Stand Up

Sitting down for long periods is unhealthy. See what Dr. Mercola says about the hazards. Then consider the remedies, like standing up.  Put your computer or laptop up on a taller dresser or on a filing cabinet.  In other words, stand up.  

ORGAN DAMAGE

Heart: When you sit, blood flows slower and muscles burn less fat, which makes it easier for fatty acids to clog your heart. Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, for instance, showed that women who sit for 10 or more hours a day may have a significantly greater risk of developing heart disease than those who sit for five hours or less.5

Pancreas: Your body’s ability to respond to insulin is affected by just one day of excess sitting, which leads your pancreas to produce increased amounts of insulin, and this may lead to diabetes.

Research published in Diabetologia found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least.6 Sitting for more than eight hours a day has also been associated with a 90 percent increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Colon Cancer: Excess sitting may increase your risk of colon, breast, and endometrial cancers. The mechanism isn’t known for certain, but it could be due to excess insulin production, which encourages cell growth, or the fact that regular movement boosts antioxidants in your body that may eliminate potentially cancer-causing free radicals.

Findings presented at the 2015 Inaugural Active Working Summit also found that sitting increases

Lung cancer by 54 percent

Uterine cancer by 66 percent 

Colon cancer by 30 percent

Another reason for this increased cancer risk is thought to be linked to weight gain and associated biochemical changes, such as alterations in hormones, metabolic dysfunction, leptin dysfunction, and inflammation—all of which promote cancer.

Digestion: Sitting down after you’ve eaten causes your abdominal contents to compress, slowing down digestion. Sluggish digestion, in turn, can lead to cramping, bloating, heartburn, and constipation, as well as dysbiosis in your gastrointestinal tract, a condition caused by microbial imbalances in your body. 

According to Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease,

“There is growing evidence that dysbiosis of the gut microbiota is associated with the pathogenesis of both intestinal and extra-intestinal disorders. Intestinal disorders include inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and celiac disease, while extra-intestinal disorders include allergy, asthma, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and obesity.”

BRAIN DAMAGE

Your brain function slows when your body is sedentary for too long. Your brain will get less fresh blood and oxygen, which are needed to trigger the release of brain- and mood-enhancing chemicals.

POSTURE PROBLEMS

Strained Neck and Shoulders: It’s common to hold your neck and head forward while working at a computer or cradling a phone to your ear. This can lead to strains on your cervical vertebrae along with permanent imbalances, which can lead to neck strain, and sore shoulders and back.

Back Problems: Sitting puts more pressure on your spine than standing, and the toll on your back health is even worse if you’re sitting hunched in front of a computer. It’s estimated that 40 percent of people with back pain have spent long hours at their computer each day.

The disks in your back are meant to expand and contract as you move, which allows them to absorb blood and nutrients. When you sit, the disks are compressed and can lose flexibility over time. Sitting excessively can also increase your risk of herniated disks.

Personally, after I reduced my normal 12 to 14 hours of daily sitting to under one hour, the back pain I’d struggled with for decades disappeared.

MUSCLE DEGENERATION

Standing requires you to tense your abdominal muscles, which go unused when you sit, ultimately leading to weak abdominals.

Hip Problems: Your hips also suffer from prolonged sitting, becoming tight and limited in range of motion because they are rarely extended. In the elderly, decreased hip mobility is a leading cause of falls.

Sitting also does nothing for your glutes, which may become weakened, affecting your stability and the power of your stride when walking and jumping.

LEG DISORDERS

Varicose Veins. Sitting leads to poor circulation in your legs, which can cause swelling in your ankles, varicose veins, and blood clots known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) 

Weak Bones.  Walking, running, and engaging in other weight-bearing activities lead to stronger, denser bones. Lack of activity may cause weak bones and even osteoporosis.

World's Toughest Job

This may seem a little tardy to post, but it really is timeless. A nice reminder. 

Magnesium (Orotate)

The above organizes the information really well in a nice little chart.  As for food sources, you can see your options there at the right.  But as for supplement options, I think there is one form of Magnesium that is omitted that actually gets absorbed better than Malate or Citrate and that is Magnesium Orotate.  Try Advanced Research's Magnesium Orotate.  I am surprised that it is not listed, since the orotate has come recommended by a couple of different doctors that I've contacted. I cannot even speak to the recommend amounts in this chart, for some individuals or conditions may require more or may require less from one day to the next.  That is kind of up to your discretion.  "Doctor, Heal Thyself" sort of thing.  Gauge it.  See how you feel.  Take a certain amount one day and see how you feel.  If you need to back off, then do that; if you feel you could tolerate a little more, then try that.  You be your own doctor.  A nurse friend of mine has shared a conflicting opinion with me with regard to magnesium but he does not in his opinion differentiate which form of magnesium to take.  He warned against it causing diarrhea. I've been taking Magnesium Orotate and have not once come even close to that condition, so not sure what the concern is. Maybe the concern exists with other forms, like Magnesium Oxide as the chart suggests.

"[Fat-soluble] vitamin A . . . became known as the 'anti-infective' vitamin."

Christopher Masterjohn calls fat soluble Vitamin A, aka, Retinol, the anti-infective vitamin.  And by anti-infective, he means anti-infection, meaning that it would protect you from infections?  Particularly the measles. "What about Vitamin C?  I thought that Vitamin C was the vitamin to take to stave off infections!" you insist.  The two focus on different components of your immune system.  Retinol Vitamin A protects your ". . . immunity, bone growth, mucous membranes and the eyes, skin, hair and nails." Mucous membranes are an important part of your overall immunity, protecting the cells and keeping pathogens from penetrating your cells.

Vitamin C, a water soluble anti-oxidant, works on other parts of your immune system, coalescing in a forceful attack against predatory pathogens to destroy infections.  Vitamin C and Retinol A should be taken in conjunction.  Both produce much better results in repair as you are recovering from any debilitating condition, whether it be pathogen or injury. 

BEST SOURCE of RETINOL VITAMIN A
Wikipedia explains that "Cod liver oil is a nutritional supplement derived from liver of cod fish. As with most fish oils, it has high levels of the omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Cod liver oil also contains vitamin A and vitamin D. It has historically been taken because of its vitamin A and vitamin D content. It was once commonly given to children, because vitamin D has been shown to prevent rickets and other symptoms of vitamin D deficiency."

BRIEF HISTORY OF VITAMIN A

Weston A. Price Foundation's Christopher Masterjohn explains that:

While vitamin K2 languished in obscurity, vitamins A and D continually traded places with one another as the favored vitamin du jour. The pendulum initially swung in favor of vitamin D because rickets was common in the early twentieth century while eye diseases resulting from vitamin A deficiency were rare. It then swung in favor of vitamin A when that vitamin became known as the “anti-infective” vitamin.2 After World War II, the medical establishment had easy access to antibiotics and thus lost interest in battling infections with vitamin A.3 Vitamin D fared far worse, taking the blame for a British epidemic of infant hypercalcemia and eventually earning a reputation as “the most toxic of all the vitamins.”4

These days, the pendulum has swung full force in the opposite direction: we blame an epidemic of osteoporosis on vitamin A, and see vitamin D as the new panacea.5

Though a paradigm of synergy never took hold, it was not for want of opportunity. When Mellanby and Green first demonstrated in the 1920s that vitamin A prevented infections, they concluded that vitamin D could not be “safely substituted for cod-liver oil in medical treatment,” and that “if a substitute for cod-liver oil is given it ought to be at least as powerful as this oil in its content of both vitamins A and D.”2 Consistent with this point of view, clinical trials in the 1930s showed that cod liver oil could reduce the incidence of colds by a third and cut hours missed from work in half.6 Cod liver oil also caused dramatic reductions in mortality from less common but more severe infections. The medical establishment, for example, had been successfully using it to treat tuberculosis since the mid-nineteenth century.7 Studies in the 1930s expanded this to the treatment of measles.8 These findings made the popularity of cod liver oil soar (Figure 1).9.

The Miracles & Speed of 3D Printers in Healthcare

from CBS News

A 3D printer saved the lives of three baby boys with the same life-threatening condition, their doctors report in the latest issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Kaiba Gionfriddo was six weeks old when he turned blue because his lungs weren't getting enough oxygen. He was diagnosed with a terminal form of tracheobronchomalacia, a medical condition that causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. With no cure and a low life expectancy, doctors told his mother April he may not make it out of the hospital alive.

Kaiba was one of the three babies who became the first in the world to receive 3D-printed devices that helped keep their airways open so they could breathe properly, thus saving their lives. "These cases broke new ground for us because we were able to use 3D printing to design a device that successfully restored patients' breathing through a procedure that had never been done before," Glenn Green, MD, an associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, said in a statement.

Tracheobronchomalacia affects about 1 in 2,000 children around the world, according to the doctors, and renders them unable to fully exhale. Using a 3D printer, Green and his colleagues were able to create and implant a customized splint around the airways of the three boys to expand the trachea and bronchus. This 3D printed device is made to change shape over time as the children grow, and eventually be reabsorbed by the body as the condition is cured.

The findings in the report suggest that this early intervention may prevent complications of conventional treatment of tracheobronchomalacia such as a tracheostomy, prolonged hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, cardiac and respiratory arrest, food malabsorption and discomfort.

3D-printed hearts help surgeons save babies' lives

Kaiba was the first to receive the implant three years ago and his doctors report that the splint has degraded and he appears to be disease-free. "Before this procedure, babies with severe tracheobronchomalacia had little chance of surviving," Green said. "Today, our first patient Kaiba is an active, healthy 3-year-old in preschool with a bright future. The device worked better than we could have ever imagined."

Garrett Peterson

UNIV. OF MICHIGAN HEALTH SYSTEM

Two other children have also had success with the device.

Garrett Peterson received one a the age of 16 months. Garrett spent the first year of his life in hospital beds tethered to a ventilator, being fed through his veins because his body was too sick to absorb food.

Since receiving the device, he has not shown signs of any complications and is leading a normal life, able to breathe properly, doctors say.

Ian Orbich's condition was so grave that his heart stopped before he was even six months old. He received a customized 3D-printed splint and is now doing well at the age of 17 months.

Green and his colleagues received emergency clearance from the FDA to do the procedures. While these three cases appear to be a huge success, the doctors noted that this technology will take time to put into widespread practice. "The potential of 3D-printed medical devices to improve outcomes for patients is clear, but we need more data to implement this procedure in medical practice," Green said. The authors also acknowledge that potential complications of the procedure may not yet be evident.