3 Squats You’re Probably Doing Wrong—and How to Fix Them With Kelsey Wells

Get ready to do leg day the right way.

When it comes to leg day, you either love it or you hate it. But if you fall into the latter category, it could be because you struggle with correct squat form. It can be really hard on your back and joints if you don’t have your body aligned properly. Luckily, fitness influencer Kelsey Wells is here to fix that. In this video, she’s going to show us how to fix our squat form. Get ready to do leg day the right way. 

Squats

Many people don’t know what direction to point their knees as they lower into a squat. Make sure to keep them in line with your toes, not pointed in or out. 

RELATED: 3 Common Exercises You’re Probably Doing Wrong–and How to Fix Your Form

Sumo squats

When doing sumo squats, your toes should be pointed out. Avoid pointing them straight or in, and focus on angling them away from your body.

Jump squats

As you jump up, it can be easy to drop your chest and hunch your shoulders. Instead, think about lifting your chest up and keeping your shoulders down and back. 

Source link

Survive Cocktail Party Season – Health

Go for it:                  Calories:
White wine spritzer     72
Rum and cola             110
Gin and tonic             114
Red wine                    125

Run from it:             Calories:
Cosmopolitan              271
Daiquiri                       278
Martini                        326
Margarita                    336

 

Next page: Hangover, be gone

 

 

 

Source link

Happy, Healthy Holidays – Health

Funny how whats supposed to be a celebration turns into something that you have to “survive.” Well, not this year. Our guide takes the stress out of your holidays by giving you everything from gift ideas for your special friends and family to tips thatll help you stop bingeing at the buffet table and overspending at the mall. Whats more, well show you how to avoid that real holiday wrecker—trying to do way too much all by yourself. Stephanie Woo, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Pepperdine Universitys Graduate School of Education and Psychology, says, “When you realize catastrophe is not lurking around every unfinished to-do, you can focus on what you really enjoy.” Hear, hear!
 Is Your Home Safe for the Holidays?

 Stay Calm this Holiday Season

 

 Tips From Real Women

 

 Q and A About Postholiday Slump and Missing a Loved One

 

 Avoid Backache This Holiday Season

 

 5 Ways to Curb Your Cravings

 

 Stressed About Cash? Try This

 

 

Source link

Inspirational Holiday Quotes and Sayings

Inspirational Holiday Quotes and Sayings



Source link

Medical Conditions Doctors Miss – Health

For many migraine sufferers, nothing could be more obvious than the severe headaches, which are usually characterized by intense throbbing or pulsing and can be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, or sensitivity to light and sound. But some people may get migraines without even knowing it, says Dr. Fleming.

“Sometimes migraine symptoms can be very severe, where the patient can even develop paralysis, and other times they can be very subtle,” he says. “Patients might feel dizzy or lightheaded or feel a vague discomfort in their heads, and oftentimes they’ll get treated with medication that might not be appropriate for a true migraine.” A neurologist should be able to rule out other possibilities, and make the proper diagnosis.

RELATED: 18 Signs You’re Having a Migraine

Source link

Health Risks of Vitamin D Deficiency

Rickets, or the softening and weakening of bones in children, is usually caused by an extreme and prolonged vitamin D deficiency; children who are 3 to 36 months old are at highest risk because their bones are growing so fast. In the late 19th century, doctors realized that vitamin-D-rich cod liver oil helped to prevent and treat rickets in children; manufacturers added vitamin D to milk for the first time in the 1930s, and rickets has since become rare in the United States. When nutritional rickets is diagnosed, supplementation with calcium and vitamin D corrects most bone damage within a few months, sometimes within a few days.  The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all infants, children, and adolescents receive a minimum daily intake of 400 IU of vitamin D.   

Source link

How to Prevent Holiday Stress

Chances are, the holiday invitations are hitting your inbox and mailbox. Between the office party, family commitments, and one-day sales, you can be stretched—too thin. Packing your calendar with obligations means sacrificing time usually spent on other activities. Sleep and exercise—important stress relievers—could be the first to go.

What you should do: Get ready to say no to some things. Start to prioritize chores, decline some invitations, and schedule time to do holiday activities you enjoy, instead of just those you feel you have to do.

Source link

Cases of Legionnaires’ Disease Are Occurring Across the U.S. What Is It, and Are You at Risk?

You’ve probably been seeing an increase in Legionnaires’ disease coverage in the news lately. Legionnaires’ was blamed for the illnesses of four L.A. Fitness gym members in Florida late last month, and a New York City police officer is currently in the hospital recovering from Legionnaires’ as well. (Fellow cops were warned not to shower at a precinct in East Harlem, where traces of the bacteria that causes the disease were found.)

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about risks associated with home water births, which have been linked to two 2016 cases of the disease. And yesterday, Michigan’s top health official was charged with involuntary manslaughter for failing to alert the public about an outbreak, which some experts have linked to the contaminated-water crisis in the city of Flint. Twelve people died from the outbreak in 2014 and 2015.  

RELATED: Beat 16 Summer Health Hazards

But wait, wait, wait. What is Legionnaires’ in the first place? Back in 2015, after an outbreak in the South Bronx killed 12 people and sickened dozens more, Health broke down the basics and spoke with experts. Here’s what you should know. 

It’s a serious form of pneumonia 

From 8,000 to 18,000 people are hospitalized each year in the US with Legionnaires’ disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s an infectious disease, but unlike other things like influenza and the common cold, it doesn’t spread from person to person; people catch it by inhaling mist from water systems harboring Legionella bacteria. The first known outbreak occurred in 1976, at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia, which is where the name comes from.

Symptoms can show up two days to two weeks after someone is exposed, and can include fever, cough, chills, muscle aches, headache, fatigue, confusion, loss of appetite, and diarrhea.

 

“It is a true bacterial pneumonia. That’s why it is severe, but at the same time it doesn’t make everyone ill, and it doesn’t kill everybody,” Hassan Bencheqroun, MD, an interventional pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Pacific Pulmonary Medical Group and an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Riverside, explained to Health. “Those that develop the pneumonia and those that die from it are those that have risk factors.”

These risk factors include being 50 or older, having a chronic lung condition (such as asthma or emphysema), smoking cigarettes, taking medication that suppresses the immune system, and having an immune-suppressing illness.

RELATED: 10 Places With Measles or Other Outbreaks

The bacteria can grow in water tanks, spas, and air-conditioning systems  

Legionella pneumophila is the strain responsible for 90% of cases of Legionnaires’ disease. The bug lives in the condensers of large air conditioning systems, hot water tanks, whirlpool spas, cooling towers, even ornamental fountains. While low levels of the bacteria won’t lead to an outbreak, “it’s when it multiplies to the level that it would cause disease that we worry,” Dr. Bencheqroun said.

“Legionella is usually a rarer cause of pneumonia,” Belinda Ostrowsky, MD, director of epidemiology, stewardship, and infection prevention at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx, added in an interview with Health. “In the Bronx we can see clusters (increased number of cases) in the summer months. Clusters can also be seen at times due to specific environmental sources.”

In the 2015 outbreak, investigators determined that a cooling tower on top of a hotel was the source of the illnesses in the Bronx. To confirm that certain structures are the source of a particular outbreak, medical sleuths must match the DNA signature of the bacteria found at the source to the bacteria that’s making people sick.

RELATED: 14 Types of Food That Can Make You Sick

Antibiotics can treat the disease 

Death rates from Legionnaires’ disease range from 5% to 30%. Some patients will get better with just a few days of intravenous antibiotics, while others may need to spend 10 days to two weeks in the intensive care unit, according to Dr. Bencheqroun. “Most of these people have an incredible amount of inflammation in the lining of their lungs, so their oxygen level is very low,” he says. Some people may simply need some extra oxygen, while others may need to be on a ventilator.

To get our best wellness tips delivered to you inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

The good news, Dr. Bencheqroun said, is that inexpensive, very effective drugs for treating Legionnaires’ disease are available. “We have excellent antibiotics that treat this pneumonia, and these antibiotics are not complex, third tier, only-accessible-to-the-rich kinds of antibiotics,” he said. “Most of the cases of Legionella pneumonia that we diagnose, we send home, and they restart their life with just a story to be told.”

Source link

What to know about ADHD

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is a set of behaviors that is common in children, leading to an inability to concentrate or sit still. It can also occur in adults. Read on to learn about the different specifiers for ADHD, treatments, and research into the possible causes.



Source link

The Story of the Hospital Staffers Who Took Photos of a Patient’s Genitals Raise Questions About Privacy and Security in the OR

Doctors and staff at a Pennsylvania hospital are under fire after what news reports described as a “ton” of employees crowded into an operating room to take cell-phone photos of a patient being treated for a foreign object lodged in his or her genitals, PennLive reported this week.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Bedford Memorial Hospital has been cited by the state’s Department of Health for the incident, which took place last December while the patient was under anesthesia.

RELATED: 20 Weird Facts About Sex and Love

A hospital employee initially told state investigators that a personal phone was used to document the case—“to use for future medical lectures”—because the operating-room camera was broken.

However, the health department determined that photos were taken on several phones, that some employees had shown their spouses or other people at the hospital, and that the operating-room camera was indeed working. One witness told investigators that “there were so many people [in the operating room] it looked like a cheerleader-type pyramid.”

The hospital alerted the health department when an employee complained about images circulating around the building in January. Bedford Memorial was cited for failing to protect a patient’s confidentiality and privacy, allowing people not involved in a patient’s care into the operating room, and allowing people to use personal devices to take photos of a patient.

As a result of the incident, two staff members were suspended and one was replaced. The hospital also alerted the patient who had been photographed, disciplined an unspecified number of other staff members, and required all surgical staff to attend a meeting on privacy and confidentiality.

Hopefully, those actions help prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. But unfortunately, doctors behaving inappropriately at the expense of a patient is more common than it should be.

RELATED: Hospital Performs Surgery on Wrong Baby

In a 2015 editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the journal’s editors addressed this issue. “Although we wish it were otherwise,” they wrote, “most physicians at some point find themselves in the midst of situations where a colleague acts in a manner that is disrespectful to a patient.”

The editorial was accompanied by an anonymous essay from a physician who recalled two instances of sexual or racist behavior by doctors, directed at patients while they were under anesthesia. One instance had been told secondhand, but one the author was present for—and felt too embarrassed to speak out at the time.

This isn’t the first reported case of offensive and inappropriate photography, either. After actress Joan Rivers died from complications during surgery in 2014, rumors surfaced that her doctor had snapped a selfie with her while she was unconscious.

In a 2008 JAMA study, 17% of internal medicine residents admitted to making fun of a patient, sometimes while he or she was under anesthesia. There have also been reports of doctors with inappropriate—and often publicly available—social media profiles, with posts that include private information about patients.

Of course, medical professionals can also act completely unprofessional even when their patients are wide awake, with offensive or insensitive comments that do exactly the opposite of making us feel like we’re in good hands.

Still, these cases are the exceptions, not the rule—and there are plenty of great doctors out there who put patients’ needs and feelings (and their privacy and other rights) first. There are also procedures and regulations in place at hospitals and medical facilities to prevent these episodes from occurring, and to respond to them if they do.

“By shining a light on this dark side of the profession, we emphasize to physicians young and old that this behavior is unacceptable,” wrote the authors of the 2015 editorial. “We should not only refrain from personally acting in such a manner but also call out our colleagues who do.”

To get our best wellness tips delivered to you inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

And while there may not be much patients themselves can do in many of these situations (like in the middle of a surgery, for example), it’s important to feel comfortable speaking up anytime something feels strange, says Health’s medical editor Roshini Rajapaksa, MD.

“Don’t fall into that old mentality that whatever the doctor says goes,” says Dr. Rajapaksa. “Trust your instincts, and if something seems off or feels creepy, say something.” Most hospitals have a patient advocate who will hear concerns and complaints, she says, “and you can always report unusual things to the state medical board.”

Source link

The Best Meditation Videos Under 10 Minutes

You exercise to keep yourself in shape physically, but what about staying balanced mentally? Meditation is an amazing way to get centered, and incorporating it into your daily routine can decrease stress and soothe anxiety. Even celebs love it, like singer and actress Victoria Justice, who claims meditating is one of the best things she does for her body.

Not quite sure where to begin? We’ve rounded up the top guided meditation videos for any and all occasions. There’s one for increased focus, another for overcoming self-doubt, and even a guide to meditation for a better night’s sleep! Even better: These meditations are all 10 minutes or less, meaning even the busiest bee can manage to fit in a little “me” time.

RELATED: 25 Surprising Ways Stress Affects Your Health

Source link