Common, Missed Cause of MusculoSkeletal Pain - Your Drugs

Three years ago, I started a series of Fitness Fixer posts about the extensive phenomenon of muscle, joint, and body pain occurring from common prescription drugs. The editors at that time asked me to defer writing about it. I have been watching the medical reports grow, substantiating the numbers and secondary problems of chronic pain from common medicines. This is a short summary, with more coming this summer.

Major side effects of body and muscle pain from common prescription drugs are not rare as once thought. Misdiagnosis of this pain is common. Unnecessary treatments, surgeries, and more drugs are often given. Exercises and stretches do not stop body pain from drugs:

• Statin drugs for cholesterol are a frequent cause of muscle and joint pain, and sometimes, numbness or tingling in the fingers or toes
• Common prescription drugs for anxiety and depression. Even though this class of medicines may be prescribed for nerve pain, they can cause nerve and muscle pain as side effects
• Ritalin (methylphenidate hydrochloride) and related drugs
  
• Some prescription allergy medicines such as Allegra (Fexofenadine)
• Prescription acid prevention medicines called PPIs - proton pump inhibitors (Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, Zoton, Inhibitol, and others). PPIs have also been shown to greatly increase risk of hip fracture
• Erectile enhancing drugs
• The calcium channel-blocker drug verapamil
• The antibiotics erythromycin and clarithromycin
• Some HIV medications
• Prescription medicine for constipation like Zelnorm (Tegaserod), irritable bowel, and others digestive complaints.
• Migraine and headache prescriptions
• Medicines for fibromyalgia
• Even many medicines for pain, sadly have pain both as direct side effects and rebound pain, increasing drug dependence and pain cycles
• There are several more prescription drugs that cause more problems than they relieve. List your additions in the comments below.
  

Often the need for the original medicine can be stopped with simple healthy changes. Motivated people can address and change the original problem, making their life better and more active than before instead of paying for more medicines and the problems that come with them.

Two of my books teach how to fix pain and mention specific drugs and what to look for:

• Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery. Each chapter on each kind of pain gives a list of drugs that are known to cause pain.
• Health & Fitness THIRD ed - How to Be Healthy Happy and Fit For The Rest of Your Life. Several chapters include drug information pertinent to the condition covered, plus several chapters on general health, offering many ways to avoid needing the original medications.
• Click the link www.DrBookspan.com/books.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others
• Human Growth Hormone
• Doctor Fakes Benefits in 21 Pain Pill Studies

Labels: arthritis, blood pressure, digestion, dizziness, drugs, fibromyalgia, fix pain, headache/migraine, practice of medicine

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Knee Surgery - Arthroscopy Results No Better than Pretend Surgery

A study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the surgery was no more successful than pretending to do the surgery.

Arthroscopic surgery for knee arthritis is performed in substantial numbers. Why? The patient's doctors said they needed it. Where did the doctors get that opinion? It is taught in medical school and repeated at medical conferences. Repeating things is not evidence-based medicine (which is key) but vehemence-based medicine. When highly paid people repeat things without even knowing if it is true, that is eminence-based medicine.

Studies are now following up the same patients who had the surgery. Numbers show that often the surgeries are not needed, and people can do as well without surgery, and with intelligent non-surgical rehab.

This is not new. In the 1930's, patients being prepared for the rigors of surgery through exercise, often found that by surgery time, they didn't need it. Other patients without receiving exercise went straight to surgery. They may have had continuing pain and damage after surgery or later in life, but patient tracking was not done. Doctors just reported that the surgery was done, the patient lived, and that was all, and on to the next paying job.

Then studies compared surgery to physical rehab without surgery. Improvement rates were found to be about the same.

Then came an even more interesting study in 2002 of 180 patients that compared knee arthroscopic surgery to cutting the patient but not doing the knee surgery. Sixty patients in the placebo group received skin incisions and underwent a simulated surgery without insertion of the arthroscope. Two other groups had one of two typical knee procedures: Sixty-one patients had arthroscopic lavage group, and 59 to had arthroscopic débridement.

Results showed, "At no point did either of the intervention groups report less pain or better function than the placebo group." Conclusions were, "In this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic débridement were no better than those after a placebo procedure."



This does not mean that surgery does not "work" but that you do not have to have it or be rushed into it, if it is not right for you. There are other ways, often as quick, and less expensive and painful and without the limitations following. Take your time. Don't let anyone push you into something not right for you. Medical claims that you will get worse if you do not have immediate surgery have not turned out to be factual.


Related:

Surgery for Knee Arthritis, Meniscus, Unnecessary
What Works Better Than Knee Surgery?
Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Surgery Unnecessary
Hamstring to Quadriceps Ratios Not the Answer in Knee Injury

Labels: arthritis, fix pain, injury, knee, practice of medicine, surgery

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Fast Fitness - Make Your Own Muscle Soreness Rub

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - by special request of martial arts students starting my summer semester university class this Tuesday - Make a quick soreness relief rub at home:

Labels: arthritis, drugs, fast fitness, green fitness, martial arts, soreness

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Does Running Ruin Your Joints?

A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no evidence of accelerated rates of osteoarthritis among long-distance runners.

Further, weight-bearing exercise like running helps stave off osteoporosis by maintaining bone mineral density.



Posts showing good movement mechanics during exercise and daily life:

• Healthy Knees
• Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?
• Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
• Back Pain From Running
• Walking Softly Benefits Olympic Wrestler
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• Not Old for the Olympics Part I
• Most Helpful Olympic Advice So Far
• Arch Support Is Not From Shoes
• Common Exercises Teach Hip Tightness When Kicking, Stretching, and on the Stairs
• Is Bad Martial Arts Good Exercise?
• Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Runner Fixes More Pain With Straighter Push-Off
  
  

Labels: aerobic, aging, arthritis, impact, injury, osteoporosis, repetitive strain, running, walking

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Another Way Exercise Helps Rheumatoid Arthritis

A study described in Medline news seemed to give mysterious theories about strangely different body composition distribution of people with rheumatoid arthritis. What is this mysterious change? The people with the hardest time getting around had "increasing amounts of fat and decreasing amounts of lean mass (skeletal muscle) on the arms and legs."

The authors of the study theorized that the difference altered the "normal range of motion of the arms and legs" or may, "biochemically interfere with muscular function" or even "may be infiltrating the muscles." Perhaps a less mysterious conclusion can be added. Anyone with or without arthritis will have more difficulty and discomfort getting around when they have high fat and low muscle. That is called being out of shape. Being out of shape makes movement difficult. It is not a mystery. Whether being out of shape is not your fault because of a condition does not matter. If someone has arthritis, that is even more reason that they need regular healthful exercise. The study reminded that people with higher fat and lower lean (muscle) can be normal weight. You can be out of shape and too weak to comfortably support body weight at any weight, not only if you are very heavy.

The study authors write," However, since one's body composition can be altered, there is hope to reduce the amount of disability and improve the quality of life of these patients." I have been tracking the topic of this particular study for a while now. Previous studies showing that rheumatoid arthritis patients improved body composition with arthritis drugs were done by people working with and receiving salaries from the drug manufacturer. An obvious and easy way to alter body composition is simple regular fun activity:

Get started on lifestyle exercise:

• How To Join a Free Gym
• Fast Fitness - Figuring Heart Rate Training Range
• Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady?
• Household Fitness in the New Year
• Get Better Exercise From Your Chair
• Married 63 Years With Good Balance
• Better Exercise on the Stairs
• Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance
• Getting Stronger Without a Gym
• Getting Stronger is for Everyone
• Better Balance by Christmas

See if pain comes more from ordinary bad habits than arthritis:

• Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
• Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?
• Getting the Right Yoga Medicine
• How a Reader Stopped Recurring Pain, Got Stronger, and Said Aha!
• Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck?
• Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine
• Healthier Carrying - Get Free Ab Exercise and Stop Pain
• The Stretch You Need The Least
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?

See if common medicines and foods work make pain or problems:

• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures
• Inspiring Update from Jill - Celiac, Knees, Fasciitis, and Restoring Happy Life
• Junk Food Through Your Skin?
• A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery
• Healthier Fitness Water
• Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?

What else is exercise good for?

• Regular Exercise Reduces Cold and Flu Incidence
• Exercise and Cancer
• Sinus and Head Colds
• Top Diabetes Treatment is Exercise
• Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones

Regular exercise will make you able to get around more easily. You do not need exercise machines or expensive programs or therapies. Go walking, dancing, biking, or do whatever activities you love or used to love. If it's hard, remember that Olympic athletes gasp with effort. Top athletes have sore muscles the next day. Being mildly out of breath, and using muscles because of healthy exercise can be good, not bad. Use common sense starting something that will be both fun and healthy.

Labels: arthritis, practice of medicine

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Simulation Suit To Feel the Pain of Osteoarthritis

A BBC news article reported on a suit that gives wearers a "real life" insight into the pain and impaired quality-of-life associated with osteoarthritis (OA). The suit costs £20,000 and was developed by Loughborough University. They wrote: "The JOINT Osteoarthritis Education Programme will be made available to GPs throughout the UK, providing advanced training on the diagnosis and management of the condition, including both drug-based and lifestyle approaches to help improve mobility and minimise pain."

How does this suit work? The specs for this particular suit are proprietary to the company (that means they are not telling). Similarly marketed suits to simulate arthritis use a simple principle to produce the painful feeling - they use straps and other restrictive designs to hold the body in bent positions that cause the rubbing and strain.

The suit would be useful for the kind of health care worker who tells people to live with their pain instead of fixing the cause to stop the pain. Most other people don't need an expensive suit to show them how to hunch over and hurt all over:

• The post Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix shows how to understand the simple mechanics that damage discs. In my work, I have found it is one of the same mechanisms that increases wear and tear on the vertebrae contributing to spinal arthritis.
  
  
• The second main wear and tear injury adding to spinal arthritis is standing with the lower spine arched inward too much (lordosis) - Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine. The muscles you would use to simply move your spine to a less arched position and restore neutral spine are your abdominal muscles.

• Discs and vertebrae are living parts of your body. They can heal, when you stop hurting them, usually starting within days by stopping the harmful movements that aren't good for you anyway, and using healthy movement during daily life that gives you free exercise. Discs can heal without surgery, just like a sprained ankle. More on how to stop recurring ankle sprains is in How To Treat Ankle Sprains and Prevent Them and No More Ankle Sprains Part II.

• Post on changing bad positioning that increases wear and tear and risk of osteoarthritis on knees: You Can Fix Your Own Knees.
  
  
• Posts on changing positioning that increases wear and tear and risk of osteoarthritis on the neck: Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck? and Gaze Perseid Meteors Without Neck Pain.
  
  
• Post on changing positioning that increases wear and tear and risk of osteoarthritis on the shoulder: Upper Back Exercise and Neck Pain Prevention Too.
  
  
• Post on changing positioning that increases wear and tear and risk of osteoarthritis of the lower back: Prevent Back Surgery.

Use all the various articles on fixing injuries in The Fitness Fixer to see how to move in healthful positioning so that your exercise is healthy rather than injurious. You don't need to get treatments, or adjustments, or surgery, or shots, or medicines. It is a win-win situation where you do not have to give up favorite activities, and can become healthier than before. Just use healthy movement as part of normal daily life and get free exercise, better physical abilities, and stop the processes that cause injury, all at the same time.

For books, try Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Health & Fitness in Plain English Third Edition. The Fix Pain book concentrates on how to stop injury process in each area, with patient stories in each chapter. The Health & Fitness new third edition covers back and neck pain, plus living and exercising in healthy ways, nutrition, and health issues including measuring body fat tests, bone health, heart health, and other topics. Descriptions on my books page.

Labels: arthritis, fix pain, injury, practice of medicine

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Forearm, Upper Body and Hand Exercise

During the part of the year that we live in the United States, we have a luxury - a washing machine. You put clothes in it, and it washes them for you. You come back later, hang out the clothes, and the Earth dries them for you. Luxury.

Recently the old washing machine could not wash any more. I always appreciated the machine, but I rediscovered something else. Washing clothes by rubbing them on a washboard, and wringing water from heavy canvas work jeans and martial arts uniforms is vigorous hand and arm exercise.

Occasionally, sources for arthritis information state that if you have arthritis of the hands or wrists, avoid wringing clothes and instead, purchase a tool that squeezes the cloth to remove the water for you. However, it is not use of the hands or a wringing action in itself that causes arthritis pain. Use of the hands improves function, improves joint health, improves the strength that allows you to accomplish more without strain, and is an important part of arthritis prevention and management.

Good use and exercise of the hands does not mean to move the area no matter how much it hurts. Misuse - bad movement habits - is often the culprit in wear and pressure on the area. Instead of craning the wrist and fingers back and levering the wringing action on the finger joints, wrist and base of the thumb, use the muscles of the hand and forearm, as well as the entire arms to power the wringing action. Start with fun gentle squeezing, let the hands warm through real life use, and continue to improve function through use.

There is no need to keep straight wrists or splint them to keep them straight. Splinting may temporarily reduce pain, but reduces strength and function which often leads to bigger problems. It is not a healthful or useful solution to, "limit the patient to limit the pain." Use your body, have fun, be active, and be able to move for normal daily function. Use healthful body mechanics and the actions will be far more likely to build you than injure.

More posts on strengthening the hands are on the way.

More on distributing weight on muscules of the arm and hand instead of compressing the joints:

• Fast Fitness - Prevent Wrist Pain During Pushups and Cooking
• Fast Fitness - Upper Back, Shoulder, Triceps, Arm, Wrist, and Hand Stretch
• Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking
• Fast Fitness - Quick Wrist and Forearm Stretch

Click the labels under each Fitness Fixer article for more on each topic.

Labels: arm, arthritis, hand, spirit, strength, wrist

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Fix Scoliosis and Arthritis Pain, Fix New Orleans

This story came in from Marla:

"I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that after suffering for many years from back (scoliosis) and neck (arthritis) pain, it was my good fortune to happen upon your website. I read every word, tried the movements and postures and found an immediate measure of relief from the pain that no doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist or massage therapist has been able to help (I am 56). I immediately ordered a number of your books, read them from cover to cover, gave them to my daughter and son-in-law and then ordered more for my son.

"I took your books with me to New Orleans, where I worked for 10 days as a volunteer building houses, and am happy to report the exercises and stretches allowed me to climb ladders, wield heavy loads and hammer nails without further consequence to my back and neck.

"As mentioned by most people, I found instant relief upon simply correcting the positions of my neck and back. I took the books to New Orleans with me and did most of the stretches, especially the side bending, back extension, hip and hamstring ones. I also took great care with my positioning with the construction work and lifting.

"Before I found you, because I was in so much pain, I had stepped up my go-to stretching routine gleaned from years of aerobics and some yoga, which always included toe touching with straight knees and plow and all those exercises you say not to do. I thought it was good that I could touch my toes on the floor behind my head in a plow or my palms to the floor bending forward. Ouch!

"I've also been doing many of the strength-building exercises, trying to work up from the elementary to the more difficult. It's fun stuff and it feels SO GOOD!

"Thank you for putting so much information out there for the long-suffering public! Sincerely, Marla Black"


"PS - my daughter is a triathlete and she and her husband have been doing all the bad stretching and wrong postures. Her neck and back were starting to hurt. I gave them the books and they are already onboard and feeling the difference!"

Here are some links to information used:

• Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?
• Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
• Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
• How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle
• Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
• Book - Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery.

Labels: arthritis, fix pain, hamstring, readers inspiring story, scoliosis, spirit, strength, yoga

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Walk Lightly - Shock Absorption for Happier Joints

"Your tread must be light and sure
as though your path were upon rice paper

"This rice paper is the test
Fragile as the wings of the dragonfly

"Clinging as the cocoon of the silkworm
When you can walk its length and leave no trace
You will have learned"
- Master Khan to Grasshopper in the 70's TV series Kung Fu

Walk, run, jump, and move lightly.

Banging down with each step is not good for your body. It increases risk of joint pain and plantar fasciitis.

I tell my students to stop banging and stomping when they walk and move and jump. One day, a student asked me "How?" Here are some things to try:

1. I asked the student to stomp his foot.
Then I asked him to place his foot down lightly. That is how.

2. Use an analog bathroom scale. Step on heavily and see the numbers go up high. Then step on again lightly and see that the last number reached is a lower number. In sports medicine, we use force plates to measure ground forces when an athlete jumps or runs by.

3. While walking, try not to make noise. It doesn't mean to tip-toe, but to walk with regular heel to toe gait, but lightly.

4. Try walking with a full-to-the-brim cup of hot coffee or any liquid. Don't tip-toe, just walk softly without spilling any.

5. Practice jumping in the air and landing softly. Bend your knees when landing. Increase the height of the jump, maintain soft landing. Work up to jumping down from increasing heights without making a sound, or much sound.

Labels: arthritis, feet, impact, knee, leg strength, martial arts, plantar fasciitis, running, walking

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High Fat Meals Hurt Lung Function

I am still getting caught up with work from the sports medicine meeting I attended in late May.

An interesting study was presented at the pulmonary and respiratory physiology session -
"Effects of a High-Fat Meal on Pulmonary Function in Healthy Subjects." It is known that high fat meals negatively affect people with asthma and other pulmonary problems. It is also known that a high-fat diet increases internal inflammation, which is associated with higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis (possibly other forms of arthritis such as osteoarthritis), and several other chronic illnesses. What about effects on your lungs and breathing?

The study looked at the effect of a high-fat meal on airway inflammation and pulmonary function. The researchers tested subjects for total cholesterol and triglycerides, then fed them a high fat meal. Subjects were tested after the meal for cholesterol and triglycerides, various pulmonary functions, markers of airway inflammation (exhaled nitric oxide), and C-reactive protein, which is a marker of systemic inflammation. The researchers found that the high fat meal increased total cholesterol, triglycerides, and exhaled nitric oxide. They concluded that the results suggest that high-fat meals may contribute to inflammatory diseases of the airway and lung (in addition to other health consequences).

Just as smoking or taking amphetamines are not healthy, but help weight loss, popular weight loss diets "work" but have health drawbacks. Check your meals to see if you eat high fat, whether for a diet, or just from unhealthful eating habits.

A diet may help weight loss, but be unhealthy. An exercise may work a muscle but be bad for your joints. A medicine may fix a disease but harm the patient. You don't have to choose. Many fun healthy ways to exercise and control weight that don't harm the body are given throughout this Fitness Fixer blog.

Click the labels under this post for related posts that give information about breathing exercises and healthier nutrition.

Related:

• Do Breathing Exercises Work?
• Fix One Pain, Don't Cause Another
• A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery
• Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money
• Another Way Exercise Helps Rheumatoid Arthritis
• Is Your Health Food Unhealthful
  
  
  

Labels: arthritis, breathing, circulation, diabetes, nutrition, weight loss

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Calories Burned in Prayer

Last week at the sports medicine conference, I talked to a researcher from Kuwait University. Dr. Jasem Ramadan presented a lovely little study called Bioenergetics of Islamic Prayers, measuring the amount of oxygen and calories the physical movements of the prayers burned.

Five standard prayers (Salat) are mandatory every day for every adult male and female Muslim. Each prayer has a continuous sequence of body movements (Rakkas) consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling and sitting. Each Rakka lasts between 3 and 6 minutes. Dr. Ramadan looked at the energy cost of two and four Rakka prayers in thirty-two male and female adults. He found that Salats have a positive effect on metabolic function. For an 80 kg person, energy cost of daily prayers was about 80 calories a day, and could be considered a form of physical activity that enhances fitness.

Dr. Ramadan told me, "The prayers have been done for thousands of years and no one thinks about it as physical exercise." I told him I think that often. I told him that Russian Orthodox prayer was pretty physical. A liturgy lasts hours, done standing and continuously crossing yourself from the floor in a squat to high overhead. Everyone including the oldest people do this, up and down, and up and down, and up and down, stretching and squatting, reaching and bending. I always thought it was group community health activity, probably found long ago to be protective against many ailments (and attributed divinely). The original yogas were the same, reaching upward to exalt the heavens, bowing, kneeling, prostrating, rising, over and over.

I told Dr. Ramadan that many Westerners aren't comfortably able to do the kneeling Rakka shown in Healthy Toe Stretches or rise to a stand without using their hands, as in the post Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise, not only the elderly, but the rest of the population too.

He seemed surprised and interested. I told him I believed that this lack of basic human movement for real daily life was a major contributor to the epidemic numbers of people who are too weak and unstable to get up unassisted, to walk without canes and walkers, have trouble taking stairs, have poor balance, and for much knee and hip pain and degeneration. Dr. Ramadan said that elders in his country do not suffer knee and hip arthritis in high numbers, and can easily rise from the floor into their old age. I told him that many Westerners are familiar with a device that is worn, with a button to press for help if they cannot get up from the floor or chair. At this point, he was sure I was kidding.

If you cannot get up from the floor or low chair easily without using your hands, you likely have dangerously decreased leg strength and balance. Use good bending to strengthen your legs and knees many times a day and improve your fitness, explained in the post How Often Should You Be Healthy? Use healthy movement every day to sit, rise, bend right, clean, garden, give thanks, stretch, take stairs, and play to get healthy functional exercise, and prevent common joint pain. That is fitness as a lifestyle.

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, strength, stretch, weight loss, yoga

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Healthy Mother's Day

Neolithic groups (stone age) worshiped the mother. Ancient Germans worshipped the virgin Hertha holding her child. Scandinavians worshipped virgin Disa holding her child. In ancient Egypt it was Isis with infant Osiris. In India, Devaki had Krishna (also by virgin birth). In Asia, Cybele and Deoius. Chinese holy mother Shing Moo held her child in arms. Christian missionaries to Tibet, China, and Japan found that holy mothers depicted with splendid light around their head and holding a divine child had been worshiped long before they got there.

In Rome, the goddess was Demeter, meaning Earth Mother, wearing wreathes of braided corn in her hair. In ancient Greece, Demeter was called Ceres, the great mother with baby at breast. From her name "Ceres," we get the word "cereal" (grains), "which made man different from wild animals."

In the spring in ancient Greece, celebrations were held in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. Christian Europe celebrated the spring festival of "Mother Church" who (they believed) would protect them from harm. During the 1600's, England celebrated "Mothering Sunday" on the 4th Sunday of Lent, honoring the mothers of England. All cultures worshiped the divine, the Mother, who gives life and food, compassion and love.

So. How to celebrate this Sunday on Mother's Day? I'm in favor of some goddess worship, probably involving some rocks and food and chocolates and compassion and love. Not so original, but time tested and universal:

• Visit Mom (or a Mom) and give her a massage (if she wants one). Neck, hands, feet, back. Good for circulation for giver and receiver. Touch can be healthy. Ask her stories.
• Teach her a Nice Neck Stretch
• Make her (and you) something healthy to eat. For light teas, try cinnamon, cloves, grated orange peel, or ginger in hot water.
• For a cold treat without unhealthy junk food, mash a frozen banana with crushed raw walnuts or flax seeds. Use a food grinder or get free exercise by mashing them yourself in a bowl. It will taste like creamy ice cream. Flax seeds and walnuts have been found to be effective to help bone health as vegetarian sources of omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids. Raw walnuts (as part of a general low fat and cholesterol diet) have also been found to have a beneficial effect to decrease cardiovascular disease risk, among other benefits. This treat has fiber and is non dairy, both associated with lower breast cancer risk.
• Goddess worship often is helped with chocolate. The primary chemical in chocolate is theobromine. "Theo-" means God and "broma" comes from a word meaning food. The theobromine in chocolate was named for "food of the gods." Theobromine is an antioxidant, weak diuretic, stimulant, and mood booster, opens breathing airways, and relieves coughing. Dark chocolate has more theobromine than lighter chocolate, with flavonoids and phenolics, plant substances that are good for the heart. People who get a kind of vascular headache called migraine do better not to eat chocolate. For others, get plain cocoa, unsweetened, not junked up with sugar. Add the unsweetened cocoa to the frozen mashed banana and walnuts for a healthy sweet wonderful treat that tastes better than you would expect. For exotic flavor and more health benefit, add fresh grated ginger root.
• Sit outside in the air and sun to have your tea and frozen banana. Warnings on the dangers of overtanning are important for preventing skin cancer for people who work outdoors, who over-tan for cosmetic purposes, and a few other populations. Another group to consider is those spending too little time outdoors. Sunlight exposure and the Vitamin D it makes your skin produce, is increasingly documented as crucial to bone density, healthy immune function, positive mood, sound sleep at night, relief of symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, MS, Parkinsons, polycystic ovary, diabetes, and other health issues. A nice massage and tea and chocolate outside in the sunlight could be made into a wonderful Mother's Day. Nice excuse to buy a hat.
• Make Mom (or a Mom) some homemade healthy skin lotion. Commercial products have preservatives, dyes, and chemicals. Try combinations of grape seed oil, tea tree oil (very small amount), vitamins C and E, ginger, honey, tea, fresh aloe, and fragrances from oils, fruit, flowers like lavender, or leaves like mint. (Don't wear citrus oils like lime out in the sun.)
• Help out at a woman and child shelter. Or help at a men's shelter to help the guys get back on their feet to help their own families.
• Celebrate Mother Earth - go out and pick up litter. It's good exercise. Bend right.
• Make a trip to look around a home improvement center to see about some do it yourself solar projects, even if only to replace a few lights.
• Go do gardening for your mother, or your mother Earth. Lift and bend right, reach right, carry in healthy ways.
  
• Do some cooking, shopping, vacuuming, and cleaning for Mom (or a Mom). Water their plants. It's good exercise for you and a nice thing for them.
• Be good to each other - all the children of Earth.
• Follow the advice of the unknown who said, "The most important gift a father can give his children is to love their mother."
• If that doesn't work, take the advice on the side of aspirin bottles: "Take two aspirin, and keep away from children."

Labels: arthritis, circulation, diabetes, digestion, fibromyalgia, fix pain, green fitness, holiday, massage, nutrition, osteoporosis, Parkinson, spirit, stretch, sunlight, upper back

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Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York

The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.

In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."

Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.

Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.

My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net

Labels: aging, arthritis, balance, disc, education, fix pain, hip strength, knee, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, sitting, squat, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

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Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving

If you think you won't have time to exercise over the Thanksgiving holiday, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much of the Thanksgiving holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.

Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your Thanksgiving into fitness and health as a lifestyle:

1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags,
   to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your weight back toward your heels, and your body upright.
   
   
2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing straight. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.
   
   
3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang over and forward. Stand upright, chin in, and just tilt your head downward in relaxed manner to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.
   
   
4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more:

• Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.
• Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.
• Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.
• When you eat the Thanksgiving meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle.

Drawings and more ideas on healthy positioning - see the book Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier

Labels: abdominal muscles, achilles stretch, arthritis, balance, disc, facet joints, fix pain, green fitness, hamstring, holiday, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, neutral spine

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Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle

Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.

• A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.
• A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.
• A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance.
• The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.
• The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.
• The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.

If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.

Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."

You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.

Here is a fun way to change mindset to exercise as a lifestyle:

Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.

If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:

1. when bending to make the bed,
2. to pick up laundry,
3. look in the refrigerator,
4. load and unload the dishwasher,
5. to pick up your shoes,
6. open a lower cabinet,
7. lift a child or pet,
8. feed a child or pet,
9. pick up things from the floor,
10. pick up hand weights to do exercise,
11. put down weights after exercising,
12. many daily activities.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fast Fitness - Count How Many Times You Help Or Hurt Your Body Daily
• Readers Count - Second Missed Cause of Back Pain With Golf
• How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• Better Balance by Christmas
• Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending
• How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending
• Common Exercises Teach Bad Bending
• Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Books:

• Learn bending, reaching, and fixing knee and back pain: Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery
  
• Get built-in lifestyle exercise, fix back and knee pain, learn health and fun at the same time: Health & Fitness in Plain English THIRD edition.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, disc, fix pain, knee, leg press, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, osteoporosis, practice of medicine, sciatica, squat, strength, stretch, upper back

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How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending

Imagine how good your legs would look if you did 400 squats and lunges a day, and how many calories you would burn. Using your legs would strengthen them and reduce risk of both osteoporosis and arthritis. It has been found that a major predisposing factor of knee arthritis is weak thighs.

Now remember how many times a day you bend for ordinary household and work activities. It is more than you think. Some time ago I did an intensive tracking of how many times a day the average person bends. I also put my graduate students on this as a formal study. This kind of counting is a grad student specialty. Many of my other students wanted to count also.

We all found about the same thing. The average sedentary person bends an average of 100-200 times a day just getting things out of the refrigerator, dishwasher, closets, washing, and doing other little things around the house or workplace. The average nonsedentary (but still not active) person bends 200-400 times a day. The average fidgety and active person bends over 500 times a day.

Now realize how many times a day you are hurting your back and missing free exercise by bending over in unhealthy ways, as in the photo, above left. Leaning over all day is also a factor in neck pain. If you only burned half a calorie each time you bent properly, keeping your body upright, and bending knees, you would get a lot of exercise. You would not have to change clothes or go to a gym or pay a trainer. You would not have to take pills because you make your back ache. You would not have to do anything except live your life. You life is supposed to be healthy. You are not supposed to stop your life to go "do exercise." It is a sad thing to see people do squats and lunges in a gym, then bend over wrong to put their weights down, and bend wrong again to pick up their things to leave.

When you bend, keep your upper body upright. When you are bending with feet side by side (squat bend), keep both heels down and your weight back over your heels to keep your weight on your leg muscles and off your knee joints. Don't stick your behind far out in back. In these ways, healthy bending saves your back and gives much exercise without going to a gym, and helps, not hurts, your knees. Healthy bending is life changing.

Next: Change painful to healthful bending for real daily life. Changing exercise to healthy medicine - Free Exercise and Free Back and Knee Pain Prevention - Healthy Bending.

Labels: achilles stretch, arthritis, fix pain, hip, hip stretch, leg strength, leg stretch, lower back, lunge, osteoporosis, posture, squat, strength, weight loss

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