Best wishes
Erika Yigzaw
CIO
The American College of Healthcare Sciences (ACHS), based in Portland, Oregon, is a leader in holistic health education. We are accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) and state licensed by the Oregon Department of Education. ACHS, founded in 1978, is one of the oldest and most respected distance education natural health colleges, offering flexible online programs, a highly qualified faculty, and a diverse student body.
Remind Yourself of Your Goals - Start thinking about why you started exercising in the first place and what the end results will be. Do you want to lose a certain amount of weight? Get more toned? Have more energy? A quick reminder of why exercise is important to you can be just the motivation that you need to seek out another set of reps.
Plan on Reducing Your Workout – If you feel that you won’t have the energy to do your complete routine, tell yourself that you will just do half of the work out. If you usually jog four miles, plan on just doing two. If you are weight-training that day, focus on just doing the compound exercises while leaving out the isolation exercises. Once you get going, you might discover that you actually have the energy to do your full workout.
Don’t Go Next Time - Give yourself permission to skip the next work out but not this one. If the next work out rolls around and you still don’t feel like going, you actually might be doing yourself some good by skipping it. Feeling consistently turned off by exercise is usually a sign of overtraining, and giving your body more time to rest can actually help you reach your fitness goals faster.
The trickiest part of any exercise plan is motivation. You can know all of the exercises and the proper techniques, but if you aren't inspired enough to get to the gym, it won’t do you much good. Figure out what motivates you most, and make sure that you use that motivation to hold yourself accountable for regular physical activity. I'm not opposed to an occasional self-bribe either. It goes something like this, "If I workout at least 4 times this week, I'm going to treat myself to a spa pedicure next Friday after work." Just make sure that your rewards are not food-based, and you'll be good to go.
For similar articles about natural health and fitness, click here.
Posted to Ode by Amber O’Neal. Reprinted 4/29/09 from the Sustainlane website: http://www.sustainlane.com/reviews/when-you-just-don%27t-feel-like-working-out/D4432QHN7TYBC8QUMAV2PVQPV9JZ
BY: Dorene Petersen, ACHS President
Plants provide us with a rich array of therapeutic ingredients known as active constituents. Many aromatic plants are packed with specialized cells containing essential oils, as well as other constituents that provide healing qualities. Usually these aromatic materials are distilled, which releases the essential oil from the specialized cells.
Distilling essential oils requires specialized equipment. For this reason, most people are not able to distill their own essential oils at home. However, infused oils are a good alternative. Though less concentrated than essential oils, infused oils require much less botanical material than distillation and are well suited for making massage oils, as well as culinary and bath oils.
To make infused oils for personal use at home, you need very little equipment. To prepare an infused oil, you heat a base oil with your botanical material (or herb) over hot water. It is important to pick the best base oil for your infusion, because many base oils have active constituents that can enhance the therapeutic benefits of the infusion you are making.
Base oils, also called fixed oils, are made primarily from the seeds or fruits of plants. Unlike essential oils, however, base oils are non-volatile. (Essential oils are called “volatile” because they readily vaporize when heated at a low temperature; base oils — like almond or avocado oil — do not.)
When making infused oils for personal use, cold-pressed, organic base oils are preferable, because they retain more of their natural elements than heat-extracted oils. Heat destroys antioxidants, which are naturally occurring in oils, and which help prevent the oils from spoiling when they come in contact with air. By contrast, cold-pressed oils already contain vitamin E, a naturally occurring antioxidant that prevents spoiling.
Base oils include:
Menopause is the natural cessation of menstruation and ovulation, which typically occurs in women ages 40-55. Though menopause is sometimes called the “change of life,” it does not have to change your life in a negative way. Rather, there are many natural strategies you can use to make the transition as smooth and health-promoting as possible.
Nutrition is a big part of everyday life and, for that reason, one of the best tools you can use to control any menopause-related symptoms. Once you know how to select foods that will support your body during menopause, you will feel more in control of what your body is experiencing, but you will also be practicing the best medicine possible — prevention.
Menopause is often associated with stressful symptoms like hot flashes, sweating, irritability, depression, and stomach upset. Why is that? Many naturopathic and allopathic doctors attribute menstruation with the ability to eliminate toxins from the body. Once menstruation ends, toxins have to find new channels and can overload other eliminatory channels. When this occurs, physical symptoms of toxicity appear.
Women cannot stop menopause from happening. But, we can ease the transition with a good nutrition program. There has been a lot of research about the role herbs can play in balancing hormones in the body. Plant saponins, such as the diosgenin found in wild yam, cause a mild balancing response by binding directly to hormone receptors. The following herbs contain beneficial saponins: black cohosh, dong quai, elder, ginseng, licorice, passion flower, and wild yam.
In addition, herbs can supply the extra nutrients needed during menopause. Calcium-rich herbs, for example, support bone health and are easy to incorporate into the daily diet via cooked meals or teas, including: alfalfa, cayenne, chamomile, chives, cleavers, dandelion, dill, parsley, plantain, red raspberry, red clover, rosehip, watercress, and yellow dock.
Additional vitamin and nutrient-rich herbs that can ease menopause include:
According to a press release posted March 23 by the American Botanical Council:
On Friday, March 12, ABCNews.com’s Health section published a story on the controversy surrounding detoxification now brewing in the United Kingdom. The American Botanical Council’s Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal is extensively quoted in the article.
The controversy is related to the launch of a new line of herbal products by Duchy Originals, a company that promotes organic and sustainable food production, founded by the Prince of Wales in 1990.1,2 The new herb line, Duchy Herbals, was launched in January 2009.2 So far Duchy Herbals includes an Echinacea-relief tincture (containing the root of Echinacea purpurea), a Hyperi-lift tincture (containing St. John’s wort, Hypericum perforatum), and a Detox tincture containing artichoke (Cynara scolymus) leaf and dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) root.
The ABC News article was stimulated by an article in the UK containing criticism by Prof. Edzard Ernst, MD, PhD, a widely-cited author of clinical trials and systematic reviews on complementary and alternative medicine modalities, of a detox product.
For the sake of perspective, it is constructive to know that the Echinacea-relief and Hyperi-lift tinctures are the first herbal tinctures produced in the United Kingdom to be registered under the Traditional Herbal Products Directive (THMPD), a recent regulation applying to all European states.2 The THMPD allows herbal products to be registered under medicines law. To earn a license a company must submit a complete file to the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) containing extensive evidence of a product’s traditional use, safety, and quality.
However, the detox tincture requires no such licensing from MHRA because it is classified as a food supplement. The “detox” product is intended to aid people in the removal of toxins from their bodies. [...]
The article quotes Blumenthal and Dr. Lee as follows:
Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of the Austin, Texas-based herbal medicine think-tank American Botanical Council, said that part of the thrust behind the detox movement is the idea that the food supply and environment of today expose people to higher levels of chemicals and pollutants than in the past.
"Many people—rationally or irrationally, correctly or not—believe strongly that they must detoxify their bodies to give themselves that extra edge to get rid of [these chemicals]," he said. "There is probably a healthy and rational basis for some of this, though some people take it a bit too far."
And Dr. Roberta Lee, vice chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, said detoxification as a concept may be getting an undeservedly bad rap.
"Detoxification is a natural process that occurs in the body, though it is not labeled as such in the medical profession," she said. "The idea that detox is a silly notion, I think, is a fallacy."
Blumenthal and Lee were further quoted in the article which can be accessed in full here.
1 Childs D. Prince Charles’ herbal products stir controversy. ABCNews.com. March 13, 2009. Available at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/story?id=7071267&page=1. Accessed March 16, 2009.
2 Duchy Originals encourages consumers to adopt an integrated approach to healthcare with launch of duchy herbals [press release]. East Twickenham, London, England: Duchy Originals. January 22, 2009.
© 2009 American Botanical Council: http://cms.herbalgram.org/press/2009/PrinceCharlesDetox.html