On Recommending Exercise

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There is a recently published study on how to recommend regular exercise to chronically ill adults.
Although this study was of chronically ill adults, the concepts should work for healthy adults as well. The study suggests that cognitive approaches to suggesting exercise does not work. Like the proverbial broken record, people have heard it enough. They already know that exercise in important to their health and recovery.

The solution may be behavior changing strategies. Then the question becomes what types of activities will stimulate exercise, or the mind-set to exercise regularly? One of the most obvious is to set goals. Set a reasonable goal for low impact exercise like walking 20 minutes per day. Increase the goals as they are achieved. To begin with, it is more important that we do something every day for exercise, the goal is to set the habit of exercising. Then increase the goals to sustainable activity with longer time periods. To begin with even 12 minutes of walking will achieve results, but certainly more is better in this regard.

Put your walking shoes by the door, write down your goals, get feedback from friends and family, invite people to join you, self-monitor your activity in a calendar, record you accomplishments.

I started TaeKwonDo when my children wanted to quit and I wouldn't let them. I saw many benefits of social, mental, spiritual, and physical nature that I wanted them to continue. By making it a family venture, it became more acceptable to them. Two days a week of this more strenuous exercise must be tempered with a lower impact form of exercise the rest of the week.

Recently Judy and I have formed a walking group that meets daily at one of two prearranged places for an hour of walking together. It is more fun to walk with friends and we motivate each other. It is more difficult to do these things alone. Among our walking group are cancer survivors, stroke victims and diabetics. They benefit from the group activity to stimulate their interest in exercise.

Try these ideas to help you exercise and help others as well.




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Heavy Metals Linked to Cancer

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Heavy metals like cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury, nickle, iron, copper, aluminum, and beryllium have been linked to causing cancer and other dread diseases and disorders. These heavy metals are found in the air we breath, the food we eat, and the water we drink. They are virtually everywhere. They cannot be avoided. It is possible to limit exposure if someone would know all of the exposures and limit one's activities to avoid them, but there would still be unknown exposures. The trick is to live a lifestyle without fear in the face of heavy metal exposure and potential cancer diagnosis.

The problem is that these free radical heavy metals replace other vital minerals in the body causing immune deficiencies. Enzyme activity is disrupted when heavy metals replace these minerals. This enzyme disruption can cause DNA damage to cells and cause cancers to occur.

Zinc finger proteins are necessary for cell division. If mercury or cadmium has replaced the zinc in this protein, cell division cannot occur in those cells. This causes problems with healing from wounds, or surgeries, etc.

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Miracle Cancer Survivors

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There are people who survive cancer without medical intervention or despite medical intervention. Patients who were sent home to die under hospice care or people who refused medical intervention suddenly stage a miraculous and unprecedented recovery. How does this happen?

The medical community dismissed it as a fluke, as expected. What they don't know, they don't want to know. What they don't know can hurt and kill others. The close mindedness of some doctors absolutely astounds and frustrates me. I thought they all had scientific interests and should jump at a chance to examine such events.

It appears that there is a link between unrelated illness during cancer that triggers an immune response that strengthens the immune system to fight the cancer as well. Can an active and vibrant immune system fight and kill cancer cells? Can alternative and complementary health care be more than a placebo effect for cancer patients? It seems that this may be the case. Nutrition and supplementation may be the new cancer treatment.



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The Air We Breath

The very air we breath can make us sick and cause other health problems. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) have been linked to many diseases and disorders in humans. Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) has seriously diminished over the years of the industrial age due to the creation of chemical compounds of every nature for every purpose. Are there set standards for indoor air quality? The government has regulatory power over some workplace air quality issues.

Can these harmful toxins be avoided or our exposure reduced? Some of these toxins can be avoided through properly handling exposures that release these chemical compounds into the air. Few but some can be filtered from the air. Many are difficult to detect and have not had enough study for regulatory agencies to decide how to handle them, and many are so beneficial that their hazard is overlooked or minimized in the interest of industrialization and modernization.

Further posts will discuss more on air quality, toxins, and solutions.

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