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Cleansing Spinach with Chickpeas

By admin, July 7, 2010 8:53 am

Serves 4Weight Loss Plans

Ingredients:

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 big garlic clove, halved
1 onion, peeled and cut into small pieces
1/2 tsp cumin
1 pinch of cayenne pepper
2 cups fresh or canned chickpeas, cleaned and drained (if using fresh chickpeas follow the instructions on the packet, as they need to be soaked and precooked first)
8 cups baby spinach leaves, cleaned and drained
Celtic sea salt or himalayan salt and pepper to season

Directions:

Gently heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the garlic and simmer for about 2 minutes until the garlic halves turn slightly golden without letting them get burnt.

Add the onion, cumin, cayenne pepper and gently stir fry for about 5 minutes until soft. Add the chickpeas and stir in the cayenne pepper.

Stir in the spinach leaves. Put a lid on the pan and gently let it cook for about 3-5 minutes.

Season the dish and serve immediately.

Incorporate this recipe with your Medifast Diet. It is a great addition for your diet plans.

Healing Warm Broccoli Soup

By admin, July 6, 2010 12:13 pm

Serves 2Medifast Diet Plans

Ingredients:

1/2 Avocado
6-8 medium size Broccoli Heads
1/3 Red Onion
1 Celery Stick
Big Handful of Spinach
A thumb size piece of Ginger Root
1 Tbsp Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (Optional) or Tamari Wheat Free Soy Sauce
1 Pinch Cumin (Optional)
2 Pinches of Celtic Sea Salt
garlic & pepper to taste

Directions:
Lightly steam the broccoli (5-6 minutes) then place all ingredients in a blender. Add garlic, pepper, Celtic Sea Salt to taste.

Incorporate this recipe with your Medifast Diet. It is a great addition for your diet plans.

Spring Renewal Energizing Soup

By admin, July 5, 2010 9:44 am

Serves 2

This is definitely a highly rejuvenating soup and is a big favorite during my 30 Day Whole Body and Mind Cleanse. It contains avocado which is high in EFAs and cucumber which is well known for its cleansing properties. The taste of this soup can be dramatically altered by the use of the herbs and spices mentioned or by alternating between lemon and lime.

Ingredients:

1 avocado
2 spring onions
1/2 red or green pepper
1 cucumber
2 handfuls of spinach
1/2 clove of garlic
Bragg’s Liquid Aminos to taste (Soy Sauce substitute)
100ml of light vegetable Bouillon (yeast free)
Juice of 1 lemon or lime
Optional: coriander, parsley, cumin.

Directions:
Blend the avocado and stock to form a light paste, then add the other ingredients and blend.

Incorporate this recipe with your Medifast Diet. It is a great addition for your weight loss plan.

Bad Vision Boosts Alzheimer’s Risk

By admin, July 2, 2010 9:15 am

Want to give yourself a better chance of avoiding Alzheimer’s disease? Get your eyes checked. New research reveals that treating vision problems can actually reduce the risk for certain types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

Seeds for this study were planted with information from the Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study, when University of Michigan researchers observed that people with dementia tended to have had fewer eye procedures prior to their diagnoses than those without dementia. This led the team to ask two questions:

  1. Does poor vision contribute to the development of dementia?
  2. Does treating visual disorders reduce the likelihood of developing dementia?

Can You See Dementia in Your Future?

Using data from Medicare and the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study, the Michigan researchers followed 625 elderly Americans- none of whom had dementia at the outset- for an average of 10 years. Based on a scale that ranked vision from excellent (one) to totally blind (six), they found that the risk for dementia increased by an average of 52% with each step up the scale. Mary A.M. Rogers, PhD, a clinical epidemiologist and the study’s lead author said that the study results suggest the problems with declining vision preceded the dementia. She said that this is the first epidemiologic study, to her knowledge, that points to treatment of vision problems as being protective against the development of late-life dementia.

Some of the connections between poor vision and dementia symptoms seem obvious, while others are not yet understood; for instance, Dr. Rogers pointed out that people with poor vision may be less likely to participate in the kinds of activities, such as reading, playing board games and engaging in physical activities which can be protective against cognitive decline. She said that other research indicates that vision loss can lead to structural changes in the brain, but notes that more studies are needed to understand why.

See Your Doctor

The truly promising news of this study is the notion that dementia might be preventable.  Dr. Rogers points out that when elderly people received appropriate treatment for their visual difficulties,  such as corneal transplant, cataract removal and lens insertion, and treatment for retinal detachment, lesions and other eye disorders, their probability of developing dementia decreased. Even one visit to an ophthalmologist was associated with a lower risk.

The bad news, however, is that at this point Medicare coverage of vision problems is spotty. While only about 13% of the Medicare population has Alzheimer’s disease, this group accounts for 34% of Medicare spending; and the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is increasing. Dr. Rogers believes it would be very worthwhile to investigate whether expanding vision screenings and treatment to more elderly Americans would in fact save money for Medicare.

In the meantime, add “preventing dementia” to the list of reasons why having your vision checked is a worthwhile endeavor.

Mary A.M. Rogers, PhD, research assistant professor, department of internal medicine, University of Michigan, and research director of the Patient Safety Enhancement Program, University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor.

Get involved with a Medifast Diet Program and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include a Medifast Coupon Code with your order and save on your diet. Stop paying full price when you can get a discounted coupon from Medifast instead.

More Housework, More Sex?

By admin, July 1, 2010 10:45 am

Can picking up a broom get a man more va-va-voom? That was the research premise for a recent study by Constance Gager, PhD, a sociologist in the department of family and child studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Dr. Gager started with the well-documented fact that housework is typically shared unevenly between husbands and wives even when both have jobs outside the home. “Given that 77% of women with kids age six and older are in the labor force, we wondered why men aren’t contributing more to housework,” Dr. Gager told me. “So we asked, ’What would encourage them to do so?’ And we came up with the obvious hypothesis — more sex.”

On average, the wives in Gager’s study spent nearly twice as much time on household tasks as did their husbands: About 42 hours a week for the women versus 23 hours for the men.  While the husbands logged more paid working hours, about 34 hours/week versus 20 hours for the women, when the total hours worked (jobs plus housework) were combined, women worked more than the men by about three hours a week.  (Three hours may not sound like much-unless you are suffering from a chronic lack of sex…) Also, the data did not capture all the time women spend organizing, planning and forecasting for the household, tasks with which Dr. Gager’s research shows they want more help.

Dr. Gager then looked more deeply into the study participants’ home lives, and here’s where it gets really interesting:  For both sexes, it appears that the harder you work, the harder you play.  In other words,  more hours spent on household labor, on average, meant more hours of sexual activity.  This surprise finding held true for both husbands and wives in all types of work.

Energy for Everything?

I asked Dr. Gager what explanation she had for her findings, and she told me that the study was not designed to explore the reasons behind the results. But, she said, the research team is willing to speculate. “We don’t think it’s causative, but we do know that the more time is spent on housework, the more time gets spent on sex, so it might be reflective of an underlying trait: Being a go-getter with high energy.” In other words, Dr. Gager said, the hardest workers may be people who attack life with gusto, and it seems they get a lot out of it, if you know what I mean…of course you do.

This intriguing finding bodes well for people who have the energy to take on both work and family chores. “As life gets busier and time gets tighter, there are people who can successfully balance their multiple time commitments,” said Dr. Gager. “They devote their time to paid work and housework while maintaining an active sex life. Rather than compromise their romantic life because of work demands, this group of go-getters makes sex a priority.”

So does that mean that if you start doing more vacuuming you’re more likely to get lucky, regardless of your sex? Maybe.  In the doctor’s words, “It couldn’t hurt!”  Hey, a lot can happen in three extra hours a week.

Source(s):

Constance Gager, PhD, lead researcher, sociologist and assistant professor, department of family and child studies, Montclair State University, New Jersey.

Get involved with the Medifast Diet and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include one of the Medifast Coupons so that you can get a great discounted price with the latest Medifast Coupon Codes.

High Protein Diet Danger

By admin, June 30, 2010 9:25 am

You’ll probably lose weight if you follow a popular type of diet that’s low in carbs and high in protein; but are high protein diets a healthy way to lose the weight? The controversy surrounding this type of eating plan is loud and seemingly endless. And a new study is further stirring that pot with a startling new finding  about cardiovascular health.

The study started out as a straightforward effort to determine whether a low-carb/high-protein diet is healthy, says its senior author Anthony Rosenzweig, MD, director of cardiovascular research at the Cardiovascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mice bred to have atherosclerosis were fed one of three diets for 12 weeks:  One group ate a standard mouse chow with 65% carbohydrates, 15% fat and 20% protein; another group ate an approximation of the typical Western human diet with 43% carbs, 42% fat and 15% protein; and a third group ate an approximation of a typical human low-carb/high-protein weight loss diet with 12% carbs, 43% fat and 45% protein.

What’s the Surprise?

Not all the findings were surprising. As expected, the mice in the low-carb/high-protein group put on less weight as they matured than those on the Western diet. In addition,  their markers for vascular disease (including cholesterol and triglyceride levels), oxidative stress, insulin and glucose levels, as well as some inflammatory cytokine levels were either no different or slightly better.   But the researchers got a big surprise when they examined the blood vessels themselves: The low-carb/high-protein eating mice had far more atherosclerosis as measured by plaque accumulation than the mice in the Western diet group.  Huh.  Turns out maybe you can’t eat a strict diet of bacon and eggs and cheese and butter without some negative health consequences…

Seriously though-this could be big news for human dieters.  The researchers had to try to find an explanation for this unexpected and worrisome finding. Since none of the standard vascular health markers (the things your doctor checks at your annual physical) indicated anything was amiss, the researchers theorized that something might have interfered with the mice’s natural ability to repair injuries to vessels and return them to normal function. The team focused on a special bone marrow cell thought to play a role in blood vessel regrowth and injury repair called EPC (endothelial progenitor cells.)  They found that in the low-carb/high-protein group, levels had indeed dropped 40% after only two weeks on the diet.

What does this mean for us non-mice? The study shows a correlation between reduction of the cells and an increase in arterial plaque which Dr. Rosenzweig believes  may be of great importance. Other studies have demonstrated that people with heart and cardiovascular disease tend to have fewer of these cells and that people who exercise regularly have more of them.  So now we must wonder, can a low-carb diet reduce EPC levels and possibly lead to or contribute to serious heart disease? More research is required, as we still don’t know whether this would happen in people… but it certainly convinced Dr. Rosenzweig to go off the low-carb diet he was on.

Related Diet News

You may also be interested in Dr. Rosenzweig’s research from Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City (“The Brain-Shrinking Diet”). This earlier, and unrelated, study found brain shrinkage in mice fed a low-carb/high-protein diet — another finding that raises concerns about the potential for harm in such a diet. While it’s too early to draw conclusions, the two studies do ring some cautionary bells about diets loaded with protein and light on carbs. As Dr. Rosenzweig says, the best message for now is to stick with “all the things we know are good for us, including a balanced, nutritious diet with lots of fruits and vegetables.” Those are the kinds of carbs we all need to eat anyway.

Source(s):

Anthony Rosenzweig, MD, director of cardiovascular research, CardioVascular Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Get involved with a Medifast Diet Program and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include a Medifast Coupon Code with your order and save on your diet. Stop paying full price when you can get a discounted coupon from Medifast instead.

Calcium and Vitamin D: Codependent Supplements

By admin, June 29, 2010 12:08 pm

If you want to keep your bones healthy as you age, it’s important to be sure that you are getting vitamin D and calcium in adequate amounts. Make sure you read that as both, not one or the other.

Each has important health benefits on its own;  but together these two are like “team health.”  The US Department of Agriculture has just published new research highlighting how important it is to get sufficient calcium and vitamin D.

Calcium + D = Strong Bones

More than 25 million adults (men and women) in the US either already have or are at risk for osteoporosis. It’s common to equate osteoporosis with inadequate calcium, but according to Dr. Rubman, inadequate vitamin D is a far more pervasive threat. Here’s why: When calcium levels fall, the body activates vitamin D consumption. It gets sent to the gut to encourage better calcium absorption and to the kidneys to limit calcium loss in urine. Without enough of it, bones grow thin and brittle.

What You Can Do

This is why getting calcium alone isn’t the answer to bone health. You must also get enough vitamin D. You can get it from a variety of foods: Salmon, tuna, mackerel, fish liver oils, D-fortified foods such as milk, orange juice and breakfast cereals.  And your body can also synthesize it from 10 to 15 minutes of daily sun exposure. But the body’s ability to manufacture vitamin D diminishes with age, and most Americans are short on it.  So Dr. Rubman prescribes up to 2,000 IU daily of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) to many patients.

Note: The current government-recommended intake is only 400 IU daily for adults age 51 to 70, but experts agree that this is too low, and there are plans to raise it. In the meantime, Dr. Rubman suggests asking your doctor to test your D3 level to see if you are deficient, especially important for seniors, he notes, as well as all people who may not be spending much time in the sun.

To get enough calcium: The official recommended calcium intake for American adults age 50 and older is 1,200 mg daily.  This is generally sufficient if your body is absorbing it properly. However, insufficient stomach acid due to aging or stress or, worse, the persistent use of acid-blocking medications, can impede this process. A supplement is one option, but perhaps not necessary; most people can get sufficient calcium from dietary sources. Cow’s milk, even though it contains 300 mg of calcium per cup, is not necessarily the best choice since it is tough for many people to digest fully.

Here are some good dietary sources:

-One cup of goat’s milk contains 325 mg of calcium

-1 cup of collard greens 350 mg

-3 ounces of canned salmon 180 mg

-1 cup of boiled black-eyed peas 210 mg.

That’s practically a day’s worth of calcium right there.

Getting sufficient amounts of these vital nutrients isn’t hard, and it is vitally important. When it comes to bone health, calcium and vitamin D need each other to deliver the benefit.  So aim for adequate amounts of both or you will get the benefit of neither.

Source(s):

Andrew L. Rubman, ND, founder and director, Southbury Clinic for Traditional Medicines, Southbury, Connecticut. www.southburyclinic.com.

Get involved with the Medifast Diet and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include one of the Medifast Coupons so that you can get a great discounted price with the latest Medifast Coupon Codes.

Scar Eraser

By admin, June 28, 2010 5:05 pm

Life happens, and, as we all know, it often leaves scars. We can see them on our knees, elbows and elsewhere. But did you know that you can get scars inside your body too? These sometimes occur after surgery or an injury such as a broken bone, but other times in response to less obvious insults, including simple inflammation.  Things such as heart attack and stroke often  leave internal scars;  inflammatory conditions, including Asthma, Sinusitis, Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Arthritis and others also leave destructive scar tissue in their wake. I recently learned more about these internal scars and some of the surprising ways that they can affect our health — and about a therapy that can speed healing while smoothing scars on both the inside and outside of the body.

The Purpose of Scars

Scars are the body’s visible response to injury, which is to generate healing fibers (called fibrin) where damage has been wrought. These eventually weave together to heal the damage done, but the repair is obviously not seamless. Fortunately, your body’s cells are continually regenerating, and over time such scars usually fade until there’s little, if any, evidence left.

Our bodies accomplish this by producing enzymes (called fibrinolases) that dissolve scar tissue and replace it with healthy tissue. Sometimes, though, our natural healing powers aren’t up to par. This is where an intriguing therapy comes into play: Our body’s natural ability can be bolstered by using an enzyme called serrapeptase which is isolated from the silkworm.  It is the substance that allows the worm to dissolve its carapace so that it can become a butterfly. Since it comes from the same class of enzymes as those produced to heal the human body, supplements have been formulated from it. While the transformative powers of serrapeptase aren’t quite so lyrical for humans, it can enhance our natural ability to heal.

Clean Up Crew

Dr. Rubman suggests picturing serrapeptase as an internal carpet-cleaning formula. With repeated applications and some scrubbing, a stain or, in this case a scar, scar tissue will begin to dissolve and dissipate.

In the wake of all that activity, however, serrapeptase is apt to leave behind its own mess. This detritus has a tendency to accumulate and can end up thickening your blood. That’s why Dr. Rubman routinely prescribes a second enzyme to be taken along with serrapeptase: Nattokinase. Nattokinase is made from the traditional Japanese fermented soy product, natto. It’s like a vacuum cleaner, he says. Along with plasmin, the body’s own natural anticoagulant or blood thinner, nattokinase serves as a clean-up crew to dissolve errant fibrin and other tissue particles. This completes serrapeptase’s job and encourages good blood flow throughout the body.

Who Needs Enzymes?

At certain times, typically with illness, stress, when you’re eating poorly or just with age, your body’s natural production of enzymes such as serrapeptase and nattokinase may decline, but taking supplements can help pick up the slack. Dr. Rubman and I discussed how these enzymes can be used to improve various health problems:

Respiratory disease: Serrapeptase thins the dense mucus often present in people with chronic asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis and other pulmonary diseases. Studies show that it helps repair damage to the structure and function of delicate mucous linings.

Pain and inflammation: Together, serrapeptase and nattokinase have antiinflammatory properties that serve as natural analgesics. They ease pain by relieving swelling, fluid accumulation and pressure. Serrapeptase also speeds tissue repair and blocks the release of pain-inducing chemicals called amines from inflamed tissue.

Cardiovascular health: Dr. Rubman prescribes a combination of serrapeptase and nattokinase to reduce arterial plaque and break up small blood clots that clog arteries in the cardiovascular system. Together these enzymes thin the blood, promote circulation and bring down levels of LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) and C-reactive protein (CRP, a marker of inflammation and heart disease). (Note: When prescribing these two enzymes together for his patients, Dr. Rubman likes a product called Neprinol, available from the manufacturer at www.ArthurAndrew.com and at The Vitamin Shoppe stores.)

Women’s wellness: Some women experience an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone that triggers inflammatory responses such as the development of scar tissue. This abnormal tissue may accumulate in the breasts or uterus, where it can lead to fibrous breasts or uterine fibroids. To control these conditions along with the pain and pressure that many women experience with menstruation, Dr. Rubman prescribes FibroVera (also from www.ArthurAndrew.com and The Vitamin Shoppe), a product he helped create, that combines serrapeptase, nattokinase and the enzymes bromelain (extracted from pineapple) and papain (from papaya).

Use Under Medical Supervision

While serrapeptase and nattokinase are safe and effective supplements for most people, Dr. Rubman says that they should be avoided by those with a bleeding disorder or who are taking blood-thinning drugs such as warfarin(Coumadin). Other interactions are sometimes (though rarely) problematic, including those with aspirin, fish oil and vitamin E.

According to Dr. Rubman, the most effective enzymes are “enteric-coated,” which means that the active ingredients are covered with a protective layer that lets them survive exposure to stomach acid and pass into the intestine intact. Enzymes should be taken 30 minutes before or 90 minutes or so after eating. Supplementation with enzymes can be complicated, Dr. Rubman said, so they should be taken only under the supervision of a trained professional.  That said, these powerful enzymes have the potential to improve your health in a way that you may, indeed, find transformative.

Source(s):

Andrew L. Rubman, ND, founder and director, Southbury Clinic for Traditional Medicines, Southbury, Connecticut. www.southburyclinic.com.

Get involved with a Medifast Diet Program and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include a Medifast Coupon Code with your order and save on your diet. Stop paying full price when you can get a discounted coupon from Medifast instead.

Harry Potter Fans Outraged After Being Labeled “Too Fat To Ride”

By admin, June 26, 2010 3:20 pm

You may have already heard about the controversy surrounding the new signature attraction at Universal Studios’ “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” theme park in Orlando. Apparently, height is no longer the only bodily measurement under theme park scrutiny; weight, shockingly enough, also affects whether or not a passenger can safely ride:  ”Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey,” employs individual restraints to keep each guest safely in to his or her seat. The problem?  The restraints aren’t large enough to accommodate heavier riders.

And some fans of the Harry Potter series who traveled a great distance to experience what one theme park goer described as “the ride of my life” were turned away because they could not fit into the safety restraints–safety being the operative word here.

Universal seems to have anticipated this issue as they both stationed staff “wizards” and placed test-seats along the line and at the entrance to Forbidden Journey. But was this really enough? I mean, they have those “size-wise” testers for carry-on luggage at the airport; but I’ve never seen someone actually check their back with it.  And you always see some traveler with a carry-on bag twice the size and they still get on the airplane.

One Harry Potter fan, Jeff Guillaume of Lansing, Michigan, who measures 5′8″ and weighs 265 pounds expressed his disappointment when he was not able to ride because the restraint would not fit over his torso.  About the same time, it was reported that NBA star Dwight Howard was a rider and fit just fine in the restraint.  Now,  Howard is 6′11″ and also weighs 265 pounds. This spurred many Harry Potter fans to point the finger at Universal Studios … as how could Guillaume be denied when he weighed the same as Howard? “This must be discrimination!!!” they all cried in unison.

Are you serious?

5 Pounds of Fat vs. 5 Pounds of MusclePlease. Let’s have a short lesson, shall we?  Muscle weighs more than fat, right? We’ve heard that for years, but what gets lost in the shuffle is the size difference between 5 pounds of fat and 5 pounds of muscle. See the picture to the right?  That is the difference. And if you’re like Guillaume, you are carrying at least 100 pounds more fat than you should.   That would be roughly 20 of those blobs, which is  precisely why he can’t ride Harry Potter- not because Universal Studios is discriminating against him.

Guillaume did the right thing in admitting he was overweight rather than reacting like a typical American and filing a discrimination lawsuit. Instead, he is going to use the experience as a motivator to lose weight. Good for him.  Most of us could stand to replace a few 5 lb fat blobs with smaller 5 lb muscle ones.

Universal Studios doesn’t enforce specific weight limits; they do have the test seats and a requirement that riders be at least 48 inches tall. Universal Studios states that their body dimension restrictions are not to discriminate but “to ensure the safety of our guests. It’s #1.” As it should be.

We do have a rising problem in this country in that the average American man weighs 191 pounds; in 1960 it was 166 pounds.  Universal isn’t the first theme-park operator to deal with issues raised by the growing rate of obesity in the United States. In 2007, Disney had to modify the “It’s a Small World” ride after weighted-down boats began regularly getting stuck in the plume.

Idea: Rather than blame the theme parks for being unable to safely accommodate obese riders, obese riders–Unite!!  And be no longer obese.  Medifast has been proven to be a safe and effective form of weight loss, backed by more than 30, 000 doctors and guaranteed to help you in your quest to replace enough fat blobs with muscle blobs so that you too can safely ride Harry Potter’s Forbidden Journey at Universal Studios.

Free Yourself From Chronic Pain

By admin, June 24, 2010 11:09 am

Many people who are chronically ill, for instance, with diabetes or cancer or who have suffered a traumatic injury, ultimately end up with a condition called neuropathy.  Sufferers experience their nervous systems turning against them, randomly sending out pain signals that can range from merely uncomfortable tingling, to debilitatingly painful, stabbing sensations . Opioids and antidepressants can help, but these drugs have side effects which render them less-than-great choices. Acupuncture can be helpful, too, but generally speaking, chronic pain sufferers have few effective treatment options.

A recent study of a relatively new treatment addresses this concern and has proved promising for a few. The new therapy is called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and is recommended for people who have neuropathy resulting from a spinal cord injury. This form of treatment involves placing electrodes (attached to a battery pack) on the skin along both sides of the spine at the level of and just above the spinal cord injury to deliver electrical current. The same technique has been used to treat other forms of chronic pain and muscle spasms.

Shocking But Effective

Twenty-four patients were given TENS units and taught to self-administer the treatment three times a day for 30 to 40 minutes at a time. They did this for two weeks at high frequency and then for another two weeks at low frequency.

Results: About one-third of the patients reported that their pain was reduced at least somewhat. 29% were helped by high-frequency stimulation and 38% by low-frequency stimulation. But six patients asked if they could keep their TENS units so they could continue the treatments themselves at home-clearly indicating that they experienced some benefit.

TENS may sound more like torture than treatment; you’d think that stimulating nerves that have already gone haywire would simply cause more pain.  But Cecilia Norrbrink, RPT, PhD, in the department of clinical sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where the study was done, had this to say:  ”TENS is not painful and it does work well for some people.” She also said that scientists believe it works by using the body’s own pain-inhibiting systems. She gave a very simplified explanation: High-frequency TENS activates large nerve fibers, which are the ones carrying nonpainful signals such as touch. Stimulating these nerve fibers releases transmitter signals in the spinal cord that can inhibit the pain signals coming from small nerve fibers. Low-frequency TENS, on the other hand, seems to activate neurons in the brain stem (where inhibitory pathways start) by releasing pain-blocking endorphins.

Another option: There’s a form of Japanese acupuncture that incorporates electrical stimulation through needles, according to contributing medical editor Andrew L. Rubman, ND. It is called electro-acupuncture, and it might be a good option to explore with your acupuncturist or naturopathic doctor.

Can You Do This At Home?

Side effects from the treatment are minimal.   Some patients experience muscle spasms and others find the electrodes irritating to their skin. But those are minor complaints compared with the pain relief the treatments sometimes deliver. If you’re interested in exploring TENS treatment for neuropathic pain, discuss it with your doctor as there’s a long list of medical cautions that are considered contraindications for its use. If you are among the lucky ones, this might provide welcome relief from chronic pain.

Source(s):

Cecilia Norrbrink, RPT, PhD, department of clinical sciences, Danderyd Hospital, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

Get involved with a Medifast Diet Program and make drastic changes to your health. Make sure that you include a Medifast Coupon Code with your order and save on your diet. Stop paying full price when you can get a discounted coupon from Medifast instead.

Medifast makes no claim that these results are representative of all participants on the Medifast Program. Medifast recommends you consult with a physician before starting a weight loss program. Individual weight loss results may vary. Fullness Index™ is a satiety calculation based on a food's fiber, protein, and calorie content. The equation is: (grams of protein per serving + grams of fiber per serving) x 100, divided by number of calories per serving. The higher the number, the more fullness is derived from each calorie.
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