Exercise Mistakes

You might be just a beginner or may be experienced in your exercise regimen, but there are many mistakes most of us make while workout. These mistakes become a part of our exercise routine like bad habits, and can lead to injury, joint pain and delayed or no results. In order to get maximum benefit out of the hard work you put in during exercise to remain fit, it is very important that you identify problem areas.

Avoiding the Warm Up

Warming up before beginning the strength training or other work out may sound so boring and like a waste of time, but the warm up is a very important part of the exercise regimen, with many benefits. It should be the base of any fitness plan. Warm ups prepare muscles and connective tissue to loosen up and bear with the stress during the exercise. Your muscles work better because of blood flow toward the muscles, giving better results. Joints are lubricated, which decreases the chances of joint pain. If you skip warming up consistently, you are at high risk of injury and delayed result gains.

Always warm up for 8-10 minutes and then jump into your workout. If your body is lightly sweated, you are good to go.

Skipping Cool Down and Stretches

Doing stretching exercises and cooling down is equally important. Stretching and cooling down helps the body change from one exercise to the other.

Cooling down specifically helps transition the body and mind to rest after you have worked. It gradually lowers your heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. The sudden transition of the body from exercising to rest may cause blood pressure to drop, which could cause dizziness or fainting. By properly cooling down you also prevent muscle stiffness or soreness. Cooling down should always be gradual and be done after any exercise or strength training for 10-15 minutes. Keep in mind that stretching is not same as cooling down.

Stretching helps decrease the tension in your body, improves posture and aids coordination. Stretching helps joints and body parts to move further, avoiding the risk of injury or any kind of discomfort. Furthermore, it establishes breathing patterns, delays the onset of muscle fatigue and increases energy levels. Stretching from head to toe when the body is warmed up and more flexible is desirable for maximum benefits. Stretches should be slow, controlled and gradual, avoiding any jerks or bouncy movements. You should have a feeling of a little discomfort while you stretch. If you feel pain, you have stretched too much. You can do stretching exercise 15-18 minutes everyday with each stretching 15-30 seconds

Source: http://www.greendivamom.com/author/savneet/

How Sunlight Affects Skin and Body

The role of sun and its ultra-violet rays is a little more complex than what we think, and it may also give us an insight how do we age. The sun acts sort of like one of the machines that shoots out tennis balls. But the sun’s tennis balls comes in form of ultra-violet rays that are torpedoed down to Earth. Now, one type of ultra-violet rays, UVC, is blocked by the atmosphere before it reaches us, so this type of UV has very little effect. The rays that constantly affect you are the UVB rays and the UVA rays. Blocking all kinds of rays is not possible. UVB rays are stopped at the topmost levels of the skin, but they still penetrate inside and cause burning and skin cancer. They cause tanning as well.


On the other hand, UVA rays penetrate deeply in the skin to cause burns, wrinkles and skin cancer. To top it off, sunlight also destroys the reserves of folic acid, also known as folate or vitamin B9. Folate is required by the body to replicate DNA properly. The rays can also damage the eyes.

The question here is how does sunlight cause damage? One way is through connective tissue breakdown. UV radiation cause the structural protein of our skin, collagen, to break down and disables our ability to repair damage. Another way sun age our skin is through the formation of free radicals, those aggressive charged compounds that damage cells and breakdown collagen as well. Free radicals can cause cancer by changing our DNA and preventing our body from repairing it. UV destroys the rungs of the DNA ladder so that the DNA ladder posts bind with one another. Still another way UV rays cause damage is by thinning the walls of surface blood vessels, leading to bruising, bleeding and appearance of blood vessels through the skin.

But, the flip side is that we also really need UV rays. Natural sunlight creates active vitamin D, which we need for bone health, since it helps to regulate calcium. It helps to ensure the proper function of the heart, nervous system, clotting process and immune system. That is significant because thousand of cancer deaths a year are linked to insufficient UVB exposure and subsequent deficiency of active vitamin D. UVB activates vitamin D from cholesterol. That is the reason why cholesterol levels go high in the winter. In winter there is not much sunlight, so you don’t have enough active vitamin D, therefore your body pumps up your cholesterol in the hope of converting as much as possible to active vitamin D. This serves as another example of an evolutionary trade off between procreation and higher levels of cholesterol. So how strong we look, can be felt by high LDL, cholesterol and consequent heart disease and stroke.

Also, have a look at this fact: if you have low level of UVB penetration, then you need more cholesterol, which can be more readily converted to vitamin D. In this setting of low sun exposure, a substance called Apo E4 rises to help create more cholesterol and subsequent vitamin D. Apo E4 elevations of cholesterol lead atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s later in life. Those of us, whose ancestors lived in the areas with high UVB rays were not so plentiful evolved to have less melanin in our skin to allow all those UVB rays to get through, but if skin color is too light or too much sunlight enters the cells, then folate level plummet. Without protection from those nutrients, other neurological symptoms increase in people and their offspring are prone to neural tube defects.

Basic Foot Care

If your feet could speak, they would probably complain that they do not get proper care and attention. So what do we do to keep them in tip-top shape? If you treat your feet with tender loving care and they will reward you with years of diligent, pain-free service. Just follow simple steps for happy, healthy feet forever.

Wash your feet daily. Make sure to clean between the toes and under the nails. Completely dry your feet after bathing. Dry the places between toes too. Damp feet are breeding ground for bacteria and odor.
To help prevent dry, cracked foot skin, massage a good thick lotion into your feet before you dress and again when you go to bed.
Add a little foot powder to your shoes each day to help absorb perspiration.
Wear fresh socks or hosiery daily.
Cut your toenail straight across to help avoid ingrown toenails. Afterward, smooth nail edge with an emery board or nail file.
Inspect your feet daily for blisters, corns, swelling. calluses or other any other problems. Get appropriate treatment. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Source: http://www.greendivamom.com/author/savneet/
Give your shoes a rest. Alternating pairs allows shoes to completely dry out and give the padding time to return to its normal shape. This makes shoes last loonger and keeps your feet healthier.
Drink lots of water.
Give yourself a weekly feet treatment. Massage your feet with warmed oil mixed with a few drops of essential oil of lavender, eucalyptus, or peppermint to de-stress and relax your sore feet.

If you are overweight, lose some pounds. Excess weight adds enormous pressure to your feet.

Walk, walk, walk.