Jennifer L Kalmer MD

Breathing Massages Your Organs

The movements of the diaphragm during the deep breathing exercise massages the stomach, small intestine, liver and pancreas. The upper movement of the diaphragm also massages the heart. When you inhale air your diaphragm descends and your abdomen will expand. By this action you massage vital organs and improves circulation in them. Controlled breathing also strengthens and tones your abdominal muscles.

Facilitating Breathing

Facilitates breathing: A good posture naturally enables you to breathe properly. I started appreciating this after I started meditating regularly a few months back, coupled with a good posture. I found a really a huge difference in the amount of air I could inhale between sitting up straight and slouching. This is why yoga, pilates and meditation exercises pay so much attention on getting your posture and sitting positions right.

Ways to Prevent a Brain Attack

Quit smoking. Compared with nonsmokers, smokers on average have double the risk of ischemic stroke. And a study in an August issue of the journal Stroke found a dose-response in female subjects, meaning that the more cigarettes a woman smoked per day, the higher her odds of suffering a stroke. Two packs per day boosted risk of stroke to nine times that of nonsmokers. The same study found that when subjects quit smoking, their risk of stroke returned to normal within two years.

Eat your veggies. As if you need yet another reason to eat your vegetables, the American Heart Association recommends people at elevated risk of cardiovascular disease, which includes stroke, should make sure they get several servings a day. One reason is to increase intake of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12, which have been associated with lower blood levels of homocysteine. Epidemiological studies suggest that high levels of this amino acid are associated with elevated rates of heart disease and stroke. Folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 can also be found in fortified grains and cereals.

Improved memory and learning.

Naps aren’t just for the very young, old, and sluggish. Daytime dozing may enhance a person’s capacity to learn certain tasks. That, at least, is the eye-opening implication of a new study in which college students were challenged to detect subtle changes in an image during four different test sessions on the same day.

Participants improved on the task throughout the first session. The students’ speed and accuracy then leveled off during the second session. The scores of the participants who didn’t nap declined throughout the final two sessions. In contrast, volunteers who took a 20-minute power nap after completing the second practice session showed no ensuing performance dips. What’s more, 1-hour power nappers responded progressively faster and more accurately in the third and fourth sessions. It looks like napping may protect brain circuits from overuse until those neurons can consolidate what’s been learned about a procedure.

Flexibility—It isn’t just for girls anymore

A big part of avoiding injury is being flexible enough for whatever activity you’re going to engage in. As a powerlifter, your flexibility needs are going to be way less than that of a gymnast, but you still need some flexibility. If you can’t break parallel with less than four plates, you’ve got some serious tightness issues that are going to land you in the dog house one day or another. For those of you with back pain, tight hip flexors can pull your pelvis out of alignment, causing a serious amount of back pain.

Having enough flexibility in your chosen activity will help you stay injury free and that again is why the dynamic warm up is important. It will increase your flexibility for the task at hand, helping to prevent injury while also not diminishing muscle tension like static stretches do (this is bad for weight lifting; muscle tension is part of how you lift heavy things).

Static stretching should only be used if you are symptomatic. For instance, if you’re having back pain and find your psoas is as tight as all hell, you need to static stretch it regularly to decrease the muscle tension, easing the pull on your lower back and relieving your pain.