Health

Did you know that some muscle stretching can actually be harmful? While some stretches can help improve your joint health and restore your musculoskeletal balance, other stretches are unnecessary or even damaging. Whether you tend to overstretch or fail to stretch at all, stretching can be a useful tool that coordinates with your other healthy […]

When you’re looking at increasing your daily (or weekly) dose of cardio exercise, you may be wondering what to add to your regime. Or maybe you’re not even wondering, you’re just planning on adding more of the same. Well, don’t. The best cardio is something you aren’t currently doing. Exercising for longer periods of time […]

If you’re like a growing percentage of Americans of all ages, you struggle with obesity. Approximately one third of American adults can be described by this term, which denotes those with a BMI (Body Mass Index) over 30. The equation for figuring out BMI takes into consideration variables such as gender, age, height, and weight, […]

Excruciating. Violent. Severe. All those words can be used to describe cramping leg muscles. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with intense pain from cramping leg muscles? Even otherwise healthy, active young people can experience this kind of shocking situation, from time to time. Endurance athletes, such as runners, cyclists, […]

Ankle sprains. They plague people of all ages, in all walks of life. Particularly frequent victims include those with a pension for clumsiness or athleticism as well as fashionistas who insist on their high heels. Far from “just a sprain,” the simple turn of an ankle can greatly limit a person’s mobility and produce pain […]

Do You Work with Your Hands? Whether your hands are overworked in the garden or the kitchen, on construction projects or a computer keyboard, arthritis and finger strain can be painful and limiting. If you’re part of the 80% of American adults that rely on a regular paycheck just to survive, stopping using your hands […]

Positioned atop the tibia, or shin bone, the horse-shoe shaped menisci help absorb the stress that walking puts on our knees. The unique shape of the meniscus allows the femur, or thigh bone, to glide over it during bending or straightening of the knee. Tears of these pivotal disks of cartilage are actually quite common. […]

Did you know that each year, millions of people are sent to physical therapy due to doctor recommendations? Many first-time patients either dread their initial appointments because they expect to endure intense pain, or they have no clue what to expect, at all. So what exactly do physical therapists do? If you’re anywhere close to […]

Is My Cardio Good for Me? Many people ask, “What kind of cardio workout is best for my body?” The real answer to that question is this: any exercise other than your recent exercise obsession or fixation. Runners subject themselves to meniscal tears and degenerative knees as a result of their joints constantly pounding away […]

Muscle cramping, and specifically leg cramping, can be excruciatingly painful. The burning sensation that comes with involuntary contraction of muscles can attack a professional football player during a playoff game as strongly as an out-of-shape white-collar worker during a round of golf. It can also come on suddenly when a person is simply relaxing. This […]

The shoulders are some of the most complex joints in the body. Their structure (ball and socket) allows for three separate planes of motion (side to side, front to back, and rotating), in contrast to an elbow joint, for example, which is a hinge joint that allows for only one plane of motion. Unfortunately, though, […]

While the 15% of the population that’s left-side dominant is basically forced to achieve a certain level of ambidexterity, the vast majority of us are a bit spoiled — or are we? The following everyday items are set up to favor the right-hand dominant majority, and most of us probably don’t even realize it. • […]

As much as the posture and chairs we use when we sit and the shoes we wear when we run affect our bodies, our sleeping positioning and beds are important as well; after all, most of us spend at least the same amount of time in bed as we do in our office chairs, and […]

For many individuals who suffer from arthritis, pain is a way of life. The joints that are affected by arthritis feel stiff in the morning, sore by the afternoon, and downright painful in the evening. Arthritis is most common among the elderly, but young people may also be susceptible to it, depending on their habits […]

If you’re like 90% of the population, you’re right-hand dominant. Unlike “lefties,” the majority of us don’t have to give a second thought when we perform simple tasks such as zipping a coat, taking a picture, using scissors, or switching the gears of a bicycle. Since the equipment used for those activities has been designed […]