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Knitting Health - How to Keep on Knittin' and Feel Great!!
Knitting Health for Joints
Arthritis and joint pain have needlessly ended the pleasure of knitting for many. If you suffer from these conditions, please keep reading because these conditions are reversible for most people. And it's never too soon to focus on prevention as well so you can keep knitting for many, many years.
While knitting is often praised for it's calming and stress relieving effects - did you know the repetitive movements of knitting can create the same brain wave state as meditation (hence the term 'knititation") - it is also often blamed for causing pain and stiffness in the finger joints and arthritis. But while knitting may aggravate such conditions, it is not the underlying cause which is often food related - either food sensitivities or simply the wrong food choices. Please read the excerpt below from Eat Right America and go to the website:
Eat Right America.
Take the free Eat Right Survey to find out how you compare to the typical North American diet.
There are many natural joint pain relief products on the market as well as nutrients like glucosamine and fish oil which really may help. But if you look seriously at your diet and make some positive changes like eating more veggies and cutting out processed foods, then you will enjoy many other benefits as well to your overall health.
Tips for knitters with arthritis:
1. Don't overdo knitting if you are in a lot of joint pain but don't stop altogether either. Many knitters find that doing some knitting actually improves flexibility and mobility of the joints. Also take breaks to stretch your fingers.
2. Try different types of needles. Generally materials with a bit of flexibility are better such as wood, bamboo and casein but not metal.
3. Try natural pain relief products before pharmaceutical pain-killers. In the long term, aspirin is believed to actually worsen the condition of joints. Some pain relief can come right off your grocery store shelf. Folks have reported relief from things such as the spice tumeric, cream of tartar and apple cider vinegar.
Knitting Health for the Eyes
Eyesight is another thing we want to protect to keep us happily knitting into old age. It's difficult to find the perfect pair of glasses that allow you to knit, read a graph pattern and watch TV all at the same time. So protect and strengthen the eyesight you have. Here are some helpful tips:
1. Healthy eating can go a long way to prevent and improve vision problems (See Eat Right America below). There are also good vision nutrient formulas that usually include lutein.
2. Always have good lighting when knitting. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do fine knitting and pattern reading in bright daylight. Daylight is really important to the eyes. (Sailors are known to have better vision than coal miners.)
3. Take vision breaks. If you find you need to focus and keep your eyes on your knitting, then look up often and focus on various distances - from the other side of the room to out the window and over the horizon. This is also really important when working in front of a computer for long periods or even simply reading.
Excerpt from:
Eat Right America:
Top 10 Principles for Nutritional Excellence
Joel Fuhrman M.D.
Chief Medical Officer of Eat Right America
www.eatrightamerica.com
Eat Right America believes it is the right of every American to understand the truth about nutrition and how it affects your health. Our nutrition-based approach has resulted in healthy, permanent weight control and prevention/reversal of many chronic health conditions like heart disease and diabetes. We invite you to join the Eat Right America movement!
1. If it wasn’t food 100 years ago, lay off it today! 100 years ago, less than 3% of people died of chronic illnesses. Today it’s over 90%. Over 50% of an average American’s diet is processed foods — manufactured products void of nutrition and vitamins. Processed foods are also laden with salt and both saturated and trans fat which promote many diet-related chronic illnesses.
2. H=N/C — America’s New Health Equation — Health is directly related to the amount of Nutrients you get for each Calorie. The more “nutrient-dense” a food, the more powerful it is. The most nutrient-dense foods are fruits and vegetables, especially dark leafy greens which are the foods most missing in modern diets. Spinach provides twice the nutrient density of Broccoli, and 10 times the nutrient density of potatoes. Strawberries are eight times more nutritious than bananas per calorie. Nutrient-dense foods contain vital nutrients, vitamin and minerals essential for preventing disease, boosting immunity, detoxifying the body and delivering permanent weight loss.
3. Nutrition IS the Prescription! Heart Disease, Type II Diabetes, Hypertension and many other conditions, are directly related to diet such as having too much fat, sodium or sugar. The body has an incredible ability to heal itself when properly nourished and when we reduce the toxic foods we eat. Patients on insulin for years have been known to become medication-free in just a matter of weeks.
Read more....
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