bottom line is clear: "We know there's something in the brain that regulates performance," says MacRae. "Now we want to see if we can manipulate it."

To do so, they're using a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, which has experienced a wild surge in popularity among researchers over the last few years. There are studies on pain, depression, memory and learning, and enhancing the motor rehab of Parkinson's and stroke. Then, last year, Brazilian researchers published a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showing that trained cyclists produced 4 percent more power and had lower heart rate and perceived effort during an incremental test after a 10-minute bout of tDCS—and suddenly, the sports world was interested.

"It's about the nature of fatigue," explains MacRae, a trim, straight-backed figure with a faint South African accent. "Why do we slow down? Why do we make that decision to slow down?" If the answer seems obvious, think again. It's true that if you take an isolated piece of muscle in a Petri dish and jolt it with electricity over and over again, it will eventually stop twitching. That's how we usually think of fatigue—as a purely corporeal phenomenon, a mechanical breakdown. But that's not what happens in a race. You cross the line and you're still moving. Your muscles still work, and your heart's still beating. So why didn't you go faster?

When I arrived in Santa Monica (Red Bull flew me and several other science journalists in to watch the fun), the second of three days of testing in the controlled environment of Red Bull HQ was just getting started. Along with Johnson, the athletes included mountain biker Rebecca Rusch, and BMXer Mike Day, and triathletes Jesse Thomas and Sarah Piampiano, though Piampiano had to drop out of testing due to an injury she'd suffered two days earlier in the closing miles of Ironman Texas (it turned out she'd fractured her femur). Each day followed an identical program of alternating brain stimulation and cycling tests. The only difference was who received real brain stimulation and who receive sham stimulation: the subtle ants-on-your-scalp tickle that accompanies the first jolt of tDCS current fades so quickly that it's impossible to tell whether the machine is on or off after the first minute or so.

tDCS is disarmingly—almost disturbingly—simple: you connect a voltage source (a 9-volt battery will do) to two electrodes placed on opposite sides of your head. The precise placement of the electrodes determines which regions of your brain the current flows through. As it passes, the current changes the excitability of the neurons in the affected region, making them slightly easier to trigger (or harder, depending on which direction the current flows). Edwards and Putrino's primary interest in tDCS is to help patients recover from brain and spinal cord injuries—but "rehab and high-intensity training are not as different as people believe," Putrino says. "Whether you're a high-end athlete or a patient fighting locked-in syndrome, you're dealing with the same limitations of muscle fatigue."

Rusch was the first athlete on the bike. "My first thought was 'How is this different from the electroshock therapy they did in the 50s,'" she admitted as a crowd of scientists clustered around her affixing wires, sensors, and electrodes to her body. "I was like, they're going to do what to my head?" (The key difference is magnitude: electroconvulsive therapy delivers 500 to 1,000 times more current through the brain, enough to trigger seizures.) But she'd come around to the idea, lured by the promise of learning more about the hidden reserves she relies on to win races. "If you're being chased by a lion, or a car falls on a baby, you find something extra," she said. "I think we're just touching the iceberg of 'How do we train that?'"

Edwards fitted Rusch with a neoprene cap embedded with eight electrodes: one to send current, one to receive it, and the rest to monitor her brain activity. Then she took a seat in a comfortable leather recliner, closed her eyes, and let the electrons flow for the next 20 minutes. The active electrodes were positioned just above her forehead and just behind the crown of her head, sending the current through the chunk of primary motor cortex that sends signals to the legs—and, in theory, tweaking the hair-trigger response of those neurons to make sure signals would keep flowing through mounting fatigue.

That's one picture of how tDCS works, but the truth is that nobody is entirely sure how it produces all the effects observed in studies. In addition to keeping the brain's output signals high, it may alter how information from the rest of the body is received and interpreted. "We can say that (tDCS) somehow amplifies signals, but also decreases pain induced by muscle fatigue," says Alberto Priori, a researcher at the University of Milan whose seminal 2007 study showed that tDCS to the motor cortex could boost muscular endurance even in healthy subjects. It may turn out that tDCS can act in many different ways, depending on where you zap.

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What will it mean if the experiment works—if brain stimulation really does make the Red Bull athletes faster? One obvious specter is brain doping, a possibility that Brazilian researcher Alexander Okano acknowledged when I spoke to him about his research last year. The technique will lead to "benefits comparable to using drugs," he said. And "there is no known way to detect reliably whether or not a person has recently experienced brain stimulation." The safety risks of tDCS are thought to be minimal (though some researchers point out the lack of long-term studies, especially on the developing brains of young people), but the ethics of brain boosting will nonetheless require plenty of debate.

But there's a more subtle benefit from discovering that a jolt to your brain allows your muscles to go faster—because tDCS doesn't create that extra power in your muscles. It just (in theory) unlocks what was always there. And once you know it's there, you have a better chance of accessing it next time. That's what 1968 Boston Marathon champion Amby Burfoot was getting at a few years ago when he described the benefits of a "deception" workout where the coach makes you tackle an extra repeat after you think you're finished. "From this workout," he wrote, "you'll learn forever that you're capable of much more than you think. It's the most powerful lesson in running."

That lesson—and the many ways we search for it—was on my mind as I watched the cyclists tear around the velodrome on the fourth day of testing. Away from the controlled environment of the lab and its futile stationary bikes, it was easier to connect the dry clinical discussions of "maximal voluntary contraction" and "task failure" with the messy reality of no-holds-barred competition. On the first 4-kilometer time trial of the day, Johnson notched the fastest time with a 5:20, two seconds quicker than Thomas. A few hours later, after another round brain stimulation, Thomas managed to drop his time to 5:10, then stood on the sidelines cheering as Johnson, wheels tracing a perfectly level contour around the steep curves, tried to reclaim the throne. 

Stopwatches clicked as Johnson whizzed past the finish in 5:17. "Did I get him?" he panted as he circled past the finish line again a moment later. Thomas laughed. "That's the first thing I asked when I finished too. It's the same mindset." He glanced around at the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery arrayed on the infield, the laptops and transmitters, the sensors and wires poking out of his bike shorts. "You can do all this shit, but it all comes down to two guys on a bike, trying to beat each other."

That's worth remembering before we get carried away with neuro-hype. The next morning, before heading to the airport, I cornered one of Edwards's colleagues and asked for a peek at the randomization protocol from the previous day, when Johnson and Thomas had been battling back and forth. I wanted to see who got the real tDCS and who got the sham. For the first trial, Thomas got zapped and Johnson didn't. For the second trial, it was the other way around.

‘Gluten Free’ Label Now Actually Means Gluten Free

http://time.com/3082227/gluten-free-label-now-actually-means-gluten-free/

FDA enforces rule saying the claim can only be used for foods containing less than 20 parts per million of gluten

Before Aug. 5, there were no standards or regulations governing the use of gluten-free claims placed on packaged foods. As of Tuesday, however, the Food and Drug Administration determined that the claim can only be used for foods containing less than 20 parts per million of gluten.Starting Tuesday, the label “gluten free” will actually mean “gluten free.”

The FDA said that the term will still be voluntary, but that companies must market foods as gluten-free “in a truthful and not misleading manner.” Any food packaging that fails to meet its requirements “will be subject to regulatory action.”

This rule is particularly meaningful to those suffering from celiac disease, who will get sick if they eat foods containing gluten. While previously wheat was labeled on foods, the AP reports, barley and rye hadn’t always been labeled.

“A decade ago, our research determined that the prevalence of celiac disease in the United States was 1 in 133,” said Dr. Alessio Fasano, Director of the Center for Celiac Research at MassGeneral Hospital, in a statement. “Even then it was obvious that patients could not safely manage their diet without better labeling requirements. The FDA has devoted years of work to make sure the standard issued today was safe for celiac patients. Our research supports that standard.”

The FDA regulation was issued in August 2013, but wasn’t enforced until a year later.