Pelvic Floor Exercises (Not Kegels!) To Prevent Urinary Incontinence

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It’s a common threat, and if you think it couldn’t happen to you, then well, just wait. Happily, Dr. Christine Pieton, PT, DPT, a sport & women’s health physical therapist, has advice:

On the ball!

Or rather, we’re going to be doing ball-squeezing here, if you’ll pardon the expression. You will need a soccer-ball sized ball to squeeze.

Ball-squeeze breathing: lie on your back, ball between your knees, and inhale deeply, expanding your torso. Exhale, pressing your knees into the ball, engaging your abdominal muscles from lower to upper. Try to keep your spine long and avoid your pelvis tucking under during the exhalation.

Ball-squeeze bridge: lie on your back, ball between your knees, inhale to prepare, and then exhale, pressing up into a bridge, maintaining a firm pressure on the ball. Inhale as you lower yourself back down.

Ball-squeeze side plank: lie on your side this time, ball between your knees, supporting forearm under your shoulder, as in the video thumbnail. Inhale to prepare, and then exhale, lifting your hip a few inches off the mat. Inhale as you lower yourself back down.

Ball-squeeze bear plank: get on your hands and knees, ball between your thighs. Lengthen your spine, inhale to prepare, and exhale as you bring your knees just a little off the floor. Inhale as you lower yourself back down.

For more details and tips on each of these, plus a visual demonstration, plus an optional part 2 video with more exercises that aren’t ball-squeezes this time, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Psst… A Word To The Wise About UTIs

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  • The Princess of Wales wants to stay cancer-free. What does this mean?

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    Catherine, Princess of Wales, has announced she has now completed a course of preventive chemotherapy.

    The news comes nine months after the princess first revealed she was being treated for an unspecified form of cancer.

    In the new video message released by Kensington Palace, Princess Catherine says she’s focused on doing what she can to stay “cancer-free”. She acknowledges her cancer journey is not over and the “path to recovery and healing is long”.

    While we don’t know the details of the princess’s cancer or treatment, it raises some questions about how we declare someone fully clear of the disease. So what does being – and staying – “cancer-free” mean?

    Pete Hancock/Shutterstock

    What’s the difference between being cancer-free and in remission?

    Medically, “cancer-free” means two things. First, it means no cancer cells are able to be detected in a patient’s body using the available testing methods. Second, there is no cancer left in the patient.

    These might sound basically the same. But this second aspect of “cancer-free” can be complicated, as it’s essentially impossible to be sure no cancer cells have survived a treatment.

    Two nurses look at two computer screens as a patient enters a CT scan machine.
    Testing can’t completely rule out the chance some cancer cells have survived treatment. Andrewshots/Shutterstock

    It only takes a few surviving cells for the cancer to grow back. But these cells may not be detectable via testing, and can lie dormant for some time. The possibility of some cells still surviving means it is more accurate to say a patient is “in remission”, rather than “cancer-free”.

    Remission means there is no detectable cancer left. Once a patient has been in remission for a certain period of time, they are often considered to be fully “cancer-free”.

    Princess Catherine was not necessarily speaking in the strict medical sense. Nonetheless, she is clearly signalling a promising step in her recovery.

    What happens during remission?

    During remission, patients will usually undergo surveillance testing to make sure their cancer hasn’t returned. Detection tests can vary greatly depending on both the patient and their cancer type.

    Many tests involve simply looking at different organs to see if there are cancer cells present, but at varying levels of complexity.

    Some cancers can be detected with the naked eye, such as skin cancers. In other cases, technology is needed: colonoscopies for colorectal cancers, X-ray mammograms for breast cancers, or CT scans for lung cancers. There are also molecular tests, which test for the presence of cancer cells using protein or DNA from blood or tissue samples.

    For most patients, testing will continue for years at regular intervals. Surveillance testing ensures any returning cancer is caught early, giving patients the best chance of successful treatment.

    Remaining in remission for five years can be a huge milestone in a patient’s cancer journey. For most types of cancer, the chances of cancer returning drop significantly after five years of remission. After this point, surveillance testing may be performed less frequently, as the patients might be deemed to be at a lower risk of their cancer returning.

    A dermatologist peers through a magnifying lens at a mole on a man's back.
    Skin cancer may be detected by the naked eye, but many other cancers require technology for detection and monitoring. wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

    Measuring survival rates

    Because it is very difficult to tell when a cancer is “cured”, clinicians may instead refer to a “five-year survival rate”. This measures how likely a cancer patient is to be alive five years after their diagnosis.

    For example, data shows the five-year survival rate for bowel cancer among Australian women (of all ages) is around 70%. That means if you had 100 patients with bowel cancer, after five years you would expect 70 to still be alive and 30 to have succumbed to the disease.

    These statistics can’t tell us much about individual cases. But comparing five-year survival rates between large groups of patients after different cancer treatments can help clinicians make the often complex decisions about how best to treat their patients.

    The likelihood of cancer coming back, or recurring, is influenced by many factors which can vary over time. For instance, approximately 30% of people with lung cancer develop a recurrent disease, even after treatment. On the other hand, breast cancer recurrence within two years of the initial diagnosis is approximately 15%. Within five years it drops to 10%. After ten, it falls below 2%.

    These are generalisations though – recurrence rates can vary greatly depending on things such as what kind of cancer the patient has, how advanced it is, and whether it has spread.

    Staying cancer-free

    Princess Catherine says her focus now is to “stay cancer-free”. What might this involve?

    How a cancer develops and whether it recurs can be influenced by things we can’t control, such as age, ethnicity, gender, genetics and hormones.

    However, there are sometimes environmental factors we can control. That includes things like exposure to UV radiation from the sun, or inhaling carcinogens like tobacco.

    Lifestyle factors also play a role. Poor diet and nutrition, a lack of exercise and excessive alcohol consumption can all contribute to cancer development.

    Research estimates more than half of all cancers could potentially be prevented through regular screening and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (not to mention preventing other chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes).

    Recommendations to reduce cancer risk are the same for everyone, not just those who’ve had treatment like Princess Catherine. They include not smoking, eating a nutritious and balanced diet, exercising regularly, cutting down on alcohol and staying sun smart.

    Amali Cooray, PhD Candidate in Genetic Engineering and Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) ; John (Eddie) La Marca, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) , and Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Get Better Sleep: Beyond “Sleep Hygiene”

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    Better Sleep, Better Life!

    This is Arianna Huffington. Yes, that Huffington, of the Huffington Post. But! She’s also the CEO of Thrive Global, a behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live—in particular, by challenging the idea that burnout is the required price of success.

    The power of better sleep

    Sleep is a very important, but most often neglected, part of good health. Here are some of Huffington’s top insights from her tech company Thrive, and as per her “Sleep Revolution” initiative.

    Follow your circadian rhythm

    Are you a night owl or a morning lark? Whichever it is, roll with it, and plan around that if your lifestyle allows for such. While it is possible to change from one to the other, we do have a predisposition towards one or the other, and will generally function best when not fighting it.

    This came about, by the way, because we evolved to have half of us awake in the mornings and half in the evenings, to keep us all safe. Socially we’ve marched onwards from that point in evolutionary history, but our bodies are about a hundred generations behind the times, and that’s just what we have to work with!

    Don’t be afraid (or ashamed!) to take naps

    Naps, done right, can be very good for the health—especially if we had a bad night’s sleep the previous night.

    Thrive found that workers are more productive when they have nap rooms, and (following on a little from the previous point) are allowed to sleep in or work from home.

    See also: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    Make sure you have personal space available in bed

    The correlation between relationship satisfaction and sleeping close to one’s partner has been found to be so high that it’s even proportional: the further away a couple sleeps from each other, the less happy they are. But…

    Partners who got good sleep the previous night, will be more likely to want intimacy on any given night—at a rate of an extra 14% per extra hour of sleep the previous night. So, there’s a trade-off, as having more room in bed tends to result in better sleep. Time to get a bigger bed?

    What gets measured, gets done

    This goes for sleep, too! Not only does dream-journaling in the morning cue your subconscious to prepare to dream well the following night, but also, sleep trackers and sleep monitoring apps go a very long way to improving sleep quality, even if no extra steps are consciously taken to “score better”.

    We’ve previously reviewed some of the most popular sleep apps; you can check out for yourself how they measured up:

    Time For Some Pillow Talk: The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down

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  • Palliative care as a true art form

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    How do you ease the pain from an ailment amidst lost words? How can you serve the afflicted when lines start to blur? When the foundation of communication begins to crumble, what will be the pillar health-care professionals can lean on to support patients afflicted with dementia during their final days?

    The practice of medicine is both highly analytical and evidence based in nature. However, it is considered a “practice” because at the highest level, it resembles a musician navigating an instrument. It resembles art. Between lab values, imaging techniques and treatment options, the nuances for individualized patient care so often become threatened.

    Dementia, a non-malignant terminal illness, involves the progressive cognitive and social decline in those afflicted. Though there is no cure, dementia is commonly met in the setting of end-of-life care. During this final stage of life, the importance of comfort via symptomatic management and communication usually is a priority in patient care. But what about the care of a patient suffering from dementia? While communication serves as the vehicle to deliver care at a high level, medical professionals are suddenly met with a roadblock. And there … behind the pieces of shattered communication and a dampened map of ethical guidelines, health-care providers are at a standstill.

    It’s 4:37 a.m. You receive a text message from the overnight nurse at a care facility regarding a current seizure. After lorazepam is ordered and administered, Mr. H, a quick-witted 76-year-old, stabilizes. Phenobarbital 15mg SC qhs was also added to prevent future similar events. You exhale a sigh of relief.

    Mr. H. has been admitted to the floor 36 hours earlier after having a seizure while playing poker with colleagues. Since he became your patient, he’s shared many stories from professional and family life with you, along with as many jokes as he could fit in between. However, over the course of the next seven days, Mr. H. would develop aspiration pneumonia, progressing to ventilator dependency and, ultimately, multi-organ failure with rapid cognitive decline.

    What strategies and tools would you use to maximize the well-being of your patient during his decline? How would you bridge the gap of understanding between the patient’s family and health-care team to provide the standard of care that all patients are owed?

    To give Mr. H. the type of care he would have wanted, upon his hospital admission, he should have been questioned about his understanding of illness along with the goals of care of the medical team. The patient should have been informed that it is imperative to adhere to the medical regimen implemented by his team along with the risks of not doing so. In the event disease-related complications arose, advanced directives should have been documented to avoid any unnecessary measures.

    It is important to note, that with each change in status of the patient’s health status, the goal of treatment must be reassessed. The patient or surrogate decision-maker’s understanding of these goals is paramount in maintaining the patient’s autonomy. It is often said that effective communication is the bedrock of a healthy relationship. This is true regardless of type of relationship.

    This is why I and Megan Vierhout wrote Integrated End of Life Care in Dementia: A Comprehensive Guide, a book targeted at providing a much-needed road map to navigate the many challenges involved in end-of-life care for individuals with dementia. Ultimately, our aim is to provide a compass for both health-care professionals and the families of those affected by the progressive effects of dementia. We provide practical advice on optimizing communication with individuals with dementia while taking their cognitive limitations, preferences and needs into account.

    I invite you to explore the unpredictable terrain of end-of-life care for patients with dementia. Together, we can pave a smoother, sturdier path toward the practice of medicine as a true art form.

    This article is republished from healthydebate under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Seven-Day Sleep Prescription – by Dr. Aric Prather

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    You probably already know about sleep hygiene. So, what does this book have to offer?

    Dr. Aric Prather offers seven days’ worth of adjustments, practices to take up, from when you get up in the morning to when you lay your head down at night.

    Some you’ll surely be familiar with, like avoiding blue light and social media at night.

    Others, you might not be familiar with, like scheduling 15 minutes for worrying in the daytime. The rationale for this one is that when you find yourself inclined to worry at a time that will keep you awake, you’ll know that you can put off such thoughts to your scheduled “worrying time”. That they’ll be addressed then, and that you can thus sleep soundly meanwhile.

    Where the book really comes into its own is in such things as discussing how to not just manage sleep debt, but how to actually use it in your favour.

    Nor does Dr. Prather shy away from the truths of our world… That the world these days is not built for us to sleep well. That there are so many other priorities; to get our work done, to succeed and achieve, to pay bills, to support our kids and partners. That so many of these things make plenty of sense in the moment, but catch up with us eventually.

    Bottom line: what this book aims to give is a genuinely sustainable approach to sleeping—controlling what we can, and working with what we can’t. If you’d like to have a better relationship with sleep, this book is an excellent choice.

    Click here to check out the Seven-Day Sleep Prescription, and improve yours!

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  • Valentine’s Day & Your Heart

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    We’re not talking metaphorically; this is about your “beating wet pumpy thing” as a friend of this writer once put it!

    Heart to heart

    A dietician calls for us to take care of our hearts this Valentine’s Day, with ideas such as:

    • Teamwork makes the dream work: support your partner’s health objectives by choosing gifts or activities that align with their goals, such as opting for new running shoes instead of candy if they aim to exercise more.
    • Split up… Dinner: instead of consuming large portions individually, consider sharing a decadent meal to reduce metabolic load while still enjoying the experience together.
    • A moving experience: plan active dates like hiking, dancing, or taking a walk, which promote both bonding and cardiovascular health. And if you can think of other perhaps “vigorous activities” you might enjoy doing together on Valentine’s Day, then that’s great for your heart too!
    • Be aware of mutual health influences: recognize that partners can impact each other’s health behaviors and risks; making healthy choices together can strengthen both the relationship and individual well-being.
    • No date, no problem: if you’re single this Valentine’s Day, consider connecting with friends, of if that’s not for you, perhaps treating yourself to a “self-care day” at home.

    Read in full: Celebrate Valentine’s Day with actual hearts in mind, says dietitian

    Related: Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

    Playing the hand you’re dealt

    We can make many choices in life that affect our health one way or the other, but there are some things we can’t control, and that includes a family history of some disease or other. In the case of a family history of heart conditions, all is not lost, and you can still play the odds:

    • Diet: rich in fiber, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. Go easy on sugary, salty, and/or processed foods. Yes, sugary too! Sugary foods can increase blood pressure in the same way that salt does, by forcing the same homeostatic response.
    • Exercise: prioritize movement, as in those “active minutes” that your smartwatch tracks. That famous “150 minutes per week” is great; more is better.
    • Sleep: get up regularly around the same time each morning, preferably early. You should get to the point whereby you wake up shortly before the time your alarm would go off, each morning.
    • Avoid: smoking and alcohol. They are both terrible for heart health.
    • Teamwork: work with healthcare professionals to manage your heart health; a personalized plan is best, and they are there to help.

    Remember, genes predispose; they don’t predetermine:

    Read in full: Expert explains how to improve heart health, even if your family has history of heart conditions

    Related: The Whole Heart Solution: Halt Heart Disease Now With the Best Alternatives and Traditional Medicine

    Not so sweet?

    Chocolate is famously high in antioxidants, but that must be weighed against other factors, if for example you’re eating a product that, when all’s said and done and the ingredients list is read, is mostly sugar.

    That can be avoided, though! If you do like chocolate, we recommend getting dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa; 90% is great if you can find it!

    Even so, the saturated fat content means you still might want to make it a moment for intentional “mindful eating” of a square or two, before setting it aside for another day:

    Read in full: Valentine’s Day and chocolate are a perfect match, but is it a healthy relationship?

    Related: 10 “Healthy” Foods That Are Often Worse Than You Think

    Take care!

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  • How much time should you spend sitting versus standing? New research reveals the perfect mix for optimal health

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    People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative.

    However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our sleep, or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question emerges – what is the best way to balance our 24 hours to optimise our health?

    Our research attempted to answer this for risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. We found the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each.

    Finding the right balance

    Current health guidelines recommend you stick to a sensible regime of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity 2.5–5 hours per week.

    However mounting evidence now suggests how you spend your day can have meaningful ramifications for your health. In addition to moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity, this means the time you spend sitting, standing, doing light physical activity (such as walking around your house or office) and sleeping.

    Our research looked at more than 2,000 adults who wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviours, for seven days. This gave us a sense of how they spent their average 24 hours.

    At the start of the study participants had their waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity measured. The body sensor and assessment data was matched and analysed then tested against health risk markers — such as a heart disease and stroke risk score — to create a model.

    Using this model, we fed through thousands of permutations of 24 hours and found the ones with the estimated lowest associations with heart disease risk and blood-glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate intensity activity.

    When we looked at waist circumference, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and a heart disease and stroke risk score, we noted differing optimal time zones. Where those zones mutually overlapped was ascribed the optimal zone for heart disease and diabetes risk.

    You’re doing more physical activity than you think

    We found light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute) – such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or strolling casually with friends – had strong associations with glucose control, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely accumulated intermittently throughout the day rather than being a purposeful bout of light exercise.

    Our experimental evidence shows that interrupting our sitting regularly with light-physical activity (such as taking a 3–5 minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially so after lunch.

    While the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time might seem a quite high, at more than 2 hours a day, we defined it as more than 100 steps per minute. This equates to a brisk walk.

    It should be noted that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study of heart disease and diabetes risk and the “optimal” 24 hours, and the results will need further confirmation with longer prospective studies.

    The data is also cross-sectional. This means that the estimates of time use are correlated with the disease risk factors, meaning it’s unclear whether how participants spent their time influences their risk factors or whether those risk factors influence how someone spends their time.

    Australia’s adult physical activity guidelines need updating

    Australia’s physical activity guidelines currently only recommend exercise intensity and time. A new set of guidelines are being developed to incorporate 24-hour movement. Soon Australians will be able to use these guidelines to examine their 24 hours and understand where they can make improvements.

    While our new research can inform the upcoming guidelines, we should keep in mind that the recommendations are like a north star: something to head towards to improve your health. In principle this means reducing sitting time where possible, increasing standing and light-intensity physical activity, increasing more vigorous intensity physical activity, and aiming for a healthy sleep of 7.5–9 hours per night.

    Beneficial changes could come in the form of reducing screen time in the evening or opting for an active commute over driving commute, or prioritising an earlier bed time over watching television in the evening.

    It’s also important to acknowledge these are recommendations for an able adult. We all have different considerations, and above all, movement should be fun.

    Christian Brakenridge, Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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