Archive for the 'Health & Fitness' Category

10 Ways to Avoid the Serious Complications of High Blood Pressure

Posted in Health & Fitness on January 12th, 2007

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, can have many negative affects on your health, leading to a number of dangerous illnesses including:

• Heart disease
• Stroke
• Heart Attack
• Kidney problems
• Blindness
• Dementia
• Death

High blood pressure is often referred to as the “silent killer”, because many who have it are oblivious to their condition until they experience a heart attack or stroke. Regularly monitoring your blood pressure and making effective lifestyle changes to control hypertension, greatly reduces your risk of developing dangerous health complications, and can even help you avoid, prolong or reduce your need for medication.

The following are 10 ways you can effectively reduce your chances of developing serious complications related to high blood pressure:

1. Loose the extra weight – Did you know blood pressure usually increases with weight gain, and decreasing your weight by 10 pounds can help you lower blood pressure? Thus, the more pounds you lose, and the closer you are to your ideal body weight, the better chance you have of keeping your blood pressure in check. In addition, a healthy weight loss plan also improves the overall effectiveness of blood pressure medication

2. Regular exercise – Staying active is a great way to keep in shape and control blood pressure. Engaging in regular exercise (a minimum of 30 – 60 minutes everyday or every other day) will help you decrease your risk of developing hypertension.

3. Improve your diet – Eating healthy by lowering your intake of foods that are high in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol and adopting a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, grain and low-fat dairy products, can do wonders for improving your blood pressure.

4. Lower your salt intake – A diet rich in sodium can increase your blood pressure. Salt is naturally found in many of the foods and beverages we consume. Therefore, refrain from adding salt to food, limit your intake of processed foods, read the labels of the foods you buy, and eat more fresh foods so you can enjoy the natural flavor.

5. Drink alcohol in moderation – Drinking alcohol in moderation (a single drink – IE a glass of wine or beer per day) has its health benefits. However, regularly drinking beyond moderation is detrimental to your health and blood pressure.

6. Steer clear of tobacco and secondhand smoke – The nicotine in tobacco raises blood pressure by at least 10 mm Hg. Although this is only a temporary increase (lasting up to an hour), if a person is repeatedly exposed to nicotine, blood pressure can remain high constantly.

7. Limit caffeine – Studies have found that regular caffeine drinkers have higher blood pressure compared to non-caffeine drinkers. Therefore, if you can live without it, try cutting caffeine completely out of your diet. If not, dramatically reduce your intake by drinking only one caffeinated beverage daily.

8. Reduce stress – People who suffer from chronic stress are at a high risk of developing hypertension. If you lead a hectic lifestyle you need to take time out of your busy schedule to relax. You can achieve this through breathing exercises, massage, getting proper sleep, venting emotions, thinking positively and having a sense of humor.

9. Visit your doctor regularly – Have a full physical and get your blood pressure checked regularly. If you have hypertension you will probably need to learn how to self-monitor your condition. This will help both you and your doctor find the best treatments for you.

10. Find support – There are many people who suffer from hypertension. Befriending others with the same condition or joining a support group can be excellent treatment. Knowing you are not alone, and realizing that others care about your heath and well being, can help you find the encouragement you need to take better care of yourself.

If you are looking for more help for Blood Pressure Reduction symptoms please visit NaturalBloodPressureReduction.com and sign up for a free newsletter.

Understanding Visual Thought and Autism

Posted in Health & Fitness on January 9th, 2007

The best way to help an autistic child cope with change is to understand the way they think, so you can present ideas and situations to them in a way they will effectively comprehend.

While the average person thinks in language, the average person with autism thinks in pictures. This thinking process is known as visual thought. Visual thought is when a person thinks in pictures, images or even movies, instead of actual words and concepts. Therefore, for most autistics, words are like a second language. Written and spoken words are transformed into moving pictures with sounds in their mind. It is through the comprehension of their visual thoughts that they can either identify with a situation and words, or not understand.

Recent research on autistic thinking has found that people with autism are inclined to focus on specific details instead of the bigger picture. Unlike a normal brain that connects all of its different processing parts together, the brain of someone with autism is not entirely connected to each of its systems. This is what sometimes makes autistics excellent at one thing and unskilled at something else.

Visual thinkers have difficultly forming concepts. This is because conceptual thinking usually occurs in the frontal cortex of the brain; the part of the brain that has unusual makeup in autistics. The frontal cortex incorporates information from the thinking, sensory and emotional areas of the brain. Due to the fact that the frontal cortex of autistics is not properly connected to the other parts of the brain, they encounter problems when it comes to carrying out normal functions.

Most autistics excel at visual spatial skills, but have difficulty with verbal skills. Instead of developing new conceptual ways of thinking through emotions and words, they can create new visualizations by taking small pieces of other images they have stored in their memory banks to create new visual concepts of understanding. They translate words into pictures, and piece pictures together with actual experiences to create video-like images that make up their thought process.

Autistic individuals have difficulty learning things that cannot be visualized as a picture. For this reason, nouns become the easiest words for children to understand and learn because they can be directly related to images. However, prepositions, verbs, etc. are more difficult for autistics to process because the usually do not understand these words until they are associated with an actual event they remember doing. For instance, the word “under” may be understood through a memory of going under a table. Usually, an autistic has difficulty with words that cannot be converted to pictures and have no definite meaning on their own such as the word “and”.

One of the best ways to help the average person understand the autistic brain is to visit an online image based search engine (IE Google Images) and type in words. The images these words produce can give you an idea of how autistics think and use pictures to form concepts.

The best way to teach an autistic child is to build on their strengths, not just on that which they have difficulty. Thus, teaching and communicating with a visualization aid can be very effective and help them process their thoughts. In most cases, the more someone with autism learns, the more they will comprehend and understand that they think and feel in a different way than the average person.

Just remember, effectively communicating with a person with autism can take time. Therefore, you need to be patient, understanding, and engage your sense of humor.

Rachel Evans has an interest in Autism. For further information on Autism please visit understanding autism or autism resource blog posts.