Stress Management

As the previous blog post stated, stress can and will have some serious side-effects to your life. Nobody ever wants to be sick, so you need to find ways to avoid these stress-related illnesses. Of course, there will be times that a sickness such as maybe a cold will happen, the more you do to prevent it, the more time you'll have for your life.

There is not one single solution to reducing stress, yet a multitude of ways. Of course, you know I'm a huge proponent of massage and I will do whatever I can to promote it. Massage will decrease stress and increase your immune system and the more often you have a massage the better it will be for your health. Even if you can just do once a month, that is better then none! Think about it this way, you take your car to get it's oil changed every 3,000 miles or so, you need to do the same with your body... get your monthly tune-up.

There are other stress management things you can do. As another previous post stated, Take a Cigarette Break. Taking breaks during your workday can decrease stress and increase productivity. Another thing is to find something that you enjoy and do it! Find the time for you. More de-stressing tips are:

• Walk
• Laugh
• Yoga
• Have more fun
• Increase physical activity
• Talk things out with family, friends or even a therapist
• Get plenty of rest, relaxation and sleep
• Make time for hobbies
• Take a bath and relax
• Read a book 

I hope you take the time for you and find out what you can do on a daily basis to help reduce your stress.  Part of it really is making yourself a priority and not everyone else.

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website . Learn something new daily, connect with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

The Ill Effects of Stress

Experts estimate that 80-90% of disease is stress related. Though stress starts as emotional, such as pressures from work or family and instant stresses such as car accidents, it often can turn into physical issues. Stress can affect the body by raising your heartbeat, headaches, upset stomach, diarrhea, and lower your immune system. According to webmd.com, stress is linked to high blood pressure, abnormal heartbeat (arrhythmia), blood clots, hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, heart attack and heart failure, neck, shoulder, low back pain, pain menstrual periods, low fertility, erection problems, feeling cranky, frustrated and tired to name many of the physical issues. As you can see, ignoring stress, not dealing with it and finding ways to release your stress will make you sick! Maybe you might not notice it right away, yet eventually stress will get your attention when you are in the doctors office finding out what is wrong.


For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website . Learn something new daily, connect with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Take A Cigarette Break

Take a cigarette break? What the heck am I talking about? You thought I was all about health and goodness, etc. Well I don't mean to actually take a break and go smoke a cigarette, what I do mean is to take a break. Before doing massage, I worked in a variety of manufacturing offices and the people who smoked where constantly taking breaks. So now that I do massage and promote taking time to re-charge, the people who took those cigarette breaks mostly had the right idea.

Though obviously I am NOT going to promote smoking, I do promote taking breaks during the workday. So many of us sit at our computer hour after hour after hour and before we realize it we haven't gotten off our butts for four, five maybe six hours or more. Sitting for such long periods is both not good for our bodies as well as our minds. You hear about when you travel that you should get up and walk around every hour or so. The same thing applies to the workday. Get up! Walk around! Even just getting up and walking away from your desk for as little as 3-5 minutes will circulate your blood through your body and give you those few minutes to re-charge your brain. This especially good when you are facing a problem that you just don't know what to do about. Taking those few minutes to not think about it, can give your subconscious mind the time to circulate the problem and hopefully give you an answer when you come back to it.

Though this might seem to be a contradiction to you, you can be more productive when you take more breaks. So again, though I am not promoting cigarette use, I am promoting taking as many breaks (or more) as the people in your office who smoke. I will end with this quote from Dr. Joyce Brothers, Psychologist and advice columnist: "No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least 5 minutes every hour, you'd be more productive."

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website . Learn something new daily, connect with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

Infertilty Massage

Wow, it has been quite some time since I've written a blog! Now that I am, what better thing to write about then the new aspect of my massage therapy practice: Infertility Massage. Originally titled Fertility Massage, yet I have decided to change it to Infertility as that really is what is happening.

Infertility Massage (or IM for short on this blog) is a specialized massage working with both the reproductive and digestive systems of the body. Some of the benefits of IM are:

• Helps to restore the uterus to its normal position and shape if it has become tilted
• Helps restore the uterus to its normal position if it has been compressed by overloaded intestines
• Improves circulation and brings fresh oxygenated blood to the reproductive organs
• Helps loosen scar tissue and clear blockages from the fallopian tubes
• Helps to improve digestive health Helps to eliminate impacted intestines
• Helps to achieve hormonal balance

As many of you who might be reading this know, many women and couples will do anything to achieve their ultimate, life-time goal of being parents. I'm sure many people know someone who have tried for years to get pregnant and either go with in-vitro fertilization (IFV), adoption or just finally give up after years of emotional heartache. Infertility Massage can be an alternative to, prior or during IVF treatment. However, IM is at a significantly lower cost, as well as having some of the great health benefits as listed above.

Statistics, statistics, statistics. Most people want to know, will this work? Of course I can't promise 100%, yet here are two studies for you to see the promise:
Medscape General Medicine Ob/Gyn & Women's Health, 6/18/04 reviewed the outcome of infertile women and divided them into two groups: natural fertility and pre-IVF. Women in both groups received therapy to their abdominal/pelvic area. Of the natural fertility group, of the 14 patients available for follow-up, 71% became pregnant within one year. Of the IVF group 22 of 33 embryo transfers were successful, which is significantly higher than the estimated odds ratio for successful pregnancies.

Alternative Therapies, Jan/Feb 2008, Vol 14, No 1 studied the impact of pelvic physical therapy for blocked fallopian tubes. 28 infertile women who had been diagnosed with complete tubal occlusion were give 20 hours of manual physical therapy treatment. One month later, the women were tested to determine the status of the blockages. Seventeen of the 28 patients (61%) showed that the tubal blockages had been released. Nine of the 17 women went on to become pregnant. The study concluded that because "truly occluded tubes are not known to reopen spontaneously, the results suggest this non-invasive therapy might be considered as adjuvant to standard gynecological procedures in treating tubal occlusion."

For more information on Heavenly Healing Mobile Massage, please visit my website . Learn something new daily, connect with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.