How A Weight Lifting Belt Helps Prevent Injuries
If you’ve tweaked your back recently, one thing that you can do, if you have a doctor’s approval, to protect your back while you still go to the gym and lift, is to wear a weight lifting belt. These belts will help your back to support itself and you will be at a lesser risk for injury by wearing the belt. But how does the belt actually work?
Lifting belts work by utilizing something known to scientists as inter-abdominal pressure. Normally your abdomen has a certain level of pressure in it. Normally you can increase this pressure yourself by sucking in your stomach and clenching your abs. What happens when you wear a belt is that the back of the belt keeps your back in strict alignment and doesn’t allow it to bow out backwards. The front of the belt meanwhile, is tightened and pushes your insides together, increasing inter-abdominal pressure.
In short, what increased inter-abdominal pressure does is it allows your spine something to rest itself against. This means the tiny stabilizer muscles in your back don’t have to work as hard and can relax, even if it’s just ever-so-slightly. This keeps your back in alignment and makes sure that you most likely won’t tweak it again.
However, it is important to note that a belt will not prevent all injuries. You will still have to maintain good form while you are lifting and engage your core. If you don’t you can still get injured even with a belt on. Or, even if you don’t get injured with a belt on, once you attempt to lift without one on you run and extremely high chance of getting injured.
Using a weight lifting belt is a great way to help protect your back and help present injuries to it heal faster. However, always make sure to use it right so you don’t end up getting even more injured down the road!
Why I Use Cherries for Gout
I've had gout for almost twenty years and it wasn't until the past four to five years that I finally got it under control. How did I accomplish this? I followed a friend's advice and started eating cherries. Cherries and gout therapy have gone hand in hand for many people for a long time, but I had never really considered it until my friend mentioned trying it. I was taking gout medication and it really was not reducing the number of gout attacks I was having so I figured why not? Now that it's been four to five years, why do I continue to use cherries to as one of my main gout treatments?
First of all, continue to use cherries because I believe they work. I can say that since I began using "cherry therapy" I have significantly reduced my flare ups from two to three times a month to once to twice a year. If you've ever had gout, you know that is something to get excited about.
Second, U.S. government studies at the Department of Agriculture found in 2003 that cherries can indeed reduce swelling. The USDA was trying to confirm a study done in California. What they found was that among test subjects, four common inflammation markers went down after the patients consumed bing cherries. Why is this important? The irritation of the uric acid crystals in the joints creates swelling and pain. Reducing the swelling, reduces the pain during an attack.
Third, cherries help reduce uric acid in the body. Since uric acid crystallization is what creates gout, reducing uric acid is vital to treating this disease. Separate studies showed vitamin C and potassium in cherries work both to lower uric acid and also to make uric acid more easy to excrete out of the body. Both these abilities help reduce uric acid and reduce the chance of crystallization.
I use cherries because since I began my attacks have declined dramatically. I attribute this to their ability to not only help reduce painful swelling, but also their ability to lower uric acid that creates the swelling in the first place. Give cherries a try. I don't think you'll regret it.