chronicillnesscat:

Living with a Chronic Disease

A very good video by Hank Green in which he talks about having Ulcerative Colitis, and just generally on living with a chronic condition.

I must add that as I’ve just passed my five year anniversary of my diagnosis, I’ve realized that he’s right to say that it becomes a new normal. I am much more aware of my body and how my conditions are not me, but simply a part of me. To all newly diagnosed or undiagnosed people who read this, it will get easier with time.





chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat.Text reads: “Doctor recommend getting blood taken - Instant panic because of the future pain.”]





healthyellie:

Build your own fitness plan with Gain Fitness! Choose from workouts geared towards maintaining health, fat loss, or bulking up. Target specific parts of the body and choose which exercises you incorporate into your plan. It’s like having a personal trainer right at your fingertips!

Bringin’ this back for those of you who did not see it the first time. :)



#workout #work out #exercise #fitness #gym #training #gain fitness


neurosciencestuff:

Simulated Mars Mission Reveals Body’s Sodium Rhythms

Clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D., knew he had a one-of-a-kind scientific opportunity: the Russians were going to simulate a flight to Mars, and he was invited to study the participating cosmonauts.

Titze, now an associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University, wanted to explore long-term sodium balance in humans. He didn’t believe the textbook view – that the salt we eat is rapidly excreted in urine to maintain relatively constant body sodium levels. The “Mars500” simulation gave him the chance to keep salt intake constant and monitor urine sodium levels in humans over a long period of time.

Now, in the Jan. 8 issue of Cell Metabolism, Titze and his colleagues report that – in contrast to the prevailing dogma – sodium levels fluctuate rhythmically with 7-day and monthly cycles. The findings, which demonstrate that sodium is stored in the body, have implications for blood pressure control, hypertension and salt-associated cardiovascular risk.

Titze’s interest in sodium balance was sparked by human space flight simulation studies he conducted in the 1990s that showed rhythmic variations in sodium urine excretion.
“It was so clear to me that sodium must be stored in the body, but no one wanted to hear about that because it was so different from the textbook view,” he said.

He and his team persisted with animal studies and demonstrated that the skin stores sodium and that the immune system regulates sodium release from the skin.

In 2005, planning began for Mars500 – a collaboration between Russia, the European Union and China to prepare for manned spaceflight to Mars. Mars500 was conducted at a research facility in Moscow between 2007 and 2011 in three phases: a 15-day phase to test the equipment, a 105-day phase, and a 520-day phase to simulate a full-length manned mission.

Crews of healthy male cosmonauts volunteered to live and work in an enclosed habitat of sealed interconnecting modules, as if they were on an international space station. Titze and his colleagues organized the food for the mission and secured commitments from the participants to consume all of the food and to collect all urine each day. They studied twelve men: six for the full 105-day phase of the program, and six for the first 205 days of the 520-day phase.

“It was the participants’ stamina to precisely adhere to the daily menu plans and to accurately collect their urine for months that allowed scientific discovery,” Titze said. The researchers found that nearly all (95 percent) of the ingested salt was excreted in the urine, but not on a daily basis. Instead, at constant salt intake, sodium excretion fluctuated with a weekly rhythm, resulting in sodium storage. The levels of the hormones aldosterone (a regulator of sodium excretion) and cortisol (no known major role in sodium balance) also fluctuated weekly.

Changes in total body sodium levels fluctuated on monthly and longer cycles, Titze said. Sodium storage on this longer cycle was independent of salt intake and did not include weight gain, supporting the idea that sodium is stored without accompanying increases in water.

The findings suggest that current medical practice and studies that rely on 24-hour urine samples to determine salt intake are not accurate, he said. “We understand now that there are 7-day and monthly sodium clocks that are ticking, so a one-day snapshot shouldn’t be used to determine salt intake.”

Using newly developed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies to view sodium, Titze and his colleagues have found that humans store sodium in skin (as they found in their animal studies) and in muscle.

The investigators suspect that genes related to the circadian “clock” genes, which regulate daily rhythms, may be involved in sodium storage and release. “We find these long rhythms of sodium storage in the body particularly intriguing,” Titze said. “The observations open up entirely new avenues for research.”

(via page03)






thats-hawt:

phitness:

tonedgoals:

endorphinskeepmerunning:

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WATCH THIS.

I started bawling when he started running holy crap

I’m showing this to my dad. If this guy can do it, my dad can, too!

Wow! That’s all I can say. That was amazing!

(Source: lovewithallyouvegot, via eat-rice-first)






I just noticed that you haven't been on in 3 weeks... but I hope you're still here! I have questions about IBS... I feel like I have that problem but I'm never going to be diagnosed because my mom doesn't notice anything wrong. I just feel like it's so hard to poop and I'm always bloated and gassy and annoyed, and when I press on my stomach it makes gurgling sounds all the time. I have no idea what's up, and I'm just confused in general :c

Ah! Yes, I am still here. This isn’t my main blog, so I tend to not update— even on my personal one, since I’m still in school currently.

And I’m sorry to hear about your tummy troubles! IBS and other functional GI diseases are really hard to diagnose, trust me, it’s been a long six years of this. There are a lot of tests, and some don’t necessarily give a definite answer. It can be frustrating and confusing, not only for yourself but for your parents as well.

To address some of your concerns:

  1. Constipation is one of the key, prevalent signs of IBS. In fact, constipation IS NOT normal. Even in patients who do not have IBS, constipation is not a normal bodily phenomena, and should be considered. It can be dependent on diet, but in the case of IBS, diet is not always a trigger to constipation, but does play a key part in whether or not you experience constipation.
  2. Bloating and excessive gas is another key sign of IBS, especially if it takes place immediately after a meal. Again, this is not normal. There is a grey area where some foods will typically cause bloating and gas, but this should not be an every day experience.

My suggestion to you is that you make a food journal (I’m a hypocrite, I know, I hate doing it). Document when you ate, what you ate, how you felt before and how you felt after. Try to include any medication you took, and what your bowel movements were like too.

If you have a hard time convincing your mother that something is up, showing a journal with the symptoms you feel and how often they occur can be a real eye opener. A lot of the times, patients with IBS don’t feature any external features of pain, other than a discomforted look on their face, so it can be extremely difficult for other people to notice the symptoms, let alone understand how much you are affected by the problem.

Another small thing that may help is to try to eat as healthy as possible. It seems really simply and ridiculous, but I’ve found that most people who suffer from IBS do so much better on a diet of especially healthy foods. I’ve even found that many people who aren’t actually gluten intolerant do much better on a gluten free diet (for me, it seems that gluten free foods are so much easier to digest).

Oh, another little thing: try to document when and how much Ibuprofen/Acetaminophen you take; a big reason for IBS issues is misuse of over the counter pain relievers. It’s part of the reason I have IBS symptoms. (And by abuse, I do not mean in terms of addict abuse, but by taking large dosages close to one another, for an extended period of time. I.E. taking advil for my migraines and menstrual cramps, 1200 mg+ every couple of hours, for about three days straight)


Lastly, if you ever get to go to the doctor for these issues, make sure to test for Crohn’s diease, gluten intolerance, iron levels, as well as an MRI/CAT scan to rule out everything else (also: there two specific studies, one involves digesting radioactive material to see how long it takes for food o be digested, the other involves ingesting contrast material to see the GI tract[I had both done, but I’m honestly forgetting what the last one was for.] are pretty important as well. If your doctor decides to do one or the other, they can deduce what a endoscopy or a colonoscopy might miss.)

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions please feel free to ask. I promise to respond as fast as I can; even though I’m not updating as I would like to, I’m still checking tumblr on my ipad when I get the free time to. I have so much experience with this, so honest to goodness, fee free to pick my brain.

(I’m going to make this a public post for the rest of my followers, but I will ask you back to tell you I responded, if you don’t happen to see this!)

healthiie:

Allrecipes.com is easily one of the best recipe sites online.. but sifting through a million recipes to find yummy & healthy recipes can be hard. The healthy section has a lot of lol-worthy “healthy” options (cinnamon sugar pork rinds? are you serious? in the healthy section? ok.) & There’s a ton of great healthy recipes buried in other sections around the site. Here’s a list of some worth looking at!

PS - when you change the number of servings, it automatically scales the ingredients down for you!

Enjoy.

xo Mia

(Source: recoverykitty, via fitforinfinity)



#healthy foods


weight-loss-life-gain:

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(Source: ratherbehealthyy, via girlgrowingsmall)





Sorry!

I’m really sorry to all of you guys for disappearing for these last couple of months, without saying anything.
Currently, I’m in school, so it’s essentially impossible to update this blog, when I really have no time to spend on the internet, let alone focus on ideas for posts and editing on top of homework.

I just wanted to you you all know that I’m alive, and that I still plan to use this blog, and update regularly, when I can. I also appreciate all the new followers and hope to offer you all new and useful posts real soon.

Stay healthy!