Anti-aging Disease Prevention and Weight Management
Includes the Anti-aging, Disease Prevention and Weight Management
Objective:-
This program is a voyage of personal discovery that will give you all the knowledge you need for a longer life,( you receive a copy of our Anti-aging and Weight management Twelve Essentials Manual). Many aspect of individual health are covered, we not only look at your lifestyle but also the role of internal inflammation in accelerated aging, the role of enzymes to slow aging and how to use this knowledge to stay younger, protected and healthier longer, these are just some of the topics covered.
You will also receive an individual nutritional and lifestyle plan that is built around your own personal health and physical requirements. The building blocks of your life and indeed your decline comes from the food you eat, an inappropriate diet has two consequences. Firstly too much of the body’s resources goes into digesting foods your body has no use for or even worse foods that are detrimental to your health. This process of understanding is an individual one and each person has different nutritional requirements and some foods that are good for one person can cause internal inflammation in another person. Some people estimate the energy requires to digest an inappropriate diet is as high as 80%, this leaves little energy left to deal with toxic waste matter, the efficient replacing of millions of cells that replicate themselves each day and most importantly keep you fit and young looking. Secondly by replacing foods that age you with those that slow down aging we get an overall positive effect. This part of the program is undertaken by Howard Jones AAc and Sonia Jones ND who is highly experienced in this field and has written several books on the subject including the Anti-aging and Weight Management Twelve Essentials Manual).
As part of your stay we have an in-dept assessment of your current health status and to identify any indicators to future problems. Then your individual nutritional and lifestyle plan is put together with three aspects in mind a) to allow your body to rebuild itself without stressing the system b) as prevention is the key, to give you protection against any serious chronic diseases your body might have a weakness towards and lastly c) help you with any current health issues. During your stay you will also have 2 one to one questions and answer sessions on how to use the different elements contained in the Essentials manual and the opportunity to have treatments as included in the package.
Program includes:-
The Anti-aging and Weight Management Twelve Essential manual (the client receives this prior to arrival so they are familiar with the essentials and can come armed with questions)
Use of all the facilities
7 nights accommodation includes a light healthy breakfast.
An in-depth assessment of your health and nutritional status with a written report
2 question and answer sessions on the anti-aging manual
6 one hour treatments ie massage or facials, acupuncture or remedial therapies.
We recommend the option to do a Detox during the first 4 days to include juices and castor oil packs, cost $75.00.
Additional Options:- more treatments, low level laser face lift treatments and anti-aging facials
Structural assessment (check up for pain relief and joint restrictions) includes advice and treatment options to improve any pain or restrictions and improve flexibility and stability.
Prices:-
Low season $1728 single occupancy and double occupancy is $1334 per person.
High season $1840 single occupancy and double occupancy is $1403 per person.
(programs can be mixed please enquire about the costs)
Read MoreLupus Awareness May – The symptoms and signs of lupus (under the Arthritis umbrella)
The symptoms and signs of Lupus (under the Arthritis umbrella)
There are no hard and fast rules – systemic lupus erythematosus SLE can develop a different combination of symptoms, with various parts and/or organs involved.
The most common symptoms -
Fatigue
Low-grade fever
Loss of appetite
Aching muscles
Mouth ulcers
The butterfly rash
Hyper-sensitivity to sunlight
Inflammation of the mucus lining of the lungs
Pericarditis of the heart (inflammatory condition)
Raynaud’s – poor circulation to fingers and toes
Complications involving organs, the severity of the disease will depend on which organs are involved –
The Skin only – discoid lupus. The skin rash is often found on the face and scalp. Inflammation is typically red with no pain no itching, however these rashes can scar but more often than not heal with permanent scarring. can scar more often than not. When the scarring occurs on the scalp, hair loss is possible, generally not permanent. It is thought that about 7% of discoid cases can develop into SLE.
About 50% of SLE sufferers develop a red, flat facial rash over the bridge of their nose, called the butterfly rash becaise of it shape. Most patients with SLE will develop arthritis during the course of their illness. Arthritis in SLE commonly involves swelling, pain, stiffness, and even deformity of the small joints of the hands, wrists, and feet.
Sometimes, the arthritis of SLE can mimic that of rheumatoid arthritis.The more serious this inflammatory condition is when the brain, liver, and kidneys are affected. White blood cells and blood-clotting factors also
can be characteristically decreased in SLE, which can increase the risk of infection and increased risk of bleeding.
Inflammation of muscles causing muscle pain and weakness.Inflammation of blood vessels that supply oxygen to all the cells in the body causing a derterioration to nerves, the skin, or internal organs.
Inflammation of the lining of the lungs causing pain.
Inflammation of the heart can cause sharp chest pain.
Inflammation of the kidneys can cause fluid retention, high blood pressure, and even kidney failure.
Inflammation of the brain can cause personality changes, strange thoughts, seizures or even a coma.
Damage to nerves can cause numbness, tingling, and weakness of the involved body parts or extremities.
Some patients with SLE also have Raynaud’s phenomenon poor circulation to fingers and toes. The tips can look as if the blood has completely drained out, often accompanied by pain and numbness in the exposed
fingers tips and toes.
Arthritis eases up when you’re not dehydrated, a common problem
Water is good for you, everyone knows it and would agree. You are probably thinking to yourself this is rather obvious and doesn’t need stating. However, research is revealing a different picture, I might be stating the obvious but most people are ignoring this simple fact. You seriously need to think about your fluid intake, if you want to feel better and help with those aches and pains of arthritis. I come across a lot of tired people that certainly look older than they are and tell me they feel older than they are. There are many reasons for fatigue, aches and pains but one of the reasons is dehydration. Dehydration is common.
Drinking enough water relieves pain and joint stiffness of arthritis. If you suffer from headaches, maybe you are not drinking enough hydrating fluids. When you are dehydrated your cells contract and retain waste products. When you are well hydrated your cells expand allowing them to get rid of their waste products, allowing them to maintain the correct pH balance, enabling the cells to take on nutrients, slowing down the aging process. This very important aspect of health is often over looked by practitioners and patients a like. Being hydrated is fundamental to any health and pain relieving program. But surprisingly is easier said than done for some people.
We all know how important water is, no need to explain. Or is there? Survey after survey tells a completely different story. We are not taking water seriously enough. Research has revealed that many people are dehydrated and that some people are very dehydrated. As we get older the situation seems to get worse. Being dehydrated is very aging, a bit like a dried up old prune. Our organs find it extremely stressful trying to function correctly under these circumstances. Over a period of time being in this state will have some very serious health consequences.
However many people including children tell me how they drink plenty during the day.
It is possible to drink yourself into dehydration? The answer is yes it is.
It is estimated that a lot of people are only getting one third of the hydrating fluids they need!
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Did you know? Drinking 5 to 8 glasses of water a day reduces are risk of all sorts of cancer and other diseases. |
Water is -
a) major component of blood
b) prevents constipation
c) flushes out toxins
d) prevents muscle stiffness
e) prevents joints from being painful as in arthritis
f) maintains a normal metabolism
g) temperature control
h) needed for protein digestion
I am often asked ‘how much water should I drink’?
The answer will depend on several things like your activity levels, the climate, how much you sweat, how much alcohol you drink, the amount of stress in your life, how much tea and coffee you drink and what you eat – some food is very dehydrating and some are hydrating.
The average person will need about 6 to 8 glasses a day. This amount would increase if for instance if you are in training and live in a hot country.
What are the symptoms of dehydration? This list of symptoms is not exclusive to dehydration it must be added.
Before you consider taking a medication, (which by the way is also dehydrating) for the symptoms listed below, first make sure your are well hydrated and you are eating well. Many people find these symptoms disappear or at the very least lessen to a large extent, it may take a week or two before you notice a difference.
* frequent headaches
* spots and blemishes
* stiff muscles
* painful joints
* dry skin
* saggy skin
* lack of energy
* hunger
* fluid retention
* fuzzy thinking
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Did you know? Research shows that the brain gets confused between hunger and thirst. People often eat when in fact our bodies are crying out for a hydrating drink. |
Balance It is important to start increasing your consumption of hydrating drinks and decrease your intake of dehydrating drinks.
Hydrating fluids – water, herbal teas, fruity teas, vegetable juices and fruit juices diluted with at least 50% water
Dehydrating fluids – coffee, tea, sodas, milk shakes, alcohol, chocolate drinks etc
Read MoreArthritis improved with 7 things you can do now?
These are important aspects that accelerate the aging process and speed up degeneration in general, contributing to a poor quality of life with more suffering than necessary, especially in most forms of arthritis.
1) Inflammation can be triggered by a number of things, what you eat and drink has a huge impact on your inflammatory responses, encouraging pain and destruction. It is very important to improve your diet in every way you can. This will have a huge impact on your condition.
2) Free-radicals – encourage degeneration such as in arthritis conditions. Take some anti-oxidants.
3) Poor detoxification – organs need certain nutrients to produce specific enzymes that neutralize and remove toxins from the body this is especially true of the liver and arthritis.
4) A negative outlook on life in general will impact on every cell in the body producing destructive chemicals that speed up degeneration. Of-course there are times when you will feel a little down that is natural but to always see the tank as half empty as opposed to half full is a problem. The tank may still measure half way up but they are two completely different ways of looking at the same thing.
5) Poor posture puts a strain on joints. Muscles tighten, which in turn restricts blood flow and this reduces movement of oxygen and nutrients in the joints. Also reducing the amount of toxins that can be removed from the joints, encouraging more degeneration and/or inflammation. A practitioner of the Alexandra Technique can help you in this area, showing you the correct posture in everyday life – reading, sitting at the computer, standing, walking etc.
6) Lack of activity, this does not mean you have to join a gym. It does mean you have to move around move, as the lack of activity does mean you could seize up. Just like the rusty gate.
7) Poor bio-mechanics some people due to their build have extra wear and tear on – the hips, knees and/or ankles. For instance – due to knock-knees, or bow-legged or collapsed arches will change the total alignment of the legs which can cause ankle, knee or hip problems. See a foot/posture specialist, or as a osteopath or chiropractor. They can arrange for inserts to be made especially for your particular set of circumstances for your shoes that help re-align your legs removing some of the pressure. This could mean all the difference to you being more active.
Read MoreCoffee linked to arthritis
From the BBC News
Drinking coffee may increase the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, according to doctors.
Research carried out in Finland suggests the number of cups of coffee drunk daily is linked to increased risk of developing the condition.
Doctors at the National Institute of Public Health in Helsinki examined their theory among a cross sectional survey of almost 7,000 people.
One in 100 affected
They found the number of cups of coffee consumed on a daily basis was strongly associated with rheumatoid factor.
Rheumatoid factor can contribute to the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, which affects approximately one per cent of the population.
It can lead to permanent disability, and can even, in extreme cases, affect the major organs, causing life-threatening damage.
The research team also monitored a group of almost 19,000 over a 15 year period, none of whom had any evidence of arthritis when first tested.
They found people who drank four or more cups of coffee a day were twice as likely to test positive for arthritis than those who drank less.
The results held true even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as age, gender, smoking and weight.
They also report that those who drank 11 or more cups a day were almost 15 times as likely to have rheumatoid factor as non-coffee drinkers.
t they are unable to identify the ingredient in coffee, and in coffee that is not filtered in particular, that may increase the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
They called for further research to be carried out to see if their theory stands up.
Possible risk
“Coffee consumption should be considered a possible risk factor or a confounder in future reasearch intot he cause of rheumatoid arthritis,” they state.
The findings are published in the latest issue of the medical journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
But a spokeswoman from the Arthritis Research Campaign said: “When you consider that rheumatoid arthritis is a complex disease with a large genetic element, and that environmental and genetic factors interact to play a part in its development, to link the disease with coffee consumption is rather simplistic.”
A spokesman from the Coffee News Information Service, which represents the coffee industry, said the study had shown an association but not a cause and effect relationship.
“Most importantly when the data was collected 20 years ago, very strong boiled coffee was heavily consumed in Scandinavia, and does not represent normal UK consumption, which is primarily of the instant variety.
“Coffee drinkers should rest assured that coffee consumption in moderation is perfectly safe.”
Read MoreMagnetic and copper bracelets for arthritis
I wrote an article a little while ago about magnet therapy and their benefit- Actually, their lack of benefits. It’s a 5 billion dollar a year industry but there are next to no studies that have shown any clinical results. Here are the results of a study just conducted by a group of researchers from the University of York.
This was the first tightly controlled study to check the effectiveness of both copper and magnetic wrist bracelets for relieving pain due to arthritis. The researchers had this to say ‘they are useless’. There was apparently no easing of pain or stiffness. They had 45 patients who tested copper bracelets, two different types of magnetic bracelets and one bracelet that was demagnetized (sham bracelet). According to one arthritis charity, they felt it was better to keep your money in your pockets rather than wasting it on these bracelets.
Each person in the trial was over 50 years old and had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis. They had to wear the bracelets for a 16 week period. In the journal of complementary therapies, the researchers stated that there was no decrease in pain or stiffness and no increase in function. The three things you would want if you had just gone out and bought one!
The person in charge of this study, Stewart Richmond, a research fellow from the department of health sciences said that the only other randomized controlled trial done on copper bracelets was back in the 1970s.
This is rather eye opening especially when you consider that magnetic bracelets can cost up to $100 each. The industry in America alone is worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year!
However I remember my grandmother used to swear by her copper bracelet. She could not function without it she used to tell me. So this sis where we look at he effects of ‘the placebo’. The placebo effect is well documented and I will be writing about this in a future post as well the nacebo effect-the placebos’ opposite.
According to Mr. Richmond, the perceived benefits people have are simply due to psychological placebo effects. When people buy them they are in a great deal of pain and when this pain eases they attribute this to their wrist bracelets. Their studies have shown that the magnetic and copper bracelets have no benefits whatsoever over placebo wrist straps that don’t contain copper or magnets. He goes on to say that the bracelets are sold to elderly people who are generally in pain and vulnerable.
At the institution for arthritis research, Jane Tadman can’t understand why so many people have copper bracelets when there is absolutely no research that supports any benefits for using them. She agrees with Mr. Richmond in that without any scientific research or indeed evidence that shows any benefits of using them save your money!
If you do suffer from arthritis I can tell you this; certain therapies have been studied and have proven to have had positive effects on relieving pain, stiffness and increasing function.
• Nutrition. Getting the right nutritional advice is imperative. You could be eating a diet that, unbeknown to you, is inflaming your condition! There are many foods and natural remedies that can also relieve your condition. These factors must be addressed.
• Exercise. Again, it is well documented that regular exercise is of great benefit to arthritis. The joints need motion. The fluid in the joints which is the joints lubricant is only produced by motion. Therefore, if you don’t move the joint you don’t produce synovial fluid which is your lubricant. Then you are stuck in a downward spiral because if you don’t move it you don’t produce lubricant and if you don’t produce this, it hurts to move your joint. And if it hurts to move your joint you refrain from moving it-and so on and so on.
• Acupuncture. Here is another well documented therapy that works. The world health organization has recognized acupuncture as an effective treatment for arthritis.
Support orgainic if you can – help your Arthritis
By supporting the organic movement, we help to minimize chemical damage which poses a real threat to the future of humanity. We need to think hard before choosing an intensively produced product over an organic product simply because of the small extra cost.
Organic food is free from insecticides, pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, fertilisers and a whole host of other toxic artificial additives, flavourings, colourings and preservatives. The combination of these residues may be more toxic than you realize due to the synergistic effects of multiple residues on foods that can accumulate in human tissue. The health effect of all of this pollution is slowly becoming clear.
Agro-chemicals were not developed with nutrition, health or the environment in mind.So what we get is a cheap but inferior product with a cocktail of up to 40 different chemicals, waxes and insecticides.
Organic farmers are committed to fine food, and they will have left the trees in a meadow with healthy soil, filled with a diversity of butterflies, lady birds, birds and wildlife in general.
There are many hidden costs to intensive farming and spraying especially to the workers that have to handle the chemicals often without safety clothing, suffering all sorts of diseases.
Organic produce may well cost a bit more but this is no comparison to the possible cost if we don’t try to support organic foods. There is the cost to the tax payer for the subsidies to agro-chemical farming. The cost of cleaning up the environment as the chemicals end up in our water-ways killing fish and then there is the possible cost of healthcare as an indirect and direct result of the cocktail of chemicals. Then there is the cost to the wildlife, whose natural habitats are being systematically destroyed.
“The UK pesticide market is currently worth about £500 million every year. It is extraordinary that the cost of removing pesticides from drinking water amounts to a huge £120 million annually,” says Professor Pretty. In Britain subsidies on normally grown food works out at about 40 pence in every pound spent on food. This cost is paid through the taxation system.
Organic farmers earn lower subsidies because they grow rotation crops so they are unable to maximise subsidy income. They cost society about 25 pence in every pound. When you cost in the real cost of industrial agriculture and take away the subsidies that favour the wrong use of resources, you end up with a situation where, organic food would actually cost less than conventional! The situation is also very much like this in the USA.
More and more people are going organic and prices for organic foods have been falling over the last five years as more and more organic food is bought. It is vital that we safeguard the future of organic farming by paying a little bit extra to keep organic farmers in business.
Organic farming is generally smaller scale and more labour intensive, sometimes with smaller crop yields. Farmers also have to convert their land to organic production over a period of years, and as organic farming relies on crop rotation, up to 25% of land may be left to lie fallow at any one time to increase natural soil fertility.
Organic food’s strength lies in what it doesn’t contain. There is, in fact, only food in organic food as regulations prohibit hydrogenated fat that can cause of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, aspartame thought to be a neurotoxin – affecting the nervous system, phosphoric acid found in many soda drinks causing osteoporosis, antibiotics which interfere with our immune system, hormones that are causing feminization of wild life, low sperm count, obesity, various cancers, pesticides causing or encouraging mutagenic, carcinogenic effects,GM foods – who knows what the long term effects will be, linked to IBS, Crohn’s disease, autism, other gut-based disease, or any of the 7000 artificial colourings, flavourings, preservatives and processing aids that are permitted in conventional food that have been linked to cancer, liver disease, gut problems. These are chemicals, food additives and processes that are not allowed in organic foods.
Also look out for wild crafted, hydroponic, bio-dynamic and eco-friendly grown foods.
Arthritis & Pain Program at The Haven
