Category Archives: Health

Health, Life, Tips

Tips for Lumbar Herniated Disc Pain Relief

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Herniated discs can cause severe trauma in your lower back, and it may radiate through the buttock and down the leg. It is caused by the material inside the disc pushing outwards and irritating the nerve. The pain is often hard to bear and can even impact the quality of life as it may be accompanied by numbness and loss of sensation. It may affect people as early as in their thirties and aggravate with age. However, there are ways to relieve the condition, no matter how intense it is. Let us share some tips that can help.

Try heat and cold therapy

If you have mild pain in the lower back, relieving inflammation should be your top priority. Applying heat and cold therapy can help by alleviating muscle tension and reducing inflammation in the area. Heat increases blood flow, loosens muscle tightness, and improves the elasticity of connective tissue. Conversely, cold decreases the temperature of the local tissue and produces an analgesic effect.

Engage in moderate activity

Exercising in pain sounds counterintuitive, but moderate activity actually provides relief to patients with a herniated disc. Exercise releases endorphins, the feel-good hormone that boosts your mood and decreases the perception of pain. Walking, hydrotherapy and cycling on a recumbent bicycle are the recommended activities. It is best to consult a personal trainer to decide the best option that will work for you, depending on the severity of the condition.

Consult a pain management professional

At-home remedies may not always help you with lasting relief, and you will probably need professional help at some point. Consulting a physical therapist for pain management services is a good idea, and you must do it sooner rather than later. You can visit a pain management clinic and explore options such as Spinal Cord Stimulation, Radiofrequency (RF) Ablation, Cervical Epidural Steroid Injections, Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injections, and more. A specialist can help you understand these options and pick the apt one.

Seek comfort with sleep positions

Most patients experience more pain during the night, but some sleeping positions can reduce the pressure from the spine. You can use a pillow under your knees or lie on your side keeping a pillow between your knees. A restful night can help you address the problem gradually. Make sure you find the ideal position to get relief as soon as possible. It may require some hit and trial, but listening to your body helps.

Get quick relief with painkillers

The pain may be moderate at times, and you will expect quick relief to live normally. An over-the-counter (OTC) medication helps with instant relief from pain and inflammation. You can try medicines such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen, but make sure you do not overdo them. They offer only temporary relief and may have side effects following prolonged use. You must consult your doctor or pain management specialist before using them in the long run.

These tips work for most patients, but you may need a more aggressive approach if they do not help. You can opt for a minimally-invasive surgery for lasting relief. Further, physical therapy helps with rehabilitation and the prevention of a relapse.

Going Healthy, Health, Lifestyle

Playing the Odds: How To Be 90% Healthy

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We are constantly hearing that we’ve got to be completely healthy specimens. But there’s a lot to be said for being 90% healthy. You may have heard of the 90/10 Rule, where you are 90% well-behaved and the 10% you can “roam free,” and while it’s not necessarily an approach to diet, it is a way for you to change your mindset towards being healthy while also making you feel your best and at the same time not necessarily depriving yourself. But how can we really get into the mindset of being 90% healthy? 

Turning Unhealthy Foods Into Healthy Ones

Part of the draw in being 90% healthy is that we can eat whatever we want with that remaining 10%, but it’s important to play the odds. If there are things that we can do to make unhealthy treats healthier, we will feel better for it! You don’t necessarily have to come up with a low-fat version of something you love, because this will certainly take the shine off it for you but you can reinvigorate certain things that can make a big difference to your overall health. For example, if you like baking, you could add vanilla-flavored CBD oil to the mix and it could have a positive impact on you. Additionally, you could incorporate natural sweeteners and flour into your indulgences. And this can mean that you may feel better after indulging in something that you really like. If you can make things a bit healthier, for example, eating whole grain pasta instead of white pasta, it may make all the difference to how you view being healthy. 

Understand What That 10% Is for You

You have to understand your statistics to truly get to grips with what 10% means to you. For example, if you like three meals a day and have one snack, throughout the course of a week you have eaten 28 times in that seven-day period, this means that 10% of that equates to approximately three treats every week. When you start to get into this mindset, you will know your limits. 

Sticking to Your Limits

This is so important to being mainly healthy because you need to know what your body can handle. Some people don’t get along with too much milk, and this is why it’s so important to give yourself a solid foundation before you can be flexible with your food choices. The 90% doesn’t have to be salad! Many people try to be healthy in the most stereotypical way in order to reap the benefits of that 10%. But the fact is that if you don’t necessarily like vegetables, you can find ways to make them taste good. You can add a lot of spices to vegetables, and playing with flavors is not just going to benefit your diet, but your children’s diets as well! If you don’t like certain healthy food, you shouldn’t force yourself to eat it. 

Being 90% healthy is a benchmark that we can all achieve. It’s important to allow ourselves indulgences from time to time, but remember, everything in moderation!

Going Healthy, Health, Life, Tips

Making Life Easier As You Get Older

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Getting older is something that very few people look forward to. No matter where you are or your position in life, everyone has to age, and this is something that you simply can’t escape. Of course, though, you can make the process easier for yourself by taking the right steps. There are a lot of challenges that people have to face as they get older, but you can overcome them by taking the right steps as you go through life. To help you out with this, this article will be sharing some tips that will make it much easier to enjoy life.

Medical Support

Many elderly people have strict medical needs that have to be addressed each day. This can be a challenge for people to deal with on their own, and this makes advice very important. Advice on managing hearing loss and other conditions can give you the chance to make your own life much easier without having to bend over backward in the process. Most people are able to improve their own health with the right advice.

Of course, though, alongside this, you also need to make sure that you are working to get treatments and direct help from medical professionals. An audiologist can help with your hearing, and there are specialist doctors available for many different parts of your body. If you are unsure about who you need to talk to, you could consider the idea of seeing a regular MD before you get started.

Keeping Up With Friends

Maintaining a good social life can be difficult as you get older. Modern technology has made this much easier, but you need to be prepared to take advantage of it to be able to speak to the people you care about. Getting a smartphone or computer will make this nice and easy, with services like Zoom and Facebook Messenger making it a simple matter of opening your device to start a conversation. This is something that more and more people are working to achieve in the modern age.

Adapting Your Home

Getting around your home can be one of the biggest challenges for an elderly person. Stairs can be extremely dangerous if you have poor balance while reaching high things and climbing into beds and baths can also be difficult. Adapting your home to combat these issues doesn’t have to be too hard, with loads of companies on the market offering options that will make your home perfect for someone with limited mobility.

Getting old is an important part of life, but you don’t have to suffer through it. There are plenty of ways to make this time more comfortable for yourself, making it worth putting time into making sure that you are getting the best results. You will also see and learn about it with your own parents and how they dealt with it, they may have needed a caregiver for elderly people which you can then start to recognize when you need extra help.