Redbridge For Mental Health

Arthritis is a condition that can cause stiffness, pain and swelling in joints and other supporting structures of the body such as bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Some forms of arthritis may affect other parts of the body, including various internal organs. There are many different types of arthritis including osteoarthritis (degenerative joint disease), rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, gouty arthritis, and septic arthritis. Arthritis can affect anyone at any age. Arthritis treatment often includes physical therapy and exercise. Physical therapy and exercise can help arthritis sufferers in many ways. The primary goal is to improve functional capacity to help reduce pain and fatigue associated with daily activities. Increasing the range of motion of a joint is the primary focus of physical therapy.

Physical therapy and exercise for arthritis focuses on pain relief, and in restoring function and movement. Physical therapy programs may provide therapeutic methods, including physical techniques and activity modifications. A physical therapy program consisting of manual therapy and exercise benefits patients with arthritis.

Gentle exercise helps to prevent bone loss and osteoporosis. Lifting weights is a beneficial exercise for arthritis and for joint support. Physical therapy and exercise reduces joint pain and stiffness, builds strong muscle around the joints, and increases flexibility, muscle strength, cardiac fitness, and endurance.

Some of the exercises prescribed for people with arthritis:

•    Range-of-motion exercises (stretching or flexibility exercises)

•    Strengthening exercises

•    Water exercises

•    Recreational exercises

•    Endurance or aerobic exercises

Physical therapy and exercise helps to:

•    Maintain normal joint movement

•    Strengthen muscles around the joints

•    Strengthen and maintain bone and cartilage tissue

•    Improve overall ability to do everyday activities

•    Maintain weight to reduce pressure on joints

•    Keep bone and cartilage tissue strong and healthy

Depending on the severity of arthritis, a physical therapist may suggest either isometric or isotonic exercises. A combination of manual physical therapy and exercise is more effective to reduce pain, dysfunction and stiffness in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee.

Dog pets have earned the title “man’s best friend.” They deserve the claim for their dependability and obedience over the centuries. A house may appear empty to the ordinary passer-by, but if there is a dog in residence, it is awaiting the arrival of the man or woman of the home from their day’s activities. You can bank on it!

The dog guards the empty house and keeps its ears attuned for the first sounds of your arrival. Suddenly, the human owner opens the door and they find themselves smothered with affection bestowed by their dog. Emporers of ancient times never felt such adoration.

Sometimes, the world turns on us for whatever reason, but our loyal dog pet never will. He stands with us no matter what the future brings.

We award them with special, personal names. We lovingly call them Prince, Sheba, Fido or any number of appellations. We create complete personalities and natural attitudes around the names we give them.

It usually doesn’t matter what the dog breeds are. We don’t care if they are a small dog that we can carry in a purse, coat pocket or in our arms.

They might even be a large dog that requires education with dog etiquette, and how to conduct itself on a leash.

Medical researchers tell us that the reality they’re dogs actually blurs in our minds.

As time passes, and we interact with them everyday, we attribute to them personalities befitting humans. They become virtual people in our thinking. We gradually forget they’re animals, and we begin to see them as almost human friends.

There is a very powerful and proven reason for this…listen to this little known fact. Science tells us this can be a very therapeutic arrangement. Seniors particularly can benefit immensely in an ongoing partnership with a dog pet.

How many ways can you count to explain why we live with a dog.

They plaster hair over all the furniture, and particularly on your favorite dark suit or dress that you wear only on special occasions.

It seems they always want to go outside at extremely inappropriate times. For example, at ten o’clock on a rainy Friday night, Prince scratches at the door to announce he wants, and needs, to go outside.

Why would you want to share your life with a dog pet and put up with its diverse, and sometimes irritating habits?

The answer is simple…we need them in our personal worlds to make our lives more bearable.

Do you miss the energy and life of young people and the joy they generate? Have your kids moved on to their own universes and no longer intrude on yours as much as you would like them to?

Do you crawl out of bed each morning and wonder how you will fill the hours until the end of the new day? Do you welcome the air conditioning unit turning on and off because it breaks the endless silence of an empty house?

Scientists have reasearched the subject. They have documented the very real symbiotic partnership that develops between humans and their dog pets.

Let’s take them one by one!

1.Research has proved that pet and owner share a mutual need for each other and both profit from the arrangement.

2.A person’s mental and physical health demonstrate a marked improvement once a dog pet comes to live in the household.

3.Seniors’ loneliness dissolves and they exhibit increasing vigor and contentment in a developing owner dog pet relationship.

4.Research reveals that people feel needed by the pet and are forced to develop a schedule for providing for the animal’s welfare.

5.The ownership reliance requirement on the human increased the pet owner’s need to become more enthused and aware of their own personal welfare.

The research indicated that the dog pet inspired a sense of feeling needed and a surging sense of increased self value in the senior human owner.

The report brought out that the senior owners particularly developed an enthusiastic desire to face each day. The dog pet had a fixed schedule for its needs and the owner found it a necessary routine to be followed each day.

If you’re a dog pet owner, sometimes you may feel that they’re just too much trouble, and take up too much of your time.

When that happens, just give Butch an extra doggy treat for supper, and an added ear scratch.

Why? Because it’s very good for your mental and physical health. And if you’re a senior, it just may go a long way in curing your ailments!

Shiatsu is an oriental (eastern) therapy of physical and energy rebalance. Usually it is defined as an oriental “massage” but it is much more than that. It acts through pressure with thumbs, fingers and palms applied to determined areas and points of the human body, without the use of any mechanical or of another type instrument, correcting internal dysfunctions, promoting and keeping the health and treating specific illnesses.

Among the diverse benefits that SHIATSU presents to the organism, it will be able to be distinguished:

*Gives flexibility to the skin

*Improvement of the circulatory system

*Gives flexibility to the muscular system

*Aid to recuperate the balance of the bone system

*Facilitation of the digestive system functions

*Improvement of the endocrinous system control

*Regulate the functions of the nervous system

Shiatsu is,in fact, used by health professionals to cure illnesses,normally in combination with other oriental therapies.To cure illnesses, however,isolated SHIATSU is a limited technique. It is of bigger utility to raise the level of energy of the patient, to regulate and to fortify the functioning of the organs and to stimulate the natural resistance of the body to the illnesses.

It is truth that SHIATSU alleviates body pains and solves small organic riots, but its great potential is for the patient becoming conscientious of its proper “body”. And the “body” is not only the physical body, but storing emotions and feelings equally, also reflecting our emotional state.

Shiatsu, being an oriental therapy, is based on the principles of the oriental medicine where the health is a balance question of the diverse existing forces in the human organism. It is not worried in eliminating the illness directly, but in normalizing the vital energy of the patient, creating, thus, conditions to the organism to eliminate the disease through its proper ways, being given emphasis to health and not to illness.

The vital energy, assigned “ki” in the East, is the basic energy of the life of all livings beings, including the man. KI energy flows in the human body in a regular form, forming channels that are assigned “meridians” of energy that are the base of the oriental medicine.

Being the free stream of energy through our body essential for the physical, intellectual and emotional health, always that disturbances in this stream exist, appointedly accumulation or deficit of KI in determined zones of the body, conditions are created that affect our state of health, being able to originate what we know as “illnesses”.

Thus, the therapists act in the meridians with sight to the energy rebalance, appointedly in the called pressure points, with the designation in japanese of “Tsubos”, that are points that condense KI energy and allow us to contact and to act on the energy meridians with a more intense form. Of the scientific point of view,

Tsubos are points that present low electric resistance, or by other words, are good electric conductors, being able to be used in such a way for diagnosis as for treatment, reflecting the internal functioning of the corporal system.

This concept of acting in the energy meridians, appointedly through the TSUBOS, is used in acupuncture that uses needles placed in points in the meridians, in moxibustion where it is applied heat on the chosen points of the meridians and in shiatsu where it is applied pressure on these points and meridians.

The tracing of meridians and location of the tsubos are known since ancient times, having been discovered through the practical experience (by empirical form) and later confirmed by the modern scientific research.

The meridians are represented by a great string of energy that goes up and down covering the human body from the head to the feet, forming a track that can be learned and be used in a systematic form. This string is divided in 12 pieces, being each piece a meridian, related with determined organic functions and certain psychological or emotional features.

In its majority the meridians have the name of the organs that occupy a place of prominence in the meridian functions, but it must be attempted that meridians are not (or do not represent exclusively) the organs.

For beyond this basic system of 12 meridians, which are pairs, or by other words, are reproduced symmetrically in the two sides of the body, there are used more 2 odd meridians that are localized in the body axis (in shiatsu these two odd meridians are assigned “arteries”).