Can We Start a Culture Revolution to Change Our Healthcare Costs? Cleveland Clinic Thinks So!

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Ann Bartlett

This week, I took time out from working at The Body in Balance Center to head off to New York City to see 3 days of Social Media Week’s health and wellness hub.  Social media is becoming the quickest way to obtain and viral information.  For me, it helps with time management, because I have a lot on my plate.

There were many great speakers, but one in particular inspired me to write about our health habits.  Dr. Mike Roizen, chair of Cleveland Clinic and business partner to Dr. Oz, gave a speech about the health costs of average Americans.

He started by stating “Peak quality of life hits between ages 25-35.  After 25, you loose 5% of every functional measure every 10 years. Your IQ also goes down 5% every 10 years, but about 25% don’t loose their IQ.”  What makes them different? Their overall lifestyle habits.

Dr. Roizen, and his colleagues at Cleveland Clinic, decided that as part of an evidenced based program, they would focus on four areas that effect your peak quality of life. The four areas of focus:

  • tobacco
  • food choices
  • physical activity
  • work stress

(These four areas of interest are the same areas of focus at Body in Balance Center. From practitioners to classes we offer the same ideals as Cleveland Clinic. Nice!)

For Dr. Roizen, the first change was to detox their work environment.  He said if they couldn’t take the carpet, grind it up and eat it, then it had to go. Go advice! (To watch the podcast of Dr. Roizen’s speech, click here)

Food and water are basic necessities to survival, but in an industrialized world we have excesses and prepackaged convenience foods with plenty of sugar and salt to make it palatable. This becomes the burden to our rising healthcare costs.  According to Dr. Roizen, in 1990, the US had an obesity rate no higher than 14% within each state.  By the year 2008, no state has less than 15% obesity rate.

“Behaviors are governed by emotion and in order to change those emotions, you need to make a culture change,” said Dr. Roizen.  What Cleveland Clinic did to change their health habits was to focus on minimizing 5 foods for both patients and employees:

  • Saturated fat
  • Trans fats
  • Sugar
  • Simple carbs (enriched flour)
  • Syrup

For me, this is the golden key!  After 43 years of living with diabetes, I still don’t have complications and my main focus has always been to eat healthy and exercise lots!  As someone living with type1 diabetes, food choices are vitally important to managing my blood sugar, but also in weight control and keeping the rest of my body as resilient as possible. 

How well does minimizing the above 5 ingredients work? Very well.  My blood work, ie cholesterol, blood pressure etc are in perfect order.  In fact, my HDL (good cholesterol) is over 100, something that very few people can say.   My view of food is that it should help build the strength of bones and muscle, but it should also help to strengthen my digestive tract and immune system and replenish my cells with plenty of energy.  I don’t eat food just because it tastes good.  I eat food that tastes good and makes me feel energetic and focused hours later!

For one week, try limiting saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, simple carbs and syrup and add in whole foods and grains and see what happens!  And remember to completely change a habit it takes six weeks. Next up, exercise. :)

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is Your Body A Church, Or A Junk Yard?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Ann Bartlett

With the explosion of press over Paula Deen’s type2 diabetes diagnosis, and her subsequent deal with pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk,  my phone has been ringing and my mind and heart are struggling.

The dilemma is whether this is good PR for all of us living with diabetes. I have two concerns about this situation.  My first concern is whether Paula Deen will be a responsible expert patient example for people to follow. Time will tell and I’m willing to give her that.

The second concern is that Deen is a TV personality, whose PR agent quit after Deen’s announcement.  Her publicist couldn’t agree with Deen’s business decision to do a sponsored program with Novo Nordisk called Diabetes in a New Light.  I give her publicist credit for realizing that Deen’s brand was never designed to be viewed  as healthy and that it will be very hard to sell Deen’s brand against real health sources.

If there is one message to remember, it is that we have just one body for the rest of our lives.  What we do to keep it healthy and strong is important, with and without chronic illness!

As we age, the body will begin to send all the necessary responses to help fend off illness and to maintain healthy body functions for a vibrant, energetic life. But if the system is weak from unhealthy habits, such as in the case of Paula Deen’s smoking and nutrient deficient foods, the body cannot combat the high probability of disease.

At a lecture about food, I heard a speaker say, “Your body is a temple and you need to embrace it the way you embrace going to church.” In other word, don’t chip away at the flying buttresses of Notre Dame!  Would you allow rodents to do damage to the pulpit, alters and pews?  Age and decay are expected, but how we chose to care for the building is usually to hire the most qualified person to handle the repairs and maintenance, and not let the rats in to do more damage.

The foundation of a healthy body is directly related to what we eat.  Healthy, nutrient dense foods, proper hydration are daily requirements. The second most important need for the body is exercise.  In my experience, these two things are not choices! If women want to look good, take a good look at your skin in the mirror before you get in the shower.  Does your skin have a healthy glow?  Are the pores clean and open? Is your hair shiny and lustrous?  If these things are not obvious, your health may be taking a hit and the body is rerouting nutrients, that would ordinarily feed the skin, to help bolster the immune system.

All of us will go through moments when the body looks less vibrant.  When I have the flu, I think of it like experiencing a hurricane.  But the day after, the sun is out and the chance to rebuild is new and open to possibilities.  You need to clean up by understanding what is lacking in your health and move to rebuild the basic good health habits one at a time, giving each change 8 weeks to settle into routine.

Good health can be a huge capital return for your body, mind and your pocketbook. Dr. Weil is a formidable example of that success!  I hope Dr. Weil and Paula Deen have a cook off! :)

 

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tisane – Tea with Sweet Zing

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Ann Bartlett

I’m sitting here with a whopper of a cold that came on very quickly and with a vengeance! While colds seem innocuous, they can take their toll if we don’t take care.  So while I take time off to care for myself, I thought I would share some of the things I do to naturally bolster my immune system.

My cup runneth over!  It’s noon and I’ve already had 3 cups of tea.  Throat coat when I got up, peach tisane with a tiny bit of honey added and Gypsy Cold Care tea with a slice of ginger added.  Of the three types of tea, I love my peach tisane! The flavor is herbal infusion of fruit, grains, leaves and roots that create wonderfully fragrant and flavorful tea.

Tisanes have been documented as far back as ancient Egypt and China.  The word tisane comes from a Greek word that means pearl barley, but tisanes today rarely use barley, most are flowers, fruit, leaves and herbs.  I drink a peach tisane that is almost all fruit: peach, cherry, apple, hibiscus and rose hips. It’s very high in vitamin c and other antioxidants and is 100% caffeine free.

The benefits of tisane depend on the ingredients added, but they are largely antioxidant rich, which is perfect for helping get over my cold.  Tisanes are also very good for the skin.  Lots antioxidants are wonderful for the skin as well as cleansing.  The flavor of a tisane can be brightened with honey.  Honey blends the fruit flavors and also takes out any tartness of the hibiscus.  For those Kama Sutra fans, a cup of tisane will help sweeten the skin, as well as nourish it.  Just as garlic finds it way to the pores and breath, so does the sweetness from a cup of tisane.

Tisane is also great for the dieter who wants to curb a sweet tooth. In training for the GW Parkway classic in April, I want to loose a few pounds so I’m using it like a dessert treat when I feel like something sweet.

On this cold grey winter day enjoy a cup of pure heaven!

Tisanes may be bought locally at:

Old Town tea and Spice on 215 S. Union Street

Tea and Spice Exchange 320 King St

Teavana in Tysons Corner

If you would like to try something elegant, try the skin smart tea selection from Tea Forte.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Designer Yoga Classes ~ Are they of Benefit?

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Ann Bartlett

Everywhere you look these days, the signs say “YOGA.”  The business of yoga has become crowded with studios on every street in every town.  To me, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s hard for prospective students to know what studio fits their need and intention.

Studio owners are beginning to look for niche markets to help bolster their numbers; such as prenatal yoga classes, mommy and me classes, yoga for runners and yoga for specific health conditions.  Even hospitals are offering yoga as stress reduction for cardiac patients.

Recently, I saw a Mindfulness Based Diabetes Management class, with a focus on “diabetes yoga.”  Ugh.  I felt suckered! Is there such a thing as “diabetes yoga?”  I have lived with type 1 diabetes for 42 years and yoga has always been a physical workout, but more importantly, a relaxing way for me to tune into my body and enjoy the moment without it being focused on diabetes.

This begs the question, “Does yoga change for someone with diabetes?”  The real answer is no.  Classical hatha yoga is about the body, mind and spirit and a yoga practice will struggle if the 3 elements are not flowing together unconsciously.  A great pose isn’t accomplished through sheer strength, it is accomplished by quieting the mind, using the breath to help focus and move the body into a pose.  Just using one of those elements will cause the body to fail to reach it’s full capacity, or edge.

Teaching hatha yoga, students learn the eight limbs of yoga: yamas (restraint), Niyamas (observances), asana (postures), pranayama (breathing), pratyahara (withdrawl of senses), dharana (concentration), dhyani (meditation) and Samadhi (absorption).  The details to the eight limbs are these: yamas, or restraint is about social values of non-violence, truth, appropriate behavior and non-possessiveness. Niyamas, or observances, bring focus to personal ethics, contentment, self -study and surrendering to a higher power. Pratyahara is referring to turning your attention inward and allowing no distraction of the mind to pull your attention away from the effort to be in the pose.

Someone with diabetes, or any chronic condition like diabetes, should not require a condition-specific yoga class.   Instead, they should look for a class suited to their experience with yoga.  When I started back to a regular yoga practice, 8 years ago, I took a fundamentals class.  Even though I was a seasoned yogi, it had been a while and I knew that I needed to reacquaint myself with the principles of yoga.  While I found some of it boring, I also found that I had forgotten some of the principles of yoga and by slowing myself down and revisiting the basics, I found a much more rewarding experience.

As for my diabetes and yoga, I found that I lost weight more easily and needed less insulin and personally, I felt more content.  It didn’t take a class dedicated to diabetes, it just took the effort to find the right class.

 

 

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Years Resolution

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Ann Bartlett

I think New Years resolutions are just hype, because after a couple of months most people forget about them and return to old habits. But a new year deserves recognition, right?

So how do we begin to carve out a long-term goal at the start of a new year?  By setting a monthly goal, where every month can change.  Most New years aspiration about self, so why not love thy self in the moment.  If you handle it that way, suddenly, a new year resolution doesn’t seem as daunting.

Since October, I made a promise to a friend that we would run the GW Parkway classic 10 miler in April.  For Christmas, I bought myself a treadmill and set up a workout room in my house, so prepping for my goal is done and I have no excuses for not being able to finish 10 with ease!

Since my treadmill arrived, I’ve used it every other day, trying the options and programs, so that I’m comfortable that I won’t fly into a wall.  My running over the last year has been pretty inconsistent and it’s been about 4 years since I made it a regular routine of 4-6 times a week and also where I had a goal in mind.  So January is about finding a routine that works for my busy work life and also taking my time to build my base running fitness.

As part of my goal, I want to loose 10 lbs, which actually isn’t hard when I start running, but I have to make sure I’m taking in the right calories to match my output.  Working as a massage therapist 5 days a week, teaching classes, consulting for diabetes projects and adding my fitness schedule, I need to make sure that I eat very well to maintain my energy.  The holidays always hammer my otherwise healthy diet, so I like to start off the year with a simple healthy, but restricted diet.

For the month of January I’m going to cut back my coffee consumption, alternating green tea and coffee.  My meal choices will be more fish and chicken, lots of veggies, both fresh and cooked and low carb, about 60-80 grams per day. Despite cutting back on the coffee, I usually find my energy increases and I feel less agitated. Low carb also helps me digest food better. For me, it will be cutting down some foods I grab when stressed and adding foods that are leaner, or less concentrated. The theory of detoxing your body is a myth; unless you consume a lot of junk food, then eating a fresh, well balanced diet will feel like a detox for a couple of weeks.

For me, my diabetic body depends on constant attention and nurturing my healthy habits to maximize whatever is left of my immune system. With that said, my new year is starting off with reasonable goals for the next month.  Nothing overwhelming and nothing new, I’ve just added a little more focus for loving myself. Happy New Year!!

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Proper Use of a Neti Pot

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Ann Bartlett

Many people suffer with sinus problems.  Symptoms include headaches, facial pain and chronic clogged nasal passages.  In response to the growing number of patients suffering chronic nasal issues ear, nose and throat docs are recommending sinus irrigation, or Neti pots.

A Neti pot looks like a small teapot that holds a warm saline solution and is poured into one nostril and the solutions flows through the sinus cavities and exits out the other nostril.  The saline solution helps to clear away crusting in the nasal passages and reduces the number of allergens sitting in the sinuses.

Yesterday, NPR alerted listeners to 2 deaths directly associated with Neti Pot use.  The culprit was not the Neti pot saline solution, but a brain eating amoeba found in tap water in Louisiana.  A similar issue developed this past summer when several children died after swimming in a pond.

If you plan on using a Neti pot remember that water should always be distilled or filtered and not directly out of the tap, regardless of where you live!

Here’s to clean air, clean water and the proper use of a Neti pot!

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Our Favorite Natural Cold Care Remedies

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Ann Bartlett

This fall Washingtonian’s Well+Being blog asked us for our favorite cold remedies.  We love sharing with expertise, but realize that editors need to focus the article.  I thought it might be to everyone’s advantage to share the full content that we shared with Washingtonian’s Well+Being:

Ann Bartlett, LMT

As a massage therapist, I have a routine for caring for a cold.  One thing I don’t do is get a massage! In the early part of having a cold a massage can exacerbate the symptoms, making you feel worse. Best is to get a massage toward the end of the cold. This also avoids spreading the cold to anyone else.

At home, I bundle up with socks, layers of clothes and settle in for reading and napping.  In addition, I make a large batch of matzo ball soup (you can use noodles instead) and I add a healthy dose of fresh cut ginger and let the ginger steep in the broth for several hours in a slow cooker. The anti inflammatory in ginger, called gingerols and shaogals, help reduce the pain of a sore throat and also help to kill rhinoviruses. I also will make gypsy cold care tea and add a slice of ginger to it.

 Njemile Jones, L.Ac

I have the good fortune to be a licensed practitioner of Chinese Medicine.   I spend my day sharing rich ancient healing traditions with many people our community.  I frequently see newly pregnant women who are cautiously reluctant to take over the counter cold remedies.  Fortunately Chinese Medicine offers many safe, easy to use, tasty remedies that are helpful for anyone to try, even kids.  If you’re in the early stages of a cold and have a scratchy, itchy throat, chills but not much fever, and a bit of neck stiffness, I often recommend Cinnamon Twig Tea or Gui Zhi Tang.  It has gently warming herbs like cinnamon and fresh ginger, along with licorice root, red dates, and a little bit of white peony root.  It’s warming nature helps you break a mild sweat to release the cold hovering just beneath the skin.  However, if you have a raw, sore throat, with a fever and headache, I always suggest a tea with cooling herbs like peppermint, or a congee — a type of soup — with green onion, black mushroom, jobs tears, mung beans and bamboo shoots to cool the body, and help break the fever.   Finally, there’s nothing like a 45 minute treatment that includes cupping of your shoulders and upper back, along with a few acupuncture needles gently placed on your forearms and lower legs, to help kick that cold out of your body quickly and efficiently.  Wishing you good health and abundant wellness this fall and winter season.

 Regan Franklin, yoga instructor

The Breath Shield

Got Yoga?  Take a deep breath!   Breath is the vehicle to our survival and during cold season, fighting the virus.  So are you alive and sick or are you riding the highway of life?  Breath, when used in the proper manner is a whole lot more than the automatic function that we all know it to be.  Breathing into the chest as opposed to the belly results in a more shallow breath, thereby depriving your body of the refreshments that it needs to keep on partying.  Basically, the shallow breathing results in less oxygen transfer to the blood and in turn less nutrients are delivered to the tissues that need them thereby, amongst other disorders, making your body’s immune system work less efficiently.

Oh and a bit of chamomile tea always soothes and revs up the nadis (energy channels) to give you an herbal jumpstart, energetically and physically (and sometimes mentally).  Enjoy life’s ride and breathe with unity, serenity and awareness.

From Dr. Chris Johnson, ND

The fastest way to end a “cold” or flu is with an individualized single homeopathic remedy. With the correct remedy, the illness should be gone or almost gone within 24 hours. However, this takes knowledge of the different pictures of the remedies, as their use is very specific and individualized. There are books to teach people the basics of using homeopathy for minor, acute conditions such as colds – these are often available at health food stores.

Other than that, the easiest approach is to use elderberry syrup. Elderberry has very strong direct anti-viral properties and also mobilizes virus-fighting elements of the immune system. In clinical trials, it has been shown to reduce duration of flu and flu-like illness by an average of 4 days while also greatly reducing intensity of symptoms. Similar effects can be expected with “colds” (which are usually viral). Best effects are achieved when taken within 48 hours, and preferably 24 hours, of onset of symptoms. Look for products called Sambucol or Sambucus and follow directions listed on the product.

Christopher Johnson, ND is a naturopathic doctor specializing in the use of homeopathy and nutrition to address a broad range of conditions in both the adult and pediatric populations. He is owner of Thrive Naturopathic, a holistic health practice located in Alexandria, Virginia. He speaks and teaches widely on homeopathy and holistic health care. Visit his website at: www.ThriveNaturopathic.com

From Dr. Joe Henderson, DC

I have to share the irony of writing a short blog on natural cold remedies while suffering from a head cold, but maybe that’s perfect timing.  As a chiropractor, I don’t promise that getting adjusted will cure cancer, fix digestion, or wipe out the common cold, or reverse the aging process (all things I’ve heard other chiropractors say).  What I will say is that optimal functioning of the immune system depends on a host of variables: nutrition, exercise, effective stress release (as a society, we absorb more and more stress into our bodies now than in past generations and often don’t make the time to de-stress ourselves.  Proper function of the spine, the joints of the extremities, and healthy tone of the muscular system also plays a role, a direct neurological role.  Studies have mapped a direct neurological connection between joint capsules, intervertebral discs, and muscle spindles (kind of like a control center in a muscle) to the thymus gland, a major player in the immune system.

The best analogy I can make of the body is to compare it to a computer.  The brain is the hard drive, and the rest of the body is both the monitor and the keyboard.  Right now (interestingly, right after the warranty was up) the letters a, b and n aren’t working on the keyboard of my laptop.  It makes it virtually impossible for me to do a simple thing like answer emails without copying and pasting those letters from some other document.  Your body and your immune system function the same way.  If “optimal” doesn’t go in, “optimal” doesn’t come out.

I wasn’t able to get myself adjusted when I felt this head cold coming on, but I can honestly say I’ve gotten rid of all cold symptoms at other times in the past by making sure I got my spine (especially the thoracic or mid-section) opened up the day I felt it coming on.

We welcome any comments on additional natural remedies!

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Do Massage Therapists Have Rights?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ann Bartlett

As a massage therapist, it is our responsibility to protect the emotional well being of our clients when they are in the sanctuary of our treatment room.  We are taught to create a peaceful place that calm feelings and offer a safe haven.  People’s vulnerabilities often surface in a massage room and the last thing any professional wants to do is put either themselves, or their client at risk.  Nothing could have taught me the importance of these boundaries, then 2 weekends that I spent working with incest survivors during a weekend retreat 20 years ago.

My job at the retreat was to watch for signs of physical pain and to work with participants after their intensive session.  The scars for these women were physical and emotional.  One woman said to me, “Please don’t touch my feet.  My parents used to shackle my feet to the floor, spread eagle and naked.” I could see the physical scars across her ankles to confirm her story, and  I could not have been more conscious of my own actions during her treatment.

In those days, I was so eager to explore the body mind connection and workshops offered the best psycho-social understanding. While challenging, these events yielded some of the best training in learning boundaries both for myself and, more importantly, for my clients.

However, as a massage therapist, the landscape has changed, in the last few years. Over the past 7 years, I’ve encountered two people who have disregarded my boundaries and my emotional well being. Both had one commonality: they had a dual relationship with me, meaning friend and also massage therapist. As the most recent situation closes, I decided that I needed to understand “how I got here.”

I did not embrace the predator notion at all, but after hearing the consensus of 3 psychology professionals, it is hard for me ignore the fact that they mostly likely had intentions and manipulated the conversation to get what they wanted, putting my professional boundaries in an awkward position.  It didn’t help when a friend and colleague urged me to read this article.  In my case, the two were not Sandusky, or even close to that kind of manipulation, but they were people who sparked an interest and closeness with me and I was not quick enough to see the game and nip it in the bud.

As a result of these experiences, I met with a local vice cop, who regulates massage.  I asked if we, as massage therapists, have rights.  The answer was a mind blow!  I have a ton of rights and options that I never knew, nor received training in school. Do you know your rights for where your business is located?

This information needs to be a basic part of massage school curriculum and therein lays my outlet for turning this ugly experience into something positive. Stay tuned for more to come on the subject!

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Massage Therapist’s Self Care

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Ann Bartlett

I just came home from my ritual monthly spa day!  For me, spa days are a necessity for the long hours that I spend working.  Without self-care routines, my body starts to talk to me saying “sore shoulders, cranky neck, tired eyes, tired low back.”  All of these are symptoms of stress.

As a society, Americans have learned to reduce the pain of stress through both positive and negative routines.  Some good routines are regular exercise, eating well, meditation, massage, tai chi, qi gong, reiki and all forms of energy healing. The negatives routines are the ones that suppress or mask pain.  Alcohol is one method many people chose to reduce stress and it’s easy to see why.  It’s highly social and accepted, it dulls most pain, and it heightens the senses.  But after the euphoria of alcohol dies away, the stress can come back and feel more acute and alcohol elicits depression as well.

The whole earthy crunchy tactic is stabilizing for many, but may not be appealing to all! I have many routines that I pick and chose. I love pedicures, facials, body scrubs and whatever is close by will often be sufficient when looking to destress. Locally, I run to Sugarhouseday Spa, I highly recommend the loving hands of Audrey Anne, but be aware, she is very different from the type of massage that I give!

I love a great Ayurvedic treatment called Abhyanga.  An Abhyanga treatment is a two-part treatment, first part is dry and the second part is herbal oil.  The dry rub is prepared according to your skin and body type, the sesame oil also has herbs added. Using a silk glove the therapist will rub the dry mixture on the skin helping stimulate the lymphatic system and it also increases the circulation helping the skin to detox. Then the therapist wipes off the dry rub and begins to soothe muscles into deep relaxation.

I tried this treatment when I visited Kripalu.  I left the massage, headed down to the sauna and let what was left of the oil and dry rub sink deeply into my body.  It was a great recovery from 3 days of intense snowshoeing in Vermont! Rest and recovery come in many different forms and varying treatment of stress is a wonderful self-exploration!

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences!

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment