Health And Wellness

Electric Massagers Can Help With Stiff Muscles And Circulation

If you are someone who has to work a lot in a poor working posture or you have to be on your feet all the time,you most likely have muscle pain and muscle stiffness. This can be caused by a large variety of reasons but the most likely is that there is lactic acid buildup in the muscles that causes the pain. By improving the circulation in the area you can get rid of it,and by physically rubbing it you can break down the lactic acid and further increase the effect. Many people could find help from using an electric massager for this purpose,as they usually do both –warm and massage.

A naturally built in function in our muscles is that when the temperature of the muscle rises,the tension lowers. The same thing happens when you go the other way around –when the temperature gets colder,your muscle will get tense. This is a way that our body controls the body temperature –tense muscles produce more heat than relaxed ones. Unfortunately when we get exposed to cold,we can experience painfully tense muscles and even cramps but these fortunately usually disappear once we apply some heat directly to the muscle.

Using an electric massager that has a built in heater we can rise the temperature in the area without the discomfort of the heat all around your body. You have to be careful with heat like this though,since an area which is suffering from inflammation should not be heated. The added heat will only further increase the inflammation and in case of an injury it can cause unwanted scarring in the muscle or ligaments. Scar tissue is not as durable and hardy as collagen which is mainly used in our ligaments,and it will not contract like your muscle tissue does.

Massaging the area physically will help with circulation as it will physically force the fluids between the cells and within the lymphatic system and veins start moving. Also our muscles have a built in reflex that causes them to relax when there is too much pain in the muscle. For only small pain this internal reflex does not overcome the contractive signals that come from your central nervous system,but once massaging brings about enough pain,the muscle will relax. You will notice this if you have a very stiff and painful muscle,and you go see a professional massage therapist who will apply pressure to the area. The pain and the stiffness will suddenly go away after a specific amount of pressure.

Generally electric massagers aren’t going to be powerful enough to open up very bad stiffness,but most people –especially women –can find them to be very helpful for back pains,neck pains,leg pains and foot pains. There are many happy electric foot massager owners who could swear on the fact that the machine saved their life. They are generally simply to use,and some of them have a heating mode as well.

This relatively lighter massage will help increase blood circulation in the area but it will also increase the flow of lymphatic fluids which will further increase the reduction of lymphatic fluid build up and lactic acid buildup which can both cause pain and stiffness.

Health Benefits Of Green Tea

One of this most important health supplements of our time is green tea,and it is also one of the most studied supplements. The reason why it is so important is just like with fish oil,there are many many benefits that you can get from drinking green tea,or by using supplements which contain it.

Many of you have already heard that you can use green tea for weight loss,but that isn’t all it is good for –even though losing weight is very very healthy for a large number of people. Since losing adipose tissue has been shown to improve conditions anywhere from sleep apnea (1) to cardiovascular diseases (2) it is not a surprise that most weight loss supplements can be healthy.

Many studies have been performed and one compound in green tea has been identified as being behind many of the benefits of green tea. We can not say that this is all that green tea contains,as there are still probably thousands of compounds that we yet have been unable to identify. EGCG is the name of this compound (epigallocatechin-3 gallate).

To make it simple for all of you,here are listed some of the important health benefits of green tea. You can read the details below.

Cancer prevention
Help for chronic inflammation
Rheumatoid arthritis relief
Insulin sensitivity
Obesity prevention
Weight loss
Reduction of elevated cortisol levels
Reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases

What makes green tea special?

To get started,it is important to realize the fact that when something is found as preventative towards diseases,it is considered healthy. Just like when something makes you lose fat or make it easier to maintain your current weight,it is healthy based on numerous studies that prove obesity (1,2) is unhealthy,

Antioxidants are healthy

One important thing that people are always looking for healthy supplements is their antioxidant properties. Antioxidants like most of us know help fight free radicals in your body,which are highly reactive compounds that can cause damage to your DNA . This damage can then cause cancerous cells to form,and that is why many antioxidants have anti-cancerous properties (3,4).

The lack of antioxidants doesn’t directly cause oxidative stress,but it usually makes our bodies less effective at managing it. These days our bodies are constantly bombarded with chemicals such as organophosphorous compounds which can be found in pesticides for example. In fact,most “dangerous”exposures to these compounds occur accidentally when pesticides are present.

I put dangerous in quotes because these compounds accumulate in your body in the nerves,and long term exposure even in small quantities can cause the same problems. You can’t avoid this long term exposure these days,and that is why it is important to use supplements such as green tea to help your system deal with the added stress. It is always dangerous,and not just when you get a large exposure at one time.

Green tea has been shown to work against the stress of these compounds (5),and in fact it did so far better than other antioxidants tested. That is why it should be an important part of your health and wellness regime.

Insulin resistance is the biggest problem today

There are many things that can cause obesity,and many people are saying that it is simply the amount of foods that matter,but science knows there are many other things that contribute to the problem. Calories are not just calories,and basically your body doesn’t give a damn about calories.

One thing that researchers have noticed,is that obese people are in a state of chronic inflammation (6),and at the same time at an increased risk of cancer. At the same time they have insulin resistance.

What researchers have also found is that the activation of specific pro-inflammatory genes are linked to insulin resistance (7). Simplified,this means that the chronic inflammation contributes to the insulin resistance. Hence the reduction of inflammation should help fight insulin resistance.

This makes perfect sense since most of the foods that we eat today,cause rampant inflammation. For example,foods that contain sugar and omega-6 fatty acids cause inflammation (8). These fatty acids can often be found in vegetable oils that are commonly used for the manufacturing process of different sugary and high simple carbohydrate foods such as fast foods. Think about hamburgers,french fries,bread and so on.

One of the health benefits of green tea is that it suppresses the inflammatory response in your body (9). It is anti-inflammatory,in a healthy sense –not like anti-inflammatory medicine. Because of this anti-inflammatory effect,green tea can help one improve their insulin sensitivity.

This is not all. It has also been shown to have a more direct (10,11) effect on insulin sensitivity,and for this reason alone it should be in regular use in most people. If you already aren’t using a green tea supplement,or drinking it on a regular basis,please start doing so!

Effect of green tea on cardiovascular diseases

Cardiovascular diseases are the problem of many,and unfortunately this is also a part of western medicine which isn’t properly managed. Green tea is one of the supplements that have been shown to help people at risk for different CVD,and that is one of the reasons that makes it an important supplement for anyone interested in maintaining their health.

Coronary artery disease is familiar to people who are at a risk of getting it –some of their relatives perhaps had/have it. To make a long story short,it is the single most common heart disease there is. If you know someone who has problems with their heart,they most likely have it. The hardening and narrowing on the arteries that provide the heart muscle with blood reduces the blood flow,and makes it impossible to for the heart to adjust to an increase in work.

A recent meta-analysis came to the conclusion that based on the amount of research data the we have,the consumption of green tea reduces the risk (12) of such heart diseases. There are many,many different ways why it can do so,and many of the health benefits of green tea,work in a synergy to promote better vascular health.

Conclusions anyone?

To list all of the health benefits of green tea,we would need a very long medium,and the scope of this article unfortunately does not deal with all of the green tea health benefits. You can be sure that you will find more articles in this website about the subject.

1. Thorax. 2011 Jun Effect of weight loss on upper airway size and facial fat in men with obstructive sleep apnoea.
2. Methodist Debakey Cardiovasc J. 2010 Management of obesity in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.
3. Biochem Pharmacol. 2011 Anticancer activity of thymoquinone in breast cancer cells:Possible involvement of PPAR-γ pathway.
4. Molecules. 2011 Curcumin:an anti-inflammatory molecule from a curry spice on the path to cancer treatment.
5. Arch Oral Biol. 2011 Prophylactic effect of green tea and Nigella sativa extracts against fenitrothion-induced toxicity in rat parotid gland.
6. Diabetol Metab Syndr. 2011 Visceral adiposity,insulin resistance and cancer risk.
7. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2011 NOD1 activation induces proinflammatory gene expression and insulin resistance in 3T3-L1 adipocytes.
8. Am J Kidney Dis. 2011 Dietary Omega-3 Fatty Acid,Ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 Intake,Inflammation,and Survival in Long-term Hemodialysis Patients.
9. Arthritis Res Ther. 2011 Epigallocatechin-3-gallate suppresses the global interleukin-1beta-induced inflammatory response in human chondrocytes.
10. J Am Coll Nutr. 2009 Green tea extract decreases oxidative stress and improves insulin sensitivity in an animal model of insulin resistance,the fructose-fed rat.
11. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Green tea extract ingestion,fat oxidation,and glucose tolerance in healthy humans.
12. Am J Clin Nutr. 2011 Black and green tea consumption and the risk of coronary artery disease:a meta-analysis.

Are You Sensitive To Salt?

It is a good thing when a controversial study is published,and the medical world gets all worked up on it. When the information that we take as a fact is proven not to be one,it makes us question our knowledge,and makes us study more. This is what keeps the scientific researches funded!

It has been “shown”in the past that your salt intake should be carefully monitored to avoid many different long term illnesses,and CVDs where on the top of the list. The whole American Heart association is based on a recommendation that everyone should be taking in less than 1500mg of sodium each day. This is the equivalent of a 1/2 teaspoon!

Depending on your diet and eating habits,this can be impossible to achieve. If you are eating anything that you haven’t prepared,there is a large chance that the amount of salt is already a half of a teaspoon per meal!

Should you be worried though?

Well first of all,studies have shown that it’s not necessarily the amount of salt that you ingest is the problem. An article published in JAMA 2011 showed that type 2 diabetics which had the lowest urinary secrection –in laymans terms lowest amounts in urine –of sodium,had the highest risk rate for CVDs and basically any other disease known to man (1). The effects that an increase of sodium intake had,only increased the systolic blood pressure (the blood pressure when your heart is contracted),and not the diastolic (the pressure when your heart is relaxed). An increase in diastolic pressure has been linked to increase of CVD risk.

The recommendations thus far have been to significantly reduce salt intake for type 2 diabetics,where in fact the studies conducted (2) have recently shown that for diabetics,a moderate increase in salt intake can actually lower blood pressure.

These are individual studies,and there are many other pieces in this puzzle. Your nutritional status plays a huge role in this,as does your activity levels. We all know that when we sweat,we lose minerals,and sodium is one of them. If you are an athlete,it is more important for you to get enough salt,than to try to limit your intake.

High protein diets are also known to increase the need for sodium,and since athletes often are eating more protein to assist with recovery,this might be another factor that should be noted.

What is our take on this?

Studies should be always read with an experienced eye –don’t make guesses unless you can make well educated guesses. The research so far isn’t sufficient to make large changes in the recommendations for the general population,but perhaps we should shift our focus from limiting the amount of our salt intake,to using a non-refined salt with a color. Using this method in choosing the salt you use,you will make sure that you are not getting pure sodium,but also many other important minerals that work in collaboration and don’t have such a negative effect.

1. Fatal and Nonfatal Outcomes,Incidence of Hypertension,and Blood Pressure Changes in Relation to Urinary Sodium Excretion JAMA 2011
2. Dietary Salt Intake and Mortality in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Diabetes Care 2011

Why Is Dental Health Important?

To feel good and experience overall wellness,one has to pay attention to each part in their health,and not just focus on for example the health of their skin and expect it to give them a good overall health. With a good overall health and wellness,the skin will also be healthy,and the same thing goes for the teeth –although it works the other way around as well.

When it comes to maintaining good oral health,you will have to pay close attention in what you are putting in your mouth. This in return will have a direct effect on your body composition,and overall health.

Because so many of us are focused on only washing our teeth,and flossing,we are forgetting one fact –there are many groups of people that barely wash their teeth and never even heard about flossing,and they have a better oral health on average than the average US citizen. What is causing this? Their nutrition.

Smoking is a big problem for oral health in western countries,but even in countries where cigarettes aren’t as readily available,some kind of smokes are used,and still the people seem to have decent oral health.

The biggest reason for poor dental health today is soft drinks. These are highly acidic drinks,and they will cause a shift in the pH of the mouth,causing decay. When one drinks these between meals,the pH of the mouth can be consistently too acidic,causing significant problems including cavities but also teeth rot.

Side-Effects Of Poor Oral Health

The problem isn’t that you will have poor teeth if you have poor oral health,but recently researchers have found that it is linked to a much larger number of symptoms. For example a study published in Journal of Periodontology,found out that people who are suffering from chronic periondotitis –which is in laymans terms different sorts of inflammation of the gums –have elevated C-reactive protein levels (1) in their blood.

This will result in a number of illnesses in long term,including diabetes (2). These are all valid reasons not to delay taking care of your teeth! But the problems don’t stop here. It has also been found that poor dental health has been linked to an increase in the risk of cardiovascular diseases (3). These three alone should be enough for anyone to start washing their teeth and flossing regularly. Doing both twice a day with a non-fluoride toothpaste and regular flossing string,should be enough to maintain good oral health,when a sensible diet is used.

Something that isn’as well studied yet,is the heavy metals that were used in the fillings in the past. Mercury can be found in many of the older fillings,and these are absorbed in your blood and transported around your body. In your cells these metals take the place of such metals as magnesium,and when this happens in the muscle layer of your veins,you can get hypertension because the diameter of your arterias is smaller when the muscles are contracted.

It is also known to cause heart attacks,and in these cases it doesn’t really matter if you get enough magnesium in your nutrition,as it is the heavy metals that come from your dental fillings that cause the problem.

These studies show that you need to take care of all the aspects in your body to be healthy,but nutrition alone,can be a really big factor in any smaller category of health!

1. Chronic Periodontitis and C-reactive Protein Levels Journal of Periodontology 2010
2. Periodontal disease and oral hygiene habits in a type 2 diabetic population International Journal of Dental Hygiene 2009
3. The Relationship Between Periodontal Disease (Pd) and Cardiovascular Disease (Cvd). Mediterranean Journal Of Hematology and Infectious Disease 2010