Herbal News Magazine
All About Herbal Medicine, Alternative Health News and Natural Supplements
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Jan 22
Everyone knows that smoking cigarettes, cigars and other things you inhale hot smoke into your lungs with are dangerous to your health. That has definitely been more than established by the medical community. As if to drive the point home even further, the Center for Disease Control has released their top death causes list.
And guess what? The top three causes are related in some way to smoking. That’s not to say there are not other factors involved such as genetics, other lifestyle choices and environmental factors. However, each of them can have a direct relation to the act of smoking. Which makes quitting smoking all that much more important.
3 Smoking-Related Causes of Death
1.) Emphysema and other lung function disease such as COPD. This one is one of the most undeniably smoking-related health issues that can lead to death pretty easily. Aside from lung cancer, it is a definite link to smoking – although, as with everything else, it can also happen on its own without smoking, but that is pretty rare and the link is a well known one.
2.) Cancer. There are several types of cancer that are related to smoking. Cigarettes are a carcinogen. Not only does the smoke produce toxic by-products, but the cigarettes themselves contain harmful chemicals that permeate not only the lungs and other organs in the body, but also the surfaces of furniture, the walls in homes, the surfaces in cars, and everywhere else the harmful habit is done, making it carcinogenic not only to the smoker, but also to “second hand smokers”. Basically, cigarette smoke is a cancer causing agent, and for that reason, it has been linked to everything from breast cancer to prostate cancer.
3.) Heart disease. Heart disease can be partially genetic, true. It can also be greatly attributed to your diet and lack of exercise. However, smoking is also another acknowledged risk factor in determining likelihood of heart disease. Your ticker is affected by smoking because smoking raises heart rate and also increases blood pressure and stress levels, all of which are not heart friendly and cause damage over the years.
Smoking generally makes the smoker feel relaxed in the very moments they are smoking (and gives them a feel-good buzz too, hence the addictiveness). However, this is misleading because in the end smoking really jacks our nervous system up and increases dangerous anxiety and stress hormone levels, none of which is good for the heart.
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Apr 4
Yoga is an excellent exercise. Not only is it a great, and multilevel workout that can be tweaked for any fitness level, but yoga has been proven to help reduce stress and anxiety, depression, increase circulation, and greatly improve breathing abilities.
Among its many achievements as a great all around exercise that can be used by people of all fitness levels and ages, but now there are studies showing that regular yoga practice can HALVE the risk of something called atrial fibrulation, or irregular heartbeat.
Irregular heartbeats are a lot more common than you’d think. I’ve actually experienced them a few times. It’s as if you feel your heart is “fluttering”, like it tripped off of it’s regular pattern of beating and can’t seem to find its footing again. It can be scary.
Many times it’s harmless, but in the elderly especially, atrial fibrulation can lead to strokes and death, and if left unchecked, irregular heartbeat can also be deadly for the young as well.
Studies have shown that yoga may even reduce irregular heartbeat better than some of the drugs that have been prescribed to treat it, which of course come along with a host of unsavory side effects of their own.
The patients in the study underwent yoga practices that involved meditation, breathing exercises and typical yoga exercises which involve a great deal of stretching poses and controlled, focused breathing and relaxation techniques.
Not only did they report about half the incidents of irregular heartbeat episodes, but they also noted that the exercise regimen seemed to greatly decrease their depression and anxiety that is typically related to an irregular heartbeat.
Heart monitors were attached to the patients and detected such significant changes and improvements in their heart rates and regularity that the study’s author is now recommending yoga as part of a treatment regimen in irregular heartbeat patients.
This is great news considering a great deal of the treatment options had to do with drugs and invasive procedures!
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Tagged as: anxiety, atrial, beat, breathing, depression, exercise, fibrulation, heart, improvement, irregular, meditation, reduction, stress, stretching, yoga -
Apr 2
I was shocked to read that a lot of childhood allergies and asthma attacks are due to an allergy to something that you would certainly hope no young children would be coming in close contact with – cockroaches!
Just the mere mention of their name makes one get the heebeejeebees. Or maybe that’s just me, but cockroaches have a nasty reputation as being a dirty, pesty insect that can grow very large, and is often attracted to uncleanly places.
Of course, that’s not always a fair stereotype, since you can be the best housekeeper in the world, keep your food cleaned up at all times, and still get these major pests.
In fact, cockroach allergies in children were the biggest reason for asthma hospitalizations this past year! Talk about eye opening, I never had a clue that this allergy existed. We talk about herbal remedies for asthma which help open up the airways and also help to defend against the body’s reaction to certain allergens, and I had never heard of this particular cause of asthma before.
Children allergic to cockroaches don’t even need to come in to direct contact with the insect to experience the effects of the allergic response and to get an asthma attack. Cockroach excrement and debris are actually light enough to be lifted into the air, and to be inhaled.
When they are inhaled, especially in a small, poorly ventilated room (often times bedrooms are the culprit), they cause an immune response which can trigger an asthma attack in the child.
Often times cockroach allergies are some of the more severe, and this is why this type of allergic reaction and ensuing asthma attack results in emergency room visits. Children can be tested for this allergy by taking them to an allergy specialist, who can do a skin test to determine if that is the cause.
Herbal asthma remedies can really help a child or an adult with asthma to breathe more easily and to de-constrict those bronchial passages for easier breathing.
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Mar 31
Exercise, I am convinced, is the single most important factor in my own personal life, for reducing stress and anxiety. I have been under a ton of pressure at work lately, and the stress I feel really has boiled over into my life outside of work, I’m sort of ashamed to say.
While I was always able to keep my work and personal life separate and leave my problems “at the office”, this time it’s just been different, and the troubles that I felt during the day at work followed me home at night.
So much so, that I actually started logging on to work a lot in the evening from home, just so I could not tear my hair out the next day under all the demands being thrown at me rapid fire from the various business groups I work with.
It was the only way I had to cope. And guess what? When my stress levels were their highest, I stopped going to the gym at work on my lunch so that I could work straight through my lunch. This only compounded my stress more, and even lead me to have some instance to rapid heartbeat and panic attacks.
I knew that I was actually compounding the stress by not going to the gym and working during that time instead, but I felt I had no choice and that I really had to do it. The fact of the matter is, I was probably making myself a less productive person by working instead of going to the gym in the end.
I realized once I started getting that workout in during the day, that I was actually able to focus more, I was able to control my responses to stress better, and I was also able to control the way I dealt with demanding people better as well, whereas I felt like I might explode on them before.
Exercise also helps you to regulate your breathing better, which means that you can also control your heart rate and your physical responses to stressful situations.
Exercise is excellent for reducing stress and anxiety because it reduces the hormones ciruclating in the body, and balances the hormones that are supposed to always be kept in balance as well. Also, by working out, you literally “work out” your stress issues.
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