Ginger Oil & Its Pain-Relieving Properties for Arthritis

Ginger has been used in Asian medicine for thousands of years. It was written about in Chinese as well as Sanskrit texts, and the Romans and the Greeks had a lot to say about this versatile herb as well. Europeans started to use it as a spice and condiment around the 10th century.

There are over one hundred different forms of arthritis. The most common form, osteoarthritis (degenerative joint disease) is a result of trauma to the joint, infection of the joint, or age. Other arthritis forms are rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and related autoimmune diseases. Septic arthritis is caused by joint infection. People with arthritis have pain

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that’s chronic in nature, and affects not only tissues and joints, but also other organs at later stages of the disease. The exact cause of the disease is yet to be found out, and unfortunately, there is no complete cure for the disease. Medicine and certain lifestyle changes can Arthritis is a condition which is related with the inflammation of joint. Though there are different types of arthritis but all types of arthritis is related with the inflammation of joints. People suffering from this problem have common complaints which include joint pain, swelling and stiffness. The problem of arthritis can be described as the Before we delve into the remedies for arthritis, it’s important to understand the 2 main types of arthritis. There are over one hundred types of arthritis but they all go under the heading of these 2 main branches: This is my burden in life, the main type and the one most often suffered. Osteoarthritis mean

How To Treat It? Foot Arthritis

Foot arthritis could be described as one of the more common forms of arthritis. The problem with the foot is that it consists of twenty-eight bones and thirty joints, of which any are susceptible to arthritis. If arthritis develops in any of these joints, its going to affect the way you walk, run and move in general. The joints in the foot which are more commonly affected are: the big toe, the ankle, the mid foot and the hind foot joint.

The most common form of arthritis which develops in the foot is osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is the result of getting older, and essentially wear and tear on the joints and cartilage. The cartilage wears down, and the bones rub together resulting in pain and swelling.

Please understand the next few paragraphs with care, the situation and the options have a lot of different versions. Traumatic arthritis is a common form of osteoarthritis that develops in the foot of a patient following some form of severe injury. This can develop in the foot even when the injury was treated correctly, and given time to recover fully. The most common forms of traumatic foot arthritis are a torn ligament, broken bone or severe sprain.

There are various symptoms and indications of foot arthritis, which should alert the sufferer to the condition immediately. These symptoms include swelling, tenderness, pain, stiffness and reduced mobility of the affected joint. All these symptoms will eventually lead to a difficulty in walking.

For a doctor to properly diagnose foot arthritis, a serious of tests and physical examinations will need to be performed. The doctor will also require information about your health and lifestyle to give clues on the complexity of the condition. The next step is to perform a walking analysis. In performing this walking analysis, the doctor will measure your stride and test your ankle and foot strength. Certain diagnostic imaging tests may also be required to further diagnose your condition- theses may include and X-Ray, CT or MRI scan.

After fully evaluating your foot arthritis, your doctor/physician will devise the most suitable treatment plan. There are many non-surgical treatments available, these include:

Taking anti-inflammatory medication

Steroid injection

Foot brace or cane usage

Ankle and foot support usage

Physical therapy

The final treatment option is surgery, and is generally reserved as a ‘last resort’ when all other treatment methods have failed. The key to effectively treating arthritis is early diagnosis. Do not ignore those sensations of stiffness and soreness; see a doctor as soon as possible, so that you have the best chance of treating your foot arthritis.

Excellent comment on the subject:

Arthritis is a degenerative condition that can be caused by normal wear and tear on the joints over a long period of time. Eventually joint cartillage can wear down and then you have bone grating on bone, which is very painful. Think of joint cartillage like a brick wall. Your body is the bricklayer, and time is the enemy firing weapons at your wall. Your bricklayer is pretty good at putting up bricks, but he has a very sporadic supply train (blood) giving him replacement bricks and mortar. If there was a way to increase the supply train, your bricklayer would be able to work faster. He’ll never be faster than the enemy, but he can stall defeat. In my clinic we counsel clients theat treatment of arthritis is a three-pronged approach. 1) control pain and inflammation. This is achieved through the use of drugs such as NSAIDS (Rimadyl, Previcox, Deramaxx) or when these drugs become innefective, you can advance to the cortisone drugs. 2) Give the joints what they need to repair themselves (think back to your bricklayer.) This means fortifying his diet with the building blocks of cartillage- glucosamine and chondroitin. Plus, there is exciing new research that an amino acid (chromium ethylester- sold under the brand name Rejuvinate) has a catalytic effect on the glucosamine and chondroitin, making them work even better. 3) Retain muscle mass and range of motion. Mild exercise (several short walks per day- no more than what is comfortable for your dog) is very beneficial in the treatment of arthritis. There are also veterinary physical therapy centers that have underwater treadmills for dogs also, so that they can walk without thier full weight on the joints. Swimming is great, too! At the end of the day, addressing the problem of arthritis from all 3 angles will give yout the best result and make him comfortable for the longest period of time, but ultimately your dog will reach a point where he’s no longer having a good quality of life. No one knows your dog like you, so no one besides you- not even your vet- can know when he’s ready to give up the fight. Best of luck, and my heart goes out to you. IM me if you want any other info. And apologies for the typos- i'm typing with a broken wrist!

Surviving Glycemic Diets (Ketogenic, Low-Carb or Atkins):

1.The first step to living a Glycemic Diet Lifestyle is knowing what you can have, and have lots of. This includes a large variety of vegetables and fruits. The best you can do is eating five vegetable servings of cup per day and four cups of fruits (Please be selective) per day.

2.Remember that eating refined white flour, white potatoes, white rice to your body, is like eating sugar, making a diet high in “White Stuff”, typically, breads, rolls, bagels, pretzels, and crackers made from white flour – a high sugar diet. Whole grains mean extra fiber, which aids in weight loss. Not only does the fiber fill you us quickly with fewer calories, but is also eliminate some of the calories you eat. Fiber can go through the digestive system so quickly that some of the calories never have a chance to actually digest.

3.Try to eat two or three calcium – rich foods every day. Calcium not only supports your bones and helps prevent osteoporosis, but it also helps prevent colon cancer, high blood pressure, and PMS. Calcium may also lower your body fat.

You should read through the next few paragraphs thoroughly, the matter and the fixes have quite a lot of different versions. 4.Beans are the highest-fiber foods you can find, with the exception of breakfast cereals made with wheat bran. Beans are high in soluble fiber, which lowers cholesterol levels, and foliate, which lowers levels of homocysteine, another risk factor for heart disease.


Diets That Work – ‘Burn’ Fat Faster With This Diet – YouTube: Visit: diets that work

5.People who eat nuts regularly have less heart disease and other illness than people who avoid them do. There are compounds found in most nuts called tocotrienols. You just have to limit the amount of nuts that you eat. The best thing to do is to chop your favorite kind, keep them in your fridge and sprinkle two Tablespoons a day on your food.

6.People who east fish twice a week have fewer fatal heart attacks. Fish is rich in Omega-3 fats, which have the ability to prevent the development of a dangerously irregular heartbeat. Fish is a good source of protein, which promotes satiety – the feeling of fullness you look for in a meal.

7.Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day, plus a cup or more of tea. Water is so important to our body. Water also helps to metabolize the fat. Big water drinkers also appear to get less colon and bladder cancer. Every cup of tea you drink provides a strong infusion of anti-oxidants that help keep blood from clotting too easily and that may help lower you risk of cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

8.Try to stay within a healthy fat budget and watch the type of fats you consume. Get most of your fat from Cold Pressed Virgin Olive Oil, Flaxseed Oil, Borage oil or Walnut Oil. You may use Butter and creams for your daily dose of Vitamin E, but remember that you only need a little.

9.What nutrition you cannot get from your foods, you can take in a pill. Just remember to be sensible. Most vitamins won’t dissolve in your stomach, or your intestines. Make sure that your vitamins are food source or they can cause vitamin toxicity in your liver. If you’re eating correctly, non-processed foods being 95% of your diet, then you should be getting all that you need. If you feel you need more nutrition, only take of the amount of vitamins that have been recommended. Remember that your body will store what it does not use, and if it stores too much, you can be asking for trouble.

10.Be careful with the choices you have in your diet. You carry with you a guide for the amount of meat that you should eat in a day. Make of fist and put it down on a piece of paper with the little finger down against the surface. That’s the size of meat that you should be eating in a day. Make sure that your choices in meat are free of other chemicals that can interfere with your health or medication.

D.S. Epperson is the top formulator for Home Blend Gourmet / South Pacific Health, a leader in the functional food industry in the U.S. With twenty years of experience in Nutritional Biochemistry, she has written reference books on botanicals and manufacturing of medicines from botanicals, and published articles on health, fitness and foods. She has formulated over 240 formulas and inventions for health, the environment and agricultural uses, and continues to research and study microbial advantages in nutraceuticals and functional foods. For more information or to view the articles that she has written: http://www.sugarblend.com

What Is Osteoarthritis of the Knee & What Is the Treatment?

Articular cartilage is the gristle that caps the ends of long bones. It consists primarily of a matrix of proteoglycans which are complex arrangements of proteins and glycogen molecules. The proteoglycans exist within a framework of tough collagen fibers. Within the proteoglycan matrix are cells called chondrocytes. These cells are the ones that are responsible for the synthesis of proteoglycans. In fact, the normal maintenance of cartilage integrity is highly dependent on the normal metabolic function of these chondrocytes.

Healthy cartilage can withstand the usual loads that accompany the activities of daily living. Cartilage, when loaded, acts as a shock absorber. It’ll partially deform but springs back to its normal shape under normal circumstances. It also provides a gliding surface which is enhanced by a small amount of synovial fluid, produced by the joint lining, that acts as a lubricant.

This is often really important part of this topic. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease of articular cartilage. It arises as a result of the inability of cartilage to keep up with excessive breakdown. The first step is a disturbance in the matrix. This causes loss of cartilage resiliency. Of course, proteins that promote inflammation (called inflammatory cytokines) are produced by the joint lining. These cytokines activate destructive enzymes, called proteases. The proteases degrade the matrix and cause the chondrocyte to malfunction.

The inflammatory cytokines cause the production of other bad chemicals including nitric oxide and matrix metalloproteinases. These cause further cartilage breakdown.

Over time, cartilage wears away, underlying bone is exposed, and joint deformity occurs. Pain and disability are the end result.

The knee is a particular target of osteoarthritis.

With the aging demographic as well as the increasing incidence of obesity, knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a significant public health problem. Significant disability can result and health care dollars are being spent at an astonishing rate for total knee replacement. The 2003 National Institutes of Health Consensus Statement on Total Knee Replacement estimated that the mean total cost of a knee replacement in the United States was 35,000. That figure is obviously higher now. And the dollar cost doesn’t factor in the potential for complications.

More than half a million knee replacements occur annually and that figure will continue to rise.

Non-surgical treatments by and large are palliative. These include education, weight loss, analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), braces, physical therapy, exercise, and injections of glucocorticoids and viscosupplements (lubricants).

Investigational therapies aimed at either increasing the production of matrix and/or collagen or reducing the amount of inflammatory cytokines are being scrutinized but so far, there is little cause for optimism.

More recently, the use of autologous stem cells, have been shown to have promise for KOA.

(Wei N, et al. Guided mesenchymal layering technique for treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee. J Applied Research. 2011; 11)

Nathan Wei, MD, FACP, FACR is a rheumatologist and Director of the Arthritis Treatment Center http://www.arthritistreatmentcenter.com. He’s a former Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and consultant to the National Institutes of Health. For more info: Arthritis Treatment

If you are a Male You Should Be Concerned :: The Effect of Nicotine

We all know that smoking kills. And we also know that the chemicals that exist in cigarettes such as tar and especially nicotine are the main reason for our smoking addiction. Like most drugs, nicotine stays in the body, even when you’re not smoking.

Beside the normal attributes of nicotine addiction such as high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer there are more disturbing evidence that nicotine contributes to erectile dysfunction. The fact that less blood flows through your body due to blocked arteries, mean less testosterone is produced and the likelihood of erectile dysfunction increases

You should read this short article with care, the matter and the answers have a variety of differences. Nicotine dependency will be directly related to what kind of smoker you’re the longer you smoke and the more you smoke the greater your dependency on nicotine. Those who smoke socially will have nicotine trace in their blood for few days while other heavy smoker can expect the nicotine trace to last for up to thirty day

To accelerate the process of getting rid of nicotine in your blood stream try these few simple steps

Drink plenty of water- water is been known to remove toxin out of your body and it’ll assist in removing nicotine from your blood stream. Take antioxidant and vitamins to try rebuilt and cleanse your body. Exercise, be active your brain will use some of its resources while you’re active leaving fewer resources to peruse the addiction

The good news is that our body is capable of repairing the damage caused by smoking. Once you stop smoking your body will start the healing process, the nicotine will be removed from your blood stream and the addiction will gradually disappear!

If you would like some more information,a place where you can ask a question and get some tips and advice on different methods of giving up smoking please drop by at quit smoking advice.

Here’s How – Quit Smoking

Trying to quit smoking is definitely not one of the easiest things to do in life, some people would rather eat sand than having to go through the withdrawal period. Cigarettes is one of the most socially accepted drugs in most countries, it’s definitely not illegal, it may just be illegal to smoke in certain places, but it’s not a banned drug.

As with everything in life, trying to kick the dirty habit’s all about choice, however, easier said than done as most smokers would say.

Here’s how:

The first thing is to make a conscious decision to quit, not a conscious decision to try to quit. Our brain sometimes does funny things to us and because we sincerely know it would be the right thing to do, we practice a little mercy on ourselves and put the words “will try to quit” in our sub-conscious mind, meanwhile, telling family and friends we’ve decided to quit and then going through the painful, agonising withdrawal period only to relapse. It’s called denial! Take a moment, sit down and have a heart-to-heart with yourself. List the pros and cons of it if you need to see it in black and white. This is also effective in actually helping you to see that there really is no pro’s to it. How can there be when with each puff, you’re hurting yourself and your organs and with secondary smoke, hurting the ones you love most. It starts with a sincere intention which comes from understanding why you need to, not want to, but need to quit smoking, then making the conscious choice to quit, and then comes the hard work by following through on your decision. This is by no means easy so get professional help if you need to. Avoid people, places and things that would normally cause you to light one up. Avoid those three things at the beginning of the process, but manage them at a later stage because you can’t be avoiding the rest of the world nor reality, you’ll encounter smokers at some time or the other during your time of quitting.

Most smokers who finish a packet a day will admit that most of it’s due to habit and not actual craving.

You can only manage what you can control. Monitor yourself when you have a craving. How long does it last? What happens to you during that time? Ask yourself if you’ll be able to manage it when it happens again?

Also, to entertain the thought of a craving is to validate it, so don’t pay too much attention to it, otherwise you’ll find yourself anticipating when the next craving will happen.

It certainly is a process to quit smoking, so be conscious of that, but don’t use it as an excuse to relapse. Relapsing is a choice too.

This is often a very important section of this specific subject. So it really helps to think of the benefits to your organs, especially your lungs, think of all the money you’ll be saving, you’ll be able to taste better, you’ll be increasing your chances of a longer healthier life and of those loved ones around you. The pros of quitting definitely outweighs any craving.

Considering Different Aquaponics Designs Will Make Things Cheaper & Easier

By considering the different aquaponics designs that might suit your needs, you’ll start off on the right foot when starting your own sustainable organic garden. Many people make the mistake of rushing into building an aquaponics system, without fully considering and understanding what makes a system like this work in the first place.

Rushing into a project like this will likely result in higher maintenance and ongoing expenses that can be avoided if you take the time to set up your system properly from the very start. If you’re interested in building a home aquaponics system in the cheapest and most time-efficient manner, then part of your research should include how to use recycled materials, and how to convert household items into usable supplies.

The Most Common Designs Are All Trying To Achieve The Same Thing

Let us go on with this short post. 3 of the most common aquaponics designs that are used to set up a home aquaponics system are elevated grow beds, an aquaponics raft, and a backyard solar pond. Regardless of the basic design that you choose, you really should understand what we’re trying to accomplish first, and then choosing the right set up for your needs will become much easier.

Successful aquaponics is all about biological balance. All of your efforts will be centered on balancing the amount and number of fish, plants, and bacteria – so that each of these parts is in the right proportion to sustain the other two parts.

Aquaponics GA – YouTube
Creating a system that will sustain itself will require effort for the first few weeks and possibly months, but the payoff will be worth your efforts. Sustainable organic gardens can provide vitamins, minerals, and fiber on an ongoing basis that’s more nutrient dense and far cheaper than what you can get in a health food store.

Most of the time, you can create the proper biological balance in an aquaponics system in a week or two. You’ll first condition the water that the plants and fish will live in, by encouraging the growth of healthy bacteria.

By encouraging bacteria to grow in the water, you’ll be reducing the harmful chlorine in the water and creating the fish waste conversion system at the same time. The bacteria will decompose the fish waste and ammonia into usable nitrates that the plants will absorb through their roots. As the plants take up these vital nutrients, they’ll also clean the water for the fish.

Why The Design of the System is Important

The design of the system will ensure that the dirty water is circulated from the fish to the plants, and that the purified water will move from the vegetables back to the fish again. As an example, if you use elevated grow beds, the system will use gravity to drain the water from the vegetation back to where the fish are. This water movement does 2 things. It reduces the pH levels of the water where the fish are, while simultaneously aerating the water for the fish. Both of these processes happen naturally in freshwater rivers and lakes, and that’s why you see so many fish in these places.

The other important consideration when you’re researching which aquaponics design to use, is to determine if you may possibly want to scale up your system at a later date. Many people can envision either increasing the size of their harvests of fresh fish and vegetables, while others hope to grow their system into a commercial aquaponics business.

By taking the time to reflect on your own goals and needs, and by learning about the types of systems that can meet those needs, you’ll be in a much better spot to start building your own aquaponics self-sustaining system.

Robert Alekson has been growing organic fruit and vegetables for over twenty years. If you’re interested in learning more about the different aquaponics designs that you should consider.