Smoking And Back Pain

For years, research has shown a link between smoking and an increased risk for low back pain, intervertebral (spine) disc disease, and inferior patient outcomes following surgery. A new study,published in the December 2012 Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery(JBJS), also found that smokers suffering from spinal disorders and related back pain, reported greater discomfort than spinal disorder patients who stopped smoking during an eight-month treatment period.

“We know that nicotine increases pain,” said study author Glenn R. Rechtine, MD, University of Rochester Department of Orthopaedics. “In this study, if you quit smoking during treatment, you got better. If you continued to smoke, there was statistically no improvement, regardless of the treatment you had. Smoking is bad for you... This study supports the need for smoking cessation programs for patients with a painful spinal disorder given a strong association between improved patient reported pain and smoking cessation.”

200 Plus Weight Loss Tips

Did you miss the free download for “200 Plus Weight Loss Tips”? Well, you can still download it for £0.98 or $1.57
It’s not much to pay and you get great tips and reminders like this:

Dealing With Cravings
Duke Diet & Fitness Newsletter says: “Try thinking of cravings as ocean waves. Just as a wave recedes after it peaks, a craving will recede if you do not feed it with your thoughts or actions. Instead of giving in to a craving right away, give it some time to pass. Distract yourself for a few minutes by reading or writing in your journal, taking deep breaths, going for a walk, talking about how you feel, or using such positive self-talk as "This urge won't last forever, and I am in control. I am feeling uncomfortable, but I can wait this out." Remember, bingeing might make you feel better for a short while, but you will feel better in the long run if you find a healthier outlet instead.”

Buy “200 Plus Weight Loss Tips”? from the UK site

Buy “200 Plus Weight Loss Tips”? from US site


And, of course, if you're a member of Amazon Prime, those weight loss tips are still free.

Self Help Number 3

Thank you to everyone who has downloaded my free Kindle book “200 Plus Weight Loss Tips”. The book is now 1st on the Personal Health free download best seller list and 3rd on the Self Help free download list. Can you help me to get to number 1 on both lists please? If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can do so here, but you only have till 7.59 am on Thursday (UK time) to get it free:

If you download it and like it, please post a review. You can download the book now, and read it when you have time – lots of people have told me they’re going to read it between Christmas and the new Year. And please tell others about this offer.

Download my eBook "200 Plus Weight Loss Tips" for free

 Many people are struggling to manage their weight for the holiday season, so I thought I’d give all those people some help. My Kindle book “200 Plus Weight Loss Tips” is now free for most of the next two days. That is until:

7.50 am on Thursday 6th December in the UK.
11.50 pm on Wednesday 5th December in USA (PST)
8.50 pm on Thursday 6th December in Sydney, Australia

Here are the first three tips to get you going:

The Colour Blue
Reader’s Digest says: “There’s a good reason you won’t see many fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: Believe it or not, the color blue functions as an appetite suppressant. So serve up dinner on blue plates, dress in blue while you eat, and cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.”

Imagine More To Eat Less
While you may not be able to stop after just one, simply imagining yourself eating a bag of crisps could keep you from going overboard. A study by Carey Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University, published in Science, shows that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food. These findings suggest that trying to suppress your thoughts of desired foods in order to curb cravings for those foods is a fundamentally flawed strategy.

Increasing Your Self Control
It may seem bizarre but clenching muscles - any muscles - can help you exert self-control. The next time you feel your willpower slipping as you pass that mouth-watering dessert case, tighten your muscles. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research says firming muscles can shore up self-control.

Don’t wait and lose this chance to get all the tips for free, rather than paying the normal download price. There’s no catch in this; it genuinely is free and you can keep it on your eBook reader indefinitely. But I would like to ask a favour: if you download it and like it, please post a favourable review on Amazon. Even if you don't have time to read it now, download it now to read later.

Here are the links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

World Toilet Day

Today is World Toilet Day - more than 2 billion people still don’t have a dignified or private place to go to the loo.

 Text  WASH12£1
to
70070

to donate one pound to Village Water working to reduce this dreadful statistic (I'm a trustee so I can vouch for this charity and all the good work it does).

Toys For Boys And Toys For Girls?

My grandson is 7 years old and I’m beginning to think about what to buy him for Christmas. I’d received a copy of the Boots catalogue and decided to have a look through it.

I was shocked to see that the toys for older children were divided into “Girls’ Toys” and “Boys’ Toys”. And, you guessed it, in the boys’ section there were  exciting things like Meccano Assorted Build and Play Vehicles or a Weird Science Slime Laboratory. Girls? Oh they have Glitter Babes Giant Pamper Set or, but no, I can’t bring myself to write about the rest.

I’m throwing the catalogue away. I will not be buying from Boots.

Healthy Protein Powders

I am a keen gym person and find that I do well if I take a protein powder after my workout, ut lots of protein powders are full of all sorts of other stuff as well. I like Good Hemp Protein Powder. The taste isn’t that great, but I mix it with orange juice and glug it down. Since I've been doing that I've found I recover better, am generally less tired (particularly in the morning) and my skin looks and feels a lot better.

I like the fact that it’s made in the UK on a farm in Devon. I was pleased to receive their latest newsletter and to read this:

“This year we have been growing on farms where we plant additional areas with plants to increase birdlife and wildlife. In fact for every acre of hemp we planted, we planted an additional 10% of land with wildflowers, special grass mixes and food for the birds through the winter.

"The combination of this work and the benefits of hemp have increased the birdlife dramatically – in fact the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) recently counted the birds seen in a section of the farm and found almost 70% increase from 5 years ago.”

The Secret Of A Healthy Old Age?

I really enjoyed this long article from the New York Times magazine. They title it The Island Where People Forget To Die. If you're interested in having a long and active old age, this article will certainly offer lots of food for thought. It also makes you realise (yet again) that there is a lot in modern society that is not conducive to health and well being.

An Interesting Approach To Weight Loss

Would you take part in a weight-loss program in which you were explicitly asked not to lose any weight for the first eight weeks?

Although the approach sounds counterintuitive, a study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that women who spent eight weeks mastering weight-maintenance skills before embarking on a weight-loss program shed the same number of pounds as women who started a weight-loss program immediately. More importantly, the study showed that the “maintenance-first” women had regained only 3 pounds on average a year later, compared to the average 7-pound gain for the immediate dieters.

The study’s authors say that the maintenance-first approach may offer a way to halt the cycle of yo-yo dieting.

Read more information on this weight loss technique>>

Small Bits Of Time

If you spent 10 minutes every day doing something, that would be 1 hour 10 minutes a week, and a staggering 60+ hours a year. Think what you could do with all those small bits of time.

Homesick Students

It can be hard on the whole family if someone goes away to college and finds it difficult to settle and is homesick, so why not give the Bach Flower Reemedies a try.

There are 38 different reemedies, so see which one is suitable. Obvious choices could be Mimulus, Walnut or Honeysuckle.

Lowering Alzheimer's Risk

5 steps to lower Alzheimer's risk as suggested by the Harvard Medical School Newsletter
While there are no surefire ways to prevent Alzheimer's, by following the five steps below you may lower your risk for this disease — and enhance your overall health as well.

1.    Maintain a healthy weight. .
2.    Check your waistline. To accurately measure your waistline, use a tape measure around the narrowest portion of your waist (usually at the height of the navel and lowest rib). A National Institutes of Health panel recommends waist measurements of no more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men.
3.    Eat mindfully. Emphasize colorful, vitamin-packed vegetables and fruits; whole grains; fish, lean poultry, tofu, and beans and other legumes as protein sources; plus healthy fats. Cut down on unnecessary calories from sweets, sodas, refined grains like white bread or white rice, unhealthy fats, fried and fast foods, and mindless snacking. Keep a close eye on portion sizes, too.
4.    Exercise regularly. This simple step does great things for your body. Regular physical activity helps control weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. Moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise (walking, swimming, biking, rowing), can also help chip away total body fat and abdominal fat over time. Aim for 2 1/2 to 5 hours weekly of brisk walking (at 4 mph). Or try a vigorous exercise like jogging (at 6 mph) for half that time.
5.    Keep an eye on important health numbers. In addition to watching your weight and waistline, ask your doctor whether your cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and blood sugar are within healthy ranges. Exercise, weight loss if needed, and medications (if necessary) can help keep these numbers on target.

For more on ways to help prevent Alzheimer's as well as information on diagnosing and treating it, purchase A Guide to Alzheimer's disease by Harvard Medical School.

Getting Satisfaction From Small Things

Many people belittle themselves for getting immense satisfaction from small things. You hear people say things like: “I know it’s sad but I get such a lot of satisfaction from ..” What that from is varies. It can be

• A tidy desk drawer
• A line of washing
• A new magazine
• The colour purple
• The downy hair on my child’s arm
• Chopping onions finely

The implication is that it’s not a good thing to get satisfaction from small things. But think about this again. Isn’t it better to find lots of satisfaction in small things rather than waiting for your lfe to be perfect before you can be happy.?

Get more tips and insights from my book 500 Plus Health And Happiness Tips >>

My Bicycle Ride From Russia to Turkey

I have been away from the office riding my bicycle from Peterhof (St Petersburg, Russia ) to Istanbul (Turkey). I rode 2596 miles (over 4100 km) through ten countries. It was  quite an adventure – exhilarating, exciting, scary, tiring and much more. I kept a dialy blog about my journey. You can read my blog here>>

Organic Christmas Gifts

I love Green People organic personal care products. Remarkably cheap for such effective products that care so well for you and the environment. And they’re not tested on animals and use some fairly-traded ingredients too.

They’re currently offering 10% off the Christmas Gift Range if you quote the code GPXMAS – offer ends 20th October.

Vegetarain and Vegan Athletes

If you're a vegetarian or vegan athlete there's some great information here about making sure you get enough protein, etc:

• Athletes: Power Up with Good Nutrition
• Carb-Loading
• How to Stay Hydrated
• Meeting Protein Needs

It's from the well-respected Nutrition MD web site.

200 Plus Weight Loss Tips

My latest book is now available from the Amazon Kindle Store:

200+ Weight Loss Tips, many of them backed up by references to scientific and medical research. Practical ideas that are easy to apply and effective. No bizarre diets or trying to sell you pills, CDs, specific programmes, or anything else!  Just great advice and support to help you get control of your appetite, lose weight and keep it off.

Vegetarian Survey

What’s it like being vegetarian in the world today? Is it easy, challenging, satisfying, fun? What’s difficult and is there anything that could really make a difference? The Big Veggie Survey, a major new research project, commissioned by the Vegetarian Society and carried out by market research company ORC International, aims to find out.

The Vegetarian Society, an educational charity, wants to hear from vegetarians, vegans, ex-veggies and meat-reducers to learn more about the experiences of vegetarians in today’s world. The Big Veggie Survey is also aimed at caterers, carers and teachers, indeed anyone with an interest in vegetarianism. The survey is open now and runs until 3 September at www.vegsoc.org/survey 

Vegetarian Shoes

I used to have a much loved pair of shoes from Vegetarian Shoes based in Brighton (but with an online shop too) that had a sticker inside saying: shoes for feet that don’t eat meat. It always made me smile when I put the shoes on. Sadly my most recent pair of shoes from this great company don’t have the sticker, but they’re still stylish and comfortable.

Vegetarian Shoes now has a sale on with some great bargains. So do take a look.

Learn More About The Bach Flower Reemedies

 Want to know more about the wonderful Bach flower remedies? There's a new web site where you can do that: Bach Educational Resource. This is a highly informative, internet-based learning programme with films, lectures, and archive material which is all free to view and use.