9. Blood Pressure – Beware of Six Serious Risk Factors

The risk of high blood pressure is quite high and you can’t afford to be complacent about it. Some specific risk factors that you have to guard against have been identified. There are six risk factors which are more significant.  If you have one or more of these factors, then you should take steps to protect yourself.

1. Age:
   The risk of contracting blood pressure increases with age. Statistics indicate that 50% of the people in the age group 50-60 and 75% of the people above 75 years suffer from high blood pressure.
2. Overweight:People who have excess weight are more prone to be affected by high blood pressure. In fact if you are overweight, your chances of contracting hypertension are 6 times the chances for a person with normal weight.
3. Family history of hypertension:
   If one or more among your parents, grandparents or siblings have had high blood pressure, you run a high risk of being  affected by high blood pressure.
4. Improper diet:As you know only too well, diet plays an important role in maintaining your health. High salt consumption and consumption of packaged foods will result in accumulation of excess fluid in your body. This condition will impose an additional burden on the heart and will translate into increase in blood pressure.
5. Inadequate physical activity:If you do not exercise regularly or if you are not otherwise physically active, the risk of hypertension will increase significantly.
6. High Stress:Hypertension is sometimes characterized as a psychometric disease in that it can be caused by emotional stress.  You may not be able to avoid stress completely but you should be able to keep it under control.

Be in the look out for these risk factors and if one or more of these factors apply to you, you should be cautious to avoid getting affected by high blood pressure.

8. Quit Smoking by Doing Exercises

Quit Smoking and Exercising – Are they related? Odd as it may sound, the answer is ‘yes,’ Exercising will help you give up smoking and lead a healthy life by the effect it has on your system, your overall health and your lifestyle in more than one way.  Let us see how exercising will help you quit smoking. 

1)      Exercise will reduce your carvings for nicotine:
If you are a habitual smoker, you have developed some carving for nicotine, the harmful chemical contained in tobacco. Studies have shown that exercises temporarily arrest your nicotine carvings. You can verify this by an experiment. Exercise for half an hour and you will discover that you won’t feel like smoking till sometime after you have finished the exercise.

You may wonder whether a temporary  cessation of the carving for cigarettes can help you quit smoking. If you exercise regularly, you will find that your desire to smoke becomes less and less intense over time. If you decide to quit smoking after doing exercises regularly for a few months, you will find it easier to  live without a cigarette.

While the connection between exercising and the decrease in the craving for tobacco defies a credible scientific explanation, it is generally agreed that the result is achieved by your mood getting lifted after you exercise. After all, smoking is related to your moods. You smoke more when you are in a depressed mood.

2)      Exercise reduces your stress level:
It is a well established fact that physical activity will reduce your stress. Since smoking is related to stress, it is only natural that exercising helps you to quit smoking. When you exercise, beneficial hormones are secreted in the brain which will fight the stress inducing hormone cortisol thereby have the effect of making you feel good. When you feel good, you are not inclined to think of going for a cigarette.

3)      Exercising makes you sleep well:
A sound sleep not only makes you feel physically stimulated but also frees you from the debilitating power of addictions. While it is not easy to come out of a habit overnight, the long term effect will be very strong. People who give up smoking often suffer from the debilitating symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Good sleep is the best antidote to overcome these withdrawal effects.

4)      Exercising will counter weigh again:
Well, I can hear your asking the question, ‘Pray what has weight gain got to do with giving up smoking?’ It is a bit indirect, but is important, nevertheless. Weight gain is often seen as a consequence of giving up smoking. By preventing the occurrence of weight gain, exercising helps you to quit smoking in an indirect way. 

To sum up, making a physical activity as a part of your quit smoking program will bolster your efforts and enhance the chances of your succeeding in saying goodbye to smoking once for all. Needless to add, exercise  not only helps you give up smoking but also improves your health. 

7. Control Hypertension without Use of Drugs

Hypertension Symptoms:
Some of the common symptoms of hypertension are:
• Giddiness, Dizziness and a Feeling of Instability.
• Palpitations.
• Insomnia (inability to sleep well).
• Digestive problems and Constipation.

Treatment of Hypertension:
Hypertension, like any other physical disorder needs to be treated by a physician. Yet, hypertension, not being a disease but only a condition can be controlled through diet, exercise and adjustment of lifestyle.

There are several claims about "cures" for hypertension through use of herbal medicines and other remedies. I do not like to go into the merits of these claims.

But there is a simple method which does not involve use of any drugs or remedies. This technique called Slow Breathing can bring down your blood pressure quickly and almost effortlessly. This method has medical recognition - FDA approved, easy to use and practicable by all.

This method has been used and endorsed by such institutions of repute as the Harvard Medical School, The Mayo Clinic, Rush-Presbyterian Hospital and the American Heart Association.

Studies published in the Journal of Human Hypertension and numerous other respected medical journals reveal that:

Breathing slowly and deeply (less than 10 breaths per minute) for 10 to 15 minutes a day while extending exhalation results in significant reductions in blood pressure. That's because gentle, slow breathing acts like a natural safety valve to relax muscle tension, especially in the chest area, allowing constricted blood vessels to open and relieve pressure on the heart.

It literally takes a load off your chest!

6. A First Visit to an Acupuncture Clinic

You might be thinking about making an appointment at an acupuncture clinic.  Many people consider this for various symptoms; some common ones being persistent pain, stress-related symptoms, or other problems such as weight loss.  In China, many people use their acupuncture visits as a periodic tune up in order to stay healthy.  Chinese acupuncturists sometimes get paid as long as their client is healthy, rather than when their clients have symptoms.  So, let us take a tour of a modern American acupuncture clinic to see what it is like.

A typical clinic looks like any professional office, and you will be shown into a room where you are comfortably seated in a chair.  The acupuncture practitioner comes in and begins the diagnosis.  There are two major parts to the diagnosis, physical observation and a discussion of your symptoms and environment.  A basic physical observation will include taking your pulse and observing your tongue.  Unlike a traditional doctor's office, your pulse is taken on both wrists, and at several points on each wrist.  Your pulse is taken both near the surface of your wrist and also more deeply below the surface.   These observations will be written down and used together with the discussion with the practitioner.

You should think about a number of things to discuss at your first acupuncture visit.  If you are coming in for a particular symptom or set of symptoms, this should be a major part of the discussion.  Think about several different aspects of your symptoms.  Let's say that you have persistent pain in your ankle, to use one example.  The pain may not be constant during the entire day; it may ebb and wane depending on the hours of the day.  The pain may increase or decrease due to certain activities, and you should observe these as much as possible.  You might think that walking would certainly increase the pain, but sometimes walking is not as much of a problem as persistent standing, for example, as a cashier in a grocery store.  Also, the pain might change depending on the times of the month, and that should also be mentioned to the acupuncture practitioner.  Cause and effect, if any, is also important to report.  Some things to consider if stress is a component, for possibly the pain started or increased when you got a new supervisor at work.  Notice that a diagnosis for an acupuncture visit includes physical, emotional, social, and mental components to the diagnosis.  So come to the acupuncture office armed with as much information as you can gather about the reason you are coming.

Once you and the acupuncture practitioner get through the initial diagnosis, some time is taken to construct a plan of treatments.  Depending on the particular symptom that you have, and the other personal information that was taken in the initial diagnosis, your first treatment might be this same day, or you may be asked to return on a different day to start your treatments.  The time of day and the particular days for acupuncture treatments are carefully selected in order to achieve the best result possible.

If you do have an initial treatment, it will be painless, and generally takes less than an hour, sometimes much less than that.  The acupuncture practitioner will insert very slim needles at specific locations, which will remain for the number of minutes needed for your particular symptoms.  When the needles are still you are not even aware of them.  Inserting and removing needles is also pain free, rarely there may be a slight twinge, but not more than that. During your treatment you may feel more relaxed, a buzz of energy, slightly warmer at the needle insertion points, or exactly the same as when you came in.   However, the needles are doing their work to regulate and rebalance the circulation in your body.  So enjoy your first visit, and know that each visit brings you closer to your optimal health.

5. "The Way to Wellness" Your 7 days program

How many times have you gone to sleep at night, swearing you'll go to the gym in the morning, and then changing your mind just eight hours later because when you get up, you don't feel like exercising?

While this can happen to the best of us, it doesn't mean you should drop the ball altogether when it comes to staying fit. What people need to realize is that staying active and eating right are critical for long-term health and wellness -- and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more you know about how your body responds to your lifestyle choices, the better you can customize a nutrition and exercise plan that is right for you. When you eat well, increase your level of physical activity, and exercise at the proper intensity, you are informing your body that you want to burn a substantial amount of fuel. This translates to burning fat more efficiently for energy.

In other words, proper eating habits plus exercise equals fast metabolism, which, in turn gives you more energy throughout the day and allows you to do more physical work with less effort.

The true purpose of exercise is to send a repetitive message to the body asking for improvement in metabolism, strength, aerobic capacity and overall fitness and health. Each time you exercise, your body responds by upgrading its capabilities to burn fat throughout the day and night, Exercise doesn't have to be intense to work for you, but it does need to be consistent.

I recommend engaging in regular cardiovascular exercise four times per week for 20 to 30 minutes per session, and resistance training four times per week for 20 to 25 minutes per session. This balanced approach provides a one-two punch, incorporating aerobic exercise to burn fat and deliver more oxygen, and resistance training to increase lean body mass and burn more calories around the block.

Here's a sample exercise program that may work for you:

* Warm Up -- seven to eight minutes of light aerobic activity intended to increase blood flow and lubricate and warm-up your tendons and joints.

* Resistance Training -- Train all major muscle groups. One to two sets of each exercise. Rest 45 seconds between sets.

* Aerobic Exercise -- Pick two favorite activities, they could be jogging, rowing, biking or cross-country skiing, whatever fits your lifestyle. Perform 12 to 15 minutes of the first activity and continue with 10 minutes of the second activity. Cool down during the last five minutes.

* Stretching -- Wrap up your exercise session by stretching, breathing deeply, relaxing and meditating.

When starting an exercise program, it is important to have realistic expectations. Depending on your initial fitness level, you should expect the following changes early on.

* From one to eight weeks -- Feel better and have more energy.

* From two to six months -- Lose size and inches while becoming leaner. Clothes begin to fit more loosely. You are gaining muscle and losing fat.

* After six months -- Start losing weight quite rapidly.

Once you make the commitment to exercise several times a week, don't stop there. You should also change your diet and/or eating habits,' says Zwiefel. Counting calories or calculating grams and percentages for certain nutrients is impractical. Instead, I suggest these easy-to-follow guidelines:

* Eat several small meals (optimally four) and a couple of small snacks throughout the day
* Make sure every meal is balanced -- incorporate palm-sized proteins like lean meats, fish, egg whites and dairy products, fist-sized portions of complex carbohydrates like whole-wheat bread and pasta, wild rice, multigrain cereal and potatoes, and fist-sized portions of vegetable and fruits
* Limit your fat intake to only what's necessary for adequate flavor
* Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water throughout the day
* I also recommend that you take a multi-vitamin each day to ensure you are getting all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

I suppose that's all I can think of for now. I should extend my thanks to a doctor friend of mine. Without him, I wouldn't be able to write this article, or keep my sanity.

Enjoy life, we all deserve it.

4. Acupuncture and Drug Abuse

Acupuncture is a bright light on the road to recovery for many drug addicts and alcoholics.  As an addict is recovering, the physical and psychological urge to get another fix or get another drink can be overwhelming.  If the addict can get past that feeling, there is more hope for another successful day on the road to recovery.  Currently there are a number of chemicals to help reduce that feeling, such as the nicotine patches to help people stop smoking.  However, a major advantage of using acupuncture is that it uses no chemicals in the treatment, can be used for a number of different addictions, and is quite inexpensive compared to a number of other treatments.

Let's take a look into a clinic that uses acupuncture to treat recovering addicts.  Before the clinic used acupuncture, it was somewhat loud and not a pleasant place to be.  The treatment room holds dozens of clients at the same time, each sitting in a chair.  Each person sits with five long needles dangling from each ear.  Depending on the person, a few also have some acupuncture needles in their hands, arms, or feet.   When the time comes to remove the needles, some are removed by one of the acupuncture practitioners, or an assistant, or some clients remove their own needles at the appropriate time.  Needles are left in the patient for an average of about forty-five minutes.  The chairs are arranged so that the clients can see and talk to each other if they wish.  This helps when they share experiences, and helps if some of the new clients are nervous about the use of acupuncture.  The room, though it holds a number of often troubled patients, is generally quite calm and peaceful.

What advantage is there in using acupuncture for a recovering addict?  Most of the addicts describe a release of that feeling that insists they must find a fix or must find a drink.  The patient describes it as the feeling when you get home after a long day and take off your shoes.  The effect of the treatment lasts for about a day, and so newly recovering addicts are scheduled for daily treatments.  People such as dry alcoholics can come by on a periodic basis, or when they feel they need another acupuncture treatment.  Many dry alcoholics are fine as long as their daily life is not stressful, but if a family problem arises at home or at work, the familiar feeling becomes strong once again.  At those times an acupuncture clinic is a great help, for it affects an actual physical change in the person.

Many detox clinics that use acupuncture in its regimen incorporate it into an overall program, where the acupuncture treatments are the first steps that a patient takes.  A typical clinic will schedule a new patient for daily acupuncture sessions, and at each session take a sample to ensure the patient has not used drugs during the past day.  After 10 "clean" days, the patient is considered in sufficient shape to start additional therapy, such as a twelve step program.  Acupuncture treatments continue during this time.  If a patient has a relapse, the patient just starts all over again with the ten day acupuncture treatment.

Using acupuncture in recovery programs has definite advantages, both economically and in support of physical and mental health for the recovering addicts.  It is just another example where the use of acupuncture incorporates healing in all areas:  physical, mental, and emotional.

3. 5000 Year-Old Medical Secret Unearthed!

When you get sick, you go to the doctor. And the doctor will, of course, prescribe medicines. You will go and buy medicines. You take them, and hopefully, you get well.

This is how the health profession goes on nowadays – a cycle of diagnosis and prescription.

If anyone were to give you herbs for medicine, you would probably say that that person was a quack.

But nowadays, studies are being conducted to see if there are really is any merit to what is called 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 the advent of modern medicine.

This includes herbal medicine, or phytotherapy, which is prevalent in Chinese, Ayurvedic ( Indian), and Greek medicine.

Upon the advent of modern medicine, many professionals discarded the use of herbs in favor of man-made medicine. The fact that these treatments are based on the healing properties of some herbs was forgotten.

For example, opium, digitalis, quinine, and aspirin all have their roots in traditional medicine.

Natural medicine can be considered as a lost art. This does not mean that it has lost efficacy over time. In some cases, natural therapy is actually better than modern medicine. This leads some doctors to seriously consider and study the possible uses of natural medicine

Before we continue, it is important to stress that not all the natural remedies are legitimate. It would help to only try those remedies which have been thoroughly studied and are relatively risk free.

Take herbal medicine for example. There are many well-documented and studied herbal remedies available. However, only those that deal with minor ailments such as cough, colds, fever, skin rashes, and its ilk 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 and advocacy 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 compile, 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 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. You could mention homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and other alternative medical treatments. It would pay to consult the experts as to the legitimacy of these treatments.

Natural medicine should also be thought of as an accompanying medicine. Right now, the current collective medical thought suggests that natural medicine be used only to supplement accepted modern medical practices. In that case of minor ailments your expert we actually advise you to take natural therapies instead.

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, and the regular natural treatment.

It is this same line of thought that leads our parents to tell us to eat our vegetables. Yes, a healthy lifestyle and will do no harm to our well-being. And this is the foundation of natural medicine – may it be massage, herbal medicine, aromatherapy or others.

It is funny but true that science, in its quest for excellence, is studying the knowledge of sages past. This, surprisingly, leads us back to the 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 that these therapies are truly helpful to our health and our society.