Try Acupuncture: Give Alternative and Complementary Medicine a Try and Avoid Using Powerful Pharmaceutical Drugs

At the Center for Complementary Medicine, a multi-disciplinary health center in Willow Glen, San Jose, Rick J. Bernard L.Ac., the center’s creator, and a team of healing practitioners treat patients with Complementary and Alternative Medicine, health practices that are not typically considered conventional or Western.

Have you tried Chinese or Alternative and Complementary Medicine? Tell me about your experience or your thoughts on this post on Twitter @danielgamberg.

 

Get The Vitamins Your Body Needs From Your Food and Stay Healthy

Photo Courtesy selva

 

Growing up I’m sure you were told how important it was that you to take your vitamins every day. You may have even been duped, as I was, into thinking that your parents were cool and actually gave you candy at breakfast time.

It wasn’t long before I learned that my chalky breakfast candy shaped like Dino, Bamm Bamm and Fred Flintstone wasn’t really candy at all, and in fact was a vitamin to help me grow up strong and healthy.

Flintstones Chewable Vitamins were the first vitamins I remember taking. In the morning’s I would guess which character I got to eat and it became a fun guessing game for awhile. But, as I grew older their texture and appeal wore off and it was time to graduate from chewable vitamins anyway, right?

Well, the not-so-funny thing was that my diet wasn’t enough to replace the vitamins I was missing out on and I never “graduated” to a more sophisticated, healthier vitamin routine – at least not for about a decade (maybe more).

And I think this is common. Think about it. Despite how relatively easy it is to do and the significant health benefits, how many of us actually “graduated” from our childhood vitamin routines to a daily teenage vitamin schedule. I didn’t.

Today, as adults, many of us lack the robust foundation an adolescent schedule would’ve provided and our major deterrents are not only time and money but also the knowhow. Some people may be struggling financially and following a vitamin schedule is economically out of the question. Or people are just too wrapped up in their everyday lives to incorporate something new.

So I’ll make it easy for you. You won’t have to deviate from your normal routine to stop by a Vitamin Shoppe, GNC or any vitamin store, and, get this, you don’t even have to buy or take any vitamins.

By simply consuming the right foods you can easily receive a healthy dose of your daily vitamins, but you knew that already. You just need to know what each vitamin does and what foods they’re in.

Here are some vitamin rich food suggestions for you to try.

To boost your vitamin A intake look for orange colored fruits and veggies like carrots, sweet potatoes and cantaloupe. Dark green leafy vegetables like spinach, kale and collard greens are also rich in vitamin A; milk that’s label “fortified with vitamin A” and liver are good sources too.

Vitamin A helps keep our vision clear and healthy by helping us see at night or in dark and dim lit situations. It also helps keep the colors we see both bright and dark and helps our skin grow and look healthy.

The B vitamin group contains eight types which help us metabolize our food into energy when we need it and helps generate and distribute red blood cells that oxygenize our bodies and allow them to function properly.

At the grocery store look for whole grains like wheat and oats, seafood, fish, poultry and meat, eggs, milk, yogurt, beans, peas and leafy green vegetables to help you load up on B vitamins.

Most of us know Vitamin C helps prevent infection by strengthening our immune systems but it also helps keep our body tissue strong and healthy and aids in the healing process when we have an open wound. Vitamin C is most commonly found in oranges and other citrus fruits, strawberries, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, kiwi fruit, sweet red peppers and cantaloupe.

Food that strengthen our bones, teeth and nails are rich in vitamin D such as fish, egg yolks, liver and cereal and milk that have been fortified with vitamin D. Vitamin D assists our bodies in absorbing the mineral calcium which is essential for our bones and teeth to develop healthily.

So, just by purchasing these foods you can avoid taking pill vitamins and don’t have to develop a new routine in your already busy life.

Vitamin rich food suggestions taken from TeensHealth.org and KidsHealth.org which are produced by Nemours, one of the nation’s largest organizations dedicated to improving the standards of children’s health, according to their web site. The site’s were established by medical professionals and details what foods contain the vitamins you need to stay healthy and also highlight their key roles in the body. They’re easy to read and very informative.

 

Improve Your Health With Massage

Photo Courtesy hop_sungtrieu

Hear from Elissa Gentemaun, a massage therapist instructor at Just For Your Health, a massage clinic and college in San Jose, Calif., explain the health benefits of massage.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

When most people, including myself, think about living healthier lives, thoughts of joining a gym or following a strict dieting run through our minds as practical ways to help us reach our fitness goals. And they are. We all know that exercising and watching what we eat are essential for achieving a healthier lifestyle. What you may not know is that there are viable, healthy alternatives to supplement these conventional methods that help you live and stay healthy.

I, as you may be, was surprised to read about the benefits of massage therapy. I know it sounds a bit farfetched and you’re probably asking yourself: How much can a massage actually help me live a healthier life? And you should. I did. It’s that very question that lead me to the information I’m about to share with you.

Here’s some startling statistics: medical research suggests that up to 90 percent of all illness and disease is stress-related, and levels of stress-related illness are almost twice as high for women than as for men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s right, 90 percent! And, to top it off 75 to 90 percent of all primary care physician visits are stress-related, according to the American Institute for Stress.

If that’s not an incentive to decrease stress in your life the benefits of massage therapy may be.

Massage therapy is the manipulation of muscles, tendons and other soft tissues in the body by a certified massage therapist. There are many types and techniques of massage that are designed to directly improve how you physically feel, which for many people translates in to having a revitalized psychological, emotional and even spiritual state of wellbeing. In other words, it reduces both physical and emotional stress.

Though scientific research studies on the benefits of massage therapy are limited, the overall consensus is that it works. Studies suggest that a single massage session can reduce “‘state anxiety’ (a reaction to a particular situation), blood pressure, and heart rate, and multiple sessions can reduce ‘trait anxiety’ (general anxiety-proneness), depression, and pain” according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

The NCCAM also reported that recent studies suggest that massage therapy may benefit people suffering from lower-back pain, chronic neck pain and relive pain and improve the moods of advanced cancer patients. Medical researchers have also performed studies that suggest massage may boost the human immune and endocrine systems.

Massage therapy is most commonly used to alleviate work-related, sports-related and stress-related muscle conditions that occur in the body. Pregnant  women, infants, athletes, people suffering from migraines or living with anxiety and depression and many other conditions may find comfort (physical and emotional) in massage. People who suffer from chronic illness or disease and have exhausted medicinal treatment also turn to massage for pain relief. Massagetherapy.com has a full list of the benefits of massage.

The health benefits of massage are clear and vast; especially if you’re stress levels are high. So if you’re looking for a healthy alternative to reduces stress and improve your lifestyle, you may want to incorporate massage in your life. It might just keep you out of the doctor’s office.