Many prostate cancer patients choose to take nutritional supplements to improve or increase sexual potency and alleviate symptoms associated with poor prostate health. Some studies show that about half of prostate cancer patients use an herbal or dietary supplement and most do so without discussing it with their doctor.

Researchers at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., sought to determine if three widely used commercial prostate-specific dietary supplements changed the radiosensitivity of normal prostate and/or androgen-positive and -negative prostate tumor cell lines. There have been published reports of negative clinical effects for some tumor sites from the use of certain dietary supplements after chemotherapy, but the effect of dietary supplements on radiation therapy treatments is not well-known.

The study authors found that the cell growth and radiosensitivity of the malignant tumor cells were not affected by any of the supplements, but two of the supplements inhibited the growth rate of the normal prostate cell lines while a third supplement also increased the cellular radiosensitivity of some normal cell lines by inhibiting DNA repair.

“Cancer patients turn to supplements to aid in their treatments for a variety of reasons, but this study proves that what some patients believe is helping them may actually be harming them,” Brian Marples, Ph.D., senior author of the study and a radiobiologist at William Beaumont Hospital and clinical research professor at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, said. “It is very important for all patients to discuss any type of supplement they may be taking with their physician and especially important for prostate cancer patients receiving radiation therapy as this study shows that it may be negatively affecting the effectiveness of their treatments.”

Research suggests that vitamin D, which is obtained from sun exposure, some foods, and from supplements, may help prevent some cancers. Vitamin D is metabolized and most active within the kidneys. Because both the incidence of kidney cancer and the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency have increased over the past few decades, Sara Karami, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, MD, and her colleagues designed a study to explore whether occupational sunlight exposure is associated with kidney cancer risk.

The study included 1,097 patients with kidney cancer and 1,476 individuals without cancer from four Central and Eastern European countries. Demographic and lifetime occupational information was collected through in-person interviews and occupational sunlight exposure indices were estimated based on industry and job titles. The investigators observed a 24 percent to 38 percent reduction in kidney cancer risk with increasing occupational sunlight exposure among male participants in the study. No association between occupational sunlight exposure and kidney cancer risk was observed among females in the study.

The findings suggest that sunlight exposure may affect kidney cancer risk, although the authors have no explanation for the apparent differences in risk between men and women. They offer several hypotheses for the observed differences. Biological or behavioral differences between men and women may play a role. For example, hormonal differences may influence the body’s response to sunlight exposure, females may have a higher tendency to use sunscreen on a regular basis, and men may be prone to working outdoors while shirtless. It is also possible that the observed gender differences in risk were due to confounding by other unmeasured kidney cancer risk factors, such as recreational sunlight exposure and physical activity levels.

While this study’s findings raise the possibility of a link between sunlight exposure and kidney cancer risk, “they clearly need to be replicated in other populations and in studies that use better estimates of long-term ultraviolet exposure and vitamin D intake,” said Dr. Karami.

Article: “Occupational sunlight exposure and risk of renal cell carcinoma.” Sara Karami, Paolo Boffetta, Patricia Stewart, Nathaniel Rothman, Katherine L. Hunting, Mustafa Dosemeci, Sonja I. Berndt, Paul Brennan, Wong-Ho Chow, and Lee E. Moore. CANCER; Published Online: March 8, 2010 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.24939).

Source: David Sampslon, American Cancer Society

Use a condom every time you have sexual intercourse, oral sex, or anal sex unless you know that you and your partners are STD-free.

Condoms are most effective when you follow these steps before using them:

• Buy latex condoms sold in the United States. These condoms meet strict safety standards and are unlikely to break or leak.
• Keep the condom in its package until you are ready to use it.
• Check the condom for its expiration date. Throw away condoms that have passed the expiration date.
• Avoid storing rubber (latex) condoms in any hot place (such as the glove compartment of a car). Heat can weaken the rubber and increase the chance that the condom will break.

Follow these steps to use a condom properly.

• Unwrap the condom carefully to avoid poking tiny holes in it with your fingernails.
• Put the condom on as soon as your penis is hard (erect), before you enter your partner. The condom can be put on as part of lovemaking.
• Pull down the loose skin from the head of the penis, if you have not been circumcised.
• Hold the tip of the condom and squeeze out the air. This leaves room for the semen when you ejaculate. Also, the condom is less likely to break if all the air has been squeezed out.
• Keep holding the tip of the condom. Unroll it onto the erect penis, all the way down to the pubic hair.
• Use a lubricant on the outside of the condom once it is on completely. Use lubricants like Astroglide, Slippery Stuff, or K-Y Jelly, which do not contain oil. Never use Vaseline, grease, hand lotion, baby oil, or anything else with oil in it. Oil can weaken latex rubber and cause the condom to break and may irritate your partner’s vagina. Read the label to be sure that a lubricant does not have oil in it.
• Press on the bottom of the condom (by the pubic hair) after you ejaculate and pull out while your penis is still hard. This will keep semen from spilling out of the condom.
• Take the condom off and throw it away. Use a new condom each time you have sexual intercourse, oral sex, or anal sex.
• Wash your hands after handling a used condom.

Source: Healthwise

Do- Dry hair gently

Beating up your hair with a rough towel and vigorous rubbing can cause serious damage. Physical force breaks off finer hairs, and newly emerging ones don’t even get a chance to survive. Use a super soft cloth and pat rather than rub the hair to rid it of excess moisture after bathing.

Don’t- Use a bristled brush for styling

Styling time usually comes after a shower when hair is wet and in its most fragile state. Needless to say, tearing tracks down your scalp with a bristly brush isn’t the best idea. The only styling tool a man needs nowadays is his bare hands.

Do- Keep hair short

It’s time to say goodbye to those luscious locks you’ve been holding on to since college. Age is setting in and things are thinning upstairs. Longer hairstyles only serve to accentuate what’s already gone, but a closer crop will maximize coverage leaving no one the wiser. And if the situation is dire, go for the gusto: hair for men is optional.

Don’t- Comb it over

Two words: Donald Trump. See the “do” above on keeping hair short in order to avoid this sad (and ineffective) strategy for handling hair loss.

Do- Try hair loss-prevention products

Most treatments for hair loss leave much to be desired. Balding concealer (scalp spray paint) quickly comes to mind. But sometimes the most obvious and effective choices for treatment get roped in with the fast fixes that don’t work. While other products have come and gone, tried-and-true Rogaine remains. Its special ingredient, minoxidil, is still one of the only scientifically proven methods for staving off hair loss and yes, even regrow hair.

Don’t- Overdo it with styling products

Gels, pastes and putties serve a purpose: they help smooth hair and hold it in place. But nothing is worse for drawing unwanted attention to a scarce scalp than glopping on goo. Strands of hair end up clumping together only to bare all for world to see. Lay it on light to keep things covered up.

Do- Use a thickening cream/conditioner

That hairstyle may not be as thick as it used to be, but that doesn’t mean you have to shear it all off just yet. Conditioners and creams specially formulated for troubled tresses can keep your secret under wraps by helping build and protect the shaft of the hair.

Don’t- Panic or do nothing

Shedding strands here and there is no reason to sweat. In fact, it’s 100% normal to lose as many as 100 hairs every day. If you’re really shedding your coat, chances are it’s happening so slowly you may not notice until the pesky process is well underway. Once balding has begun, don’t deny it. Seek treatment — personal or professional — and then move on to life’s more important problems.

Source: Adam Fox, AskMen.Com

Many men don’t go about training their biceps in the right manner and wind up doing 10 different variations of curls until they feel the ”pump and burn.”

Remember that while a muscle pump may temporarily engorge your muscles with blood and make them appear larger to the eye (we talk about this in our article Fake A Beach Body), once the enhanced blood flow normalizes, you’re going to be right back where you started.

In order to really develop muscle size, you’ll want to combine very heavy weight training with exercises that increase vascularity. This pairing is what will smash your biceps and get you arms noticed.

The following workout, which will smash your biceps, should be performed twice a week for maximum benefits. Doing this workout twice a week is enough to develop larger muscle fibers while giving you a proper recovery period.

Reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row with half a deadlift

The first exercise on our smash your biceps plan is the reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row with half a deadlift. Changing the grip of this movement helps to place more stress on the biceps, while still working the back at the same time. Additionally, using the dumbbells rather than a barbell will help prevent one arm from working harder than the other to compensate for a weaker muscle, and thus preventing the possibility of a size imbalance.

Since most men can typically row more weight than they can curl, the reverse-grip bent-over dumbbell row is the perfect exercise to lead the smash your biceps workout. It’s also an exercise that leads to maximum strength development.

Finally, to add some advanced variation to the movement, once the dumbbells are in the upper position, perform half a deadlift action in order to call the lower-back muscles into play and give a more complete workout. Note that this should be one fluid movement and not done in a jerky fashion.

Incline dumbbell curls

The second exercise to add when you want to smash your biceps is incline dumbbell curls. The advantage of doing these on an incline bench is that it will reduce any momentum that takes place with standard curls, ensuring that you are only targeting that bicep muscle.

In addition to this, since your back is flat against the bench, you will not have to sacrifice strength due to a weak core if that is an issue for you.

When you are executing the movement, be sure that you are moving throughout the full range of motion to work all the muscle fibers to their full extent.

Dumbbell curls with a twist

As a variation on the standard dumbbell curl, performing a curl with a twist at the top gives the muscles a fresh stimulus that can boost results to the next level. You’ll want to focus on performing these slightly slower than your standard dumbbell curl to really feel the full impact of the movement and, if you can, try to use a short pause at the top before lowering.

Also, be careful that you’re not using momentum to help you complete the movement (the tendency to use momentum is high since you’re standing upright). Momentum can be avoided if you think to slightly stick out your chest and strictly moving from the elbow joint.

Straight dumbbell curls with triceps extension superset

Finally, the last way you can smash your biceps into growth is to start including some supersets in your workouts. Supersets will have you pairing two exercises back-to-back and will help to really pump up the arms as they fill with blood.

This is a great technique to use at the very end of your workout, as it will really finish off the muscles and help to considerably boost the temporary size increase you’ll experience.

Some people will choose to superset two different bicep exercises back-to-back, but for the purpose of this workout you want to superset a bicep exercise along with a triceps movement. This has the advantage of allowing you to lift a heavier weight with the bicep exercise, experiencing slightly better overall strength gains.

Be sure to keep rest periods between the two exercises as short as possible, and take about 30 seconds to 1 minute of rest between each superset. You should also aim to work into the slightly higher rep range with this type of setup, closer to 10 to 12 reps total to really get some lactic acid building up within the muscle tissues.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen.Com

The findings, published in a recent issue of the journal European Urology, compared treatments for three groups of study participants with enlarged prostates over four years. The study, which included more than 4,800 men, is one of the first to compare single and combo medication regimens in such a large group.

The first group of study participants received the drug dutasteride; the second group received tamsulosin; and the third received a combination of the two medicines.

“We found the combination therapy to be superior at reducing risk of BPH progression,” said Dr. Claus Roehrborn, chairman of urology at UT Southwestern and lead author of the study. “The two medications joined forces in terms of symptom control. On the strengths of both dutasteride and tamsulosin, participants reported fewer symptoms, and we observed a 25 percent reduction in prostate volume.”

Dr. Roehrborn added that subjects who received the combination therapy also showed a 50 percent reduction of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein produced by both cancerous and noncancerous prostate tissue. PSA levels can be an indication of increased risk of cancer because cancer cells usually make more PSA than do benign cells, causing PSA levels in the blood to rise. Should PSA levels continue to rise after beginning therapy, patients should be monitored closely because the combination medicines do lower PSA readings, Dr. Roehrborn said.

Enlarged prostate, also called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), is a common urologic condition that affects about 50 percent of men between the ages of 51 and 60 and up to 90 percent of men over the age of 80.

Symptoms of the condition can be prolonged and severe. Prostate enlargement creates pressure on the urethra, making it difficult to urinate, which can lead to acute urinary retention. This retention causes a host of other problems, including extreme discomfort and infections.

Researchers also looked at the data to determine if the number of study participants needing surgery for BPH decreased with the combination medication regimen. Compared with tamsulosin alone, the combination of drugs reduced the incidence of acute urinary retention by 67 percent and reduced the need for BPH-related surgery by 70 percent.

“We found a 65 percent decrease in the relative risk of acute urinary retention or BPH-related surgery compared with tamsulosin alone and just over a 19 percent reduction compared with dutasteride alone,” said Dr. Roehrborn.

Those taking the combination of drugs also were less likely than those in the other two groups to discontinue therapy, he said. Participants themselves noted that the combo medicines were most effective at reducing symptoms.

“There is currently no combination drug for doctors to prescribe for these patients,” Dr. Roehrborn said. “This research should provide physicians better information when they decide on a course of treatment for patients with BPH.”

Other researchers contributing to the study were from the Deaconess Clinic in Evansville, Ind.; State University of Rio de Janeiro; Universita Vita Salute San Raffaele, Italy; University of Toronto; and GlaxoSmithKline.

The study was funded by GlaxoSmithKline. Dr. Roehrborn is a consultant to the pharmaceutical company.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder in the US, afflicting over 36 million people. Not only is hearing loss highly prevalent among the elderly, but approximately one third of those aged 40-49 years already suffer from hearing loss. Even mild hearing loss can compromise the ability to understand speech in the presence of background noise or multiple speakers, leading to social isolation, depression, and poorer quality of life.

Investigators from Harvard University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston looked at factors other than age and noise that might influence the risk of hearing lose. Aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen are the 3 most commonly used drugs in the US. The ototoxic effects of aspirin are well known and the ototoxicity of NSAIDs has been suggested, but the relation between acetaminophen and hearing loss has not been examined previously. The relationship between these drugs and hearing loss is an important public health issue.

Study participants were drawn from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which tracked over 26,000 men every 2 years for 18 years. A questionnaire determined analgesic use, hearing loss and a variety of physiological, medical and demographic factors.

For aspirin, regular users under 50 and those aged 50-59 years were 33% more likely to have hearing loss than were nonregular users, but there was no association among men aged 60 years and older. For NSAIDs, regular users aged under 50 were 61% more likely, those aged 50-59 were 32% more likely, and those aged 60 and older were 16% more likely to develop hearing loss than nonregular users of NSAIDs. For acetaminophen, regular users aged under 50 were 99% more likely, regular users aged 50-59 were 38% more likely, and those aged 60 and older were 16% more likely to have hearing loss than nonregular users of acetaminophen.

Writing in the article, Sharon G. Curhan, MD, ScM, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and colleagues state, “Regular use of analgesics, specifically aspirin, NSAIDs, and acetaminophen, might increase the risk of adult hearing loss, particularly in younger individuals. Given the high prevalence of regular analgesic use and health and social implications of hearing impairment, this represents an important public health issue.”

Source: Pamela Poppalardo, Elsevier Health Sciences via EurekAlert

For the millions of people who depend on coffee to jumpstart their day, cholesterol is probably the last thing on their mind as they wait for the morning jolt of caffeine to kick in. In the past few years, though, more and more evidence hints that coffee can increase cholesterol levels.

Experts say that the majority of coffee-drinking Americans do not need to worry about the impact of a cup of joe on cholesterol levels. That’s because most Americans drink filtered coffee, which is believed to have much less of an effect on cholesterol than unfiltered coffee. Filters seem to remove most of the cholesterol-boosting substances found in coffee.

But a cholesterol check may be in order for people who use a French press or percolator to make their coffee or who prefer espresso or other varieties of unfiltered coffee, according to Dr. Michael J. Klag, the vice dean for clinical investigation at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

In 2001, Klag and his colleagues reviewed more than a dozen studies that looked at the relationship between coffee consumption and cholesterol levels. They found that drinking an average of six cups of coffee a day was associated with increased total cholesterol and LDL, the harmful type of cholesterol. Nearly all of the rise in cholesterol was linked to unfiltered coffee.

The coffee culprit

Although caffeine is often cast as a villain, the stimulant is not to blame for unfiltered coffee’s effect on cholesterol levels. According to Klag, the increase in cholesterol is believed to be caused by oils called terpenes that are found in coffee, but are mostly removed by filters.

“Persons who drink unfiltered coffee should get their cholesterol checked to make sure it is not elevated,” says Klag.

The Johns Hopkins researcher notes that in a 1994 study he and his colleagues found an association between coffee consumption and an increased risk of heart disease. But most of the increased risk was linked to coffee-drinking before 1975. It was during the mid-1970s, Klag points out, that drip-coffee makers became widely used in the United States, making filtered coffee the norm.

Although Klag advises his patients who drink unfiltered coffee to switch to filtered brew, he says that not everyone needs to be overly concerned about the effect of unfiltered coffee on cholesterol. He notes that cholesterol levels are a “combination of how you live, what you eat and what genes you inherit.” A healthy person with low cholesterol probably does not need to worry too much about the effect of coffee on cholesterol levels, he says.

A Dutch researcher who has also documented the cholesterol-boosting effect of unfiltered coffee agrees that the risks need to be seen in perspective.

“Unfiltered coffee has much less effect on your heart-disease risk than smoking, high blood pressure or being overweight,” says Dr. Martijn B. Katan, a professor at the Wageningen Center for Food Sciences and Wageningen University. “But if you want to optimize your cholesterol levels, you should avoid large daily amounts of unfiltered coffee.”

Unfiltered coffee seems to boost cholesterol the most, although a handful of recent studies hint that filtered coffee may have an effect on cholesterol, too. In one study, researchers in Sweden found that people who normally drank filtered coffee experienced a small drop in cholesterol levels when they stopped drinking coffee for a few weeks. The results were “surprising,” according to Dr. Elisabeth Strandhagen, of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Goteborg, who led the study.

“We have done some tests on coffee filters, but we cannot explain why the filtered coffee had this effect on serum cholesterol,” she says.

Despite the findings, filtered coffee seems to have a much smaller effect on cholesterol than unfiltered coffee. Strandhagen encourages people with high cholesterol or who are at high risk of heart disease to choose filtered coffee. They should also avoid coffee filters that have “aroma holes,” which are very common in Sweden, she says.

Pieces of the puzzle

But filtered vs. unfiltered may not be the most important question to ask about coffee and cholesterol, according to a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

“People try to pin a culprit” when it comes to coffee and cholesterol, “but people do not live in an isolated world,” says Dr. Gail C. Frank, a professor of nutrition in the department of family and consumer sciences at California State University, Long Beach. According to Frank, there are “several pieces to the coffee story,” including not only whether people drink filtered or unfiltered coffee, but how much they drink and what they are doing besides drinking coffee, such as smoking.

And a study by Greek researchers published in the issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests that combining smoking with coffee-drinking can increase the stiffness of arteries more than each of the activities alone. “Given the frequent combination of smoking and caffeine intake, these effects on arterial function may have important implications for human health,” the researchers wrote.

Filtering through old habits
When making decisions about coffee, Frank encourages people not to look for a yes or no answer. It’s not a simple question of “do drink coffee” or “don’t drink coffee,” she says.

While unfiltered coffee may contain substances that raise cholesterol levels, many popular coffee drinks sold at coffee houses contain other ingredients – cream and sugar, for example – that raise questions of their own about cholesterol.

Instead, Frank encourages people to “filter through” their own lives and their own cardiovascular risk factors to make a decision about how much and what type of coffee to drink.

Source: Merritt McKinney, MSNBC

A new device that looks a lot like those home ovulation and home pregnancy tests but checks sperm count will soon be available in Europe, and is undergoing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review for marketing in the US.

The test targets couples who have been trying to get pregnant for a few months, but aren’t ready to seek professional help, Dr. John C. Herr of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who helped develop the new test, told Reuters Health.

The test helps couples sort out if the male is a factor in the infertility “and to do that in privacy with some cost savings,” he said. “The product will retail for about $25. That’s a lot cheaper than going in and having a full semen analysis.”

Depending on where you are in the country, he added, semen analysis can cost from around $65 to $250, and may or may not be covered by insurance.

In the journal Human Reproduction, Herr and his team report on a study comparing the accuracy of their SpermCheck Fertility test with standard laboratory sperm count methods, using 225 semen samples. The tests were accurate 96 percent of the time, the researchers found. Ninety-five percent of the time a laboratory professional and a lay person got the same result when reading a single test independently.

Sperm counts of 20 million per milliliter of semen and above are considered normal. The test will tell a man whether or not his sperm count meets this cutoff, and if it doesn’t whether he has a severely low sperm count (below 5 million sperm per milliliter). “It basically tells the man how deep the infertility is,” Herr explains. “If both strips are negative it’s important that they then seek medical treatment for the infertility.”

The test works by detecting an antigen found on the surface of the head of a sperm cell known as SP-10, which Herr and his colleagues discovered. “There’s a lot of cell biology and molecular biology behind the project,” the researcher said, adding that the work of discovering SP-10 and developing the test – much of it funded by the National Institutes of Health – took about 10 years.

While women only need to dip a test stick in their urine to see if they’re pregnant or close to ovulation, the SpermCheck Fertility test requires a few more steps.

Users let the semen rest for 20 minutes, collect 100 microliters using a pipette, and mix the semen with a detergent-containing substance known as a buffer, which releases the SP-10 protein from the sperm. Users then put a few drops of this mix into the two sample wells. Within seven minutes, the test results will appear in test windows above the wells.

Source: Reuters Health.

Don’t be so quick to give up this time. When you arm yourself with a few last strategies you can bypass this hurdle with success. If you implement two or three of the following strategies, you should be able to see a five-pound weight loss in about two-and-a-half to three weeks time, which is a safe rate that will ensure it is fat loss and not lean muscle loss.

Here are five things you should start doing immediately to drop those five pounds.

1- Implement extreme carb cycling

You may already be on a diet that does make use of higher carbohydrate days along with lower carbohydrate days, but typical approaches tend to be quite moderate. When trying to strip off those last five pounds, you’re going to have to kick it up a notch and really go to the extremes.

Try making your low carbohydrate days very low carb, where you’re focused on strictly eating protein and fibrous vegetables. This will create a very high calorie deficit, thereby accelerating fat loss. Then, place your high carbohydrate days on your training days and bring the calorie balance up to maintenance value — or even slightly above — by adding a very large number of carbs back.

Since carbohydrates are the macronutrient that most influences the metabolic rate, this drastic zigzag approach keeps the metabolism firing while you enjoy a faster rate of total fat loss.

2- Take one week off training

In some instances, the reason you’ve hit a wall with weight loss is because the body hasn’t received enough rest. When you’re verging on overtraining, it’s quite common for the body to actually retain water, making it harder to lean down.

Take one week off training while eating closer to a maintenance diet. This will help to reset the metabolism and water balance. Many people are very surprised at the impacts one week off can have.

3- Shift the rep ranges of your exercises

Plateaus are quite common when you’ve been performing the same workout for a lengthy period of time and can keep you from dropping those last five pounds of fat. A simple way to crank up the calorie burn of your workout is to increase the reps to 10 for one single week while decreasing the rest period to only one minute between sets.

Note that you’re not aiming to make this a circuit training workout, but simply quickening the pace of the workout to add intensity. The nature of this protocol (10 reps with 1 minute rest periods) compared to a typical strength program of 5 reps and 3 minute rest periods tends to produce a greater release of growth hormone in the body, which is beneficial for promoting lean muscle mass development.

4- Increase protein intake

The fourth way to lose those last five pounds is to increase the protein content of your diet. It’s important to remember that the leaner you get and the lower you take your total calorie intake, the more protein you will need. This helps to prevent lean muscle mass loss and ensure recovery.

An added benefit of bringing your protein intake higher is that it will increase the metabolic rate. Over the course of a week or two this could mean the difference between staying at a standstill or losing another half to one pound.

Great sources of protein to include regularly are chicken, lean beef, egg whites, white fish, and low-fat cottage cheese.

5- Combine sprint training with steady state cardio

Finally, consider altering the method of cardio you’re doing so that you start with 5 to 8 interval sprints of 30 seconds in length interspersed with 90-second rest periods. Then, proceed to finish the cardio session off with another 15 minutes of moderate paced cardio.

This gives you the best of both worlds where you’ll get the metabolic spark that interval training offers, along with the benefit of moderate cardio that strictly uses fatty acids for fuel.

Source: Jeff Bayer, AskMen.com