Tag Archives: herbal pain relief

Be Well health tips

Why is turmeric good for you?

(From the Heart is below, plus info about the new issue of Basic G+ so read on.)

Turmeric Boost from Shaklee is a highly absorbable form of Curcuminoids (they added black pepper to help). Turmeric has been used to reduce inflammation (arthritis), natural pain relief, joint pain relief, heart health, clearing brain fog and more. Perhaps you have been using Turmeric in cooking and supplementing with it for these very reasons. Here’s some good information about Turmeric and why you might want to try Shaklee’s version. Switching brands often makes a huge difference.

What is turmeric? What are curcuminoids? And what is curcumin?
Turmeric, curcuminoids, and curcumin are not interchangeable terms. Turmeric is a distinctive yellow spice that’s part of the ginger family and has been used for 4,000 years in cooking and medicinal uses. The family of active compounds in turmeric is called curcuminoids. The primary curcuminoid found in turmeric is called curcumin, and this is where turmeric’s powerful benefits come from. Curcumin is well-known for its powerful antioxidant properties.
What’s the difference between turmeric root and turmeric extract?
Curcumin is found in the root of the turmeric plant but only comprises a small amount of the turmeric root; an average turmeric root contains less than 5% curcumin, and this amount varies from turmeric root to turmeric root. On the other hand, turmeric extracts are made by extracting curcumin from the turmeric root and are standardized to contain concentrated amounts of curcumin. Turmeric Boost includes 500 mg of turmeric extract standardized to contain 95% curcuminoids.
Why is black pepper extract included in the formula?
Because curcumin has been found to have relatively low absorption, Turmeric Boost contains 5 mg black pepper extract (Piper nigrum), a key ingredient that enhances curcumin absorption and increases bioavailability.
Can Turmeric Boost be taken any time of day?
Turmeric Boost can be taken any time of day but should be taken with a meal or shake.
Is Turmeric Boost vegan?
Yes. Turmeric Boost is great for people that eat a vegan diet.
Is Turmeric Boost Kosher?
Yes. Turmeric Boost is Star-K Kosher certified.
Is there anyone who should NOT take Turmeric Boost?
Turmeric Boost is not intended for use by children or by women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Please consult your physician if you are on medication, pregnant, breast-feeding, or under the age of 18.
Turmeric Extract
Turmeric has long been used for inflammatory conditions and liver support.

Turmeric references so you can look them up yourself!

Basic G+
Shaklee’s response to the pandemic was to re-introduce Basic G (+) in twice the concentration. A new Basic G+ spray bottle gives better instructions on mixing and usage.
WHAT MAKES BASIC-G+™ SPECIAL
1.Disinfects in 5 minutes.* That’s 50% faster than the previous formula.
2.Works on bacteria, fungi, and viruses in kitchens**, bathrooms, and pet areas.
3.Highly concentrated and economical. One 16-oz. a bottle makes up to 32 gallons of cleaning solution. *See label for complete directions. **
Basic-G+ Germicide is a highly concentrated formula and should be kept out of reach of children.
Food contact surfaces must be thoroughly rinsed with potable water after use. Note: It is a violation of Federal law to use Basic-G+ in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.
You add the water, which means:
•Fewer plastic bottles
•Less energy used for shipping

At Shaklee, we are committed to innovating through science and looking to nature for the answers that can provide healthier lives. We ensure the highest quality and safety standards – conducting over 100,000 quality tests per year to ensure our products are safe.
The new item code for Basic G+ is 00527. The spray bottle is 50531.

From the Heart….
The end of summer is anti-climactic. There is no fall trip to look forward to, no big adventures to report. In fact, my birthday August 2nd, normally swarming with hugging family members, was a weird mini-series of 5 – 7 close relatives outside and masked. At one such event, I was exposed to the Covid-19 virus. My youngest grandson tested positive as did his father. Two test and days later, I am healthy.
I added two young hens to my coop when the Old Lady, Daisy, died at 12 and Goldie wouldn’t be happy living alone. We all seem to need companionship. Happily, my granddaughter, Cami Killorin, is living in my back bedroom, playing fabulous tunes every day in preparation for issuing her first singer/song-writer album. She and I ran away to the Cascades and slept on the ground in our sleeping bags a couple of nights when it was soooo hot in Seattle. There were very few people. We sat by the fire and sang songs, watched an owl sail through the dense forest, walked logs and read by the roaring Troublesome Creek.

I hope you are doing well and not going crazy with the solitude, the news, and inactivity. I am hopeful that the continued attention being paid to the economic and justice disparity between Whites and POC is slowly changing systems. If you don’t have a person of color to talk to about how they live their lives on a daily basis, I suggest you make an effort to meet one or two and listen to their stories. Our Episcopal congregation (155 participants) has been reading and listening to podcasts, interviews and books to better understand the background, then meeting to discuss via zoom.

I am shocked. I’ll leave it at that. I try not to get all my information from media which seems a bit biased on both sides. The persons of color themselves speak to me in their own voices. It is powerful. As a White woman, these stories have been invisible to me, with a few minor exceptions. I did grow up in a Jim Crow town in Oklahoma but didn’t know what the Black families’ lives were like. I didn’t know any Black children until my senior year in high school, through Girl Scouts.

Useful media: www.fb.com/betsybellshealth4U for a live health tip every Thursday at 8:30 PDT. Under 10 minutes.

www.HiHoHealth.com my personal shopping website with Shaklee.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving, Betsy

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

sleep and pain

Does pain keep you awake at night? “Sleep, or lack of it, may be a sign that surgery might help.” Dr. Nora listed several indicators including sleep and pain. Sleep difficulty jumped out at me.

Several customers have complained about sleep challenges so I thought I’d share some problems associated with pain and lack of sleep plus some remedies.

When pain is first experienced, most people do not experience sleeplessness. However, when pain becomes a problem, it can be a vicious cycle. If someone experiences poor sleep due to pain one night, he or she is likely to experience more problems the next night and so on. It gets worse and worse every night.

We know that pain triggers poor sleep. Someone experiencing lower back pain may experience several intense phases of light sleep which lead to awakenings. These periods of light sleep are innocuous for a person not experiencing chronic pain. Pain is a serious intrusion to sleep. Pain is frequently associated with insomnia and these coexisting problems can be difficult to treat. One problem can exacerbate the other. pm_general_cp_sleep_intro01

A 2015 sleep and pain study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation verified by numbers which we could have guessed: people with chronic pain are three times more likely to get a bad night’s sleep even though over half of all Americans experienced pain in the last week.
Without a good night’s sleep, one gets grumpy, is less able to function and the perception of ones general health status goes down. Sleep is necessary for healing and restoring every internal organ and without it, health does deteriorate.

We often turn to drugs—both prescription and over the counter, and alcohol to try to get to sleep. The National Sleep Foundation suggests being very intentional about getting adequate sleep by making sleep a priority.

StressPainEffects_NSF_v3*Stop or limit  caffeine consumption.
*Limit alcohol intake, particularly in the evening.
*Use of pain killers and/or sleeping pills are effective, but should be used under the supervision of a physician.
*Practice relaxation techniques , such as deep abdominal breathing.

Personally, I go to bed by the clock, not by my sleepiness. I can get a second wind if I get started on a new project—web search, emails, Face book—in the late evening which keeps me up. I know I will wake up at 5:30 so aim for head-on-the-pillow by 10:30. Seven hours of sleep. When I wake up at 5:30, I usually listen to soothing music or a meditation tape, a Nidra Yoga or Back Pain relief to stay in bed until 6:15 or so. I sit in the hot tub every night just before going to bed. Some people take a hot shogentle sleep complexwer or bath to aid the transition to sleep.

Shaklee makes an herbal supplement called Gentle Sleep Complex which has passion flower extract and chamomile extract plus 225 mg of Valerian. Three tablets before bed helps you go to sleep.

I take several Pain Relief Complex tablets, also. I put Shaklee’s Joint and Muscle Pain Cream on my lower back and then lie with an ice pack under the my back while I listen to a meditation tape.

What have you found that helps with 7 – 9 hours of deep pain & Muscle Pain Creamrestful sleep? Please add your comments so other readers can benefit from your experience.

Be well, Do well and Keep moving.

Betsy

206 933 1889

www.HiHoHealth.com for shopping

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com for travel stories

www.MyLifeasFiction.com for my writing blog (not live yet)

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

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor

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Gentle Reader,

Confessions of an arthritic painting contractor:

Taking down paintings, emptying book shelves, moving furniture, rolling up rugs, pulling up old wall-to-wall carpet, removing electric face-plates and then spackling, sanding, taping, and painting every wall that faces the outside is a sure-fire recipe for arthritic flare-ups of major proportion.  No matter how many times I lay down on the floor and hung my knees over the Back2Life machine; no matter how many of Shaklee’s herbal Pain Relief Complex tablets I took, I could not prevent pain from coming on.

The people I was supervising as general painting contractor were:

Carsten Rossen and Jack Dahlstrom, 14 and 16, grandsons who did major lifting and prep work and even some priming.

Hanna Rossen and Ben Killorin, 17 and 19, grandchildren who turned out to be excellent painters and were able to mask, spackle, sand, edge and roll paint with only a few drips here and there.  They each put in hours of time, their music blasting, bags of gorp and dried mangos, enormous sandwiches and Shaklee Performance drink for rehydration consumed.  Ben made the sandwiches as his first summer job was the Deli department at a local grocery store.

Elizabeth Skewis, friend of Grace, my oldest daughter, and now a great friend of mine, is a woman who has done everything under the sun for a living including painting.  She was my right hand gal, with skill and stick-to-itiveness, esthetic judgment and coaching for me and the teenagers.

Pete Rossen and Hanna, father and daughter, came to move the furniture back where it belonged after the final (almost final) painting was done.  He was the one who suggested I could hire my grandchildren when I was fretting about whom to get to do the painting.  I loved their youthful energy in the house and their “there, there, Grandma. Don’t lift anything.  Just tell us and we’ll do it.”

Mike Walker, my renter who lives down stairs and is a finish carpenter.  He put all the running toe board back in every room with his power tools.

The problem child in this final stage of the energy upgrade was, you guessed it, ME.  I love hard work and couldn’t stop myself from all the above mentioned tasks.  I did stop lifting.

Two observations that may help you who suffer from arthritis when you are over-active.

1.  Don’t stop moving.  In the middle of this ordeal I took a 3 ½ mile neighborhood walk which included a long downhill, then a beach walk and finally a 190 tread staircase and 4 long blocks uphill.  Moving keeps the nutrients flowing to the joints which are poorly nourished.  Without good nutrition, the crumbling joint cannot heal itself.  Which brings me to the second point:

2.  The cells in our joints are constantly repairing and rebuilding new, healthy cells to replace the worn out ones and to solve the problems of collapsing vertebrae.  Peggy Cappy talks about this in her meditative CD “Healing Back Pain” which I listen to nearly every day.  Wednesday, after hiking 9 miles round trip, 2000+ ft elevation gain, on Mt. Rainier’s east side to Summerland alpine meadow, I stopped for the evening with one of my hiking buddies.  Her husband is a neurologist with Group Health here in Seattle.  In our conversation he stated that these broken down joint cells do get replaced with fresh, healthy new cells that attempt to fix the problems.  He has told me many times to keep moving, no matter what.  Find something to do that doesn’t hurt and keep doing it.

Today, I spent the morning hanging pictures and scrubbing pain spots off the hard wood floors.  I have no pain.

You can build healthy joints, but you must keep moving to help your body accomplish that feat.

The house is beautiful.  It was all worth it.  Here’s a video I put together to show the energy upgrade work that was done.  When you see the space age water heater, you’ll appreciate the remark made by the city inspector when he came to sign off on the stepped-up electrical power,

“Wow.  This thing should be in the living room where you can sit with your friends, smoke a joint and watch it.”

Whoa!

May I offer a further explanation of the energy improvements under the new roof.  The Crown Roofing guys took off the old stuff including the particle board and before they put the new base and shingles on, the Vesta Performance guys laid down rigid insulation covered by a thin layer of reflective material which would further divert summer heat from entering the house.  They also installed a fan system circulating air in the summer and avoiding mold build-up from a poorly ventilated crawl space over the ceiling and under the roof.  I desperately needed a new roof and was able to fold the cost of the roof itself into the energy upgrade low-interest loan from the Puget Sound Community Credit Union.  This banking institution works with the city of Seattle to implement the Community Power Works program for the homeowner who wants to lower their carbon foot print.  A new roof by itself may or may not reduce heat loss from your house.

You are welcome to drop by and tour the garage and I’ll offer you a cold drink of some sort, but mostly you won’t notice anything different about the house.  It does look fresh and clean but I didn’t change the colors or the furniture.  If you are a person who notices roofs (is there such a person?), you’ll see that mine is beautiful, new and no places where the shingles have flown off in the latest wind storm.  But who looks at roofs?

I am so proud to have done this major effort to reduce my carbon foot print as part of Seattle Community Power Works.  The final numbers came through in the blow test today.  Looking good.  One tight house.  It’s for the Planet and the grandchildren.  I hope you’ll take advantage of any opportunity you have to do the same.  Congratulations if you already have.

Leave me a comment and while you are at it, please ‘like’ my Face book page.  I’d appreciate it.

Be well, Do well and Keep Moving,

Betsy

www.EmpoweredGrandma.com

206 933 1889

 

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Arthritis, Health and Fitness

Ankle replacement? How bad is it?

1 Comment

 

Gentle Reader,

 

Have you dried off from your most recent visit to the Y’s water aerobics for arthritics?  Not there yet?  Today I want to share information about replacing those joints that just keep hurting so much that you prefer to sit or lie down rather than try to move through the pain.  My favorite website for the latest procedures is Johns Hopkins Medicine.  This week they have an article about ankle replacement.  Replace your ankles?  Oh, my goodness.  It would have to be really bad before I’d do that.

 

My own experience with arthritis in the ankles came as a result of breaking the left ankle while cross country skiing in 1997. The snow conditions were our usual white cement so often prevalent in the Cascade mountains.  The Women on Wednesday group I ski with had chosen the Swan Lake trail that begins along Lake Kachess and then rises through twists and turns to an upper plateau. We have never made it to Swan Lake. It must be there somewhere.  Our ski day usually begins with a couple hours of climbing on skis, then lunch in a nice trail side spot, followed by another 20 minutes uphill to warm up.  Then we usually turn around and come down.  These logging roads are never groomed except by the occasional  snow mobile.  Snow mobiles can create moguls that make skiing even more challenging than breaking trail.  If the uphill has been through new snow, even cement (heavy) snow, the downhill can go quite well.  On the particular day of the breakage, I was doing my usual fast downhill and on one curve, planted the tip of my left ski squarely into a snow bank.  My body continued on.  I could hear the snap.

 

It was possible to ski out the remaining 4 miles or so by keeping the left leg slightly bent and the foot rigid in the boot, using the polls and right ski to snow plow.  On the bus, a fellow skier and nurse, filled a sandwich bag with snow and wrapped my ankle with an emergency tape.

 

The next day, an x-ray revealed a hair line fracture which they cast. I was in this non-weight baring thing for 60 days and a walking boot for another 30 days.  I worked hard to keep the muscles functional with all sorts of floor exercises including leg lifts in all directions, and was ready to walk as soon as they gave the go ahead.

 

Now, fifteen years later, I am getting little twinges when setting off on a hike or long city walk.  Do I stop?  Is it harmful to keep going?  I can report that I may slow down a bit, exercise great care in foot placement and gait, and above all keep going.  So far so good.  The pain doesn’t stop me and the ankle is still functioning well.  Will it get worse?  Probably.  Will I go for surgery someday?  Who knows.  I would recommend doing every possible thing before going there.  If you do read the article at the link, you’ll see that people have good results.  Are they hikers, cyclists, climbers?  Or are they people who just want to be able to walk around their house when the pain has become so unbearable they are confined to a chair?

 

Osteoarthritis and arthritis caused by injury often come down to the same thing as one ages.  I prefer to take hands full of supportive supplements to 3 Advil because I am sure that the supplements strengthen tissue and feed cells for better all over health.  Advil will mask the pain for sure.  It is pretty conclusive that vitamins, minerals and protein build healthy tendons, muscles and bone.  There may still be pain.  Try an herbal pain inhibitor first.  Shaklee makes a good one.  If you want to explore these, go to HiHoHealth dot com.  We have a Pain Relief page there.

 

The Johns Hopkins site on arthritis gives good information about the other joint replacements as well.  Good luck if you are facing this decision.  If you want to talk more about your options with a person who has been dealing with arthritis for 35 years, I’d love to hear from you at 206 933 1889.  If you would like to comment, please do.

 

Do well, Be well and Keep Moving,

 

Betsy

 

 

 

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