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High Blood Pressure

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Called the silent killer, this condition has no symptoms but can lead to serious health problems. New studies show lifestyle changes and natural supplements may be viable alternatives to prescription drugs for some cases of high blood pressure.

Symptoms
No symptoms, even when blood pressure is in the danger zone. Some people complain of headaches and ringing in the ears when blood pressure is very high, but usually the condition is discovered during a medical exam.

When to Call Your Doctor
If your blood pressure remains high (140/90) after two months of treatment with supplements.

What It Is
Defined as the force the blood exerts on arteries and veins as it circulates through the body, blood pressure is controlled by a complex regulatory system involving the heart, blood vessels, brain, kidneys, and adrenal glands. It’s normal for blood pressure to fluctuate often — even minute to minute. In some people, however, blood pressure remains chronically high, a condition known medically as hypertension. Blood pressure is recorded as two numbers. Systolic pressure (the top number in a reading) denotes when the heart contracts and forces blood through the arteries; diastolic pressure (the bottom number) reflects when the heart relaxes. Normal blood pressure is 120 (systolic) over 80 (diastolic) or lower. Hypertension is defined as blood pressure averaging 140/90 or higher in at least two separate measurements.

What Causes It
In 90% of people with hypertension, the cause isn’t known; this type is called essential hypertension. However, risk factors include smoking, obesity, gender (men are twice as likely to suffer hypertension as women), a high-sodium diet, and a family history. In addition, blacks are more prone to hypertension — and suffer greater consequences from it — than whites.

How Supplements Can Help
If you have mild hypertension (140 to 159 systolic and 90 to 99 diastolic), start making lifestyle changes and take calcium and magnesium. If your blood pressure is higher, see your doctor before using supplements.

What Else You Can Do
Lose weight. Even a few extra pounds can raise blood pressure.
Walk or do some other form of aerobic exercise regularly.
Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products; reduce fat and salt intake. A new study found such a diet may be an alternative to prescription drugs for mild hypertension.
If you have mild hypertension, you may want to try lifestyle changes and supplements before turning to prescription drugs, which often have unpleasant side effects. Begin a two or three-month trial with supplements. If your blood pressure drops, you can use the supplements indefinitely. If your blood pressure doesn’t respond, you may need prescription antihypertensive drugs. If you already take such medication, don’t stop or reduce your dose without your doctor’s approval.

Supplement Recommendations

Calcium/Magnesium
Vitamin C
Coenzyme Q10
Essential Fatty Acids
Hawthorn
Taurine
Arginine

Calcium/Magnesium
Dosage: 1,000 mg calcium and 500 mg magnesium a day.
Comments: Do not use magnesium if you have kidney disease.

Vitamin C
Dosage: 1,000 mg 3 times a day.
Comments: Reduce dose if diarrhea develops.

Coenzyme Q10
Dosage: 50 mg twice a day.
Comments: For best absorption, take with food.

Essential Fatty Acids
Dosage: 1 tbsp. (14 grams) flaxseed oil a day; 1,000 mg fish oils 3 times a day.
Comments: Take fish oils if you don’t eat fish at least twice a week.

Hawthorn
Dosage: 100-150 mg 3 times a day.
Comments: Standardized to contain at least 1.8% vitexin.

Taurine

Dosage: 500 mg L-taurine twice a day on an empty stomach.
Comments: If using longer than 1 month, add mixed amino acids.

Arginine
Dosage: 1,000 mg L-arginine twice a day on an empty stomach.
Comments: Take with a mixed amino acid complex.

Source:Your Guide to Vitamins, Minerals, and Herbs(Reader’s Digest)

Categories
Healthy Tips

6 Smart Holiday Diet Tricks

Survive the holidays without damaging your diet.

When the winter holidays arrive, sometimes there’s no way to avoid being stuck in the house with lots of family and friends  and food everywhere. Here’s how to cope:

1. Hang with the kids. If all the adults are circling the food table, spend time with the children. At most ages, kids are more likely than adults to be doing something active. Their energy and playfulness can help distract you from food.

2. Appoint yourself activity director. Take the lead in suggesting non-eating activities that the family can do together, from playing Scrabble or charades to building a snowman.

3. Grab a water bottle. When there are lots of high-calorie beverages around, it helps to have an alternative. Keep a glass or bottle of water handy.

4. Keep “free” snacks and beverages on hand. Satisfy your munchies with very low-calorie treats like carrots, celery, sweet peppers, sliced jicama, and diet drinks. That way you won’t have to rely on your willpower to steer clear of all those diet-busting rich foods.

5. Be helpful anywhere but in the kitchen. This is a tough one, especially if you’re at the in-laws’ house. But it’s easy to nibble when you’re surrounded by food preparation. Volunteer for other duties: cleaning up, setting the table, being bartender, running errands — anything that doesn’t involve food.

6. Get lost. If the sight and smell of all that food become just too much for you, excuse yourself and get out of the house. Take a stroll or go for a drive.

Source:Raeder’s Digest

Categories
Positive thinking

Humility

The notion of humility as a virtue brings numerous images to mind. We tend to envision those rare individuals who humbly bear life’s struggles while downplaying their own strengths. Yet humility is also associated with people whose insecurities compel them to judge themselves unfavorably as a matter of course. The true definition of humility, however, does not correspond precisely with either of these images. Humility is not passivity. Rather, it is an utter lack of self-importance. The individuals who embody the concept of humility appreciate that each human being on the planet occupies a unique place on an infinite spectrum of development. Though they can take pride in their own accomplishments, they also understand that the people they interact with each day are as valuable and have as much to offer the world as they themselves do....click & see

To be humble is to accept that while there will always be individuals more and less advanced than yourself, those on all parts of the spectrum of development can provide you with insights that further your personal evolution. Recognizing these insights is a matter of opening yourself to the fact that not only do others think and feel differently than you, but their life experiences have shaped them in a very different way than yours have shaped you. This means that while you may have a greater understanding in some areas, others will always be able to teach you something. When you cultivate a genuine yearning to know what skills and talents those you encounter have been blessed with, you cannot help but learn humility. You instinctively understand that emotions like envy breed resistance that prevents you from growing, and that being flexible in your interactions with others will help you connect with unexpected mentors.

When you practice humility, you want to become as accomplished and evolved as you can possibly be, yet you are willing to submit to the expertise of others to do so. You understand the scope of your aptitudes yet you choose to eradicate arrogance from your attitude, and you can distinguish the value you possess as an individual while still acting in the interests of your fellow human beings. Humility, simply put, is a form of balance in which you can celebrate your own worth while sincerely believing that every other person on the planet is just as worthy as you.

Source:Daily Om

Categories
News on Health & Science

Siesta may save your heart

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Sleeping a little over half-an-hour in the middle of the day may reduce the risk of death from heart disease, particularly in healthy young men, say researchers.

Naps – known as siesta – are often taken early afternoon after a mid-day meal. Such a period of sleep is a common tradition in hot countries.

Dimitrios Trichopoulos from the Harvard School of Public Health and other researchers looked at 23,681 men and women aged between 20 and 86 who did not have a history of heart disease or any other severe condition, reported the online edition of BBC News .

The six-year Greek study took into account ill health, age, and whether people were physically active. Participants were also asked if they took mid-day naps and how often, and were asked about dietary habits and physical activity.

The researchers found those who took naps of any frequency and duration had a 34 per cent lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who did not take mid-day naps.

Those who took naps of more than 30 minutes three or more times a week, had a 37 per cent lower risk. Among working men who took mid-day naps, there was a 64 per cent reduced risk of death compared with a 36 per cent reduced risk among non-working men.

Experts said napping during afternoon might help people to relax, reducing their stress levels. The researchers added that if backed by other trials, taking a siesta would be an interesting way of reducing heart disease as it had no side effects.

The only important factor was that people should not reduce the amount of physical activity they did in the rest of the day.

Source:The Times Of India

Categories
Featured

Does Pain Serve a Purpose?

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It’s a Warning System, Not a Character-Building Tool.

Remember the 1970s television series “Kung Fu”  Each episode opened with scenes of a stoic Shaolin monk, played by David Carradine, enduring excruciating physical challenges    walking over burning coals and lifting a hot cauldron with his forearms. Pain was portrayed as a critical part of the monk’s path to spiritual and personal growth.

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To be sure, individuals can gain confidence and pride by pushing themselves to complete marathons or other demanding physical challenges. But enduring pain or stress injuries on a regular basis serves no good purpose for the body or soul, researchers say.

“Good pain is the body’s warning system,” said Dr. Edward Covington, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Program. “Intense nociceptic pain is the good pain. It’s the pain that warns you your appendix is about to rupture or someone has stepped on your foot.”

While many would consider a life without pain as a blessing, it is anything but that for those who suffer from a rare disorder that leaves them unable to feel pain. The condition   called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, and also known as CIPA   affects nerve endings. Because sufferers have no ability to sense pain, they are vulnerable to serious cuts, fractures and burns. Covington said this is a particularly difficult disorder to manage and can leave a person seriously compromised by injury by adolescence.

Most people are not disabled by nociceptic pain, which is pain caused by injury or trauma to the body’s tissues, but rather by chronic pain, Covington said. Indeed, about 70 million Americans are partially or completely disabled by chronic, debilitating pain, according to the National Pain Foundation. And despite advances in pain treatment, many people encourage themselves to dismiss or ignore pain.

“We have a tendency to think people who don’t complain about pain are macho, Clint Eastwood-types, and those who do complain are wimpy,” Covington said.

But research suggests otherwise. “There are a number of genetic differences in enzymes and in individuals’ opioid receptors that these ‘tough guys’ may simply not be experiencing pain,” Covington said.

‘Good Pain’ vs. ‘Bad Pain’

When treating pain, patients and their primary care doctors too often overlook the distinction between good pain and bad pain, many specialists say. Patients want to know exactly what’s causing their pain, and physicians often go looking for an underlying physical cause. But this is often the wrong approach. “In many cases, the pain itself is the disease,” Covington said.

“We need to recognize that all pain doesn’t have a somatic [bodily] origin,” said Dr. Todd Sitzman, medical director of The Center for Pain Medicine in Hattiesburg, Miss.

Like Covington, Sitzman recommends a multidisciplinary approach to pain management. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can have a great effect in pain management. Through therapy, Sitzman said, “patients can reduce their sense of suffering by changing maladaptive behaviors and learning new coping strategies.”

Patients may also need to change their diets, adopt or alter exercise regimes or address psychological problems to make real progress in alleviating chronic pain. But, he admits, “There are no magic potions.”

Pain as an Opportunity

Dave Markowitz, author of Perspectives: A Radical Approach to Healing, is on the other end of the healing spectrum. The son of a pharmacist, Markowitz decided to take a decidedly non-pharmaceutical route to addressing chronic pain, using everything from meditation to spiritual channeling with his clients.

Markowitz believes chronic pain can signal underlying emotional or spiritual concerns. He turned to alternative therapies when Western medicine failed to alleviate his pain. And as a man who actually has walked across a bed of hot coals, Markowitz has developed an interesting perspective on pain. “Any situation including pain can be a burden or an opportunity. Pain can be a friend, if we look at it as an opportunity,” he said.

For Markowitz, getting to the emotional root of pain can be the key to unlocking it. He said he had an extraordinarily successful session with a client who said she had suffered from sciatica for 40 years. With Markowitz’s help, the woman came to realize that her pain was associated with feelings of responsibility, tied to her relationship with her daughter. By the end of the session, Markowitz said, the woman said 80 percent of her pain was gone.

In diagnosing chronic pain, Markowitz said, patients and physicians can get “locked in” to a certain treatment plan. “There are people who really need medication. However, the pain doesn’t go away. It just gets blocked with the medication. I believe this can set off a chain reaction, and a downward spiral of ill-health.

“If someone’s experiencing pain for decades, it seems sensible that we should look at other types of treatment to address the pain,” he said.

Markowitz said he emphasizes personal empowerment, and that healing can come fairly quickly when a client is mentally ready. “The last thing I want is to see a client for six months,” he said.

High-Tech vs. Alternative Treatments

These sorts of nontraditional therapies are being embraced by more medical practitioners, but many people still believe a pill or injection is the only way to deal with serious pain.

“Americans have been seduced by technology. It’s exciting and sexy and incredibly profitable. But there is no treatment that is as effective as a multi-treatment rehab program,” said the Cleveland Clinic’s Covington.

“Cognitive therapies, for example, cost less and carry far less risk than surgery and pharmaceutical treatments, but tend to get short shrift and government and insurance companies often don’t cover it,” he said.

Covington believes that patients and doctors too often want quick and easy fixes to a problem. “You can write a prescription in 30 seconds and the patient can take a pill in 30 seconds. What we see happening is Americans spending more for health care, but they may be getting less health.”

Source:ABC News

According to me our human body is a super computer and whenever there is a trouble in any part of the body the computer gives a signal which is pain.In our house we have smoke detecter which starts whistling as and when there is smoke which may cause harm.Our normal duty is to find the cause of the smoke first,stop it and then of course we stop the whistling sound.If we are busy only to stop the whistling sound, the house may get burnt. Similarly whenever there is pain in any part of the body, we should first stop the cause of the pain instead of taking some painkeeler(which may have several bad side effects) and stop the pain.Alternative medicine always tries to see the cause of the pain and try to remove the cause and at the same time stops the pain.

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