Doctorshealthsystems

If you enjoy dancing, that should be your form of exercise – and line dancing is extremely popular and social. Everyone has a good time because the skill is mostly in reproducing the dance routine perfectly, not in the sophistication of the dance steps. That means any one prepared to learn the routine can join the dance!

Dance is an extremely social form of exercise, and if you need the company of other people to keep that body moving, then join a dance group. Alternatives include: jazz ballet, ballroom dancing, or for more specialised dances, look up your local directory and you may find cultural and ethnic groups like Irish and Scottish dancers.

Health Farms

Health farms are worth attending if you can afford to take time out to remain in an environment designed to focus on your well-being.

What a great way to start your cellulite-loss program: check into a health farm for a week, at the end of which you will emerge with new habits, having had sufficient time to clear your mind of all the clutter. What a peaceful way to set goals! You’ll have advisers on hand, massage, sport, fitness centre, bicycles and enough time so that you can have a long quiet think about your long-term attack on cellulite.

*68\24\88*

Develop affectionate memories to associate with your new routine. The aroma of fresh coffee may conjure up pleasant memories of good friends, so make that fresh pineapple and watermelon juice create associations too. Share your new lifestyle.

Make little changes – instead of cutting out the coffee altogether, have it black, cut the sugar for starters.

That’s not too radical! It’s an attainable goal. And if you have six cups of coffee per day, why not cut it down to two?

Remember, when it comes to losing cellulite, it’s the tenor of the life that counts, not the exceptions. So most of the time you should avoid unhealthy drinks, just as most of the time you should v make health-conscious and cellulite-conscious decisions.

Summary

• Pure water actively helps shift cellulite. Drink eight glasses a day.

• Only pure fruit and pure vegetable juices are genuine ‘food drinks’.

• Look forward to drinking pure fruit juice.

• Enjoy natural flavours.

•Be positive.

•Share delicious memories with friends and family,

•Make an effort to modify your intake of alcohol, stimulants and artificially flavoured drinks. The best way is to drink more water

• And, don’t be surprised to find that you are more alert and that you lose ‘that tired feeling’.

*53\24\88*

Short Term

• Exercise 10-15 minutes per day.

• Also engage in passive exercise, like walking.

• Enjoy some massages.

• Halve intake of all negative substances – like alcohol.

• Double intake of all positive substances – like fruit and vegies.

• Lose weight in the first week.

Remember to make all goals achievable. Encourage yourself to perform in short bursts, making sure that you do tire yourself out – just a little bit for starters. Don’t have a complete body revolution – your body might still need its coffee, and those who get headaches will soon know if they are being too radical with their restraint. Prefer to restrain yourself gradually, being comfortable that you can – and will – achieve what you intend.

Medium Term

• Exceed 15 minutes of exercise per day.

• Start having fun – compete with your previous times and efforts.

• Put more effort into walking.

• Avoid intake of all negative substances.

• Increase intake of all healthy foods.

• Lose more weight. /

Medium term performance is most satisfying, because you really start to see spectacular results. Once you get over the muscular aches associated with starting to get fit, the body begins to perform at levels which only four weeks ago seemed impossible! Also after three – four weeks of solid effort, you start to see results. Your friends and your family might not start to notice yet, but you will certainly find yourself feeling and looking better, and beginning to wonder what you will do for clothes one size smaller.

Longer Term

• Exercise 60 minutes per day – 30 minutes weight and muscle training and 30 minutes heart and lung training.

• Continue to engage in passive exercise and don’t let your partner break the habit of giving you massage.

• Imbibe negative substances only very occasionally.

• Continue intake of healthy foods.

• And continue to lose weight.

The unfit have no idea how great it feels to be fit. This longer term program is the one you must settle into in order to retain what you have gained. It will become your lifestyle, and you should try to find ways to enjoy it. Eliminate all those things you ‘tried’ and hated in the first few weeks – maybe the paw-paw wasn’t so good, but you learned to love mangoes! And maybe the rowing machine wasn’t for you, whereas you can read or watch television on the treadmill!

By now you may have picked up a few friends along the way. Your social circle might have widened as you interact with like-minded people, and you will alter your plans in order to meet at various locations where you can encourage each other.

*24\24\88*

Most of you are not looking for a cover-up solution.

Most of you are probably curious about the possibility of getting rid of cellulite quickly, efficiently and forever. I bet you’re even curious about your own level of commitment and self-restraint.

How’s your track record at achieving your goals?

• Are you a strong person in your place of work?

• Are you strong in the home?

• Are you strong about quitting things you’ve said you’d quit, and doing the things you’ve said, you’d do?

The strength of character shown in the past will be on a par with the strength you will show in modifying your current behavior.

Face yourself when you set your goals.

Nothing Too Dramatic!

Just before we get too serious about writing down goals, remember that it is important that you have fun along the way, because if you don’t have fun it all becomes a chore. And if something becomes a chore, it gets quickly eliminated. Ah yes, the ‘Elimination Principle’, that old rule of human behaviour which has eroded past good intentions and resolutions!

Start slow and grow into your commitment – rather than shocking both your body and your friends by sudden dramatic changes.

*9\24\88*

The pain of adapting to life without a loved one is real but natural. The whole routine of your life is upset and it is not easy to readjust. This is a difficult time but as a result, your life will change in ways you can’t imagine at the time.

My mother has recently died. My son’s response that ‘Nana had gone to a higher rank’ reflected our opinion too. We grieved for her in different ways. She lived with me for almost fifty years.

I am lucky I had the opportunity to really know my mother. She did so much for me and was the centre of my household. Her absence is noticed in so many ways. No one places fresh garden flowers on my desk, anymore. She always ‘said it with flowers’.

Mum taught us love and laughter, and I now see that her greatest gift to me was that of time. I couldn’t have done so many studies without her help and support.

Grief is never easy. It is an ongoing process encompassing many emotions – regret, remorse and loss.

The formal stages of grief are firstly denial, when we can’t believe what has happened. The second stage is anger, when we want to hit out at someone or something (why me?) The third stage is bargaining (if only I can … till… I will. . .).The fourth stage is depression and the fifth, serene, stage is acceptance.

The emotional pain has an individual timing but it usually takes about two years for the ache in your heart to gradually subside. It never completely goes but becomes less intense with the passage of time. There will always be moments when a memory will be triggered and you find tears streaming down your face.

‘Letting go’ has to be learnt many times in our lives. We must let go of the past, including its mistakes (although we call them opportunities).Throughout our lives we have to learn to deal with grief. We must leave our mothers to go to kindergarten, we must leave the support of our school to go to work. We must say goodbye to our youth. All this sorrow has to be accepted as part of gaining maturity. If we are successful guardians, we allow this process in our children without pain or guilt.

In acupuncture, the channel of chi energy which is out of balance is the metal meridian. This controls all crying, weeping and sobbing. Yin and yang must be balanced if people are having difficulty overcoming their grief.

Star-of-Bethlehem (a Bach Flower remedy) helps immeasurably when your emotions become embarrassing to you. Homeopathically, there are many choices, but you need an expert to work them out.

*127\19\2*

The shooting hot pain down one leg, or both if you are unlucky, is well-known to every chiropractor and osteopath in the world. We specialise in this condition and it forms one of the major parts of our practice.

The sooner after any injury, be it from sport or from a fall, that you have the joint adjusted, the sooner it will be mended. It is important not to waste time. If you ignore treatment the next two or three days will be crucial. You are an injury waiting to happen.

During the next couple of days, you will be just bending over to pick up the soap, or simply twisting to heave yourself out of bed, when this gripping pain will race down your back into your leg.

Do you want to know how to make it worse? Put the electric blanket on! Or have a hot bath! The inflamed ligaments around the sprain/strain will be further aggravated by the heat. The last thing you want is a ride to hospital for traction.

All you need is ice to reduce the swelling. Think of a lower back injury as if it were a sprained ankle. How would you handle that situation? That’s right – lie down and take the weight off it. Next, ice pack it, and then support it with an elastic wrap. Then a few hours later when you can walk trot down to the

chiropractor to have the joint adjusted and take the pressure off the nerve.

You must have no exercise for ten days to three weeks — until the ligaments heal – then into the pool or whatever exercise your chiropractor recommends.

A long car journey is an aggravation to chronic sciatica. The sitting position stretches the sacro-iliac joint and the repetitive movement of getting in and out of the car as you stop to look at something or to visit the toilet, brings the irritated sciatic nerve to screaming point. Consequently I hear about many people’s holidays first hand as I treat their sciatic pain after a long trip.

The first thing you should do is lie down and take the stretch off the pelvic joint. Put a pillow under the troubled leg to release the tension over the joint.

Don’t heat the joint if the pain is radiating into the thigh, knee or ankle. Ice it for ten minutes every hour till the pain subsides. The next morning you will be able to walk to the toilet, get dressed, move your body to your chiropractor’s couch!

If possible, let the sweeping and vacuum cleaning be done by another member of the family. Or you will injure yourself again. Don’t become depressed because ‘it never seems to heal’. Just do the right thing and be patient.

Sitting is often the wrong thing to do. Watching TV while recuperating will aggravate the condition – that low lounge chair wrecks your lower back every time. Can’t someone make furniture that supports our spines?

If you are elderly and your back injury occurred many years ago, this does not mean that you cannot be helped. So much depends on the cause of the problem and on the condition of the joints needing therapy. The skeleton needs gentle handling at any time, but more so when the frame has taken a lot of stress over the years.

Osteopathic work is always available to you no matter what your age. All muscles can be gently ‘untangled’ to improve their circulation and assist the drainage of tried muscles. Fibrositis can be massaged away to restore the stretch necessary for movement.

Acupuncture and moxibustion easily attract warmth and relaxation to the area, and are valuable tools when relieving sciatica. We can help cramps and coldness in the leg. Many a seventy-year-old has told me that this was their first massage and they were sorry they had waited so long.

Chiropractic also has specific adjusting techniques for the frail, the young and the frightened.

Mrs Mac’s story-I’m a woman in my eighties and had been incapacitated with a painful thigh and hip for two years. My doctor said it was a bit of rheumatism that comes with old age and gave me something to rub in with some tablets to take. I’ve got so many tablets now that I rattle.

Well I suffered with it for over two years till I came to Sydney to visit my daughter and she took me along to see her chiropractor. I was very nervous about this as my doctor had advised me not to have anything to do with them at my age.

But my daughter insisted, so I went along. I was surprised at how gently I was handled. I was told that I had twisted my leg somehow. I remembered that one day several weeks before the trouble started I had jumped up quickly from my rather low lounge chair. I had a twinge in my hip for a while then I forgot about it.

Anyway, my leg and hip were worked on and I was assured that nothing had to be ‘clicked’, especially at my age. In three treatments I was so much better that I could get to sleep without pain. I have so many things I want to do at my age. I am glad that the pain does not interfere with my bowls now.

*113\19\2*

The burning pain of cystitis has to be experienced to be believed. If there is blood in the urine it is wise to have it analysed, since discharge of blood can have sinister overtones. Although the medical answer is antibiotics, what do you do when it becomes a chronic condition?

We prefer to look at the whole person not just the symptom. Firstly, have your pelvic structure checked out for any misalignment. If the nerve supply to the bladder is affected, removing the cause can solve the problem.

Homoeopathy is then my choice for treatment:

Aconite if you can catch the symptoms early.

Cantharis for all the classical signs, this is IT.

Staphysagria for ‘honeymoon’ cystitis. Too much, too soon.

Dulcamara use to prevent the problem.

A homoeopathic for the infection is given at this time.

Acupuncture is used then to boost the immune system and sedate the pain. We use ear acupuncture for the bladder meridian, although we sometimes go directly to the bladder points near the spine. There is so much that natural therapy can do.

Helping yourself: Go vegetarian. Drink barley water (boil 100g/4oz barley in enough water to cover it. Strain and pour cold water over the barley. Add a little lemon rind. Simmer till the barley softens. Cool. Strain. Add honey and drink at least six times a day). My usual recommendation is to add barley to all your vegetable soups. Use chamomile as a herbal drink. Have two days on vegetables and boiled rice only, to relieve acute symptoms.

See your chemist for a mixture to alkalinise your urine. Or if you have access to a herbalist they may recommend yarrow, marshmallow leaves, bearberry, sage and horsetail to be made up into a tea infusion. Or some prefer alfalfa and corn silk teas.

A bicarbonate of soda hip bath is very soothing; garlic and calcium ascorbate are also recommended. Ferrum phosphate and sodium phosphate cell salts are the minerals naturopaths recommend.

Marian’s Honeymoon-Marian didn’t realise cystitis would go along with her on her honeymoon. It was a second marriage though she was only thirty-two. The burning pain started after only three days on their island paradise, and it was excruciating to urinate.

As luck would have it, there was a homoeopath close by on the mainland from whom she obtained some cantharis and staphysagria. She applied some hot water bottles to her back and just apologised to her new husband. He was very concerned and had the hotel make up the barley water with lemon as the naturopath recommended. The hotel pharmacy sold them some powder that considerably eased the pain of urination, but it seemed soaking in the bath was the most exciting thing she wanted to do. Oh well, at least the sun was shining . . .

On a different tack, a drug for arthritis has been found by a Newcastle hospital to cause severe cystitis in the elderly. If bacterial infection is not found to be the cause of your cystitis, it is wise to check any medication you are taking.

*99\19\2*

It is especially important to find the cause of vomiting and nausea. If it is food poisoning, use the homoeopathic nux vom which works wonders. Give it in sips every time the patient throws up. It only has to touch the tongue to be effective. There’s no need for swallowing if even boiled water won’t stay down.

Chiropractic: Occasionally vomiting can occur because a joint in the upper neck is causing irritation which eventually affects the vagus cranial nerve, which supplies the stomach. An adjustment can stop the trouble immediately. This is often the case in pregnant women, especially if they find that vitamin B6 is ineffective.

Projectile vomiting in babies is often the result of a birth injury, and a chiropractor or osteopath specialising in cranial adjusting will be able to treat it successfully. However, any vomiting in babies is serious and requires immediate professional help.

Homoeopathics are:

IPECAC for diarrhoea, with a clean tongue.

Ant tart for diarrhoea with an unclean tongue.

Pulsatilla if sickness is after fatty or rich foods.

Arsen alb when the patient is chilly and very weak.

Cuprum met for stomach cramps.

Buy a product called Gastrolyte at the pharmacy for dehydration.

Dietary: If the problem is infection, then boiled water for twenty-four hours is only commonsense, though I feel that it is better to have something in the stomach to throw up rather than dry retching. Don’t give citrus, use apple or boiled white rice.

Acupuncture has great benefits. The laser machine can be used to settle the stomach of a child who feels queasy. This works well if the problem is only nervous tension. But the needles are far better for adults desiring immediate recovery.

*61\19\2*

This results when a cranial nerve called the trigeminal becomes very irritated. The sooner the neck is checked and adjusted to normal the better, as chronic cases are difficult to reverse. The pain is severe with various trigger points and some of the medical treatments can be quite drastic.

Prompt treatment is essential. The sooner you realise that a nerve is acutely irritated and have a chiropractor do essential adjustments, the fewer complications will arise. Homoeopathics like rhus tox and hypericum are a good start, but you may need to have specific ones made up for you.

Acupuncture certainly will help, as the pain creates a great deal of stress which makes things worse. Keep the nerve and surrounding muscles warm to prevent palsy developing. Make sure the diet is adequate and ensure enough sleep.

Vitamins Bl, B6 and B12 (by injection) are recommended in high doses which are reduced as the pain lessens. See your general practitioner about those. Low doses of vitamin B complex by tablet won’t help much, but there is no harm in trying.

*59\19\2*

The name literally means ‘twisted neck’ and is generally the result of an irritated nerve root which leaves the patient able to turn the head only one way because the muscle has cramped as a protective mechanism to prevent further damage.

Very rarely do people feel the strain occur when it first happens. Generally it takes up to forty-eight hours for the muscles to react. They provide a splint for the injury, so reduce movement while the strain is acute.

If an adjustment is done quickly, one treatment is often all that is necessary, although in my experience most require at least two.

Take the weight of the head off the neck, by using a towel or soft neck brace for support, for the first twenty-four hours. Better still, he down. If the condition is only muscular, and not an irritated nerve from a cervical sprain, the neck will be free quickly.

A young man came in with his neck rigid from pain. He said he had woken up with the problem as he found his cat had slept across his neck! I said we could leave the cat out of it. What had he done twenty-four to forty-eight hours before? ‘Only sailing’ was his reply.

I felt there were enough strong, twisting actions done whilst sailing to explain how his neck could have been injured. It was fixed, as is usual in acute cases, in two treatments.

*58\19\2*