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The Flu Hysteria and Your Family
By: Ryan Joseph
(originally in Nov. 2004 ZoneNet Newsletter) In this flu season, America is faced with a dilemma: we are some fifty million flu shots short. Public health officials say that the vaccine should be reserved specifically for babies six months to two years old as well as adults over 65. They should also be reserved for women who are pregnant in their second or third trimester, health care workers who care for high-risk groups, patients afflicted with debilitating health issues such as heart and lung disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and asthma. It is the time to sit down with our families and face some hard facts. I live in a house with my wife who is in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy, my 8 year-old son and my 68 year old father who we have been taking care of for nearly two years. Unfortunately, my Dad has been suffering from lung cancer. When we heard about the potential shortage a number of months ago, my wife and I had a conversation about it and we decided that she and my father needed the vaccine the most. My son and I visited our family physician and she suggested some things we can do to prepare our bodies against the flu season. In lieu of her advice, our whole family has become even more stringent about cleanliness and discouraging the spread of germs. We wash our hands often and keep hand sanitizers on around with the understanding that it is not a substitute for the real thing. Think of all the things we touch in the course of a day that we do not realize, everything from touching strange door knobs to using public computers. Instead of sneezing into our hands, we sneeze into a tissue or into the crooks of our arms. We have all improved our diets by incorporating more fruits and vegetables and taking antioxidant supplements. We have also added healthier foods to our usual diets like wheat germ and yogurt to support our immune systems'. We eat better balanced meals, which supply us with healthy amounts of protein and larger helpings of vegetables and fruits or whole grains. We have also cut down on sugar both in our drinks and our food. These types of foods help deliver some of those components essential for the body to build a strong immune system, hopefully improving our ability to fight the flu. We exercise more, try to keep the stress level in our house lower and are sure to get enough sleep. I feel quite confident about our ability to ward off the flu this season and if one of us happens to catch it, then hopefully it will not hang around for too long. We again visited our doctor so as to be sure we were in good shape. My blood pressure has gone down and our overall family health is great. Our doctor thanked our family for making a decision for the good of society by choosing to take better care of ourselves, especially since my son and I are part of the high risk group for living with a pregnant woman and an elderly man. Ryan Joseph is a writer/researcher. For more info. visit http://www.sportsnutritions.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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How to Benefit from the Mind-Body Connection
(excerpt)
You are about to gain insight into the
mind-body connection. The number of
people who truly understand these principles on our
planet are relatively few.
There is an undeniable connection between our minds and
bodies, you can learn
to use this fact to your benefit.
Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and
Miracles" was once a
distraught cancer surgeon until he
began to understand the greater principles
of the mind-
body connection. He felt dragged down by the artificial
barriers
that existed between patient and doctor, and the
helplessness he often felt as
a result of his inability
to effectively serve those patients. Eventually, those
barriers
were disintegrated by Dr. Siegel's recognition
and growing understanding of the
mind-body connection and
how it could serve his patients and himself.
Dr. Siegel, or Bernie as he began to have his patients
refer to him, had some
startling realizations as a cancer surgeon. He found that
there were actually
quite a few people in the world that successfully beat
the statistics on cancer
survival. He began to recognize that a patient's ability
to defeat something as
serious as cancer had to do with the patient's mind and
attitude about their
disease.
If you would like to see the rest of
this article, please go here:
http://www.tobeinformed.com/repository/mind-body.html
copyright 2004 - David Snape
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