Massage, Mind & Body

Sleep seems to be one of the things that most people don’t do enough of. Adequate sleep can make an lasting impact on your life and assist you with handling daily stress with much more ease. Writer Gretchen Rubin provided the following effective tips for getting the sleep you need.

Good habits for good sleep:

1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.

2. No caffeine after 6:00 p.m.

3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes—okay. Analyzing an article—nope.

4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.

5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. I have to put a pillow over the cable box.

6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.

If sleep won’t come:
7. Breathe deeply and slowly until you can’t stand it anymore.

8. If your mind is racing (you’re planning a trip, a move; you’re worried about a medical diagnosis), write down what’s on your mind. This technique really works for me.

9. Slather yourself with body lotion. This feels good and also, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re hot, it cools you down.

10. If your feet are cold, put on socks.

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Here’s a simple solution that I often suggest to clients to address that nagging foot and heel pain:

Press out the bottom of your foot with a spiked rubber ball—a common massage tool sold at health food stores—to ease tightness, break up pain and relieve plantar fasciitis. Stand or sit as you roll your foot over the ball. Use as needed throughout the day. Can’t find a spiked ball? Use a tennis ball instead.

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The following are some helpful tips that you may have known before but forgotten and stopped practicing (like I had). That is until Shape Magazine published these gems to keep in mind, especially during your frequent grocery store visits.

Mistake #1: Produce overload
Sure, making one big grocery run at the start of the week seems like a no-fail way to get your five a day. But the vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables begin to diminish the moment they’re harvested, meaning the longer you store produce, the fewer nutrients it will contain. After about a week in the fridge, for example, spinach retains just half of its folate and around 60 percent of its lutein (an antioxidant associated with healthy eyes). Broccoli loses about 62 percent of its flavonoids (antioxidant compounds that help ward off cancer and heart disease) within 10 days.

Solution: Buy smaller batches at least twice a week. If you can’t shop every few days, go froze. These fruits and veggies are harvested at their peak and are flash-frozen immediately. Because the produce isn’t exposed to oxygen, the nutrients stay stable for a year, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis. Just be sure to avoid frozen products packed in sauces or syrups. These can mean extra calories from fat or sugar, and may be high in sodium as well.

Mistake #2: You’re stashing foods in see-through containers Continue Reading »

There’s new word that those yummy, antioxidant rich blueberries–that are a wonderful, handy snack–may also be the link to controling weight and cholesterol. Read on: Continue Reading »

Tis the season for the sniffling, sneezing and itchy eyes that mean nothing other than spring is in the air. For those of you who suffer from allergies, the following tips courtesy of Reader’s Digest could be just what the doctor ordered:

Eat the Right Foods

Improper eating habits can cause health problems, and make existing ones worse. Eating the right foods can help alleviate many health problems, including asthma and seasonal allergies. Medical studies have repeatedly concluded that powerful chemicals called antioxidants — found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, green tea, and other foods and beverages — help battle inflammation inside your body, a critical factor in controlling allergies. Of course, don’t load up on an antioxidant-rich food if you are allergic to it.

Lose Your Extra Pounds

Carrying extra pounds also makes it harder to breathe — a problem you don’t want when Continue Reading »

Be aware of the weight loss products you may choose to use. Some dangerous ingredients with unfamiliar names may be lurking within your favorite products.

The FDA has issued a new alert about weight loss products tainted by potentially dangerous ingredients. Many of the products claim to be “natural” or “herbal” but include drugs, sometimes in very high doses.

Altogether, the FDA has found 72 tainted weight loss products since it first brought the issue to public attention last December.

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Here’s an interesting result to a study done on the mysterious ailment: restless leg syndrome (rls) as reported by HealthDay:

Having a big belly or being obese appears to increase the risk for restless legs syndrome (RLS), a new study finds.

Some 5 percent to 10 percent of adults in the United States have RLS, a disorder that causes people to feel a compelling need to move their legs, especially when they’re lying down. The condition can have a substantial impact on sleep, daily activities and quality of life, researchers say.

In the new study, “we found that obesity was associated with a 40 percent higher risk of having RLS,” said lead researcher Dr. Xiang Gao, an instructor in medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Individuals with a higher waist circumference, a marker for central obesity, are also 60 percent more likely to having RLS relative to those with a low waist circumference,” he added.

The researchers also found an association between obesity at age 20 and a higher risk of having the disorder in mid-life or later, Gao said, while noting, “This suggests that obesity could be a risk factor for development of RLS.”

The entire article with more details on the finding can be found here.

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Think you know about alternative medicine? Like what is cupping? Hatha yoga? Qigong? Here’s your chance to test your knowledge with this handy quiz. I got seven out of ten correct myself. What was your score?

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There’s no getting around aging but you can do it well with the following tips from Real Simple:

Taking Care of Your Brain

What aging can bring: Forgetfulness, decline in mental agility, risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

What the research shows: “Doing things that hit both the left and right sides of the brain, like word puzzles plus mazes and visuals, has been proven to build brainpower,” says Gary Small, M.D., director of the University of California at Los Angeles Center on Aging. Swedish researchers believe there’s also a connection between physical activity and cognitive decline. Their study found that subjects who exercised at least 20 minutes two or more times a week at midlife reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia later by 60 percent. On the nutrition front, a study at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center showed that an essential omega-3 fatty acid counteracts the brain’s production of neuron-damaging amyloid proteins.

What you can do: “Challenge yourself mentally and physically; as little as 10 minutes of Continue Reading »

You may have seen the recent commercials promoting high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) as a healthy sweetener when used in moderation. These commercials are an attempt to dispute those recent details about this popular sweetener. Well below are some other details that have surfaced from a recent study showing why hfcs should be avoided:

A new study in mice sheds light on at least part of the reason for the insulin resistance that can come from diets high in high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener found in most sodas and many other processed foods. Continue Reading »