Healthy Living Tips

Have exercise misconceptions prevented you from starting an exercise program? Clear up any confusion and let these exercise tips improve your workout routine. Hopefully none of these common exercise myths, mistakes and misconceptions have prevented you from working out.

1. Common Mistake: Failure to set goals. Do you exercise without a clear goal in mind? Having a clear goal set is a critical step in exercise and weight loss success.  Tracking your progress in a journal will help ensure you see your improvements, will help motivate you and help you meet your ultimate goal.

2. Common Misconception: No Pain, No Gain. Pain is your body’s way of letting you know something is wrong. Do not ignore this. When you go beyond exercise and testing yourself, you will encounter physical discomfort and need to overcome it. An example of this would be training for a marathon. It is important that you have the “base training” before getting into the advance training. The base training develops the body and gets it ready for extensive training. You need to learn to “read” your body. Is the heavy breathing because you are pushing your body or could it be the beginning of a heart attack. Exercise is important. Do it correctly and you can do it for the rest of your life.

It is normal for you to hurt after you exercise, but it must be done gradually with a good amount of rest periods to allow proper healing. There are two common problems here with beginning exercisers. You can cause long lasting damage to muscles, tendons and ligaments if you work out while you are in pain, without allowing enough rest time to heal. You might find yourself in constant and long lasting pain if you do this which means that you will no longer be able to exercise.

Every year approximately 9.5 per cent of the American population suffers from depression. Depression is a grave illness that affects day to day life and destroys families. It is a disorder that controls the mind and its functions causing loss of appetite, sleeplessness, mood swings, and a deep sense of despair.

The symptoms of depression are varied and the severity changes with time. And, according to experts depression can be an inherited disorder, or caused by life threatening illnesses, or stress. Other causes are certain diseases, medicines, drugs, alcohol, or mental illnesses. Women are seen to experience depression more than men and this is attributed to hormonal swings, menstrual cycle changes, pregnancy, miscarriage, pre-menopause, and post-menopause.

Common symptoms are:

1.    An unshakeable sadness, anxiety, or emptiness.

2.    Overwhelming hopelessness accompanied by pessimistic feelings.

3.    Extreme guilt, feelings of helplessness, and no sense of self worth.

4.    Loss of energy, a slowing down of metabolism, and activity levels. Being plagued by constant fatigue.

5.    A sense of helplessness along with an increasing inability to focus and indecisiveness.

6.     Loss of sound sleep and development of extreme insomnia.

7.    Inexplicable weight loss or weight gain. Triggered by loss of appetite or eating binges.

8.    Brooding and suicidal inclinations.

9.    Irritability, short temper, as well as restlessness.

10.    Physical afflictions like headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain for no particular reason.

If you experience any of the above along with a marked change in behavior do consult your doctor. He will give you a thorough examination to rule out physical causes for depression as well as any underlying medical problems. Then if required he will recommend that you consult a psychiatrist or psychologist.

If you have diabetes information about how to manage your condition is vital to your well being.

If you don’t look after your feet you run the risk of developing sores or infections that could, in the worst case scenario, lead to amputations. As happened to my father-in-law.  Reduce your risk of infection or amputation by incorporating these 7 foot care tips…

1)  Check your feet daily – especially if you have low sensitivity or no feeling in your feet. Sores, cuts and grazes could go unnoticed and you could develop problems leading to amputations.

2)  Don’t go around barefoot, even indoors. It’s easy to tread on something or stub your toes and cut yourself. Protect your feet with socks/stockings and
shoes/slippers.

3)  Be careful if you have corns or calluses. Check with your doctor or podiatrist the best way to care for them.

4)  Wash your feet daily in warm, NOT HOT water. And don’t soak your feet (even if you’ve been standing all day) because it could dry your skin and form cracks or sores.

5)  Take extra care to dry your feet completely, especially between your toes. These are natural moisture traps – leaving them damp or wet could create all sorts of problems.

6)  Exercise your legs and feet regularly. Even when sitting you can rotate your ankles; wiggle your toes or move your legs up and down. These all keep your blood circulation flowing and helps to minimize the risk of foot problems.

7)  Get your feet professionally checked, at least once a year, for sensitivity and signs of any problems.  You can usually arrange this when you have your annual check up for your AC1 levels (blood glucose levels over a 3-month period), blood pressure and cholesterol.

Physical fitness is the ability to function effectively throughout your workday, perform your usual other activities and still have enough energy left over to handle any extra stresses or emergencies which may arise.

The components of physical fitness are:

*  Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance – the efficiency with which the body delivers oxygen and nutrients needed for muscular activity and transports waste products from the cells.

*  Muscular strength – the greatest amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort.

*  Muscular endurance – the ability of a muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements with a sub-maximal force for extended periods of times.

*  Flexibility – the ability to move the joints or any group of joints through an entire, normal range of motion.

*  Body composition – the percentage of body fat a person has in comparison to his or her total body mass.

Improving the first three components of fitness listed above will have a positive impact on body composition and will result in less fat. Excessive body fat detracts from the other fitness components, reduces performance, detracts from appearance, and negatively affects your health.

Factors such as speed, agility, muscle power, eye-hand coordination, and eye-foot coordination are classified as components of “motor” fitness. These factors most affect your athletic ability. Appropriate training can improve these factors within the limits of your potential. A sensible weight loss and fitness program seeks to improve or maintain all the components of physical and motor fitness through sound, progressive, mission specific physical training.

Principles of Exercise

Traditional tanning methods have become less popular these days because of major health risks. Because of this major finding in tanning several companies have provided tanning creams, lotions and spray to get a tanned skin even without the help of tanning beds or the sun. Most people prefer this type of artificial tanning since there is no significant health risk and the only damage a person may get from them is if their skins are too sensitive and the application may cause some allergy.

Among these innovations the one that is gaining the most popularity is the self tanning spray. This easy to use product is sprayed evenly on the skin and then all you have to do is wait for it to dry. Tanning products contain a chemical called dihydroxyacetone (DHA). This chemical acts an agent that triggers the amino acids in the skin to produce a great tan. Tanning products has been recognized by many as safe and effective and does not produce the great risk that traditional and tanning beds have. Applying a tanning spray is pretty easy, but there are some things that you need to know to achieve that perfect even tan. Here are five things that you should remember when you apply one.

Prepare your skin

Before you apply a tanning spray, make sure that your skin can handle the formulation. Read the instructions carefully and then apply a small amount of the spray in your body and wait for any allergic reactions or discoloration. In this way you can check the quality of the tanning spray and you reduce the risk of hurting your skin.

Having headache is annoying and sometimes it is difficult for us to avoid. Mostly when we are under pressure, headache appeared automatically. If it gets worse, we might faint due to the pain we felt.

A headache is a condition of mild to severe pain in the head. It can also attack at our upper back or neck. There are different types of headache, but most of the time headache brought on by stress, too long in front of computer, noise and others.

One of the main causes of headache is tension in the muscles of the neck, scalp and jaw. We usually deal with it by taking some sleep or consume over-the counter aspirin to release our pain. However, can we do this at any place?

Obviously, we cannot sleep at the office or at the mall. In addition, we might run of aspirin when headache strike us.

Do not worry! The easiest way to handle headache and we can do it everywhere is through massage. Massage is the practice of applying pressure or vibration to the soft tissues of the body, to heal injury, relieve psychological stress, manage pain, improve circulation and relieve tension.

When we suffer from headache, we can help ourselves with self-massage. Simple and everybody can do it, either at work or home.

Here are four easy ways in massage to heal our headache.

1. Eyes Area Massage — Close your eyes. Place your middle fingers to your eyes that are above cheekbones. Massage that area gently but firmly in circular motion for 1 minute,