Swine Flu Precautions

Here's a good sane bit of info on the swine flu and precautions.

http://stress.about.com/od/otherconditions/a/swine_flu.htm?nl=1

An Apple A Day?? You need MORE!

Are you stuck in an apple-a-day rut? Here’s a good reason to chop up that apple with some strawberries, apples, grapes, and oranges.

It’s called synergy. You don’t just get a wider variety of nutrients by eating more fruits. Those nutrients actually work together to produce even more powerful health benefits than any single fruit could alone. Think of it like compounding interest -- but with fruit!

One Fruit, Two Fruit, Three Fruit, Four

We all know that the antioxidants in fruits and veggies work hard to protect your body from aging and disease. But what you may not know is that those antioxidants work even harder when they have the company of other antioxidants. That’s why researchers recommend people eat 5 to 10 servings of a wide variety of different fruits and veggies every day.

The Goal: Whole

If you tend to eat the same fruit over and over, consider breaking the mold next time you’re at the grocery store or farmers market, and pick up something you’ve never tried before. And choose whole organic fruit if possible, so you get the most antioxidant bang for your buck. Try a fruit smoothie with mixed berries, plain low fat yogurt (organic if possible), some pineapple juice and organic milk. It’s a great snack, or even a meal depending on how much of it you eat! You can buy frozen mixed berries and defrost a small amount at a time to put in a whole grain cereal, or oatmeal, even with just some plain yogurt. Load up on your berries every chance you get for some of the best antioxidant, cancer fighting, cardiovascular disease fighting doses around!

Massage: An Integral Part Of A Wellness Plan

If you’ve ever had someone walk up from behind you when you are tense, and massage your shoulders, you know how great it can be, that is, if you have someone who knows what they are doing. I was at a seminar once, and the doctor teaching it had us stand up, turn to one side and massage the shoulders of the person in front of you for a minute or so. I did this and received a nice massage from the person that had been on my left side. Then, we had to turn the other way and do the same thing again. Suddenly, I was attacked by what felt like crap pinchers squeezing my shoulders. I felt as though it was the longest minute of my life and it was all I could do to not ask the person to stop. When it was over, my desire was to turn back around like the first time, and give that person a taste of what she had just done to me!! I resisted, and am better for the experience! So, the lesson learned is: Kids, don’t try this at home, get your massage from trained professionals!

However, there is NOTHING like a timely massage. The benefits of massage are well documented and go further than what most people know about. Let’s take a look at them here, and let me encourage you to consider using massage as part of your plan for optimum health and wellness.

First of all, as I said in a previous article, 90% of visits to a doctor’s office are said to be stress related in some fashion. That being said, reducing the effects of stress could ostensibly have positive effects on 90% of illnesses. There is no doubt about the positive effects of massage on stressed out people. Massage releases endorphins, the body’s natural anesthetic, countering the higher levels of cortisol and adrenaline that run rampant in stressed out people. So, for people under stress (like most of us), massage can be a tool to fight off its deleterious effects.

Massage can help or even prevent injuries too. By stretching connective tissue, massage improves circulation to help prevent or break down adhesions or scar tissue that builds up from normal day to day living and exercise. Massage also influences the excretion of certain fluids (nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur) necessary for tissue repair.

Massage helps the movement of lymph in our body. The lymphatic system helps with our overall filtering of toxins. It is a set of channels like our blood vessels, but it doesn’t have a heart muscle to pump fluid through it. Muscular movement and contractions of muscle helps move it around and flush it out of our system. Massage helps aid the movement of lymph, and is especially good for those that are less physical and don’t get regular exercise. Thus, massage can help you stay healthy in this manner as well.

Pregnant women who receive massage often have their lower back pain alleviated significantly. It requires someone trained in prenatal massage, but it can be so beneficial to the mother. One study also noted that premature infants that received massage tended to gain more weight and fare better than those who weren’t.

The list goes on to fill more space than we have here for this article. Suffice it to say, if you’re looking to move yourself toward wellness, massage can and should be an important tool in your journey.

How's Your Attitude??

Here's a great little post on how our attitude affects our health and our ability to achieve our health goals. It also covers how to make our attitude improve so our chances of hitting those goals improve.

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/weightloss/276/making-a-change-attitude-is-everything/

just copy and paste that link to your browser's address space.

Be Well!!

Dr. Bruce

Are Your Fruits/Veggies Plastic?

An interesting blog about the quality of our plant based foods. I know we are considering how to organically grow some things at our household.

http://blog.friendseat.com/supermarkets-vegetables-plastic/

Setting Yourself Up For Success In Your Health

So many times we decide to change our health status so drastically at one time that we set ourselves up for failure. Instead we need to learn to take small steps at a time to increase our chances of success. For instance, we can't go from be Cody the Couch Potato to Mike the Marathoner overnight. If we try, we set ourselves up for failure: overexertion soreness, serious injuries, discouragement etc. Instead, try the concept of "a little bit more"! Click on the link below to see how to go about setting goals for yourself in life and with regards to health and wellness.

http://longevity.about.com/od/makeachange/p/smartgoal.htm

Sleep Hygiene, An Important Part Of Wellness

The article below was published in Dock Line magazine in February of 2009 and I have added in a few things that I couldn't fit in to the article.

Ok, raise your hand if you’re glad to know that laying a foundation for wellness includes anything to do with sleep! You’ll be glad to know it is an integral part of being well. To be more specific, REST is an integral part of being well, and lack of it leads to breakdowns in the body. It’s also important to become familiar with a new term called “sleep hygiene”. We’ll touch on these things in the rest of this article, and hopefully I can fit it all into one issue, if not, rest assured (no pun intended), we’ll cover the rest (another unintended pun) next time.

First, why do we get sleepy? Did you ever wonder that? What is it that makes us feel ready to go to bed? Without going into the physiology of it all, let’s just say that the Guy who did the wiring on us knew what He was doing. Getting sleepy is the body’s way of telling us “ok, you’ve had a long day, it’s time to power down so we can repair any damage that has gone on”. Repair to the damages that are inflicted by daily living occurs when we rest. That is why when we don’t get enough rest, we can’t function, and can fall ill. That is also why we want to sleep more when we are ill. Our body’s innate intelligence is telling us to slow it down. So now you know there is a real reason for rest.

Remember I differentiated between sleep and rest. One can sleep without getting enough rest. The real resting occurs when we get into Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM). That is the deep, repair time sleep. We’ve all had nights where we were in the bed for 8 hours, maybe even sleeping most of that time, yet we still feel tired and un-rested. So, what things keep us from deep rest, and what can we do to get better at it? Read on!

There are several things that can keep us from resting well. Some things are well within our control, some we have less control over. For now, we’ll just focus on developing a good sleep hygiene plan. Sleep hygiene has to do with the habits you can learn to improve your resting. They are multi-faceted, and when working together will help you improve the chances of getting proper rest.

1. Pre-sleep routine: You must develop a routine to follow for proper rest. An example would be as follows: Shower at 9:30, read from 10:00 to 10:30, followed by bedtime. The more of a routine you develop and follow, the more you body will be ready for rest.
2. Avoid alcohol and caffeine: I have some people tell me that they have no trouble sleeping after caffeine at night. I can understand that, but what I tell them is, while you may be able to fall asleep, studies show that you will not enter the deeper levels of sleep required for rest and repair. The same is true of alcohol. If you’ve ever had too much to drink, you know you can fall asleep easier, and sleep for a very long time. However, I am sure you felt very tired and worn out afterward, the effect of the alcohol having kept you from deep rest.
3. Try a cup of chamomile tea before bedtime to relax you, especially if you've had a stressful day.
   
4. As you get closer to your bedtime, start turning down the lights in the house. The darkness makes your body start preparing for sleep.
5. Don’t watch stimulating TV shows right before bedtime (ie 24). It keeps your mind too active. No exercise for at least 2 hours before bedtime. Also don't use the TV in the bedroom to fall asleep.
6. Use the bedroom only for rest and sex. Using it for work will create a neuroassociation in your mind of work/bedroom.
7. Keep your bedroom temperature cooler vs. warmer
   
8. If you can’t fall asleep, or you wake and can’t fall back asleep, don’t stay in the bed tossing and turning. Again, a negative neuroassociation will be linked to the bedroom and NOT being able to sleep. Instead, get up, read something non-stimulating (a maintenance guide) and keep the lights down low. Turning the lights up bright tells your body it’s time to wake.
9. If you have trouble falling asleep, or falling back asleep, use the breathing technique we taught last month for reducing stress. In through your nose, out through your mouth, with exhalations much longer than inhalations. The way to slow down your exhalations is to breath out thru your mouth with your lips pursed as if you are going to whistle. Doing a session like this shortly before bedtime for 15 minutes will help prepare you for rest. Focus on relaxing every muscle in your body bit by bit until you finally doze off.
10. Finally, get up and go to bed at the same time every day, or as close to it as possible. Developing that routine helps our bodies fall into a pattern. This is especially important as we age and sleep disorders become more common.
11. Keep your room as dark as possible.

Be Well!!!