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A psychological perspective on back care

29/4/2018

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Using the Franklin Method for Back Health 
 Apr 19, 2018
 Author - Mollie McClelland Morris 
​

 chronicpain,  exercise,  health
When most of us think or talk about our backs, we usually say things like “my back is stiff and tight”. “I have herniated discs”, and “my back is really sore”. Fitness instructors say that our lower back needs “protecting”. In fact, if someone answered “How are you?” with, “My back feels really dynamic and strong today and I feel great.” we would probably laugh.

Many of us are searching for ways out of pain, and there are many modalities to try, including manual therapies, massage, osteopathy, or rolfing or exercise, pilates or yoga to strengthen the back. Others take pills, herbs, hot baths, cold compresses, taping, foam rolling, new shoes or mattresses even surgery to have less pain in the back.

The science around pain, and back pain specifically suggests that there is not a direct correlation between “injury” and pain. Pain is sometimes present with no injury and likewise, many of us have small bulges in our discs, with no symptoms. So what is going on, and what can we do to feel better?

Research is beginning to suggest that the very thoughts “My back is stiff and tight” actually create and reinforce back pain. The belief that our back is fragile and in danger creates that state in our bodies. When we talk about our bodies, especially our backs, the language is usually profoundly visceral, and overwhelmingly negative. We are creating those qualities as we move, by thinking about our body in that way.

What if we worked with our mind first, and used that tool to change the body? Franklin Method starts there: by changing our thinking about our movement. It is truly a methodology for improving movement using the mind and body.

Try this exercise: Move your shoulders up and down a few times. Check in as you do it. How do you feel? You might feel tight or stiff, or you might really enjoy moving. Now, as you move your shoulders think about how you would like your shoulders to feel, maybe smooth or light. As you move, say the words: “my shoulders are light and smooth”. Has anything changed? Now say the opposite: “my shoulders are heavy and clunky”. You may feel that your body instantly takes on what you are thinking, and that the movement is immediately heavier and laboured. That is a simple exercise that shows how thinking affects the body.

Do the same in spinal movements. Think about the qualities you want to feel as you move. Say “my spine is free and strong”. Add breath to your movement. You may discover that your pain is already dissipating. The mental shift in this exercise is the beginning of our internal healing toolkit. While very helpful, it may not be enough to totally heal from pain.

​Through anatomical and biomechanical images and exercises students experience the body’s physical structures, to move more efficiently and effectively. The understanding and embodiment of our form and function creates a fully developed and integrated system of movement exercises and visualisations, often using bands and balls for training and conditioning. Franklin Method can also work alongside other movement practices, including pilates or yoga, and can be applied to any physical activity including horseback riding, running, or surfing.

Where Franklin Method differs from other modalities is that it is not just a set of exercises to do. The toolkit for creating healthy movement includes metaphor, clear anatomical and biomechanical visualisation and embodiment, motivational imagery, touching and tapping for better proprioception, and even mental simulation of a movement and its desired effects. Using this detailed and varied imagery, students find new movement pathways, stimulate under or overused muscles, tone and relax the body and feel better.

And why is this important? In my first Franklin Method class, Eric Franklin, creator of the method asked us to rate a movement experience. For the majority, the experience was average. Then asked if we wanted to live an average feeling life, we all answered no. These tools can help us heal from pain, but also can help us live our lives in the best possible way. Both empowering and challenging, Franklin Method asks us to take responsibility for how we create our experience in our body and mind, and then gives us tools to continually improve.
 Mollie McClelland Morris
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Calm.com blog post on sleep

17/4/2018

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I came across this today and its one of the best articles I've seen on sleep and managing the difficulties of getting enough. I'm reposting it here for you to read ..... and I would wholeheartedly recommend the calm.com app for its many different evolving options to encourage wellbeing.

3 key ingredients for good sleep

HEALTH & HAPPINESS, SLEEP
We’ve all been there—tossing and turning, willing our tired bodies to hit the sack when it refuses shuteye. To help, we turn to sleeping pills, herbal remedies, over-the-counter sleep meds and other antidotes.
But the truth: we already have everything within ourselves to get a good night’s sleep—it’s built into our amazing mechanism as human beings.
So why then do we still struggle to get good Zzz’s?
Most, if not all, slumber problems stem from not having one or more of three key sleep ingredients in place when it’s time for bed. 

1. Feeling sleepy.
It may sound obvious, but many times we go to bed before we’re actually sleepy. And by “sleepy” I mean not just feeling tired or even exhausted, but where you actually find yourself nodding off.
And while our reasons for hitting the hay may seem sound: it’s your usual bedtime, your partner is going to sleep so you should too, or you want to get “the right” number of shuteye hours—if you’re not sleepy, you won’t sleep. 

So how can you ensure your body is ready for lights out? 
  • Establish a set wake-up time. Generally, we need to be awake about 16 hours before we’re ready for sleep (assuming we’re already well-rested). The key? Having a set wake-up time and sticking with it.
If you get up about the same time each morning, including weekends, your body will establish a regular sleep/wake cycle, and you’ll get sleepy around the same time each evening. 
It can be challenging at first, especially on the weekends, when all you want to do is stay in bed and sleep late. But your body will adjust after a few weeks—making it easier to wake up earlier (which means more time to enjoy your days off!). 
  • Stay active during the day. Engage in your life wholeheartedly. Put everything into your work, relationships and leisure activities. The more mentally and physically active you are during the day, the more tired you’ll be at night, and the easier sleepiness will come. 

2. Allowing Yourself to Relax.
Relaxing in the evening is challenging for many. Life can be stressful and demanding, so when bedtime comes, we can still be wound up, making sleep feel impossible.
Here are a few tips to get relaxed before bed:
  • Give yourself at least an hour to unwind.
This means no work or stressful activities for an hour (2-3 hours is ideal) before going to sleep. You can read or listen to a not-too-heart-pumping story (be sure to check out Calm Sleep Stories for some great bedtime fiction). Or enjoy peaceful music, do a puzzle, or make love. It can be almost anything as long as it helps you relax and decompress. 
It’s important to carve out this time for yourself. Mark it into your calendar so nothing else will take its place.
  • Move your Body. 
Working out 3-6 hours before bedtime has several benefits: it decreases stress and anxiety, facilitating relaxation; if exercising outside, the natural light helps maintain a regular sleep cycle (making the desire to sleep at night stronger); and it raises and then steeply drops your body temperature, which is ideal for good sleep.
  • Take a hot bath.
If exercise isn’t an option, then a good substitute is a bath. Keep it hot and soak for 20-30 minutes, no earlier than two hours before bed. This will allow your body temperature enough time to drop for optimal sleep.

3. Listening to your sleep signals.
Many of us try to force sleep or expect it to come when we want it to. But just as our body will signal when it’s hungry, it will tell us when it needs sleep.
Unfortunately, we lose touch with this innate signal because we (unknowingly) interfere with our sleep by trying to make it come.

But your body will sleep when it’s ready. 

Learning what to do, and not do, to reset your sleep cycle and being in touch with your body’s signals are fundamental to get and maintain a strong, consistent and healthy sleep pattern.
For more details on how to achieve this and cultivate great sleep, listen to the introduction to Sleep Stories at www.calm.com and check out my story in the app.

Dr. Steve Orma is a clinical psychologist, recognized mental health expert, and specialist in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, and stress.


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Turmeric - benefits for health

8/4/2018

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Generally, one of the aims of starting this blog, was to communicate the things I find in life that are useful and improve our ability to live our best life. Today I want to include Dr Gregers post on the benefits of turmeric. I've tried it myself and it has worked. That doesn't mean of course that it will work for everyone .... and its always important for each individual to be cautious, aware of their individual needs, and  aware of potential allergic reactions to anything ingested. 
Dr Greger advises just 1/4 teaspoon a day which can be mixed with a variety of foods and drinks. He describes it as powerful stuff !
See what you think .....
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What to Take After Surgery
Written By Michael Greger M.D. FACLM on March 13th, 2018

Medicine is messy. One of the reasons researchers experiment on animals is they can create uniform, standardized injuries to test potential remedies. It’s not like you can just cut open 50 people and see if something works better than a sugar pill. But, wait a second, we cut people open all the time. It’s called surgery.
In my video Speeding Recovery from Surgery with Turmeric, I discuss a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study that investigated the efficacy of turmeric curcumin in pain and post-operative fatigue in patients who had their gall bladders removed. Fifty people were cut into and given either curcumin or an identical-looking placebo, along with rescue analgesics—i.e., actual painkillers to take if the pain became unbearable. Even though it’s just laparoscopic surgery, people don’t realize what a toll it can take. (You can be out of commission for a month!) In India, turmeric—found in curry powder—has traditionally been used as a remedy for traumatic pain and fatigue, so the researchers decided to put it to the test.
According to the study, in the weeks following surgery, there was a dramatic drop in pain and fatigue scores in the turmeric curcumin group, with p-values of 0.000. Those are my kind of p-values! The “p-value” refers to a measure of the strength of evidence. The smaller it is, the stronger the evidence is that the result they found didn’t just happen by chance. By convention, a p-value under 0.05 is considered small enough for a result to be considered statistically significant. This means that you’d only expect to find a result that remarkable simply by coincidence 5% of the time, or in 1 out of 20 cases. So a p-value like the one in the study, <0.000, suggests you’d have to run the experiment thousands of times before you’d come up with such a dramatic result just by chance.
It’s hard to come up with objective measures of pain and fatigue, but drug-wise, the curcumin group was still in so much pain they were forced to take 7 of the rescue painkillers. In the same time period, though, the control group had to take 39 pain pills. Of course, it’s better not to get gallstones in the first place, which you can learn more about in my video Cholesterol Gallstones, but the researchers’ conclusion was like no other I’ve ever read in a drug trial.
“Turmeric is a natural food ingredient, palatable, and harmless.” Okay, so far so good. It continued: “It proves to be beneficial as it may be an ecofriendly alternative to synthesized anti-inflammatory drugs which have a definite carbon footprint due to industrial production.” Since when do surgery journals care about the greenhouse gas emissions from drug companies? I just had to look up the reference in the journal Surgical Endoscopy entitled “Journey of the Carbon-Literate and Climate-Conscious Endosurgeon Having a Head, Heart, Hands, And Holistic Sense Of Responsibility.” I don’t know what’s stranger, seeing the word “holistic” in a surgical journal or the name of this guy’s practice: “Dr. Agarwal’s Surgery & Yoga.”

The benefits of turmeric are clear—and not just as a remedy for pain. The spice also serves as a potent treatment against cancer, as I explain in these videos:
  • Back to Our Roots: Curry and Cancer
  • Carcinogenic Blocking Effects of Turmeric
  • Turmeric Curcumin Reprogramming Cancer Cell Death
  • Turmeric Curcumin and Colon Cancer
  • Topical Application of Turmeric Curcumin for Cancer
  • Turmeric Curcumin, MGUS, and Multiple Myeloma
  • Turmeric Curcumin and Pancreatic Cancer
  • Benefits of Turmeric Curcumin for Inflammatory Orbital Pseudotumor
Turmeric is effective at fighting many other health conditions, too, as is evident in these videos:
  • Turmeric Curcumin and Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Turmeric Curcumin and Osteoarthritis
  • Boosting the Bioavailability of Curcumin
  • Who Shouldn’t Consume Curcumin or Turmeric?
  • Preventing Alzheimer’s with Turmeric
  • Treating Alzheimer’s with Turmeric
  • Turmeric Curcumin vs. Exercise for Artery Function
  • Fighting Lupus with Turmeric
  • Turmeric Curcumin for Prediabetes
  • Heart of Gold: Turmeric vs. Exercise
  • Benefits of Turmeric for Arsenic Exposure
Finally, you may be wondering whether turmeric is best taken as a supplement or in whole food form. I invite you to watch Turmeric or Curcumin: Plants vs. Pillsand find out.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.
PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations:
  • 2012: Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death
  • 2013: More Than an Apple a Day
  • 2014: From Table to Able: Combating Disabling Diseases with Food
  • 2015: Food as Medicine: Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet
  • 2016: How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers

Michael Greger M.D. FACLMMichael Greger, M.D. FACLM, is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized professional speaker on a number of important public health issues. Dr. Greger has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, testified before Congress, appeared on The Dr. Oz Show and The Colbert Report, and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous "meat defamation" trial.

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