Tuesday 28 February 2012

Focus on Liina..........

Liina specialises in body-mind therapy. Body-mind therapy helps you to become more aware of your own body. Together we can uncover reasons why some tensions have tendencies to repeat themselves. Your body never lies so it can be an effective guide to start healing yourself.

Liina uses shiatsu, reflexology, counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy to help people with a range of ailments achieve a better quality of life.

If you would like to book a free 15min consultation with Liina or any other therapist at The Therapy Room please contact us:

01223 315400
[email protected]
http://www.thetherapyroomcambridge.co.uk/Reflexology.html?page=therapyView&therapyID=48

Monday 27 February 2012

Thinking yourself healthy? Life Principle 1 - Thoughts

Can the way you think influence your health? Well most of us would agree that if you don't feel happy then it often gives us a headache or tiredness, or tummy ache or some other symptom, and most people would also agree that happiness has something to do with what is going on in our brains - the way we think. So perhaps we all agree, and hynotherapists tap into this. This is actually backed up with quite a lot of research, which is easy to find if you 'google it'.


Wellness (health) is an integration of body, mind and spirit;
Awareness that everything that we 
"think, feel, do" and "say, believe, value" 
impact on our overall state of health and wellness.

Anything that helps  build our awareness of thoughts that enter our head (we have 65000 per day according to Dr Deepak Chopra), and our ability to hang onto only the thoughts that serve us, will help us in any health goal.

Should do, can't, ought to, I'm not good enough, I don't deserve, and many others, are examples of thoughts that may be repeated in your mind over and over, reinforcing themselves. Think how this influences what you do, how much time you spend with yourself for yourself, thinking and feeling what you eat or drink, the relationships you choose. 

This week be aware of when you say or think these things, and stop and say the opposite -
I'm not good enough - I'm good enough.
I don't deserve - I deserve...

It will be a small step, but great journeys start this way..

Tune in next week to see how Breathing influences our health in so many ways..



Wednesday 22 February 2012

The six life principles for health and happiness

Our health comes down to a combination of actions associated with the 6 life principles that we do everyday without being very conscious of them. These principles are the foundation for our health. Doing them poorly over long periods of time results in lack of health, vitality, energy, self-esteem, image and eventually disease. Improving any or all of these will significantly improve health and vitality for us.

I will be covering one principle per week, and offering my insight into how it has worked for me and my clients, and how it can work for you, with practical tips you can use to help yourself.

Next week will begin with how our thoughts or our mind powerfully oversee our health.

How often do you think about what your body does for you, and what messages it is telling you, spend 5 minutes this week, in a quiet place and focus on your body - is there an ache, tension, discomfort, weakness, soreness? Write them down on a piece of paper - this will be very useful to refer back to when we start looking at the 6 life principles.

Damien Clements Integrate Health Practitioner

Monday 13 February 2012

"Home fever" is the new hay fever...

Our homes are a huge source of pollution, and are contributing to making us sick, from outgasing from carpets, curtains, paint, heating systems, dust, household cleaners, but the newest threat is from unseen EMG radiation from WiFi, DECT phones, mobile phone masts. They weaken the systems in our body and leave us open to many  Read more here..
http://microondes.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/home-fever-is-the-new-hay-fever/

But what can we do about it?
Well here are a few tips -
1. Wire your internet access in your home, and switch of WiFi.

2. Get some house plants that mop up, our household pollution. Pick from some of these - AGLAONEMA treubii - Chinese Evergreen, CHLORPHYTUM comosum Vittatum - Spider or Airplane plants, Dracaena deremensis (Janet Craig), DRACAENA fragens - Cornplant, DRACAENA marginata, Epipremnum aureum (Devil's Ivy), FICUS benjamina - Weeping Fig, HEDERA helix - Engligh Ivy, Howea forsteriana (Kentia Palm), NEPHROLEPIS ex. Bostoniensis - Boston Fern, ORCHIDACEAE - Orchid, PHILODENDRONS, especially oxycardium - Heart-leaf, PHOENIX roebelenii - Dwarf/Pigmy Date Palm, SYNGONIUM podophyllum - Arrowhead plant, SANSEVIERIA, SCINDAPSUS aureus - Devil's Ivy, including Silver Pothos, Pothos Gold and Pothos Marble Queen, and SPATHIPHYLLUM clevelandii - Peace-lilly, White Flag.

  • 3. Get an airtube headset for talking on your mobile phone. Do a search on Google for a selection of options.

    4. For more advice book a free consultation at The Therapy Room here

    Monday 6 February 2012

    LOAF for LIFE - your new source for real bread in Cambridge

    LOAF for LIFE joins first fifty bakeries using The Real Bread Loaf Mark



    Cambridge Home Bakery ‘LOAF for LIFE’ is one of the first fifty bakeries around Britain to adopt The Real Bread Loaf Mark since it was launched in September 2011 by Real Bread Campaign ambassadors, and renowned Real Bread bakers, Tom Herbert and Andrew Whitley.



    The Loaf Mark offers an at-a-glance assurance from a baker that a loaf was made without the use of any processing aids or other artificial additives.



    Dr. Peter Voshol said: ‘I started to bake Sourdough breads for fun and hobby. After many enthusiastic responses and my own enjoyment I applied for Home-Bakery status. All of the loaves I bake are what the Campaign calls Real Bread. The Loaf Mark makes it easy for people to see that I am baking an honest crust.’



    Real Bread Campaign co-ordinator Chris Young added: ‘It’s great that LOAF for LIFE is one of the first (home) bakeries in the country to sign up to the scheme. We still call for an Honest Crust Act that requires all bakers to declare everything that goes into a loaf, but for now The Loaf Mark is a quick guide to additive-free loaves.’



    A survey carried out by Toluna for the Campaign found that more than 70% of Britons believe it’s unacceptable that an ingredient/additives list doesn’t have to be displayed for unwrapped loaves, and that processing aids don’t have to appear on any ingredients list. It also found that 85% of people said they thought a mark to show a loaf was additive-free would be useful.



    Any baker can use The Real Bread Loaf Mark by signing an annual agreement that he/she will only use it to promote loaves made without the use of any processing aids or other artificial additives. The annual fee varies depending on the scale of the business, but for example it is only £10 for Campaign members running the smallest homebakeries; and for others it is included in the Campaign membership fee. The scheme is also open to non-members. Full details of The Loaf Mark scheme can be found at www.realbreadcampaign.org



    Home Bakery ‘LOAF for LIVE’ started February 1st 2012 baking Real Bread and specializes in sourdough breads to sell locally. Peter uses organic certified flour from the local Foster’s Windmill in Swaffham Prior.



    The Real Bread Campaign is Part of the charity Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme. Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is open to everyone who cares about the state of bread in Britain, and any bakery can add additive-free loaves to the Campaign’s online Real Bread Finder directory.






    For more information please contact Peter Voshol: [email protected]


    February 3rd 2012


    Friday 3 February 2012

    Sugar should be controlled like alcohol...

    ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2012) — Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
    See Also:
    Health & Medicine
    Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.
    In the Feb. 2 issue of Nature, Robert Lustig MD, Laura Schmidt PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that sugar's potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.
    This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.
    Sugar, they argue, is far from just "empty calories" that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver -- the least understood of sugar's damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.
    Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome -- the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer -- are not clinically obese.
    "As long as the public thinks that sugar is just 'empty calories,' we have no chance in solving this," said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.
    "There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates," Lustig said. "But sugar is toxic beyond its calories."
    Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. "We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar," said Brindis, director of UCSF's Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. "Changing these patterns is very complicated"
    According to Brindis, effective interventions can't rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.
    The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.
    "There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality," said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF's Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) and co-chair of UCSF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute's (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on alcohol and addiction research.
    "In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level," she said.
    The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute, UCSF's National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.
    Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.
    "We're not talking prohibition," Schmidt said. "We're not advocating a major imposition of the government into people's lives. We're talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get."

    For more information and a free consultation click here

    Immune Boosting tip no 6 - beat that Cold

    Blow your nose often - but the right way. Regularly blowing your nose avoids mucous from being sniffed back into the head. But avoid blowing hard, as the pressure can push the infected mucous back into the sinuses, increasing congestion and prolonging the cold; or into the ear canals, causing earache. 

     Staying warm and resting when you first come down with a cold or the flu helps the body to focus its energy on upregulating the immune system.

    Gargling can moisten a sore throat and bring temporary relief. Try a teaspoon of salt dissolved in warm water, four times daily. An astringent gargle, such as tea (which contains tannins) will tighten the membranes and reduce an irritating tickle in the throat. Or use a thick, viscous gargle made with honey, sage and cayenne pepper all of which are slightly antibacterial or antiseptic. Steep fresh sage leaves with the cayenne in 100 ml of just boiled water for 10 minutes. Add about 50 ml of honey; you can also add a pinch of salt and some cider vinegar to help loosen mucous. Let the mixture cool to room temperature before gargling.

    Hot liquids relieve nasal congestion, prevent dehydration and soothe the uncomfortably inflamed membranes of the nose and throat.
     Steamy showers moisturise the nasal passages and generally relax the body.

    A small dab of mentholated cream under the nose can open breathing passages and help restore the irritated skin at the base of the nose. Menthol, eucalyptus and camphor all have mild numbing ingredients that may help relieve the pain of a nose rubbed raw.

    Sleeping with an extra pillow under the head will help relieve congested nasal passages.

    Don't fly unless it is absolutely necessary.  The change in air pressure will increase the stress on the upper respiratory system and may temporarily damage your eardrums. 
    For more information and a free consultation click here

    Wednesday 1 February 2012

    Carrots: The Natural Aspirin?

    Studies show that carrots are a rich source of natural salicylates.

    You know that aspirin is salicylic acid, commonly used for any type of inflammation.

    The study showed that vegetarians have serum concentrations of salicylic acid as high as those of people ingesting 75 mg of aspirin a day, the amount in half of a baby aspirin.