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November 2003

Table of contents:

1. Seven easy ways to stretch your memory
2. Natural ways to prevent colds and flu
3. Think Safe! Plantar fasciitis - that annoying heel pain

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Seven easy ways to stretch your memory

1. Guard your health. Untreated high blood pressure, for example, can impair ability to remember. So can side effects of many common medications or underlying conditions like alcoholism, depression, a thyroid gland problem, sleep disorders or stroke. Remember: If memory slips increase, it may be a sign to speak to your doctor.

2. Take a picture. To better remember where you've left something, like your car keys, pretend to hold a camera to your eyes, focus on the object and click the image into your memory.

3. Think like a poet. Make up rhymes to recall ideas and construct simple-to-remember acronyms to record key phrases. You'll make remembering EASY...Every Acronym Saves You.

4. Put it in writing. When you're 20, your vocabulary is about 20,000 words strong. By the time, you're 60, that number doubles. So it's no wonder it may take longer to sift through your memory bank as you age. Recommended: Make a daily list of what you can't afford to forget...and carry it with you.

5. Take a daily dose of brain food. Eating at least one serving of beta carotene-rich food each day has been shown to improve some aspects of memory, especially for people over age 60. Good bets: Apricots, cantaloupe, carrots, papayas, peaches and sweet potatoes.

6. Get moving. Studies have shown that people over 40 who exercise at least three times weekly have 20 percent better memory skills than those who don't work out.

7. Remember to have fun! "Mind games" and other mental activities can help stretch memory muscles. So challenge your brain by reading more, taking courses, playing chess, Scrabble and bridge, and doing crosswords and other puzzles.

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Natural ways to prevent colds and flu

Wash Your Hands
Most cold and flu viruses are spread by direct contact. Someone who has the flu sneezes onto their hand, and then touches the telephone, the keyboard, a kitchen glass. The germs can live for hours -- in some cases weeks -- only to be picked up by the next person who touches the same object. So wash your hands often. If no sink is available, rub your hands together very hard for a minute or so. That also helps break up most of the cold germs.

Don't Cover Your Sneezes and Coughs With Your Hands
Because germs and viruses cling to your bare hands, muffling coughs and sneezes with your hands results in passing along your germs to others. When you feel a sneeze or cough coming, use a tissue, then throw it away immediately. If you don't have a tissue, turn your head away from people near you and cough into the air.

Don't Touch Your Face
Cold and flu viruses enter your body through the eyes, nose, or mouth. Touching their faces is the major way children catch colds, and a key way they pass colds on to their parents.

Drink Plenty of Fluids
Water flushes your system, washing out the poisons as it rehydrates you. A typical, healthy adult needs eight 8-ounce glasses of fluids each day. How can you tell if you're getting enough liquid? If the color of your urine runs close to clear, you're getting enough. If it's deep yellow, you need more fluids.

Get Fresh Air
A regular dose of fresh air is important, especially in cold weather when central heating dries you out and makes your body more vulnerable to cold and flu viruses. Also, during cold weather more people stay indoors, which means more germs are circulating in crowded, dry rooms.

Do Aerobic Exercise Regularly
Aerobic exercise speeds up the heart to pump larger quantities of blood; makes you breathe faster to help transfer oxygen from your lungs to your blood; and makes you sweat once your body heats up. These exercises help increase the body's natural virus-killing cells.

Eat Foods Containing Phytochemicals
"Phyto" means plants, and the natural chemicals in plants give the vitamins in food a supercharged boost. So put away the vitamin pill, and eat dark green, red, and yellow vegetables and fruits.

Eat Yogurt
Some studies have shown that eating a daily cup of low-fat yogurt can reduce your susceptibility to colds by 25 percent. Researchers think the beneficial bacteria in yogurt may stimulate production of immune system substances that fight disease.

Don't Smoke
Statistics show that heavy smokers get more severe colds and more frequent ones. Even being around smoke profoundly zaps the immune system. Smoke dries out your nasal passages and paralyzes cilia. These are the delicate hairs that line the mucous membranes in your nose and lungs, and with their wavy movements, sweep cold and flu viruses out of the nasal passages. Experts contend that one cigarette can paralyze cilia for as long as 30 to 40 minutes.

Cut Alcohol Consumption
Heavy alcohol use destroys the liver, the body's primary filtering system, which means that germs of all kinds won't leave your body as fast. The result is, heavier drinkers are more prone to initial infections as well as secondary complications. Alcohol also dehydrates the body -- it actually takes more fluids from your system than it puts in.

Relax
If you can teach yourself to relax, you can activate your immune system on demand. There's evidence that when you put your relaxation skills into action, your interleukins -- leaders in the immune system response against cold and flu viruses -- increase in the bloodstream. Train yourself to picture an image you find pleasant or calming. Do this 30 minutes a day for several months. Keep in mind, relaxation is a learnable skill, but it is not doing nothing. People who try to relax, but are in fact bored, show no changes in blood chemicals.

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Think Safe! - Plantar Fasciitis- that annoying heel pain

Ask any Physical Therapist what they feel is the number one foot problem they see most often and they're likely to say Plantar Fasciitis. This is very common if you're talking to a sport PT or trainer and especially true if your talking to one of the CIS therapist who works with industrial athletes everyday. In fact, the athletic and industrial populations hold the highest number of injuries, which total roughly 2 million Americans per year.

Plantar Fasciitis is characterized by numerous tears in the tendon that lines the bottom of the foot supporting the inside arch known as the medial arch. Many laymen often confuse this condition with heel spurs. While PF may or may not involve bony growths on the heel, it always involves tissue damage and inflammation.

The factors that can lead to PF can be intrinsic, such as persons with high or low (flat) arches or misalignments between there forefoot and heel, or extrinsic such as poor foot wear, or running, jumping, walking or standing on an unyielding surfaces (like cement floors). It is important to mention, however, the presence of all these factors individually or combined, may or may not produce PF. But, among those who experience PF, approximately 70% suffer from a common factor of heel cord tightness according to an American Physical Therapy Assoc. study (Russell. Olson, S. et al 2003). Other studies have shown that the best factor for predicting the onset of PF is a sudden change in the stresses placed on the feet; for example going from a sit down job to a job that requires prolonged standing or significant weight gains.

All studies seem to agree that prevention, early intervention and education can and do work to prevent and heal PF. Early professional treatment can return 90% of employees to work without restriction. Prevention idea's can include:

1. Anti-fatigue matting at the workstation
2. Employee education and use of proper foot wear and visco-elastic insoles
3. Lower extremity stretching program

Any early intervention or treatment program should include the following therapy regimen and exercises:

1. Icing 10 minutes several times a day, especially before bed and after work
2. Standing on stairs doing 10 heel raises then alternating feet
3. Heel walking and toe walking for 10 to 15 feet
4. Heel cord stretching of both the superficial and deep muscles
5. Arch taping and arch massage or prefabricated arch supports that are fitted properly by a professional PT or ATC

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