Fast Fitness - Stretch For Menstrual Cramps

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a stretch to help relieve the ache of menstrual cramps and the same pain from uterine cramping after sexual relations:

1. Person with cramping lies on back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor or bed.
2. Partner sits at their feet, facing their knees, and gently cups the front of both thighs near the knees.
3. Partner leans backward, pulling the top of both thighs with them (yellow arrows in photo). Cramping person should feel a pleasant relief stretch in the lower abdomen (red arrow in photo). Repeat as needed.
   
   

The partner doing the cramp release can either sit closely, securing the cramping person's feet with their knees (as pictured), or sit further back. It is preference for how you can best and most comfortably do the stretch.

The cramping person's feet can be moved closer to their body to add a nice Achilles tendon stretch, or if the partner applying the stretch is not strong enough to easily pull back. This stretch works extra well on a soft bed when the feet can sink into the soft surface. Apply it slowly to not overdo.

See how this works for you and send your suggestions.

Related:

• Fast Friday - Valentine's Day Partner Weightlifting
• Friday Fast Fitness - Partner Achilles Tendon Stretch
• Fast Fitness - Plyometric Partner Bench Press for Valentine's Week

Not Related, Random Fitness Fixer:

• Indiana Jones Rocket Sled

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Labels: hip stretch, massage, menstruation, partner exercise, stretch

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Japanese Ama Divers - Cold, Clothing, and Children

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

Previously:

• Diving With the Japanese Ama Divers
• The AmaSan Japanese Diving Women
• The Mermaid Stories
  
  

Next:

• Diving Women of Korea - The Haenyeo

Labels: breath-hold diving, cold, green fitness, menstruation, pregnancy

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Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again

On Monday July 7, a news show Troubled Waters featured a story of two scuba divers who floated 19 hours overnight after they and their dive boat did not connect after a dive on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

In their television interview, the two divers told various points of the situation. Three of the concerns were common myths often repeated in scuba training.

1. They mentioned they experienced signs of hypothermia. Technically, not any chilling is hypothermia. Being uncomfortably cold does not mean you have hypothermia. Shivering and teeth chattering does not mean you have hypothermia. You can even become incapacitated by cold before becoming hypothermic. In informal conversation, the two terms of hypothermia and chilling are often used interchangeably.

2. The woman of the pair stated she had read in a book, which had a section about progression of hypothermia, that exercise is not good and can be counterproductive. They were worried that body movement would, "send blood to the muscles away from your core, and your organs" and for that reason, make them colder.

I have read the book they mention. It is a book of wonderful stories and great writing, interesting medicine, but the physiology is frequently off. As a physiologist, I notice these things. When I teach medical students in their classes, I often see that they do not want to learn physiology, they only want to learn what medicine to give and where to cut. I tell them that without understanding the reasons for how the body resulted in the situation in the first place, they will only repeat the mistakes of their teachers by giving medicines and cutting.

Back to the shivering divers floating all night, waiting for rescue. It is not always the case that exercise in the cold must only make you colder. Exercise in cold water can generate enough heat to match or surpass the large thermal drain, depending on water temperature, work load, duration of exposure, your body composition, what you are wearing, and other factors. It is true that exercise in cold water increases heat loss, but it is an important point that it does not mean that you will always cool. Whether you stay comfortable or get cold depends how much heat you keep and how much you lose. If you generate more heat than you lose, you will be warmer than when you started. When I worked on cold water immersion for the Navy, we studied body cooling in pilots downed in cold water, and how long they could survive (all volunteers, really they loved my studies). We also studied divers. Some divers sent for underwater missions during the Gulf War were overheating underwater and had to wear ice vests with their scuba gear.

3. The last myth is a popular one. I am a scuba instructor and have heard this one repeated often. The two divers mentioned that the woman of the pair was menstruating and that there were sharks in the water. The woman said, "I'm shark bait is what I'm thinking." Diver researcher Dr. Carl Edmonds found that Australia's shark attack tracking system reported nine times more shark attacks on men, even though there was an even number of male and female swimmers.

Menstrual blood does not attract sharks. Neither does menstrual blood attract grizzly bears during camping trips, cause wine to sour as stated in ancient religious writings, or cause wings to snap off airplanes, as pilots insisted in the 1920's. The term man-eating shark, for now, remains.

I explain these myths and more about swimming and diving physiology, underwater and in heat and cold, in the book Diving Physiology in Plain English.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Do You Lose Most Of Your Heat Through Your Head?
• Fitness Myths - How Many Legs Does a Dog Have If You Call the Tail a Leg?
• Time of Death From Body Temperature?
• Beware of Hype in Training Methods
• Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA - Parts I and II
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Getting Fitter in 50 Degrees
• Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw

Labels: cold, menstruation, myths, scuba, swimming

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