Last years of 2020 & 2021 were pretty rough year for most of the world population regarding health and wellness. While some people fared ok, many took many steps backward in being healthy and well. The exact measures many people have been taking to stay safe, have actually been contributing to them becoming less healthy. Staying inside dramatically affected positive social interactions, options to exercise and staying active, fresh air intake as well as less sunlight on the skin to help synthesize vitamin D. Vitamin D is a key component to maintaining innate (natural immunity) and bone health. This issue alone, will contribute to an increase in osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis or low bone mass, is a disease that causes bones to become thin, brittle and weak, making bones more likely to break, most often from a minor fall. The most common bones that are affected are the spine, wrist or hip. Osteoporosis is often called a “silent disease.” You can’t feel or see your bones getting thinner. Many people do not even know that they have thin bones until a bone breaks. Most people with this issue don’t die from osteoporosis, but rather from complications that follow from falling or breaking brittle bones while out and about.
Osteoporosis is a major public health issue with an estimated 44 million Americans, or for more than half of those 50 or older. In the United States, almost 1 out of 2 Caucasian or Asian women over 50 will experience a broken bone due to osteoporosis. 24 percent of hip fracture patients age 50 and over die in the year following the fracture. Six months after a hip fracture, only 15 percent of patients can walk across a room unaided.
Things you can do to prevent loss of bone mass:
A bone mineral density (BMD) test can diagnose osteoporosis.
Eat a variety of healthy (nutrient-rich) foods every day.
Get the calcium you need.
Get the recommended amount of vitamin D.
Get some sunlight on your body everyday (helps the body synthesize vitamin D)
Don’t smoke
Limit alcohol.
Take action to prevent falls
Exercise regularly with appropriate methods for your personal situation, limits and expectations
Being physically active can help prevent bone loss leading to osteoporosis. Your bones get stronger and denser when you make them work. Walking, climbing stairs, and dancing are impact (or weight-bearing) exercises that strengthen your bones by moving your body against gravity when you are upright. Resistance exercises, such as lifting weights or using exercise bands, strengthen your bones as well as your muscles.
Tai Chi and qigong like in this video are perfect examples of physical activity that improves posture and balance to help decrease your risk for falls and fractures. Tai chi can also strengthen the bones themselves by reacting to the tension that exercise puts on the muscles and consequently the bones. If the bones are not engaged in everyday use, osteoporosis can find its way into the body. Exercise can be easy; try 10 minutes at a time, adding up the minutes to reach your goal.
I offer instruction in qigong, Taoist yoga, tai chi, martial arts, ship pal gye, hapkido, fitness, wellness and many other avenues to improve health and well-being.
I am currently accepting new clients for group, small group & private instruction.
Managing High Blood Pressure Using Qigong Practices
High blood pressure or hypertension (HTN) is a major public health issue affecting almost a billion people worldwide. HTN is often called a “silent killer” because while it has no obvious symptoms, untreated HTN can often lead to strokes, heart attacks and other health issues. As of 2015, an estimated 75 million adults in the U.S. had HTN.
Management of hypertension is typically addressed through lifestyle changes, diet and antihypertensive medications. A diet high in vegetables, fruits, and low-fat dairy type foods can help lower blood pressure among people having hypertension, as well as those without. Also, a diet low in sodium can also help to lower blood pressure across age, gender, race, weight, and physical activity subgroups. Other methods for lowering high blood pressure can include weight reduction if overweight or obese, increasing physical activity, and moderate alcohol consumption.1
High blood pressure or hypertension is a disease in itself but also a major risk factor for other diseases. Normal blood pressure is typically 120 systolic (maximum pressure during one heartbeat) over 80 diastolic (minimum pressure between two heartbeats). Systolic blood pressure over 115 mmHg is usually considered as higher than normal. An average and sustained blood pressure of 140/90 would be defined as hypertension and considered to put an individual at risk of specific health issues. Medical studies have shown that an increase of hypertension is connected to an increasing rate of cardiovascular issues such as heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, myocardial infarction, and premature mortality.
Blood pressure over 180/110 mmHg, if left untreated can overcome normal microvascular autoregulation. This can often lead to severe damage to the body’s blood circulation within the smallest blood vessels (microcirculation) resulting in a syndrome of accelerated or malignant hypertension and possibly cerebral hemorrhage where there is bleeding in or around the brain, which can be immediate threats to one’s life.2
information from the Mayo Clinic lists various factors that can put someone at a higher risk of experiencing hypertension and its relative ailments:
Age. As people grow older, the risk of high blood pressure increases. Up until around age 64, hypertension is more common with men. Women after age 65, are at higher risk of having high blood pressure.
Race. Those of African heritage often acquire high blood pressure earlier in life and more often than other ethnicities. Serious complications related to hypertension such as heart attack, kidney failure and stroke are more common in those of African heritage.
Family history. High blood pressure has a tendency to be hereditary.
Obesity and overweight. The more someone weighs, the more oxygen and nutrients are needed to be transported through the blood to tissues. Increased blood flow increases the pressure on the blood vessel walls throughout the body.
Lack of physical activity. People who are more sedentary often have higher heart rates making the heart having to work more with each contraction. Less physical activity also contributes to the risk of being overweight or obese.
Smoking and tobacco use. Smoking or chewing tobacco can immediately raise blood pressure temporarily, while the chemicals in tobacco may cause damage to the lining of the artery walls.
High salt (sodium) diet. High sodium in your diet may cause the body to retain fluid, which leads to an increase in blood pressure.
Low potassium diet. Potassium helps keep the balance of the amount of sodium in the cells of our body. If there is not enough potassium in our diet, sodium can build up in the blood.
Excess alcohol consumption. Excessive drinking can cause damage to the heart. More than one drink per day for women and more than two drinks per day for men can affect blood pressure.
Stress. Stress left unchecked can cause a temporary increase in blood pressure. Habits related to stress like binge eating, tobacco use and excess alcohol can lead to further increases of blood pressure.
Chronic conditions. Certain chronic conditions can also increase risk of high blood pressure. These would include diabetes, kidney disease and sleep apnea.3
In recent years, news and media outlets have brought some attention to complementary alternative medicine (CAM) as options to use with or without pharmaceutical approaches to manage high blood pressure. Among these methods would be meditation, tai chi, qigong and its root origin of yoga. A research study conducted in 2015 titled Qigong for Hypertension: A Systematic Review, investigated the use of qigong practices for hypertension. It was widely distributed through various internet outlets such as PubMed, NCBI, Medicine, ResearchGate, Harvard Library and others.
Qigong has its root origin in yoga. Tai chi and daoyin are types of qigong (or basically yoga) where the body is trained to perform “yoga in motion” where exercises are linked together to form sets of movements. While all of these methods have quite different names, they all share the same Eastern Indian origins and similar philosophy. All of these types of exercise use mindful breathing with deliberate body positioning. The mind is focused inward on one’s thoughts, breathing and posture. All have elements for mind, body & spiritual (or higher consciousness) development. These practices have been practiced for thousands of years (origins between 5000-1500 BC), and Tai Chi originated in the 12th century. The following is a basic translation of these methods:
Qi, chi or gi = air, energy, or breath
Gong or kung = work or effort
Qigong = energy or breath work
Daoyin = guide the qi, stretch the body (sometimes referred to as Taoist yoga)
Tai chi, taiji, tai chi chuan = supreme ultimate fist
Yoga = to join or unite
The systematic review of this study was conducted in coherence with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Only RCTs investigating the effects of qigong on high blood pressure (hypertension) were included. The results from this meta-analysis study suggests that qigong is an effective therapy for hypertension.
At the time of this study in 2015, China had roughly 5% of its 1.3 billion population practicing qigong on a regular basis. They believe qigong to improve health, prevent illness, and extend life by addressing a wide range of ailments and conditions. These ailments would include hypertension, chronic pain, fatigue, stress, movement disorders, cancer, depression, anxiety, heart failure, coronary heart disease, cardiac rehabilitation, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immune function and to enhance the overall quality of life (QOL). Qigong here is widely practiced by middle-aged and elderly people, many who cannot engage in moderate-to-vigorous–intensity aerobic exercise. This makes qigong more appropriate for elderly patients, being a gentle alternative to intense physical activities. Static (non-moving) qigong can be practiced which has even lower physical demands.
The results from this meta-analysis study suggests that qigong is an effective therapy for hypertension. Qigong is better than no intervention but with antihypertensive drugs. However, it was found that qigong was inferior to exercise in lowering high blood pressure. Additionally, qigong used as a supplemental therapy to antihypertensive drugs, can significantly lower hypertension. Qigong could be recommended as a complementary intervention for hypertensive patients.
If other well-designed RCTs were to offer a high quality of methodology confirming that qigong is beneficial, it could be used as a recommended evidence-based complementary or alternative therapy for the management of high blood pressure on a global scale.
Due to inferior systematic quality of some of the included studies, further RCTs with strictly designed methods need to be pursued along with long-term follow-up focusing on definitive clinical outcomes are required in order to confirm the results. From here, a higher level of evidence could support qigong as an alternative to regular conventional exercise for elderly patients. In contrast, negative outcomes can challenge the clinical evidence supporting qigong.
A methodical search for literature was executed from 7 databases, from their respective inceptions up until April of 2014. These databases included PubMed, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Chinese Scientific Journal Database, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and the Wanfang database. Randomized controlled trials were a mixture identifying interventions of qigong as either practice alone (monotherapy) or adjunctive therapy with antihypertensive (high blood pressure lowering) drugs versus no intervention, exercise, or antihypertensive drugs for hypertension.
The controls included wait-list control, jogging, conventional exercises, no exercise, oryzanol, or antihypertensive drugs. Participants in the treatment group were given the same type and dosage of antihypertensive drugs, and with the same standard that was used for the control group. All studies were parallel-designed and single-centered.
A total of 2349 patients with hypertension were evaluated. Participants were of any age, gender, and ethnic origin, being clinically diagnosed as hypertensive in any stage, with at least 1 of the current or past guidelines or definitions of hypertension. Of the trials, 18 were held in China and 2 trials were conducted in South Korea. From data presented in the study, participant ages ranged from as young as 21 and as old as 84. The average age appeared to be in the mid 50’s. The data compiled in this study spanned from as early as 1959 up until 2014. The duration of qigong treatments ranged from 8 weeks to 12 months.
All studies showed qigong as either monotherapy or supplemental therapy to hypertension drugs in the treatment group. Two of the trials had a 3-group study design with 1 trial including jogging, qigong, and antihypertensive drugs groups, while the other trial included qigong plus antihypertensive drugs groups. Practice sessions for that practicing qigong, were usually at least 15 minutes long and sometimes up to 60 minutes. 1-2 practice sessions per day were reported in the data.4
I find it quite commendable that there was data compiled from over such a long period of time for this study. Qigong is so embedded within Asian culture for thousands of years, where in the United States it is relatively new to our country. I have found as usual with many of these medical studies regarding ancient Eastern methods, the researchers are careful to say that more research and investigation is required. Regardless of the research, these methods have been used for thousands of years by other cultures that look beyond the scientific data and see a strong correlation between the mind, body and spiritual connection affecting health and well-being.
I feel that qigong is a great method to reduce hypertension, having worked with hundreds of individuals over my 40 years of teaching these methods. Any methods that encourage mindful regulation of one’s breathing patterns, can have a profound positive effect on their autonomic nervous system. Management of the “fight or flight” response of the sympathetic nervous system or “rest and digest” response of the parasympathetic nervous system, is directly connected to the body’s autoregulation of the cardiovascular system and consequently high blood pressure.
References
1 Langford, A. T., Solid, C. A., Gann, L. C., Rabinowitz, E. P., Williams, S. K., & Seixas, A. A. (2018). Beliefs about the causes of hypertension and associations with pro-health behaviors. Health Psychology, 37(12), 1092–1101. https://doi-org.northernvermont.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/hea0000687
I offer instruction, lectures and seminars on qigong, Taoist yoga, tai chi, martial arts, ship pal gye, hapkido, fitness, wellness and many other avenues to improve health and well-being.
I am currently accepting new clients for group, small group & private instruction.
I thought I’d share my perspective on this subject of state of American health. Mostly just my opinion from my experiences as a father of 2 young adults and teacher (martial arts, wellness, qigong, Taoist yoga etc.) for almost 40 years. Yes, I am showing my age. When I was in elementary school in the 70’s, we had a 1/2-hour recess and 1-hour of physical education (PE) every school day. Middle & high school was PE everyday regardless of weather. I cannot remember more than 1-2 kids during that time as being labeled “hyperactive” however a lot more kids had trouble focusing and getting good grades in particular subjects; so focus had always been an issue on some level. Ritalin was the only medicine that I had even known to exist for a few young people, that had what was to in later decades diagnosed as ADHD.
Fast forward to the last 20 years of my life. My kids while in elementary school had recess for about 15-20 minutes a few days a week alternating with PE for two days a week. High school required 1 credit of PE over the 4 years of attendance; online or in person were the options. Talking with other parents and teachers over this time led me to understand that a large portion of kids were having ADHD, depression, anxiety, obesity and many other health issues that were dealt with through pharmaceuticals on a daily basis. Sports and PE were often not even considered as methods to manage these ailments. Getting good grades and into a good college are the main focus in high school, leaving little time for such non-academic pursuits of physical activities that actually make the mind work better.
Having discussed this issue with many school teachers that I knew as friends, most felt that less recess and PE was a major step backwards in child development. Additionally, these teachers felt that it was much more difficult for them to teach while attempting to harness the pent-up energy and emotions of kids sitting for hours on end throughout the school day. Most wished that recess and PE were brought back as a standard daily requirement.
So while I strongly believe that yoga and other mindful methods would be great (this is what I teach!) I would be very happy just to see regular exercise of running, swimming, calisthenics, and game play come back to all levels of school. So many benefits for the mind and body that are associated with whatever level of physical as well as mental and social engagement that are being left out of schools in lieu of more time spent on academics. If we are to have a strong and healthy population, we really need to be planting seeds of good health education and self-responsibility with our youth, in order to make it grow into the adult years.
I offer instruction in qigong, Taoist yoga, tai chi, martial arts, ship pal gye, hapkido, fitness, wellness and many other avenues to improve health and well-being.
I am currently accepting new clients for group, small group & private instruction.
Every thought, has an emotional attachment on some level. Positive emotions keep organs in balance for optimal performance. Negative emotions disrupt this balance leading to other symptoms and ailments.
What You Think Affects Your Outlook
If your thoughts have a mostly positive emotional attachment on some level, you may have more of an optimistic outlook in your life. Conversely, mostly negative emotions tend to make people have a somewhat pessimistic outlook in their life.
Managing our thoughts and consequently, our blood chemistry can be accomplished through mindful practices.
I offer instruction in qigong, Taoist yoga, tai chi, martial arts, ship pal gye, hapkido, fitness, wellness and many other avenues to improve health and well-being.
I am currently accepting new clients for group, small group & private instruction.
United Martial Arts Association 