Clinical Trials and Medical Blog

Some people, it seems, are endowed with a healthy immune system. They never seem to get sick and, if they do get the odd cold, they continue their daily routine and snap out of it in no time flat. Then you see others who barely have to hear the word ‘flu or see someone blowing their nose and bam, they’ve got it!

Is it all in the head? Are you born with a strong immune system to fight off disease? Can you do something about it, if you’re not? Anyway, what does it mean to have immunity? Well, a very simple explanation is that there are basically two types: active and passive immunity.

The definition of ‘immune’ is that your body is so strong and resistant to any disease that you will not succumb to it.

Active immunity is considered to be long-lasting and tends to be life-long. If you’re in this category then, whenever you’re exposed to a disease organism, your immune system will instantly start to produce antibodies to that disease. Furthermore, if you should come into contact with that disease in the future, your immune system will identify it and immediately fight it off with the stored antibodies.

Passive immunity is not inherent in your system. It is when you cannot produce enough antibodies to fight off disease, and get an external boost by injection, medication or nutritional supplements.

Healthy people with an active, innate immunity are usually referred to as being resistant to disease in general. The term immunity is usually applied to general protection against a specific organism. Even if you are generally healthy, you may from time to time need a boost in order to help fight off a virulent strain of a specific infection or virus. The more severe the disease producing organism, the more the passive immunity is applied.

The medical profession recommends boosting your inherent immunity with specific antibodies to fight off a potentially dangerous infection or virus.

A good digestion and healthy appetite are indicators of a strong immunity. “Getting better quickly is a better indicator of immune health,” says Dr Dennis Alexander, head of molecular immunology at the Babraham institute in Cambridge.

Immune globulin can be administered to provide immediate protection from specific health threats to those who have a severely impaired or suppressed immune system. For instance, some who may normally have fairly good resistance to disease suddenly realize that their system cannot handle the sudden onslaught of germs in the hospital.

Likewise, the body under stress, i.e. disease or sudden accident, is often not capable to fight off multiple vaccines in one shot.

Judging by the large numbers of people coping with disease, the human system is inherently fragile and cannot handle multiple onslaughts, like the ones discussed above.

Many believe that if you are generally healthy and look after your health, you will only have a mild version of what’s going around. “In truth, there’s no such thing as a normal immune system,” says Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital, London, who researches cancer vaccines. He says the system is naturally very variable.

The rise of allergies, auto-immune diseases (where the body attacks itself) and inflammatory bowel disease are all indicators of immune resistance performing under par.

Both types of acquired immunity respond to peptide sequences called antigens. Antigens help the acquired immune system recognize invading bacteria, viruses and other harmful organisms (pathogens).

Leftovers, non-organic foods, and foods laced with preservatives can severely tax the digestive system. This can, in turn, clog your circulation, and create a sluggish, compromised immune system.

Going to be late, working at night, irregular eating habits, sleeping during the day, and exposing the body to stress and fatigue can all affect the digestion and body rhythms and thus compromise your resistance.

Therefore, be good to yourself. Eating nutritiously and keeping an active, happy lifestyle will go a long way to boosting your immune system.

Ok, so your one of those people who just has the worst kind of schedule known to mankind. You get up at 5am so you can get to the office by 7am to start your day. You have to go to a parent-teachers meeting at your kid’s school right after work, then you have to take your kid to soccer practice after that. You seem to have days like this almost all the time. You never seem to have much time for yourself between all of the things you have to do every day, so how can you possibly find the time to incorporate exercise into your day? Exercise takes time, and time is one luxury you just don’t have.

Well, there is a way to get some exercise into your day and that way is to simply exercise at your desk. No, that was not a typo. Here is a little routine that you can do right at your desk. It doesn’t take up much time and while it will not make you a candidate for the next fitness competition, it will give your muscles enough work to stay firm.

Complete one set of each exercise in order. Do 10 to 20 repetitions of each exercise, and follow with 1 to 2 more sets in order if time permits it.

Chair crunch:

Sit tall in your chair with your feet flat on the floor. Begin to slowly round your upper back downward until you feel your abdominal muscles tighten. Hold for 3-5 seconds, and then return to the start position.

Squats:

Stand up in front of your chair. Sit back into a squat like you are sitting back down in your chair, keeping your weight on your heels and your knees behind your toes. When you are almost touching your chair with your butt, push yourself back to the standing position using your leg muscles.

Calf raises:

Stand in front of your desk and put your hands on the desk for balance. Lift yourself up onto the balls of your feet. Hold for 3 to 5 seconds, and then lower yourself back down to the floor.

Desk pushup:

Stand 4 to 5 feet away from your desk and put of your hands on the edge of the desk. Relax your lower body and using just your arms, lower your chest down toward the desk and stop when your chest is about 3 to 6 inches away from it. Then push yourself back up to the starting position again using only your arms.

Seated triceps lift backs:

Sit tall in your chair. Put your arms down at your sides with your palms facing forward. With your arms strait and elbows locked, slowly bring your arms up behind you until you feel your triceps muscles tighten. Hold for 3 to 5 seconds, then lower your arms back to the starting position.

Seated bicep curls:

Sit tall in your chair. Start with one arm down at your side, palm facing forward in a fist. Put your other hand over your fist and push against it for resistance while bringing your fist up toward your shoulder. Once your fist is close to your shoulder, lower it back down to the starting position maintaining constant resistance with the other hand throughout the entire movement. Complete all repetitions for that set, then switch sides and repeat.

After you have completed each exercise for the amount of repetitions and sets you can do, sit down and straighten your legs. Now gently reach for your toes until you feel you can’t go any further, hold for 10 seconds (do not bounce), then return to the starting position. Next, reach your arms out to your sides as far as you can. Keeping them fully extended, bring them slowly to the front and cross them over each other as far as you can. Hold for 10 seconds, and then return them to your sides. Now, reach your arms over your head as far as you can, hold for 10 seconds, and then return them to your sides.

Taking the time to do this simple but effective exercise routine at the office will help to keep you toned and you can do it even with the worst schedule possible because it can be done during your lunch break and still leave you enough time to eat your lunch.

Enjoy your workout.

Your muscles ache from a good stretch. This is quite normal and is part of the process. Stretching has seemingly been with us and particular with athletes since the beginning of time.

A very key point to good stretching is to hold the stretch for at least seventeen seconds. This is a pearl of wisdom gleaned from a ballet teacher a few years back. She said that any stretch under 17 seconds was just not effective.

The 17 second rule is exceeded in the high intensity Bikram’s yoga where stretches are held for about 30 seconds. Don’t forget the high level of heat that is used in Bikram’s to extract that last little bit of stretch out of your muscles. An interesting twist that is not necessary to gain benefits from stretching. But, it can’t hurt, right?

So what kind of benefits can you expect from stretching? That’s an easy one. Have you ever seen the movie, Blood Sport? Did you know that Frank Dux could truly stretch his body to the extreme. The actor that played him was quite elastic as well.

Great elasticity is also something you might see in well trained Spetsnaz(Russian)agents. They often work out with Russian kettlebells too. They are for superior strength gains and the ability to withstand ballistic shocks.

Why are stretching and flexibility considered important to these people? Stretching gives one the ability to have explosive power available at one’s fingertips without the need to warm up. Of course most of us are not martial artists or agents. But, you’ll be happy to know there are plenty of other benefits.

Let me give you an example. After learning to sit in the full lotus position for long periods of time, my ankles became very flexible. One day I was walking along and my left foot fell into a pothole. This mishap pushed my ankle sideways to about 90 degrees from it’s normal position.

Amazingly, this didn’t even hurt, not one bit. If my ankle hadn’t been so flexible, I may have suffered a sprained ankle. At the very least, it would have hurt for days.

Key point: stretching helps us to avoid injuries. Not only that but if you do have a muscle, tendon or ligament injury it should heal faster, theoretically speaking.

Stretching actually grows the ligaments, tendons and muscles being stretched. They really grow longer over time. Check with your physician before undertaking any type of exercise, including stretching.

Nasal labial folds: you know - the folds and lines (wrinkles) that are determined to develop into permanent grooves on the side of your mouth, in your cheeks and up to your nose. They’re more than just laugh lines. Even if they were formed by laughing, you don’t feel like laughing now because every time you see them, you know they are winning the war of aging.

Flabby muscles make you look older; if your arm muscles jiggle, those muscles need exercise. If your thighs look dimply or the skin on your upper inner thigh feels thickly soft, you can firm and tone that area with exercise. The same with a thick waist, a droopy backside or a bulging tummy; exercise is the solution.

An exercised body looks streamlined; improved posture means you no longer slouch and your tummy looks flatter because your core muscles have new life and strength; they’re in better shape from oxygenated blood, contractions and resistance.

The face and neck muscles can become flabby, too. When these muscles soften and then droop, it is blatantly apparent that something unflattering is occurring.

Mind you, aging in the face is sinister because it takes a lot of years for faces to develop lines, folds and sags. By age forty, most people are seeing the early stages of muscle atrophy when their eyelids feel and look heavy, by fifty, the jaw feels spongy and you see that droopiness is affecting your good looks.

The look of old will affect your confidence and no matter how you wear your hair, or how much makeup you use, you will still see sagging. You can disguise a multitude of aging in the body by the clothes you wear – black, loose fitting clothing can conceal waist, tummy, hips, thighs and arms but how can you mask aging in the face?

Thankfully, there are safe and sane techniques that will save your face and they are easy to master. Facial exercises will quickly isolate the affected areas of your face and in just minutes a day, you can deliberately, systematically, and consistently help your face look healthier, prettier, and younger.

These exercises are not contortions; rather, they are isometric and resistance exercises that will shape and contour your face easily and simply without the high costs typically associated with cosmetic or plastic surgery.

From the moment you begin this incredible transformation process, you will see and feel the difference in your muscles and skin every time you perform the exercise movements.

Successfully exercising your cheeks to lift those laugh lines requires you to learn how to anchor the muscles near the nose so when they contract they reposition higher near the ear in the hairline. Have you stood in front of your mirror and pulled the hairline up and back just wishing you could iron out those lines that run from the nose to the mouth?

Exercise helps this to happen. Not just one exercise. Several exercises target specific muscles and muscle groups to contract the cheek muscles up and back to the ear. Contractions and resistance movements plump up the muscles, helps the skin to look healthier from the increased blood supply and gives your face a toned and tightened look.

The muscles in the face weave over and under each other; one end attaches to bone, the other end attaches to either skin or another muscle. This means that when the muscles begin their downward slide, they pool into other muscles and muscle groups, depressing the face making one look tired and even old.

You can stop this.

Surgeons do not want you to know that you can shape and contour your face with facial exercise. They want you to believe that you need injections, surgery and other costly modalities to keep you looking younger.

Exercise is so easy and it makes sense. Consider this, in just minutes a day you can create visible changes that will turn into lasting results. In the privacy of your home, using only your thumbs and fingers, you have the power to reshape and contour your face so that you look younger and healthier without surgery, injections or risky procedures.

For the rest of your life, this exercise program will work for you and you can forever look substantially younger. It’s the best kept secret!