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Menstrual Cramps: 6 Home Remedies

As women, we all know it, dread it, and are sometimes even thankful that we get it — I’m talking about our monthly period. We all know the constant throbbing and cramping pains that come with it. Hormone-like substances, called prostaglandins, which are involved in pain and inflammation, trigger the uterine muscle contractions. Higher levels of prostaglandins are therefore associated with more severe menstrual cramps. For some women, their cramps might even interfere with their work, school, and daily activities.

About three out of four women experience menstrual pains, and every one out of 10 women experiences severe cramps.

To help you get through the monthly visit, here are some home remedies that ease menstrual cramps.

1. Exercise

This might sound a little crazy and you might be thinking to yourself, I can barely move, let alone exercise. However, brisk walking, or any type of physical activity, can help to ease your belly pain. When you’re doing any type of aerobic exercise, your body is pumping more blood. This helps to release endorphins to counteract the prostaglandins and reduce your cramps. Exercising three to four times a week is good for the overall health of your body, but it is especially important if you’re prone to painful menstrual cramps.

I, personally, never skip my workouts exercising 5-6 days a week. Period and especially PMS days are not exception to the rule. Right activities have tremendous beneficial effect not only on physical but also on mental health. But, be careful! Do not overload yourself either. Have 30-40 min of circuit training or 20-30 min cardio (i prefer power walk outside) and a nice Hatha yoga session after.

2. Apply heat

Heat helps to relax the contracting muscles in your uterus, which is the cause for your pain. There are many over-the-counter heating patches and pads or electric, reusable ones. Or, even taking a regular plastic bottle with hot water and applying it to your abdomen is an alternative when you don’t have access to a heating pad.

3. Drink chamomile tea

A study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Chemistry found that there might be pain-relieving properties in this fragrant tea.

This is one of a growing number of studies that provide evidence that commonly used natural products really do contain chemicals that may be of medicinal value,

said Elaine Holmes, Ph.D., a chemist with the Imperial College of London. The research found that when 14 participants were given urine samples, their urinary levels had a significant increase in hippurate, which is a natural anti-inflammatory. Anti-inflammatory drugs help to decrease the prostaglandin production, thus relieving menstrual cramps.

4. Make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D

Prevention is always better than the cure, which is why making sure your body has enough vitamin D is important in preventing menstrual cramps. A study found that high doses of vitamin D3 led to a significant decrease in menstrual cramps. As reported by Health.com, “40 Italian women were split into two groups: one receiving a single oral dose of 300,000 IUs of vitamin D3 and the other getting a placebo five days before the expected start of their menstrual periods.” Their pain scored dropped by 41 percent, while those in the placebo group saw no change in their pain scale.

DL-Phenilalaine is another highly recommended supplement. It’s not essential naturally occurring amino acid that can help to reduce PMS symptoms. Also this amino acid stimulates alertness and increase serotonin production helping therefore to avoid menstrual fatigue and mood swings. Check recommended dosages with your nutrition adviser.

5. Have an orgasm

Yes, that’s right — orgasms help to relieve all kinds of pain, including menstrual cramps. Before an orgasm, the uterus is more relaxed, and at the moment of climax, blood flow increases, helping to relieve the cramps. Orgams relieve the pain through the release of endorphins, which help you to feel instantly better. They also help to relax your whole body and induce sleep so you won’t feel any cramping at all.

6. Acupuncture

Acupuncture is a component of traditional Chinese medicine, which involves sticking the skin with small needles to stimulate the body at certain points. Researchers from the Oriental Hospital at Kyung Hee University Medical Center in South Korea found that acupuncture might have positive effects on menstrual cramps. The study was based on 10 trials with 944 participants. “There was an improvement in pain relief from acupressure compared with a placebo control,” according to the study.

Edited by OpenMindPortal

Comments by Tatiana Dmitrieva

Initial source: Menstrual Cramps: 6 Home Remedies

Protein banana bread

Yummy, healthy and lean option of your favourite banana bread. I use oat flower and oatmeal to make it even healthier. You can easily fortify this bread with protein powder if you aim to increase your protein intake and swop stevia with other sweaters or fructose.

Perfect for breakfast, as pre and post-workout snack.

Could be stored up to 3 days in room temperature but usually it’s not the case.

Enjoy.

Macros per piece: macros is approximate (depends on the portion size)

Calories: about 90-130 kcal

Protein: about 5 grams (without protein powder), about 15 grams fortified

Carbs: about 10 grams

Fat: about 4 grams

Yield: 1 loaf (about 5-6 pieces); prep time: 15 min; cook time: about 1 hour; total time: 1.30 min

Ingredients

1 cups oat flour + 1 cup whole wheat flower + 1 cup oatmeal
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1-2 scoops whey protein powder (optional). I use bannoffee pie flavour.
½ tsp salt (optional)
8Tbsp coconut oil, plus 1 tsp. for greasing
1 Tbsp. stevia
2 Tbsp. honey (optional)
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, mashed
mixed crushed nuts and dried fruits (optional)
85ml/3fl oz unsweetened almond milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice
1 lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
Mix together flour, baking soda, salt and protein powder into a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine coconut oil butter, stevia and honey together until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, mashed bananas, almond milk and vanilla extract to the butter.
Add crushed nuts and dried fruits to the butter.
Grease a loaf tin and pour the cake mixture into the tin.
Transfer to the oven and bake for about an hour.
Remove from the oven and cool in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely before serving.

Bon appetit

What the Rest day does to your body. Shocking inside

How many days a week do you actually work out? How many days should be devoted to rest? Do we really need a rest day? Some people believe that the more you exercise, the quicker and better the results. What’s the ideal ratio of rest to workout days in order to maximise the outcome of your exercise?

Workout days are simple to follow: you just follow your routine. Then, on your “rest days”, you feel like a lost duckling. It is always so tempting to fill them with “other physical activities” up to the top. Do you run on the treadmill? Or maybe do lighter weights? A bike ride on a unicycle up a mountain sounds nice. How about this: try actually letting your body rest.

“Rest” Is Often Misunderstood

There’s a reason rest days are intentionally woven into workout programs. In fact, rest is necessary for progress. When you exercise—particularly when you do really intense stuff like training for a marathon or lifting heavy weights—you’re damaging your muscle fibers. And it’s really the rest and recovery that let you repair muscles, and get fitter.

The American Council on Exercise (ACE) defines a rest day as a non-training day, where you’re not challenging your body at all. Some people interpret it as a license for a cheat day or just do nothing—the latter of which I actually encourage if you already work out too much. I used to work with people who took rest days to mean activity that was the exact opposite of resting. They might go for a “quick run” that ended up being eight miles; or do high-intensity interval training right after squats and deadlifts. That’s on top of training five to six days a week, sometimes twice a day. Those are pretty stressful rest days. Of course, these are extreme cases, but the urge to be extreme in fitness is more common than you think.

Refusing to Properly Rest Hurts You in the Long Run

You’ve heard the saying: “No pain, no gain,” or “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” If you work out intensely every day, you run your body ragged. Ideally, your fitness cycle should be: Work out, recover, profit, repeat. The recovery part is necessary for you to keep up this cycle over and over again and be able to see those results in the long run.

But remember, you’re (probably) not only exercising. You’ve got a life, a job, a family, Game of Thrones spoilers, and so many other stressors. These will all impact your ability to recover from your workouts.

And let’s not gloss over the fact that fitness is 50 percent physical and 50 percent mental. I know I spend a lot of time thinking about how to crush my workouts, what to do to get the most out of them, the “right amount” of reps and sets, what glorious thing I’m going to eat afterward, or whether the stripes on these socks match the color of my shorts. All of these stressors will have rippling effects on not only your workout performance but on other areas of your life, too. A little extra strenuous activity here and there isn’t a big deal.

But by the time you really do need that rest, it may be too late: you’ve burnt out. As a result, your motivation and energy levels will get hit hard; you’ll get lackluster or no results; you’ll make yourself more prone to injuries; or worse, you’ll start to see exercise as a chore.

Some fitness practitioners believe (and I share their opinion) that over-training causes massive water retention. At first glance it may resemble gaining fat. However, just a few days of complete rest could solve the problem, and is sufficient time to shed up to 2-3 kg of retained fluids in men and up to 5 kg in women.

Rest Doesn’t Have to Mean Doing Absolutely Nothing

At the same time, plenty of people have told me that deliberate rest would be too disruptive to their “hot” workout streak. That is, they’re stuck on this idea that if they take some time to rest, it’ll mess up their momentum and be much harder to get crackin’ to work out again.

If that’s you, you don’t have to stop entirely. Instead of being completely still, you can do what’s called “active recovery”, where you’re still moving, just letting your body recover. Many coaches advocate engaging in some sort of movement, but advise that it should be easy on the body.

Here are some ideas on what that might look like:

Do some mobility work: Mobility refers to how well your joints and body move. If you sit at a desk all day, you can probably work on your mobility to improve your posture and range of motion (like in your upper back and hips). Besides, better mobility can translate to better performance in the gym, too. Your rest days are the perfect opportunity to fit in light mobility and flexibility work. Yoga or foam rolling can be part of this regimen.
Practice technique: Whether you’re learning a new weightlifting move or trying to improve your running stride, use your rest day to practice. If you’re practicing a weightlifting move, I recommend using a broomstick in place of a barbell. A lot of repetitions even with just the barbell could tire you out.

Do cardio (only if you want): You’re probably told to just do cardio on the exercise machines on your rest days. You can, but don’t feel like you need to, especially if you’re already pretty active. Do it only because you want to and it’s actually a way for you to feel relaxed.

Take your activity outside: Hike, jog, bike, play catch, swim, prance, or do anything you enjoy. When you spend all your time working out indoors, it’s nice to be able to mix it up with doing something outside. Recreational sports are great, but sports like soccer, football, basketball, Ultimate frisbee, and so on can also be really intense. If you’re playing at a competitive level on a regular basis and feel beat, talk to a coach who specializes in your sport about designing a proper in-season training protocol.

When you feel really run-down and lack the energy and motivation to work out, it’s a dead giveaway that something needs to go. Obviously, you can’t just easily toss aside many of your life’s obligations, but you can always cut down on your activity. Instead, you can spend a day preparing your meals on your rest day. Heck, if you want to, you can sit on your ass to play video games or read a book at the park. You should take at least one day of rest like that.

Doing too much exercise is counterproductive. Being fit and healthy requires the interplay between rest and exercise, which in turn bring you results and all those other health benefits. So, take care of your body. That’s why you’re working out in the first place.

Stephanie Lee

Source:

http://vitals.lifehacker.com/stop-working-out-so-much-on-your-rest-days-1778354349

5 WAYS ON HOW YOU CAN FIND YOUR PASSION IN LIFE

How can you find your place in life, and lead a happy and fulfilling existence? If you have the answer to these two fundamental questions, then you are halfway to achieving them. Here are a few exercises that can help all of us down the path to a deep and enduring happiness.

courtesy by Millionaire’s digest

edited by OpenMindPortal

Exercise 1 – Revisit your childhood. What did you love to do?

Make a list of all the things you remember enjoying as a child. Would you enjoy that activity now?… You can also ask yourself these questions to help get you started: what can be translated and added into my life now? How can those past experiences shape my career choices now?

Exercise 2 – Make a “creativity board.”

Start by taking a large poster board, put the words “New Business” in the centre and create a collage of images, sayings, articles, poems and other inspirations.

The idea behind this is that when you surround yourself with images of your intention — who you want to become or what you want to create — your awareness and passion will grow.

As your board evolves and becomes more focused, you will begin to recognise what is missing and imagine ways to fill the blanks and realise your vision.

Exercise 3 – Make a list of people who are where you want to be.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Study people who have been successful in the area you want to pursue.

For example, during the recession, many people shied away from the real estate market because they thought it was a dead end. Some experts believe that’s the perfect time to jump in — when most others are bailing out — because no matter the business, there are people who are successful in it. Study them, figure out how and why they are able to remain successful when everyone else is folding and then set up structures to emulate them.

If you want to be creative, create a rigorous and formal plan. It’s not the plan that is creative; it’s the process that you go through that opens up so many possibilities.

Exercise 4 – Start doing what you love, even without a business plan

A lot of people wait until they have an extensive business plan written down, along with angel investors wanting to throw cash at them — and their ideas never see the light of day.

Just do what you enjoy — even if you haven’t yet figured out how to monetise it. Test what it might be like to work in an area you’re passionate about, build your business network and ask for feedback that will help you develop and refine a business plan.

It’s a way to not only show the value you would bring, but you can also get testimonials that will help launch your business when you’re ready to make it official.

Exercise 5 – Take a break from business thinking.

While it might feel uncomfortable to step outside of business mode, the mind sometimes needs a rest from such bottom-line thinking. Maybe for you, it will be creative writing, painting, running or even gardening. Read also How to make your brain work better

After you take a mental vacation indulging in something you’re passionate about, come back to a journal and writing down any business ideas that come to mind. You’ll be amazed at how refreshed your ideas are. Looking at beautiful things – art and nature – creates connections that we often neglect to notice.

https://millionairesdigest.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/how-to-find-your-passion-for-travel-beauty-book-bloggers-more/