Arthritis Treatment Facility

The condition arthritis can be defined as the inflammation of the joints. The major symptoms of arthritis are pain in joints and inflexibility, which usually become intense with age. These are the two most common types of arthritis osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Osteoarthritis is generally caused by normal old age and rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. Other types of arthritis can occur due to uric acid crystals, infections and underlying disease like psoriasis. The pain due to arthritis caused by joint damage. Joints consist of the following parts:

Cartilage

Cartilage is a hard, but smooth coating on the ends of bones, cartilage permits bones of the joint to move smoothly over each other.

Joint capsule

This is a membrane which encloses all the joint parts.

Synovium

This is a thin membrane which lines the joint capsule and produces synovial fluid, which makes the joint slippery and nourishes the cartilage.

The most usual signs and symptoms of arthritis include the joints. Rely upon the type of arthritis, signs and symptoms also include:

Pain
Stiffness
Swelling
Redness

Decreased range of motion


Treatment options:

Medications

The medications used in the treatment of arthritis alter, rely upon the type of arthritis. Normally used arthritis medications contain:

Analgesics

These types of medications help in reducing pain, but these medications do not have any effect on inflammation. Examples are acetaminophen (Tylenol, others), narcotics containing oxycodone (Percocet, Oxycontin, others) and tramadol (Ultram, Ryzolt).

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs treat both pain and inflammation. Over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs include naproxen (Aleve) and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others). Few types of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are accessible only by prescription. Oral nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can cause stomach problems like irritation, and few may enhance the risk of heart attack and stroke. Some nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are also accessible as creams and gels, which can massage on joints.

Counterirritants

Few types of creams and ointments which contain menthol or capsaicin, these ingredients make hot peppers spicy. Massaging these preparations on the skin over the aching joint may obstruct the transmission of pain signals from the joint itself.

Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs

Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs are often used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs decrease or stop the immune system from attacking the joints. Examples are hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) and methotrexate (Trexall).

Biologics

These are commonly used in combination with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, biologic response modifiers are genetically made drugs that aim many protein molecules that are included in the immune response. Examples are infliximab (Remicade) and etanercept (Enbrel).

Corticosteroids

This type of drug, includes cortisone and prednisone, and decreases inflammation. Corticosteroids can be used orally or also used in the form of injections directly into the painful joint.

Therapy

Physical therapy can be effective for some types of arthritis. Exercises can improve the motion and strengthen the muscles surrounding joints.

Surgery

If other treatment options do not work so surgery is the only cure.

Joint replacement

In this procedure doctors remove the damaged joint and replaces it with an artificial joint. Joints of hips and knees are most commonly replaced.

Joint fusion

This procedure is common for smaller joints like joints in the wrist, joints in the ankle and fingers. It usually removes the ends of the two bones in the joint and then fix those ends together until they heal into one stiff unit.

Home remedies


Weight loss

Losing weight will decrease the stress on the weight-bearing joints. This may enhance the mobility and prevent future joint injury.

Exercise

Exercising can help in keeping joints flexible. Swimming is usually a good choice because the buoyancy of the water decreases stress on weight-bearing joints.

Heat and cold

Heating pads or ice packs may help in reducing arthritis pain.

Assistive devices

Using walkers, raised toilet seats and other assistive devices can help in protecting the joints and enhance the ability to perform daily tasks.

Aerobic Activity For Muscle Tone

Aerobic activity is very different from other kinds of exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and weight lifting. Those exercises have their place, but their value is limited because they only target a few muscles. They build bulk especially on the arms and chest, and they make you look very impressive, but what about the heart, the lungs, and the digestive core muscles?

If you do weight lifting (as I also do), I hope that's not all you do. If done alone without aerobic activity, muscle-building exercises can actually be harmful because they increase the number of muscle cells without increasing the capacity of the heart and lungs to supply those new muscle cells with the oxygen they need. As a result, some impressive body builders die prematurely of heart failure.

In order for aerobic activity to be effective, there must be sustained physical exertion that makes you breathe hard over a sustained period of time. Body building exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, and weight lifting make you breath hard, but they don't last long. When you lift weights (depending on how much you lift), you can exhaust yourself in less than a minute. As a result your arm and chest muscles are developed, but your heart and lungs are not. Your arms are stronger, but in normal activity you are more fatigued because your heart and lungs have to work overtime.

Aerobic Activity for an extended period of 20 to 30 minutes (the more the better) forces the heart to tone itself and grow new tissue so that it can deliver more oxygen enriched blood with less effort. The lungs are conditioned to expand to a greater capacity so that the body can assimilate more oxygen. Blood vessels expand and become more elastic and reduce the build up of plaque so that there is less resistance to the work of the heart and the flow of blood. The body even grows new blood vessels between the muscle fibers so that oxygen can be delivered more efficiently to the muscles and to other tissues. The result is less fatigue and perhaps even more years added to a person's life.

Different forms of aerobic activity tend to target and tone different areas of the body. Cycling and walking are especially good to tone and strengthen the leg muscles. Canoeing and swimming are especially good to strengthen and tone the arms and the upper body. I like jogging because it tones everything. But whatever type of aerobic activity you choose, it will bring benefit to every muscle and every system and every tissue because aerobic activity will optimize the blood-oxygen supply of the entire body.

There are all kinds of aerobic activity to choose from - biking, jogging, canoeing, or swimming, just to name a few. If you find an activity that you like, you might not even realize that you are working! I recommend doing some kind of aerobic activity three or four times a week that raises your heart rate to about 150 beats per minute for about 30 minutes each session. If you are not accustomed to aerobic activity you will want to start out slow at first and eventually work up to that goal. It will be hard at first, but eventually your efforts will reward you with rich results. Who knows? You might be adding time to your life every time you exercise.

Aerobic Activity For Healthy Body Tissue

Aerobic activity is necessary to grow, repair and maintain healthy body tissue. Every cell in your body is constantly at work. Before you were born your body was producing new cells at the rate of 15,000 each minute, and eventually you reached a total of 50 trillion cells (assuming that you are a normal-sized adult). New cell material is constantly replacing old and damaged material. The effects of aging appear when the cells are not able to reproduce themselves fast enough to repair damaged body tissues.

Every tissue in your body is made up of specialized cells for specific bodily functions. Each specialized cell is a sophisticated factory that performs very complex functions as it processes nutrients and minerals to produce new cell material, and for this process there must be an abundant supply of oxygen. Oxygen and nutrients must arrive at the cells in correct proportions. Without enough oxygen to assimilate them, nutrients cannot be processed and will be eliminated from your system unused. Aerobic activity helps your body to optimize its oxygen intake so that there will always be an ample supply to assimilate its nutrition.

Without aerobic activity your body's oxygen supply is depleted. Minerals and nutrition in your system will be wasted, leading to premature aging. Ligaments turn weak and are easily torn. Muscles turn lax and fill with fat. Bones become brittle. Both the blood and the bones need an abundant supply of calcium, but the blood needs it more. If the blood is not able to assimilate enough calcium from its nutrition because of an inadequate oxygen supply, the blood will actually steal the calcium it needs from the bones, making them fragile and leading to osteoporosis.

Since aerobic activity tends to optimize the oxygen supply of the entire body, there is no tissue in the body that does not benefit. Of course, no amount of aerobic activity can completely stop the process of natural aging, but the enriched oxygen supply produced by aerobic activity can, in most cases, slow the aging process down considerably. And in some cases, the deteriorating effects of aging can be reversed. Increased oxygen can tone muscles and make them lean and more elastic. An adequate oxygen supply can optimize the body's ability to absorb nutrition and minerals like calcium so that the blood doesn't have to steal minerals from the bones. The result can be greater bone density.

Have you ever heard of a hyperbaric chamber? A person is sealed into a hyperbaric chamber which is filled with pure oxygen, and the pressure is increased to two or three times the normal level. Pure oxygen under high pressure saturates the body. This stimulates the body to repair damaged tissues very quickly. Some hospitals put patients into these hyperbaric chambers after surgery to greatly speed the rate of healing, and it also reduces the danger of infections. Some professional football teams use these hyperbaric chambers to make their injured players heal much more rapidly.

Unfortunately, most people can't afford a hyperbaric chamber of their own. And even if they could, spending your whole day inside a hyperbaric chamber is a bit impractical. Although aerobic activity cannot match the performance of a hyperbaric chamber which feeds pure oxygen to the body under high pressure, aerobic activity does enhance the body's oxygen supply to some degree, and this promotes the healing of body tissue much better than an inactive person with a depleted oxygen supply.

Acupuncture and Thyroid Health

Acupuncture and Thyroid Health - How to Treat Thyroid Disease Using Chinese Medicine

Chances are that you've heard of the thyroid gland. Any idea what it does? The primary role of the thyroid gland is in regulating metabolism but it also plays a role in maintaining the proper balance of calcium levels in the body. The thyroid gland is composed of two separate lobes located on either side of the windpipe below the voice box. Each lobe is made up of two different types of tissue, the follicular cells and the parafollicular cells. A majority of the tissue is composed of the follicular cells which produce the iodine containing hormones T4 and T3. The parafollicular cells produce a hormone called calcitonin.

The T4 and T3 hormones produced by the follicular cells are important hormones in the body that regulate metabolism, promote protein production and govern oxygen use in the hard working cells of the body. Metabolism is the process by which the cells release and utilize energy from nutrients to make proteins and other components the cells can use to function or grow. Without the proper levels of T4 and T3, the cells cannot function at an optimal level and metabolism is increased (hyperthyroidism) or decreased (hypothyroidism). Calcitonin produced by the parafollicular cells works with another chemical, parathyroid hormone, to balance calcium levels in the body. As is often the case in the human body, the activity of the thyroid gland is regulated by the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) from the pituitary gland.

How can this small gland around your neck affect your health? Simply put, if the thyroid gland is producing too much or too little T4 or T3, then your body's metabolism will be affected. Diagnosis of thyroid imbalance is usually based on laboratory findings. Typically the levels of TSH are measured but if the levels of either T4 or T3 are off, then your doctor may diagnose you with a thyroid condition. Too much activity and you have hyperthyroidism; too little and you have hypothyroidism. Western treatment usually involves medication such as levothyroxine, a replacement for T4 in the case of an under active thyroid gland or medication, surgery or radiation treatment to calm or remove a hyperactive gland.

Thyroid conditions occur more often in women and often become more evident as they approach menopause unless they have a genetic predisposition to a faulty thyroid. With hypothyroidism, they may have temperature regulation problems and feel cold all the time. Since metabolism is affected, weight gain and fatigue are often noticed as well. The symptoms are opposite with hyperthyroidism. Often anxiety, nervousness, flushing, palpitations, insomnia, weight loss and goiter (an inflamed thyroid gland) are reported.

How can acupuncture help with thyroid conditions? Acupuncture works by balancing the overall system and bringing the over or under active thyroid back to normal working conditions. Endocrine diseases such as this are effectively treated by acupuncture since its relaxing effect has an impact on brain and hormone activity within the body. In addition to treating the thyroid directly, acupuncture is also extremely valuable in its ability to address the uncomfortable symptoms of thyroid disease. A popular treatment for thyroid conditions involves several needles inserted painlessly in the ears. Chinese herbal medicine also seeks to either promote or subdue thyroid function through the use of herbs such as ginseng, mint or ginger.

It is important to mention that the thyroid gland is dependent on iodine for its function, a nutrient that is sometimes lacking in the typical American diet. Supplementing the diet with sea vegetables, like seaweed, or a sea salt containing iodine can help promote healthy thyroid gland function. In the case of hypothyroidism, it must be remembered that taking a medication such as levothyroxine that contains synthetic T4 to make up for a natural deficiency, will cause the body to adjust its own levels of TSH or the thyroid hormones. This can lead to a rapid switching of hormone levels and further side effects. If medication or surgery doesn't appeal to you, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine is a natural way to maintain a functioning thyroid gland and may be effective in helping you treat and manage your condition.

10 Raw Foods and Drinks That Help Treat Asthma

One of the most common disease that affect people from all ages is asthma. Asthma basically targets the air passages which are responsible for bringing oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from the lungs. When asthma attacks, the interior walls of these airways become swollen, thus, making it hard for a person to breathe. This swelling or inflammation is more likely caused by free radicals and allergens that a person may have inhaled.

Asthma can cause serious discomfort. If you have asthma, you will know how difficult it is to deal with this kind of recurring respiratory disease. The worst thing about asthma is that is not completely curable. This means that once you have been diagnosed with this disease, it can accompany you through your whole life. Though asthma cannot be fully treated, you can do many ways to manage it.

There are many preventive measures that you can do in order to lessen asthma attacks. One of these measures is to have a balanced, healthy diet. The good thing is that there are various kinds of foods that can help you with your asthma problem. If you want to fight asthma, then you better add these raw foods and drinks that help treat asthma to your daily meal:

Honey is one of the greatest foods that you can find out there. It contains a lot of vitamins and minerals that can help boost your health. Honey is also rich in anti-oxidants and anti-bacterial contents which help ward off those allergens that may be causing the asthma attacks.

Garlic, onion and ginger are common household spices which are nutritionally rich. It is widely used as an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory agent. To reduce the occurrence of asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases, you should add garlic to your food recipes or eat it as is if you can take its raw taste.

Fish has plenty of natural oils such as Omega-3 fatty acids. This kind of oil is healthy and is a great anti-inflammatory agent. Consuming right amount of Omega-3 is good for the health, especially for the heart.

Fruits are delicious and highly nutritious. When you eat fruits, not only can you lessen asthma attacks, but you are making your body a whole lot healthier. If you are asthmatic, consider consuming lots of fruits, especially those rich in Vitamin C.

Green leafy vegetables can do your body good. The vitamins and minerals that you can get from eating this type of vegetable can help in regulating the flow of circulatory and respiratory systems. It also reduces inflammation caused by asthma attacks.

Carrots are rich in beta-carotene which is one kind of antioxidant that helps protect the body from free radicals. This beta-carotene, when converted to Vitamin A can also supply the body with benefits such as good eyesight.

Grains, beans and nuts contain a high magnesium levels which is a necessary element that helps lighten up asthmatic condition. So if you have asthma, maintain a high level of magnesium to help ward off severe attacks. Also remember that foods which undergo minimal process have high level of magnesium than processed foods.

Fresh green tea contains natural compounds that help improve different organs of the body. It works by widening the different passages in the body such as arteries, veins and even the airways. It has been widely used in calming asthma attacks.

Coffee can help in calming a person having an asthma attack. Although caffeine is not seen to be beneficial, it has a similar effect as the medical prescriptions taken by asthmatics.

Water keeps the body fluids flowing. It helps flush away dirt inside the body and lightens up mucus that block the airways. Remember to drink at least eight glasses of water every day to keep your body hydrated.
The best way to fight asthma is to keep your body at the best condition possible. If you consume these anti-asthma raw fo

5 Reasons Why Muay Thai Training Is a Better Workout Than Running

I trained competitively for cross country skiing for 7 years of my life. In those years I did over 500 hours of training every year, many of which were spent running. I have always enjoyed running, but these are some of the things I discovered when I started training muay thai (MT) over 6 years ago.

1) It's more practical. Running can't help you in a self defense situation, unless you run away. MT can most definitely help you in a self defense situation, but not in the way you would expect. The self confidence you develop from training MT will allow you to stay calm in difficult situations. This self confidence will carry over to all areas of your life, making you a happier, more balanced person.

2) It's more fun. Putting long miles on the road can hypnotize you, and is also hard on your joint. Learning MT challenges you mentally as much as physically. It keeps your mind present, teaches your discipline and is a great stress release. Training with a partner and learning new techniques keeps you constantly engaged, there's no time to get bored.

3) It's a more effective fat burner. When I switched over to training MT, I got my body fat as low as 6%. I had never been able to get it below 10% before then. Here's why: although running does burn more calories per workout, training MT gives a metabolic boost that lasts up to 8hrs afterwards, burning calories even while you're sitting! This boost is created by using your whole body and recruiting a greater number of muscle fibers than long steady running.

4) It increases your strength, agility and coordination. Running is good for building cardio, but MT offers a dynamic set of techniques and challenges that you'll never see on a long run. MT pad training combines strength training with cardio, while you have to constantly be aware of your timing, distance and technique. The first time I tried it I was all over the place, and was way weaker than I thought. It left me thinking about the training even after I was finished, and I couldn't wait to train some more, which is something I hadn't felt in a while.

5) It's a better cardio workout. I know, I just said running is good for cardio, and I didn't believe it either. But the first time I tried muay thai I couldn't even get through one round! This is because you only use your legs when running, so your heart only has to pump to your legs. Whereas training MT, you're using your entire body, and this constant shock keeps your heart pumping blood to your whole body. Since the body wants to minimize this shock the next time it happens, it increases the volume of oxygen in your blood, giving you even better cardio in less time!

3 Ways to Eliminate Stress Easily

Stress is the primary effect of handling too much pressure. Most of the people are experiencing stress everyday in doing their daily activities. You must be aware that stress is not good for you; therefore you must give remedy to it.

It is hard to deal with stress when you get used to it. You sometime ignore it, knowing that you can handle it. Nevertheless, you did not notice that the effect of stress is cannot be only felt emotionally but also, it can be shown physically. A stressed person is dull. You will see the age of a stressed person since handling too much stress will make you look old. Stressed person is comparable to a withered flower. Even if it still smells good but it appears to be ugly on our sight.

Dealing with stress is the best thing to do for you able to avoid those unwanted effects. In fact, there are different kinds of treatments and it's on you how to fit your schedules or capabilities on such treatments.

Here are the 3 ways in eliminating stress easily.

1. You can deal with stress by simply managing your time. Time management is the best way to overcome stress because the time has a lot of things to do in giving loads on your duties. Doing a plan will give you a path on what to do on that specific time. In that case, you will avoid stress since your mind is at peace knowing that you have set your tasks and activities accordingly for today.

2. You can avoid stress by taking a rest. Having a break is one of the most important things to do in avoiding stress because you will have a time to relax and clear your mind. Stress is all about the mentality of a person, therefore we must find a way how to rest our mind and have a break for thinking. There are different ways how to acquire the rest for your mind, you can watch movies, listen to music, and to nap or sleep.

3. You can avoid stress by taking medicine or supplements. There are different kinds of medicine that can solve your stressfulness. However, before taking any medicine for stress, you must ask help or advices from experts so that it wouldn't harm you.

Dealing with stress is just easy to do, you just have a focus and control to yourself. Healthy lifestyle must be acquired to that you won't become easily stress and can handle much things without being stress.