Tag: sleep

Best Sleep Positions

The average human spends around 1/3 of his or her life sleeping. Sleep is the time when our body regenerates, and in the case of your muscles and bones, realign and rest in preparation for the new day.

That’s where things go wrong. Because of habit, environment, or other physical factors, many of us choose sleeping positions that actually contribute to stress and strain on our muscles, particularly in the upper body.

“Eighty percent of the population will have back problems at some point in [their] lives oftentimes caused or aggravated by the way they sleep,” Dr. Hooman Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon at the DISC Sports & Spine Center in Los Angeles, Calif.,

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Achieving Homeostasis

homeostasisHuman homeostasis is the process that maintains the stability of the human body’s internal environment in response to changes in external conditions. Your body has built-in sensors that constantly monitor body activities and attempt to correct imbalances when they occur. Getting out of balance can lead to serious consequences, including disease and a shorter lifespan. Your lifestyle and attitude has a great deal to do with maintaining balance in your body.

Here’s a short list of some of the main homeostatic processes in humans:

The Worst Sleeping Positions

The average human spends around 1/3 of his or her life sleeping. Sleep is the time when our body regenerates, and in the case of your muscles and bones, realign and rest in preparation for the new day.

That’s where things go wrong. Because of habit, environment, or other physical factors, many of us choose sleeping positions that actually contribute to stress and strain on our muscles, particularly in the upper body.

“Eighty percent of the population will have back problems at some point in [their] lives oftentimes caused or aggravated by the way they sleep,” Dr. Hooman Melamed, an orthopedic spine surgeon at the DISC Sports & Spine Center in Los Angeles, Calif.,

Continue reading “The Worst Sleeping Positions”

Five Reasons You Have a Stiff Neck

You know the feeling. You turn your head and experience pain or soreness and/or a decreased range of motion. The pain can last a moment or show up literally every day. Neck pain is pretty common, too. The CDC reports that nearly one in five of us have experienced neck pain in the last three months.

In general, neck pain is usually caused by muscles weakening over time from misuse or environmental factors. Here are five of the most common reasons why your neck might be stiff, followed by an idea for a wonderful remedy.

1. You’re sleeping wrong. The culprit could be an old or ill-fitting pillow, or the way your body is positioned during sleep, or both. In general, sleeping on your stomach doesn’t help your sleep posture. It affects your lower back and neck because you’ll likely end up twisting your head one way or another throughout the night. Try sleeping only on your side or back.

2. You’re sitting incorrectly at work. You’ve probably heard this a million times, but looking downward at a computer monitor all day will cause muscles around the neck joints to tire, overstretch and weaken.  The same thing can happen if you drive for a living and look down at your smartphone a lot. First, don’t look at your smartphone while you’re driving (other drivers will thank you) and get an ergonomic evaluation at work. Your sitting posture is extremely important for more than just reducing a stiff neck. Continue reading “Five Reasons You Have a Stiff Neck”

Ten Myths About Skincare

Just when you thought you knew about skincare, you stumble on information that turns the world upside down. You realize that something you’ve been doing isn’t right or that that “organic product” isn’t really helping.

So settle back with a nice latte and read this list of 10 common myths about skincare.

1. A base tan helps. Nope. Dermatologists agree that pre-tanning really doesn’t work, and it can actually increase your risk of skin cancer, particularly if you pre-tan in a tanning bed. The current thinking is that there’s actually no such thing as a “safe” or “healthy” tan. So trade in that oil for a decent sunscreen. Read more.

2. You can scrub away acne. There’s a common myth that if you scrub really hard, your acne will go away. Not true. Acne is not caused by a dirty face. Cleansers are great, but they don’t work better if you scrub harder. Scrubbing too much can actually inflame blackheads, causing your acne to worsen! Wash smart, not hard.

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Dealing With Phone Neck and Text Neck

There are more than 2.19 trillion texts sent each year by US mobile phone users. And massage therapists, chiropractors and medical professional are seeing a drastic uptick in the number of people seeking help for the “pain in the neck” texting, and sandwiching their phone between their neck and shoulder gives them.

More than 60% of Americans admit they might not talk to a medical professional if they were suffering from chronic pain. And according to AOA surveys, neck pain is number three most commonly experienced chronic pain (behind lower back pain and arthritis) with about 25% of experiencing the quintessential “pain in the neck”.

There can be many causes of neck pain, including poor posture while standing or sitting, using a crazy old/improper pillow when you sleep, hyperextended neck muscles due to injury or accident, or heavy lifting. And then there’s the phone.

The issue with phones

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Top Four Reasons You Have Lower Back Pain

About 2% to 10% of people who experience lower back pain develop chronic low back pain, which affects daily living for at least 3 months. The causes are many since the spine and muscles in the lower back are involved in most of the movement we do on a daily basis. Here are a few of the most common ones:

1. The way you sit. Poor sitting posture can result in lower back injuries and contribute to the poor positioning of other parts of the body, such as the arms, wrists, and legs.  You can make some small changes that can have a big impact on your posture and in turn reduce chronic pain in your arms, fingers, lower back and legs.

2. The way you sleep. Many shoulder, upper and lower back issues are caused, or exacerbated, by incorrect sleep posture. Whether it’s your pillow, the position of your arms or the firmness or softness of your mattress, changes in sleep posture are easy to do and can have a huge impact both on the quality of sleep you get, and how you feel when you wake up. Continue reading “Top Four Reasons You Have Lower Back Pain”

Top 10 Wellness New Year’s Resolutions

About one in three Americans make a New Year’s resolution. It’s a great tradition, offering us an opportunity to kick bad habits, create new opportunities, soften the rough edges of our behavior, and polish up relationships. The trick, of course, is sticking with it.

Just in case you were sitting around wondering which one of the zillions of promises you’d like to make to yourself, we’ve collected 10 resolutions that are relatively easy to keep and will certainly go a long way toward a healthier and happier 2015.

1. More FTF and less TXT. It’s easy to think that a random text now and then can substitute for a real conversation if you’re working on keeping relationships with friends and relatives strong. It doesn’t. Try talking to your friends and relatives more IN PERSON, or at least hear their voices. Use tech like FaceTime and Skype more. Put DOWN the phone while you eat or talk with others. You will find the quality of your relationships improve, your fingers aren’t as sore from texting, and you’ll avoid that $300 texting-while-driving traffic ticket, too. Continue reading “Top 10 Wellness New Year’s Resolutions”

Massage and Chronic Fatigue

Fatigue, also referred to as tiredness, exhaustion, lethargy, and listlessness, is a physical and/or mental state of being tired and weak. When somebody experiences physical fatigue, it impairs their ability to function at their normal levels of physical ability. Mental fatigue is characterized by feeling sleepy and being unable to concentrate properly.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an illness in which mental fatigue presents itself with often debilitating results, for periods of 6 months or more (3 months in children or adolescents. Fatigue is a common symptom in many illnesses, but CFS is comparatively rare.

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Six Ways to Improve Your Posture

postureposesOver time, gravity and bad habits can take their toll on your body and try to declare victory over the structural muscles that keep our bones and muscles aligned. The result is poor posture.

Classic signs of poor posture include rounded shoulders, a jutted chin, a pot belly, bent knees when standing or walking, back pain, muscle fatigue, and headaches. While we can’t fight gravity, we can take control of posture and do things the help keep muscles strong and your body trained for better posture.

1  Know what good posture looks like. Check yourself out in a mirror. Good posture while standing is a straight back, squared shoulders, chin up, chest out, stomach in, feet forward, your hips and knees in a neutral position. If you can draw a straight line from your earlobe through your shoulder, hip, knee, to the middle of your ankle, you’re good!

2  Sit up straight. Your mom was right. Use a chair that offers lower back support and sit all the way back against the back of the chair. Keep both feet on the ground or footrest. Adjust the height so your arms are flexed at 75-90 degrees at the elbow. Use this technique when driving, too! Continue reading “Six Ways to Improve Your Posture”

Lavender Helps You Sleep

lavenderwebLavender is a flowering plant that grows natively in the Mediterranean, but can now be found in the US, Australia and most of Europe.  It’s a shub with a woody stalk and small light blue or purple flowers.

The fragrance is found in air fresheners, lotions, body washes, potpourris, perfumes and just about everything that’s scented. The essential oils in lavender are great for many things, from reducing stress and anxiety, to curbing post-op pain.

It can also help you sleep. When essential oils are inhaled, the compounds will relax you and promote calmness, which helps you sleep more easily. While it’s not a cure for insomnia, lavender can certainly help.  SVMTG sells 100% pure essential oils like lavender and special aromatherapy diffusers to make sure the essence stays where you want it. Try it and rest!

Six Reasons Your Workouts Aren’t Working

Not seeing the results you want? Check out this list and see if you can put yourself back on course.

Many people have discovered that proper hydration with sports drinks helps them run faster, have better motor skills, and stay mentally sharper–and the research bears that out. But sometimes plain old water does the trick.

1 – You are working out too much. In general, your body needs 72 hours to go through one metabolic cycle, which promotes healing of tissue torn during active workouts. Try focusing on upper body one day, lower the next and taking every third day off.

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More than a job, less than a life

stressballSilicon Valley offers endless opportunity for bright, motivated people.  Whether it’s building the next best thing from an idea written on a napkin, to landing a dream job at a tech giant, the benefits are incredible. Every day you’re immersed in excitement fueled by caffeine and good old nose-to-the grindstone brainwork. It’s 10 hours a day of nonstop adrenalin. The work is exciting, challenging, and occasionally frustrating.

It also slowly turns you into one angry ball of stress.

All that multitasking, deadline-sweating, and de-prioritization of family and leisure time can take a toll.  In your high-tech world you’re giving your all for the job and giving up a lot in return. You’re trading hard work for your company for hard work on your health and relationships. Welcome to “more than a job, less than a life.”

You can just deal with it, of course, or you can take control of this one part of your life and do something positive to help reduce the stress associated with your work.

Three Steps to the Good News

Tech companies know that the work environments they’re maintaining are high-stress.  They really do care about helping you be successful and helping you manage stress.  They offer opportunities to control diet with health-concious corporate café choices, gyms for exercise and volunteer opportunities in community service to help you get out of your cube.  But lots of employees are so stressed, they forget to seek out these alternatives.  They see themselves as so busy, they don’t see how it’s possible to relax.

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Can Massage Help You Sleep Better?

sleepsheepInsomnia isn’t an illness but a symptom.  To find the best way to fix your sleep problems, you have to look for the underlying causes. If your insomnia is chronic, you should start with a trip to your physician to eliminate any actual medical conditions. If there’s no pathology that’s keeping you awake, you can try natural methods like herbs, vitamins and minerals, aromatherapy, regular planned exercise and stress management courses. But the best option yet may be massage.

For many, sleeplessness comes from physical issues like muscle pain, arm or hand numbness, neck or back pain, spasms and cramps and restless leg syndrome. For others, it’s difficult to quiet the mind and release the day’s stress.  That’s where massage comes in – helping both physical issues and relaxing and de-stressing you to the point where sleep comes easier.  Hundreds of our clients have reported better sleep resulting from their time with us.

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