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Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

It turns out that you can drink too much water! Hyponatremia, endurance sports and the Kokoda Trail

23 Jun

Bizz Johnson Marathon - Starting LineThere’s always lots of interesting health and science research popping up every few weeks and one of the last ones to catch my attention is a condition called Hyponatremia. Definitely sounds scary and so it should. It’s a serious, life-threatening condition that has come to the attention of the media following several deaths of healthy and fit people on the Kokoda Trail.

When this condition is present during an activity like an ultra-marathon or trekking the Kokoda trail, a person’s sodium level has dropped to a dangerously low level. By drinking way too much water, the sodium levels in the body become diluted and can bring about hyponatremia and its symptoms of nausea, confusion, loss of appetite, lethargy, headache, reduced level of consciousness, seizures or coma.

If you take part in serious endurance activity of any sort where you are worried about dehydration, consider that there is such a thing as having “too much to drink”. Do some research and analysis for yourself to determine how much fluid you need to replace during your activity.?

Part of your recovery

Along with proper nutrition following serious endurance activities, it is important to have a few massages mixed in with light workouts and stretching. Musclefix can provide you with an excellent solution during your recovery. We can come and give you remedial and sports massage as a premium service in your home in the days or weeks of your recuperation. Remedial massage will help to speed up recovery and smooth out micro tears and help with DOMS following your adventure.

For more on Hyponatremia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18333641

 
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Posted in Benefits of Massage Therapy, Fitness, Health, Hyponatremia, Massage Therapy, Remedial Massage

 

Massage in Melbourne – A City Embracing Massage

09 Jun

Melbourne, Australia by nightMelburnians are really taking to massage. It’s no secret that massage is good for you and I could rattle off a dozen health benefits but you probably already know them or could guess them. As a remedial massage therapist, I’m finding that the people of Melbourne are really becoming aware of the different types of massage and other therapies available to them. They know that they can get a rebate from their health insurer for remedial massages and their health funds are also advertising this fact on TV! I’ve seen many advertisements from NIB promoting the fact that they cover remedial massage along with physio, chiro and dental etc.

Research I did in my business plan in the RMIT Business Plan Competition showed that there was an estimated $400 million being spent annually on massage in Australia! That’s a lot of massages. But when you compare that to how much people would be spending on beer, servicing their cars, petrol, gym memberships. Although I am biased, being a massage therapist and all, I think people aren’t spending enough on massage! I’m even guilty of going a long time in between massages. Put your health and wellbeing before your car, your nights out in Melbourne and glossy magazines. Put $20 aside every week and have a massage at the end of every month!

What I’m seeing in Melbourne with massage is an increased media presence and general community chat. There’s training courses being advertised frequently and people talking about the massages they have had along with the usual stories of going to the hair dresser, having a killer session with the personal trainer and trying out new things like hot yoga.

So if you’re in Melbourne and have a few aches and pains book yourself in for a massage – you deserve it!

 
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Posted in Health, Massage, Massage Melbourne, Massage Therapy

 

So! You think you’re completely healthy because you cycle?

02 Jun

shadow cyclingI came across some interesting research published in the San Francisco Chronicle the other week. You would think if you were a super-fit cyclist, covering 100 to a several hundred kilometres per week that you would be a superb specimen of health and fitness.

Is this you? It’s not me, but I hear from people who cycle huge amounts and I would have thought that that they would have all their bases of health covered. It turns out that if cycling is all you really do for exercise then you could be at risk of developing osteoporosis!

But I’m super-fit so what’s the deal?

A very legitimate question to ask. Do you have calves the size of my head and consider a warm up ride to be 120km? Well, the deal is that while cycling is good for your cardiovascular fitness, muscles and for your joints because of the low impacts involved, cycling alone doesn’t provide enough impact to stimulate the bones to increase their density. Cyclists who don’t vary their exercise with impact, load-bearing activities are at at risk!

What’s the solution?

If you are an average recreational cyclist you don’t have much to worry about. It’s likely that you do enough activity of other sorts that you’ll be fine. If you’re a ‘cycling athlete’ or if cycling is the only activity you do then you need to do some cross-training.

According to Dr. Thor Besier, the director of research at Stanford University’s Human Performance Lab, “a casual walk down the street puts more impact on the bones than biking, and cyclists who spend all their time biking would probably benefit from regular walks and hikes – or even better, a short, intense run a couple of times a week.”

What’s the take-home message?

If you’re a hardcore cyclist, chances are you’re not so hardcore after all!

Read the article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/15/MNFU1DEVG2.DTL&type=health

 
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Posted in Cycling, Fitness, Health

 
 
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