Health & Fitness April
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Healthy Eating Keeping Fit Diets
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Healthy Lifestyle
As we get older, all of us lose our memory to varying degrees. Some ageing people never show any sign of memory loss and are still sharp at 90, others sadly aren’t so lucky. Memory loss can be reversed or slowed down and there are ways to limit memory loss altogether. If you follow these steps, you won’t go far wrong.
Boosting your memory l Stay mentally active As an adult your brain has dealt with huge amounts of problems and tasks to get to that stage, all were challenging. But once in adulthood you can get stuck in a rut and use tried and tested methods to solve the commonplace problems that can arise. The problem with this is that you no longer grow and you stagnate. Keep your mind challenged every day with mental workouts such as crosswords and sudoku. Learn a new language. Learn to play a new musical instrument. Get out of your routine. Try new things. Get out of your comfort zone. Make sure any mental challenge is fun. If it interests you and is enjoyable then you’ll gain more benefit in the long run.
l Sleep Getting enough sleep makes you concentrate and focus. Different people need different hours of sleep. Margaret Thatcher famously needed 30
4 hours (though she was mad) and others want 10 hours at least. The average seems about 7. As long as you feel clear headed and focused then that tends to be the level of sleep needed.
l Drink water If you become dehydrated this lessens your mental activity and aids memory loss. As you age, make sure you drink plenty of water to prevent this. About 8 glasses of water throughout the day tends to be a way to keep hydrated.
l Diet It’s essential to eat whole grains and vegetables as these contain Vitamin B1. Vitamin B12 is also essential and if you’re vegan you’ll need supplements or fortified Breakfast cereals. Otherwise fish (clams especially and trout and salmon), meat (liver especially), eggs and milk all contain B12. Alcohol lessens vitamin B1 and B12 effect, not allowing the vitamin to soak into the body. Ignoring the above diet and keeping to one of trans and saturated fats with simple carbs will mean a slowing of the brain as blood flow and oxygen is not delivered to the areas of the brain that deal with memory.
l Exercise Exercising the body exercises the brain as it increases oxygen to the brain and reduces diseases like heart problems and diabetes that effect memory loss.
Ways to lessen memory loss
The following all make you lose your memory. Stop them and your memory loss will lessen.
l Stop Smoking
Exercises like walking also use both sides of the brain and so keep this in mind when doing simple things around the house. Try simple tasks like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand to keep your mental faculties alive. It will be like learning all over again from childhood.
l Socialise Relationships with others is one of the best kinds of brain exercise. Harvard studies have shown those people with the most active social lives had the slowest level of memory decline. Get out there and meet people, join clubs, go to the pub, hell even walking the dog will make sure you meet someone!
l Laughter They say laughter is the best medicine and it is. For body and brain. It also engages the whole brain unlike certain emotions that are area specific. Laughter helps people think differently and more freely. Spend time with funny people, laughter is catching. Make fun at yourself and life’s problems. It’s the best way to deal with them.
l Organise If your house is full of clutter and your plans are all over the place, then you’re far more likely to forget things. Make a to-do list and cross them out when done. Clean the house so things don’t get misplaced.
Smoking stops oxygen getting to the brain and this results in less mental activity. Surprisingly social skills suffer when smoking as smokers have a far harder time matching names with faces than non- smokers.
l Focus Stop being distracted by trivia and focus on the important things. Don’t multi-task! Focus on the task at hand! By doing so you will remember it later. Don’t try to do too much at once. This brings stress. While this is fine in the short-term it can cause problems long-term, preventing memories being stored properly. Make sure you take time out and relax. Though this may seem counterproductive at the time, it will pay off in the long run as it will make you more efficient. Too much stress turns to depression. This then messes up concentration, decision making and memory. Meditation, the ultimate form of ‘relaxing’ can stop depression and improves focus, concentration, learning, creativity and memory. Meditating creates more activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the brain area connected with happiness and thickens the cerebral cortex that aids memory and mental sharpness.
Conclusion With dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers at record levels, as you can see, memory loss can be prevented if you are disciplined and follow those simple measures. By doing so you can live to a ripe old age and still have all your mental faculties.
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Clinical and Sports Massage Therapy 32
Clinical and Sports Massage Therapy is used by all sorts of people, from an active sports person or professional athlete through to office workers, housewives and any other occupation you can think of. Due to our lifestyles and professions we all experience aches, pains and injuries that affect our jobs and enjoyment of life. Most of these problems are eliminated by preventative treatment, which means you can carry on training or working and not take time off from either activity. We all expect so much from our bodies. People should treat their bodies as they do their cars. Like cars, we all need regular servicing and an M.O.T., if we are to enjoy full use of our bodies over time. So do your body a favour, book in for a massage and look after yourself.
What is Clinical Massage? We all have muscles but only a few of us know that our muscles are surrounded in a thin membrane of strong connective tissue called FASCIA. Fascia is normally moist which allows them to glide over each other as the muscles contract and release. After a period of time, through use and injury, the Fascia thickens and hardens. Clinical Massage is a unique technique that involves manually moving the muscles to separate them and stretch the surrounding tissue by working between the muscles. This adds a new dimension of soft-tissue manipulation as well as providing the advantages of a “normal sports� massage.
Clinical and Sports Massage Therapy helps: RELIEVE • Backache • Headaches • Repetitive strain Injury • Muscle spasm • Stiff joints • Stress and tension
PREVENT • Injuries • Muscle soreness • Poor posture
ENHANCE • Sport and exercise recovery • Mobility • Flexibility • Exercise performance • Soft tissue rehabilitation Grant can provide Sports Massage Therapy in your own home or in his regular therapy room at Centro Plaza Gym. He is available Monday to Saturday and travels from Elviria to Sotogrande. For more info check out his advert in this magazine, or his website: sportstherapymarbella.com
Focnus o
Grant Foster
Clinical and Sports Massage Therapist
About Grant Grant has been involved in the fitness industry for the last 23 years. Prior to being a Sports Massage Therapist, he started off as a gym instructor, then gym manager, having gained qualifications as a YMCA Teacher of Fitness Training, a YMCA Aerobics Instructor, a Nabba Gym Instructor and a Schwinn Spinning Instructor, before becoming a personal trainer. As a personal trainer he wrote articles for Good Housekeeping and the Staffordshire life, and various local publications in Staffordshire, as well as working on local radio. He was registered with the NRPT and worked as an area mentor for other personal trainers. In 1996 he became interested in rehabilitation and in 1997 qualified as a Sports Massage Practitioner and in the same year took a Masters diploma in Clinical Sports Massage, and has since taken other qualifications in Sports Massage Therapy. He is a great believer in being involved in sport and exercise himself, having taken part in various sports over the years such as Martial Arts, running, and weights, before getting involved in track cycling, and he still cycles 100km-150km per week.
Work Experience In the 16 years of being qualified he has worked at the highest level. He has been a tutor for ITEC Sports Massage at Naturaclass Massage School in Fuengirola. He worked at numerous U.K.A. meetings from 2000-2006. He was GB Masseur in 2004 at Norwich Union International. 2003 Masseur on the IAAF World Indoor Athletic Championship. He has also worked on various television/stage shows such as Gladiators, Ice Warriors, Peak Practice and Grease the musical. He also worked for a couple of football teams such as Stoke City and Hibernian.
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Maybe sharp words and not hard objects are what got you in this game. You got picked on so you picked up the iron. As you grew, the insults faded. Today, you’re bigger than ever. But go below the skin and there could be trouble. Muscles without strong and flexible joints, tendons and ligaments can lead to serious injury and take you out of the game. It’s easy to build a big house, but how do you reinforce a foundation you can’t see? For the past seven years, Animal Flex has been leading the pack as the #1 rated, award-winning, comprehensive joint supplement in the world. Think of it as supplemental insurance for your joints. After all, if tons of elite lifters put their faith in Animal Flex, shouldn’t you? So the next time you put it all on the line, pull yourself together and lift fearlessly.
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Baby cured of AIDS? A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists have announced, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who’s now two and a half years old and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection. There’s no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered just traces of the virus’ genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world’s second reported cure. A doctor gave this baby faster and stronger treatment than is usual, starting a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of birth. That was before tests confirmed the infant was infected and not just at risk from a mother whose HIV wasn’t diagnosed until she was in labour. “I just felt like this baby was at higher-thannormal risk, and deserved our best shot,” Dr. Hannah Gay, a paediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, said in an interview. That fast action apparently knocked out HIV in the baby’s blood before it could form hideouts in the body. Those so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She led the investigation that deemed the child “functionally cured,” meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven’t been completely eradicated. Next, Persaud’s team is planning a study to try to prove that, with more aggressive treatment of other high-risk babies. “Maybe we’ll be able to block this reservoir seeding,” Persaud said. No one should stop anti-AIDS drugs as a result of this case, Fauci cautioned. But “it opens up a lot of doors” to research if other children can be helped, he said.
Stomach cancer ‘spotted by breath test’ A quick and simple breath test can diagnose stomach cancer, study findings reveal. Scientists from Israel and China found the test was 90% accurate at detecting and distinguishing cancers from other stomach complaints in 130 patients. The British Journal of Cancer says the test could revolutionise and speed up the way this cancer is diagnosed. About 7,000 UK people develop stomach cancer each year and most have an advanced stage of the disease. Two-fifths of patients survive for at least a year, but only a fifth are still alive after five years, despite treatment. The new test looks for chemical profiles in exhaled breath that are unique to patients with stomach cancer. Cancer appears to give off a signature smell of volatile organic compounds that can be detected using the right technical medical kit - and perhaps even dogs.
A 10-year study of more than 3,000 women has found that dietary iron may reduce the risk for premenstrual syndrome, while potassium intake may increase it. Using data from a larger analysis of women’s health, researchers studied 1,057 women with PMS and 1,968 control subjects. They used questionnaires to establish their nutrient intake, both food and supplements, and established cases of PMS by clinical diagnosis. After controlling for various health and dietary factors, they found that women in the highest 20 percent for iron intake were about 40 percent less likely to suffer PMS as those in the lowest 20 percent.
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DO YOU SUFFER... Muscular aches, pains, injuries, stress or tension? Contact
Clinical & Sports Massage Therapist
GRANT FOSTER
16 years experience, 9 years in Spain
info@sportstherapymarbella.com www.sportstherapymarbella.com
PA Y
667 862 475
G FOR E 5 FR T O SES EE N SION ! E S
Previously: ITEC sports massage tutor, UK athletics therapist, 2003 IAAF World Indoor Athletics, Gladiators, Stoke City.
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Sperm:
when is it at its healthiest?
Autumn is the time of year most associated with bumper crops of new babies, and according to an Israeli study there may be a scientific reason for it: human sperm are generally at their healthiest in winter and early spring. Based on samples from more than 6,000 men treated for infertility, researchers writing in American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology found sperm in greater numbers, with faster swimming speeds and fewer abnormalities in semen made during the winter, with a steady decline in quality from spring onward. “The winter and spring semen patterns are compatible with increased fecundability and may be a plausible explanation of the peak number of deliveries during the fall,” wrote lead researcher Eliahu Levitas from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva. If there is a seasonal pattern, they said, that knowledge may “be of paramount importance, especially in couples with malerelated infertility struggling with unsuccessful and prolonged fertility treatments.”
For example, those men produced about 70 million sperm per millilitre of semen during the winter. About 5 per cent of those sperm had “fast” motility, or swimming speed, which improves a couple’s chance of getting pregnant. For the new study, Levitas and his colleagues collected and analysed 6.455 semen samples from men at their fertility clinic between January 2006 and July 2009. Of those, 4,960 were found to have normal sperm production, and 1,495 had abnormal production, such as low sperm counts. The World Health Organization defines anything over 16 million sperm per millilitre of semen as a normal sperm count. Taking into account the approximately 70 days it takes for the body to produce a sperm cell, the researchers found that men with normal sperm production had the healthiest sperm in the winter.
That compared to the approximately 68 million sperm per millilitre the men produced in the spring, of which only about 3 per cent were “fast.” For men with abnormal sperm production, however, the pattern didn’t hold. Those men showed a slight trend toward better motility during the fall and made the largest percentage of normal shaped sperm - about 7 per cent during the spring. Based on the results the (normal) semen will perform better in winter, whereas infertility cases related to low sperm counts should be encouraged to choose spring and fall.
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6 WAYS TO SAVE TIME IN THE GYM Working 40 hours a week, family responsibilities, social engagements… with such busy schedules, it’s no surprise that many of us are trying to minimise the time we spend at the gym or in fact use those reasons as an excuse not to go to the gym at all!
Avoid Socialising
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Although some of you actually use this as a reason to go to the gym, saying hello to everyone and finding out about the local gossip can eat away at your precious training time quicker than anything. I am not saying be impolite to people you know but a quick, ‘hello’, then head phones in your ear and starting your workout straight away will politely tell people that you do not want to be bothered and that you are there to train.
Prepare Yourself
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Before going to the gym, make sure you are fully prepared. Untangle your headphones, create a playlist at home, fill your water bottle… all of these things add up and waste precious gym time, so make sure you’re ready to go as soon as you step onto the gym floor.
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Do Something You Enjoy Exercise can seem like a chore if it’s something you don’t enjoy, so find an activity that helps you burn calories while boosting your mood and relieving stress at the same time. After a frustrating day, for example, try a yoga class to find your happy place while strengthening and stretching your muscles.
Avoid Peak Hours
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If possible, schedule your workouts around peak hours when other gym goers are also trying to fit in their workouts. That way, you have your choice of exercise equipment and avoid waiting for your favourite machine. Added benefit is some gyms now offer off peak prices so you actually save money too. It’s a win-win situation!
Utilise High-Intensity Intervals
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Even though you might want to minimise the time you spend at the gym, you can still maximize your workout with some high-intensity intervals, which burn some serious calories. Try alternating one minute of high-intensity activity with two minutes of steady-paced exercise. For example, try sprinting intervals during your treadmill workout or adding bursts of plyometrics to your strength training routine.
Multitask Your Muscles Another way to maximise your calorie burn is by performing multiple moves that work several muscles at once. For instance, do crunches on a stability ball to engage your entire core as well as your arms and legs. The more muscles you can work at once, the less time you’ll spend at the gym.
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