Battling For Health

Well, Christmas is over and we are now stressing for the New Year’s party preparation.

So, what did you get aside from the Christmas gifts?

A big hang-over? Due to all the alcohol you had.

Constipation? Indigestion? Due to all that food you ate.

Have you already gotten enough rest and sleep?

Most importantly, how’s your arthritis? Have your symptoms gotten worse?

Well…here are some remedies that might help.

They’re not mine, but from American Chronicle’s Arthritis Cure Secrets - Most Popular Home Remedies for Arthritis:

1. Try a red flannel wrapped gently around painful joint and leave it overnight.
2. A gentle massage with warm live oil as soon as the pain starts is cheap and effective. One of the good home remedies for arthritis.
3. Garlic, juniper, lavender, cajuput, sage, rosemary, thyme, or sassafras. Any one of these oils diluted in the proportions of one part to 10 parts of olive oil and used to massage the painful joint will bring immense relief. One of the well liked home remedies for arthritis.
4. The patient should be given a lukewarm enema for a few days to cleanse the bowels as the first step to prevent arthritis is to relieve constipation.
5. Steam baths and massage once a week are beneficial in the treatment of arthritis.
6. All general cold-water treatments, such as cold baths and cold sprays, should be avoided.
7. An extra supplement of calcium, zinc and vitamin C is often recommended and is worth trying at an early stage.
8. Sea bathing is considered beneficial in the treatment of arthritis.
9. The water should be drunk in the morning with an empty stomach. Fresh juice can also be extracted from potatoes and dilute it with water on 50:50 basis make it the first thing in the morning. One of the well liked home remedies for arthritis.
10. Dandalion is the remedy of choice–its leaf has diuretic quality that increases output from the kidneys, while its root is a mild laxative and liver tonic that enhances bowel movement.
11. Circulation around the joints can be improved through tissue-cleansing properties of essential oils, of Juniper, Cypress and Lemon, whereas oils of lavender, Rosemary and Chamomile have mild analgesic and high anti-inflammatory properties.
12. Take 1-2 capsules of cold liver oil daily, use hot/cold water according to local weather conditions.
13. Take four peeled pieces of garlic, and two grams of Sprague. Powder both and dip in 30 grams of mustard oil and heat slowly. Massage daily with this oil on pains. One of the effective home remedies for arthritis.
14. Take 10 grams of camphor and 200 grams of mustard oil. Mix in a glass bottle and close with a tight cork and keep the bottle in the sun till the camphor dissolves. Massage the affected area daily. One of the best home remedies for arthritis.
15. With feet massage eyesight improves and dryness, swelling and Oil massage should be done at least four times a mouth.
16. The patient suffering from arthritis should not sit idle nor over-exert himself or herself. Immobility may lead to stiffness of joints and over-exertion may be lead to damage of ligaments.
17. Epsom salts (4 TBSP) should be added to bathing water, to reduce inflammation and stiffness of joints.
18. The body should be kept warm at all times. Joints should not be bandaged tightly as this limits movement and interferes with the free circulation of blood.
19. The patient should relax for 30 minutes every night in a tub of warm water in which cupful of sea salt has been mixed.

Most importantly, the said American Chronicle article reminded us of the Arthritis Diet. Indeed, what use are these remedies if your diet is bad for your condition?

These are the highlights of a good arthritis diet:

• The diet of the arthritis patient should be planned along alkaline lines and should include fruits and vegetables for protection, proteins and carbohydrates for energy.
• Red meat and dairy products are destructive.
• A vegetarian diet, or one including fish, with plenty or raw fruit and vegetables can do miracles.
• Cabbage, carrot, celery, cucumber, lettuce, onion, radishes, tomatoes and watercress may be used for raw salad.
• The cooked vegetables may include asparagus, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, celery, brinjal, mushroom, onions, peas, beans, spinach, tomatoes, squash and turnips.

Personally, the above lists are very helpful to me. Hope it helps you as well.

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If you’ve been following the Too Sexy For My Hair blog, you’ve learned that Lori Miller has lost her battle against cancer this past October. Her husband Cary, however, is urging people to consider donating to charity in Lori’s name this holiday season.

From Too Sexy For My Hair:

Those of you who knew Lori will be well aware that she was beyond compassionate––even in her darkest hour she continually found other people to worry about… the homeless, the poor, the sick, the mentally ill.

Anyway, in honoring my wife’s truly giving spirit, I have decided to keep up with our recent tradition of helping others around the globe via great organizations such as Heifer International, and Kiva.org.

Click on the link for more information on how you can donate in Lori’s name. Please be as generous as you can be this season.

On a related note, check out this video from a cancer patient’s last lecture — “If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.”

Battling Cancer seeks to bring you the latest in cancer news, opinion, resources, and off-beat stories. Don’t miss out — subscribe to our RSS feed!

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I am currently in the midst of upgrading all the “Battling For Health” sites to the new network template, and happy to say that this BATTLING STRESS blog finally has a new look. Although, I am still testing this template (it’s in beta mode) .. while I am doing this I have removed a few plugins and installed a few more - so, if you see anything screwy or kooky - please drop me a comment about it!

Take care - and, hope you had a Wonderful Christmas!

HART

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Being placed in situations that demand the impossible almost inevitably lead to stress. Unrealistic deadlines to meet useless goals, enforced by unreasonable managers - are an all too common scenario. But individuals who find themselves in such circumstances still have options.

There are a dozen small, stress-relieving exercises that can help ease the symptoms while working toward the long-term cure. Stress produces a number of well-documented physiological effects like muscle tension, shallow breathing and compromised immune system. To combat these, you can take direct action.

Take a few deep breaths, slowly. No need to go into some kind of Zen state, just allow yourself to expand the chest and relieve tension around the center of the body. Stretch the arms and shoulders. Gently work the head from side to side. Flex the calves.

Take a few minutes to work on your mental processes as well. Stress often inhibits the ability to focus or concentrate effectively. It decreases memory retention on needed items because the irritation causes focus to shift to the fact of being angry.

While you’re breathing deeply, close your eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. Again, that doesn’t require any form of deep relaxation, just a moment to let the external world go. At the same time, you don’t want to focus solely on the anger or stress you’re feeling. Focus on an internal image of something pleasant - a child’s face, the family dog, a great golf swing, anything that works for you.

Now that you’ve tackled the symptoms, go after the roots of the problem.

Many choose to start their own businesses. That choice brings with it a whole new set of challenges, but the overarching benefit is the freedom to meet them. You’ll find yourself working long hours with little recognition. But, even in the absence of large external rewards, the internal rewards - the satisfaction, the feeling of being the ‘commander of your own ship’ - is frequently cited as a major incentive for those who keep trying.

Many others will try to work for positive change within their current organization. Even when those efforts are only partially successful, individuals report that they gain satisfaction from the knowledge that they are not simply accepting their unpleasant fate passively.

You can make efforts to transfer to another job within the organization, or look forward to the day when that unreasonable boss will have moved on. Remember, very few things in any company stay the same for more than six months to a year.

While you’re waiting for better circumstances, focus on the process less than the results. Keep a realistic attitude about what is and what is not within your control. Try not to let the latter matter very much. Seek out the cooperative individuals in the company and don’t burden yourself with trying to change the others.

By all means, let off some steam to trusted friends and family members outside work. At work, stay focused on the task.

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On behalf of the kind folks at HART Networks (and by that, I mean HART and Gloria) , I want to wish all of you Battling Cancer readers a Merry Christmas! I’ll see you all under the mistletoe — but don’t tell my husband! (Hmm, I seem to be saying that a lot lately).

Best Wishes,

Lesly

Battling Cancer seeks to bring you the latest in cancer news, opinion, resources, and off-beat stories. Don’t miss out — subscribe to our RSS feed!

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Federal officials are being asked to answer why they gave an “all clear status” to a toxic waste dump in Pennsylvania’s Schukill County after a report given at the the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting stated that the number of rare cancer diagnoses in inhabitants living nearby was “statistically improbable.”

The site, a former mine, was used as a dumping ground for paint sludge, solvents, and other potential carcinogens, before being shut down in 1979. Later, the area was classified as a Superfund site by the Environment Protection Agency.

From Wired:

In 2001, the EPA took the sites off the Superfund list, but didn’t fully account for all the waste deposited there. Residents say McAdoo and the government failed to completely clean up and believe pollution caused freakishly high local levels of polycythemia vera, a rare form of cancer characterized by red blood cell overproduction.

In the fall of 2006, state officials asked the ATSDR to study the reported cancer cluster. The ATSDR, who officially state that “site-related contamination poses no public health hazard because there is no evidence of current or past exposures,” contracted Mount Sinai School of Medicine cancer researcher Ronald Hoffman to do the work.

The Agency on Toxic Substances and Disease Registry who commissioned the review later called the “biased and misleading.”

Government agency covering up cancer cases? Sounds like another case of Erin Brockovich — movie-worthy drama, but still frighteningly true. Perhaps the feds might want to consider doing something worthwhile with the toxic slurry.

Battling Cancer seeks to bring you the latest in cancer news, opinion, resources, and off-beat stories. Don’t miss out — subscribe to our RSS feed!

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We Have A New Template!

At the moment, you are looking at the beta version of the NEW look for the HART-Empire Network. For 2008, I plan to roll out similar templates to all my sites around the network. For all “Battling For Health” series of blogs, the templates will be quite similar with the same colors and general feel - with, each blog’s uniqueness adding to it’s growth. All readers from any health blog will now be able to quickly jump to another health blog, via the links at the top of the page.

While this template is up and running, it still is in BETA version, and I would be interested in your opinions and suggestions about the useability of this site. There are a few new things being created or in development - and, a few things forgone from the old template. We have a couple of things in this new template that might take an extra second to load, but have installed a plugin to cache these pages and images and the overall experience should be a positive one, and faster!

So .. what do you think?

Other sites currently with this template are:

HART-Empire-Network.com
arthritis.BattlingForHealth.com
cancer.BattlingForHealth.com

Generally, I hope to roll out this identical template with all the domains and sites of the “Battling For Health” series of blogs.

Take care, Seasons Greetings … and all our best in 2008!

HART

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Gloria Gamat, from the Battling Arthritis blog wrote an interesting article titled .. Weight Loss, Osteoarthritis and Your Christmas Recipes

Tomorrow night will be Christmas Eve and you most likely have your recipes memorized and the ingredients all bought in preparation for the food you will serve your family on Christmas.

What if there is an arthritis patient in your family? Then you have to put that into consideration when planning your meals for the holiday. Not only arthritis, but what if there is a diabetic or an hypertensive person in the family?

If that is the case then I always recommend cooking healthy foods to be on the safe. Let not be the holidays be an excuse to forget that particular diet you were following in lieu of your condition — diabetes, hypertension, arthritis…etc.

… continued //

It’s a good read . check it out!

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Tomorrow night will be Christmas Eve and you most likely have your recipes memorized and the ingredients all bought in preparation for the food you will serve your family on Christmas.

What if there is an arthritis patient in your family? Then you have to put that into consideration when planning your meals for the holiday. Not only arthritis, but what if there is a diabetic or an hypertensive person in the family?

If that is the case then I always recommend cooking healthy foods to be on the safe. Let not be the holidays be an excuse to forget that particular diet you were following in lieu of your condition — diabetes, hypertension, arthritis…etc.

One more thing I would like to remind you of: your weight. If you have arthritis, being overweight or obese is not going to help you. Being close to your ideal weight will surely reduce your risk for osteoarthritis. (Read more about the osteoarthritis-weight association from Johns Hopkins.)

Being overweight is a clear risk factor for developing OA. Population-based studies have consistently shown a link between overweight or obesity and knee OA. Estimating prevalence across populations is difficult since definitions for obesity and knee OA vary among investigators.

Data from the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES I) indicated that obese women had nearly 4 times the risk of knee OA as compared with non-obese women; for obese men, the risk was nearly 5 times greater. (ref. 6) In a study from Framingham MA, overweight individuals in their thirties who did not have knee OA were at greater risk of later developing the disease. (ref. 7)

Other investigations, which performed repeated x-rays over time also, have found that being overweight significantly increases the risk of developing knee OA. (refs. 8 and 9) It is estimated that persons in the highest quintile of body weight have up to 10 times the risk of knee OA than those in the lowest quintile. (ref. 5)

Case in point: mine. Earlier this year, I weighed a whooping 165 lbs. I am barely 5 ft. tall, so I know that is too far from my ideal weight. When my osteoarthritis (OA) symptoms attacked in mid-August, my weight made it even worse. I changed my eating habits and now I weigh 135 lbs. My OA is better, not only due to my changed diet but also because of the meds, vitamins and other therapies I am taking. The symptoms are less and I don’t suffer as much as I used to.

At 135 lbs., by BMI says I’m still a bit overweight. While I am convinced I need to shed more weight, this holiday season is an odd against that goal. Despite that, I am keeping myself from overeating. I definitely do not want to regain all those pounds I lost.

SO. If you are arthritic like me. remind yourself to eat healthier, not only this holiday season but for all times.

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