Preventing Injury in the Garden

With the late start to the summer, I have noticed an influx of gardening injuries amongst patients recently. The May long weekend marked the beginning of sprains and strains related to the multitude of hours spent hunched over in the garden picking weeds and digging.

These forms of injuries are very preventable, by simply warming the muscles up and stretching before we spend hours straining the body! We cannot demand the body to support us in the same position for prolonged periods of time.

If you are planning to spend some serious time in your garden, which can mean longer than 30 minutes, be sure to warm up your body by walking for 10-15 minutes. Once your body is warmed up, begin by stretching the large muscle groups that will be providing the power for these tasks. This includes muscles of the low back, upper back, neck, legs, and arms. As you can see, gardening recruits most of the body!

While gardening, be sure to keep your knees bent and back as straight as possible. Always check how heavy you are lifting, and always keep the load close to your body. When moving around in the garden, try to pivot your feet and avoid twisting your body especially when carrying a load! Avoid heavy lifting immediately after prolonged bending or kneeling. When the load becomes too heavy, be sure to ask for some help! Do not take on too much.

One of the most important things to do when gardening is to stand up, change positions and move every 10-15 minutes! It is easy to get caught up while your knees are bent and you are hunched over reaching in to the garden. Your muscles, tendons and joints do require some breaks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Whole Body Approach

Whether you are considering loosing weight, becoming more fit, or just ameliorating your lifestyle and managing your stress – you must consider all aspects of your health. There are so many diets, workout regimes (boot camps and online DVDs) to consider but it really comes down to a whole body approach and a commitment. Nutrition, activity and a well-balanced lifestyle are essential to the success you are looking to achieve.

For the month of May, I have gathered a great team at High Point Wellness Centre to highlight the total body approach to health. I have called this the ‘Be Well Spring Lecture Series’, which will be held each Tuesday evening and speakers will include a registered dietician, well-experienced personal trainer, a chiropractor and myself highlighting the various approaches to health.

Nutritional support is vital for essential health. This means a balance of food groups, and not necessarily eliminating components unless you experience allergies or sensitivities. Tanya Giaquinto, RD will highlight “Eating on the Go”, and will explain how to include those essential nutrients in to your daily meals.

In our incredibly demanding society we are often searching for quick ways to loose weight and gain muscle mass. An important component of this is physical activity.  In May, Katarina Simons will highlight the Essential 20 minute workout. You will be surprised! There are many quick ways to fit workouts in to your day. For example, you can work your core as you prepare dinner by contracting your abdominals, and repeat squats as you bend to pick something up from the floor, or as you wait for hot water to boil.

When we begin to feel the spring weather we are motivated to improve our health and how we feel about ourselves. I encourage you to visit our free lectures being held in May each Tuesday evening to get the details from trained health care professionals.

Baked Kale Chips

1 bunch of Kale

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Line a non-insulated cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and hear into bite size pieces.  Wash thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner.  Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoning salt.

3. Bake until the edges are brown but are not burnt, 10 to 15 minutes.

Printed from Allrecipes.com

BANANA BREAD OR MUFFINS

Yield:  12 slices

3 large well-ripened bananas

2 tablespoons oil, preferably canola

1 egg

1/3 cup milk

1/3 to ½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon of baking powder

1 ½ cups of flour, preferably ½ whole wheat and ½ white

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mash bananas with a fork
3. Add egg, oil, milk, sugar, baking soda and baking powder.  Beat well.
4. Gently blend the flour into the banana mixture and stir for 20 seconds, or until moistened.
5. Pour into a 4” x 8” loaf pan that has been lightly oiled, treated with cooking spray or lined with wax paper.
6. Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean.
7. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pan.

Nutrition Info:

Total calories:  1600

Calories per slice:  135

Nancy Clark, MS, RD “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, Second Edition”

www.nancyclarkrd.com

Humor and sleep. Reducing Stress

In my previous two blogs of this series, I reviewed coping strategies for stress that included decreasing your caffeine intake, regular exercise, and relaxation or meditation on a regular basis. In the last blog of this series, I will introduce two other strategies, humor and sleep, that can assist in the management of stress on a daily basis.

How often do you find yourself laughing each day? Did you know that humor has the ability to reduce your stress? Laughter can assist in relieving tension, and changing the chemical reactions in your mind. Humor can add positivity to your day and ease a challenging situation. Remember that humor is an individual thing, and what is funny to one person may be offensive to another.

An important component to our daily function is sleep, which is important for our daily stress control. We all know that being well rested allows us to enjoy life much more. Chronic stress and fatigue are closely intertwined, as coping with stress is more difficult when you’re tired. This dynamic can create a vicious cycle. Often stress can prevent us from sleeping at night, and so the cycle continues indefinitely. The issue is having enough resilience to stress, which typically waivers with lack of sleep. It is essential to identify how much sleeping you are obtaining on a regular basis, whether you are waking up at night and if you feel rested or tired in the morning. It is also imperative to be aware of what your usual sleep requirement is, which ranges from 6 – 10 hours. The majority of our population is sleep deprived, and Canadians are considered to be a population with a significant amount of commuting and Internet use which absorb our time.

In order to address your sleep patterns and quality of sleep, attempt to get to bed 30 – 60 minutes earlier and monitor how you feel after a few days or a week. Play around with the times, and add 15-20 minutes as you go. The criteria for successful sleep are waking up feeling refreshed and good daytime energy.

The weekend can pose a challenge to our sleep patterns since we often take advantage of the mornings and sleep in. Some individuals are sensitive to this change and sleeping in too long can throw off regular sleeping rhythms. A similar issue arises with power naps, where a short sleep (under 20 minutes) can be beneficial and anything longer can hinder sleep patterns. Remember that sleep is key in your ability to manage stress and help you cope better.

I encourage you to choose 3 stress management techniques from the ones I have addressed and challenge yourself to implement them in to your daily routine. Actively, you can learn to control your mind and make a difference in the type of response that your body has to the stressors in your life.

I would like to remind you that On Wednesday, March 30, High Point Wellness Centre, along with the Psychiatry Department of the University of Toronto, the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, the Workplace Safety & Prevention Services and Your Workplace is holding a half-day Mental Fitness Summit. We are facing situations that require more stamina and are more stressful than ever before. Stress unto itself is not bad. It’s how we handle it that matters. This summit will help us learn how to harness stress in a way that will make us even more effective in our roles. The final session will be led by . He will address the issue of evaluating not only our individual performance but our team’s performance as well, which will be entertaining as well informational.

Coping With Stress Part 2

In the continuation of my four part series regarding stress reduction, I will address two additional concepts you can incorporate into your lifestyle and utilize to change your stress behavior.

The first concept I will address is one of my favorites, exercise as a stress coping mechanism. In order to comprehend the effects of exercise on the body, it is important to appreciate the effects of the stress response.

We have triggers, such as work or road rage, that trigger our response however stress is actually the body’s reaction to these factors. Stress is the fight-or-flight response in the body that is mediated by adrenaline and other stress hormones. This response leads to physiological changes such as an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, faster breathing rate, an increase in muscle tension, dilated pupils, a dry mouth and increased blood sugar. These changes occur in order for the body to defend itself against danger and are self-protective. The concern is that our modern day stressors do not require us to run away from danger. The body goes in to a state of high energy in order for us to deal with stress however, this excess energy will not be utilized to combat with the demanding boss or frustration with children.

Exercise is a very effective way to dissipate the excess energy from your stress response. Exercise performed on a regular basis can help limit ongoing stress. I recommend physical activity at least every other day, if not each day, for a minimum of 30 minutes each time. Aerobic activities are what you should be aiming for, such as walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, racquet sports, and classes at the gym or dancing. Be sure to choose activities you like otherwise they will feel like a mundane routine and you will not maintain them. Choose to have some variety in your exercise regime, and participate in some of these activities with a friend because we all know that a buddy system promises commitment.

An alternative to reducing stress is to participate in hobbies or activities that are relaxing, or to practice meditation. Through these practices, you are reversing the physiological response to stress, which causes the pulse rate to slow, blood pressure to decrease, breathing rate to slow and muscles to relax. Our bodies are accustomed to launching a stress response, but our bodies have also inherited the ability to achieve a state of relaxation.

We all know this is easier said than done, which is why we must intentionally activate this response. This can be done through a variety of ways, such as learning a specific skill set through formal training courses such as meditation. Some can activate a relaxation response by sitting quietly by a fireplace, lying on a hammock and other restful activities.  In some cases, books and relaxation tapes can be used or attending courses or meditation classes can assist with this process. Many of my patients report feeling relaxed after participating in a yoga class, which is accessible in the community.

Remember that on days when exercise is not possible, relaxation techniques are an excellent way to decrease your body’s stress level. By fitting in as little as 20 minutes once or even twice per day, you can gain significant benefits by reducing the amount of stress hormones in your body.

I would like to remind you that on Wednesday, March 30, High Point Wellness Centre, along with the Psychiatry Department of the University of Toronto, the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, the Workplace Safety & Prevention Services and Your Workplace is holding a half-day Mental Fitness Summit. We are facing situations that require more stamina and are more stressful than ever before. Stress unto itself is not bad. It’s how we handle it that matters. This summit will help us learn how to harness stress in a way that will make us even more effective in our roles. The final session will be led by Michael “Pinball” Clemons. He will address the issue of evaluating not only our individual performance but our team’s performance as well, which will be entertaining as well informational.

Stress and Our Health

This is part one in a four part series on stress

We all know that stress is a significant contributor to poor health in our society. It can underlie as many as 70-80% of all visits to family physicians. It is a recurring theme in many of our lives that can be addressed and handled much better on an individual basis. There exist various manifestations of stress, and it can also contribute to existing conditions that we have been diagnosed with, such as heart disease.

Stress affects the physical, mental, and emotional components of our lives.

The causes of stress can be considered in two general groups; external and internal. External stressors can include lost employment, moving homes, getting sick, a death in the family or constant criticizing.

However, a lot of the stress that we have is actually self-generated which means it is internal. The way we react to our external stimuli guides the majority of our upsets. This means that since we cause much of our own reaction to stress, we can definitely do something about it to reduce our response. Remember that you are able to choose and control your internal reactions much more than the outside situations that occur.

In this four part series about stress reduction, my basic premise is that in order to master stress, you must change your reaction to it. You must identify what you are doing that is contributing to your problem and change it. These changes fall into four categories: change your (1) behavior, (2) your thinking, (3) your lifestyle choices and/or (4) change the situations you are in. When we identify the root cause of our stress, we can decrease our current stress levels and prevent the recurrence of the same stressor.

I will address various ways to cope with stress, and simply remind you of the small things you can do on a daily basis to modify your stress response.

Lets consider a small change such as modifying your caffeine intake because we all know we turn to it on a daily basis. Simply decreasing or even discontinuing your caffeine intake is such a simple approach and yet so effective. We often do not realize that caffeine is a strong stimulant that actually generates a stress reaction in the body. Common examples of caffeine include coffee, chocolate, cola, and tea.

The optimal way to feel the effect of caffeine is to remove it from your system long enough and observe whether there is a difference in how you feel. You may notice that you feel more relaxed, less jittery or nervous, sleep better, may have more energy, and other systemic effects such as a decrease in heartburn. When you attempt this change, be sure to gradually decrease your caffeine intake to avoid withdrawal headaches.

I would like to remind you that on Wednesday, March 30, High Point Wellness Centre, along with the Psychiatry Department of the University of Toronto, the Centre for Health & Safety Innovation, the Workplace Safety & Prevention Services and Your Workplace is holding a half-day Mental Fitness Summit.

We are facing situations that require more stamina and are more stressful than ever before. Stress unto itself is not bad. It’s how we handle it that matters. This summit will help us learn how to harness stress in a way that will make us even more effective in our roles. The final session will be led by Michael “Pinball” Clemons. He will address the issue of evaluating not only our individual performance but our team’s performance as well, which will be entertaining as well informational.