Posts Tagged Weight
Herniated Disk and Back Pain
The disk at the back spinal column divides the skeletal structures. Disk does not compose blood vessels or nerves like other elements of the skeletal structure. Instead, disks are made up of fat, water, and tissues that connect to the skeletal structure. During all hours of the day, the disks leak water, which is caused from forces of gravity. For instance, when we sit it is a gravity force in action, which one might think that it takes little effort to sit, but contrary to the notion, it is adding a lot of weight to the spine and disk.
The disk restores water that has leaked out during the day, yet the water is restored at slower paces. Fat and water is balanced in the disk, yet when it is not it causes a person to shrink height. Fat and water inside disks are thick, yet when a person starts aging, the substances begin to thin. When fat and water begins to thin, it can lead to osteoarthritis. Thinning water and fat of the disk is also the leading cause of back pain, especially at the lower region.
Disks exterior are covered by “Annulus Fibrosis.” Sometimes the connective tissues lead to abnormal thickening, which scars the tissue. Usually injury follows, then infection, and moves to restrained oxygen intake. Surgery is often the result. The inner area of the disk is shielded by “Nucleus Pulposis.” The pulp makes up the hub of the disk, which is polished and soft. The disks make up the primary supporting force that regulates the spinal column, bones, muscles, etc.
When the disk is not protecting the spinal structures it is often dehydrated, pressured, or deformed. The disk has strength that combines with flexibility to withstand high loads of pressure, yet when that flexibility and strength is interrupted, it can result to herniated disk slips, or other injuries.
Slipped disks in medical terms are known as HNP. (Herniated Nucleus Pulposa) As outlined the intervertebral disks are ruptured, which interrupts the nucleus pulposa. In medical terms, slipped disks can include L4, L5, which is Lumbrosacral and C5-7, which is Cervical. L4 is a single area of the spinal column and disks, which defines the numerical disk ruptured.
Slipped disks are caused from accidents, trauma, strain of the back and neck, lifting heavy objects, disk degeneration, weak ligaments, and congenital deformity of the bones. Disk degeneration is outlined in this article.
Symptoms:
Lumbrosacral will show apparent symptoms, such as acute lower back pain, which radiates to the buttocks and down to the leg. The person will feel weak, numb, or tingling that stretches to the leg and foot. Ambulation also causes pain.
If cervical disk problems are present, the patient will feel stiffness around the neck. As well, the symptoms will make the patient feel weak, numb, and he/she will feel tingling around the hands. Neck pain often generates pain, extending it to the arms and onto the hands, which cause weakness to the upper region of the body. The weakness often targets the triceps and biceps, which become atrophy. The lumbar is affected also, which the patient will find it difficult to straighten the back.
What happens when a disk is slipped and/or broken the annulus fibrosis reacts by pushing its substance into the hollow spacing between the spinal column. The spinal column is made up of nerves, which travel to various parts of the body, including the brain. These nerves are affected when the disk is slipped. Learn more about the Central Nerve System (CNS) to relate to slipped disks. First, understand how the joints and connective tissues can cause back pain.
Tags: Back Pain, Blood, Blood Vessel, Blood Vessels, Brain, Make Up, Neck Pain, WeightRelated posts
Is Your Multivitamin Toxic?
In episode #33 of the second season of Crime Scene Investigator a woman poisons her husband with the chemical sodium selenite. Strange as it may sound this exotic murder weapon is found listed as a “nutrient” on the labels of most mass market vitamins. In fact, most mass market vitamins contain chemicals which the Environmental Protection Agency does not allow in our public drinking water above 50 parts per billion. According to the EPA’s -Maximum Contaminant Level standards (MCL) the highest allowable level of selenium in public drinking water is 50 parts per billion. To get a sense of how small an allowable limit this is, 50 part per billion is equivalent to a tablespoon of water in an olympic-size swimming pool or 25 seconds of time in approximately 16 years.
How can vitamin manufacturers advertise something as being a “nutrient” when the EPA – out of concern for our health – has barred it from our drinking water at all but infinitesimal levels? Has sodium selenite really been shown to be toxic? A brief perusal of toxicology reports from the Hazardous Substances Databank (toxnet.nlm.nih.gov) and PUBMED (pubmed.gov) shows that sodium selenite can be carcinogenic, genotoxic and may cause reproductive and developmental problems in animals and humans.
A word should be said here about the differences that exist between inorganic minerals and biologically active ones.
The selenium which exists in foods like brazil nuts, mustard seeds, and fresh produce grown in selenium rich soil, is infinitely different from this biologically inert forms being put in some multivitamins. In fact the difference can be as great as that which exists between life and death: i.e. sodium selenite can cause cancer, whereas the selenium found within food, or chelated forms like selenomethionine have all been shown to prevent and combat cancer. The basic principle which explains this difference is that when you isolate a “nutrient” or “vitamin” out of the food complex within which it is naturally found, and whereby it is inseparably bound to thousands of known and unknown food factors (e.g. enzymes, amino acids, etc.), it becomes a chemical isolate and therefore no longer beneficial to life (especially vertebrate mammals who are equipped to get their minerals from plants who do the job of biological transmutation from baser forms to living ones for us).
The primary reason why sodium selenite is preferred by some vitamin manufacturers over safer, more beneficial forms like chelated or yeast-grown selenium is because it is less costly to use lower quality raw materials, and therefore much MORE PROFITABLE to the manufacturer.
“You Get What You Pay For,” is a saying which almost always rings true for dietary supplements. Buying industrial waste products, or chemicals which are considered hazardous waste and repackaging them as “dietary supplements” can be extremely profitable.
Indeed, this is not the first time in American history that such a hoax has been perpetuated on the public. The FDA approved uses of flouride in our drinking water and nuclear waste as a means of “cold pasteurization” of conventional food illustrates how industrial waste products with known toxicity are eventually converted into commodities or technologies “beneficial to health. Whereas initially these substances have very high disposal costs that take away from the bottom line of the industries that ultimately excrete them into our environment, through the right combination of lobbying, miseducation and “checkbook science,” the liability is converted back into a commodity, with the environment and consumer suffering health and finances losses as a result.
Unfortunately Sodium Selenite is not the only problem with mass market vitamins. Take the multivitamin Centrum, for instance, whose manufacturer Wyeth is one of the 10 most powerful pharmaceutical companies on the planet. This vitamin contains the following chemicals:
Chemical: amount found in Centrum/ EPA Maximum Allowed Limit in Drinking Water
- Sodium Selenite: 25 mcg/ 50 parts per billion
- Nickelous Sulfate: 5 mcg/ 100 parts per billion
- Chromic Chloride: 150 mcg/ 100 parts per billion
- Sodium borate (borax): 150 mcg/ 600 parts per billion
- Stannous Chloride: 10 mcg/ 4 parts per million
- Ferrous Fumurate: 18 mg/ 300 parts per billion
- Manganese Sulfate: 2 mg/ 50 parts per billion
- Cupric Oxide: 2 mg/ 1.3 parts per million
So, if these chemicals are actually toxic, how can they be marketed as beneficial to our health?
The actual reason why a company can get away with using potentially harmful chemicals as “nutrients” has to do with the FDA’s “Weight of Evidence” standard for determining the toxicity of a given substance. Within this paradigm inorganic, synthetic and biologically unprecedented substances are considered safe until proven guilty. Throwing out the “precautionary principle” it places the burden of proof on those who challenge the use of substance by direct laboratory tests, from not one but from many epidemiological studies. The substance must be shown to not only cause disease, but that it will cause that disease in its allowed dosages. The inherent insanity of this approach hinges on the fact that proving toxicity in humans requires that we perform very costly and potentially dangerous tests on humans in order to prove that the substance we are testing isn’t toxic! This borders on immoral behavior, and is at the least, incredibly impractical. Moreover, since so much of the research done on synthetic chemicals is funded by the companies and industries whose interests are to find the substance safe, the likelihood of finding this toxicity is very small – that is, until, after years and years of use in the marketplace the chemicals are eventual shown to contribute to disease. Because the toxicities may be low, and take many years, even decades to manifest in a clinically discerned symptom, it may be impossible to separate out any particular chemical as dangerous.
Ultimately, we need to use common sense in our purchasing decisions and realize that sometimes companies will intentionally mislead the public – with the complicity of regulatory bodies like the FDA – and will advertise a product that has no health benefits; or worse, may actually detract from our health. The fact that Centrum may or may not be “the #1 doctor recommended brand of vitamin” is irrelevant considering that one does not go to a doctor to seek wise counsel on nutrition. It is simply not their specialty.
Tags: Diet, Health, Nutrition, Supplements, Vitamin, Vitamins, WeightRelated posts
How Working Promotes Healthy Aging
Working is a good way to stay on top of your health. Many things about working make a person feel good both inside and out. Knowing that you can do something to make a difference in peoples lives is a great inter feeling.
How does working make me happy?
Working will keep you healthy by keeping you in shape so you can maintain. Working forces the brain to continue processing, which is good when one is trying to say healthy. Work boosts your self-esteem. Your self-esteem when satisfied will be so high you will not know what to do with it. You won’t feel depressed, since the stress is less on you. Just knowing that you are going to meet your bills on time will give you a peace of mind.
There is a lot of reason why you should work to stay healthy. Take someone that does not work. These people are always sick and depressed, stressed out and not knowing which direction to turn. However, if they were working they would be feeling like a new person that can walk over a mountaintop. If your working you doesn’t have, time to sit and stress over things like paying your bills. You know that you will be able to pay them on time. In addition, you will not be stressing about things that you can’t change in life like maybe a bad marriage, or the children moving out of the house. You will be able to go to work and come home a new person and love the change.
What can stress do to you?
Stress can do a lot to your mental as we as physical reactions. You have to be able to control your stress to avoid illness. Being stressed out all the time can cause you to go into a depression and not be able to get out without your doctors help.
When you feel stressed, it often brings you down. You feel worn and often feel like nothing in life will help. Stress begins to burden you, which affects your health and in time, you will not have control if you do not take control now.
Stress will cause you to lose weight or even gain weight. Stress can cause headaches, which seems to continue. As you allow stress to take over, it gradually breaks down your immunity system. This is when you experience sickness, colds, flu etc. Depression follows symptoms appear similar to common stress. At this point the mind takes over, playing tricks to confuse you further.
Some of the things that depression can cause are either too much sleep where all you do is sleep or not enough sleep making it hard to sleep. You will find it hard to achieve a good night sleep. Now we see fatigue during wake hours accumulating.
Some people that are depressed gain weight. Often they sit around sinking in self-pity, which means activities are out of the question. Now the muscles start to deteriorate, since these natural sources need activities to survive. As the depression continues, the person starts binge eating, or not eating enough foods. Now we have a problem, since the intestines, and other vital organs will sustain damage.
The person often feels saggy, Nagy, and unwilling to exercise. Now we have more problems. Can anyone say Hello Obesity? As you can see, in the end it pays to work, since you will feel better about you. The muscles and joints require consistent movement to promote health. Learn how you can keep those muscles and joints happy by learning more about healthy aging.
Tags: Brain, Exercise, Headache, Headaches, Health, Healthy, Lose Weight, WeightRelated posts