Healthy Living Archives - Page 2 of 5

It’s Apple Picking Time!

Whether you are a devotee of a local apple orchard or just a lover of apples, this is the best time of year. Right now, apples are at their peak, locally grown and ready to eat.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. It’s not completely untrue. Apples are a great source of vitamin C, which is found just beneath the skin (another reason to eat the skin). Apples are high in fiber, relatively low calorie and contain minimal sodium and no cholesterol. Apples have been associated with lowering LDL cholesterol (the so-called bad kind) as well as contributing to a healthy digestive tract. Apples can be a part of a diabetic diet. Consumption of apples has been shown in a variety of studies to improve cardiovascular health, improve lunch function, and keep asthma at bay. And apples contain anti-oxidants, which play a role in pain management.

Here are a few ideas to incorporate apples into your regular eating patterns:

For kids’ lunches, many kids won’t bite right into an apple (especially if they have orthodontic appliances). So, help them out, slice and peel the apples and brush the flesh with a mixture of lemon juice and water to prevent browning. Immediately put the slices into an air-tight container.

Home-made applesauce from freshly picked apples is easy and makes the house smell great. Core the apples, peel them if you want (we don’t!), cut the apples into cubes and put them into a small saucepan. Cover the apples (just barely) with water. Boil the apples and then turn down the heat to low until the water lessens. Mash up the apples to the desired consistency. Add sweetener (sugar or sugar substitute, just a few teaspoons or its equivalence) and some cinnamon to taste. Serve warm or room temperature or cold the next day.

Baked apples: This fancy looking dessert isn’t that hard to make. The hardest part is coring and scooping out the inside of the apple (a melon baller helps). The rest of the recipe can be found here:

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-baked-apples-stuffed-with-oatmeal-brown-sugar-75752

And we love this recipe for Apple Butternut Squash Soup, which combines Michigan apples and Michigan root vegetables, too: The recipe can be found here:

http://www.michiganapples.com/Recipes/ID/533/Michigan-Apple-and-Butternut-Squash-Soup

So, get out there and pick your apples from the orchard or the grocery store, and eat them every which way. We hope it keeps the doctors away, except for well checks, of course!

Labor Day Lesson: How to Make Work Less of a Pain

In honor of Labor Day, let’s talk about work and pain.

Now, we are not saying that work can’t sometimes be a pain, from the smelly leftovers your office mate is eating at lunch to the endless meetings.

We want to focus on how your body functions at work.

Standing Tall: If you stand at work a lot because you are in manufacturing or in retail or construction jobs, you may not feel that you can control your physical environment as much as you can. The major thing you can control is your posture. Check your posture. Are your legs spread around shoulder width? Are your shoulders pulled back? These questions not only make you look leaner and stronger, they also protect your back and neck. Change your position every fifteen minutes and do take seated breaks or even if they are comfortable, do occasional lunges or squats.

The Desk Jobs: The major components of most people’s work areas are a chair, a desk and a computer. You may not be able to control how much the boss spends on these items or how they are configured, but as you gain some seniority, you may be able to agitate for some better benefits.

Evaluate your seated position:

Does your chair give you sufficient support and padding?
Is your chair the right height? Your hips and knees should make 90 degree angles. Although it can be cute for young, short women to dangle their legs from their desk chairs, it’s ultimately terrible for your legs and feet.
Is your desk the right height? If you type at a keyboard, your elbows should be at 90 degree angles.
Is your keyboard the right height? The majority of the screen should be right at eye level, directly in front of you.

Make Work Less of a Pain:

Bring a weight to work and stow it under your desk. Every once in a while, grab it and do 8 repetitions of bicep curls or tricep curls or your other favorite arm exercise. Ignore the stares of your coworkers or challenge them to do the same.

Sit down/stand up desks. If your boss is Dan Gilbert, CEO of Quicken Loans, then nearly all of your employees have these wonders of ergonomics. With a push of a button, you can change the height of your desk and take a break from sitting for a while. As we looked around his busy office, we noticed that several people change their positions regularly. We also noticed a fair percentage of men and women tending to stand exclusively at the end of their day. Standing improves blood flow, burns a few more calories and prevents blood clots: all good things.

Wireless headsets are a great investment for those who spend a great deal of time on either a corded phone or cell phone. Women particularly tend to turn their necks to the side to hold the phone in place, which is a guarantor of future neck pain. A wireless headset not only frees you from neck pain but it also allows you to leave your desk while you talk, encouraging you to be less sedentary.

Work is part of life and takes up a lot of waking hours. Let’s resolve this Labor Day to treat our bodies as part of our work product, too.

The Balancing Act

Having good balance is critical. You need good balance to function efficiently and safely. Sometimes injury and disease processes can impair balance.

There are two kinds of balance: static balance and dynamic balance. Static balance is your ability to stay upright and in good position while staying still. Dynamic balance is your ability to maintain proper balance and form while moving around (walking, exercising, transitioning from sitting to standing).

All adults, young and old, can benefit from exercises that work on strengthening and improving balance. Older adults, in particular, should tackle balance-increasing activities as they can help to prevent falls, which can be harmful or even fatal for seniors, and can lead to loss of independence and mobility. Balance issues can also impair athletic performance and daily living skills for all people, regardless of age.

Consider incorporating exercises into your routine that address endurance, strength, balance and coordination. Here are a few suggestions:

Sitting down and standing up without using your hands for support
Standing on one foot (you can do this holding on to something or not)
Walking on a line (or if advanced, a balance beam). To do this, you need to walk with one foot directly in front of another. You can hold on to a friend or a wall for support, if necessary, but try to progress to doing it unaided.
Leg Raises: Stand alone or behind a chair. Lift one leg at a time, first to the side and then to the back. Switch legs. (You can even do this while standing in line…ignore the stares of the other people, they are imbalanced.)
Tai chi is a slow, deliberate series of movies that emphasizes balance and gentle stretching.
Certain beginning yoga and Pilates moves also incorporate balance, but they often require strength. Your pain level may or may not allow these more involved calisthenics.

Please check with your health care team before embarking on any exercise program.

Meditation and its Health Benefits

We admit that we are guilty of not taking time away from our busy days to be intentionally quiet, what many would call “meditating”. Call it what you will; approach it religiously or secularly. The data is in and it is irrefutable: regular quiet meditation is beneficial to your physical and mental well being. We love this infographic, courtesy of Huffington Post:

Don’t Sweat It: Heat, Humidity and Pain

Heat and humidity, while a welcome change from the freezing Michigan winters, often bring with them challenges for our pain patients.

Arthritis sufferers often say they prefer heat as they find it easier on their joints. However, headache patients vary: some prefer heat; others experience more pain during the summer.

The effects of humidity are not clear. Migraine sufferers report less pain in both low humidity and high humidity, while many report increased migraine headaches during changes in both humidity and pressure.

Sweating and Humidity: Sweat is a natural phenomenon. It helps the body to cool down. However, perspiration only works if the sweat evaporates off your body. In highly humid days, if the sweat just lingers on your body, it is not working well. Be aware that if you are feeling constantly dewy or moist, that your body’s perspiration functions aren’t working optimally. You can actually become dehydrated in this situation, increasing your chances for headaches and spine pain. Increase your hydration accordingly, drinking as much as 1-2 cups per hour of water while actively sweating.

Take a Dip: The warm weather makes swimming an ideal pastime and exercise, all in one. Take advantage of the sunny skies and swim, either leisurely or with some gusto. Enroll in a water aerobics or hydrotherapy class. All of these are beneficial for all pain sufferers. Check out these articles about swimming for pain relief:

Water Workouts Swimming Away From Back Pain

Other summer issues that may bother pain sufferers:

Different summer schedules which could mean school age children underfoot who need attention and activities. Often, vacations can be stressful, as adults’ and children’s activities outside (waterparks, theme parks, sports events) are not always easy on pain patients.
Long days and short nights. If you are very sensitive to the amount of light outside, then it may be hard for you to settle down until much later in the evening than usual. In addition, the morning light may wake you up earlier than you had hoped. Pain sufferers need consistent, restorative sleep. Buy the plushest pair of eyeshades possible (think 1940’s films!) and try to avoid the light.
Traveling while exciting can be tough on pain sufferers. You might want to check out these tips for traveling and pain management:

Travel Tips to Stay Pain Free Driving Trips for Pain Sufferers

Fitting in Fitness on Vacation

Taking a vacation is great for your body and your soul. It is a time to connect with family and friends, to change up your routine and hopefully to escape from the chores and responsibilities that await you at home.

Vacations can come in a variety of shapes and sizes: a quick camping trip that is easy on the budget and forces you to uplug from the wired world and plug into nature and family, a trip to a resort that takes care of all of your needs and has entertainment and luxury all within reach, a trip to a favorite beach or mountain to enjoy a different vista and revisit familiar restaurants and fun activities, a busy sight-seeing trip, taking in cities and famed sites, and enriching youself through culture and art.

Wherever you vacation, you do not need to take a vacation from healthy behaviors, especially if your healthy habits also contribute to experiencing less pain.

One of the easiest healthy habits to continue on vacation is movement and exercise. If your vacation gives you a bit more time, than you can utilize the time to pamper yourself with enjoyable fitness activities. Here are some ideas as to how to stay fit on vacation:

Bring walking/exercise shoes, even if you have to take something else out of the luggage and leave it at home. Even if you don’t plan on exercising every day, not having the right shoes will surely eliminate even the possibility of exercise.
Sign up for walking tours. The possibilities are endless. There are dozens of walking tours in New York, Chicago, and cities everywhere as well as regularly scheduled easy to difficult guided hikes in national and state parks. Cruise ships often have city walks and rainforest/nature walks as one of their many offerings.
Swim every day! Access to a pool, beach or lake allows easy opportunities for relaxing movement that can also burn calories. Even floating is better than watching TV, but try to amp it up and at least tread water or better yet, swim more vigorously.
Check out the exercise room, but exercise caution. The state of cleanliness and repair can vary tremendously in workout rooms in hotels, cruise ships and resorts. Cruise ship exercise rooms are our favorites. They tend to be immaculate, and they often have machines looking out over the water. Hotel exercise rooms sometimes are just “meh”. If the equipment looks even the slightest bit dirty or worn out, take a hike and exercise outside.
Stretch out or do a little movement in your room. If you have access to Wifi, you have the ability to look at thousands of videos on Youtube on a phone or tablet. Fitness Blender has hundreds of free videos that range in length and intensity, so you can just stretch after a long drive or flight, or even carve out time for a 1000-calorie epic exercise session.

Vacations can give you the time to rejuvenate. Fitting in fitness ultimately will result in a more energizing vacation.

Returning to the Greens: Getting Back on Course

If you haven’t played golf in a while due to injury or weather or your schedule, summer is a great time to fit in a few rounds or even 9 holes here and there. Golf is great exercise and can be a fun way to pass the time with friends and family. Golf is lower impact than many other activities.

Returning to golf in general is a good idea. However, as with all potentially intense periods of exercise, you can’t just jump right into the deep end. Here are some ideas to help you get right bank on the links safely:

Strengthen any weakened muscles. Squeeze a tennis ball and do wrist curls to strengthen your wrists. Do core exercises, including sit-ups, planks and other stretches to fortify your abdominal muscles, thereby protecting your lower back.
Start with working on your short game. These shots are the least taxing on your low back, hips and shoulders. Getting out to a practice green and putting as well as practicing your chipping are important preliminary exercises to undertake prior to your first real outing with friends and family.
Super-slo-mo your swing for the longer shots. Practice swinging with the club but really, really slow it down, so that it takes even as long as 10 seconds from back swing to follow through. Focus on your body: your hands, wrists, shoulders, hips and back. If anything hurts during these practice swings, address that body part before continuing.
Place some tees around your yard and just make contact with the tees.
Go to the driving range to get a feel for how effective your swing is. Perhaps you need to change your club choices or be much more deliberate about your posture. Don’t berate yourself, just find ways to compensate. Hire a golf instructor if you get frustrated for some fine-tuning.
Before your first round of golf, give yourself at least 15 minutes of good warm-up prior to teeing off at the first hole. Stretch your arms above your head with the clubs in your hand. Swing your clubs. Stretch out your legs and your hips. Pay attention to your hands, too, clenching and unclenching them slowly.
Change your goals for the day and maybe for a while to come: it’s not about a score; it’s about trying to golf without pain and with some sense of joy.
You’re not in the PGA or LPGA. You are not required to finish every round that you start, nor even play every ball (depending on the rules that you follow within your playing group and the rules of the course). Take a break on a particularly challenging hole. Walk a little more if you can, a little less if it hurts.

Golf is a great source of exercise and camaraderie. With some careful planning, it’s a sport that can be enjoyed for many years by lots of Michiganders.

Refrigerator Shelves + Research = Results

photo by Flickr/brixton

Mindless eating.

It’s what happens when you’re bored or hungry or both. Or stressed or emotional. Or all of the above.

Dr. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab has been studying mindless eating as well as healthy eating. He has discovered small ways that we can tweak our kitchen environments to cut down on mindless eating and transform it into healthier eating habits. Some of his suggestions that are delineated in his latest book Slim by Design, which he discussed recently on American Public Media’s “The Splendid Table” include:

Change out the china. Dr. Wansink discovered that people eat less when their dishes contrast in color with what they are eating (especially brown or white carbohydrates). In addition, consider using smaller plates. When the plates are smaller, it takes less food to fill them up and also seconds seem less enticing.
Stow the (less healthy) snacks. Maybe you really want to have no snacks in the house. But if you have family members who need or want snacks and don’t have problems with overeating, then you can’t entirely ban the snacks from your home. If that is the case, keep all of your snacksin one cabinet and make it a bit of a “stretch” to get to the snacks, either by placing them up high or down low, but definitely not front and center, which is reserved for…
Put the fruit and veggies front and center. It really makes a difference if the low-fat options are accessible and visible. Don’t hide the vegetables in the refrigerator bins. Instead, immediately after you purchase your fruit and vegetables, wash and cut up at least a portion of them and store the pieces in clear containers. Rearrange your refrigerator so that the front of the middle shelf is filled with tasty, healthy treats, ready to be immediately eaten with no preparation necessary.
Make the clear choice for healthy leftovers. There are lots of ways to store leftovers: in foil, in clear disposable containers, and in their original cooking implements. Wansink recommends that the healthier the leftover, the more transparent the container should be. So, leftover cheesecake shouldn’t be nearly as visible as leftover cut up carrots.
Ditch the extra dishes. Dr. Wansink recommends serving from the counter or the stove and not bringing a large serving dish to the table. By creating one more step to get seconds, we actually can find ourselves just taking one serving, whereas bringing the entire bowl of pasta to the table encourages overeating. Understandably, this rule is designed for family eating only; clearly, it could be untenable with company.

The most important thing to remember as you try to eat more mindfully is that small habits can bring about big changes. Put some of these into practice and see if they make it easier for you to reach for something healthier.

Wonderful Water Workouts

Swimming is amazing exercise for pain patients. The benefits of swimming are:

Swimming burns calories and builds muscles.
The water provides natural resistance.
Water can relieve aching muscles and joints and give relief during the heat.
Swimming strengthens the neck and back muscles.
Swimming is completely low impact and is much easier on joints.
If the pool water is warm enough, the warm water can promote blood flow and improve healing if there has been an injury.

Swimming in a pool can feel comfortable but still provide a solid workout. Consider adding these components to some of your swimming workouts.

Ambient music. If you are at a public pool, you are at the mercy of the lifeguard’s music selections. But any upbeat music keeps boredom at bay.
A large visible clock is a great resource. Then you can keep track of time as opposed to laps, which can sometimes be difficult.
If you vary your strokes with a few laps with a kickboard, you will get a very strong leg workout while giving your arms a bit of a break. This is also helpful if your arms or shoulders are weaker or in pain.
Change your strokes. Alternate crawl, breaststroke and backstroke. If you are a particularly strong swimmer, you can throw in a butterfly stroke once in a while, too.
Hate going back and forth? Tread water for a while. To make it even more of a calorie burn, tread water while holding water weights.

Swimming workouts can have endless variety and can be an enjoyable component of a healthy lifestyle.

Functional fitness: Is it right for you?

If you suffer from pain, you have likely received advice about the therapeutic aspects of exercise. Exercise is good for your body and your mind. Exercise can help with weight control, increases flexibility and range of motion, can be an antidote to stiff joints and also has positive psychological components.

But what kind of exercise program should you embark on? There are so many exercise options out there. You can join a gym, enroll in classes, walk or run on your own or with a buddy. Weight-bearing exercises, cardio exercises, circuits, Pilates, yoga, high intensity, low impact…the list is dizzying.

Your physical therapist will surely encourage you to be consistent in exercising almost daily. Many physical therapists are also recommending that their pain patients aim for functional fitness.

Functional fitness exercises train your muscles to help you do everyday activities safely and efficiently. Functional fitness exercises work to train various muscle groups to work in tandem with one another. This helps to prepare you to perform the tasks you encounter at home and at work.

Instead of rowing at a machine, think about doing the rowing motion with hand-held weights while you are actually bent over at the waist or while standing up with your arms rowing parallel to the ground. This mimics lots of everyday motions: taking groceries out of the back of the car, lifting a child out of a car seat, or even doing various manufacturing jobs. This, then, is the epitome of functional fitness: a fitness routine that strengthens various muscle groups (in this case, arms, back, neck and shoulder muscles as well as strengthening your core) so that you can be “functionally fit” to do those desired everyday tasks.

Physical therapists as well as trained exercise consultants can help you develop a group of functional fitness exercises, based upon what you need to get through your day physically. Perhaps you are a caregiver for a loved one. Often, the tasks associated with caregiving (turning a person over, helping them transfer from lying to sitting to standing and back again) require a different type of fitness than just doing bicep curls at the gym. Other typical functional fitness exercises include squats (with both feet planted and with one leg planted), squats with an overhead press, lunges and what are called dead lifts.

As with all exercise routines, functional fitness should only be undertaken under the advice and consent of your physician.

1-800-586-7992