January 2012
18 posts
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Experience Life Magazine: Healing Spices, part 5
Ginger
Health Benefits: Quiets Queasiness
For thousands of years, traditional healers worldwide have turned to ginger to help ease nausea of all kinds. For the past few decades, scientists have been proving that ginger works.
A team of gastroenterologists from the University of Michigan and National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan decided to study the effects of using ginger on 13 people...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Iliopsoas
Psoas and Iliacus
Hip-flexor muscles situated deep within the abdominal wall and upper thigh.
Why stretch them: The psoas and iliacus are shortened during activities that flex the hips, such as sitting. Because they increase the arch of the lower back, tight hip flexors are notorious for causing lower-back pain.
Start: Lie on your back on a stable table with your legs hanging off the edge....
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Experience Life Magazine: Healing Spices, part 4
Fennel Seed
Health Benefits: Calms Menstrual Cramps
Fennel is one of the few plants that has it all — it’s a vegetable, herb and spice. That tang of licorice when you bite into a fennel seed comes from the volatile oil anethole, the same compound that gives anise its licorice-like flavor. Fennel seeds are teeming with anethole and dozens of other phytochemicals, including phytoestrogens,...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Your Calves
Gastrocnemius
Powerful calf muscle that runs from the knee joint to the heel.
Why stretch it: When it gets tight, it can cause pain in the Achilles’ tendon and arch of the foot, as well as cramping in the muscle itself.
Start: On a low step or curb, stand on the ball of your
right foot so the arch and heel are hanging off the edge.
Stretch: Relax your calf and let your heel drop toward the...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Your Glutes
Gluteus Medius and Minimus
Layered muscles located on the outside of the hipbone.
Why stretch them: These can get overworked when walking and running.
Start: Face a table the same height as your groin. Standing on your left leg, bend your right knee and place your leg on the table. Adjust your right knee so it lies in front of your navel, and bring your right foot to the left of your left...
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Experience Life Magazine: Healing Spices, part 3
Coriander
Health Benefits: Eases Digestive Discomfort
People often confuse coriander with cilantro, because they come from the same plant. But there’s a big difference. Cilantro, an herb, comes from the strongly scented leaves of the coriander plant. And while it is tasty, it’s not nearly as healthful as the spice coriander, which comes from the plant’s sweet, nutty seeds. Two of the...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Piriformis
Piriformis
A small muscle deep in the buttocks.
Why stretch it: Biomechanical imbalances, such as weak glutes, cause the piriformis to perform extra work. The resulting tight piriformis can push on the sciatic nerve, causing pain in the hips and buttocks and down the side of the leg.
Start: Sit on a chair, lower back arched and abs tight. Cross your legs so the outside of your right foot...
Reboot, Day 10
Whew! 5 more days to go and I’m feeling the changes!!
I wish I had taken Before pictures or at least had weighed myself, but alas I did not…
I can say that my waist is noticeably trimmer, I don’t have the belly bloat I’d been carrying around since Thanksgiving, and I’ve got more energy than ever before!
This journey so far has been a roller coaster, I can tell you...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Latissimus...
Latissimus Dorsi:
Wide muscle that covers the sides of the back.
Why stretch it: Lack of overhead arm movement can shorten the lats, causing pain in the lower back and shoulders.
Start: Stand an arm’s length away from a door handle. Grab it with your right hand and step your left foot closer to the door. Fold forward so your right arm and torso are parallel with the floor. Step your right...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Pectoralis...
Pectoralis Major is the large chest muscle from the rib cage to the upper arm.
Why stretch it: Forward-oriented activities such as typing and driving can tighten this muscle, contributing to poor posture.
Start: Stand facing a corner of a room, with one foot in the corner and the other foot behind you. Raise your arms so your elbows are slightly higher than your shoulders and pointing...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Hamstrings
Hamstrings
Four separate muscles on the back of the thigh.
Why stretch them: Running and excessive sitting shorten them, which can lead to lower-back pain or decreased range of motion.
Start: Sit on a bench so that your entire right leg rests on the surface and your right foot dangles off the edge. Plant your left foot on the floor, as far back as possible. Sit up tall with abs engaged and ...
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Experience Life Magazine: Healing Spices, part 2
Turmeric
Health Benefits: Reduces Inflammation
Turmeric is a kitchen staple in India, found in just about every dish that crosses the table — a fact that has not been lost on researchers, who observed 30 years ago that the incidence of chronic illnesses among people in India is significantly lower than in most Western countries, especially the United States.
Turmeric owes its preventive...
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Reboot, Pre-Game
So it turns out that Join The Reboot is a big hit! The site has been crashing every five minutes, but I did have time today to sneak in and get some meal plans for the next fifteen days!
As you may have remembered from my last post on this subject, I was going to be starting on January 8th, but since my boyfriend (who actually owns a juicer - mine went kaput) is on a rotating schedule for work...
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Experience Life Magazine: Stretching Your Quads
Rectus Femoris
The only quad that crosses the hip and knee joints.
Why stretch it: When tight, it can cause pain in the knee, hip and lower back.
Start: Stand to the left of a waist-high surface on your left foot and place your right leg on the surface behind you. Bend your right knee and loop an elastic band around your right foot. Place your left foot in front of your hips. Hold the band...
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
– Carl Jung
December 2011
10 posts
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The Science of Acupuncture
acupuncturegirl:
People who ask me about acupuncture are often convinced that it cannot be scientifically proven, or that there are no studies that have demonstrated its effectiveness. This is not true (scroll back through the archives of this blog for some examples).
What many of these same people take for granted is that so-called “Real” medicine is totally science-based, and that drugs...
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Experience Life Magazine: Healing Spices, part 1
Cinnamon
Health Benefits: Balances Blood Sugar
Maybe it’s ironic that cinnamon — that spicy-sweet favorite that cooks use to give desserts extra flavor — can help control blood-sugar problems. Or maybe — given the fact that the rate of type 2 diabetes in the United States has doubled in the past two decades — it’s Mother Nature’s way of cutting us a break.
Study after study has shown that...
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A Healthy Kind of Contagious →
This is so true!!
My boyfriend passed on the runningitis to me and I passed it on to my mom!
It’s a bug worth catching!!
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Experience Life Magazine: Smart Stretching
Everyday activities take a toll on our bodies, tightening our muscles and limiting our range of motion in potentially painful ways. This simple stretch routine can help undo the damage.
By Nicole Radziszewski / January - February 2012
Our bodies take a lot of abuse. We sleep on lousy mattresses, sit hunched over in our cars and at our desks, lug shoulder bags and wear shoes that...
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New Year's Resolution!!
Well, this may not qualify as a NYR since it will only take me less than a month to complete, but I’ve decided to do a Reboot!
What’s a Reboot?
You might have read an earlier post where I talked about my juice fasting experience, but what will differ from my earlier experience is that I’m going to follow a twenty-nine day diet overhaul that I hope will set me up for a healthy...
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Acupoint of the Day: First Up, LI-4
The great thing about Traditional Chinese Medicine is that you can practice it anywhere and anytime!
Acupuncture points are located all over the body and are connected by meridians to distal areas of the body on and below the skin, even to your essential organs. You may already recognize a few as common “pressure points,” like the one I’ll share with you today. By knowing the...
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Ever thought about studying Traditional Chinese...
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Shoulder, Neck, and Low Back Pain? Maybe it's your...
Restricted latissimus dorsi muscles can inhibit the range of motion of your arms, destabilize your core, and lead to back, neck and shoulder pain. The latissimus dorsi, which start at the back of each armpit and attach to several points in your thoracic and lumbar spine, are the largest muscles in the upper body. They produce the internal rotation, adduction and extension of the arms...
November 2011
9 posts
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Women's Health Magazine: ACUPUNCTURE TO RELIEVE... →
Learn why acupuncture might be the best pain reliever for your body aches and pains
The Best Time Investments You Can Make →
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“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that...”
– Lao Tzu (via lucifelle)
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What Does It Take to Become an Acupuncturist?
Ever wonder how long it took your acupuncturist to go through school? Do you wonder what they studied?
When I was looking into going to school for acupuncture and Chinese medicine, I was astonished to learn the depth of training and scope of practice for acupuncturists in the United States. I’d been going to acupuncturists for years to care for my own health, but I’d never considered how...
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Acupuncture For Children
acupuncturegirl:
I was listening to NPR recently and there was a story about MD’s prescribing Nexxium to babies for spitting up, even though some breast-feeding moms have found that eliminating dairy, gluten, and soy from their diet makes a huge difference with this problem. It is upsetting to us when our children are sick, but giving them prescription drugs which have only been tested on...
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TCM Approach to Bell's Palsy
Affecting about 40,000 people in the United States every year, Bell’s Palsy is a neurological disorder that manifests as a paralysis of the face. This disorder often affects only one side of the face. Bell’s Palsy is thought to be a result of damage to the facial nerve that controls the muscles on one side of the face, which then causes those muscles to droop. The facial nerve damage that...
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Heat vs. Ice: The Injury Debate
vs.
Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, or RICE. Most athletes have heard that this treatment protocol when facing an acute injury, but is it always the best form of treatment? Does it matter whether the pain is acute or chronic? What about the quality of pain? Other questions come up such as duration, frequency, and what about the use of heat?
Traditional biomedical practitioners have long...
“To Heal Illness, Begin by Restoring Balance”
– Caroline Myss - American medical intuitive, mystic and author whose work involves exploring the spiritual and psychological roadblocks of life.
October 2011
18 posts
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“Discovered” by Western Medicine
Very valid point about what constitutes medicine! Now I’m wondering where I can get this Kalata-Kalata tea for future patients!
naturecuresclinic:
A popular website for medical headlines, medicalnewstoday.com, recently posted an interesting story titled “Potential New Drugs From A Cup Of Tea – The Witch Doctors’ Gift.” The article is describing a video series produced by the American...
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Well: Yoga and Stretching Equally Effective for... →
Weekly yoga classes relieve symptoms of low back pain about as well as intense, regular stretching sessions, a new study shows.
Consistency is key to great health results!!
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Healing with Traditional Chinese Medicine -... →
This article is great if you’ve ever wondered about Traditional Chinese Medicine. It’s not all about the needles!
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Farmacy!
“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” ~ Thomas Edison
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Why do cats purr?: (Scientific American) →
On a wild-off-the-mark kind of post for me (well it is still health related) I wanted to share this article, because
A. I think it’s interesting
B. It’s the perfect segue into sharing with you all my two new loves!!
So excited about these two little girls! We’re very excited to have these little furrballs in our lives! :)
acupuncturegirl:
I love this: “sound frequencies...
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SheROX San Diego Triathlon Race Recap
750m Swim. 20k Bike. 5k Run.
I felt disappointed going into this race. Three weeks earlier I injured my IT band & missed almost two weeks of training. I did not feel prepared to really give it my all in this race, but I was excited that I had so many friends participating with me and that my mom & boyfriend would be on the sidelines cheering me on.
The weather was relatively warm on race...
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Juice fasting!
It’s not easy, let me tell you that!!
This week was my second attempt at the detox, and I found my will power subside at the end of day three again.
But let me tell you, I love it, I’m a believer, I just need to gain some greater will power - and probably set myself up to start when I don’t have 12.5 hour days of school (hello, stress cravings!) and 40 mile bike rides planned.
...
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Autumn remedies
e-lu:
Autumn is upon us, folks! I’m sure you can feel the changes in the weather and temperature, and even see the changes, especially in plants, from summer to fall. Fall is associated with the metal element in TCM. The metal element has many representations such as change or transition, dryness, meticulousness, grief, the color white, pungent tastes, and more.
In TCM, the lungs, aka “the lung...
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The Application of Traditional Chinese Medicine...
Acupuncture practitioners around the globe can tell you that migraine sufferers seek help from acupuncture clinics on a daily basis. Many find that this method of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) offers symptom relief unparalleled by oral medications. This ancient therapy is becoming more widespread and increasingly introduced into mainstream Western healthcare in the 21st century and can...
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Acupuncture for Mental Illness
Acupuncture Alleviates Schizophrenia – New Research
22 JULY 2011
New research concludes, “that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia would benefit from acupuncture treatment alongside conventional treatment.” Acupuncture was effective in alleviating schizophrenia and the side effects of psychiatric medication. Acupuncture also improved energy levels, sleep, physical disorders, and...
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Results from Recent Case Study Show Acupuncture is...
Klinikum der Universitat Munchen in Germany released results in September, 2011 from a case series performed to demonstrate the practicality and possible effects of acupuncture when used as emergency medicine to treat post traumatic stress (PTSD), nausea, and emotional trauma. A trial of 60 patients aged between 23 and 55 years old, 57% of them female, were treated by the German emergency...