Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

The Importance of Knowing First Aid

There is an importance of understanding how to give first aid or CPR. Taking a class on first aid can be done at a local community center or hospital. Whilst taking such a class, these are the items an individual will most probably learn. As an individual learns what to do in their first aid class, they will get taught the A-B-C?s of first aid.

Now, this does not mean A-B-C as in bullet points, no, this is a mnemonic motto. So, whilst administering first aid to anybody, they should be getting help from a trained person for clearing their Airway, Breathing properly or Circulation in their heart.

An airway which is blocked has to be attended to immediately. Being able to clear anyone?s airway is important for supporting their life. If the airway is not open, it will most likely affect that person?s mind and body functions. In turn, this will cause a sudden deterioration of that person?s life.

As you can see, having an open airway allows a person to respond to you and sustain their life. The open airway also keeps oxygen going to the brain. Without oxygen to our brain, there may be permanent injury too. Just as important as opening a person?s airway is, so too is helping them to breathe again.

These two aspects, airway and breathing, may seem the same to you, but they have two separate functions for a first aid responder to achieve. When it comes to breathing, that person will need some help. Once the airway is open, they might not be breathing properly.

Having a person breathe, on their own, is just as crucial as having an open airway. Both of these functions require the passage of oxygen to the brain and this is why the objective of a first aid responder is to help that person breathing again without assistance.

Just as vital as opening the airway and breathing is, so too is allowing circulation to the heart. The human heart is an amazing muscle but when a person?s heart is in trouble, they will require urgent care in order to make certain that they remain alive.

If the human heart is not receiving oxygen and beating as meant, there might be a loss of life. Every step given to an injured person, from a first aid responder, is vital. Every action received, in the order given, is also vital.

All three A-B-C measures above, having been learned in a CPR class, and then used as taught by a first aid responder is vital to the survival of the injured person. In fact, seeing if a person has a pulse and is breathing is the first thing to be done while helping a person in trouble.

As recently as 2010, the American Heart Association requested that the A-B-C?s be converted to C-A-B. Now, when performing first aid on an adult, it is recommended to do chest compressions first, and then see if the airway is open and if a person can breathe on their own. The original A-B-C?s can still be utilized on infants and children.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on numerous subjects, but is currently concerned with wholesale first aid kits. If you have an interest in RC vehicles, please go over to our website now at First Aid Courses Online.

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Stress Headaches And How To Treat Them

We all have headaches from time to time, but do you know why you have those headaches? If you just get a headache from time to time, once every couple of of weeks or so, it is not much of a problem, but if you fear your next headache, then you almost certainly do have a problem.

Tension headaches are the most prevalent and tension can be related to stress, but there are also purely stress-related headaches. This type of headache can also be driven off by a tablet or two from the medicine cabinet, but it is better to get rid of the cause for the headache. Attack the reason not the symptom. The rest of this piece is about what to do with the different sorts of stress headaches.

Basically, a stress headache occurs once the obstacles that are presented to you engulf your ability to cope with them. Some people get on well with stress others deal with stress less well. Some people even prosper on it and others have taught themselves how to de-stress rapidly.

When a person comes across stressful situations, a little bit of our mental resistance against stress is worn away. This is fine and is normal, but then as other stresses happen there is less and less defence left to carry on. Trying to cope whilst you are starting to feel weaker and weaker will often bring on a stress headache.

Another reason why a stress headache is the most common kind of headache, is because other types of headache can bring on a stress headache as well. The best news is that almost all forms of headaches can be avoided or cured and a stress headache falls into this category.

There are, obviously pharmaceutical medicines to treat headaches and there are natural, home remedies as well but there are also non-medicinal methods of treating a stress headache. These other methods include: cognitive therapy, behavioural therapy and physical therapy.

These ways can be studied from books, night school groups, the local library, the Internet or by arrangement with your clinic or physician. It is well-worth learning how to use these techniques because taking drugs or medications can lead to headaches anyway.

Cognitive Therapy: seeks to ‘redirect’ stress headaches. In this course of action, the patient is taught to recognize what begins the stress symptoms and what the onset of a stress headache feels like. Then they are taught how to modify their response to these conditions.

Behavioural Therapy: is a way of changing your life style to prevent the incidence of a stress headache. For example, numerous people reach for comfort foodstuffs or alcohol once they become stressed, but it may be better for you to do something else, |when you feel a stress headache coming on.

Physical Therapy: tries using bio-feedback responses, so that once a stress headache begins, the sufferer strives using relaxation techniques (maybe yoga) in order to reduce their stress and possibly prevent the stress headache from occurring. Meditation, deep breathing and prayer are some of the other techniques that can be tried.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous subjects, but is currently concerned with school first aid kits. If you have an interest in RC vehicles, please go over to our website now at First Aid Courses Online.

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The Nicknames Of English Football Teams

A review of the nicknames used by English football teams reveals a beguiling insight into English social history over the last 150 years.

All soccer teams seem to get a nickname, bestowed upon them lovingly by their loyal fans. Although in one very famous case – that of Manchester United – the nickname of The Red Devils was actually invented by the club itself as a marketing ploy, copyrighted and eventually the Red Devil himself was incorporated in the team’s coat of arms.

The derivation of the name may seem obvious, or may be lost in the mists of time or even not known today.

In many cases the nickname is derived from the colour of the team?s shirts. Obvious examples of these include:

Chelsea – The Blues Burnley – the Clarets Watford – the Hornets Preston North End – The Lilywhites Liverpool – The Reds Newcastle United – The Magpies Coventry City – The Sky Blues Blackpool United – the Tangerines Weymouth – The Terras Cambridge United – the Yellows Hull City – the Tigers

Other nicknames are far more prosaic in origin, being based upon abbreviations or contractions of the team?s real name. Examples of these cases include :

Middlesbrough ? Boro Rochdale ? the Dale Gillingham ? the Gills Wigan Athletic ? the Latics Queens Park Rangers – QPR Blackburn Rovers ? The Rovers Aldershot Town ? The Shots Shrewsbury Town ? The Shrews Tottenham Hotspur – Spurs Swansea City ? The Swans Woverhampton Wanderers ? Wolves

Location plays an important part in a lot of team nicknames

Sunderland – The Black Cats (named after the Black cat gun battery which was located on the banks of the River Wear) Bournemouth – The Cherries (the stadium was built on the site of a cherry orchard) Carlisle United – The Cumbrians (Carlisle is in the county of Cumbria) Bristol Rovers – The Gas ( their old ground was located next to the gasworks) Torquay United – The Gulls (Torquay is beside the sea) Tamworth – The Lambs ( the team plays at The Lamb Ground, named after a local pub) Grimsby Town – The Mariners (Grimsby is on the coast) Rotherham United – The Millers ( the pitch is called Millmoor) Sheffield Wednesday – The Owls ( they play in an area of Sheffield known as Owlerton) Kettering Town – The Poppies ( their stadium was constructed on a poppy field) Blackburn Rovers – The Riversiders (their site is built on the banks of a river) Bolton Wanderers – The Trotters (in the 19th century the ground was located next to a piggery)

Other nicknames are derived from local occupations or industries:

Sheffield United – The Blades ( local links with cutlery manufacture) Burton Albion – The Brewers ( Burton is a major centre for the brewing industry ) Hereford United – The Bulls (from the local cattle industry) Wycombe Wanderers – The Chairboys ( local furniture industry) Northampton Town – The Cobblers (from the local boot and shoe industry) Yeovil Town – The Glovers (local links to the glove making industry ) Luton Town – The Hatters (Luton was for many years a centre for the production of hats) Crewe Alexander – The Railwaymen ( Crewe was constructed as a railway town

Finally, a short assortment of some of the more amusing, bizarre and obtuse derivations:

Charlton Athletic – The Addicks ( A corruption of the ward ?haddocks? after a neighbourhood fish and chip shop) Norwich City – The Canaries ( Norwich was a leading centre for the breeding of canaries. The team subsequently adopted the green and yellow of the Norwich Canary as their playing strip) Hartlepool United – The Monkey Hangers (During the Napoleonic wars the citizens of Hartlepool allegedly hung a monkey thinking it to be a French spy) Bury – The Shakers (The first Chairman of the club, J T Ingham said before a local derby game against Blackburn ?We will shake them, in fact we are the Shakers?) Peterborough United – The Posh (A previous manager of the team is reputed to have said ?We are looking for posh players for a posh team?)

We hope this look though the history behind the nicknames of English football teams has been amusing and informative.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.

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What Are Fad Diets?

A fad diet is a fashionable diet plan that purports to help you lose weight usually in a relatively short time. A fad diet usually attracts a lot of media attention, which then attracts a large number of overweight people to try it in order to get back in shape. Fad diets are often soon discredited, but they go on raising their head from time to time.

The grapefruit diet was or is an example of a fad diet. People wanted to accept as true that you could lose weight solely by eating. The food in this instance was grapefruits, but there is also a cabbage diet. The trouble with these fad diets is that their slimming effect is only temporary, because you cannot eat only cabbage or grapefruit for the rest of your life, so the weight comes back as soon as you go back to normal.

‘If you always do what you always done, you will always get what you always got’ is a true saying. But what is worse is that a lot of of these diets can be injurious to your health.

However, do not think that fad diets are a new trend. Fad diets or fad treatments have an ancient history going back to fake witch doctors, medicine men and quack doctors who doubled as barbers! Fad practitioners have a long and disreputable history and they are still alive and doing very well, thank you very much, today.

These days, medicine is too strictly regulated for them, so they have turned their attention to susceptible, desperate dieters. Most of those that take up a fad diet are overweight teens longing to look like their favourite movie star.

Fad diets usually concentrate on reducing or completely cutting out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about the rapid loss of weight. In fact, this rapid loss is due to the quick loss of water that these low-carb diets stimulate. Much of the fat might still be there, so that when you stop the diet, your body regains its normal amount of water and the lost weight is put back on just as fast as it was discarded.

In the normal course of events, carbohydrates are the source of energy for work and activity, but with these fad diets, the carbs are no longer there, so the body starts to break down its stockpile of fat. This may appear advantageous but it is not necessarily so. The ketones resulting from the breakdown of fat are excreted via urine and often increased volumes of urine, which can cause dehydration. People with certain medical conditions have to be very cautious too; diabetics, for example.

Fad diets are popular, but they can be very damaging to your body and when they do not have the desired result in the long-term, it can be very depressing leading to comfort eating. This is why many people begin a fad diet, lose weight and are radiant for a month or two, but then slip back when they are getting near to their ideal weight. They go back to their old ways and the weight begins to come back. They become depressed, convinced that they will never be able to lose weight; they comfort eat some more, maybe giving up any hope of regaining a normal weight permanently.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

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Are You Hindering Your Weight Loss Program?

If you would like to lose weight, you must have a plan, a route map to success. This is called a program or programme. There are thousands of programs, but many of them are just just batty. If they sound foolish, they probably are. Have you heard of the ‘cabbage water diet’? It sounds daft and it is. You cannot only drink cabbage water all your life!

Although there is a lot of claptrap talked about losing weight, there are some truths that have a role to play in nearly any program you choose to follow. One of these truths is that it is better to eat many small meals during the day (about 5-6), than to go all day without eating and then stuffing yourself at dinner in the evening. This is commonly called ‘grazing’.

Have you ever wondered why this might be so? Well, the fact is, that the average human body can only process about 250 calories an hour. If you eat more than that, you are almost certainly overloading your digestive system. This is why it matters, because if your body cannot handle all the calories that you give it, it will stockpile them.

Your body can only use up what it requires to fulfill the job that it is busy with, that is, what you are putting it through. If you are watching TV, most of those 250 will be stored. If you are exercising, most will be burned up. It stores the residue as body fat. Your body has learned through evolution that hard times will come, so it prepares for them. It is like us putting excess money in a savings account or people hoarding food if a bad winter is predicted.

However, these days in the West, we seldom face those lean times anymore. So, that fat is never used up and we just keep adding to it until we resolve, by choice, to limit our intake of calories or increase our amount of exercise.

Given this information, what can we do with it? Well, if you were to want to lose weight, you should be consuming no more than 1,500 calories a day (or whatever your program tells you), so 1,500 divided by 250 is six. if you ate 250 calories every other hour, that would give you twelve hours.

Therefore, eating light but often would be a beneficial strategy or program to follow, because firstly, you are only providing your body with what it needs, when it requires it and secondly, you are able to better maintain a steady blood sugar level, which means that you level out the spikes and troughs you experience in a normal day’s cycle.

Two hundred and fifty calories does not seem a lot, but it is surprising what it will stretch too, if you take the time to investigate. It is true that you will have to severely restrict some foodstuffs, like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, but whoever seriously thought that you could lose weight by eating that stuff anyway?

If you do not have time to cook several times every day, look in your supermarket. There are loads of ‘250 calorie’ microwave meals. You don’t want to eat that? I can’t blame you. so get a good cookbook, which shows calorie content. You are at work all day? OK, eat some fruit, but choose wisely. It can be done, it only takes a little determination and planning.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

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