Blog
New Beginnings
The time is always right to begin returning to good health. Regardless of whether your issues involve weight, exercise, diet, blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic pain, now is the time to begin taking action on your own behalf.You are not alone. Literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide have various chronic complaints and...
Should I Use Ice or Heat for Pain?
Should you use heat or ice on your painful injury? The best method of solving this important riddle is to assess the nature and source of the pain. Essentially, a new injury, that is, one that you sustained within the last 48 hours, is best treated with ice. Chronic pain, or pain that you have had for a long time, is generally best...
Indoor Activities and Exercises
How to Exercise IndoorsFor those of us who live in locales such as southern California, outdoor activities and outdoor exercise are available year-round. Elsewhere, winter sets in and many people discontinue their outdoor activities until the return of spring. As it is important to maintain our fitness levels throughout the year,...
Holiday Stress – Take a Deep Breath
Holiday Stress Take a Deep BreathMost of us pay little attention, if any, to the daily functioning of our many physiological systems. Our hearts beat, our digestive systems digest, and our various hormones, such as those deriving from the thyroid gland, adrenal gland, and pancreas, do what they do. It's all good... until it's...
Proper Overindulgence Over the Holidays
Proper Overindulgence Over The HolidaysThe term "overindulgence" is probably best assessed as a red flag, especially with respect to consistent overconsumption of high-calorie comfort food and desserts during the holiday season. An overall healthier perspective could be described as "indulgence" regarding such calorie intake....
The 5 Senses
The five senses, that is, the sense of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell, provide us with necessary information regarding the world around us.1 These precious capabilities enable us to navigate our environment with seemingly instantaneous feedback with reference to our actions and activities in our immediate surround. The...
The Benefits of Sleep for Adults
Obtaining sufficient restful sleep is an essential requirement for optimal human productivity. Such a practice is a key component of a healthy lifestyle, which includes a nutritious diet, regular vigorous exercise, and a positive mental attitude. How much sleep one needs varies from person to person. Importantly, failure to obtain...
Back to School and Mental Wellness
Summer is a subjectively fleeting season and school days are upon us once again. For children, this bittersweet time marks the completion of a period of relative freedom and the beginning of a new set of responsibilities. For adults, the onset of late summer and early fall signals yet another turn of the wheel of life, reminding us...
Repetitive Motion Injuries
A repetitive motion injury (or overuse injury) involves doing an action over and over again, as with a baseball pitcher throwing a baseball, a tennis player hitting a tennis ball, typing at a computer keyboard, and most notoriously, typing with your thumbs on the tiny keypad of your phone. It may be reasonably asserted that our...
Left-Handers Day
Left-Handers Day, celebrated on August 15th, was launched in 1992 by the Left-Handers Club, an organization based in the United Kingdom. Since then, Left-Handers Day has become a worldwide event and social media phenomenon. Around the world, approximately one in ten persons is left-handed. But we live in an overwhelmingly...
Peak Experiences
The American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau roamed far and wide over the hills and mountains of his native Massachusetts and neighboring New Hampshire. In his masterwork, "Walden," Thoreau famously stated that we must "reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the...
Dynamic Warm-ups
In a common occurrence, you bend over to pick up the pencil you inadvertently dropped on the floor. Or you bend over to pick up the soap bar that has slipped through your fingers in the shower. Or you bend over to lift a bag of groceries out of your automobile trunk. These are all daily events. But on a certain day, at a certain...
Summer Sports
Summer SportsIn the summertime, everyone's thoughts turn to the outdoors. We want to get out in the sun and have some fun. Some people do exercise outdoors, such as running, walking, and biking, all year long regardless of the weather.1 For others, summer's warmer temperatures make activity outside the house or the gym more...
Wellness Gardens
When time is spent in an office or indoors day in and day out, some can lose that connection to the outside world. And that loss of connection can lead to higher stress levels and more health ailments without even realizing it. But when that the gap between office life and outdoor life is bridged, quality of life - and health -...
Smart Shoulders
Our shoulder joints have the greatest range of motion of any of the musculoskeletal joints in our bodies. The shoulder joint is really two joints, the glenohumeral joint between the arm bone (humerus) and the shoulder blade (scapula) and the acromioclavicular joint between the acromion (a bony projection off the scapula) and the...