A new study by The George Institute for International Health has found Tai Chi to have positive health benefits for musculoskeletal pain. The results of the first comprehensive analysis of Tai Chi suggest that it produces positive effects for improving pain and disability among arthritis sufferers.

The researchers are now embarking on a new trial to establish if similar benefits can be seen among people with chronic low back pain.

“This is the first robust evidence to support the beneficial effects of Tai Chi. Our study proves that Tai Chi relieves pain and disability among people with arthritis and shows a positive trend towards effects for overall physical health. We now want to see if these benefits are the same for people suffering from low back pain”, said author Dr Chris Maher at The George Institute. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: Amanda Hall, arthritis, Australia, Author, back pain, China, Chris Maher, exercise therapy, George Institute, George Institute for International Health, low back pain, north America, pain, Tai Chi

I just found a reference to a report on Science Daily showing that obesity problems in North America can be directly attributed to overeating.

The study originated in Europe and included almost 2400 people as well as using stats on the amount of food grown as well as imported.

Here is a bit of a quote:

New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

As much as we like to point fingers at a host of different causes of obesity, it seems that eating more calories is the number one culprit. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Congress, Europe, food, greater food intake, increased energy intake, north America, obesity, Science Daily, thermodynamics, United States

acai berry (pronounced ah-sigh-ee) has been a real sensation this year with many new products on the market promising everything from weight loss, antivirus properties and even help for people with Leukemia. Earlier this year Oprah put the acai berry on the top of a list of superfoods and you know how things go when Oprah talks about them, the little Acai berry has not been safe since. To me the real story of the Acai Berry is that it is a fruit berry that has strong antioxidant abilities but lets see what we can find out about Acai Berry and your health.

What is the Acai Berry

The acai Berry fruit, a small, round, black-purple fruit is about 1 inch in diameter, kind of like a grape and grows on a very tall tree. Two crops of fruit are pare grown per year. The Acai berry fruit has a single large seed that takes up a lot of the berry. The skin of a ripe berry is a deep purple color, or green, depending on the kind of acai that it is.

The berries are harvested as food in the Amazon region of Brazil, acai palm (the tree it grows on) is incredibly important as it makes up a lot of the diet for the people in the area and is the biggest cash crop for it’s area of Brazil. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Acai Berry, amazon, Amazon jungle, Brazil, cholesterol controller, common infection, Concord, energy food, fight infection, food, food kind, Leukemia, natural remedies, north America, oil compartments, process food, Staph infections, vitamin a

Well Summer is here, or at least close to being here and the summer driving season has started in earnest by now. I have always loved how people in North America that are satisfied at being strangers in their own city will start up conversations with strangers at a campground so easily when on vacation.

Anyway, one of the real challenges for most people is the lack of exercise on a car trip. You pack up the car on Friday night, drive to the next hotel or campground and don’t move until you are there. Then you get out of the car and are stiff. There are a few ways to avoid this and I hope you take advantage of them. I found and edited a bit this article by Mike Strawbridge on car exercises that you can do while on the road.

Exercises to do while driving

Tummy toner – Sit up straight in the seat in a normal driving position. Breathe in deeply into your lower abdomen. Now instead of exhaling, push the air up to your chest, filling your upper lungs. Now slowly exhale. You will feel your posture improve and get a big rush of energy by doing this exercise. Don’t be surprised if you have to readjust your mirrors due to a higher seating position. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: back pain, car facing, car trip, driving exercise, energy, gas pump, heel spurs, Janice, lean forward, Massage, Mike Strawbridge, nasty road trip food, north America, owner of Straw Solutions performance improvement consulting, pain, physician, plantar fasciitis, travel tips

Why do fat people stay fat? Sure we all know that there are a lot of people that lose weight and there are surely a lot of people that take diets seriously. Heck we even know that behind every get skinny for a buck plan there is someone that really does know how to stop people from getting fat by helping people lose weight in a healthy way.
So why are people still fat and getting fatter all the time?

Well there are several reasons that people have so much trouble keeping a healthy weight and I think that there are five key reasons why and how people can lose weight successfully and for good.

1. Fast food – We have been happy to eat fast food for many years now. People still talk with pride of the first Canadian McDonalds going up down the road where I grew up in Richmond BC. The trouble with fast food is everywhere. Serving sizes are way too big, the fat level is too high, there are far too many bready carbs. And the real problem with fast food? It is getting bigger and the hold that the big fast food companies have on kids with free toys means that even parents don’t have as much say as they should have. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: apple_a_day, carbs, cheapest food, energy, food, food_companies, getting_fatter, HDTV, healthy_weight, lose_weight, mcdonalds, north America, serving_sizes

Fitness, Health and Earth day seem like maybe they are not very well linked at all but I think that there is a case to be made that being greener is a lot healthier way to live.

Being the father of two your kids we have been bombarded this week with Earth day events and stories from school. I remember when I was growing up the whole recycling concept was just picking up steam and a few years later in Vancouver we had curb side recycling, something that my adopted city of Calgary does not yet have

Anyway being green, I believe, is a lot more global then it used to be. Sure we in North America are the greatest consumers of all kinds of products but  around the world our influences are being felt here are a few ways that I can think.

Nice bright fruits and veggies – I can get a banana or an apple any day of the year from the supermarket. One of the many ways that farmers in other countries make my food more appetizing is to use pesticides and fertilizers to make the fruit look better in the supermarket. Not good for the environment or even me personally. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: calgary, Earth Day, food, north America, Vancouver

Just caught this long article on Eating disorders on the main MSN.ca site. There are a lot of facts in this article and it is interesting that when people want to better their health sometimes they go to far and actually harm themselves by losing to much weight. I used to hate the talk of Anorexia and Bulimia being a disease thinking that it was just a way for some people to get attention but have really learned over the last few years that this is something that is a very dangerous disease with very deep rooted causes.

Eating disorders have increased in frequency as a consequence of society’s emphasis and preoccupation with thinness. Eating disorders are multi-factorial, with genetic, traumatic and nutritional causes. In North America, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two most important eating disorders. They predominantly affect females.

What is the difference between anorexia and bulimia?

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric condition where people intentionally starve themselves because of a false belief that they are fat, or for fear of becoming obese. In reality, they are almost always underweight or of normal weight when the condition starts. It is estimated that more than 90% of all those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa are female, often from middle and upper socioeconomic backgrounds. This disorder usually starts in the years between adolescence and young adulthood, with the average age at onset of 14 years. Anorexia nervosa afflicts about 1 per 100,000 in the population at large, but the rate is believed to be higher among Caucasian adolescent girls – about 1 in 200. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: affective disorder, alcohol abuse, American Psychiatric Association, anorexia nervosa, anxiety disorders, binge-purge syndrome, bulimia nervosa, cognitive behavioural therapy, constipation, Counselling, dangerous disease, dehydration, depression, digestive and reproductive systems, dizziness, drug abuse, Drug therapy, dysfunctional family environments, eating disorder, eating disorders, enemas, esophagitis, food, food craving, food cravings, food restriction, inflammation, low blood pressure, malnutrition, Mumps, nervous and hormonal systems, north America, obesity, obsessive compulsive disorder, olanzapine, panic disorder, parenting, Psychotherapy, runner, schizophrenia, social phobias, starvation, vomiting

A calorie is a calorie I always thought but maybe I am wrong. There is a good shance that your diet soda is making you fat.

Diet Blog has just posted the results of a study done on rats that shows that eating artificial sweeteners in the form of saccharin will actually make you gain weight faster then using the sugar itself.

I know that I have seen these kinds of results before and have always been confused by how it would work but essentially the thinking by the scientific community is that your brain notices the “sweetness” of the food and think that it is sugar. and stores food as fat because the brain thinks that the body has more than enough fuel (calories) to keep it going.

I know that some people will say in seeing this that people are not rats but still physiologically this makes sense to me. Also, if you look at all the diet pop that is sold and people in North America just seem to be gettng bigger and bigger then maybe there is some merit in the conclusions of this research. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: artificial sweetners, diet soda study, energy intake, food, metabolic syndrome, north America, obesity, stores food, sugar substitutes, Texas, University of Texas

This has nothing to do with fitness just a noticing by another blogger Tino Buntic has recognized 2000 bloggers that have their pictures on their blog. The list is all over the place in terms of types of blogs but in looking at the pics it is nice to see people from all races, both genders and, even though tough to tell, hopefully from many countries and not just North America and Western Europe.

Great idea and thanks Tino for including me!

Tags: north America, Western Europe

I remember watching an old episode of Chips where Ponch cracked an egg into a glass and drank it. I have done this in the past as well in the misguided belief that it would make me stronger. Raw eggs can be dangerous to eat and you should always cook your eggs before eating. Here are some tips that have come out from the FDA:

The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reminds consumers to pay special attention to the handling of eggs and preparation of foods that contain eggs during this holiday season. Some holiday favorites, such as cookie dough, homemade eggnog, and some types of stuffing, may contain eggs that are raw or undercooked. Eggs sometimes contain a bacteria called Salmonella, which can cause illness if eggs are not handled and cooked properly. An FDA national survey of consumer food safety practices, the 2006 FDA/FSIS Food Safety Survey, found that cookie dough is one of the major sources of raw egg in the American diet, and that only three percent of respondents always use a food thermometer when they cook baked egg dishes such as stuffing.

To avoid egg-related illness from holiday foods:

* Do not eat unbaked cookie dough.
* Cook baked egg-containing dishes to160 degrees F.
* Make recipes that call for raw or undercooked eggs, like eggnog, with eggs that have been treated to destroy Salmonella or with pasteurized egg products.

An estimated 118,000 illnesses per year are caused by consumption of eggs contaminated with SE. To help consumers avoid these illnesses, FDA requires the following statement on packages of fresh eggs that have not been treated to destroy Salmonella:

Safe Handling Instructions: To prevent illness from bacteria, keep eggs refrigerated, cook eggs until yolks are firm, and cook foods containing eggs thoroughly.

Following these instructions is important for everyone, but especially for those most vulnerable to food borne illness—young children; the elderly; persons with weakened immune systems due to conditions such as AIDS, cancer or diabetes, or treatments such as chemotherapy for cancer; persons with weakened immune systems due to steroid use; and persons with immune suppression after organ transplantation.

So what about Eggnog? This is poured straight out of the carton at Christmas isn’t it? Well Eggnog that is sold in stores in North America is pasteurized. Using a pasteurized product means that no further cooking is necessary.

Tags: AIDS, cancer, chemotherapy, Chips, christmas, consumer food safety practices, diabetes, egg-related illness, fda, food, food thermometer, north America, pasteurized egg products, transplantation, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, weakened immune systems