Archive for Health
The basics of the importance of health and well-being for being successful in school
Posted by: | CommentsThe study demands of the final years of school and tertiary education are akin to training for a major sporting event. In this case, however, you not only have to develop intellectual fitness but maintain the physical condition and stamina necessary to stay the course. Health concerns – diet, exercise, not burning too much midnight oil, avoiding the byways of drugs or smoking or the many other routes to debilitation – are as important for academic achievement as for athletic prowess.
This need to get yourself into shape physically and intellectually, and even emotionally, is part of your academic workload. Mind and body are part of the whole living organism – you neglect one at the expense of the other. A dumb athlete will seldom achieve much, an unfit student who lacks the staying power to handle the demands of study will also find the going hard.
That is not to say people who are handicapped or at some physical disadvantage cannot succeed. Rather, it means that they have to invest more effort in the intellectual process to make the grade.
Planning for exercise and recreation is an important part of organizing your study comprehensively to allocate time for everything, especially adequate sleep and relaxation. It has always seemed to me unfair that an adult can go to work, complete the tasks demanded of him or her during the working day and return home with time to put their feet up in the evenings or on weekends. But the unfortunate school or university student must do homework or extend on the educational institution’s contact hours by home study, and this sharply reduces the time available for socializing, keeping fit or just flopping out in front of the TV. Yet these activities are as vital as a good diet for health and well-being and will often determine the overall capacity of the student.
The Basics of Perimenopause – How to Exercise and Move Toward Good Health
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the kindest things you can do for your body is, quite simply, to move it around. Here I’ll mention some basics about types of movement that provide multiple benefits: less stress, cardiovascular conditioning, more bone strength, and lowered risk of breast cancer.
Yoga is an ideal exercise for forties women for a host of reasons: it tones up our muscles and calms us down. We can do it when and where we like, and we don’t have to buy any equipment, shoes, or outfits. Another beautiful aspect of yoga is that it is a gentle way to begin moving if you’re unaccustomed to exercise. More advanced yoga exercises and poses are suitable for women who regularly exercise. Alternating a more rigorous and jarring form of exercise like running with the soothing and calming stretches involved in yoga is an excellent way to bring balance to an exercise routine. Some yoga poses are weight-bearing, that’s the type of exercise you need to do regularly in order to build bone strength. (Weight-bearing exercise simply means that the weight of your body is supported by your bones.)
Walking is another integrated form of exercise that builds your bones, gets your heart pumping, and can also give you a stress-free break from your hectic pace. The act of walking around, either alone or with someone whose company you enjoy is a conscious way to break away from the pattern of rushing around. You might be surprised at what you notice, as Mary was. The executive who was an avowed no exerciser, Mary had agreed to hand off some of her phone calls late in the day to her assistant so she could take a short walk. “I was very uncomfortable at first,” she said. “I’m just not used to having nothing in my hands. I’m always holding the phone, or the steering wheel of my car, or my briefcase, or the reports I’m reviewing, or I’m pounding the keyboard on my computer. It felt strangely nerve-racking at first to be walking around empty-handed. I felt like I was wasting time.”
To her credit, Mary didn’t give up walking twice a week. “I didn’t want to carry hand weights, so I bought a set of stress balls’ that fit in the palm of your hand. They’re made of soft material that you squeeze. Depending on what my day has been like, I either press them gently or try to pulverize them.” A normally serious person, Mary suddenly laughed.
In our forties, exercise doesn’t have to be about doing bouncing routines to thumping music in a communal room. Some women are combining their exercise routines with an expression of their spirituality, borrowing from ancient traditions where women gave thanks together for water, sun, good crops, and other gifts from the earth. Today a group of women I know who are members of a synagogue regularly gather outside to exercise and pray together. Reaching for the sky, one participant described the gathering as a “way to send prayers directly up to God.” She added, “Exercising and praying at the same time reminds me to be thankful for my body, that it’s healthy and strong.” Ecclesiastical dance brings movement into some masses or church services, using the body to offer praise and thanks for mysteries and miracles that are, perhaps, beyond words.
The Basics of the Partnerships in Health During Perimenopause
Posted by: | CommentsAmong the women I talk to, there’s a buzz of excitement and lots of networking as we look for ways to make our perimenopausal transition very different from our mothers. Never mind that relieving perimenopausal symptoms with herbs still isn’t standard practice, we’ve taken the initiative, done lots of research on our own, experimented with what works, and shared the information with friends, sisters, co-workers, and neighbors.
Evaluating complementary remedies requires the same kind of vigilance we use when we evaluate any prescription hormone option for perimenopause. As I have done my own investigation about herbal remedies, talked with professionals and women who use them, and tried them myself, these principles have been helpful in choosing among the many, many, complementary products available to us now:
- Decide which symptoms you most want to manage. That will help you prioritize among certain products.
- Educate yourself about including herbal or complementary remedies in your self-care plan. Start by doing some reading on your own. (The Healing Power of Herbs by Michael T. Murray, N.D., Herbs of Choice by Varro E. Tyler, and The Lawrence Review of Natural Products, a newsletter, are excellent resources.)
- Enlist the help of a knowledgeable professional who can guide you as you select, combine, and monitor the effects of the herbs you choose. You may have to do some searching to find an individual who has a thorough background in herbal or plant-based remedies.
- Keep in mind that herbal is not a synonym for benign, and that in fact some plants are highly toxic, even deadly. Never assume that a herbal or natural preparation is harmless; thoroughly investigate everything you are going to put in your body.
- Bring your health care provider into the loop. While more and more people are exploring complementary or alternative approaches to a host of health issues, research shows that two-thirds of them do not inform their primary health care provider about their explorations. I strongly recommend that you include your provider in your search, for two important reasons. First, he or she can help you determine if any medication you are taking would interact adversely with an herbal preparation. (Herbs can interact with each other and other medicines, specifically antidepressants, anti-anxiety agents, and some medications to control high blood pressure, to name a few.) Second, your experiences may help your provider learn about and become more receptive to no drug approaches.
-If you are pregnant or are trying to become pregnant, be very cautious about taking natural preparations, just as you would be with any medication. Unless you and your health care provider can be 100 percent certain that a medication or herb will have absolutely no effect on your fetus, my suggestion is not to take it while you are trying to conceive or during your pregnancy.
-Read labels carefully. The quality of some herbal preparations varies widely. If the label makes it hard to understand how much of a particular herb or other ingredient is in a product, look for another brand.
-Remember that some herbs or plant-based medicines exert very potent influences on the body. (The heart medication digitalis, for example, is derived from plants in the nightshade family.) Be sure you understand how much of the herb you need to take, and never assume that “more is better.”
-Be a wise consumer. Just as no prescription hormone will be a cure-all or silver bullet for all perimenopausal symptoms, the same is true for herbs and other complementary medicines. If a claim seems exaggerated, it probably is. Also, you need to look at any herbal remedy as part of a larger picture that includes your lifestyle.
- Quality control isn’t always easy with herbal products. In my experience, I have found that PhytoPharmica in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Celestial Seasonings in Boulder, Colorado, are both reliable sources that rigorously test their products to ensure quality. I also recommend comparing costs. Good health can never be too expensive, of course, but before you buy any product or preparation that has a high cost, be sure you have solid evidence that it is going to do what you expect.
Finally, when you decide to try a new approach, think about timing. I generally advise against trying something brand new when the stakes are very high, like trying a remedy for insomnia the night before a big presentation or other important event when you’re very concerned about getting rest. If you don’t get the desired result right away, your disappointment stands to be much greater.
The Basics of Perimenopause – The Health Changes When The Mood Is Right
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Mary and I had our first meeting about her perimenopausal symptoms, she told me mat she sometimes felt like “cringing” when her fiance was amorous because penetration was painful. Vaginal dryness can make intercourse so uncomfortable that some women may avoid it, even unwittingly. But as I frequently observe in perimenopausal women, Mary’s mild aversion toward sex was only partially caused by vaginal dryness. Stressed by a demanding job that left her little time to pay attention to her own needs, she initially came to see me for help with extreme irritability and tension. In our initial discussion about her moods, she readily acknowledged that these feelings also put a real damper on her sex life. She and her fiance get into fights that degenerate into a debate on whether I’m being unreasonably volatile or whether he’s deliberately trying to drive me crazy. Then we’re both so angry and tense that neither of us has any affection to show the other.”
A few months later, Mary’s story was different. She had been using natural progesterone to help with her anxiety, and estriol for her vaginal dryness and drop in sex drive. At the same time, she instituted two very new practices, walking at least twice a week while squeezing her handheld “stress balls” instead of a cell phone, and passing on rich restaurant meals in favor of vegetables, fruits, and grains, to help restore hormonal balance. It wasn’t long before she saw a difference in her outlook.
“I perceived the change at a very visceral level right away, within days, as if a knot in my stomach dissolved,” Mary said. “More gradually I noticed that I could be more relaxed sexually, too, probably because I didn’t have the vaginal dryness and burning, but also because I didn’t feel so frantic about my work and my life.” Her testosterone levels were also low, but in her case regulating her estrogen and progesterone levels and incorporating some important lifestyle changes had made a distinct difference in the way she felt physically and emotionally.