local health brief
Lose Weight with Small Calorie Reduction A reduction of just 200 calories a day combined with aerobic exercise four times a week produced greater weight loss and better heart health in obese, sedentary adults than exercise alone or a 600-calorie reduction plus exercise, reports a new study in Circulation. Researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, tested 160 adults ages 65 to 79. Those that combined exercise with 200 fewer calories a day lost 10 percent of their weight, about 20 pounds, over five months. They had a 21 percent average increase in the aorta’s ability to expand and contract, a key indicator of heart health. Measures of aortic stiffness did not change significantly for the exercise-only group or the 600-calorie-reduction-plus-exercise group. Weight loss was similar for both calorie-reduction groups, even though one group consumed nearly three times fewer calories per day. mentatdgt /Pexels.com
Flowers Can Alleviate Holiday Blues
health briefs
Darryl Roberts, ND, is a practitioner at Haas Wellness Center, located at 3315 Springbank Ln., Ste. 102, in Charlotte. For more information, call 704 837-2420, email DoctorDarrylND@gmail.com or visit www.DoctorDarrylND.com. 10
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AwakeningCharlotte.com
Boost Kids’ Learning Abilities with Exercise The right kind of exercise can help kids learn vocabulary better, suggests research from the University of Delaware. An article published in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research reports that when 48 children between 6 and 12 years of age were taught new words before swimming, they scored 13 percent higher on a test of the words than children that did CrossFit-like exercises or colored pictures. Lead researcher Maddy Pruitt says that exercise is known to increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein she describes as the “Miracle-Gro of the brain.” Swimming made a difference, she says, because it is an automatic movement, while the CrossFit exercises were new to them and required mental energy. yulianto poitier/Pexels.com
The pandemic has created a great degree of emotional stress, and the uncertainty of how to get back to normal makes the holidays harder to navigate. Using nontoxic flower essences is one way to change our body frequency and lose the blues. Thousands of practitioners around the nation use flower essences with their clients or patients with great success. The subtle vibration, or energy, of flowers has been known for hundreds of years and has become more popular in the last few decades. Everything in nature has its own vibration that makes each animal, plant or raindrop unique. Putting these vibrations to work is as simple as introducing it to another vibration and observing the result. Flower essences show us that specific flowers hold the vibration to change frequency. For a person that is sad on the inside but covers it up with a smile, a few drops of agrimony under the tongue from a tincture prepared by a practitioner can help to combat those unbalanced emotions in a short period of time without the need for medication. Someone that has gained weight and is embarrassed or has fears of what others will think produces a very specific frequency. A combination of flower essences such as crab apple (for those with low self-image) and mimulus (for those with specific fears) can be made into a tincture for clearing this emotional state.
