My ophthalmologist and I don't see eye-to-eye on thisPhoto by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash I have cataracts in both eyes, and as they have grown worse, I notice a touch of imbalance has come into my life. I asked my GP if there was any association between the two. He said no. I asked my ophthalmologist also. He said no. I say yes. Is Vertigo and Dizziness Related To My Cataracts?Science says they improve our sleep quality!Photo by Enrico Carcasci on Unsplash Ever flipped your pillow to the cool side? I have.
There's a reason we do it, and that's the reason that cooling pillows work. Not that I knew any of this until last week. Our body lets us sleep best when the ambient temperature is about 16 to 18 degrees Celsius. A fall in body temperature due to circadian rhythms causes drowsiness and increases our propensity to want to go to sleep in the evening. If we feel hotter, our sleep is disturbed, and we flip the pillow to seek cooling. It was only one week ago that I discovered that such a thing as a cooling pillow existed. I was surprised, especially since I was not reading advertising but a research report. I had no inkling that such a thing existed (beyond marketing). A little imagination helps ...I trail run with injury-free at the top-of-mind, but I also enjoy challenging myself along the way. If I see someone 200m ahead, then it becomes my challenge to calculate a passing move.
That takes stamina. You want to run at tempo pace to close the gap, pass strongly enough to discourage tailgating, and then settle back into a pace that keeps you moving ahead. What you don't want is to pass and then blow-up. This is where stamina comes in to play. Perhaps. But overdosing will damage your kidneysPhoto by Marcel Friedrich on Unsplash Scientists in the UK are calling for ministers to add vitamin D to common foods such as bread and milk to help the fight against Covid-1.
However, the call is controversial. Back in 2017, Professor Louis Levy, Public Health England's head of nutrition science, responded to calls for fortification by saying that there was not enough evidence that vitamin D would reduce the risk of respiratory infections. Recently, researchers in Spain found that 82% of coronavirus patients out of 216 admitted to hospital had low vitamin D levels. The picture is mixed; some research shows that vitamin D levels have little or no effect on Covid-19, flu and other respiratory diseases. Here's how the top vegetables stack upPhoto by Anna Kaminova on Unsplash Vegetables are essential for well-balanced diets for their high load of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre, and phytochemicals.
Right now, with the pandemic still active, salad vegetables play a more vital role than ever in our diet because of their capacity to improve our immune defences. They're also convenient since we can eat them as raw, so they present little challenge in preparing for our everyday meals. For example, a cold dish of various raw vegetables, seasoned with oil, vinegar or other dressings, can be quickly prepared. Just how vital are salad vegetables in our diet to overcome viral infections? The perfect pillow has these three qualitiesSomething we don't do often enough is to experiment with pillows and pillow positions. Read what experts say about choosing the right pillow.
Use of the wrong type of pillow will lower the quality of our sleep. That's bad for our long-term health. There's a reason we are programmed to spend a third of our life sleeping. During sleep:
Chronic sleep deprivation impairs our attentiveness, coordination and reaction time. It also increases the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes and depression. Mix and match during the week, or daily if you are a runnerPhoto by Jyotirmoy Gupta on Unsplash We take our joints for granted until they're injured. None more so than our feet.
Our feet have 26 bones (25 percent of all bones in the human body are in the feet), 33 joints, and more than 80 tendons and ligaments. There are also 20 main muscles, each with different actions and jobs that help us walk, run, jump and stand. These muscles can become weakened, tightened and inflamed just from our everyday activities. There is a lot that can go wrong - a lot of attached parts that can transmit stress through the entire foot and into our leg, hips and lower back. That's why keeping our feet flexible and strong is worth a little extra effort. This effort not only helps reduce foot and ankle pain but also strengthen the tendons and improves our mobility and gait. Not to mention the earthing benefits of bare feetPhoto by Angelo Pantazis on Unsplash We take our feet for granted until they're injured. I persisted in running too many extra kilometres in my favourite running shoes until my feet told me to grade-up to new shoes.
As well as bringing out my new shoes, I decided to walk barefooted every day as a way of reconditioning my feet. That turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as I have now found out. You might like to give it a try. When I decided to walk barefooted, I had no specific theory in mind. I just figured that having the bones, tendons and muscles of my feet moving across a natural surface - road, trail, and the beach in my case - would activate neuromuscular pathways that shoes don't. Your tendons help your brain understand how to balanceWe rarely hear of the need to keep our tendons healthy. But we know that our balance gets worse as we age. The things we need to do to keep our tendons healthy also help us better sense the position and movement of our joints.
As we age, our ability to sense the position and movement of our joints degrades, even in very active older people. This loss is more severe in inactive people and leads to a less stable gait and more falls. This is why it helps to think of regular daily exercise as a means of living longer better by avoiding falls - and also looking better longer with an upright posture. Your aim is not to build muscles and exhaust yourself; it is to improve your balance. In doing that, you'll need to build more muscle, but that outcome is a side-effect. The best program to combat loss of balance is a combination of aerobic, balance and strength exercises. This combination keeps our tendons healthy, as well as our ligaments and muscles. My feet told me that they'd had enoughI have zero brand allegiance. I buy when a quality item is on special, including running shoes, irrespective of brand. But from the moment that I stood up in my Saucony Freedom ISO shoes (Black 8.0D) I knew that I could be a fanboy.
Just two years before, almost to the day, I hated running. You know, when you do a "power hour" and the instructor lines you up at the finish for the fireman's shuttle run. Hated it. Even just lining up for sprints across the room - not happy. I could do it well. It was rare if I was not in a leading group. But I just wanted it to finish. The gym went on a summer roster over Xmas (down under in Australia). Although classes were peripheral to how I trained at the gym, I liked to do one class each week for variety. I tried boxing classes and found them a waste of time. As there was nothing in the Xmas program that interested me, I decided to run, twice a week. |
ChoicesSince I was diagnosed at 50 with Type 2 diabetes I've been learning how to do bone-building fitness training which lowers my age. You can too. It's your choice. Walter Categories
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