Fast Fitness - Built in Upper Body and Core Exercise Carrying Children
Friday, May 29, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get better exercise and stop aching back and shoulders when carrying children (or anything else) in backpack carriers or by piggyback:
Put on the carrier (and baby for a fun practice ride or use groceries, etc). Look sideways in a mirror.
See if you round your upper and or lower back forward. See if you lean your upper body backward under the weight. Notice if you increase your lower spine inward curve, are tilting the hip out in back to hold up the carrier.
Straighten upper and lower body segments. You will feel a strong pull on your abdominal muscles when you reduce overarching in the lower spine and prevent leaning the upper body backward. You will feel an upper back workout when you don't lean or round forward.
Use straighter positioning all you can:
It may be "natural" to try to offset loads by hunching and contorting your body, but it still hurts.
Overarching the lower spine makes carrying feel easier because it shifts weight to the spine joints (facets) and surrounding soft tissue, and off the ab muscles. Rounding forward feels easier as it shifts weight to the discs and off the back muscles.
Get more exercise and less joint trauma with neutral posture.
Looking downward with good neck dynamics: Holding healthful position does not mean never look up or down to see where you are going. It means to get natural, built-in upper body exercise, burn calories, and enjoy your time going places with the kids - Tax Preparation Health
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
RSS feeds are still going down - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Knee Surgery - Arthroscopy Results No Better than Pretend Surgery
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
A study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the surgery was no more successful than pretending to do the surgery.
Arthroscopic surgery for knee arthritis is performed in substantial numbers. Why? The patient's doctors said they needed it. Where did the doctors get that opinion? It is taught in medical school and repeated at medical conferences. Repeating things is not evidence-based medicine (which is key) but vehemence-based medicine. When highly paid people repeat things without even knowing if it is true, that is eminence-based medicine.
Studies are now following up the same patients who had the surgery. Numbers show that often the surgeries are not needed, and people can do as well without surgery, and with intelligent non-surgical rehab.
This is not new. In the 1930's, patients being prepared for the rigors of surgery through exercise, often found that by surgery time, they didn't need it. Other patients without receiving exercise went straight to surgery. They may have had continuing pain and damage after surgery or later in life, but patient tracking was not done. Doctors just reported that the surgery was done, the patient lived, and that was all, and on to the next paying job.
Then studies compared surgery to physical rehab without surgery. Improvement rates were found to be about the same.
Then came an even more interesting study in 2002 of 180 patients that compared knee arthroscopic surgery to cutting the patient but not doing the knee surgery. Sixty patients in the placebo group received skin incisions and underwent a simulated surgery without insertion of the arthroscope. Two other groups had one of two typical knee procedures: Sixty-one patients had arthroscopic lavage group, and 59 to had arthroscopic débridement.
Results showed, "At no point did either of the intervention groups report less pain or better function than the placebo group." Conclusions were, "In this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic débridement were no better than those after a placebo procedure."
Source: A Controlled Trial of Arthroscopic Surgery for Osteoarthritis of the Knee. New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 347:81-88. July 11, 2002. Number 2. NEJM.
This does not mean that surgery does not "work" but that you do not have to have it or be rushed into it, if it is not right for you. There are other ways, often as quick, and less expensive and painful and without the limitations following. Take your time. Don't let anyone push you into something not right for you. Medical claims that you will get worse if you do not have immediate surgery have not turned out to be factual.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Comments, A Medical Conference, New Findings on Discs
Monday, May 25, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
By the time this post comes out, we should be halfway out West to a medical conference. I'm presenting a study, which took years to do, and which found something unexpected.
I am a medical researcher. I find out the things that doctors (with any luck) then learn and put into practice. A research career has all (and more) of the medical schooling, but without the burden of the medical salary. In previous studies, I found that chronically overdoing the inward lower spine curve pinches the lower spine. It forces the spine joints, called facets, backward against each other, eventually wearing them out, and compresses surrounding soft tissue. After long periods of standing, exercise, and lifting with too much inward curve, lower back pain is not a big surprise or mysterious to fix. In the work I am presenting, I found that although it is known that the main factor to injure vertebral discs is too much bending forward, that overarching backward can hurt discs too. This is a new proposed mechanism of disc injury.
There is supposed to be a small inward curve to the lower spine. With the (very) small normal inward curve, spine bones line up on top of each other like stacks of cups so that there is equal pressure on discs from front to back. That is called normal lordosis (inward curve). Chronic bending forward manages to unequally load the discs so that they push out in back. Overarching also unequally loads the area. It seems to pinch already protruded discs, and may even factor in the herniation process. I will be presenting on years of my work that lead to this finding.
I made a diagram showing the disc injury coming from overarching/ hyperlordosis/ hyperextending the spine that is so common in pop fitness. The Healthline blog software is still not loading any new photos of my own. Stock photos or those from other people's sharing sites appear, but I the blogger is not letting us get my own diagrams and student photos to you, for now. I mailed the image to Healthline.com staffer Jerry, who said he could upload it for you. It should appear here, below this paragraph, so you can understand better why hyper-lordosis, although common, and often taught, it not neutral spine and can make unnecessary pain. The damage and pain can be quick to fix when you know how. Click the labels "facets" and "lordosis" for posts explaining this issue.
I have to pay the travel to get to the conference, pay the conference fee, essentially, pay to work. I have to bring a computer and projector to give my own presentation (or pay an AV fee to the conference) but won't have Internet access to see or answer questions. Leave fun comments but hold questions for the next two weeks.
Photo is me, taken on the way on the way to a previous medical conference, out for some barefoot climbing.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
Fast Fitness - Quick Refreshed Perspective Every Day
Friday, May 22, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - strengthen appreciation. Appreciation increases happiness, lowers blood pressure and stress chemicals, and reduces resentment, an unhealthy state of mind:
When you turn on a water faucet, notice that you get water. This is more than several millions of people have. Real people, as deserving as everyone else, walk miles and pay criminally inflated prices for water that is sometimes too dirty to drink.
When you turn on an electric light, notice that you get light and have electricity. In every room. At all hours. In many part of the world, even in major cities, they do not have electricity more than a few hours and sometimes, none in non-public areas.
If you are reading this, you may have a computer or other electronics. Even if it is in a library and you waited in line, you have these luxuries to browse for life enhancing ideas.
Right now, there are people carrying loads and walking miles just to dig for food and water, or carrying all their belongings on their back and living in tent refuge cities to escape persecution, sieges, physical attacks and worse, and have been for years. Not complaining doesn't mean to not change things. Do something about it:
It is fantastic bounty to have water and electricity. Try to notice it, and be happy for it. It is also true that Western water is full of unnecessary chemicals, and destructive pharmaceuticals. We can reduce polluting and taking unnecessary drugs. Don't pollute and litter without thought. Work to change the lives of all the many without basic rights and privileges. Show children that you appreciate, and don't destroy. Lead by example.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Thank you Healthcare Technology News for including my post Prevent Back Surgery in this week's Vol. 5 No. 35 edition of Grand Rounds. They wrote, "Jolie Bookspan finds that a major overlooked part of health care reform is that many standard payments are for things that shouldn't need to be done in the first place. See her example - of How to Prevent Back Surgery."
Particular thanks to this Grand Rounds because they included a prevention post in their Health Care Reform theme edition
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more in the comments, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
RSS feeds are down, subscribe, free by using "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Pectoral (Chest) Stretch - The Most Common Mistake in the Best Shoulder Stretch
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Mike Benson has sent several Fitness Fixer inspiring stories. In response to reader requests, he made us this photo set showing, "The most common mistake in the best stretch - How to not get any stretch from the pectoral stretch." I asked him to demonstrate this, because I see this mistake so often. People often "do" a stretch without "getting" a stretch.
Why is this stretch so good? Round-shouldered posture is a main contributor to neck and upper body pain and rotator cuff injury. Round-shouldered posture feels comfortable and natural when the front chest muscles are tight. A common mistake is to stretch the shoulder joint, which does not address this problem.
The purpose of the pectoral stretch is to lengthen chest muscles so that healthier positioning feels natural and comfortable. If you merely hold your elbow to the side, little lengthening can occur - shown in first photo:
Second photo below - changing the position to get the purpose - lengthening anterior (front) muscles that go across the chest. One way is to use a wall to help you press your elbow back.
Turn your body and feet away from the wall.
Your elbow is behind you, no longer out to the side.
Raising the elbow higher or lower changes the stretch.
Experiment until you only feel a stretch in the front chest and no pain or pinching anywhere in the shoulder:
Keep shoulder down and relaxed
Do not make any pain anywhere. The idea is to make things healthier, not to strain, push, force, tighten, grunt, and call that a health promotion activity.
Understand the purpose first. The purpose of this stretch is to lengthen front chest muscles so that tightness does not pull you into feeling that round-shouldered position is the norm or that it is uncomfortable to straighten. Feel the stretch in the intended area.
Use a mirror to help you connect what the position looks like with what it feels like.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
RSS feeds still down - Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Photos by and of Fitness Fixer reader success Mike Benson
Back pain from lifting and carrying babies and young children is common. Rehab and PT programs commonly have people spend time (away from their children and other important things they need to do) to lift weight to strengthen back muscles.
Here is an idea - if weight lifting helps, lift the kids. Just lift them right, so that you do not get the back pain in the first place. It is not the lifting that causes the pain.
Good Kid Lifting:
Prevents pain,
Strengthens your muscles,
Gives built in exercise (functional exercise the way your muscles work),
Increases contact with your young kids, important to their development,
Improves ability to keep time with your children fun, healthy, and happy.
Readers asked me to make reminders for them about how to lift and carry their young children.
I created several different reminders on good lifting, bending, carrying. Fun T-shirts for kids are available in several colors and fabrics. There are bibs, singlets, and shirts for babies, and fun Back and Neck Saver reminders for grownups too.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - by special request of martial arts students starting my summer semester university class this Tuesday - Make a quick soreness relief rub at home:
Cut open hot red peppers and remove the seeds. If you have sensitive skin, use gloves.
Crush the seeds using a mortar and pestle. If you don't have that, try a mallet or any pounding tool. More seeds makes a hotter rub. Experiment sensibly. Crush in some pulp of the red pepper (or a green one) to add substance and color.
Add oil to preferred thickness. Coconut oil is great, and becomes solid in cool temperatures. Or try sesame or olive oil, whatever is healthy and handy in the kitchen. Rub on sore areas.
Some commercial preparations contain petroleum products, like Vaseline, unhealthy for bodies like the Earth and you. Some contain methyl salicylate. Even though these are natural plant substances, poisonings and overdoses are common. Other soreness balms contain any number of toxic substances. Fresh, healthful hot pepper rub is quick and good.
**Wash your hands well with soap before touching your eyes or using the bathroom to avoid burning the touched areas. Be sure to remove hot pepper traces before handling contact lenses.**
Make sure it is your muscles that are sore from good honest effort, not joint injury:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to this week's host for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
For weightlifters who enjoy Olympic lifts, rows, cable cross-overs, curls, and all the other good stuff with endless heavy weight, you may like growing vegetables.
We have been tilling a vegetable garden from a rocky field at my Mom's. Seems her home was built on landfill. We had to sledge-hammer and pry concrete slabs - prodigious squatting, levering, clean-and-jerking, and hundred pound medicine ball throws over the just-built garden fence into a pile. Then lifting and hauling away the pile.
Carrying sand, earth, rocks, weed bales, tree branches as heavy as you can lift, over uneven rocky hilly earth back and forth from the truck, the field, and the new compost pile a hundred feet away for hours is functional weightlifting. Hours of repetition-maximum (RM) hoeing gives a harder abdominal, arm, and gluteal workout than it looks.
Healthline software still isn't uploading my own photos. At left above, a photo of a statue with too much lumbar curve/hyperlordosis to be healthy, but in general doing functional weightlifting. Use your muscles to prevent overarching like this when you swing a sledge, a kettlebell, or other weight. For Fitness Fixer posts on neutral spine and hyperlordosis, click the photo or here.
Over the winter while visiting home in Asia, my husband Paul and I went to a workman's shop. The store-keeps remembered us and smiled. The first time we went there years ago, they were so sure we were lost tourists, they took our shoulder and gestured at a restaurant. In the best Thai I could manage, I explained that Paul is a carpenter, has done forge metal work, and loves old-world tools, strong bamboo handles, and hand-hammered metal. They smile each year we return. In the US, we live in a crowded urban area with minimal bricked exterior in deep shade from surrounding buildings. Vegetable gardens don't grow. Paul wanted to plant my Mother's field - a brambled overgrown area.
In the Thai tool store, I explained with the words I knew that Paul was looking for a specific Thai tool, shaped like a backward shovel, that you use in overhead action, like a mattock (flat bladed pick).
Quickly, excitedly, word went from the store-keep, to her friend in the next shop, to the next, and next:
"Man who good to Mother of wife!"
The coconut telegraph was happy. We bought two heavy tools, called "job" in Thai. Both had thick lovely bamboo handles. One was giant sized for Paul, the other for me. Fun getting them through flights and US customs.
Mom had asked a local man what it would take to clear her field, and he told her a blowtorch, a machine plow, three men, and a week. Paul and I cleared it in one day in early April with a digging stick and the Thai hoe-shovels. The ground was half frozen. Six, or so hours massive exertion - first clearing brush and tall grasses, then hours of half-squats to seize handfuls of stalks, standing back up to pull them with grip strength. Then excavating slabs of concrete and discarded materials with a pry bar, the Thai digging tools, and bare armed weight lifting.
The packs of seeds we had scattered in assorted flowerpots, pans, shoeboxes, and containers sprouted over just a week into tiny plants - broccoli, cabbage, pea, hot and sweet peppers, strawberries, eggplants, and assorted spices. We have been learning about complementary planting - plants, just like people, who are better and healthier with specific other kinds of plants so that chemical fertilizer isn't needed. We are learning about plants that repel pests, instead of using insecticides.
We got a rain barrel to reduce water bills. We attached an old broken hose. The holes made it a natural soaker hose. We poked more holes and arranged it around the garden for drip irrigation. We don't know the water quality of either the rain or from the tap. We will send six dollars and a soil sample to an agricultural university for testing. Maybe other toxic things are in that landfill that we don't want the vegetables absorbing. Maybe commercial food factories have the same problem. Many things to learn.
Weeks pass squatting and sitting well to plant seedlings, still hitting buried rubble. More lifting and hauling. Each night we are too tired to worry or think anything bad. We are barely were able to lift hands and feet. I consider what people for thousands of years have been doing just for subsistence farming, day after day, year after year. I thought of Fitness Fixer success story Ivy and her story - Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain.
We thought we planted everything, then found a half pack of pea seeds left. Paul mentioned we didn't have one more container for them. I laughed, "we didn't have a pot to pea in."
Ideas:
If you're a tough vital strong person, or want to be, dig a garden.
If you don't have anywhere to dig one, hook up with some nice elder who wants one, a community group, Habitat for Humanity, or someone who doesn't want to exercise like this but still wants a garden.
Contact your community to see about organizing parents and children out in sunshine for functional exercise doing good for all.
If you only want one hour a day of hard total body fat burning muscle building exercise, only plant a small vegetable garden.
No need to buy fancy tools, use what's handy.
If you don't want to exercise so hard, try a single pack of seeds in some potting soil in almost any container on a sunny windowsill. A chance to get the vegetables you like.
Fancy individual peat pots and seed starters aren't essential; a simple pack of seeds can get you a pan full of fragrant oregano, said to be very healthful. It gives a gasp of wonder (to me) when seedlings actually sprout.
Before the 2008 election, a video appeared by Roger Doiron (I don't know him, just liked the video). He asked the next President to grow a garden. It did come true. Here is his viewpoint of getting your own garden started, showing various bending, occasionally good:
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Certain headaches can be initiated or aggravated by tense facial muscles (squinting, scowling, furrowing brow), and by tight, tense, overstretched muscles in back of the head, neck, and shoulders, common with letting the upper body slouch forward. Headaches from tight muscles were formerly categorized as tension headaches. A growing theory includes upper body muscle use among triggers of a different kind of headache, the migraine, previously thought of as only a vascular event.
The wide range of kinds of headache is not my major field of study. I had previously had results with patients retraining upper body position to stop tension headache. I was not aware my own research would be useful to people with other kinds of headache, so I am learning from my patients who frequently report stories just like this one recently in from engineer Johannes Ernst:
Dr. Ernst writes:
"Some mindblowing ideas one might come across by accident instantly convert you into a new missionary because they are so clearly and obviously true, no further check required. Your particular religion ;-) of fitness is one of them.
"I would summarize it as follows: if our ancestors, over 10's of thousands of years, had had as many ailments as we have today, the human race would have died out a long time ago. No ergonomic chairs but only rocks and logs to sit on? No exercise equipment? Not even one pill a day? Just leaves and furs instead of expensive mattresses and beds? Humans clearly had no chance.
"Well, but here we are nevertheless. So given how many ailments we have, something that we are doing these days must be much worse than what our ancestors did in the forests. Jolie's mindbogglingly straightforward answer: instead of using ever-more complicated medical and fitness tools and regimens, whose benefits, never mind costs, often are marginal or doubtful, what about we use our bodies how they were meant to be used? Duh!!
"The shameful thing is that medicine, as a profession, does not necessarily nudge anybody in that direction. Often, its leading practitioners seem totally oblivious to what should be a "Duh".
"What is wrong with this picture?
"In my case, over the course of 25 years of headaches, healthcare professionals on two continents, etc. etc., nobody, never, not once, suggested, that I could improve my posture. I got all the drugs, regardless of how expensive, few of which would make much difference other than to put me out cold.
"Last week, for the first time, about 6 weeks since I got a few of Jolie's books, I managed to extinguish an immobilizing headache through some rather simple exercises, completely without drugs. I totally expect that I will be able to do it again. (I did! This morning!)
There is more to headache than muscles and posture. Many causes can be controlled without unhealthful pills. The book Health & Fitness in Plain English THIRD edition has an entire chapter devoted to known ways to prevent and end a headache.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply to get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Bend right and pull one of the highest nutrition garden items, free, even if you have not planted a garden:
Find dandelions. You can tell them by their jagged leaves. The leaves gave them their name, from the French for 'dents de lion' (tooth of the lion).
Use good bending, with squat or lunge, to pull free nutritious food. Many people will let you have theirs free.
You can eat the green, the flowers, even the roots. USDA Bulletin #8, "Composition of Foods" (Haytowitz & Matthews 1984) ranks dandelions in the top 4 green vegetables in overall nutritional value.
Dandelion has long been known as a top nutritional food and even medicine. The official name, Taraxacum officinal, comes from the Greek, 'taraxos' meaning 'disorder' and 'akos' meaning 'remedy.'
Eat the greens as salad, sautéed like other green vegetables, or make juice. Greens are best fresh and young, just before the plant flowers. Greens have bitter taste (like coffee and beer) that is said to aid digestion. People who are accustomed to junk sweets may not like them at first, then they taste better over time, and mixed with nuts, spices, and vinegar.
Dandelion flowers are pretty in salads and on vegetables, or use them to make wine (to be covered in posts to come). Dandelion root contains inulin, a soluble fiber which does not raise blood sugar or triglycerides, making it helpful to people with diabetes. Dig roots in early spring or fall. You can eat them as is, or soak them in a jar of brandy or vodka for four weeks (or more) to make a tincture.
Now you can stop using poisonous and expensive chemicals on your lawn too. Better not to add these substances to the water system, or to yours.
The good news? Even when you pull them to eat, they come back to make more free nutritious garden without work.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
On Saturday May 16th 2009, I will be offering an opportunity to learn many techniques in one day, and pursue certification.
I will teach two different workshops. Come learn to fix injuries for yourself and others.
Optional certifications in each course will be available by arrangement. The certifications are authorized by the International Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine:
Fix and Prevent Injuries - Ankles, Arches, Discs, Knee, Back, & Neck 9am-1:30pm and Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier 1:30-4:30pm.
Both workshops are held on the same day, Saturday May 16th, in downtown Philadelphia at Temple University Center City campus, 1515 Market Street, across the street from historic City Hall.
People fly in from all over the world to attend this double workshop in one-day format.
The Academy has been in process of renaming to "Exercise Medicine" instead of the previous "Sports Medicine" for the wider application outside of sports. New developments are listed on the Academy site:
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
My post features a short video of a 7th grader who finds the fast food industry has paid for food lists including fast food to be placed in classrooms as educational materials. Click Health Homework to see it.
On the web, Grand Rounds is a collection of the best on-line medical posts from the past week. A different host works hard each week to find and list the articles. This is different from the Grand Rounds in a hospital, which is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic.
Thank you to Nursing Handover for doing the hard work of collecting and featuring our posts.
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Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
The RSS feed is down. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right to subscribe, free. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
Readers, patients, and students have asked me for years to write down for them about good lifting and bending over babies and children. I wrote articles and books. I did experiments in the lab. They still said they couldn't remember. So I made something for all of you. You can give these to everyone in need for Mothers and Fathers days, coming up, and all year.
Here it is, quicker and easier than reading the books:
If the photo does not appear (blogger is having troubles) click this link.
I designed singlets and one-piece suits for infants, T-shirts for toddlers and children, various sizes and colors.
One student had asked me to write down and hang the information around her neck so she would have an easy way to remember all the time. So I made a bib too - for the baby - so she could see it each time she bent to feed and lift.
I was surprised people wouldn't just remember on their own to live in a way so important to their health. But they kept coming back asking for me to tell them again. I am drawing the various concepts and putting them on daily items as funny reminders. I will show them in future posts if readers are interested.
Click the photo or go to this site for all the educational gifts designed so far - http://www.cafepress.com/AcademyGifts. Send your requests for other ways to have fun health built in to daily memory.
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Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own. Questions come in by hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
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Fast Fitness - Double Arm Strength, Endurance, Balance, Stability, and Free Inversion Table
Friday, May 01, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - build on the handstands you have already been doing with Fitness Fixer.
Do a handstand against a wall. An easy way is to stand with your back about a foot or so from a wall, crouch down and put one foot, then the other, high on the wall.
With feet still against the wall, begin to lean your weight until you are holding yourself up on only one arm.
Hold as long as you can. Breathe normally. Leave shoulders relaxed, not tight. Switch to the other arm.
"Sorry my video requires a lot of phone power so I had enough to snap a shot before I have to charge it. Angle is kinda odd as it is on a "tv" with my wallet ingeniously holding it in a position so it can see me instead of the floor lol. I need to go and buy a camera.."
If you like lifting weight overhead for upper body strength, you don't need to wait to go to a gym, or to get weights or equipment.
How to get started with a wall handstand - Wall Handstand Success With Liz. Use your brain before trying this. Be safe and careful, obviously.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
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