Offered together with a second separate workshop Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier. 1:30-4:30pm.
Both workshops are held the same day in downtown Philadelphia at Temple University Center City (TUCC) campus (not main campus). The Center City campus is at 1515 market Street.
People fly in from all over the world to attend this double workshop in one-day format. All class and registration links: DrBookspan.com/classes
July 27 and 28th in Snowmass, Colorado:
The Wilderness Medicine Conference and Annual Meeting will run four of my workshops in Snowmass, not far from Aspen. Each workshop runs only once this year.
Fix and Prevent Injuries - Ankles, Arches, Discs, Knee, Back, & Neck. Tuesday July 28, 2010. 3:20-5:20pm.
Not The Same Old Stretches - Stretching Smarter Stretching Healthier. Wednesday July 28, 2010. 7:30-9:30am.
Functional Core Training - The Ab Revolution™ No More Crunches No More Back Pain. Wednesday July 28, 2010. 10am-12noon.
Diving and Hyperbaric Physiology and Medicine, "Advancing Your Knowledge" (For those with prior diving medicine or scuba background). Tuesday July 28, 2010. 3:20-5:20pm.
These workshops are free with WMS medical conference admission. Last year it was required to pay for the entire conference to take my workshops. Thanks to empowered reader Jen, and wonderful WMS staffer Teri, very limited places may be open to pay for my workshops without conference attendance. I am paid nothing to travel there and give many hours of teaching time. Take a space only if I will be glad you attended.
To register, contact the WMS - Wilderness Medical Society by e-mail to Teri Howell Teri@wms.org, or phone 801-990-2988.
Class information is on my web site page CLASSES - DrBookspan.com/classes. Workshops fill fast.
If you can't make these workshops, find the books with complete text and illustrations of everything we will do on my BOOKS page - DrBookspan.com/books
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - a life-saving holiday gift that you can give, even if you haven't shopped - give a CPR class.
CPR is a first aid procedure. With CPR training, you can help save someone who has stopped breathing or heartbeat.
CPR stands for Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation. CPR gives the person air, and presses on their chest to circulate blood until emergency care arrives.
CPR can be learned and practiced under instructor supervision in a single session class. Class lengths vary. Introductory 3 and 4 hour classes may include use of external automatic defibrillators (AED). Longer classes include additional procedures, the different protocols for adults, children, and infants, and how two people can work together to do rescues.
Gift idea - give a person a card with your pledge to pay for their class or go with them. Contact the Red Cross, Heart Association, and other community preparedness training group to check classes and prices in your area (Red Crescent is more projects than classes). CPR methods change over the years. If you took a class years ago, methods are different now. Certification expires after one year. This month I spent many days renewing my various certifications and teaching Red Cross certification classes as a volunteer.
In a CPR class I taught earlier this month, obese students chomped potato chips while watching videos of CPR for heart attack. A student who said he was in graduate school for kinesiology sat extremely slouched for the 4 hour class, and bent wrong repeatedly to pick up blankets and move his practice CPR manikin. Remember - it's a class for better health?
Give blood. After I last wrote about donating, several readers asked if I give blood. I have given 41 times to the Red Cross (not paid), not counting three times directly for relatives in emergencies. This is a small number compared to Lillian in Blood Hero.
There Are Still Millions Around The World Without Basics to Live:
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Fast Fitness - Getting Exercise Making Holiday Light Power
Friday, December 11, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Why pay money to go to a gym to use electricity to power a treadmill or exercise bike, when it should be the other way around.
Burn calories and save money generating electricity to power holiday lights for your house and community (and maybe your blender).
Fourteen year old William Kamkwamba brought the first electric power to his village. He had no school to teach him, he went to the library to learn how to build a windmill from parts he hunted in a junkyard. If he can do it, can the engineers, builders, electricians, tinkers, teachers, and smarties of Fitness Fixer readers make a simple bicycle generator to hook up to holiday lights?
Try a bike shop to see how to make or get a bicycle powered generator. Several models power bicycle lights. Adapt one to hook up to holiday lights.
Each person in your group can get a turn to burn healthy calories and get in shape pedaling for an hour. The world gets clean electricity and you make it.
Happy New Decade of Common Sense Functional and Green Fitness.
Related:
These are the kinds of projects my Academy works on - The Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM). Come join us - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe free, click "updates via e-mail"upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
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Photo of Fluorescent light, human-powered electric generator (le vélo produit l'énergie électrique pour allumer le siège recouvert de néons qui est à l'arrière), by Dalbera and Arsenale (53ème Biennale de Venise) (Set
Academy Awards - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine Awards Leading World Health 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
It is an honor to announce the 2009 award winners of the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine, AFEM. I am director of the Academy, and work (unpaid) for it to be an international resource for people and communities to learn to be healthy in body and actions. Award winners were selected for representing and carrying out true world health.
This year is the first year that we will award honorees. The design for the award is by Alessandro Schiavone, Creative Director from Ravenna, Italy.
The Academy is the certification teaching branch of my sports medicine practice. My practice and the academy teach individuals and groups healthy biomechanics and movement habits for daily life instead of injury-producing habits, good food instead of disease-causing food, healthier training for athletes, healthier medical practices for the sick, no cost preventive medicine, "green" fitness, and healthier mindset.
Leading World Health - Award Winners 2009
The 14th Dalai Lama He leads by example in his message of healthy, clean, non-violent, kind life to all ages, all people, all colors, all politics. www.dalailama.com
Jackie Chan - Nickname of Chan Kong Sang Antiviolence role model in martial arts, anti smoking public service pieces, leading by example of discipline in physical training, charity work, respect for teachers, and honor as a lifestyle. www.jackiechan.com
AboveTheInfluence.com English language web site for young people of personal responsibility in drug use prevention. www.abovetheinfluence.com
Jack and Elaine Lalanne Changed their own lifestyle to health, and since the 1930's have led by example to stop junk food and to exercise no matter what your condition or age. Jack Lananne is (at this writing) in his 90's, Elaine, in her 80s. They continue to exercise daily. www.jacklalanne.com
Amnesty International World organization to raise consciousness that lack of personal safety, rights, and freedom, lack of safe drinking water and adequate nutrition for some, is lack of world health for all. www.amnesty.org
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Newly elected President of Liberia. Liberia has suffered 25 years of war, hundreds of thousands dead, lack of electricity or running water, 80% unemployment and 90% illiteracy. Grandmother of 6, imprisoned for her work for rights, she continues to put her country on a course of health and renewal. africanhistory.about.com
My Mother - Academy Lifetime Achievement Award Her students stop me in the street to say how she showed them healthy movement. Also their children, their grandchildren, and now, small great grandchildren who have also studied with her and learned that keeping moving is the way to health. Exercise Your Sense of Humor
Leading World Health 2009 - Youth Award Winners
The Youth Leading World Health award this year is shared by 16 year old Babar Ali of west Bengal India and William Kamkwamba of Malawi:
Babar Ali teaches hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village who cannot afford to go to school. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8299780.stm
William Kamkwambabuilt a windmill from junkyard parts to bring power to his village, continuing work to provide for all Malawians, where only 2% have electricity. He left school at 14 because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition. He went to the library: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one." He built a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire. "I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done." news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8257153.stm
Everyone - "There's lots of work to be done" Enjoy the beauty and health you can bring.
Coming later this month - 2009 Fitness Fixer Hall of Fame
--- 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, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
How to Cope with Pain is a blog focusing on ways to live your life with pain, written by a psychiatrist who has spent years in chronic pain.
She generously writes:
"The Fitness Fixer recommends fixing the underlying causes of pain, instead of continuing bad habits and hoping enough reps of certain exercises will cover up the problem."
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 articles.
Thoughts on Pain:
The idea is not to live with pain, but stop the causes and go on to a happier pain free life. Click for tutorials of readers who fixed pain with Fitness Fixer - readers inspiring stories
Visit the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) where students train to make "health care" healthy, and stop pain caused by counterproductive exercise practices and uncaring medical "care." We teach people and communities how to be healthy in body and actions while having fun - no cost preventive medicine - "green" fitness.
--- 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, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
The human body is healthiest and happiest when it moves throughout the day. Reader Paul J sent this video clip of a project in Sweden, reminding people how much movement can be fun: Click > arrow to play:
Medicines prescribed for poor mood and the surprising number of diseases caused by sedentary lifestyle, frequently cause disease and despondency. Real life movement throughout the day has been found more effective than pills and surgery to reduce or solve depression, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, reduce risk and effects of cancer, and other diseases.
Remember to enjoy moving. Go dancing. Skating. Play ball and Frisbee. Do community work. Pick up litter. Help a shut in. Fun doesn't only mean being entertained. Make doing good for yourself and community a positive fun feeling.
What projects can you think of to make real life active, healthy, and fun again, not just artificial movements in a gym? My Academy- the Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) teaches people and communities healthier ways to live - both in formal classes and grassroots community projects - click AFEM.
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, and The Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Save your neck while biking, while drinking from a water bottle while biking, and get a needed upper back stretch at the same time:
Main concept - your neck is not a Pez dispenser. Don't tip and pinch back at the neck to look upward to drink or look forward while riding.
Notice if you jut your chin forward and upward to drink or ride.
Instead, extend upward through your entire upper back. Keep your chin fairly still and see how much upward range you can get from your upper back. Instead of rounding the upper back forward, you get a nice straightening stretch.
Craning the neck (pinching backward at one joint) and pushing the chin forward, pinches and compresses your discs, joints of the neck bones, the soft tissue, and nerves.
To help remember good biking form, I put a reminder on a healthy water bottle. Keep your exercise healthy. Click AcademyGifts or the image to order.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. 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. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Japanese Ama Divers - Cold, Clothing, and Children
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
The multi-part story of diving with the Japanese Diving Women continues here:
In villages along the Japanese coasts, diving by the AmaSan for sea plants and other harvests goes on without tourist fanfare. We dived in the cool, dim waters, rubbing leaves on the inside of our masks to prevent fogging, although there was little to see anyway.
The AmaSan - the SeaWomen - told me that during "the war" soldiers came and were horrified that they dived in only small underwear pants. The women told me they thought Westerners were funny and strange for their discomfort about diving naked in cold water. But after that, they were made to wear clothes for diving. I experimented with diving in clothes versus none. It is colder and clumsier to wear clothes in the water, especially over repeated dives. As people know who hike or pack out gear, wet stuff is hard to deal with, change, and keep clean. It's easier without clothing. The old traditional diving garments were white. Now, commercial wetsuits are worn for the AmaSan working day.
With exercise in the cold, your body makes several different adaptations to tolerate cold better. You need cold exposure to keep those adaptations. The Ama divers mentioned that before they used clothes, they tolerated cold better. After wearing cotton suit insulation and wet suits, they lost tolerance.
They dive throughout their pregnancies – even up to the moment of delivery. They don't find that unusual, but more comfortable than moving heavily on land. They said they had no problems doing hard cold diving while pregnant, and their children were all born healthy. They all dive during menses. They told me that during "The War" (WWII) they had no sanitary supplies so were happier to be in the water anyway. They said the work is terribly hard. They asked me to tell the world that.
I asked them many questions – "If I wanted to become a SeaWoman, can I?" "Eei No! You too old!" they said. I asked if an outsider, someone who wasn't the daughter of the Ama-San wanted to become an Ama diver, could they? The diving women didn't understand. They shook their heads, "Eei. No, the daughter do not stay." I asked if a son wanted to become an Ama-San, could be become one? Most laughed at me immediately. Others looked at me for a moment to be polite, before laughing. "Eei, they can't do this work. Too cold for them." I asked again, if someone's else's daughter, unrelated to a diving family wanted to join. "Eei no – the daughter all have gone."
Years ago, the Ama-San regulated themselves to prevent taking too much. They wanted to preserve resources. They shortened the harvest season – which was roughly from April to September.
The few thousand remaining Ama-San still make substantial money diving, although income continues to drop. Large-scale commercial fishing has depleted and polluted the waters so deeply and widely that there is little left for the SeaWomen. This is the opposite of what they tried to achieve by limiting themselves.
"I was the best harvester," one told me. "Tell them that. Tell them I made more money than my husband. Tell them that."
Are there not... Two points in the adventure of the diver: One --when a beggar, he prepares to plunge? Two -- when a prince, he rises with his pearl? I plunge! -- Robert Browning
--- Questions come in by hundreds. I'm bailing the ocean with a bucket. I make posts from fun mail. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fast Fitness - Recycling and the Movie "Garbage Dreams"
Friday, April 10, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Recycling trash is honorable and beneficial for people and Earth.
The word 'Zabal' is a person who collects trash. The Zabaleen of Cairo are a class of people who for generations, have collected the city's trash by hand, with devotion and honor, and the certainly that from their sweat, they do important work for their community and the world.
The Zabaleen recycle 80% of all they collect, all by hand. They build and run their own school to educate their children in literacy, manners, good and honorable conduct, studies, and recycling techniques. The city decided it was progress to be modern and great like the West, and change to using trucks and companies to collect the trash, mostly dumped into landfill. The livelihood of the Zabaleen is dwindling. The movie Garbage Dreams shows their members visiting a landfill, incredulous that anyone would throw such literal treasure into a hole. One exclaimed that trash, and the possibilities and materials it possesses, is a gift from heaven, not to be wasted at cost to the Earth.
The movie tries to appeal to audiences by making it a drama of the decisions of three of the teen Zabaleen, but I hope the greater message the teens make is not lost. It is not progress to look down on classes of people. It is not progress to waste. It is not progress to be made to feel you are not good because you work to clean the world.
See the movie Garbage Dreams.
Learn a long-known, little talked-about world crisis encompassing health, politics, economics, sweat-of-the-brow work, pollution, and human rights.
Notice litter on the ground. Stop littering. Know that it is good and honorable to pick up trash, not something beneath your values. Pick up trash today (be prudent what you reach into). Thank others who do this work.
Garbage Dreams was supported by a grant from the Sundance documentary film program. It won several Film Festival awards.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Spring Garden is Fitness Health Goodness as a Lifestyle
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
United States First Lady Michelle Obama led the way to dig and sow a vegetable garden on the south lawn of the White House. Local primary school (elementary school) students helped, and are scheduled to continue sharing the work and knowledge and benefits of planting, weeding, caring for, and harvesting vegetables and herbs for the White House kitchen.
The first lady is developing programs to promote healthy eating for American families. In an interview, she stated, "My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities… Its most important role, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern."
Plans involve the entire First Family. President Barack Obama is scheduled to help weed and tend the garden.
In the 1990's US President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton tended a rooftop vegetable garden.
In 1943, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden in front of the White House. (In the 1920s she was also prominent in the movement to allow women to vote in US elections.) Her White House war effort Victory Garden inspired millions. By 1945, 40 percent of produce in the US was grown at home.
Read about teaching neighborhood children self-respect instead of vandalizing, and to reap what they sow, and share what they harvest for healthier neighborhoods - Lifestyle Fitness for Kids Through Gardening
For more Fitness Fixer on each topic, click labels gardening and green fitness under this post. The label children gives fitness of all kinds for children.
Questions come in by the hundreds. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. More fun in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Use you brains and hand motor skills to install it on your bicycle wheel with your kids, or family, or a friend, or alone.
Get more exercise pushing against the generator while making the power for your bike headlight or safety light.
Beside powering a light for your street bike, think of exercise machines. It seems wasteful to use treadmills and stationary bicycles that require electric power to operate. Encourage manufacturers to make equipment of all kinds that run on self-generated power, and gyms to stock them.
Use shaker and wind-up flashlights instead of battery flashlights, hook up a bike to run the television, or a treadmill to power a capacitor to run lights - power to and from the people.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
There are still people around the world, by the millions, without basics.
Blake Mycoskie created TOMS footwear to, "Produce stylish, comfortable, and practical footwear while improving the lives of children around the world."
TOMS press kits states they adhere to "No Sweatshops…ensuring both fair labor practices and minimal impact on the environment."
Mycoskie writes, “Inspired by a traditional Argentine shoe and challenged by continent’s poverty and heath issues, I created TOMS with a singular mission: To make life more comfortable. TOMS accomplishes this through a unique shoe and commitment to match every pair purchased with a pair to a child in need…no complicated formulas, it’s simple…you buy a pair of TOMS and TOMS gives a pair to a child on your behalf.
Privileged Western children may benefit from, even enjoy, practicing this type of gift giving, over spending on junk food and indulgent status items for themselves.
--- Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
Do you have to spend money to be healthy? A look around typical food market carts shows much spent on unhealthy food and products (photo, right). This post is the start of a new Fitness Fixer feature of Fast Finance Fixes - saving money while being healthier. We need a good brand name so send in your votes. Until then, we'll call it Fiscal Fitness.
Reader Ivy writes:
"How often does one hear that eating healthy is too expensive? Yesterday on my return from shopping at my favourite shop, a friend asked me as to what I had bought. I showed her the organic brazil nuts, sunflower and sesame seeds as well as the green, red and brown lentils. She remarked that organic products are far too expensive. Later in the day, I decided to phone two friends who are in a similar age group, live alone and are also on a low income. We discussed living costs so with their permission, I did a little exercise.
"I choose to be a vegetarian, my friends are not - I do not eat dairy, cakes, cookies or junk food of any kind, plus I do not drink coffee or alcohol. My friends both eat out on a regular basis, I choose not to. I do not buy cleaning products, instead, I use baking soda and white vinegar. I also use a phosphate free laundry liquid which I buy in a 5 litre container through a friend who kindly gives me a 20% discount. I do not have a mobile phone I also turn off my hot water during the day - this can save me about $10 a month in electricity charges.
"I was the only one of us three who exercised on a regular basis. I found it interesting that I was the only one who seldom visited a doctor, also, unlike the others, I did not get a cold or 'flu this past winter.
"The result of this exercise being that our costs were approximately the same within a few dollars. We three respect each others difference - each of us making personal choices. Afterall, isn't that what life is all about.
"You, my dear Dr Jolie, have been a huge influence on my life in more ways than you realise - again I thank you. Your lovely little reminders re life are also an inspiration. Thank you for your support." Ivy
Ivy first found The Fitness Fixer a few years ago when looking for information to fix severe sciatica and drop foot. Click Inspirational Ivy to see how she quickly stopped sciatica, got rid of her cane, and how her neighbor took the photos for the post. Each post links to updates Ivy has been sending since then. Reader Sylvia has since been fixing her own drop foot with Ivy's help in post comments. Sylvia's success story is on the way.
Save plenty - don't buy things that are not healthy anyway. You don't need to be vegetarian or give up coffee and alcohol. With all the money you don't spend on junk food, commercial sports food and drink, and unnecessary fitness fad products, you can give to the poor and still have enough for good food and a vacation.
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Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) "updates via e-mail" - upper right column.
Both workshops are held the same day in downtown Philadelphia at Temple University Center City (TUCC) campus (not main campus). The Center City campus is at 1515 market Street.
These workshops are free with WMS medical conference admission. Last year it was required to pay for the entire conference to take my workshops. Thanks to empowered reader Jen, and wonderful WMS staffer Teri, very limited places may be open to pay for my workshops without conference attendance. I am paid nothing to travel there and give many hours of teaching time. Take a space only if I will be glad you attended.
My workshops carry certification option through my Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM). Certification counts directly toward fellowship advancement with AFEM. These workshops are only offered a few times a year. Academy information - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
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