Be Well health tips Archives - Page 15 of 19

Can an ADD/ADHD study help us?

Posted on May 23, 2013

Gentle Reader,

I just read Dr. Steve Chaney’s most recent post which concerns food sensitivities and ADD/ADHA. The study is carefully done with cross checks for biases and the resultant information is extremely helpful for the parents of children who once might have been identified as “figgitty” and now are sent home for a prescription.

For years I have been writing about diet to alleviate the aches and pains that come with osteo-arthritis, as well as other forms of arthritis. We sufferers are at the other end of the age spectrum so this comparison may seem like a stretch. The reason I share Dr. Chaney’s post with you is because of the methodology used in the study of 4 – 8 year olds. The children were given food sensitivity tests, but Dr. Chaney states that is not necessary if you follow the protocal. You can read his entire post here. Before going on medications that have serious side effects (that includes aspirin which causes stomach bleeding), perhaps you would like to try the same elimination diet these children secumbed to. Perhaps foods exacerbate your pain and you could reduce your dependence on drugs by this simple, inexpensive and side-effect free process. Keep a food and pain diary. After five weeks of nothing but rice, meats, vegetables, pears and water (An elimination diet is the “gold standard” for evaluating food sensitivities because it eliminates almost every food known to cause sensitivity from the diet). Add foods in slowly and make careful note of your pain level as you add them.

If you decided to try this, let us know your results. This could be a break through process for many arthritis sufferers. Please take time to leave a comment.

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

4 1/2 hours of driving…Oh, my aching back

Posted on May 9, 2013

Gentle Reader,

Six hiking buddies escaped to the cabin of one of us on the Oregon coast just sound of Canon Beach. The sun shone and the sand was warm, inviting surfers, families and dogs to play even though it was mid week and basically empty of tourists or locals.

I was really hurting from the long hours of driving and didn’t want to miss a minute out doors. I had no Back2Life machine with me. But I got over my aches and pain fairly easily with a technique I’d like to share with you. In addition to several Pain Relief herbal tablets that inhibit the pain path nicely with no side effects.

Lie on the floor with your butt up against the front legs of a chair and your bent knee legs on the chair

seat. While in this restorative pose position, move in the very tiniest motions, a pelvic clock. Ten up and down movement between 12 and 6, then 10 between 1 and 7, then 2 and 8, then 3 and 9 and so on around the clock face. The pelvic tilt

is a miniscule movement using your abdominal muscles to produce a small swing from up to down. You can look it up under Feldenkrais. It works miraculously to unwind and restore balance to the lower back.

For a little eye candy, here is the sitka spruce forest we hiked in, a herd of elk crossing the dunes, the sunny beach and the wild flowers blooming their little spring hearts out.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

Before you go, tell us what you have done to get the kinks out after a long drive or hours in a chair. Leave a comment.

Fondly, Betsy

206 933 1889

www.DoWellWithBetsy dot com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

I did not know him: a cycle of pain

Posted on April 18, 2013

My brother died. I went to Boston to be with his wife and children. At first the pain and suffering was all about my loss. In Boston I became one grieving sister in a sea of grief. I did not know all these other grieving people. Not his wife of thirty-five plus years and their three children, and all of his wife’s siblings, their spouses and their children. And then his friends from high school and college and his medical practice and their church and his men friends. Six hundred people in various degrees of pain.

I listened. I discovered that I have not listened well; I let the stories of others come in unfiltered. These stories gave me my brother. How bitter sweet to have him and lose him at the same time. The acute pain is mediated by the truth, the fleshing out of the man he was these years we had been separated by a continent and our too-busy lives. Today back in Seattle, I feel less pain. I also have far more compassion for his wife and their children who now begin the work of knitting a life without him physically present.

How are emotional pains like our body pains?

I recently found an interesting web site called the Arthritis Management Program. They published a graphic of the pain/fatigue cycle which you may find helpful. In a closed loop, each new painful experience pulls you further down into the pain and suffering. In this downward spiral, pain leads to depression which makes exercise difficult. One abandons the good diet. Sleep is challenging. All of these challenges occur while a loved one is struck down and then dies. Each of these symptoms can by themselves contribute to the other symptoms, and all can make pain and fatigue worse.

Even worse, they can feed on each other. For example, inflammation from the arthritis can cause pain, which causes stress and anxiety, which can cause poor sleep, poor sleep can cause depression, depression can sometimes make it hard to eat as we should, and these can lead to more pain or fatigue, and so on. The interactions of these symptoms, in turn, make our arthritis or fibromyalgia seem worse. It becomes a vicious cycle that only gets worse unless we find a way to break the cycle.

A support group for arthritis sufferers, a good blog (hehehe) or web site can trigger a cycle-breaking strategy. A memorial service in which all the sufferers participate can show the way to break the grieving cycle. Neither strategy is permanent. I have lost two husbands and this loss brings all that pain back. It was hard to sleep, to focus my mind on anything. I felt as though I was spinning. How must those much closer to my brother have suffered from the physical and emotional disruptions of death.

I always go back to my mantra of Keep Moving. If your arthritis pain gets too great to move in the usual ways, find new ways to move. A warm-water pool and a class for arthritics; gentle Feldenkrais movements; a quick trip to the Korean foot massage place (that was my strategy when I couldn’t sleep from the anxiety of my brother lying in the ICU with a stroke.) Call a friend and ask them to help you get out of the doldrums. Eat a salad with toasted pine nuts instead of chocolate cake.

You no doubt have been on this closed circuit pain path. How did you get out of it? Let us know.

If this has been helpful, pass it along, post it on your face book page, and like my business page while you are at it. 🙂

Fondly, Betsy

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

www.grandmabetsybell.com

www.dowellwithbetsy.com

Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness

The last man standing

Posted on April 11, 2013

Gentle Reader,

The focus of my weekly blog is health and how to prevent disease. Sometimes nothing we do can prevent a health disaster. A stroke taking down a healthy man is hard to understand. I refer you to a TED talk by Jill Bolton Taylor, a research scientist who survived a stroke and recorded what was happening in her brain as she observed it taking her down. If you have ever wondered how a stroke does its damage, listen to her talk.

I have posted many blogs on diet and exercise to prevent disease. Many people who follow these suggestions, which are not original with me, still have strokes, heart attacks, or develop cancer to the head-shaking dismay of their closest relatives and friends. Things like “It’s so unfair.” “How could it happen to him/her?” are uttered in disbelief. I recommend another reading of those previous posts to refresh your memory about life style choices for yourself. There are no guarantees. No matter how hard we try.

Today’s post is about me and how it feels to be the last man standing. When my brother Eric died a few days ago following a massive stroke, his departure from this life left me the sole survivor of the original family of origin, two parents and three children. His wife and children carry the greatest burden of pain, loss and suffering. Their lives will be impacted daily by his absence, as will the circle of close friends, professional associates who saw or were touched by him. His kindness, intelligence, generosity and quiet humor will be missed. Profoundly.

A sister’s loss is different. I was not part of his life these last 60 years. We lived far apart and saw each other only occasionally for the FOO (Family of Origen) gatherings, Christmas, birthdays, weddings, funerals. We didn’t talk on the phone much, once or twice a year. So why do I feel this slicing away of part of myself? This aloneness? We never agreed on the family stories. Now there is no one left to curb my tongue. It feels vulnerable, frightening to be the keeper of the stories. They will always be “Betsy’s fiction” because memory is particular. This is not the collective memory of a people with an oral tradition. My recollections of Eric will be as far from Homer’s of Ulysses as two stories can be.

As very small children we were together much of the time. We made that migration after the war (WWII) from Westchester County in NY to the Great Lakes Navel base where our father was mustered out of the navy. That winter we woke up early on clear cold days, strapped on our roller skates and raced around the flat streets of Waukegan, IL. Once I rushed into the kitchen to tell Mommy that Eric was hanging from the tree. She flew to the back yard where his jacket pocket had caught on a limb and he was dangling upside down. My fear of heights probably originated from the time I was walking with my parents down the flat stone steps in Watkins Glen, NY. They spotted Eric running full tilt, Lyman right behind him, along the top of the low flag stone wall beyond which plunged a waterfall crashing 60 ft below. My mother whispered in that heart-stopping panic, “Port, do something.”

After Waukegan, our family made our way to Oklahoma City. Eric and I were squeezed together, the fillings of a sandwich formed by our belongings and the roof of the station wagon as the family drove south stopping in St. Louis for the night. Our little brother sat between our parents in the front seat.

In Oklahoma City, we rented in a neighborhood peppered with giant grasshopper-armed oil rigs, pumping oil night and day. I remember sitting with Eric, our noses poking through the chain link fence, watching the workmen change out the pipes from the top of an oil derrick. One of the men lost his footing and plunged to his death on the ground a few feet from where we sat. I remember my first thought was to protect and comfort Eric, too small at 7 to witness such a thing. I would have been 8 ½.

My playground memories from that year figure Eric pulling my braids, my back up against a small tree in the school yard, his feet pressed against it, one braid in each hand, laughing sardonically at my surprise and pain.

We often sat on either side of our Grandpa, our little brother in his lap. Gramps took us to the library each Saturday and read us book after book in his deep voice. We stood together at his bedside when he died on Easter. I was 9, Eric was just turning 8.

We finally settled in Eastern Oklahoma, Muskogee, where we lived those formative junior high and high school years. He and I often rode our bikes to a dirt bank by the railroad track, sacks of match box cars and trucks dangling from the handle bars. We spent hours building roads, tunnels, villages in the perfect hard sand. Swimming on the swim team and playing the flute kept us together in high school when our lives were otherwise separating. Eric spent more time with our younger brother Lyman than with me as I began dating and spending time with girl friends, loathing the annoyances of younger brothers.

Why are those early formative experiences so vivid and important above all else? None of them matter to the people who weep at his funeral next Monday. They have little if anything to do with the man he became. His passing leaves them with me and me alone.

Is it totally weird to have this acute pain as if your childhood takes on a surreal, ghostly quality because one of the key players is no longer a phone call away? I never asked him to corroborate any of these stories—and I could tell many more—so I do not know if he even remembered them. There is something so final in the passing away of that one who could have said, “Yes, I remember that. Wasn’t it scary? Wonderful? Awesome?” The mirror is broken.

I would love to hear your stories of your siblings, whether gone or still among the living.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving.

Betsy

206 933 1889

www.DoWellWithBetsy.com Would you love a ready-made blogging platform that could earn you money?

www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com Would you love products that help keep you well and help the planet, too?

Be Well health tips, Business Op

The Triduum and Easter, darkness to joy

Posted on March 28, 2013

Gentle Reader,

The great Triduum or three holy days ending triumphantly in Easter begins today. I took on one new thing for Lent in response to the half page of suggestions our Saint Mark’s Episcopal worship committee sent out, activities that would increase mindful living. When I read on the list “Write a letter to someone, stamp and mail it,” I thought about the boxes full of letters I have from my husband, Don Bell, and from my daughters when they went off to college, plus much of the correspondence from dear friends who meant so much to us and to me over the years. These letters are treasures, little vignettes of life, soul pictures living on paper. I have a grandson in college. I wrote to him and quoted some passages from his grandfather’s letters to me. Don died before any of his grandchildren were born and I have been writing the memoir of our early time together with these ten grandchildren in mind. Ben’s response surprised me. He wrote back to me asking for more.

Writing a letter requires slowing down, with intention, choosing words carefully, pouring over Don’s letters for just the right passage to share. It felt like holy work.

Our whole-heartedly secular culture does not help the practicing liturgical Christian any more than it supports the Muslim or Jews in following their holy calendars. I felt this tension more acutely this Lent than ever before. A new business possibility came into my inbox and has swept me off my feet, nearly obliterating the contemplative aspect of these 40 days. The battle between successful entrepreneurship and prayer put me in an anxious state. I discovered a left over bag of Reese’s Peanut butter cups, Halloween candy, in the freezer. I made myself a cup of tea, sat down and ate them. All. Excitement over this new thing that promised expert training in network marketing and a compensation plan that create wealth kept me awake. The combination of sugar and sleeplessness resulted in a head cold. Is my immune system that stressed by a heap of sugar and lack of sleep?

Have you been able to pin point a connection between sugar consumption, lack of rest and catching a cold? Not too far-fetched. WebMD published an article on the immune system which includes comments on sugar. From their page on Cold, Flu & Cough Health Center:

3. Eating foods high in sugar and fat: Consuming too much sugar suppresses immune system cells responsible for attacking bacteria. Even consuming just 75 to 100 grams of a sugar solution (about the same as in two 12-ounce sodas) reduces the ability of white blood cells to overpower and destroy bacteria. This effect is seen for at least a few hours after consuming a sugary drink.

For the whole article, click here: 10 Immune system booster and busters. I knew this. I ate the stuff anyway, without thinking about the consequences. The priets are available for confession on Good Friday. For a person who claims to care for my body as a holy thing, I feel stupid and guilty. I will probably just take a long walk and eat tons of Swiss chard and kale, drink Throat coat tea and shovel in the Vitamin C. Eating sugar doesn’t seem like it deserves the sacrament of confession.

I’d love to hear how this Lent/Passover is going for you. Anything come up that effects your health? Perhaps we can all support each other.

Do not forget the joy. There will be 30+ people in my living room on Sunday. The college and highschool, middle school aged kids will be full of conversation as well as ham and potatoe, asparagus and salad. It will be glorious and promises not to rain so we can spill out into the back yard. They don’t want to give up dyeing eggs even though it is doubtful they will hide any. Children want to hang on to the traditions even though it means not being cool. I love it.

Fondly,

Be Well, Do Well, Keep Moving

Betsy

Injured at 52. Diagnosed and sentenced to a wheel chair at 55. Hiking, skiing, dancing and walking at 75. Read my story.

206 933 1889 betsy@HiHoHealth.com www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com http://www.weirdmarketingtips.com/funnel/?id=b2

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Who is Peggy Cappy?

Posted on March 24, 2013

Gentle Reader,

Whether it is the new exercise classes or the intense gardening, I cannot say for sure. backcaremed (1) What I am sure about is increased pain and then the magical release from it. Here is the unexplainable magic. I have mentioned it to you several times in the past. It is a 20 minute meditation tape by Peggy Cappy about Rejuvenating the Back. She talks in a soothing voice about how every cell in your body is capable of reproducing into a fresh, new creation, whole and healthy.

I come in from the garden hurting in every lower back, hip and knee joint, shoulders and hands, as well. I turn on the Ipod to her voice and prop my knees over the Back2Life machine (I have described this contraption several times in previous posts) and when the tape is over, I stand and walk without pain.

BAck2Life machine

Back2Life

The third thing I do is take an herbal tablet that inhibits the pain path. The Pain Relief Complex is helpful but does not bring such complete results by itself.

I urge you, if you suffer pain, to invest in Peggy Cappy’s cd. You might want the Back2Life machine, too, but it probably is less important than her relaxation/rejunvenation message.

I’d be interested in hearing your techniques for curbing acute pain. So let us hear from you. If you investigate these techniques and like what I have shared, please pass the message along to your friends. While you are at it, like my facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/BetsyBellsHealth4U.

Fondly,

Be Well, Do Well, Keep Moving

Betsy

Injured at 52. Diagnosed and sentenced to a wheel chair at 55. Hiking, skiing, dancing and walking at 75. Read my story.

206 933 1889 betsy@HiHoHealth.com www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

World champion at 86: How did he do it?

Posted on March 14, 2013

Gentle Reader,

Every so often I hear about a person who just won’t sit down and quit. This guy ruined his knees running and went in search of a new sport which didn’t require so much stress on his knees. Here’s his story. Enjoy. And thanks to Bob Ferguson for passing it along.

Dean Smith Rows to new World and American Record

Dean Smith set new US and World records at the World Indoor Rowing Championship, hosted by the CRASH-B Sprints that took place on February 17, 2013 at the Agganis Arena in Boston. Over 2,200 athletes raced from more than a dozen countries, with competitors ranging in age from 14 to 95. Dean’s world record time in the 2000 meter row was 8:10.5. Just Google Dean Smith Rowing to see how he has been keeping active.

Dean, a former world- class runner is used to being on the winner’s podium. Previously in Masters Track & Field he won World championship gold medals in Hanover, Germany and Gothenburg, Sweden for the 800 meter run, as well as several national championships. Bad knees brought an end to Dean’s running a few years ago, so he was delighted to find a new sport in which to compete. He joined the Rocky Mountain Rowing Club when he moved to Lone Tree, Colorado seven years ago. Since then he has won NINE World Championships in sculls on the water in Zagreb, Croatia, Vienna, Austria, Birmingham, England and Vilnius, Lithuania.

Dean is a young 86.

He attributes his edge for success to using Shaklee Sports Products.

Email deansmith3@msn for more information & complete sports history

My wish for everyone of my readers is a long active life. We may not all win medals, but we can all keep moving. Pass this along as an inspiration to your friends and family.

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

Betsy Bells Health4u

206 933 1889

betsy@hihohealth.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Watch out for the metal detectors!

Posted on March 7, 2013

Gentle Reader,

His long legs and narrow hips will soon carry him back to the gym. He will be back on the machines and lose the ‘love handles’ that have crept on from lack of exercise. The long process of identifying what caused the sciatica, the sharp pinching pain radiating down the leg, making his once strong stride impossible is over. It took months to identify a worn out hip as the culprit. He has a new one now.

No more arthritis pain from that degenerated joint. His bones were healthy enough at 70+ to give the surgeon something to work with. Other joints–knee, shoulders, ankles–still hold. No advanced osteoarthritis everywhere.

Rehabilitation takes time. His spirit is good. He hates hurting or talking about hurting, so he will use the special chair lifters, the raised toilet seat, and take the procautions he must take to avoid damage to the new joint as the supportive muscles and tissue and tendons readjust to the trauma of surgery.

This world traveler will soon set off the alarms in the airport again. What joy. What thanksgiving.

Here are some tricks to rapid healing that his doctor may not tell him.

1. Lecithin is an oil that helps emulsify, make more liquid, substances that are sticky. After an incision or any wound to the body, our own mechanisms for repair rush to the task of healing. This healing process causes lots of swelling, too many repair cells for the space. To help bring this swelling down quickly, an emulsifier makes the spent repair cells easy to slough off through the normal waste stream. Several lecithin capsules a day, not just one or two.

Caution: not all lecithin is the same. Granuals or huge jars of capsules can go rancid quickly like any oil exposed to the air and light. I prefer a small jar with 180 capsules. There should be no smell of rancidity. A rancid fat causes more damage than you can imagine, so take care what you buy.

2. Alfalfa. This food for horses and cows is King of Vegetables and helps all systems in the body with its nutrients. In this case when the hip joint and surrounding tissue need held, it is there to do the job. Here are a few of Alfalfa’s contributions to our body:

a great aid in digestion, aids in peptic ulcers, great diuretic and bowel regulator,
effective barrier against bacterial invasion, anti-inflammatory, anti-histamine.
Natural body deodorizer, helps support the natural ph of the blood .
High in protein: 18.9% protein as compared to beef 16.5%; milk 3.3% and eggs 13.1%.
Remember, muscles are composed of protein and the lack of it causes them to break down resulting in fatigue and weakness.
After surgery, naturally replenishes joints and tissues with its healing properties.

How much Alfalfa? Lots and lots. It is like eating peas. Take a big spoonful and wash the tablets down with your favorite smoothie. Or make a hot tea. Or chew them up.

Caution: Not all Alfalfa is the same. Often genetically modified, the brand I use exclusively is grown by a very picky company’s organic farmers in Antalope Valley. The leaves are picked at sun-rise. No stems are included in the tablets. Open the bottle and take a whiff of the farm land where it grew.

If I had to pick only one supplement to take, it would be Alfalfa by Shaklee. Dr. Shaklee felt the same way.

Happy healing to my friend, the best travel leader I have ever known. And Happy Travels.

Fondly,

Betsy

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving,

www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com 206-933-1889

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Oh, my aching hamstrings

Posted on February 21, 2013

Gentle Reader,

What a ski season it is here in the Northwest. The snow conditions surprise us every Wednesday as my band of 16-24 friends head up to the pass on a big bus (potty included). It’s a good thing to use this bus company for January and February when the road conditions are dicey and icy. The bus drivers have gotten stuck twice! The ladies who ski are mostly over 65. Yesterday I learned that one companion, a tall, slim brunette with impeccable make up and style is 80. We are still climbing logging roads and snow plowing down, but we have become partial to the groomed Nordic tracks, of which there are a few. One of oldest members skis with the blind across the US and Canada. We do have a special club here with a pair of set tracks for the blind skier and her companion guide. We often see dog teams, although mid-week is a quiet time to ski. People-watching happens on Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday the only viable skiing was on the reclaimed rail road track which snakes its way up from Seattle, through the pass and on East. Long ago this track was pulled up and remaining bed has become a favorite mountain bike and Nordic ski trail.

Pushing and gliding for 3 hours and 8 miles along this relatively flat track awakened muscles I had not used so strenuously. This morning I have been on the floor getting the creaks and groans out of my joints-back and hip and knee pain are no fun, nor are arthritis flare-ups. Several techniques work well.

1. tie a strong flexible tubing around your thighs, squat and walk to the left 20 steps and then to the right. In the picture, the tubing is around the ankles. I find the tubing stays put better at the thigh.

2. Lying on your side with your knees pulls up part way, lift one knee up and then back down in a clam-shell move. Several reps on each side.

3. Put one end of the flexible tubing in the door jam and loop the other around your foot. Stand side ways to the door and take the outside foot, lifting straight legged 10 reps. Turn and draw the foot away from the door across the body. This is a classic standing Pilates move. Change legs and repeat. Years ago I bought a heavy steel foot stool off Ebay to use for this exercise as it works better if you are standing a few inches off the floor. Gyms have portable durable plastic steps that can be used. Personally, my little upholstered foot stool would never be taken for an exercise prop as it sits by the front door. This is the best picture I could find. Imagine the end of the theraband as a knotted tube in the door jab, the bottom around your shoe.

4. face the door and, with the foot in the loop of the tubing, push it away from the door while standing erect, in perfect posture, on the other foot. Several reps on both legs will help.

I am glad I climb stairs every week (200), going up and down sideways with the grape vine step. I found yesterday that straight way skiing tired the knees. Most women have slightly knock-knees and prolonged straight walking, hiking or skiing stressed them. Whenever you have the opportunity to go up or down stairs side-ways, one foot behind, then in front, do it. Your knees will not stress on the straight-away as much. I am going to get someone to film me doing this. There are no pictures on the web that I can find.

Avoiding arthritis pain in the knees, back and hips can be challenging, and fun. Get out there and enjoy the winter weather if you are lucky enough to have snow. Don’t let the diagnosis of osteoarthritis or spinal stenosis keep you from moving. Browse the techniques I have offered in my blog postings and try some of them. Better still, leave a comment about the techniques you have found work well.

Fondly,

Be Well, Do Well, Keep Moving

Betsy

Injured at 52. Diagnosed and sentenced to a wheelchair at 55. Hiking, skiing, dancing and walking at 75. Read my story.

206 933 1889 betsy@HiHoHealth.com www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com

Arthritis, Be Well health tips, Health and Fitness, Keep Moving: Managing Arthritis

Tips for women who have back pain because of osteoporosis

Posted on February 7, 2013

Here they are:

Tip #1 Increase your vitamin D3 (more info about Vitamin D3 for bone density here)

Tip #2 Add weight bearing exercise to your routine

Tip #3 Eat more greens

Gentle Reader,

You have a sharp pain in your back and can’t remember that you lifted that bag of groceries 3 days ago even though you knew it was too heavy for you. The pain subsides after a few weeks with the help of rest and some pain meds. And then it happens again.

What’s going on? You probably had a vertebral compression fracture, caused either by falling or by placing a load on outstretched arms such as raising a window or lifting a small child or a bag of groceries. The front of the vertebrae collapse. The spine is weakened by low bone density. Our bodies can repair these hair line fractures on their own. The trick is to lessen the chances of reoccurrence.

You go for your check up and they do a bone density test. The dreaded report comes back. You have osteopenia. They tell you that is probably why you’ve been having back pain. This happened to me a few years ago. My doctor immediately offered me drugs to increase the bone density. I asked him to give me a couple years to change this picture and reverse the trend to osteoporosis. The next bone density showed full blown osteoporosis. I was very disappointed. I’d been taking a good quality calcium for years. Why hadn’t it protected me? I was very physically active, walking all the time, skiing, working in the garden. I pleaded again for more time and turned down the prescription. It worked. Here’s what I did.

#1 Increased Vitamin D3 to 6000 mg a day. My blood test indicated a major increase was necessary.

#2 Stair climbing. The advice was climb 200 steps every day while carrying 20 lbs. I climbed 200 steps several times a week but didn’t carry any extra weight.

#3 Add minerals by eating lots more greens. I eat 3 – 5 heads of greens (kale, chard, mustard greens, and collards) every week, usually steamed or in soups. Spinach is good, too. I also increased the supplement Alfalfa.

I was able to reverse the condition. You can too.

I know you have done amazing things to turn osteoporosis around. Let us know by leaving a comment. If you found this helpful, pass it along. And thanks,

Fondly, Betsy

Be Well, Do Well and Keep Moving

BetsyBell’s Health4u

www.GrandmaBetsyBell.com

206 933 1889 1 888 283 2077

betsy@hihohealth.com