When practiced regularly, meditation can promote physical, psychological and spiritual well-being. Many Westerners use meditation as a way of improving overall health, and to improve issues ranging from cardiovascular disease, inflammation and immune activity, to pain, anxiety, depression, and mental imbalances. Here’s how meditation can help you:
Healing: When practiced regularly, meditation can allow you to reach a state of consciousness where your mind and body begin to heal. When you can access and hold this meditative state through regular practice, the health benefits that follow can include decreased pain and stress, increased energy, better mental and emotional clarity and stability, better sleep patterns, and improved breathing due to increased lung and heart efficiency.
Prevention: Risk factors for a multitude of diseases including life threatening heart disease and stroke have been improved with the regular use of meditation as a balancing and strengthening self-care modality.
Clarity and Energy: One of the outcomes of practicing meditation is reaching a state of mind that is characterized by mental stability and clarity where you are free from sluggishness, drowsiness, and haziness.
Stress Relief: Positive psychological changes that occur during meditation are associated with higher telomerase, an enzyme vital for the health and longevity of cells at the DNA level. This positive effect on cellular health is believed to be due to an increase in your ability to cope with stress and maintain overall well psychological well being.
The benefits of meditation are most noticeable when it is practiced on a regular basis. The most important thing to remember is to start out at a pace that is reasonable for you so you stick with it and do not give up. Even 10 minutes a day can offer profound benefits to your body, mind and spirit. By gaining control over a hyperactive mind state through the gentle discipline of meditation, you can experience increased awareness, inner peace and an array of health benefits.
Individuals looking for an effective way to get in shape will be happy to know that cycling has many health benefits. Not only will it improve your heart health but also a good cycling program can build endurance and condition the heart for more rigorous exercise in the future. It is a wonderful way to begin an exercise plan and it is much more easy to maintain over time. If done with others it feels less like a workout and more like an outing with friends so you will spend less time watching the clock.
Anyone who knows how to ride a bike can benefit from cycling. It is an excellent form of cardio to get the heart pumping and burning off unwanted pounds. If you already have a bike that is the only equipment required so you save money. Weight loss occurs when a high amount of calories are being burned during a workout, cycling provides an effective calorie burning workout without damaging the joints. To much impact to the joints can cause damage to the body and decrease a person’s ability to be move around and be active.
Including a cycling workout into your daily routine can promote rapid weight loss, strengthen muscles, build stamina and prepare you for strength training. There are different levels of cycling for beginners who need to learn the appropriate techniques to maximize their workouts or advanced cyclist who are training for a marathon. No matter what level you are on you can benefit from cycling training. It is also a great way to test your skill level and see how far you have come.
A cycling workout is the most convenient workout available. It does not require tons of expensive equipment and allows you to get out into the fresh air. The intensity of the workout can be adjusted to push your body harder without affecting the joints. You can also feel the muscles working right away, which provides instant satisfaction. To see benefits your heart rate needs to be above an aerobic heart rate for more than thirty to forty minutes. The reason cycling works so well is because it can get your heart into an aerobic zone much faster than walking so your body spends more time burning calories.
A good cycling program can improve health in less time, which means faster results. It is also much easier to get started and because it does not affect the bones negatively it is easier to maintain. Training with someone can increase the level of results and maximize the benefits of the program. Just like any other workout knowledge of beneficial techniques and diet plans customized to the individual and the workout can take anyone further.
A number of years ago we ran an apple farm in Northfield, Massachusetts. To prepare and enrich the soil for future plantings we would grow a cover crop of buckwheat, a tall plant with a beautiful white flower. As apple growers we had several hives of bees for effective fruit pollination and the bees loved the buckwheat flower transforming it’s nectar into a beautifully dark and rich honey. Our children loved the buckwheat flower season because they came to love delicious taste of the buckwheat honey. What we as parents discovered was that a teaspoon of buckwheat honey seemed to greatly help whenever the children had sore throats or coughs. This proved to be especially true if they took the honey at bedtime for they always seemed to sleep a little better. Throughout their childhood we always made sure to put away enough buckwheat honey from the hives to get through a winter of respiratory ailments.
This was a long time ago and I had forgotten about this aspect of buckwheat honey until I recently read about a study that had been done in 2007 and published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. This study found that children who received a small dose of buckwheat honey before bedtime slept better and coughed less than those who received either a common over-the-counter suppressant or nothing at all. Dr. Ian Paul, a researcher at Penn State College of Medicine indicated “This is the first time honey has been actually proven as a treatment.”
The research study involved 105 children between ages 2 and 18 in their randomized, partially double-blind study. Parents would answer questions about their child’s sleep and symptoms after the first night during which there was no treatment. On the second night the children were given honey flavored cough syrup, honey, or nothing at all. It was clear that the children who received the honey slept better with fewer symptoms. Dr. Paul also noted that honey is generally less expensive than over-the-counter medications with none of the side effects like dizziness or sleepiness. Dr. Paul indicated that the type of honey plays a role in the treatment. “Darker honeys have more antioxidants that lighter honeys and we wanted the best chance to see improvements.”
Intrigued by this information I searched further and found that “The Journal of Pediatrics” in May of 2008 gave their assessment of this study. “In this well-designed and valid study, Paul et al were able to show that honey was significantly superior to no treatment for improvement in cough severity (47.3% reduction vs 24.7%) and an overall symptom score (53.7% reduction vs 33.4%). The findings of this study suggest that honey is better than no treatment for reducing cough frequency and improving combined symptom scores.” Paul Doering, co-director of the Drug Information and Pharmacy Resource Center at the University of Florida has weighed in on the subject. “I believe recommending honey as a cough medicine has merits. It provides a safe option to using chemical based options,” he said, adding that honey is part of a trend of recommending more commonplace traditional remedies for ailments.
It should be noted that the Dr. Paul study gave no honey to children under 2 yrs. of age and the newest research seems to support that practice.