Exercise and Physical Activity Ideas

Aerobic activity raises your heart rate and keeps it up for a while. This increases the amount of oxygen delivered to your heart and muscles. Over time, this kind of activity benefits your heart, your muscles, your mood and self-esteem, and your amount of energy. It can lower your blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, body fat, anxiety and depression, and fatigue.

Finding the right activity

Experts say to do regular moderate activity and/or vigorous-intensity activity.
Here are some ideas for both types of activities. You can boost many of the moderate activities in the left column to a vigorous level by doing them faster or harder.¹

Moderate intensity	Vigorous intensity
General exercise: Brisk walking Light to moderate calisthenics (for example, home exercises, back exercises, getting up and down from the floor) Low-impact aerobic dancing Jogging on a small trampoline Weight lifting, body building, using a lot of effort Light to moderate workouts on gym equipment like Nautilus or Universal machines or a rowing machine	General exercise: Walking uphill, jogging or running Heavy calisthenics (push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, etc.) High impact aerobic dancing Jumping rope Using a stair-climber or skiing machine Stationary bicycling, with vigorous effort
Water exercises: Treading water with moderate effort Water aerobics or water calisthenics Kayaking, canoeing, white-water rafting Springboard or platform diving Paddle boating	Water exercises: Swimming laps with fast, vigorous effort Treading water with fast, vigorous effort Water jogging Rowing a canoe in competition Skin diving and scuba diving
Outdoor activities: Fishing and hunting Playing with a Frisbee Children's games, like hopscotch, 4-square, and dodge ball Playing on playground equipment Downhill skiing Shoveling snow	Outdoor activities: Horseback riding—trotting or galloping Competitive sports like rugby, field hockey, and soccer Hiking with a backpack Mountain biking Ice skating quickly (more than 9 mph) Snowshoeing and cross-country skiing
House and yard work: Sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping floors Washing the car with vigorous effort Sweeping the garage, sidewalk, or patio Washing the dog Mowing or raking the lawn Digging in the garden	House and yard work: Carrying groceries upstairs Carrying boxes or furniture Baling hay or cleaning the barn with vigorous effort

Adding variety to a fitness program is a good way to keep motivated.

• Vary the activity. If you are getting bored with walking, try swimming or an aerobics class.
• Vary the place. Try a new route for walking or biking or even a different room for your exercises or stretching. By having several options, you can pick one that suits your mood or schedule.
• Vary the time. Do your exercises at different times and for different amounts of time. If you become bored with your noon walk, try exercising in the early morning or after work or school. Instead of doing one 45-minute session, do three 15-minute sessions.

Activity at the office

If your job includes lots of sitting, try adding these short bursts of activity to your day:

• Use your commute to do some extra walking. Park several blocks away, or get off the bus a few stops early.
• Use the stairs instead of the elevator, at least for a few floors.
• Suggest holding meetings with colleagues during a walk inside or outside the building.
• Go the extra distance when possible: Get your coffee on another floor (use the stairs) or use the restroom that's the farthest from your office.
• If you need to speak to a coworker, walk to that person's office or station rather than using e-mail or the phone.
• Use your morning and afternoon breaks to take quick 15-minute walks.

Coaching and teaching

If you are bored with a sport or activity you once enjoyed, coaching or giving instruction can renew your interest.

• Youth leagues for organized sports are often seeking good coaches.
• If you ski, offer instructions at a ski resort.
• If you cycle, offer to lead a group of schoolchildren on a bike ride to teach bicycle safety.
• Offer to lead an informal fitness class at your workplace during lunch or after work.

Competition

Competition can be a good motivator because:

• It gives you a specific and measurable goal to work toward.
• Learning the details of a new course or event and then preparing for it can restore the excitement and challenge that's gone from more familiar competitions.

Helping to plan or organize a competitive event instead of entering it can provide friendship and fun with others interested in the same activity.

Cross-training

Cross-training is the combination of various activities to spread the work among various muscle groups. Cross-training has some important advantages:

• It prevents boredom by providing variety. It can help you break out of a slump.
• It helps you maintain balance among your various muscle groups. For instance, runners who have developed powerful leg muscles might cross-train to strengthen the upper body, which does not get a good workout from running.
• It reduces the risk of injuries because the same muscles are not being stressed in the same way during every workout.

Some exercise machines, such as elliptical cross-trainers, can help you cross-train. Or you can use exercise machines that give variety to your program by working muscle groups that aren't heavily used in your primary activity.

Migraine Headaches

Is this topic for you?

This topic is about migraine headaches. If you are looking for information about tension headaches, see Tension Headaches.
If you are looking for information about headaches in children, see Headaches in Children.

What are migraine headaches?

Migraines are painful, throbbing headaches that last from 4 to 72 hours. When you have a migraine, it may be so painful that you are not able to do your usual activities. But even though migraines make you feel bad, they don't cause long-term damage.
Migraines are a health problem that can be treated. Talk to your doctor about your migraines.

What causes migraines?

Experts are not sure what causes migraines.
Migraines run in families, but it isn't clear why some people get migraines and others don't.
Some things can cause a migraine to start. These are called triggers. Your triggers may be different from someone else's. Some common triggers include:

• Stress.
• Not eating.
• Poor sleep habits.
• A change from your normal routine.
• Red wine.
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG).
• Strong odors.
• Chocolate.

What are the symptoms?

The main symptom of a migraine is a throbbing headache on one side of your head. You also may feel sick to your stomach and vomit. Activity, light, noise, or odors may make the migraine worse. The pain may move from one side of your head to the other, or you may feel it on both sides at the same time. Different people have different symptoms.
Some people have an aura before the migraine begins. When you have an aura, you may first see spots, wavy lines, or flashing lights. Your hands, arms, or face may tingle or feel numb. The aura usually starts about 30 minutes before the headache. But most people don't have auras.

How are migraines diagnosed?

A doctor can usually tell if you have a migraine by asking about your symptoms and examining you. You probably will not need lab tests, but your doctor may order some if he or she thinks your symptoms are caused by another disease.

How are they treated?

You can't cure migraines. But medicines and other treatments may help you feel better and limit how often you get migraines.
At first, your doctor may want you to try an over-the-counter pain medicine, such as acetaminophen, aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen. Brand names include Tylenol, Bayer, Advil, and Aleve. Some over-the-counter medicines (for example, Excedrin) combine acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine. If these medicines don't work, your doctor can prescribe stronger medicine to stop the migraine. Your doctor also may prescribe medicine to prevent migraines.
You may not be able to use some medicines if you are pregnant or have other health problems, such as heart problems.
If the first medicine doesn't work, ask your doctor if you can try something else. It may take time to find what works best for you.
Some people also use other kinds of treatments , such as acupuncture. These may help reduce the pain or the number of migraines you have.
When you feel a migraine coming on:

• Stop what you are doing, and take your medicine. Don't wait for the migraine to get worse. Take your medicine exactly as your doctor told you to.
• Rest in a quiet, dark room. Close your eyes, and try to relax or go to sleep. Don't watch TV or read. Put a cold pack or cool cloth on the painful area.

Be careful when you use your migraine medicines. Taking them too often can cause you to get another headache when you stop taking the medicine. This is called a rebound headache. If you are taking headache medicine more than 2 days a week, or if you get more than 3 headaches a month, talk to your doctor.

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Yoga Health Benefits

Yoga health benefits are vast as they help to stretch, tone and strengthen every part of the body; they also massage internal organs and allow the practitioner to find a healthy balance in life. Yoga benefits are evident. One simple recommendation: don’t overload. Yoga health benefits are countless as you will be stress free, smooth movements of your joints, reduces your joint pain and improvement of immunity system helps to fight with other diseases.
Stress is the number one suspect affecting all parts of our physical, endocrinal and emotional system. And with the help of yoga this things can be corrected. At the physical level, yoga and its cleansing practices have proven to be extremely effective for various disorders.

Listed below are just some of the yoga health benefits that you can get.

Yoga Benefit 1: Yoga is known to increase flexibility; yoga has postures that trigger the different joints of the body. Including those joints that are not acted upon with regular exercises routines.

Yoga Benefit 2: Yoga also increases the lubrication of joints, ligament and tendons. The well-researched yoga positions exercise the different tendons and ligaments of the body.It has also been found that the body which may have started doing yoga being a rigid one may experience a quite remarkable flexibility in the end on those parts of the body which have not been consciously worked upon.

Yoga Benefit 3: yoga also massages all organs of the body. Yoga is perhaps the only exercise that can work on through your internal organs in a thorough manner, including those that hardly get externally stimulated during our entire lifetime.

Yoga Benefit 4: Yoga acts in a wholesome manner on the various body parts.  This stimulation and massage of the organs in turn benefits us by keeping away disease and providing a forewarning at the first possible instance of a likely onset of disease or disorder. One of the far-reaching yoga health benefits  is the uncanny sense of awareness that it develops in the practitioner of an impending health disorder or infection. This in turn enables the person to take pre-emptive corrective action.

Yoga Benefit 5: Yoga offers a complete detoxification of the body. It gently stretches the muscles and joints as we;; as massaging the various organs, yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body.This helps in the flushing out of toxins from every nook and cranny of your body as well as providing nourishment up to the last point. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life.