Keeping Fit Over 60
June 21, 2008 by Lucy · 3 Comments
Research over the years clearly shows that exercise helps people of all ages, not only young people but also seniors - nothing new in that, but often getting motivated and being frequently active if you’re over 60 is a problem for some people and there are many excuses of not to exercise. Read more
Acne Be Gone - Forever. Impossible?
June 8, 2008 by Lucy · 2 Comments
Like most people who have acne, they want to clear it up faster than they can say ‘acne’, giving them clear and beautiful skin they could only dream of before… and without, ever spending a single dime on useless acne treatments again… and, if you’re like most acne sufferers, banishing acne in a few days! Impossible? Read more
Enjoying Summer Without Bugs
June 7, 2008 by Lucy · Leave a Comment
Summer has come around again - the sun is shining beautifully, families down on the beach, in the parks, hiking in the woods and forests, working in and enjoying the garden - and they have company - the insects. Necessary - yet irritating little beasts that swarm over your picnic food, bite you and suck your blood and even eat your fruit and veggies from the garden at the drop of a hat. Read more
Simple Physical Activities To Strengthen The Body
May 30, 2008 by Lucy · 4 Comments
It’s a 24/7 world and small wonder that finding just that little bit of time for exercising
So let’s look at a couple of easy and simple physical activities to strengthen the body, get the heart pumping and blood flowing, as even a small amount of stretching
Stretching:
Stretching on the toes is a very useful and good physical activity for most people, especially for those with weak backs and arthritis or other joint conditions. Stretching and proper ergonomic techniques has been proven to help decrease and/or prevent back pain and many other injuries.
Try this simple stretching exercise:
Raise yourself up on your toes, stretch up your arms way up over your head, stretch your fingers, strain your muscles so you can feel every one of them, stay in this position for about 10 seconds, and then slowly return back to the starting position, with your feet flat on the floor. Do this several times in the morning - it’s a great start to the day.
Just be sure that when stretching - it shouldn’t cause any pain, especially joint pain. If it does, you are stretching too much and need to reduce the stretch so that it doesn’t hurt.
Strengthen Leg Muscles with Balancing
This exercise helps to strengthen leg muscles as well as coordinate and adjust balance:
Stand on one leg for 30 seconds, using the back of a chair or a table or desk to help you balance and keep you steady if necessary. Repeat on opposite leg. Do this simple exercise any time i.e. when you answer the phone, wash your hands or wait for the bus or elevator. Once you feel steady on one leg, use this time to stretch your neck, moving your head up and down and then from side to side.
Image via Wikipedia
Exercises that strengthen leg muscles for example, can also lower the risk of knee injury and other problems. Walking is a low impact exercise, putting little stress on the body if you’re walking at a regular pace, but it’s a great way to get out and about in the fresh air and clear your head. A good brisk walk of about an hour or so in the morning and evening is a great leg strengthening exercise, as well as taking you outdoors, where vitamin D a la natural is provided by nature.
One of the main obstacles for integrating exercise into your day, is simply remembering it. While it is easy to remember setting aside an hour regularly for a formal exercise program for example at the gym, it’s possible you need some help in getting into a routine that makes the most of your time i.e. a lunch-break at work or other available time you have during the week that you can set aside and schedule for some physical exercises.
If you don’t want to exercise or walk alone - go with a friend, your spouse, a family member, or a good neighbour - they’ll benefit from it too. There’s absolutely no need to exercise hard to get the benefits, but you do need regular exercise and activity to keep your body and mind sharp and healthy for a better and quality filled life.
5000 Year-Old Medical Discovery Unearthed!
When you’re sick, normally you go to the doctor, the doctor will naturally depending on your illness, prescribe medicine of one sort or another. You buy the medicine, you take it and hopefully you get better quickly. This is how the health profession works – a cycle of diagnosis and prescription.
If on the other hand, someone was to recommend herbs instead of medicine, you’d probably declare that person - a quack. But nowadays, studies are being conducted to see if there is any merit to what’s commonly known as - natural medicine.
Natural medicine is the use of natural methods, herbal medicines, and traditional practices to heal ailments. Every culture has a form of natural medicine. In ancient cultures, village medicine men served as the doctors of the community, passing on medical knowledge to the apprentices that followed them.
Many categories of the healing methods fall under natural medicine. Among these are traditional medicine, complementary medicine, and alternative medicine. Usually, natural medicine refers to medical practices that were in place before modern medicine arrived. This includes herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, which is prevalent in Chinese, Indian and Greek medicine.
Upon the advent of modern medicine, many professionals discarded the use of herbs in favour of man-made medicine. The fact that these treatments are based on the healing properties of some herbs was just about forgotten. For example, opium, digitalis, quinine, and aspirin all have their roots in traditional medicine.
Although natural medicine can be considered a lost art it doesn’t mean that it has lost effectiveness over time. In some cases, natural therapy has proven to be better than modern medicine. This has led some doctors to seriously consider and study in depth the possible uses of natural medicine.
At this point it’s important to stress that not all the natural remedies are legitimate, so only using those remedies which have been thoroughly studied and are relatively risk free is recommended.
For instance - natural medicine. There are many well documented and studied herbal remedies available. However, only those that deal with minor ailments such as coughs, colds, fever, skin rashes or similar are likely to be recommended by health professionals. These remedies are sometimes superior to synthetic medicine. This is because herbal medicines are less likely to cause negative side effects.
Currently there are numerous organizations that study the effects of natural medicine – among which is herbal medicine. Some governments and health agencies openly advocate the use of natural methods since they are inexpensive and relatively risk-free.
As their studies are compiled, more herbs and treatments are added to the list of accepted medicines. However, many herbs and treatments have been proven to be bogus medicine. This represents a challenge for both the user and the agencies because they have to ascertain that the treatments they either use, recommend or advocate are legitimate.
There exist today many alternative medical treatments that fall under natural medicine. However, not all of them have been proven to be effective such as homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and other alternative medical treatments. It’s worth consulting the experts as to the legitimacy of these treatments.
Natural medicine should also be thought of as an accompanying or supplement medicine. Right now, the current collective medical trend suggests that natural medicine be used only to supplement accepted modern medical practices.
The practice of modern medicine revolves around diagnosing an illness and prescribing treatments for such. Natural medicine is helpful because it suggests that treatment be not necessarily given only when sick. Natural medicine strives to make each patient practice good health habits. These habits include good diet, healthy living, regular exercise and natural treatments.
It’s the same line of thought that leads our parents to tell us to eat our vegetables. A healthy lifestyle will do no harm to our well-being - on the contrary. And this is the foundation of natural medicine – be it massage, herbal medicine, aromatherapy or similar.
Science in its quest for excellence, is studying the knowledge of past wisdom. This, surprisingly, leads us back to the abundance of remedies nature offers. The possibilities of finding remedies to everyday illnesses in natural medicine are encouraging. So staying tuned to studying these remedies is worthwhile until we can verify 100% that these therapies are truly helpful to our health and our society.
Daily Program for Stress Management
April 24, 2008 by Lucy · Leave a Comment
Stress management is a must when the stress starts interfering with your work and family life or affects your physical and/or emotional health. Stress management is a critical skill that should be mastered by all and is a set of interventions designed to identify, interrupt, and redirect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours as they relate to the expression of stress and/or anger.
Because the inappropriate response to stress is a learned behavioural response, learning is the key to success in stress management.
Since stress is almost unavoidable in life, it’s important to find ways to decrease and prevent stressful incidents and decrease negative reactions to stress. Here are some of the things that can be done by just remembering them, as life is basically a routine to follow like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast. You can do a few of them in a longer span of time.
Managing your time
Time management skills can help you organise your daily schedule and allow you more time with your family and friends and very likely increase your performance and productivity. Getting things organised will also help reduce your stress.
A few pointers on improving your time management:
- Save time by focusing, concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself.
- Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, and leisure time.
- Prioritise your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency.
- Redirect your time to those activities that are important and meaningful to you.
- Manage your commitments by not over- or under- committing.
- Don’t commit to things that are not important to you.
- Deal with procrastination by using a day planner, breaking large projects into smaller ones, and setting short-term deadlines.
- Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.
Build constructive and healthy coping strategies
It is important that you identify your coping strategies. One way to do this is by recording the stressful event, your reaction, and how you cope in a stress journal. With this information, you can work to change unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones-those that help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.
Lifestyle
  photo credit: ricoeurian |
Some behaviours and lifestyle choices affect your stress level. They may not cause stress directly, but they can interfere with the ways your body seeks relief from stress.
Here are some simple ways to help with choices:
- Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations.
- Have a sense of purpose in life.
- Get a good nights sleep, since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you’re sleeping.
- Eat a balanced diet for nutritional defence against stress.
- Get regular exercise throughout the week.
- Limit your alcohol intake.
- If you smoke, start your campaign to stop - don’t smoke.
Exercising to relieve stress
Exercise is an important component stress management program. Exercise, biofeedback, muscle relaxation, and psychotherapy have all been found useful to eliminate stress. Most stress management remedies – for example massage or yoga
Social support
Social support is a major factor in how we experience stress. Social support is the positive support you receive from family, friends, and the community. It is the knowledge that you are cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. More and more research indicates a strong relationship between social support and better mental and physical health.
Changing the way you think
When an event triggers negative thoughts, you may experience fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, and a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness. These emotions trigger the body’s stress, just as an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress.
- Thought stopping helps you stop a negative thought and in turn helps to eliminate stress.
- Disproving irrational thoughts helps you to avoid exaggerating the negative thought, anticipating the worst, and interpreting an event incorrectly.
- Problem solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event and find ways to deal with it.
- Changing your communication style helps you communicate in a way that makes your views known without making others feel put down, hostile, or intimidated. This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style.
Everyone can get stressed, whether you’re the mail person, the CEO, or the average working person and/or parent, stress is definitely one unwanted visitor you need to boot out of your home and your life.
