1. | The Tale of the New Year’s Fail

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3. | Fantastic Plastic

courtesy of Houston Plastic Surgery

Weight and mass. Pounds and kilograms. The most important thing is that your bathroom scale is useful for you as an individual user. From my clicking around online, l have found various digital and analog and combination scales which are similar but not all the same.

My family has had the benefit of the services of a professional nutrionist for 2 separate stints over the years, for 2 of our children who needed help in this area. Actually when the nutritionist’s client is a child, she works with the food preparer/server of the household. l’m the “food lady” at my house and l had the opportunity to have these 2 positive experiences with nutritionists. We talked about all sorts of things and in our case the topic was not weight reduction. When the child was weighed bi-weekly or monthly what the nutritionist looked for was using the same scale, in the same way, consistently over time. Weigh ins at the pediatrition were also part of the overall plan however we didn’t compare number to number from the doctor’s office with the nutritionist’s scale’s results like apples to apples. We did look at trends and percentiles to get the real picture of how much progress was being made at the time if any. A few ounces got us jumping for joy at this stage in our lives. Again, thankfully we met with very good success with hard work, moral support and proper use of a tool called a scale. This brings us back to the topic of useful bathroom scales.

What do you want to do with your bathroom scale? Let it be a conscious, proactive reason that you can keep consistently in your mind over a period of time. Then look online for types of scales. Talk to friends and family, too. Give away or trade your scale with them if you are ready for a new scale in your bathroom. Oh and here is an idea, you don’t have to keep your scale in your bathroom if you want to shake it up a little bit at home. But where ever you put it, use it in the same place, the same way, to get a useful number.

Considering the human factors in actual use vs. perfect use of bathroom scales, this tip of consistent circumstances during the use of your scale is the best advice l can think of to help you make your scale useful even if it doesn’t have expensive bells and whistles and electronics.

Another side note is to realize that, even outside the laboratory, IRL “in real life”, mass and weight are different concepts. So if you expect your body composition to change due to the changes you are making in lifestyle (increase muscle mass or release fat deposits) please consider this when you look at adding a new scale to your routine.

Prevention Magazine, Moshe Morris, and apartmenttherapy.com have done some homework for us on brands of scales for your perusal.

...yowch!

How many people do you know who got a flu shot and immediately came down with the flu?  It’s one of the potential side effects of the flu vaccine.  How would you like to boost your immune system naturally and without side effects?  You can do just that and greatly reduce your changes of coming down with the flu, and other diseases as well.

While a host of medical studies have been done showing that tai chi does in fact boost the immune system, tai chi actually takes a multifaceted approach.  One of those ways is stress reduction.  Doctors tell us that excessive stress is a key factor in developing a variety of sicknesses.  Tai chi has been shown to be a very effective stress reducer.

As more and more research is done on tai chi, science is beginning to prove what the Chinese have been telling us for some time. “Tai chi supports and strengthens the entire body.”  There are medical studies demonstrating that tai chi can stabilize blood pressure, improve joint health, increase bone density, help us breathe better with increased lung capacity, even improve our balance among other things.

According to One Medical Study: “… what we are really testing is the overall immune memory [cell] and function. Since those memory cells are critical in a whole host of viral infections, I would expect these findings to generalize to other infections…”

According to a WebMD Medical News article by Daniel DeNoon written in September of 2003 titled “Tai Chi Each Day Keeps Shingles Away” stated that taiji practice seems to boost the overall immune system. In arriving at this conclusion the study noted a positive relationship between the risk of contracting shingles and Tai Chi. If you’ve had chickenpox, the virus never really goes away and you are at risk for shingles if your immune system dips. The study noted a 50% increase in associated immune cells, “enough to actually prevent shingles”.

Michael Irwin, MD of UCLA

Michael Irwin, MD of UCLA, conducted this study and states “But what we are really testing is the overall immune memory and function. Since those memory cells are critical in a whole host of viral infections, I would expect these findings to generalize to other infections …Shingles is a debilitating illness. There are no medical treatments to prevent shingles. No medical treatment has yet been shown to boost shingles immunity. This novel behavioral intervention – tai chi – may have those beneficial effects and it looked to us that the people who practice tai chi had improved ability to carry out day-to-day activities …”

As reported by the National Institutes for Health, a similar 2007 study was done by a team also lead by Dr Irwin. Testing done in conjunction with a vaccine for shingles, now available, found that tai chi alone had a similar increase in participants’ immunity to varicella as much as the vaccine typically produces in 30-40 year old adults … combined with the vaccine tai chi produced a significantly higher level of immunity, about 40 percent … over the vaccine alone.

Doing a Google search on tai chi medical studies yields about 334,000 results.  If you’d like to narrow that down just a bit.  There are a few other medical studies sited on my website at www.camptaichi.com/health-stories-medical-research.  You can also find interesting information by going to the Mayo Clinic’s site at www.mayoclinic.com and doing a search for “tai chi”.

So if you’re healthy and are thinking about getting a flu shot this year consider tai chi.  If your doctor has advised you to get a flu shot, go ahead and get it. Tai chi has also been shown to increase its effectiveness.

Anyone may copy this article and use it however they see fit, as long as it is copied in its entirety with all links, the author’s information, and this statement.  You may also email John@beginningtaich.net.

In our society, video games and media are the supreme rulers. We bow to the sacred game consoles and and beg for the latest brain rot (video game).

But now the Guitar Hero by Harmonix series is taking a new hold on the nation, an interactive game with a mini eletric guitar with 5 or 6 keys. It encourages players to get on their feet and rock out! At least it encourages me.

I don’t know if it’s healthy, but it makes you move more than the standard sitting-down-and-veggitizing game controler. The only things those things do is make your hands hurt.

Hit the corresponding buttons on a toy plastic guitar, and some familiar rock anthems, from Weezer’s “My Name is Jonas,” to Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” blare fluidly from your television’s speakers. Miss a note, and you’ll hear a loud clanking sound.

But even better than Guitar Hero is Dance Dance Revolution by Konami! Now thats a video game that really makes you move, I belive that any movment is healthy, but when its put to music and a T.V. kids will absolutly love it.

Sorry Guild Wars, but you suck! (I didn’t really mean that)