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What is flaxseed oil, benefits, components and uses ?

ashish — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:35:54 +0000

Flaxseed oil comes from the seeds of the flax plant. It is similar to a grain but has more nutrient value. It contains:
- omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids which reduces heart disease among other health conditions.
- essential fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which the body converts into eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
- It contains alpha-linolenic acid.
- Flaxseed oil also contains chemicals called lignans, which are believed to have antioxidant properties.

Components of Flaxseed Oil

- FIBER: Fiber keeps the digestive tract clean and regular and lowers cholesterol and triglycerides, which is important in preventing heart disease.
- LIGNANS: These plant compounds found in the hull act as as weak form of estrogen (phytoestrogen) and appear to protect the body from hormonal cancers – including breast cancer.
- Proteins : The protein in flaxseed oil is easily digested and contains a complete amino-acid profile that the body needs.
- Essential Fatty Acids : Omega-3 fatty acids, usually from fish oil, have been shown to reduce inflammation and help prevent certain chronic diseases such as heart disease and arthritis.

Health Benefits of Flaxseed Oil

- Lowering cholesterol levels.
- Improving the immune system.
- Lubricates and absorbs toxins.
- Prevents the toxic that builds in bowels.
- Soothes ulcers.
- Acts as a buffer for excess stomach acids.
- Protect against heart disease and control high blood pressure.
- Controls counter inflammation associated with lupus and gout.
- Flaxseed Puts the Brakes on Prostate Cancer Growth.
- Eases weight loss in people afflicted with obesity.
- Treating Dandruff.
- Strengthens finger and toenails.
- Can improve eyesight and perception of colors.
- Curing asthma and diabetes.

Uses of Flaxseed Oil (sprinkled or added in small quantity)

- Salads
- Protein shakes
- Yogurt, Breakfast cereal
- Cookie Dough
- Pancakes, Muffins, Waffles
- Lotions

Side-Effects of Flaxseed Oil

- Anyone that has an allergy to Linaceae plant should avoid flaxseed oil.
- Bloating or increased flatulence is experienced. Start with a small amount and then increase gradually. Increase your water intake also.

Omega-6 Fatty Acids: Importance, Benefits, Uses and Side Effects.

ashish — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 07:15:29 +0000

Fatty acids are organic compounds composed of carbon chains of varying lengths, with an acid group on one end and hydrogen bound to all the carbons of the chain. Essential fatty acids (EFAs) are those that are necessary for health, but cannot be synthesized by the body.
The typical American diet tends to contain 14 – 25 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. The Mediterranean diet, on the other hand, has a healthier balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
Omega 3 fatty acids actually reduce inflammation and Omegas 6s increase inflammation, it’s important to have a balanced diet to offset Omega 6 inflammatory affects.
Imbalance between the intakes of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids causes inflammation if the intake of Omega-6 is more than Omega-3.
This dietary imbalance may lead to the rise of diseases as :
- asthma
- coronary heart disease
- many forms of cancer
- autoimmunity and neurodegenerative diseases, all of which are believed to stem from inflammation in the body.
- obesity
- depression
- dyslexia
- hyperactivity and even a tendency toward violence.
Cut down on omega-6 levels by reducing consumption of processed and fast foods and polyunsaturated vegetable oils. At home, use extra virgin olive oil for cooking and in salad dressings.

Dietary Sources:
Sources of omega-6 fatty acids are numerous in modern diets.
- Olive Oil
- Wheatgerm
- Grapeseeds
- Pistachios
- Sesame Oil
- Hempseed Oil
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Chia Seed Oil
- Safflower Oil
- Sunflower Oil
- Cottonseed Oil
- Raw Nuts & Seeds

Uses and Benefits of Omega-6 Fatty acids

- Taking gamma linolenic acid (GLA) for 6 months or more may reduce symptoms of nerve pain in people with diabetic neuropathy.
- Some studies have shown that taking primrose oil helps reduce symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.
- Children with Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have lower levels of EFAs, both omega-6s and omega-3s. EFAs are important to normal brain and behavioral function.
- GLA may help reduce high blood pressure, either alone or in combination with omega-3 fatty acids.
- Evening primrose oil may reduce breast pain and tenderness in people with cyclic mastalgia.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Essential Fatty acids, benefits, uses.

ashish — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:50:56 +0000

Omega 3 is the name given to a group of polyunsaturated fatty acids or essential fatty acids. Omega 3 or the essential fatty acids are vital for the healthy functioning of all organs but they cannot be synthesized by the body.
The main components of Omega-3 fatty acids are alpha-linolenic acid ALA, eicosapentaenoic acid EPA and docosahexaenoic acid DHA.

Dietary sources include :
- Fortified eggs and oils derived from microalgae.
- Dark green, leafy vegetables such as broccoli and spinach, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, flaxseed oil and Soya.
- Cold-water fatty fish such as salmon, halibut, sardines, mackerel, herring, anchovies and tuna and fish oils are the best overall source of Omega-3 fatty acids.
- Flaxseeds actually contain higher concentrations.
- Fruit juices and bread or other fortified foods (Kiwifruit, strawberries and Black Raspberry are very good sources in fruits).

Omega 3 fatty acids are the building blocks of our cell membranes and neurological system. They play a crucial role in many functions of the body.

Health Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

- A brain booster : The majority of the brain is made up of “good” fats knows as fatty acids, and the majority of this “good” fat is Omega-3. It actually increases learning ability, problem-solving skills, focus, memory, and communication between cells.
- Helps to maintain a healthy mental ability.
- It lowers the arthritis symptoms.
- Helps to loose weight.
- Regular consumption of fish oils may help diabetics by lowering their triglycerides and diabetes markers called apoproteins.
- Lubrication of skin arteries and digestive tract.
- Promote an increase in the levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) or good cholesterol while also decreasing triglycerides or fatty material.
- Increases Immune System.
- Reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke.
- Reduces skin ailments.
- Supplements rich in omega-3 fatty acids lower blood pressure significantly in individuals with hypertension.
- Essential fatty acids have been used to reduce inflammation and promote wound healing in burn victims.
- Reduces colon, prostate, breast cancer risk.
- EPA plus DHA can produce a 45% reduction in serum triglyceride level.

Negative effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

- It could cause more bleeding if somebody is already bruised.
- Gas, bloating and loose bowels may be experienced.
- People allergic to sea food should not take fish supplements.
- Pregnant and nursing women shouldn’t eat more than a single serving of oily fish per week.

Relaxation Exercises : Progressive Relaxation

ashish — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:54:05 +0000

Progressive relaxation will help to relax the entire body. It will help you to create a mental image of this relaxed state that can be recreated instantly whenever it is needed.
This exercise can be done while lying in bed, face up and arms at your sides.
- Make fists with both hands. Clench your fingers although not so tightly as to be uncomfortable. Your wrists should feel tight and even in the forearms. Hold this tension for few seconds and then relax. You will feel heaviness and limp in your hands.
- Like in the previous example, make your fists tensed again, such that the muscles start quivering. Now relax. This should make your hands feel more warm and heavy, and this would extend to your lower arms.
- Now concentrate on your upper arms. Focus on your biceps, making them tense, and your hands should remain relaxed and heavy. Quivering will start, and then relax again. Now do this again, tense, hold and then relax.
- Now that you have a hang of this, this process of tensing, hold, relaxing should be done for as many muscle groups as possible. Once you are done with your arms, do the same for stomach, buttocks, thighs, calves, feet, chest, shoulders, neck, jaw and eyes.
- Once you have started doing this a couple of times, one of the prime advantages you will learn from this is being able to get relaxed. Without doing much of these relaxing, you will be able to easily distinguish between muscles that are tensed or relaxed, and be able to focus on the tensed muscles.

Helpful Hints for avoiding problems…

ashish — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:49:31 +0000

Prevention is better than cure. People get careless when their back is not hurting and they start doing all the things that they should not do to avoid back ache.
Precautions that you should take are :
- Your neck is best ruined when you hold the phone between your head and shoulders to avoid using your hands. Use a mouthpiece or else get a speaker phone to avoid this situation.
- People who say that in order to lift something, always bend your knees and crouch down to pick up something from floor level are not wrong. You should avoid leaning over from the waist to grab it. It creates a stress on the lower vertebrae.
- Driving for a longer time and in a wrong posture can create bad back ache. Take frequent breaks to get out and stretch. Keep your knees elevated and for that keep your seat as far forward. Keep doing neck exercises and shoulder lifts while you drive.
- Do not continue sitting in the same posture for longer periods. Take breaks to exercise and stretch your neck and upper back. Place a stool to elevate your knees and feel comfortable. You will feel comfortable if the lower part of your buttocks or lower back are pushed against the back of the chair.
- If the body is not prepared for active sports, then you should avoid playing active sports over the weekend. If you are planning to play a cricket match over the weekend with a gang of friends, spend a few extra minutes with the routines for the whole week preceding the get-together.
- Always turn to either of your side with knees close to the edge of bed to get up instead of keeping the legs flat on the bed, and straining the muscles of your lower back.

Hot Water Therapy Stretching: Elbow Across Chest

ashish — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:37:59 +0000

The Elbow Across Chest hot water therapy stretch is meant to treat middle back in hot shower.
- Stand comfortably in the erect hanging from a string position. Keep the shoulders relaxed and low.
- Touch the fingers of left hand to your left shoulder, pointing your left elbow straight out from your body at shoulder level.
- Grasp the outer side of your elbow with your right hand, and pull your left arm straight across your chest until a tension is felt but not pain in the left shoulder blade area. Hips or back should not be moved at all.
- Hold the tension point for about 30 seconds.
- Return to neutral, letting your arms come to rest at your sides.
- Do the same with your right hand: right fingers touching right shoulder, right elbow pointing straight out, grab right elbow with left hand and pull right arm straight across chest.
- Hold for about 30 seconds.

Hot Water Therapy Exercises: Shoulder Lifts and Shoulder Circles

ashish — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:45:42 +0000

Shoulder lifts are meant for the areas like neck, trapezius and upper back. In all these exercises, the assumption is a hot shower is beating down on your body. For doing this exercise, stand normally and the gap between your feet should be about 18 inches. Posture during standing: imagine you are hanging from a string where the string extends from the top of your head to a hook above your head. This ensures that you are standing straight and tall. Further, your shoulders are held loose and your arms are resting comfortably at your sides.
- Move your shoulders up (imagine the effort is to touch your shoulders to your ears) and, but your shoulders should not be moving to the front or the back. However, your head and neck should remain extended.
- Keep in this position for 6 seconds while breathing comfortably.
- Relax, get your shoulders slowly move to the normal position (you can use your finger tip to slowly move down your legs and drag your shoulders down along with them).
- Do this exercise for five more times.
- Standard precaution : you need to maintain a good posture.

Shoulder Circles

This exercise is also meant for neck, trapezius and upper back. Shoulder circles are very similar to shoulder lifts, the difference being you will mix circles with your shoulders instead of simply lifting them up.
- As in previous exercise, stand comfortably, and move your shoulders forward to the maximum extent possible, but your shoulders should not lift up.
- When your shoulders have gone the maximum possible forward without lifting, start raising your shoulders. Your arms and neck should not tighten.
- Without causing any turtling of the neck or tightening of any muscles other than in the shoulders, bring your shoulders as far back possible.
- Now complete the circle by bringing your shoulder down. After this, bring them to their normal relax position.
- The attempt should be to do this entire motion in one smooth motion rather than three or four separate motions even if it takes up to 30 seconds, it is fine for the first few attempts.
- Your breathing should remain normal.
- Now, do the shoulder circle in opposite direction.
- Once you are used to this exercise, it should not take more than 6 to 7 seconds per circle.

Exercise techniques : why exercise is important?

ashish — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:38:17 +0000

Rhythmic exercise can help your back and neck in two ways. It will loosen joints and muscles, and it will increase the range of motion that is possible. Certain exercises can do this by contracting and relaxing the muscle fibers that have gotten used to being permanently shortened.
Exercise helps flush muscle tissues that suffers from a permanent state of semi-contraction and decreased blood circulation. On full contraction of muscles, toxic materials are pushed out of the blood. Soon after, when the blood moves back in due to the relaxation of muscles, the blood carries along fresh nutrients and more oxygen.
It is similar to cleaning a dirty cloth. You would put it in clean water, squeeze it elsewhere, then again put it in the water and squeeze it elsewhere. Through this method the dirt in the cloth gets removed.
Many of these exercises can be done outside the shower and without water but it is important to understand that these exercises get far more affected when done inside a shower, especially with hot water since hot water has an advantage by increasing blood circulation and causing localized relaxation wherever the water comes into contact with the body.
An improvement technique:these exercises would be far from effective if some amount of massage (even if only for a minute or so) is applied on the affected muscle groups. Another important precaution is more about safety: a bath can be a slippery area and injuries due to falling or impact can be troublesome. It is necessary to have some object to act as an cushion, large bath towel placed at the bottom of the bath is ideal for this purpose (if it gets wet you can always dry it later).

Deep massage or self massage techniques

ashish — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:31:36 +0000

Deep massage or self massage concentrates on finding and massaging the pressure points. Massage can help stimulate the circulation of blood in tense muscles. Massage also physically loosens the chronically contracted muscle fibers, helping the muscle to reach a more lengthened and relaxed state.
Just a few seconds of deep massage will enhance the effects of exercises and stretches. The massage techniques remain the same, whether done in shower bath or hot tub.
- As you stand under the shower or soak in the tub, relax. Do some simple breathing exercises.
- Two standard techniques for finding and loosening those tender pressure points are the finger walk and the finger stroke.
- Start on the massages that include one for upper back, neck, shoulders, one for the lower back and one for the middle back.

Stand, place one hand over your chest, and the other on your stomach. Inhale, expand you stomach as air fills in. When your stomach feels full, do the same with your chest. When inhaling is done, begin to exhale while gently pushing in on your chest, so that the air leaves the chest first. Then gently push in on the stomach, until that area too feels completely empty of air. Repeat the process, concentrating on filling the stomach, then the chest, then emptying the chest, and finally the stomach.
Repeat for about ten full breaths, feeling oxygen and steam from hot water fill you up.

What is the disease if bad backs are the symptoms.

ashish — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:44:11 +0000

The two largest causes of back and neck pain now-a-days are mental stress and desk work. Mental stress can make the neck tighten and upper back muscles , as though they are getting ready to ward off a blow from above. Shoulders are chronically raised, the possible range of motion of the head is reduced, and the human turtle becomes a sitting duck for the sneeze, slip, or bend that throws out an upper back, lower back, or neck.

Sitting and staring at a desktop or computer screen all day, upper bodies become overdeveloped. muscles remain in the state of chronic tension. Simultaneously, lower bodies become weak from disuse setting the scene for the pain and tightness that creates the lower back into painful spasm.

Person should identify your bodily discomforts as symptoms of a lifestyle that is dysfunctional in certain ways, you can actually use your back and neck pain to motivate you to change for the better both physically and mentally.

Whether the problem is new or old, periodic or chronic, two things should be done. First, a professional medical opinion should be sought. Second, when the treatment and healing period by the doctor is over, an exercise program needs to be began to condition the muscles of your back or neck to avoid recurrence of the problem.