The idea of shaking to build better blood and bones made sense with all the science and important authorities touting Vibra Phirm. The contraption arrived with a large yellow truck after being delayed from China. The neighbor who is a Delta mechanic helped, well he actually assembled what I later called a monstrosity with minimal help from anyone else. The directions were odd. A spring washer was called a spring mattress, and there was no part that looked like a mattress to anyone! The mechanic looked at the parts, and it was together in 15 minutes.
Guess, The Dog, was in the garage during this assemblage. When it was plugged in and oscillating/vibrating and resonating, she trembled and headed to the door whining. Not a usual experience for anyone in this household. So for three weeks during rain, cold, or snow, she went outside for the 10 minutes the machine vibrated or the back seat of the truck when it was too miserable for her. Could it be that she thinks there is a tsunami coming? Animals can sense earthquakes, perhaps?
The machine was returned and one person had lost seven pounds while another had gained two, so the physical results were satisfactory for the Chinese made Vibra pHirm. Then, because the Solo Flex Whole Body Vibration was much more versatile, it was ordered as the Vibra pHirm was returned. The price is more affordable, more convenient for travel, and it has the same specs for power/vibration/wattage/hertz. It doesn’t hurt that most of the parts were made in the United States. There is no assembly required, so the Delta mechanic stayed home and was not needed.
The comparison of the vibrations for The Dog were distinct. Her reaction to the Vibra pHirm were more upset than the reaction to the Solo Flex. She is eleven, and has not given me acquiescence that this is a positive change in her life, or her future personal involvement in the use of this exercise machine. Solo Flex has a cute little white dog on the cover of their manual sitting on the platform/bench/step. The Cute Big Dog who lives here will not be sitting on the Solo Flex Whole Body Vibration anytime soon. But there is not the sound of torment from The Dog’s voice compared to the Vibra pHirm. It could be that this exercise equipment is less noisy or more cushioned. As time progresses, perhaps The Dog will begin to be comfortable with the vibration. As indeed was the case. If not, she will be followed without question if there is ever a tsunami or earthquake in Atlanta.
After six months, The Dog likes being petted while I am doing yoga positions on the Solo Flex. My fingers are massaging her, which helps her arthritis and maybe her tumors.
The vibration of http://www.Petpause2000.com harp music did not change the reaction of The Dog to either exercise vibration machine. Imagine a horrible thunderstorm. The Dog will calm down with harp music during thunderstorms, but not with vibrations of a whole body vibration machine. The time limit for the machines is 10 minutes. Over time, perhaps she will become The Cute Black Dog sitting on the bench.
(c) 2008 Charlotte Fairchild
Author Bio: Born in Bethesda Naval Hospital, Charlotte Fairchild traveled as a Navy child, She is a writer and speaker of kudzu, fertility, roses, and teaches auto harp. Fertile Prayers is her first published book. Kudzu Kwestions will help find her several blogs and contact information.
William Li discusses a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases — anti-angiogenesis, which means preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that beat cancer at its own game.
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
“Angiogenesis” is the process your body uses to build blood vessels. Your body consists of some 19 billion capillaries (the smallest blood vessels), which are the vessels for both life, and yes, in many cases, death, as Dr. William Li, explains during his fascinating TED lecture.
This is because cancerous cells, like all other cells in your body, cannot thrive without the oxygen and nutrients supplied by your capillaries.
Virtually all of your blood vessels are formed while you’re in the womb, but there are still certain circumstances in adulthood when your body will grow new blood vessels.
Blood vessels are created each month to form the lining of a woman’s uterus, for example. And during pregnancy, new blood vessels form the placenta, which connects and shuttles nutrients to the growing fetus.
“Your body has the ability to regulate the amount of blood vessels it needs at any given time,” Li explains, and it does this through an elaborate system of stimulators and inhibitors.
“But for a number of diseases there are defects in this system,” Li says.
In some cases, your body becomes incapable of “pruning back” extra blood vessels, and in others it cannot grow enough new ones.
In these situations, angiogenesis is out of balance, and a myriad of diseases result.
For example, insufficient angiogenesis (too few blood vessels) can lead to:
Chronic wounds that will not heal
Heart disease
Stroke
Neuropathy
Erectile dysfunction
Excessive angiogenesis (too many blood vessels) promote diseases such as:
Cancer
Blindness
Arthritis
Endometriosis
Multiple sclerosis
According to Dr. Li, there are more than 70 major diseases, affecting more than a billion people worldwide — which on the surface appear completely different from each other — that all share abnormal angiogenesis as a common denominator.
“This realization allows us to reconceptualize the way we approach these diseases — by controlling angiogenesis,” Li says.
This is exciting, as I believe and have taught for years that your diet is the key to preventing diseases of all kinds, including cancer. Dr. Li’s research explains, and scientifically validates what many of us have experienced, and our ancestors intuitively knew.
You are what you eat, and there are vast differences between a historically wholesome, nutritious diet, and the processed, chemical-based foods that pass for sustenance today.
Strategies for Starving Cancer, and Obesity
In his TED talk, Dr. Li focuses primarily on cancer, because angiogenesis is a hallmark of the disease. As stated earlier, cancer cells cannot grow into noticeable tumors without sufficient amounts of capillaries feeding them oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood.
As it turns out, the majority of people carry around microscopic cancer cell clusters in their bodies, but not everyone actually develops cancer.
This is because as long as your body has the ability to balance angiogenesis properly, it will prevent blood vessels from forming to feed these microscopic tumors. Trouble will only arise if, and when, the cancer cells manage to get their own blood supply, at which point they can transform from harmless to deadly.
“Anti-angiogenic therapy is the method of cutting off blood supply to the cancer,” Li explains. “This can be done because tumor vessels, unlike healthy vessels, are abnormal and poorly constructed, and because of that, they’re highly vulnerable to treatments that target them.”
There are currently about a dozen different anti-angiogenic cancer drugs that, according to Li’s statistics, have significantly increased survival rates.
However, the answer to the cancer epidemic is not just devising better drugs to treat it in its advanced stages. The answer is preventing cancer from occurring in the first place, and that’s what’s so exciting about Dr. Li’s research.
Interestingly, obesity is also largely dependent on angiogenesis.
“Like tumor cells, fat cells grow when blood vessels grow,” Li says. So in essence, a cancer-preventive diet is also an obesity-preventive diet.
The Cancer-Preventive Diet
Dr. Li believes the answer to cancer is to prevent angiogenesis, which can effectively starve any microscopic cancerous growths, preventing them from growing and becoming dangerous.
But how do you prevent angiogenesis, aside from using a drug?
As it turns out, “mother nature has laced a large number of foods, beverages and herbs with naturally occurring inhibitors of angiogenesis,” says Li.
So by consuming these anti-angiogenetic foods you can naturally boost your body’s defense system and prevent blood vessels from forming and feeding the microscopic tumors that exist in your body at any given time.
As shown on a graph in the video, diet accounts for at least 30-35 percent of all environmentally caused cancers.
So, “eating to starve cancer” could have a dramatic impact on cancer rates across the world.
According to Li, resveratrol from red grapes, for example, have been shown to inhibit abnormal angiogenesis by 60 percent. Even more potent is the ellagic acid found in strawberries.
Logically, different foods contain different potencies of anti-angiogenetic compounds. But interestingly, when researchers evaluated a combination of two of the LEAST potent teas, for example, they discovered that this combination tea had greater potency than any given tea by itself.
“There’s synergy,” Li states, which should come as no surprise to those of you who are well-versed in holistic nutrition.
Synergy is indeed what makes fresh, whole foods so potently nutritious! The sum is far greater than the individual parts, and this is why it’s far more important to focus on eating a diet of whole, organic foods, rather than obsessing about individual nutrients.
Some Foods are As Potent, or More Potent than Anti-Angiogenetic Drugs!
In his lecture, Dr. Li shows a graph comparing anti-angiogenetic drugs with foods. It’s a beautiful illustration of just how potent foods can be, because, as Li says, “foods hold their own, and in some cases are more potent than the drugs!”
Examples of foods equaling or exceeding the potency of drugs include parsley, garlic, and red grapes.
Dr. Li is now involved with creating the world’s first rating system that will score foods according to their anti-angiogenetic, cancer-preventative properties. But there’s really no reason to wait for a comprehensive list, because we already know that optimal health hinges on a healthy diet consisting of a wide variety of whole, organic foods.
Just like a single food contains synergistic compounds, and a combination of foods can work together synergistically, a healthy diet overall will help you prevent all manner of disease, including cancer, in more ways than one.
For example, balancing your insulin levels will have a beneficial, protective effect on a number of diseases, including cancer. And eating according to your nutritional type also has potent anti-cancer effects. When we treat cancer patients in our clinic, this is in fact one of the most powerful anti-cancer strategies we have.
Other Important Strategies that Can Help Prevent Cancer
It’s virtually impossible to discuss cancer prevention today without discussing vitamin D, as the scientific evidence of its anti-cancerous benefits is truly impressive.
For example, intake of vitamin D3 and calcium could potentially prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer annually in the United States and Canada, according to a complex computer prediction model.
This model also predicted that 75 percent of deaths from these cancers could be prevented with adequate intake of vitamin D3 and calcium.
Theories linking vitamin D to certain cancers have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies, according to epidemiologist Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Garland is widely regarded as the leading epidemiologist on vitamin D and its relation to health. He led one of the latest studies on vitamin D for cancer prevention and proposed a new model of cancer development — dubbed DINOMIT– that is centered on a loss of cancer cells’ ability to stick together.
The model is a departure from the older model of cancer development, which centers on genetic mutations as the earliest driving forces behind cancer. According to Dr. Garland:
“The first event in cancer is loss of communication among cells due to, among other things, low vitamin D and calcium levels. In this new model, we propose that this loss may play a key role in cancer by disrupting the communication between cells that is essential to healthy cell turnover, allowing more aggressive cancer cells to take over.”
So clearly, no cancer prevention plan is complete without this simple lifestyle modification.
Normalizing your vitamin D levels with safe amounts of sun exposure is one of the most effective, and least expensive, strategies that is available to most people. Ideally, you’ll want to monitor your vitamin D levels to make sure your levels stay within a therapeutic range year-round.
Here are several additional strategies you can incorporate to virtually eliminate your cancer risk:
Get appropriate amounts of animal-based omega-3 fats.
Exercise. One of the primary reasons exercise works is that it drives your insulin levels down. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.
Have a tool to permanently erase the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. Even the CDC states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. My particular favorite tool for this purpose, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique.
Only 25 percent of people eat enough vegetables, so by all means eat as many vegetables as you are comfortable with. Ideally, they should be fresh and organic. However, please understand that, frequently, fresh conventionally grown vegetables are healthier than organic ones that are older and wilted in the grocery store. They are certainly better than no vegetables at all, so don’t use that as an excuse. If you are a carb nutritional type you may need up to 300 percent more vegetables than a protein nutritional type.
Exercising is one of the most important activities you can do for your health. However, just as your diet, variety is the key. It’s important to vary your exercise routine in order to get the absolute best results.
Your muscles simply get used to the same activity and they require a level of muscle confusion if they are to continue to improve and grow stronger.
I’ve been exercising for over 40 years, but for much of it I focused on running, or cardio exercise. While this is an important type, there are others that are equally if not more important, namely strength training, developing your core muscles, and interval training.
Last year, in fact, I hired a personal trainer twice a week and have been learning a large variety of exercises which provide total body fitness and do not involve running or, for that matter, the use of any significant equipment. Simply by changing up your routine often, you challenge your body in different ways, work different muscle groups and get the best overall conditioning effect.
I actually had my trainer use my digital camera to take short clips of me doing the exercises so I now have close to 150 video clips of different exercises that I can use to vary my regimen. I will typically do about 15 of them during a session.
Although I highly recommend finding a personal trainer to help you reach your fitness goals, if you cannot afford it or live in an area without access to one, you can still reap the benefits of exercise if you focus on varying your routine.
I am in the process of hiring a professional trainer to develop a section of the site where we can have these types of videos available for you.
Four Principles of Exercise
Your body is an efficient machine, and if you do the same type of exercise day after day, you’ll become quite good at it. However, when exercise becomes easy to complete, it’s a sign you need to work a little harder and give your body a new challenge.
So when you’re planning your exercise routine, make sure it incorporates the following types of exercise:
1. Aerobic: Jogging, using an elliptical machine, and walking fast are all examples of aerobic exercise. As you get your heart pumping, the amount of oxygen in your blood improves, and endorphins, which act as natural painkillers, increase. Meanwhile, aerobic exercise activates your immune system, helps your heart pump blood more efficiently, and increases your stamina over time.
2. Interval (Anaerobic) Training: Research is showing that the BEST way to condition your heart and burn fat is NOT to jog or walk steadily for an hour. Instead, it’s to alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods. That is one of the primary reasons I am so fond of the exercises my personal trainer has been showing me.
Another major benefit of this approach is that it radically decreases the amount of time you spend exercising, while giving you even more benefits. For example, intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under your skin within the exercising muscles. The resulting increase in fat oxidation increases weight loss. So, short bursts of activity done at a very high intensity can help you reach your optimal weight and level of fitness, in a shorter amount of time.
3. Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you’re really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program.
You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12 repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions. It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and rebuild.
4. Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.
Exercise programs like pilates and yoga are great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.
You might be aware that I have recently become interested in Ayurvedic medicine, and yoga is an important element of that. In March I visited the Miraval Health Resort in Tucson and had a great introduction to yoga and am now committed to applying that as a regular discipline in my life and will start seeking yoga instruction very soon.
Focusing on your breath and mindfulness along with increasing your flexibility is an important element of total fitness.
For more information on how to use exercise as a drug, including proper intensity and duration, read through this comprehensive article Exercise to Improve Your Body and Brain.
Is Staying Motivated an Issue for You?
More than half of U.S. adults don’t get the recommended amount of exercise, and one out of four don’t exercise at all.
The most common reason why people say they don’t exercise?
A lack of time.
Unfortunately, not enough people are willing to arrange their schedules around exercise, and this is due to something much deeper than time management — it’s due to psychological resistance.
No matter what reason you have for not exercising – feeling it’s too hard, getting bored with your routine, not knowing where to start – you can help yourself get into a more positive frame of mind by giving the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) a try. It can help you remove the negative emotional blocks that are preventing you from successfully implementing your program.
Further, instead of focusing on the negatives, like the work and the time it takes to stay active, focus on how great you’ll feel once exercise becomes a regular part of your life.
In case you weren’t aware, exercise does far more than just assist in weight loss. I’m going to list some of the many, many things exercise can do for your mind and body.
Go ahead and print this list out, send it to your exercise buddy or take it with you to the gym. Then, whenever you’re thinking of quitting, take a look. These benefits are just too good to pass up.
For years, doctors assumed that exposing joints to high impact loads could accelerate the development of osteoarthritis.
But experts now know that’s not the case. A review of the evidence to date, published in January in the Journal of Anatomy, concluded that exercise, even high-impact sports such as running, don’t cause arthritis. (Researchers excluded the effect of sporting injuries, such as torn knee ligaments, which are an undisputed cause of arthritis).
Far from causing arthritis, jogging, weight-lifting and other kinds of exercise may help keep joints healthy. Dozens of clinical trials have shown that exercise can reduce joint pain and stiffness, and stabilize joints by strengthening the surrounding muscles.
It’s generally accepted that stronger muscles protect cartilage by absorbing some of the force on joints and by keeping bones in strong alignment. And exercise prevents obesity, a big risk factor for arthritis.
But some researchers now believe that exercise also may stimulate cartilage growth and repair.
Cartilage, like muscles, shrinks if it’s not put to use. In an animal study, immobilizing a limb caused a 20 percent loss of knee cartilage in a matter of weeks.
In a human study reported in August, Australian researchers used MRI’s to compare changes in knee cartilage over two years among 297 older women and men. Those who participated in vigorous physical activity maintained significant cartilage loss, researchers reported in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology.
In an earlier study, the same Australian group found that sports participation in children is linked to increases in knee cartilage thickness, and the more vigorous the sport, the greater the cartilage growth could provide protection from joint deterioration due to osteoarthritis at an older age.
The secret to feeling better and living longer is exercise. Regular exercise can prevent diabetes and heart trouble. It can also reduce arthritis pain, anxiety and depression. It can help maintain independence.
Seniors need resistance training to build muscle and bone. Resistance training keeps the body limber and flexible. It improves balance to reduce the risk of falls.
If you are interested in feeling stronger, healthier and more vital, a strength training program is for you. Strengthening exercises increase the strength of your muscles, maintains and builds bones, improves your balance, coordination and mobility. The health benefits far outweigh the risk of injury, a concern that prevents many elderly people from adding more physical activity to their lives.
Research has shown that resistance exercises are both safe and effective for women and men of all ages, including those who are not in very good health. In fact, people with health concerns benefit from lifting weights a few times each week.
ARTHRITIS RELIEF
Tufts University recently completed a strength training program with older men and women with knee arthritis. The results showed that strength training decreased pain by 43%, increased muscle strength and general physical performance, improved symptoms of the disease and decreased disability. In the study resistance training was just as effective if not more effective than medications for easing pain. Similar effects of resistance training have been seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
RESTORATION OF BALANCE
As people age, poor balance and flexibility contribute to falls and broken bones. Resistance exercises increase flexibility and balance, which decrease the likelihood and severity of falls.
STRENGTHEN BONE
Post menopausal women can lose 1-2% of their bone mass every year. Results from studies showed that resistance training increases bone density and reduces the risk for fractures.
PROPER WEIGHT MAINTENANCE
Strength training is crucial to weight control because more muscle means a higher metabolic rate. Muscle is active tissue that consumes calories while fat uses very little energy. Strength training is extremely helpful for weight loss and long-term weight control.
BLOOD SUGAR
Studies show that resistance training has a profound impact on helping older adults manage diabetes. In a recent study, resistance training produced dramatic improvements in blood sugar that are comparable to taking medications. In addition, the men and women in the study were stronger, gained muscle, lost body fat, had less depression and felt more confident.
HEALTHY STATE OF MIND
Strength training provides similar improvements for depression as anti-depressant medications. Currently, it is not known if this is because people feel better when they are stronger or if strength training produces a helpful biochemical change in the brain. It is most likely both.
SLEEP IMPROVEMENT
People who exercise regularly fall asleep more quickly, sleep more deeply, awaken less often and sleep longer. As with depression, the sleep benefits obtained as a result of resistance training are comparable to treatment with medications but without the side effects or the expense.
HEALTHY HEART
Studies have prompted the American Heart Association to recommend resistance training as a way to reduce risk of heart disease and as therapy for patients in cardiac rehabilitation programs.
Scientific research has shown that resistance exercise can slow the aging clock. Studies have shown that lifting weights 2 or 3 times a week increases strength by building muscle mass and bone density.
One 12-month study conducted on postmenopausal women showed 1% gains in hip and spine bone density, 75% increase in strength and 13% increase in balance with just 2 days per week of strength training. The control group had losses in bone, strength and balance. Strength training can also have a profound effect on reducing falls, the number one cause of death in the elderly.
Whole Body Vibration and One Dog
For years, doctors assumed that exposing joints to high impact loads could accelerate the development of osteoarthritis.
