ASIS Massage Education Blog

Massage Therapy / Deepak Chopra

"Physical therapy’s purpose is to restore neuromuscular functioning after some damage,

whereas massage therapy has systemic effects.

It influences your immune system, your endocrine system, your cardiovascular system."

Deepak Chopra

NUTRITION RULES, by John Ogle

by John Ogle

In the unforgettable words of Jack LaLanne, “. . . exercise is the king and nutrition is the queen.”  He nailed that comparison.  In life, as in the game of chess, Regina is much more influential than Rex.

            Nutrition can compensate for sloth much better than exercise can overcome bad food.  In today’s world, how much of which foods you put in your mouth determines roughly 60% of your level of health.  Even the American Medical Association estimates that two of every three deaths in this country are essentially self-inflicted, i.e. “the direct result of lifestyle choices.”

            In these days of declining life spans – sure, infant mortality rates are way down but adult mortality rates are worsening – it’s hard to stay optimistic about our species.  At the same time that research is revealing more about which foods really nourish us, our tastebuds are busy leading us farther astray.   Since the end of the 19^th century, health-nuts have been warning us that we are “digging our graves with our forks.”  Why do we act this way?

            Through countless generations, human beings became physically adapted to unpredictable, even intermittent, food supplies.  Long before our ancestors learned to store excess food in granaries, icy caves or airtight containers, their bodies learned to store excess food as energy (body fat).  Without that layer of protection, they would not have survived long winters or bad times, and we would not be here now.

            In effect, our bodies are programmed to store fat as quickly as possible.  Every day, as we consume more than we burn by moving, we get bigger.  That’s the way we’re built.

            Now that we are faced with a mind-boggling variety and availability of goodies, from complete junk to superfood concentrates, even adults act like Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick on Pleasure Island.  This “problem” of abundance is aggravated by the fact that our guts, including every one of our digestive organs, are not yet adapted to modern foods or to modern cooking. 

            While the most dangerous cooking techniques (microwaving, frying, baking) clearly wreak havoc on our bodies, they are just the tip of a threatening iceberg.  Problems such as soil depletion, soil distortion, pesticide and insecticide contamination, loss of vital factors over time and in processing, and intentional adulteration grow larger with every passing day.

            What can an intelligent eater do?  Consider the following observations.

 1.  Good digestion is the key to lasting health.  Cultured and fermented foods are crucial for this.

 2.  Synthetic vitamin supplements can very easily upset normal, healthy metabolic processes (including digestion).

 3.  Human beings digest proteins from animal foods better than proteins from plant foods.

 4.  Bone strength and kidney health both suffer as protein intake drops.

 5.  Most people are not physically equipped to be strict vegetarians.  Our ancestors were highly carnivorous and plants do not supply all the nutrients our bodies require.

 6.  Food cooked right is healthier than most raw foods.  [Up to the boiling point is fine.]

 7.  Most overheated food is worse than indigestible; it is toxic and/or carcinogenic.

 8.  “Organic” foods are not just less contaminated than commercial foods, they have more nutritional value and more flavor.

 9.  Cholesterol in unprocessed food is less dangerous than the chemicals and rancid fats in packaged food.

10.  For the entire world population, the most widespread food intolerances (aka “allergies”) are  to cereal grains.

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Shirodhara Massage

Shirodhara is a form of Ayurveda medicine that involves gently pouring liquids over the forehead (the 'third eye'). It was developed by vaidyas (practitionars of Ayurveda) in Kerala, India for use in sukhachikitsa (restorative therapy) and can be one of the steps involved in Panchakarma. The name comes from the Sanskrit words shiras 'head' and dhara 'flow'. The liquids used in shirodhara depend on what is being treated, but can include oil, milk, buttermilk, coconut water, or even plain water.

Shirodhara has been used to treat a variety of conditions including eye diseases, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, greying of hair, neurological disorders, memory loss, insomnia, hearing impairment, tinnitus, vertigo, Ménière's disease and certain types of skin diseases like psoriasis. It is also used non-medicinally at spas for its relaxing properties, and is often done in conjuction with 4 hand massage.

Researchers have conducted two human clinical trials on the psychoneuroimmunologic effects of shirodhara. In the first study a group of healthy females were randomly assigned to receive a shirodhara treatment (with plain sesame oil) or remain in a supine position (control group), while being monitored for numerous physiologic, biochemical, immunologic and psychometric parameters. The second study had a similar design, with the addition of a third group that received shirodhara with a medicated sesame oil containing essential oil of lavender. Both shirodhara treatments resulted in decreased anxiety and promoted ASC (altered state of consciousness). After the plain sesame oil treatment there was a significant decrease in plasma noradrenaline and urinary serotonin excretion vs. the control group. A correlation with natural killer cell (NK cell) activity and anxiolytic effect within the shirodhara group was also observed.

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AYURVEDA - MASSAGE WORKSHOPS - TAX DEDUCTABLE VACATION

AYURVEDA - MASSAGE WORKSHOPS - TAX DEDUCTABLE VACATION

US Health Scare - why reform is needed.

Giving birth in the U.S. is more hazardous than in ANY other advanced nation - and it continues to get worse every year.

According to CDC, two decades ago there were 6.6 maternal deaths per 100,000 pregnancies; and that rate has more than doubled, to 13.3 dead mothers per 100,000.  This data ranks this great nation as 41st in the industrialized world.

"This is a national disgrace and a call to action", says Elliot Main, chief of obstetrics at San Francisco Pacific Medical Center.  In a new report from Amnesty International, the U.S. has the resources to achieve a mortality rate of 4% per 100,000, as in Great Britain.  The report blames lack of health care, costs and lack ofdoctors in rural areas, and inner cities.

Which Dirt Should Your Baby Eat? Looking for Natural Immunities

Mapping how bugs and virus help child! ren develop immunity.
By Amanda Schaffer
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2010, at 7:09 AM ET

Too much cleanliness can be bad for your baby—so goes the prevailing theory that hypersanitized childhoods may be partly responsible for allergies, asthma, and other diseases. The idea is that early exposures to germs teach an infant's immune system to regulate itself. Just as babies' brains need input, stimulation, and training, so, too, do their immune systems.

But if bugs and viruses are a form of education, which ones make up the perfect curriculum? The research doesn't serve up a neat answer, and, of course, pathogens that actually make kids sick come at a cost. Still, evidence suggests that some gastrointestinal bugs and viruses, which might or might not cause illness, may protect later against allergy, asthma, and inflammation. Baby respiratory infections, on the other hand, probably don't shield kids in the same way. So what's a tiny baby to do? Chew toys off the floor, play in the mud, go to the petting zoo. But stay away from the flu.

The idea that germs protect against allergies started to gain traction around 20 years ago. A researcher named David Strachan found that children with more siblings, particularly older brothers, were less likely to develop hay fever. Strachan's work (like most of the research that followed) didn't prove a causal relationship. Nor did it address how, exactly, kids might school one another's immune systems. But it spurred the theory that all manner of germiness, from dirty hands to runny noses, might help kids in the long run. Researchers also linked growing up on a farm to lower risk of allergy. Dit! to for attending day care early on. (Though with caveats. In one study , for instance, day care only seems to protect allergy-prone kids if they attend before they're 3 months old.) But what is it about farms or day care that might help train the budding immune system—the scat, the snot, or something else?

It could be the scat, at least in part. Last fall, researchers analyzed a treasure trove of data from the Philippines, which tracked kids starting when they were in utero, in the 1980s. The data included information on the households the kids were born into as well as the sicknesses and symptoms their mothers reported them having before age 2. The researchers found that kids who were exposed to more animal feces, and who had more diarrhea before they turned 2, tended in their early 20s to have lower levels of C-reactive protein, a key marker of inflammation. This could mean that they had less of the chronic inflammation associated with a host of ills, from rheumatoid arthritis to heart disease, and thus better immune regulation, says anthropologist Thom McDade of Northwestern University, who led the work.

Bugs and viruses that go for the gut also turn up in studies that show lower risk of allergic conditions and asthma Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that lives in the stomach lining of as many as half the world's people, often without symptoms, though it's also associated with ulcers. In one paper, preschoolers who tested positive for H. pylori were less likely to su! ffer from the itchy skin disorder atopic eczema, a hypersensitivity reaction similar to an allergy. In another, H. pylori colonization was linked to a lower risk of childhood asthma.

Hepatitis A, a virus transmitted by contaminated food and water, seems to bolster immune training, too: Kids with a certain common gene variant who had been exposed to hepatitis A appeared to be less likely to suffer from a range of allergic disorders, according to this review by Graham Rook at University College London. (Hepatitis A seems to do this by tweaking the balance of different immune cell ty! pes.)

The silver lining of protection against later asthma or allergic conditions is harder to spot for respiratory infections. Papers that sort through the evidence generally find scant evidence that runny noses and sore throats help kids stay healthy later. In fact, children hospitalized for severe respiratory syncytial virus or bronchiolitis may be more likely to develop asthma later on according to Anne Wright of the Arizona Respiratory Center. The flu, too, might spur asthma's development. And early bronchitis or frequent common! colds seemed not to lower the risk of atopic eczema—bronchitis, in fact, seemed to increase it. The theme here seems to be: Ingest; don't inhale.

All of this makes some sense in evolutionary terms. Some of today's bugs and viruses have colonized and infected our ancestors, including other mammals, since way back when. In certain cases, we might have evolved in response to their presence. And so these organisms may now help to establish or maintain an aspect of our normal immune regulation. Respiratory viruses probably didn't play this role, Rook says, because they were sporadic and transient, present in some groups of humans but not others. Viral infections like measles, mumps, rubella, or chickenpox probably didn't either, for the same reasons. But pathogens like H. pylori and hepatitis A that infect the gut and are t! hought to be very old make sense as regulators of immune development. So do microbes found in mud, soil, and rotting vegetation. And so do little worms called helminths.

Note, however, that this is maddeningly hard research to do. Scientists must figure out which critters to pay attention to and then untangle how exactly these organisms interact with the immune system. And they must sort through other factors that probably affect how a child responds to the germy stew of life—like how old he is when exposed, what other infections have already occurred, and what his genetic predispositions are.

And so we're not likely anytime soon to have anything like a lesson plan for boosting your child's immune system by, say, exposing him to H. pylori at 1 month and parasitic worms at 3 months (especially given the risks of deliberate infection). But what we do know helps explain why that hour in the garden or cuddle with the dog is probably all for the good.

Some of the Education behind the Health Care law

Lets stop all this fearful cries of government take over and look at some of the meat in the new Health Care law.

Health Care Reform Fact Check

PolitiFact has checked hundreds of claims about health care reform and read the plans under consideration by Congress. As the Democrats move toward a final vote, we've selected 10 facts about the actual health care legislation that every voter should know. Agree with the measure or not, here's what it intends to do and where the big unknowns are. We've linked to our previous reporting on each issue throughout the story; click through for even more sources.

1. The plan is not a government takeover of health care like in Canada or Britain. The government will not take over hospitals!...

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Ayurveda / Doshas

In Ayurvedic philosophy, the five elements combine in pairs to form three active forces or body types called doshas. Dosha means "that which changes."  In this sense, dosha can be regarded as a variation, an imbalance, or a transgression against the cosmic rhythm. The doshas are constantly moving in dynamic balance, one with the others.

Doshas are required for the life to happen. In Ayurveda, dosha is also known as the governing principles as every living thing in nature is characterized by the dosha.

The three active doshas are called Vata, Pitta & Kapha.

Vata is a force conceptually made up of elements ether and air. The proportions of ether and air determine how active Vata is. The amount of ether (space) affects the ability of the air to gain momentum. If unrestricted, (imbalanced), air can gain momentum and become forceful such as a storm.  Vata enables the other two doshas to be expressive. The actions of Vata are drying, cooling, light, agitating, and moving.

Pitta is a force created by the dynamic interplay of water and fire. These forces represent transformation. They cannot change into each other, but they modulate or control each other and are vitally required for the life processes to occur. Think of the normal relationship between the two elements.  Pitta governs digestion, absorption, assimilation, nutrition, metabolism, intelligence, and understanding. Psychologically, pitta arouses anger, hate, and jealousy.

Kapha is the balance of water and earth. Kapha is structure and lubrication, and cohesiveness. The Kapha force can be visualized as this stirring force in our body.  Kapha cements the elements in the body, providing the material for physical structure. This dosha maintains body resistance. Water is the main constituent of kapha, and this bodily water is responsible for strength and natural tissue resistance in the body. Kapha lubricates the joints, helps to heal wounds, provides strength, vigor and stability, supports memory, & maintains immunity. Psychologically, kapha is responsible for the emotions of attachment, greed, and long-standing envy. It is also expressed in tendencies toward calmness, forgiveness, and love.