I developed these exercises by combining ancient concepts from Chinese Qigong and martial arts. This video offers illustrated instructions for the movements I described in my article here.

After the original article ran, we got quite a bit of feedback from interested readers who asked me to make a video of the exercises that they could follow. I was happy to do so, and here it is.

One of my wellness clients, Greg Stevenson, performs the set in the video that I narrate. The step-by-step description below offers more details on the exercises. To read the original article in order to better understand the concept behind the exercises’ use, you can go here.

Weighted Pole Instructions:

1. Begin by standing with your feet a shoulders-width apart, knees bent.

2. Hold the bar in both hands, palms facing out, with arms by your side for one minute to get used to the weight.

3. Curl up the bar and hold it as close to your chest as possible for one minute.

4. Open your hands and slowly let the bar roll down your forearms, stopping at the bend in your elbows. Hold for one minute.

5. Slowly extend your arms forward while rotating out your elbows, balancing the bar across the crook of the elbows. Hold for two minutes.

6. Slowly tilt your forearms down a bit to allow the bar to slowly roll onto your wrists. Hold the bar in this position for two minutes. You can use your thumbs to keep the bar from rolling past your wrist.

7. Slowly roll the bar back up your arms to the elbows, turn your palms up and raise your hands to eye level. Hold this position for two minutes.

8. Rotate your elbows out and grasp the bar with both hands in the middle.

9. Hold the bar vertically in front of you with outstretched arms. Hold for one minute.

10. Finish by putting down the bar.

Common Pain

Among the most common pain spots on the body are the chest, shoulders and upper back. You know this pain well and you see others experiencing it, too. It seems like when one of these areas gets tight, the others follow suit.

Pain can arrive in the form of nagging shoulder pain, neck pain, pain behind the shoulder blades, pain in the chest and, soon, headaches. Anti-inflammatories or analgesics are OK in a pinch. Massage and chiropractic are good, too. The best bet, however, is to release the stiffness before it gets worse and pain sets in.

Neck, chest and shoulder stiffness usually comes from poor posture and stress. Often people are hunched over their desks on a computer all day and this elongates the muscles in the shoulder while compressing the muscles in the chest. When your muscles are all jammed up, they hurt. No worries: When you’re in a jam, use the jamb to release the pain.

The door jamb, that is.

Feel Your Pain

The first thing to do when experiencing shoulder, chest and upper back stiffness or pain is to try and feel it. This lets you better understand the tightness and where it originates.

If your neck hurts but not your shoulders, for example, then the pain may be from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. If your shoulders hurt, it could be from sleeping with your arm above your head or from stress. Additionally, the shoulders could be tightening because of shortened chest muscles, or pecs. These get short or contracted when the arms are held close in front of the body for extended periods of time when typing, writing, driving or reading. Postural and behavioral changes go a long way to prevent the tightness and pain from returning.

When the chest muscles tighten, they cause your shoulders to round forward. This gives you what personal trainers often call “turtle back.” This just means your upper back and shoulders are hunched forward, which causes pain as they keep your chest muscles in a constant state of tightness or contraction and your shoulders in an extended position. This makes your shoulders contract in an effort to pull them back to a normal position. The prolonged contraction leads to trigger points, those nasty knots you feel in your shoulders. They are painful.

Painful Dilemma

When experiencing chronic shoulder, chest, and upper back pain, many grab for NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), hot compresses and showers, chiropractic adjustments, and acupuncture. Others opt for massage and some even go so far as to get physical therapy. The best advice I can give on any pain issue is to start low-tech and try the least invasive approach first. Often times, the simplest thing is the fastest solution.

In this case, it’s stretching in a doorway. Here are five ways you can do it:

Doorway Stretch One:

• Stand with feet parallel and just behind the doorway.

• Place your right forearm against the doorway frame. Make sure your arm is held at a 90-degree angle with palm flat against the jamb.

• Step forward with your right foot through to the other side of the doorway. Do not move your arm. You should feel a nice stretch across your right pectoral (chest) muscle. Hold for 20 seconds.

• If it is too painful to hold this position, take a shorter step forward.

• If you do not feel the stretch, then turn your torso toward the left while keeping everything else in place.

• After 20 seconds return to the starting position by stepping back with your right foot.

• Repeat on the left side.

Doorway Stretch Two:

• Stand with feet parallel and just behind the doorway.

• Place your right forearm against the doorway frame. Make sure your arm is held at a 120-degree angle with palm flat against the jamb.

• Step forward with your right foot through to the other side of the doorway. Do not move your arm. You should feel a nice stretch across your right pectoral (chest) muscle. Hold for 20 seconds.

• If it is too painful to hold this position, take a shorter step forward.

• If you do not feel the stretch, then turn your torso toward the left while keeping everything else in place.

• After 20 seconds return to the starting position by stepping back with your right foot.

• Repeat on the left side.

Doorway Stretch Three: 

• Stand with feet parallel and just behind the doorway. Or, if you are too tall to allow a full arm extension toward the top of the doorway, kneel behind the doorway.

• Place your right forearm against the inside of the doorway frame.

• Slowly slide your arm up along the inside of the doorway frame. You should feel a nice stretch across your right pectoral (chest) muscle and around your shoulders and rotators.

• If you do not feel the stretch, lean slightly forward and that should do the trick.

• Hold for 20 seconds then return to the starting position by slowly sliding your arm back down the frame.

• Repeat on the left side.

Doorway Stretch Four:

• Stand with feet parallel and just behind the doorway.

• Place the palms of both hands flat on the back of the jamb, forearms held parallel to the floor.

• Slowly allow your upper body to lean forward and hold for 20 seconds. You should feel a stretch across your chest, along your ribs and/or between your shoulder blades.

• After 20 seconds return to the starting position. This is the warm-up for the next stretch.

Doorway Stretch Five:

• Stand with feet parallel and just behind the doorway.

• Place your forearms flat along the back of the jamb, triceps held parallel to the floor.

• Slowly allow your upper body to lean forward and hold for 20 seconds. You should feel a stretch across your chest, along your ribs and/or between your shoulder blades.

• After 20 seconds return to the starting position.

There are many ways a door jamb can be used to stretch the upper and lower parts of your body. These are just a few examples to get you started. The secret to the benefits of these doorway stretches is doing them slow and steady. Correcting your posture and moving every hour away from your desk also helps prevent the chest, shoulders and upper back from tightening. But if they do, these stretches are a doorway to pain relief.

Making Improvements

Reaching your fitness, health or wellness goals is no easy task. For many people, there are a number of things they wish to improve upon. Tackling such tasks, let alone setting goals to do so, can be daunting. Often, the perceived effort it takes to undertake the activities to achieve the goals, not to mention the time involved, seems too difficult. Thus, many people fall short of achieving their wellness goals or end up doing nothing to achieve them.

That can all change, however, with a simple tool to help you develop and stay on track. Each of the five components in the SMART wellness goal-setting scheme is essential to both creating and achieving your wellness goals.

Structured Plan

Specific. The more specific you can make your goals, the better chance you have of succeeding. Specificity allows for understanding how to measure success in the other four areas of SMART. Without specificity, you do more aimless floating on the ocean than sailing on the seas. Driving in circles is never as fun or satisfying as directly reaching your destination. The more specific the details of the trip, the sooner you can reach the destination. And there can be more than one — a series of mini destinations — on the way to reaching the big destination over time.

When working toward specificity, it is a good idea to begin by considering the five Ws: why, what, who, where and when.

• Why: Understanding your for changing your state of health is the most important step because it fuels your desire and sets your level of commitment to the program. Without knowing why, it is easy to do nothing.
• What: Focusing on what you want to accomplish is the next decision. Do you want to lose 20 pounds or run a faster mile?
• Who: Wellness programs work best with a support structure in place. Who will you involve in the achievement of your goals? How about a workout partner, massage therapist, a healthcare provider or a loved one who can provide moral support?
• Where: Determine where you will get treatment or exercise. Do you require visits to an acupuncturist’s office or just a track to run around? What about the local yoga class or your living room?
• When: You need to set schedules and stay on track for all this to come into play. People do better and reach their goals faster when they are in a routine. Establish a time frame for activities before you begin. Being specific is essential to know what goals you want to achieve and how to get there.

Measurable. Having measurable goals and a reliable metrics system are essential for achieving wellness goals. After all, without measuring progress how will you know whether you have reached your goal or made mini-stops along the way? There are two parts to this component: the measured goal and the criteria for measuring it.

Let’s say your goal is to lose 20 pounds in six months. Standing on a scale once per week offers the metric. Making a chart of progress at the end of each month and measuring that against your hoped-for mini-monthly goals gives you the criteria for measurement. Other scales are also available, such as 1-10 subjective scales for things like pain, hour scales for time (important for endurance measurements), blood pressure readings and so on.

Create a list of what you want to measure and then decide how it can be measured. How much weight do you want to lose? How many miles do you want to run? How much weight do you want to lift? How much of a decrease in pain do you want to feel each week or each month? Being specific about these measurements helps you decide what is attainable.

Attainable. If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. But the objective is more likely to be attainable if the goals and vision are realistic enough to actually be reached. Therefore, you must set an objective that you feel is obtainable and for which you are willing to put forth the effort. You can desire a far-off goal, but setting markers of achievement along the way makes it more accessible.

Many people quit their wellness routines or drop their wellness lifestyles when they do not attain their desired goals in an immediate time frame and don’t recognize progress toward their goals. Listing small goals that lead to larger goals is not only a successful way of attaining measurable results, but of building your self-confidence, self-belief and self-image.

Realistic. In order for wellness goals to be attainable and measurable, they must be realistic for you. That is, they need to be something that you are physically, mentally and financially able to achieve. What identifies as realistic is a matter of personal relevance; you are the only one who can determine this.

Returning to an earlier example, if it is your goal to lose 20 pounds, this must be realistic for you. Are you carrying so much weight that losing 20 pounds makes healthy sense? If you’re not that heavy, losing this much weight may be unrealistic and unhealthy. Other important questions: Do you have the time and dedication to work toward achieving that goal? Do you have the financial and structural support necessary to allow it to happen? Moreover, being realistic means giving yourself several months to lose the weight and not just a few weeks. Setting realistic time frames goes a long way to keeping you on track.

Timely. Being timely is an important part of goal setting, especially when it comes to wellness. In what time frame are you trying to achieve your goals? How much time per day, week and month are you planning on dedicating to the attainment of those goals? What time of day are you able to do this? Can you fit your planned activities into your overall life schedule?

Being specific about time is crucial. Just saying that you are “working on getting healthy” or on “the path of weight loss” can lead to failure. Time frames are important for goals to be measured in a meaningful way. Remember: Be specific!

Written Plan

Once you have spent some time considering all of this and listing the specifics of each of the five components, it’s time to write out your SMART action statement.

An example of a written plan that incorporates the SMART structure goes something like this:

“I want to feel better and experience less pain because it makes me feel good. When I feel good, I enjoy my life. Therefore, I want to lose 20 pounds and decrease my pain by 50 percent. To do this, I need the support of my family, a dietician and a personal trainer who is available on Wednesdays and Sundays. I will use a weight scale and a pain index to chart my progress over the next six months, with mini-goals set at the end of each month. I believe I can attain my goal because the time frame is realistic, I have a support system, I know what I need to do, and I believe in myself and am dedicated to changing my own life for the better.”

This statement is generic, but speaks to each of the five components of the SMART wellness goal-setting scheme. Give it a try and see what a difference it can make in reaching your personal fitness, health and wellness goals!

Often, the American lifestyle is one of too much stress, too much work, too much worry and not enough relaxation or sleep. This makes you fatigued. And when this fatigue is prolonged, or allowed to exist for weeks on end, it can become chronic. Chronic fatigue is one of the most debilitating health issues you can grapple with. It saps your energy and joy for life. Often, it can lead to depression.

The problem is that many people bring prolonged fatigue on themselves through their daily actions and choices. Fatigue-inducing actions include:

• Working too many hours.
• Experiencing too much physical or mental stress at work.
• Taking on too much without the ability to say no.
• Not reducing psychological stress.
• Not getting seven solid hours of sleep per night.
• Using external stimulants like caffeine, sugar or drugs to keep you energized.
• Eating a poor diet high in simple carbohydrates, sugars and fats.
• Not drinking ample amounts of water.
• Wearing down your nervous system with smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages.

Banish Fatigue

Suffering chronic fatigue is something most people can vanquish. If you examine the list above, you can see that all of these examples are based on personal actions and behaviors. Change these and you naturally change your energy levels. Here’s what you can do:

• Set a standard sleep and wake schedule, and try not to deviate from it. Recent studies indicate that seven hours of sleep per night is not only ideal but the healthiest.
• Do not consume caffeinated or sugar-laden beverages that dehydrate you while also causing spikes and drops in blood sugar. This leads to fatigue.
• If you experience fatigue in the middle of the day, take a nap (if possible), go for a walk or take a personal day to go home and recharge. One lost day may forestall suffering fatigue for weeks or longer.
• Try to get your work done within the standard eight-hour day. This may mean prioritizing your time, managing your schedule more efficiently or reducing your workload. Learn to say no to extra tasks before you are overwhelmed. Again, this means balancing your health with your work.
• Learn and practice daily stress-management and stress-reduction techniques, like mindful breathing and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) reframing methods. Aromatherapy also helps, as do hot showers and soothing baths at the end of the day.
• Avoid all external stimulants that produce artificial energy. These provide only short energy boosts while dragging your body down. If you need energy, go for a brisk five-minute walk or do some jumping jacks. While it sounds counterintuitive, it takes energy to make energy. The more you exercise or move your body, the more energy your body produces naturally.
• Eat only whole grains when deciding on breads and pastas; they take longer to break down and turn to sugar in your body. They do not cause the same spikes and dips in energy that simple carbs do. Getting your carbohydrates from vegetable sources is even better.
• Try to not overstimulate your sense organs. That means creating work and living environments that are not overly crammed with images, sounds, smells and clutter. Such things tax your nervous system and can lead you to feel fatigue.

Good Health

Energy is the elixir of good health. Fatigue drains you of vibrancy.

Five things lead naturally to optimal energy:

1. Oxygen: Without oxygen you cannot live. Yet most people breathe shallowly, using only a portion of their lung capacity. They do not bring in enough fresh oxygen into the body, nor do they expel enough carbon dioxide. Breathing deeply a few times every hour, as long as the air is fresh, can help energize your body, aid in detoxification and invigorate your cells.
2. Food: Necessary for life, food is your fuel. Eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables while cutting back on sugars and processed foods goes a long way toward creating natural energy and stabilizing sugar crashes.
3. Water: Water is remarkably important for all functions in the body from the elimination of toxins to the moistening of the lungs and other organs to keeping the muscles loose. Drinking water to stay hydrated is a valuable resource for preventing fatigue.
4. Sleep: Sleep allows your body to shut down and begin to repair itself from the stresses of the day. You need this time to regenerate, clean and repair. Without ample sleep on a nightly basis, you will surely experience fatigue and, often, chronic pain.
5. Movement: As mentioned before, it takes the use of energy to create extra energy. The more you can walk, jump or exercise, the more energy your body naturally starts producing. Being sedentary leads only to more sedentary behaviors which, in turn, lead to low energy, tiredness and fatigue. Get up and move.

In addition to these lifestyle changes, there are additional things you can do to prevent and overcome fatigue: Get regular bodywork like massage, acupuncture or chiropractic. Take yoga, Pilates or a spin class. Go to the gym. Hike or bike on a regular basis. Add supplements to your diet like B complex, vitamins E and C, magnesium, zinc, selenium, iron, and ginseng.

On the other hand, be sure to forgo No Doze or pills supposed to pep you up and combat jet lag.

Naturally Tired

Being tired is a natural part of each day, signaling a time to rest. Since fatigue is largely self-induced because of our lifestyles, it is clear that making changes in your daily behaviors, actions and choices can naturally reverse fatigue and prevent its return.

Live a vibrant life full of energy by making the adjustments to your life that can keep fatigue at bay. It may take some effort at first, but routines are easy to maintain after a brief period of introduction.

Getting Healthier

Many of us, especially those in their 60s and older, just don’t get enough exercise like aerobics, weight lifting or yoga for health. Yet, if we did, we would undoubtedly be healthier and more vibrant.

Osteoporosis (brittle bones) or even osteopenia (thinning bones) is a problem as we age. A lack of balance leads to falls that cause broken hips and fractured pelvises. Muscles lose their tone through lack of use. Blood pressure rises as a result of daily and lifetime stressors. All of these issues, as well as many others, need to be addressed. A lack of time or resources means most people can’t do everything they need to do, so taking prescription drugs to cope with physical weakness becomes the norm.

Drug Avoidance

It is simply healthier to avoid drugs whenever possible. And for issues like osteoporosis, cardiovascular health and muscle atrophy, various aerobic and anaerobic exercises need to be done. I don’t mean to discuss time management, though. I actually want to teach you a way to do more with less. Save time with an exercise set I developed that incorporates two ancient Chinese methods: Qigong and kung fu.

For this set of simple wellness exercises, I combined the “standing pole” Qigong exercise with the “pole rolling” exercises of kung fu. By doing this exercise set for as little as 10 minutes per day, you can effectively and safely increase your heart rate, expand your lungs, get your blood moving, tone and strengthen your muscles, build bone density to reverse or prevent osteoporosis, and improve your balance. You will work on six areas at the same time, and it requires only a weighted pole and enough space to stand. Talk about time management and doing more with less!

To get started, you need a weighted pole. You can use a standard 10-pound bench press bar, if you have one. I prefer to use the padded strength bars available at most chain sporting goods stores. These are great because they are padded and come in various weights, like 6 pounds, 9 pounds, etc. If you are out of shape, then starting with a lighter pole is better. For more robust individuals, a heavier pole is great. Either way, you can work your way up in weight and time.

Here’s what to do:

1. Begin by standing up with your feet a shoulders-width apart, knees bent.

2. Hold the bar in both hands, palms facing out, with arms by your side for one minute to get used to the weight.

3. Curl up the bar and hold it as close to your chest as possible for one minute.

4. Open your hands and slowly let the pole roll down your forearms, stopping at the bend in your elbows. Hold for one minute.

5. Slowly extend your arms forward while rotating out your elbows, balancing the pole across the crook of the elbows. Hold for two minutes.

6. Slowly tilt your forearms down a bit to allow the bar to slowly roll onto your wrists. Hold the bar in this position for two minutes. You can use your thumbs to keep the bar from rolling past your wrist.

7. Slowly roll the bar back up your arms to the elbows, turn your palms up and raise your hands to eye level. Hold this position for two minutes.

8. Rotate your elbows out and grasp the bar with both hands in the middle.

9. Hold the bar vertically in front of you with outstretched arms. Hold for one minute.

10. Finish by putting the bar back down.

Key Pointers:

• When you get into your posture, do not move. With knees bent, even slightly, the muscles in the legs are firing.
• With the weight of the bar and the unmoving posture, you experience isometric training. The bar is load bearing and helps lay new bone to improve bone density.
• The longer you hold up the bar on your arms, the more difficult the exercise becomes. As your muscles get tired, the bar seems to become heavier, and your muscles have to work harder to keep the bar up.
• When the muscles are firing and the weight feels heavier, the lungs and heart increase their activity. So even though it looks like you are doing nothing, you are increasing your heart and lung functions incrementally but not overtaxing these organs.
• Holding the posture and pole still is difficult and requires concentration. This is where meditation comes in. This is a great time to practice some mindfulness breathing. As you breathe in and out slowly through your nose, mindfully examine the various sensations in your arms, hips, legs and feet. Feel the balance shifting and the blood moving.

This exercise set is simple and easy to do, yet is powerful. It combines meditation, energy work, kung fu, isometric exercise, strength training and endurance in a comprehensive wellness set that helps promote your overall wellness. Give it try!

American Standard

The standard American diet is an abomination. Especially what’s for breakfast: Cereals made from genetically modified grains. Simple carbohydrates loaded with sugar or corn syrup. Greasy bacon, ham, sausages, pancakes, toast, muffins and sticky buns that make your blood sugar go up and down like a roller coaster.

It’s no wonder that office workers endure sugar crashes around 11 a.m. when they reach for strong coffee and maybe another carb-booster for enough energy to hold on until lunch.

Oatmeal seems to be a good choice. Yet many people eat the instant variety, which instigates a blood sugar nightmare. And let’s not forget the havoc donuts, coffee cakes, orange juice, jellies and syrups play on health. Hypoglycemia, diabetes, nausea and pain result from our poor breakfast choices that stress the adrenal glands, weaken the immune system and induce the stress response.

Breakfast Lifeline

The first thing to realize about wellness is that it begins with diet and lifestyle choices. Breakfast starts the day with a clean slate, yet many tarnish the day early with poor eating habits. TCM advocates for a bland (non-spicy) breakfast of stomach-nourishing porridge, known as congee or jook. In TCM, food is a form of medicine. Indeed, many Chinese herbals are from food sources like roots, barks, fruits, seeds, flowers and tubers. Jook serves not only as a wellness-stabilizing breakfast but also as a medicinal porridge when certain herbs are added to it.

Jook is found in Chinese restaurants that serve dim-sum, or the Chinese brunch. You can also make it yourself. It’s simple. Almost any grain or bean can be used as the base, like red beans, mung beans, aduki beans, millet, wheat, barley, corn or long-grain rice. The most common base, though, is polished white rice. It acts as a blank canvas for what may be added to it, like soy sauce, a poached egg, scallions, seafood, etc.

The basic jook preparation is made in a ratio of one part grain to between five and eight parts water. More water makes the porridge thinner and more liquid; less water makes it thicker and heartier. You can make your first batch with six parts water to one of grain and see how you like it. Generally, if you are cooking something else with the grain, then more water is added. Jook can be cooked by simmering the rice on the stove for two hours or overnight in a slow cooker.

Plain jook with added egg or chicken strips, soy sauce, bok choy or other veggies makes a terrific breakfast. However, the power of jook is in its use as a medicinal porridge. This is done by adding herbs, fruits, roots or other ingredients to the base jook. While it is best to consult with an herbalist trained in TCM for the specific herbs you may individually require, here are a few basic recipes that can introduce you to jook.

Jook For Cold And Flu

There are quite a few jook recipes for common cold and flu. Choose one to prepare depending on your signs and symptoms. When you feel achy pain at the beginning of a cold and want to warm up and stay under the covers, try this:

Cook 100 grams of glutinous rice (about half a cup) in 600 grams of water (about three cups). Mash up 15 grams of fresh ginger (about a 2-inch piece) with five whole scallions. When the porridge is cooked, add in the mashed ginger and scallions. Simmer until the ginger and scallion merge well. Eat two bowls per day to induce sweating and remove cold symptoms.

If your cold is accompanied by a sore, swollen throat, cough with phlegm, rash and/or constipation, then try this jook:

Boil a half-ounce of burdock seeds in a cup of water until only half the water remains in the pot. Use a slotted strainer to remove the burdock dregs, and retain the liquid. Add this liquid to two cups of fresh water, then add 50 grams of polished white rice (a quarter cup) and a tablespoon of granulated sugar and cook as indicated above. Note, the sugar releases the throat but also improves the taste. Use only enough to make this jook palatable. Eat two warm bowls per day until your symptoms are resolved.

Jook For Vomiting

Dry heaves, nausea and vomiting are generally caused by too much greasy, sugary or fatty foods, in addition to toxins, motion, pregnancy, gastritis and other reasons. If you are experiencing vomiting during pregnancy or after a prolonged illness, try this jook:

Cook 50 grams of polished white rice (about a quarter of a cup) in 400ml of water (two cups) to make porridge as indicated above. Boil 15 grams of bamboo shoots (a half-ounce) in 200ml (half a cup) of water until only 50 percent of the water remains in the pot. Use a slotted strainer to remove the bamboo dregs, and retain the liquid. When the porridge is ready, add the bamboo water (100g should be left) along with two slices of fresh ginger root. Bring the jook to a boil. Eat two warm bowls per day until symptoms reside.

Try this jook if your nausea is accompanied with abdominal, epigastric or intestinal pain; chronic gastritis; testicular swelling; or poor appetite:

First, make the base porridge by cooking 50g (a quarter cup) of polished white rice in 400ml (two cups) of water, as noted above. Stir fry 30g (an ounce) of fennel until it turns into a burnt yellow color and is dry. Remove from pan and grind fennel into a fine powder. When the porridge is ready, add the fennel powder and a tablespoon of brown sugar to it. Simmer until all the ingredients meld well together; eat once per day for five days.

There are many jook recipes for internal medicine, gynecology, pediatrics, dermatology, cold and flu, pain and inflammation, nausea and vomiting, meningitis, diabetes, obesity, incontinence, anemia, high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, and other ailments. Many require the use of specific herbs that are not easily found in local supermarkets. However, they are readily found in Asian supermarkets and many health food and supplement shops. Doing an online search should provide information on ordering these ingredients.

If you want to learn more about ancient Chinese jook porridges, there are many books available as well as local TCM practitioners you can call. The Internet is also a fabulous place to begin your search to know more about this ancient tradition that’s not just for breakfast anymore.

Sleep Numbers

In today’s world we seem to be obsessed with numbers. We use numbers to analyze and regulate every aspect of our bodies and our lives. How tall are you? How much do you weigh? What are your cholesterol numbers? What is your blood pressure? How many ounces of carbs does your diet allow? What’s your income? The numbers go on and on. In this list, there’s one number most of us get wrong: How much sleep do you need?

Lucky Number Seven

While it is often assumed and promoted as firm rule that getting eight hours of sleep per night is optimal, research questions this assumption. In 2010, the journal Sleep published a study that identified seven hours as being the optimal amount of sleep for health. In fact, according to Najib Ayas, M.D., of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, the study showed that those who sleep more or less than seven hours per night are at greater risk for developing cardiovascular disease. That means everyone who is sleeping the standard eight hours of sleep per night is unwittingly increasing their risk for heart problems.

There’s No Catching Up

Another sleep fallacy is that you should sleep more on the weekends to catch up on missed sleep throughout the work week. To the contrary: Sleep experts tell us that sleeping more than eight hours is unhealthy. The body does not catch up on its sleep because sleep is not cumulative. You need seven hours of deep, sound sleep. When you break up sleep with naps or pile sleep on at the end of the week, you end up with headaches, stiff joints, muscle aches and often dizziness. And, by sleeping more than seven hours at a time (during the so-called catch up days), you also increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Too Little Sleep Makes Disease Risk Bigger

Cardiovascular disease is not the only ailment associated with poor sleep. Getting only six or fewer hours per night is linked with diabetes and obesity. The link to obesity was studied and published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) and in a recent Mayo Clinic study.

The JCEM article showed that hunger is increased by lack of sleep when the brain’s appetite-control center is activated. The Mayo Clinic findings showed that if you sleep about 80 minutes less than normal, you’re at risk for eating about 550 more calories the next day. Leptin and ghrelin hormones are thought to be responsible for this effect.

“We tested whether lack of sleep altered the levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, increased the amount of food people ate and affected energy burned through activity,” says Virend Somers, Mayo Clinic professor and lead author. According to study co-author Andrew Calvin, “Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night.”

Simple Sleep Solutions

Whether you suffer from insomnia, sleep apnea or an overly busy schedule, it is imperative that you get ample sleep each and every night. Seven hours seems to be the magic number. But repetition of the same bedtime night after night is crucial. In other words: Keep a constant sleep routine.

Here are tips to help you hit the sleep sweet spot and establish a healthy habit that my enable you to live longer, healthier and happier without heart disease, diabetes or obesity:

• Better manage your time during the day so you don’t work late into the evening.
• Make a list at the end of the workday of what needs to be accomplished or started tomorrow. Don’t obsess over tomorrow’s tasks while lying awake in bed.
• Do not drink caffeinated beverages after 6 p.m., or they may keep you awake.
• Do not drink fluids of any kind after 8 p.m. if you have a weak or overactive bladder.
• Avoid alcohol at night; it disturbs crucial REM sleep.
• Waking up in the middle of the night for any reason is not healthy.
• Help yourself drift into deep sleep by making your sleeping environment as dark as possible. Block incoming light with heavy curtains. Dim the light from electronic devices and keep lit alarm clocks facing away from your bed.
• Set a schedule for sleeping and waking up and stick to it. Repetition makes your body clock stick to a schedule that promotes proper sleep.

Thoughts And Realities

We all create our own lives, a creative process that begins with our thoughts. Thoughts create realities. If you think about doing something or being something and you deeply believe you can accomplish it, then you will. On the other hand, if you think you can never achieve a particular thing (a better job, financial success or improved health), then you won’t. In both cases you format your own life experience, be it positive or negative. Although it may sound oversimplified, this is actually true.

The problem is that many people do not believe they can achieve an improved state of wellness and don’t. In contrast, others believe they can find improvement and do. The choice is yours and the results you see and feel are directed by your choices, which are directed by your thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Your state of health is based on your personal beliefs about yourself and health. While we don’t seem to have direct control over many things in our lives, we can control our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. We do not have to internalize the ideas, statements or beliefs of others. This concept is especially important when it comes to our beliefs about our own health.

Health And Attitude

Some years ago, the National Institutes of Health published a study on low back pain that analyzed all forms of pain relief, including medication, physical therapy, massage, chiropractic, hypnosis and acupuncture. The researchers found that the most successful therapy for low back pain was acupuncture. Well, acupuncture was actually rated second to placebo, which showed the best results.

What’s more, the effectiveness of the placebo increased when the administering physician wore a white lab coat and displayed a genuine belief in the therapy. That demonstrates that the power to heal ourselves is found in our minds. In this case, once the patients believed that the therapy was going to be successful, they thought about the positive outcome and even expected it.

During this experiment, belief in the therapy was created by the physicians’ positive attitudes and lab coats. These things helped create beliefs that led to positive thoughts. These factors altered the pain level in the body. Placebo, for me, identifies the power of the mind over the health of the body, based on the beliefs about treatment.

Think Outside The Zone

Many people are uncertain about trying things outside of their comfort zone. If they don’t believe in the underlying theory of acupuncture (that there is an energy in the body that runs through invisible channels, and needles inserted in specific points shift the movement of this energy), then, most likely, acupuncture therapy will not work for them.

Nevertheless, acupuncture works for millions of people and has for thousands of years. And if you seek to find out what makes some people more treatable than others or their condition more serious, you find that the answer is, basically, nothing tangible. The difference resides in their expectations of results, which are based on their concepts about acupuncture and grounded in their beliefs about the theories or efficacy of the therapy.

If your beliefs are negative, the results are negative. If your beliefs are positive, the results will be positive. Change your beliefs, and you change your experience.

Real Belief

Here’s the caveat: Making these therapies effective is not only a matter of telling yourself you believe in them. You must sincerely believe. And you can analyze your state of belief by examining how you feel about what you think. If you truly believe a treatment will work for you, you feel good and positive about the therapy overall and you expect a positive result.

However, uncertainty or nervousness indicates that you don’t truly believe a therapy works, no matter what you may think or say. If that is the case, the effectiveness of the therapy is compromised: The therapy will be successful for only a short time, it will give you only partial relief or it will provide no relief at all. This leads to the very common statement that chronic sufferers of ill health repeat like a mantra: “I have tried everything, and nothing works for me. No one can figure out my situation.”

What You Believe

When I’ve discussed these types of issues with patients and suggested they give a particular therapy another go-round — this time doing and not merely trying — and told them that a positive attitude helps, they insist: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

As I’ve said, the problem derives from the fact that your state of health is a reflection of your inner self. Your thoughts, feelings and beliefs about your health and your ability to improve it determine your state of health. It is impossible to experience change before you believe change is possible.

To clarify this concept, I look to the analogy of your reflection in a mirror. If you peer into a mirror and see yourself frowning, waiting for the image in the mirror to smile before you smile is illogical. The mirror shows a reflection. If you are not smiling, your image in the mirror cannot smile. You have to change your feelings and decide to smile before you see smile in the reflection.

In other words, you have to believe it before you can see it. And just like your reflection in the mirror, your current state of health reflects your thoughts, feelings and beliefs about your health that you must first change before you can see the physical manifestation of the change. You have to believe you can be healthy or pain-free before you see improvement in your physical reality.

Positive Thoughts

To be clear, I don’t advocate simple positive thinking. Instead, my point is that you must truly believe you can be healthier to have effective thoughts about your ability to reach that improved state. You must feel good about those thoughts and leave pessimism and negativity behind. That enables a positive result. Once you expect the positive result, you know you can achieve it.

Consequently, you can create improved health by making changes over time in your behaviors, actions and choices — even if they are only modest changes. You can then be said to be creating your health, not feeling powerless against forces beyond your control.

You must be the change you wish to become. You must embrace it. If not, you’re only paying lip service to change. To do this, you have to go beyond wishful thinking and believe in your own empowerment.

When The Pain Comes

Pain can originate from many sources: You’re on the run and seized by a spasm in your neck. The stress of the day triggers a migraine. Or you overexert yourself, and now your back is out.

You are a busy person and can’t let these ailments derail your day or your week, even if they are intensely painful. So you head to the nearest drugstore and look for quick relief in a bottle, a patch, a cream. When you get there, you are overwhelmed with choices. You look at packaging, recall past experiences and mull over product advertising claims before reaching for the most popular brand and hoping for the best.

Several hours later, you’re still in pain and you take another dose of the OTC remedy. Later, you experience stomach discomfort and GI irritation from those pills. And your body still hurts.

Complicated Answers

If you’re like millions of other Americans, you have at least one (and probably several) chronic health concerns. For many, it’s a pain-related ailment. Back pain is reported as the No. 1 reason people visit their primary care physician. Headaches and joint pain rank up there, too. I am often asked which OTC remedy is best for pain. The answer, however, is not a simple one.

Like many of you, I am both amazed and dumbfounded by the volume of pain products on the market. A short walk down any store’s supplement aisle is soon overwhelming if one is hoping to find relief for symptoms. How is it that there can be so many products for pain? Some block the pain receptors, while others reduce inflammation. Also offered: topical pain patches, heat therapy, cold therapy, and on and on.

Which treatment is the right one to use for your pain or discomfort?

The biggest issue to understand is that no individual product is suitable for every pain problem, despite marketing and accepted wisdom. For example, if you have neck pain should you choose ibuprofen (an anti-inflammatory) or naproxen (an analgesic)? Many people think they are identical. After all, they both relieve pain. Yet most people find that one product works better for them than the other. (This fact alone is a clear hint that not all products work as well for the same general issue.)

So while Motrin and Aleve both help reduce pain sensations for a period of time, they do so from different mechanisms.

If your pain is the result of inflammation, then Motrin matched with a cool-therapy patch, cream or compress is a relatively better choice. However, if your pain results from trigger points, Aleve coupled with a heat therapy cream, patch or pad is a relatively better option. I say relatively because neither OTC pain reliever is natural and either can harm the body when used for an extended period of time.

Different Causes

When pain symptoms are felt in the neck, the cause of the pain is not the same as it is for back pain. As a basic rule, however, inflammation should be reduced while spasms and trigger points should be released. Applying heat to pain originating from inflammation makes the symptoms worse and applying cold to already constricted muscles makes those symptoms worse. Spending a moment to discern the pain syndrome (collection of symptoms) before making your pain-relieving selection, goes a long way to quickening the results you desire while not aggravating and making the ailment more painful.

The idea here is that one size does not fit all, thus no one pain product is best for all types of pain. Don’t mindlessly grab a product off the shelf when you are experiencing symptoms just because that product worked for a friend, you saw a convincing ad or it’s on sale. Think the situation through, first, and then decide which (if any) product is a good choice.

Is your pain throbbing, the site of the pain red and swollen, do you have restricted range of motion? All of these are relevant to understanding the source of the pain, which itself is a symptom of a larger imbalance. Until the cause of the pain is addressed, the pain will inevitably return and you’ll need more meds to ease the discomfort. For information on understanding pain types, look here.

Another problem with OTC pain relief is that these products are only effective for the limited time the remedy is active in your blood. This is usually between two and four hours. After that, their effects wear off and you need to take more. The serious problem here is that if the product is not the most appropriate to your pain syndrome, you can actually be damaging your body while not even truly helping the issue. More importantly, if the product works on symptomatic relief (which most do) and not on changing the problem itself (most don’t), then you risk becoming chronically dependent on the product. This can lead to serious problems for your stomach lining, digestive tract, liver and kidneys. Not to mention that your original problem continues.

Realities

While I advocate natural health products, I am realistic in my expectations of them. Most natural products for pain are best used as preventive measures or at the very first sign of pain symptoms. Natural pain products like arnica, turmeric, capsicum, angelica root, feverfew, camphor and others are safe and gentle on the system. However, they generally are not strong enough to be much help during severe pain that is in full swing. Also, like OTC pain meds, these are each specific for different kinds of pain-related symptoms. Arnica is appropriate for topical inflammation and turmeric for reducing inflammation, capsicum for muscle spasm and angelica root to quicken blood stagnation and so on. Again, even with natural products, it is advised to first examine your pain type, then consider the related symptoms that are also occurring and look for a solution to address the overall pain syndrome you are experiencing in that moment.

Environmental Roots

For your body to experience pain of any kind, there must be an environment within it that allows the symptoms to take hold and cause you discomfort. This means that if your muscles are supple and blood is moving through them in the appropriate way, you should not experience muscle tightness, strain or trigger points. However, because of poor diet, lack of stretching and exercise, and sitting for long periods of time, the resting length of muscles shortens and less blood flows through them. Those events cause pain and trigger points to manifest.

Instead of unconsciously reaching for an anti-inflammatory pain reliever (for example), you should be doing several things that can solve your problem:

• Correcting the habit that creates the problem.
• Changing the environment in the muscle housing the problem.
• Taking the appropriate pain-relieving product.
• Preventing a cycle of looking to short-term relief from the wrong product that will likely become chronic.

True Remedies

To remedy pain, you must think about your pain and try to discern what type it is, the best short-term remedy, the environment that allows it to persist and what behavior is responsible for that environment. Change the behavior and you can change the environment within your body and consequently limit the occurrence of pain and reduce it from chronic to acute (or remove it altogether). Natural products and methods are always best, but in times of acute flare-up or chronic conditions, a little help from other sources can get you to the point where the natural products can do their work most effectively. However, if you grab the wrong OTC product, your problem may worsen.

Fueling Up

On a basic level, food is fuel. It is part of the four life-sustaining elements we humans need to live (food, water, oxygen, sunlight). In terms of what the Chinese call qi or energy, food helps provide our bodies with life-force, or the energy for life. It nourishes the body, cells, organs, brain and every other tissue. Eating a better quality of food improves the quality of your life-force and produces a higher quality of life.

In the East, food is looked to for health, prevention of illness, and as medicine for relieving acute symptoms. Eating a healthful diet has been, until a recent invasion of Western fast food, a staple of Asian cuisine. In the United States, we think of food as a source of pleasure, social gathering and weight management. And that’s problematic: We eat when we celebrate and when we’re stressed, and we starve ourselves when we want to lose weight.

Unhealthy Attitude

Trying to lose weight when you think of food as the enemy is unhealthy. You can’t become thin and remain healthy when your diet restricts carbohydrates, protein, fruits, vegetables or other natural whole food sources. For weight loss to be healthy, your diet must encompass all that nature offers, in as close to its natural state as possible, or at least in an unprocessed state. Trying to lose weight by focusing on reducing calories or avoiding entire categories of food is futile. Just look at the thousands of past dieters who have tried this type of method and failed. Perhaps you are one of them.

When trying to eat for weight loss:

1. Stop looking at each food in terms of its deconstructed parts, like its calorie, fat, protein and carbohydrate content. This tells only a very small part of the story and adds to confusion and stress.

2. Start looking at food in global terms of how an individual ingredient or product interacts with other food, and especially how your body handles it when eaten.

3. Remember that how much fat or carbohydrates a specific food contains on its own is not as relevant as what happens to it when it reaches your digestive tract. The important information is how quickly your body digests that food, how rapidly the food breaks down into sugar and how fast the food moves through the stomach and intestines. All of these depend on what else is consumed with it.

4. Forget about trying to lose weight with a diet and think instead of how to eat for optimal health, optimal energy and improved quality of life. Your weight will regress to the mean or reach an appropriate level based on your body and its needs.

5. Keep in mind that being skinny or thin has no relevance to being healthy. Skinny people also may have diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol and other diseases related to diet. You should aim to be a healthy weight while fueling your body with nutrient-dense foods.

Healthful Eating

Along with these, there are a few things I’d like to share that are the basis of healthful eating. Some of this may be familiar, and some may seem surprisingly counterintuitive.

To begin, carbohydrates fuel your brain, so avoiding them decreases your brain power. And I can’t imagine anyone knowingly chooses decreased brain function as a matter of course to lose weight. It’s a bad trade-off. However, you can choose to eat only complex carbohydrates like those from whole grain, fruit and vegetable sources. Whole grains take longer to break down and turn to sugar, and, as a result, your body does not dump loads of insulin at one time, which causes you to crash later and crave more simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are not healthy: They break down too quickly in your body, causing spikes in blood sugar which causes weight gain from storing sugars and fats and indulging the consequent cravings.

Fats

Fats do not cause you to gain weight, unless you eat them in overabundance. Also, the content of a fatty food tells only part of the story.

For example, when you note the fat and cholesterol of bacon, you see numbers based on bacon in its raw state. Once the bacon is cooked, especially to crispy, a huge amount of its fat and cholesterol has been removed from the edible product.

And consider how we eat sour cream and butter. Yes, by themselves they are fat-filled and fattening. However, I don’t know a single person who eats them on their own. Even though these foods are high in fat, eating foods like these, along with simple carbohydrates, does not have a strong effect on weight gain.

A baked potato, for example, is a simple carbohydrate that your body breaks down quickly if eaten by itself. However, when topped with sour cream and/or butter, the potato takes longer to digest and does not spike your blood sugar and insulin response so quickly that it contributes to weight gain (the turning of sugars into stored fats). Fats take longer than carbs to break down, so adding more fats to a baked potato and other foods is actually better for you than eating a plain baked potato.

Eating Healthfully

What we are basically talking about here is twofold. First, we need to eat high-quality food to be healthy and stay at a healthy weight. You don’t want to be thin and yet have high cholesterol or a fatty liver because you opted for an unhealthy diet for weight loss.

Second, more important than individual calorie and fat content of food is its glycemic load, or how quickly or slowly the body breaks down food, converts it to sugar and either uses it for fuel or stores it as fat.

A Chart of Glycemic Loads lists each food based on its relative glycemic ratio of fiber to sugar content. The more a food is processed or has had sugar added, the higher its numerical index. In contrast, the higher its whole grain content, the lower its index number.

Many individuals who struggle with weight do so because of problems with blood sugar, insulin resistance and metabolic issues that can be controlled by maintaining a glycemic load of 50 points or lower per day. In this way you fill your meals with food that breaks down slowly into sugars in your body and, therefore, does not promote too much insulin release and storage of sugars as fats.

Ideally, you want to break down your food slowly and use it as fuel as you go. Weight gain happens when the body stores unused food as fat or when too much insulin is released as a reaction to eating a lot of simple carbohydrates.

Have a look at the glycemic load chart here and consider how your daily eating habits are directly responsible for your weight issues, in addition to associated health issues like type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance syndrome. If you eat whole foods and look to food as fuel for life-force, and not for weight loss, you can level off at a healthy weight by eating healthfully and not triggering over-release of insulin from poor food choices.