Archive for Santa Barbara Chiropractor
Urine Sample May Reveal Sleep Disorder in Kids
Posted by: | CommentsProcedure could negate need for more complicated testing, expert says
MONDAY, Dec. 7 (healthDay News) — A simple urine test could be developed to detect whether a child has obstructive sleep apnea, U.S. researchers say.
Such a test "would alleviate the need for costly and inconvenient sleep studies in children who snore, only about 20 to 30 percent of whom actually have OSA," or obstructive sleep apnea, Dr. David Gozal, a professor and chairman of pediatrics at the University of Chicago, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.
An estimated 3 percent of children younger than 9 have OSA, which can lead to cognitive, behavioral, cardiovascular and metabolic problems. Read more…
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Motivating Ways to Get Moving and Exercise
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Once the honeymoon phase of exercising to lose weight and get fit and healthy is over, how do you manage to keep going? Injuries, weight loss plateaus and even boredom all play a part in you dragging your feet. How do you get re-inspired? You need to find the right motivation to renew your passion for fitness.
Breathe New Life into your Old Fitness Routine
If boredom is one of your main issues with fitness, spice things up a bit. Choose a fun activity that is physical. Mix it up with some socializing and leave your worries at the door. Belly dancing, synchronized swimming, kickboxing … any physical activity that looks intriguing – try it!
Offer to take a child or pet to the park. Jogging or power walking with a pet on a leash is a new experience and is also a great social activity as well. You will see your surroundings in a whole new way with a pet. Children are full of energy and if you offer an hour of babysitting at the park, you will burn all the calories you need for the day, running after them, swinging them on the swings, throwing the ball around or even a simple game of chase.
Devise an exercise plan based on your mood. If you are feeling down or contemplative, consider a walk in the park punctuated with some stretching and exercise band intervals. When you are keyed up, choose high octane activity such as aerobic class or dancing. Interval training, where you mix steady physical activity with bursts of intense exercise, keeps things lively and just might help you break through weight loss plateaus too.
Never Be Too Tired to Exercise
Choose someone with similar fitness goals and make a date to exercise. If you feel obligated to meet that person to exercise, your mood will more than likely not be a factor. Fitness partners motivate and push each other to do well so you don’t want to let each other down.
When you feel too tired to exercise, move toward your daily fitness goal in small steps. Put on your workout clothes first and see how you feel. Next, put on your athletic shoes and lace them up. Just being in your workout gear is enough motivation to move more and get things done with some spring in your step. Even if you don’t make it to the gym or your workout routine, you will likely be moving around rather than sitting or lying down.
Eating a small snack may help you overcome your tired feeling too. Choose an option with complex carbohydrates and protein such as a hard boiled egg and an apple about two hours before you typically exercise. Make sure you get plenty of iron and vitamin C in your diet along with the requisite eight to ten glasses of water per day. Iron helps you build red blood cells which means proper oxygenation in your body while vitamin C helps iron absorb better in the blood. Water prevents dehydration, a common denominator to fatigue.
Just changing your routine or even the music you exercise to can breathe new life into your fitness program. Find what inspires you; grab a workout buddy; engage yourself in spring cleaning or yard work. Anything that gets you moving, working your muscles and burning calories is a good thing!
When Sleep Suffers, So Does Decisiveness
Posted by: | CommentsNot being well-rested can be dangerous for those whose jobs require quick reactions, researchers say
(healthDay News) — Sleep-deprived people may put themselves and others at risk when they need to make split-second decisions, U.S. researchers have found.
The study, which included 49 U.S. military cadets, looked at how sleep deprivation affected information-integration, a process that relies heavily on instantaneous, gut-feeling decisions.
“It’s important to understand this domain of procedural learning because information-integration — the fast and accurate strategy — is critical in situations when soldiers need to make split-second decisions based about whether a potential target is an enemy soldier, a civilian or one of their own,” Todd Maddox, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a university news release. Read more…
Intense Daily Workout May Keep Cancer at Bay
Posted by: | CommentsThirty minutes a day cut risk in half in study of Finnish men
(healthDay News) — Increased oxygen consumption associated with moderate- to high-intensity exercise appears to reduce the risk of cancer, a new study has found.
The Finnish study included 2,560 men, aged 42 to 61, whose leisure-time physical activity was assessed over one year. None of the men had a history of cancer, according to the report published online July 28 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
During an average follow-up of 16 years, 181 of the men died from cancer. Those who engaged in moderate- to high-intensity exercise for at least 30 minutes a day were 50 percent less likely to develop cancer compared with the other men.
The researchers found that an increase of 1.2 metabolic units (oxygen consumption) was related to a decreased risk of cancer death, especially in lung and gastrointestinal cancers, after they took into account factors such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index, and fiber/fat intake.
Good Green Tea
Posted by: | CommentsGreen Tea May Help Prevent Oral Cancer
Small study reports evidence of cancer-fighting properties
(healthDay News) — A new study appears to add to growing evidence that green tea might help protect against cancer.
U.S. researchers gave 41 volunteers with pre-malignant mouth lesions green tea extract for three months at doses of 500 milligrams per meter squared (mg/m2), 750 mg/m2 or 1,000 mg/m2. The extract was taken by mouth. Other participants took a placebo.
The study found that about 59 percent of people taking the highest dose of the green tea extract showed a clinical response, compared with 18 percent of those who took a placebo. The researchers also noted a trend toward improvement in certain biomarkers that could predict cancer development. Read more…
Chiropractic Treatment and Tai Chi Practice Relieve Knee Pain
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Knee X-ray
Research done by Tufts University School of Medicine has found that patients that are at least 65 years of age or older with knee osteoarthritis (OA), and who practice Tai Chi, enhanced their physical function and encountered a decrease in pain. Osteoarthritis is a prevalent form of arthritis that brings about a breakdown of joint cartilage. Chiropractors help many people who have developed OA in a number of places in the body, including the knee joints. Knee pain and disability is one of the most commonplace dysfunctions of the musculoskeletal system, second only to spinal complaints. In fact, an astounding 4.3 million US adults over 60 years of age have been diagnosed with knee OA, according to the CDC, and it anticipates that half of the men and women in America may incur symptoms of OA in at least one knee by age 85. Knee osteoarthritis results in pain, mobility limitations, dysfunction and disability, and a decreased quality of life.
You may be asking why so many men and women develop OA. Inordinate stress over a period of time is a major determinant in the majority of musculoskeletal conditions that develop as we get older. Therefore, as people age they are more susceptible to developing OA in their joints, including the knees. Abnormal mechanics of the knee, improper gait, compensatory foot mechanics as a consequence of foot pain, and overuse of the knee joint all produce excessive stress on the knees. Eventually arthritic changes in the knee joint take place. In addition to chiropractic care, chiropractors wholeheartedly advocate natural, drug-free practices, such as Tai Chi (Chuan), that can decrease knee pain. A traditional style of Chinese martial arts,Tai Chi features slow, rhythmic movements that produce mental relaxation, as well as improved balance, an increase in strength, and improved flexibility.
The 40 men and women selected for the Tufts study were, on average, 65 years of age, overweight, and with confirmed osteoarthritis of the knee. Otherwise they were healthy. Individuals were picked at random to take part in 60-minute “Yang style” Tai Chi sessions twice weekly for 12 weeks. Each session included a 10-minute self-massage and a review of Tai Chi principles, 30 minutes of Tai Chi movement, 10 minutes of breathing technique, and 10 minutes of relaxation.
Tai Chi practice involves the type of range of motion, flexibility, muscle conditioning, and aerobic workout that is compatible with prevailing exercise advice for osteoarthritis. Furthermore, researchers noted that the “mental aspect” of Tai Chi promoted a sense of well-being, life satisfaction, and personal concepts of health that helped the participants to deal differently with chronic pain. Compared with the control group, the group practicing Tai Chi experienced a substantial decrease in knee pain.
Full findings of the study are published in the November 2009 issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.
Fit After 45?
Posted by: | CommentsFitness Fades Fast After 45
But healthy habits can stave off the inevitable declines, research finds
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
(HealthDay News) — The declines in fitness that accompany growing old typically speed up after the age of 45, new research shows.
But people can slow the inevitable by staying lean, exercising and refraining from smoking.
The findings, appearing in the Oct. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, are not so surprising in light of the piles of other research that have drawn similar conclusions.
But the new study has broad implications, given the rising number of older adults in the United States and the explosion in the sedentary, overweight and aging population.
“The Social Security Administration actually has an aerobic capacity threshold. If you’re below the threshold, you are considered disabled,” said study author Andrew Jackson.
This means more people could qualify for government disability benefits at a younger age, further draining an already strained economy. Read more…
Pregnant? Eat Your Veggies
Posted by: | Comments Veggies in Pregnancy Lowers Child's Diabetes Risk
Type 1 less likely in kids whose moms favored these foods, study found
(healthDay News) — Children born to mothers who ate plenty of vegetables during pregnancy are less likely to have type 1 diabetes, Swedish researchers say.
"This is the first study to show a link between vegetable intake during pregnancy and the risk of the child subsequently developing type 1 diabetes, but more studies of various kinds will be needed before we can say anything definitive," study author Hilde Brekke, a clinical nutritionist at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, said in a news release from the university.
Brekke and colleagues studied 6,000 5-year-olds and found that 3 percent either had fully developed type 1 diabetes or had elevated levels of antibodies that indicate a risk of developing the disease. The risk was twice as high in children whose mothers rarely ate vegetables during pregnancy, and lowest among children whose mothers ate vegetables every day of their pregnancy.
The study was recently published online in the journal Pediatric Diabetes. Read more…
Fructose May Raise Blood Pressure
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By — Randy Dotinga
Drinking more than two sweetened sodas a day boosts risk of hypertension, study finds
FRIDAY, Oct. 30 (healthDay News) — Here’s a new reason to put down that sugary soft drink: Research suggests that a diet high in fructose, a common sweetener, boosts the risk of high blood pressure.
High-fructose corn syrup is found in many processed foods and beverages. Americans consume 30 percent more fructose now than 20 years ago, and researchers have linked higher fructose consumption to the growing obesity epidemic. But scientists weren’t sure if a connection existed between fructose consumption and high blood pressure.
In a new study, Dr. Diana Jalal, of the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center, and colleagues studied 4,528 adults without a history of high blood pressure. They examined their fructose intake and found that those who consumed more than 74 grams of fructose per day — that’s the equivalent of the amount in 2.5 sweetened soft drinks — boosted their risk of high blood pressure by 28 percent to 87 percent, depending on the level of hypertension.
“These results indicate that high fructose intake in the form of added sugars is significantly and independently associated with higher blood pressure levels in the U.S. adult population with no previous history of hypertension,” the study authors wrote, adding that future research is needed to determine if lowering fructose intake will also lower blood pressure.
The study findings were scheduled to be presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting, held Oct. 27 to Nov. 1 in San Diego.
More information
Learn about high blood pressure from the American Heart Association.
SOURCE: American Society of Nephrology, news release, Oct. 29, 2009
