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April 29, 2024, 7:48 pm |
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Eve Lees
April 30, 2024
Health History – quirky treatments of the past!
If you’re wary about today’s medical treatments, be happy you didn’t live over one hundred years ago . . .
In 1899, asthma patients were recommended to try smoking to relieve their disorder.
In 650 BC, headaches, neck pain, intestinal ailments, and impotence were signs of omens. Remedies were created to identify the demons responsible, and they were expelled with spells or incantations. Dog dung was used in many treatments to help drive off demons.
Throughout the 1800’s and until the early 1900’s, it was common practice to use laudanum (opium) to raise the spirits or relieve minor pain. Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne was taken like morning tea, and Queen Victoria served her guests Vin Mariani, a popular solution of cocaine.
Until at least the 17th century, religion and magic were primary medical therapies. Bread baked on Good Friday would never go mouldy and would treat all types of diseases. Rings made from silver collected at the Eucharist would cure convulsions. The sacrament of confirmation would keep sickness away.
In the late 1800s, home remedies were available in stores, catalogues, and by direct mail from manufacturers. Each brand claimed to provide the vital key to health. Here are some examples . . .
Liquor was the main ingredient of most patent medicines. In addition to vegetable extracts and sugar, which gave each brand its own unique flavour and colour, remedies were also laced with cocaine, caffeine, opium, or morphine.
The Sears catalogue, for example, sold a morphine-laced mixture intended to be slipped into a wayward husband’s coffee to keep him home nights. Unfortunately, it ended up being the bored homemakers and older people who imbibed in the concoction, developing an addiction.
The 1899 edition of the medical textbook the Merck Manual, was another source of treatment for several disorders. Uncontrollable sexual urges in a man were treated with a potent sedative heavily laced with alcohol. Females were given a different prescription: sulphuric acid, camphor, or tobacco. Typhoid fever was treated with morphine, opium, and cold baths. Puerperal fever, a strep infection that killed women after giving birth, was treated with bloodletting and chloroform. For meningitis, a brain infection still fatal today, the 1899 treatment was iodine and turpentine massaged into the skin. For baldness, a standard medical treatment was to apply ammonia to the bare skin or to take a “little” arsenic.
However, some individuals were years ahead of their time in their sensible approach to treating poor health. The eminent Canadian physician William Osler (1849-1919) advocated, “The physician treats the disease, but the great physician treats the patient.” He also believed, “It is much more important to know what sort of patient has the disease, than to know what sort of disease the patient has.”
Eve Lees has been active in the health & fitness industry since 1979. Currently, she is a Freelance Health Writer for several publications and speaks to business and private groups on various health topics.
https://www.artnews-healthnews.com/health-writing
March 12, 2024
Shock your body to improve your fitness
Making your workout harder is just one way to advance in your fitness program. But how hard you push yourself isn’t the only consideration and not really a necessary one if you aren’t training to compete. Simply changing your program around will shock your body enough to continue stimulating the changes needed to raise your fitness level.
Muscles adapt to patterns of stress. So, it’s a good idea to mix things up to continue seeing results. Every three or four months is a good rule of thumb to make a small change in your regular routine. Here are a few suggestions to alter your current exercise program without necessarily upping the intensity of effort.
If you ride a stationary exercise bike, occasionally stand up while pedalling (increase the tension while you do this), pedal backwards, or sit on the floor (or a chair) behind the bike while you pedal (you might have to secure the bike somehow, so you won’t slide it forward as you pedal). This position is like riding a reclining cycle and puts more stress on your hamstrings. NOTE: Adjusting your leg reach when sitting on the floor behind your bike is the same as leg reach when sitting upright on the bike seat: Your fully straightened leg should be slightly bent at the knee.
Change the order of your weight training exercises or replace your usual exercises with entirely new ones for each muscle group. If you usually do three or four sets of each exercise, do just one set for each exercise, then repeat the series again three or four times.
If you like to run, consider water running in waist-deep water or experiment with Nordic Walking (fitness walking with poles) to involve an upper body workout at the same time.
Walkers can occasionally break into a short sprint. For example, walk briskly for one minute, then sprint or skip for 30 seconds. Repeat as often as you like. Or you can try shuffling sideways or backwards for short intervals (watch out for garbage cans and other obstacles!).
Take a week or two away from your usual exercise activity every three or four months. Try something completely different, like Pilates, yoga, martial arts or even a leisure activity like golf. Two weeks isn’t long enough to backslide (lose your fitness level) in your usual fitness routine. But it offers enough of a break so that when you return to the activity, you’ll continue to advance and see improvement. This is a great way to avoid plateaus.
If your cardio routine involves doing only one activity, consider breaking it up by doing several different activities. For example, if you usually run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, try doing ten minutes of three other activities, such as stationary cycling, stepping, and rope jumping. Or include walking briskly up and down your staircase if you live in a two-story home. You’ll still get the heart/lung and fat-burning benefits of a longer, single activity. In addition, you’ll work different muscles and alleviate boredom. Your workout may even seem shorter when you spend less time on each activity.
Eve Lees has been active in the health & fitness industry since 1979. Currently, she is a Freelance Health Writer for several publications and speaks to business and private groups on various health topics https://www.artnews-healthnews.com/health-writing
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