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 OSHKOSH, WI (BRAIN) Tuesday April 10 2012 4:10 PM MT—If the groundhog sees his shadow in February, there are six more weeks of winter. If he can see his reflection in retailer Chris Kegel's head in April, does it forecast a strong season for bike sales? Kegel, owner of the high-volume Wisconsin retail chain Wheel & Sprocket, has been holding a big spring sale every year for about 28 years. Every year Kegel promises his staff he'll shave his curly locks if sales revenues surpass the previous year's by 20 percent. He hasn't had to get the shave since sometime back in the GW Bush Administration. But this year, with sales of more than $1.6 million and 1,600 bikes over the four-day sale, Kegel was sporting a shiny dome by Easter time. "It was kind of the perfect storm this year," Kegel said Tuesday. "We had very strong marketing on TV, radio, newspaper and billboard, plus great weather, a better economy and high gas prices." Wheel & Sprocket rented a 90,000-square-foot space at the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in West Allis, filled it with about 2,200 bikes and ran the sale from Thursday through Sunday last week. The retailer gave space to about 50 event organizers, including clubs, charities and race promoters. About 11,000 people visited the sale and about 1,000 of them signed up for events, Kegel said. | |||
วันศุกร์ที่ 27 เมษายน พ.ศ. 2555
Wheel & Sprocket hits goal, Kegel shaves head
Ejercicios aceptables para embarazadas
Ejercicios aceptables para embarazadas
Las mujeres aumentan de peso durante el embarazo. Aunque ese aumento es esperado y natural, algunas mujeres realizan ejercicios para evitar las libras demás.
Por lo general, las mujeres aumentan de peso durante el embarazo. Aunque ese aumento es esperado y perfectamente natural, algunas mujeres siguen deseando un peso saludable y se proponen evitar un aumento de demasiadas libras cuando están embarazadas. Aunque los ejercicios pueden ser una forma idónea de evitar esas libras de más, es necesario consultar cualquier régimen de ejercitación con el médico antes de iniciarlo. Ciertas actividades como esquiar y montar a caballo se deben evitar durante el embarazo. Pero las siguientes son algunas opciones de ejercicios para embarazadas, cortesía de la Asociación Americana del Embarazo (American Pregnancy Association).
* Natación: la natación es un buen ejercicio para cualquiera, pero especialmente para las embarazadas, quienes padecen a menudo de Dolores en las articulaciones en la medida que progresa su estado de gestación. La natación nos transforma en personas esencialmente ingrávidas, contribuyendo a reducir el estrés en las articulaciones y ofreciendo beneficioso ejercicio cardiovascular así como tonificación muscular.
* Correr: las corredoras pueden seguir haciendo ese ejercicio durante el embarazo. Sin embargo, las gestantes que se proponen seguir corriendo deben mantenerse hidratadas y evitar acalorarse demasiado. Las que no corrían antes del embarazo deben evitar esta actividad, pues corren el riesgo de lesiones.
* Ejercicios de Kegel: los ejercicios de Kegel fortalecen los músculos del suelo pélvico y pueden facilitar el nacimiento porque fortalecen dichos músculos durante el trabajo y el parto en sí. La Asociación Americana del Embarazo también destaca que los ejercicios de Kegel, en el proceso de tonificar los músculos pélvicos, reducen la posibilidad de padecer incontinencia y hemorroides. Muchas mujeres siguen haciendo los ejercicios de Kegel después del embarazo, para fomentar la sanación y fortalecer aun más los músculos.
* Yoga: se sabe que el yoga ayuda a aliviar el estrés y la presión en el cuerpo. Solo se debe evitar el yoga especialmente riguroso, incluyendo el que se conoce como hot yoga.
Cuando hagan ejercicios durante el embarazo, se debe interrumpir la actividad si comienza a faltarle el aire, o siente fatiga o mareos. Y, nuevamente, las embarazadas deben consultar con su médico antes de participar en alguna actividad física. MH125182
De: Metro Editorial Services (MS).
Kegel Or Pelvic Exercises After Pregnancy
After pregnancy, the new mother wants to get back to her pre-pregnancy body shape. For nine months, the body goes through several changes. Muscles loosen up for labour and after a vaginal delivery, the muscles need to be brought back in its tight position. Therefore, after vaginal delivery, the new mother should do pelvic exercises. This not only strengthens the muscles but also tightens it.
Kegel exercises after pregnancy:
Find your pelvic muscles: Many women do not know their pelvic muscles well. To understand these muscles, be careful the next time you urinate. Stop the flow of urine and then again relax your muscles. The contraction and relaxation of these muscles are on your pelvic floor. These muscles are known as pelvic muscles.
How to do?: Now that you have tracked your pelvic muscles, you have to contract and relax them. To try kegel exercises after pregnancy, sit on a chair with legs slightly apart. Contract thinking you are trying to control your urine passage. Hold for 3-5 seconds and then release. Another way is by squeezing your legs and then contrasting your muscles. Do not pull in your tummy. In your lower body, squeezing should be felt only in pelvic muscles.
Do it anywhere, any time: One of the benefits of pelvic exercises is that it can be done anywhere at any time. Make sure you do not do this while urinating.
Should be done regularly: As you can do these pelvic floor exercises anytime, make sure you do it regularly. An empty urinary bladder ensures effective pelvic floor exercise. This also protects the dis-functioning of urinary bladder. Pelvic exercises increase orgasm among women so, better start now!
Different positions: This contracting should be done in different positions. This means you should do it while sitting, while lying down and while standing.
Watch out: You have to care for your body while doing these pelvic exercises during or after pregnancy. See that you do not squeeze any other muscle while doing the kegel exercises after delivery. Be gentle and make sure that you do not include anal or thigh or stomach muscles while doing the exercise.
These exercises practiced after delivery can tighten your pelvic muscles and also help you lose weight. Consult your doctor before trying them. They can guide you by giving proper instructions.
Kegel exercises after pregnancy:
Find your pelvic muscles: Many women do not know their pelvic muscles well. To understand these muscles, be careful the next time you urinate. Stop the flow of urine and then again relax your muscles. The contraction and relaxation of these muscles are on your pelvic floor. These muscles are known as pelvic muscles.
How to do?: Now that you have tracked your pelvic muscles, you have to contract and relax them. To try kegel exercises after pregnancy, sit on a chair with legs slightly apart. Contract thinking you are trying to control your urine passage. Hold for 3-5 seconds and then release. Another way is by squeezing your legs and then contrasting your muscles. Do not pull in your tummy. In your lower body, squeezing should be felt only in pelvic muscles.
Do it anywhere, any time: One of the benefits of pelvic exercises is that it can be done anywhere at any time. Make sure you do not do this while urinating.
Should be done regularly: As you can do these pelvic floor exercises anytime, make sure you do it regularly. An empty urinary bladder ensures effective pelvic floor exercise. This also protects the dis-functioning of urinary bladder. Pelvic exercises increase orgasm among women so, better start now!
Different positions: This contracting should be done in different positions. This means you should do it while sitting, while lying down and while standing.
Watch out: You have to care for your body while doing these pelvic exercises during or after pregnancy. See that you do not squeeze any other muscle while doing the kegel exercises after delivery. Be gentle and make sure that you do not include anal or thigh or stomach muscles while doing the exercise.
These exercises practiced after delivery can tighten your pelvic muscles and also help you lose weight. Consult your doctor before trying them. They can guide you by giving proper instructions.
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Seeking to be a virgin again
By Vision reporter
“When are you having sex next?’’ Senga Joyce, as she is popularly known by traders within Majestic plaza, asked without a care that there were people within hearing distance.
Almost in a whisper I coyly replied: “In about two weeks time.” She responded, “Use this powder at most two hours before sex.”
She continued with the instructions, in the same tone to my dismay, unbothered that there were eavesdroppers.
“After you take a bath and have dried yourself up, dip your middle finger into water, then dip that same finger into this powder.
Spread your legs and insert the finger into your private parts. Lay down for about 15 minutes because if you get up immediately, some of it will be wasted because it will seep down to your panties.”
Earlier in the day, I had called up senga Joyce, to inquire whether she had the medicine that would make my private parts tighter.
I made up a story that after giving birth two months earlier, my I had become wider and my partner was uncomfortable, and less interested in sex, lately.
On getting to her shop, I greeted her and told her I was the one who called earlier.
However, I had to explain all over again what I wanted because she said she received numerous calls from her clients, and could not recall the details of the conversation.
After once again explaining my dilemma, she asked for sh12,500. With that sum of money, I at least expected a well packaged paper bag or tin of medicine.
However, she reached for a huge faded container that once contained Dark and Lovely hair cream, scooped half a handful of the chalk-like powder, poured it onto a creased piece of paper, folded it and handed it to me.
Surprised, I asked her what the contents of the powder were, how sure she was that I would not react adversely to them, and whether they would work after all.
She said the contents were a secret she would not divulge.
“If I tell you the contents, you might become my competitor. But you will not react to the powder and you will get positive results to the extent that you will refer your friends to me,” she assured me.
She then asked me to write my name in a blue hard cover book, because she loved keeping her clients’ names and phone contacts.
I was number 737. She explained to me that each new client recorded their name and phone number.
I suggested that being a first timer and really skeptical about the powder, I should randomly pick three numbers from the book and call them up to ask whether her powder did wonders as she claimed.
Indeed when I called them, they were in praise of the powder.
One excitedly said, “My husband is abroad and whenever he returns I use it and he does not want us to get out of bed because he feels like he is sleeping with a virgin.”
While I had to brave the extremely busy and uncomfortable environment downtown to find Senga Joyce, there are corporate girls who barely have time to do the same, so they organise meetings at their homes and invite the sengas.
Cynthia Nakyeyune, a legal assistant says, “I attended an interesting meeting at my friend’s house, where the senga sold us a greenish powder for vaginal tightening. She told us to pour a handful of it into a basin full of water and sit in it at least once a month so we could always feel like virgins to our husbands. I have used it once and it works.”
So are the men as excited about it as the girls?
Simon Male, a married telecom engineer says that much as his wife has not used any herbs or medicines, he would like her to, as long as they have no impact on her health.
“Sex is a very important factor in a marriage and if it can be made more enjoyable, why not?”
Similarly, Martin Mudega, a married salesman says, “I compare sex to a football match. If a player’s purchase of new shoes guarantees goals, why not buy the shoes? In the same way, if her use of these products will make us enjoy sex more, I am in for it!”
However, not all men are excited about the tightening and Richard Mugisha, a married human resource officer says: “I think the excitement about the vaginal tightening for sex has been over glorified and may be considered overrated.
“A husband who would have serious issues with his wife’s loss of ‘tightness’ would have married majorly for sex, which is absurd.”
He adds: “Marriage should be for companionship, raising a family and love. Sex is also an important ingredient. However, like all things natural, with time women change - face, breast firmness, skin complexion and tightness. We simply have to live with it. Partners should appreciate each other and take time to talk about each other’s concerns and fears.”
But Charles Lumala, a salesman, disagrees.
He says that just like one goes to the salon to look good for their partner or to the gym to get physically fit, improvements are necessary, given the fact that sex is crucial in marriage.
“When such situations arise, the couple needs to discuss and seek solutions because they have to strive to keep the fire burning.
Just like weight lifting or muscle building exercises, kegel exercises take time to make a difference. You can do kegels discreetly, anywhere, whether stuck in traffic, or sitting at your desk at work.
Mary (not real name), a personal assistant, testifies, “I had no experience with senga products but once my friends invited me to a girls’ evening talk.
“There were corporate girls and there was a senga who had products on sale. One friend who bought one for tightening told me it works but by then I had no plans of using the products so I didn’t follow up. What I know and do are the kegel exercises. They are excellent.”
From the expert
Godfrey Aliya, a gynaecologist and obstetrician at Mulago Hospital, discourages the use of vaginal tightening using herbs and drugs, which he says destabilise the balance of bacteria in the vagina and increase the chances of infection.
“In the vagina is a delicate balance of bacteria. We have the bad and good bacteria. However, these chemicals may interrupt the balance and multiply the bad bacteria.”
He continues that they may increase the chances of infection for example pelvic inflammatory diseases, which lead to infertility.
He warns that all those substances including sitting in a basin full of coca cola, washing powder and the like are corrosive and with long term use, one risks developing ovarian cancer.
“Medically, it is not advisable for one to apply any cream, herb, medicines, liquid or powder and similar substances to their vagina for tightening. Do not introduce anything into the vagina if it has not been prescribed by a professional medical person.”
Aliya notes that for vaginal tightening, particular exercises and surgery, especially after natural child birth are the only ways medically advised. During childbirth, the pelvic floor muscles, the muscles that are stretched during natural childbirth. Kegel exercises strengthen and make these muscles more elastic, which improves sexual pleasure.
Aliya explains that a woman can trace the pelvic floor muscles during a short call.
“Without using your hands, clench your muscles to stop the flow of urine, for about four seconds. Release those muscles to let out the urine. Those are the muscles you will exercise during the kegel exercises.”
Do these exercises about ten times a day, ten times a session. Unlike the substances from sengas, kegel exercises will not give you results within two hours, and can take up to eight to ten weeks to notice improvement. Nonetheless, they are safe and will not expose you to infection.
Light weights 'better than heavy' for building muscle
Light weights 'better than heavy' for building muscle
Updated 05:10 PM Apr 27, 2012
TORONTO - Always hankered after the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone? But afraid you will be shown up in the gym when the heaviest thing you can bench-press is an iPad?
Fear not. For sports experts say that when it comes to building muscle, light weights could be more effective than heavy.
The Daily Telegraph reported that researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, found that carrying out more repetitions of light weights could build muscle mass just as effectively, if not more so, than lower reps of heavy weights.
Prof Nicholas Burd, lead author, said: "Other resistance protocols, beyond the often discussed high-intensity training, can be effective in stimulating a muscle building response that may translate into bigger muscles after resistance training."
There is a catch. Trainers must still carry on pumping iron until they can do no more - known as reaching fatigue - in order to build muscle mass. With lighter weights that could mean much longer in the gym to achieve similar results.
However, writing in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, Burd said the lower intensity workout could be better at building muscles because the higher repetitions "sustained the muscle building response for days".
The approach is almost the polar opposite of The Four Hour Body, pioneered by Mr Timothy Ferriss, a 34-year-old Californian. He put on 16 kilograms in muscle over four weeks by carrying out very short repetitions of very heavy weights until "complete failure". Lifting heavy weights carries a higher risk of injury. AGENCIES
Fear not. For sports experts say that when it comes to building muscle, light weights could be more effective than heavy.
The Daily Telegraph reported that researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, found that carrying out more repetitions of light weights could build muscle mass just as effectively, if not more so, than lower reps of heavy weights.
Prof Nicholas Burd, lead author, said: "Other resistance protocols, beyond the often discussed high-intensity training, can be effective in stimulating a muscle building response that may translate into bigger muscles after resistance training."
There is a catch. Trainers must still carry on pumping iron until they can do no more - known as reaching fatigue - in order to build muscle mass. With lighter weights that could mean much longer in the gym to achieve similar results.
However, writing in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, Burd said the lower intensity workout could be better at building muscles because the higher repetitions "sustained the muscle building response for days".
The approach is almost the polar opposite of The Four Hour Body, pioneered by Mr Timothy Ferriss, a 34-year-old Californian. He put on 16 kilograms in muscle over four weeks by carrying out very short repetitions of very heavy weights until "complete failure". Lifting heavy weights carries a higher risk of injury. AGENCIES
Training with weights can help seniors in battle with dementia
Seniors who lift weights or participate in other forms of resistance training can slow the advancement of dementia.
Researchers at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia observed 86 women, 70 to 80 years old, with mild cognitive impairment during a six-month strength training program.
The exercise classes were held twice weekly and they significantly helped improve their attention, problem-solving and decision-making brain functions, according to the B.C. study.
Exercise has always been three-fold for personal trainer Joey Palladini who has helped seniors build their mind, body and soul through fitness training at his Nanaimo studio.
The physical benefits for seniors who do strength exercises on a regular basis are visibly obvious when it comes to better balance, strength and mobility. But the improvement of cognitive performance and brain function is just as impressive.
Joan Murray, 64, has trained with Palladini at Able Body Consulting Studios for two years.
The active writer and painter does a lot to keep her mind busy, but to know her weight training might be giving her brain a workout as well as her body is an added incentive to hit the gym.
The study showed improvement in two processes that are highly sensitive to the effects of aging and neurodegeneration, executive function and associative memory, which are often impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Associative memory refers to the ability of one thought or memory to trigger another, like red means stop. And executive function refers to conflict resolution.
Almost one-third had functional MRIs at the start and end of the study to look for brain activity changes and the strength-training group showed significant cognitive improvement, said researchers in this week's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
"I don't (weight train) because I want to live longer," said Murray, while she warmed up on the exercise bike before her hour-long workout Wednesday.
"I do it because I want to live good."
Murray, who will "officially" be a senior in May, has noticed a breadth of improvements in her daily life that she attributes to her bi-weekly weight lifting workouts.
Her flexibility is better. She has more energy and stamina and pain she suffered from an old shoulder injury is completely gone.
Murray hasn't experienced any signs of dementia, but is happy to know she's already on the right track to keep her brain stimulated and healthy. "It's just an added incentive to keep coming," she said.
Palladini would like to see more seniors take a more aggressive approach to their health.
"I think seniors sometimes give up on themselves," said Palladini.
"Maybe they feel there is no hope or that (weight training) doesn't have relevance in their life. But exercise stimulates the body and mind, no matter what age you are."
KBryce@nanaimodailynews.com 250-729-4245
© Copyright (c) Postmedia News
Mexico tightens rules, lowers weight on trucks
Mexico tightens rules, lowers weight on trucks
MEXICO CITY - (AP) -- The Mexican government says it is tightening inspections and lowering maximum allowed weights for freight trucks after protests over deadly accidents involving double-trailer trucks.
Mexico has allowed trucks to roam two-lane roads with loads of up to 80 metric tons and lengths exceeding 100 feet.
Independent truckers have protested, saying that is dangerous and increases pressure on them to overload their rigs.
The Communications and Transport Department said Friday it is lowering maximum weights by 4.5 tons, and limiting double trailers to 25 kilometer (15.5 mile) runs on secondary roads.
The move follows two accidents in which the rear units of double trailers came loose and careened into buses, killing a total of 49 bus passengers.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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