Health and Fitness Articles by Karen Bruneel, D.N. Naprapath

• Ten Tips to Exercise Motivation
• Patient, Massage Thyself
• Why Ice?

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Ten Tips to Exercise Motivation

1. Exercise in places where other people are working out. Seeing other people exercising lets you know you’re not alone and helps keep you going. Sometimes you can meet exercise partners on running trails, at gyms and through events at athletic shoe stores.

2. Join an exercise class or group. Several places to check in Chicago are Fleet Feet, Midtown Tennis Club, craigslist, Discovery Center and the Chicago Park District.

3. Measure and log your progress. This could mean counting repetitions of lunges or pushups or other exercises. It could mean writing down your weight every morning, or the number of miles you walked, ran, swam or biked. You might measure the size of your biceps before and after doing weightlifting for several months. The general idea is that having a record of your improvement gives you concrete proof of your effectiveness.

4. Carry cards with your name and phone number on them. If you meet someone who wants to exercise with you, you can hand them a card and tell them to call you. Having a training partner can be a boost to your spirits. There will be times when you don’t want to workout, but your partner gets you out there, and vice versa.

5. Go outside and exercise when the weather is bad. Going for a long walk in the cold or a jog in the rain can reinforce that you’re tough. You’ll be able to say, “I did it!”

6. Develop heroes and emulate them. Think of Joan Benoit Samuelson, Roger Federer or whoever seems like a great athlete to you. Pretend like you’re that person as you do your workout.

7. Make a commitment that gives you a reason to exercise. For example, pay the entry fee and sign up for a triathlon months in advance. You’ll feel that you must do your workouts because you’ve signed up.

8. Plan a trip to a fitness event in another city. Advertise the trip with local athletic groups and organize ten people or so to go. This could be a trip to the Big Sur International Marathon in California, for example. Google your sport to see what’s happening around the globe.

9. Look at yourself in the mirror. Get a full length mirror and look at your whole body, either while working out or at another time. Whether you’re happy with your body or need to get in better shape, looking in the mirror can be motivating because you’re willing to look at what is instead of refusing to see it.

10. Do just a little bit. On days when you don’t feel like exercising at all, ask yourself if you can do an easy exercise for 15 minutes. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself and find you want to go for much longer, once you’ve started moving.

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Patient, Massage Thyself

Eileen (not her real name) is a friend of mine who suffered from a lateral torn meniscus, a painful knee injury. I helped her with daily naprapathic treatments to her knee and thigh over a period of several months.

Even so, her pain persisted, so Eileen agreed to have her doctor perform an arthroscopic examination, a procedure that involves making a small incision in the knee joint and using pen-sized lighted instruments to display the joint’s interior on a monitor.

When Eileen’s doctor viewed the inner structures of her joint, he saw that her meniscus was almost completely healed, something he said was remarkable. He had never seen a torn meniscus healing so nicely, in all the hundreds of times he’d done this type of operation. He decided that corrective surgery was unnecessary for Eileen.

Over a few more months, I continued working on Eileen’s leg nearly every day. Eventually her pain was completely gone and her knee returned to normal functioning. In this case, it seems clear that naprapathic treatments increased the circulation around her knee and coaxed the cartilage to heal.

Few people can afford to or would think to schedule naprapathic treatments on a daily basis. However, anyone can rub or massage an injured area to increase circulation and thus promote healing.

As blood flows to and from any tissue in the body, healing occurs through the circulatory system. Massage stimulates the venous and lymphatic system to carry away dead tissue and bring in new cells through the blood.

Massaging an injured or painful area for 15 to 20 minutes a day might boost your healing process. You can ask someone else to help, or use your own hands, a vibrator or massage tools such as rollers and balls.

Often vibrators and massage tools are sold at drug stores. You can also find an assortment online; Amazon is one easily accessible source.

You can make a massage tool by putting a tennis ball into a long sock and tying the sock in a knot. Put the ball against a wall and rub the affected area against it, holding the long end of the sock to keep it from slipping.

Another inexpensive massage tool is a small paint roller, about four inches long, intended for painting touch-ups. You can buy this at a hardware store.

Use the roller to rub back and forth on your injured or painful area. Sometimes it helps more to roll in one direction only. Experiment to see what feels best, being careful not to press so hard it’s painful.

Massage is one of the safest things you can do to heal yourself, and highly unlikely to harm you. Even so, you should always get medical advice for persistent pain and injury. Getting a proper diagnosis is essential to getting all of the treatment you need and returning to wellness.

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WHY ICE?

Because ice reduces swelling and lessens the sensation of pain, it is an excellent treatment for muscle and bone pain. If you exercise regularly or take part in a sport, ice is a friend you can turn to in times of need.

If you fall and bump your knee or any body part, icing will probably help. Ice is effective against all types of strains and sprains, whether in your back, neck, wrist, elbow -- or any bone or muscle.

If you’ve just run a race and your feet are aching, setting an ice pack on them or soaking them in very cold water will feel good. Walking barefoot on the beach with the cold waves washing up on your feet and ankles will feel divine.

How To Ice a Sore Spot
Icing a sore part of your body is easy. You simply hold ice against the area that hurts. One method is to put the ice in a plastic bag and rest that on your injury.

You can lessen the feeling of extreme cold from icing by putting a thin cloth against your skin. A towel is too thick but part of a T-shirt is just right.

A couple words of caution – if you’re icing someone else’s body, particularly a child’s or elderly person’s, listen to their input and take away the ice if they don’t like the sensation.

For some older people, ice can be a problem. If you're elderly and sensitive to ice, take it easy -- icing an injury 10 to 15 minutes several times a day is sufficient, and wait an hour or two between icings.

In general, icing an ache or injury is safe and won’t hurt, especially if you do it for a short period of time. Most advice says to ice for 20 minutes or less. The danger of icing for too long is frostbite.

As always, ask your doctor about icing when an injury is very painful or severe, or if you have a chronic disease.

Bags Not Best
If you put ice in a plastic bag and hold it against your sore body part, the ice will eventually start melting and dripping, and you’ll get restless from having to hold it there. A better way is to use a gel pack (sold at drug stores), because it won’t drip and you can keep re-using it.

You can also cut a paper cup to about two inches high, fill it with water and freeze it. Then hold the ice cup and rub it against your injury.

A Humble Bag of Peas
Another popular, inexpensive icing method is to buy a large bag of frozen peas or other small vegetable, and ice yourself using the closed bag of veggies.

You can freeze and re-use the same bag of peas over and over again. You can also put them in an outer bag that you’ve marked, “For icing, not eating,” to avoid having a yucky dinner.

Peas also defrost fairly easily, and you can hit the bag of them against a kitchen counter or other hard surface to make them separate. That way, the bag is easier to wrap and fit around your injured body part. This is much easier than dealing with a solid ice block.

A Wrapping Tip
And speaking of wrapping, you can use an Ace bandage in combination with ice. Wrapping the ice to your injury keeps the ice from slipping off, and can free you to do other things.

Simply place a bag of frozen peas on your knee, for example, and wind and secure the bandage around it. Now you can walk around at the same time you’re icing your knee.

Oh, and do not buy a bandage that’s marked “self-adhesive” if you’re at all sensitive to smells. These have an industrial, chemical stink. Instead, get an ordinary flexible bandage and tuck, tie or pin it on.

Ice Is Your Friend
Once you’ve used ice to reduce aches, pains and swelling, you will find that it is a safe and effective treatment. Keeping ice packs or "icing peas" in your freezer should be as routine as keeping bandaids in your medicine cabinet.

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