Both NFL football teams in Missouri swooped into Joplin last week, lifting spirits and clearing clogged yards and roads.
The Kansas City Chiefs had invited fans to donate supplies and water and cash, and the club was stunned at the outpouring it saw from the community.
The team mobilized the greater Kansas City area, loading up six semis of water (187,490 bottles, by their count) and relief supplies, along with $35,000 from the club and $21,000 of private donations.
Working together to help their community, the Rotary clubs in Slidell, Louisiana, helped renovate and reopen more than a dozen social service facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
A new study shows that moderate drinking — one to two drinks per day — helps older and middle-aged adults to live longer than those who abstain from alcohol altogether.
The researchers identified the sweet spot for living longer to be linked to moderation (not surprisingly). Moderate drinkers lowered their risk of death by 49 percent compared to non-drinkers, and by 42 percent over heavy drinkers.
The controlled study spanned 20 years and accounted for variables like socioeconomic status, health habits and levels of physical activity among the abstainers and imbibers. Compared to the moderate drinkers, who had been drinking currently or formerly for 20 years, abstainers in the study sample included many former problem drinkers and individuals with more health problems and health risk factors (such as more cigarette smoking) compared to moderate drinkers.
Despite the health benefits of moderate drinking, Holahan emphasizes the need for common sense. One or two drinks a day may be beneficial for some, but drinking a lot more can be dangerous, he said.
“Older persons drinking alcohol should remember that consuming more than two drinks a day exceeds recommended alcohol consumption guidelines in the United States and is associated with a higher risk of alcohol use problems,” Holahan said.
Photo credit: Marcomaru via Morguefile.com
A new study shows that moderate drinking — one to two drinks per day — helps older and middle-aged adults to live longer than those who abstain from alcohol altogether.
The researchers identified the sweet spot for living longer to be linked to moderation (not surprisingly). Moderate drinkers lowered their risk of death by 49 percent compared to non-drinkers, and by 42 percent over heavy drinkers.
The story of man’s evolution. Is it just a tale of survival for the fittest — the strong eating the weak? Not anymore. Scientists now see that kindness plays a role, along with sympathy, empathy, cooperation and collaboration.
David Brooks, writing in an Op-Ed, entitled Nice Guys Finish First, explained, “We often have an incentive to repay kindness with kindness, so others will do us favors when we’re in need.”
“Cooperation is as central to evolution as mutation and selection.”
(READ the Op-Ed column in NY Times)
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When Bob Krause turned 90 last week, it was by virtue of an unflagging determination and a mentality of precision that kept his body humming after being diagnosed with diabetes as a boy.
A leading diabetes research center named the San Diego resident the first American known to live 85 years with the disease, a life that has paralleled — and benefited from — the evolution in treatment.
UPS is testing trucks made of an ultra-light material that makes them more fuel efficient than their sheet-aluminum counterparts.
According to UPS, the diesel trucks come with body panels made out of ABS plastic, making them 1,000 pounds lighter than standard trucks. The combination of plastic and smaller enginea makes the trucks 40% more fuel efficient, a feature that could save the company 84 million gallons of fuel each year if the technology becomes widespread.
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Stand in front of a wall at arm’s length. Reach forward from your shoulders and plant your palms on the wall, fingers wide, middle fingers pointing straight at the ceiling.
Firm your fingers into the wall and draw your navel back as you lengthen the tailbone towards the floor. Lift your ribs from the pelvis. You want to work with a natural lower back curve but an active belly.
Keep length in your spine as you begin to walk the legs back, folding at the waist, and walking your hands down the wall. Eventually you’ll come to an L-shape as seen here. If you can’t get there today without feeling pain or rounding in the lower back, bend your knees and maintain the proper spinal alignment.
As you lift the navel and lower ribs into the body, reach long through the tailbone and legs into the floor while reaching the spine, arms and head towards the wall.
Repeat for 10-20 breaths, then fold into Fists Forward Fold once again. Move to the next pose after a few breaths.
If done properly, this tried-and true asana can be excellent for spinal traction and back health.
Move into the pose with feet hip-distance apart [did you know that’s only two fists-width or so?] and hands shoulder-distance apart. It’s important not to let your back arch too much, which pressurizes the shoulder joints and over-contracts the back muscles. Instead, think of lifting the navel and front ribs, providing a buoyancy in the shoulders and back. Carve the tailbone towards the heels and press back through the inner and outer legs equally. This provides a root, a backward grounding from which you can pull and grow your spine and head forward towards the space between your hands.
Even as you move the shoulders down the back and wrap your outer shoulder blades towards your armpits slightly, press long through the arms and fingers, providing a whole-body realignment and stretch.
Take 5-10 breaths here, then proceed to the next pose.
We should call this pose “Angel of Mercy” for what it can do to rescue your poor aching back. It’s genius at opening the lower body muscles like hamstrings, hip rotators and the iliopsoas muscles, all which can contribute to back pain, without putting too much torque on the already tight back muscles. This releases them by springing open the muscles beneath. It’s a must-do in my yoga sequencing.
From Downward-Facing Dog, bring your right knee behind the right wrist, foot either touching the left hip crease or slightly forward. Stretch the left leg out long behind you, knee and top of the foot facing the floor. Center your hips in space even if they don’t touch the floor. Press your palms into the floor or your Yoga Block, ground your legs into the mat, and allow your legs to stretch while you let your low back curve and lift up.
Draw your navel and pelvic floor muscles in and send your heart to the sky. To deepen this pose, move your front knee wider and back and creep the back leg longer.
Take 5-10 breaths here, then fold forward, forearms on a block or the floor for a full-body stretch to counterpose. Return to Downward-Facing Dog, then repeat on the other side.
After your last Pigeon, swing your back leg around and come onto your back, knees bent, feet under knees as if to prepare for a Bridge Pose. Grab your yoga block, or if you don’t have one, a firmly-rolled yoga mat will do.
Lift your hips, and place the block in the center of your hips (not low back). The block should be the skinny way, in the same direction as your spine, not wide across the hips like your pants line.Place your hips on the block and gently walk your feet wide. Knock your knees in towards one another for one minute to stretch across the sacrum, and then walk feet and knees together. Lift your knees over your hips until you can relax them but still stay suspended in the air.
This yoga pose will release your iliopsoas muscles even as it detoxes you and provides traction for the low back spine. After about 30 seconds or so, scoot your head further from the shoulders and rest for another 30 seconds. Return to the first variation, feet wide on the floor, knees closer, for a few breaths.
To release, walk the feet under the knees at hip distance. Engage your navel, lift your hips off the block and remove it to the side. Roll slowly down the spine inch by inch and enjoy your new spacious lower back curve and sacrum!
Roll over and take Child’s Pose for one minute or more. Try knees wide, big toes closer, but end with knees together for a neutral spinal stretch. If your head doesn’t touch the floor, place a yoga block or fists under your forehead so you can relax completely.
Breathe slowly into your back body, expanding more nourishing energy and space on the inhale, and on the exhales, let ever more tension dissolve.
Mehndi Rao created this neat info-graphic for GNN readers to keep the 6 poses as a ready reference. Just download and print. Here’s how it looks:
Sadie Nardini is the owner of The Fierce Club, a Core Strength Vinyasa yoga studio in SoHo, NYC. Her Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga was an Amazon.com Top 10 bestsellers\. (Originally published in the Gaiam Blog. Reprinted with permission)
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Fifteen years ago, I was not acting my age. Since I would recoil from any form of exercise, as well as any green foods, I was overweight, inflexible … and debilitated by back pain. The 40 extra pounds on my frame — plus tight, shortened back muscles and weak abs — left me moving like an 80-year-old version of myself.
I started reading up and realized a shocking number of people suffer with back pain, partly from hours of sitting in a way that flattens the low back curve. (BTW, a Balance Ball Chair System, the very one I’m sitting on as I write this, is a great tool to help build core strength and re-align your spine.)
Then, I found yoga. Over time, using some of the same poses I’m showing you here, I built a lean and pain-free body.
With just a few moves, you can bring your legs, hips and spine into proper alignment, release tension and gain supportive strength. These poses provide traction for your spinal muscles as you root through the hips and let a gentle pull or gravity make space between the spinal bones. You’ll walk taller and enjoy a body that’s no longer stopping you, but rather serving you to live, move and play to the fullest. (Download the info-graphic to keep the 6 poses as a ready reference – Thanks to Mehndi Rao for creating the neat graphic!)
Don’t overemphasize your ab work. A common misconception about healing back pain is that the back is weak and you should just work the core more. Actually, when you only work the core muscles — as in, a hundred crunches a day — you may just be shortening your front body to match the back one. This can further pull on the spine and cause more disc compression and too little (or too much) curvature. The six-pack might look good in magazines but those bunchy, contracted muscles are actually not so hot for your back.
Optimally, you want to work into greater core strength in your abdominals, side waist, low and mid back, while keeping the abdominal muscles long and lean. To do this, your back muscles will have to release, and both your back and core will have to stretch as well as flex. We’ll do both simultaneously in each of these poses.
Breathe slowly and deeply through the nose for the duration of the practice. On your inhales, flare the ribs wide, and as you exhale, contract around your navel, still maintaining a long, natural spine.
Note: Consult your doctor or physical therapist before starting, especially if you’re experiencing severe back or leg pain now or during the practice, or if you have known disc problems, like hernias or degeneration.
Fists Forward BendStand with feet hip-distance apart. Bend your knees and release your torso over your legs until your belly touches your thighs (or as close as you can get). Make two fists and place them in the opposite elbow creases. Relax your back, neck and head, and squeeze fists actively.
Fists and bent elbows together are a central nervous system trigger that causes your back muscles to open. You’ll feel it after just a few breaths!
Take 10-20 breaths here, releasing more tension from the back with every exhale.
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Rinderpest, a cattle disease that for centuries felled herds in Europe, Africa and Asia and caused periodic human famine, has been eradicated, veterinary epidemiologists announced this week.
Eradication is the Holy Grail of disease prevention and has been successful only once before. Smallpox, an equally devastating human scourge, was eradicated in 1980, proving it is possible to stamp out a microbe across the entire planet.
Scientists in the UK and Japan have identified the chemical that prompts the body’s stem cells to flock en masse to the site of a skin wound, allowing it to heal at an accelerated rate.
The chemical, simply called HMGB1, works as a catalyst that awakens stem cells idling in the body’s bone marrow, summoning them directly to the targeted wound.
The finding could lead to new breakthroughs in how medical professionals treat wounds.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have located seventeen lost pyramids throughout Egypt after studying satellite images produced by an infrared technique that allowed them to clearly see the ruins underground.
With two pyramids already confirmed by scientists, they believe there are thousands more unknown sites in the region.
Trying to turn art into action, commuters walking near State and Madison streets in downtown Chicago had a striking new image in their sights last week: a giant, six-story yellow mural encouraging viewers to “Go do good.
The banner, which is hoping to inspire 100,000 good deeds by Chicagoans this summer is the focal point of a new campaign by the United Way of Chicago and the Chicago Loop Alliance.
(READ the story at Huffington Post)
Of all the activities NFL athletes are participating in during the players’ lockout, Miami Dolphins receiver Davone Bess may be engaged in the most physically demanding — and most beneficial to humanity.
Bess has been in Costa Rica for the last two weeks, and he’s not staying at a luxury resort. Instead, he’s digging drainage ditches and working with a group called Global Volunteers.
The number of home births in the U.S. increased by 20 percent over four years, researchers have found.
After a gradual decline from 1990 to 2004, there were 28,357 home births in 2008 — the highest proportion since 1990, the study in Friday’s online issue of the medical journal Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care showed.
The Internet gold rush is spreading east. A decade after the tech bubble burst and brought down Silicon Alley, investors are crowding back into New York’s start-up scene, pumping funds to start-ups.
The flood of money is encouraging would-be entrepreneurs to ditch Wall Street or Madison Avenue careers to set up companies in New York-centric industries such as fashion, retail, finance and media. Those businesses, in turn, are having an impact far beyond the city itself.
It would be easy — expected, even — for Mary Johnson to hate Oshea Israel. After all, he killed Johnson’s only son, in 1993. He went to prison for that — and toward the end of his sentence, he become a man with whom Mrs. Johnson could make peace.
He agreed to her repeated requests to see him at Stillwater Prison. She wanted to know whether he had the same mindset as the 16-year-old boy who had appeared in the courtroom years before. He didn’t.
“I instantly knew that all that anger and the animosity, all the stuff I had in my heart for 12 years — I knew it was over, that I had totally forgiven (him).”
(READ the story or LISTEN to it at NPR)
Even though they are still recovering from their own natural disaster, the Japanese Government is helping Alabama tornado victims, donating emergency supplies including 8,000 blankets and 150 tarps worth more than $120,000.
The gift is in appreciation for the prayers and relief aid the United States offered following the March earthquake and tsunami, said Japan’s Consul General.
Even though they are still recovering from their own natural disaster, the Japanese Government is helping Alabama tornado victims, donating emergency supplies including 8,000 blankets and 150 tarps worth more than $120,000.
The gift is in appreciation for the prayers and relief aid the United States offered following the March earthquake and tsunami, said Japan’s Consul General.
This video was created in order to show a side of Israel that the media doesn’t show. All across Israel, both Arabs and Jews are living together peacefully in the hopes that someday the conflict will be resolved. So next time you hear about Israel in the news, think about the side of Israel that they are choosing not to show you.
