Is Being Tan for A Week Worth It When It Comes With A Greater Risk for Melanoma?

For those of you who still think being tan is in vogue, you might want to stop and listen.  Especially for those of you who are regular visitors to the local tanning salons.  In fact a new study finds that melanoma is on the rise, in particular in young women.  And it looks as though tanning and tanning beds might be one of the reasons for this rise in skin cancer.

According to the Mayo Clinic, women under 40 years of age are the hardest hit by skin cancer.  From 1970 to 2009 the numbers increased eightfold among women and fourfold for men, from ages 18-39.  The study went on to explore behaviors that might increase risks for melanoma, and voluntary exposure to artificial sunlamps was found to be prevalent among the females studied.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they explained concern about “melanoma rates and the damage done by early exposure to sun, but also the increasing use of tanning beds.”  While many types of cancers are on the decline, melanoma seems to be on the rise.

According to the National Institutes of Health, excess exposure to ultraviolet light increases risk for all skin cancers.  UV light is invisible radiation that can damage DNA in the skin and can be generated from sunlight, sunlamps and tanning beds.  People with fair skin are at greater risk, as they have less pigmentation to protect the body from UV radiation.  Other risk factors include severe sunburns as a child, unusual number of moles, a family history of melanoma and exposure to UV light.  Symptoms include changes in an existing mole or development or an unusual growth on your skin. 

The tanning industry defends that tanning lamps do not increase risks.  They state there is no consensus among researchers regarding melanoma and UV exposure from the sun or a tanning bed. 

For some reason, despite the questions surrounding the safety of the sun for our skin and melanoma, people still think we look healthier and more beautiful if we are tan.  Young women everywhere are still eager to get tan before the prom, to get an early start for their beach vacations or to look less pale in the dreary days of winter.  Perhaps they need to stop and think about what this is worth to them.  Tan for a day or a week versus being healthy and skin cancer-free for a lifetime? Seems like a simple answer to me.

Koach Marlo

Tennis Anyone!

Warming up to play the game
by
John McDermott, M.Ed, F.A.F.S.

When preparing to play the game of tennis, we must handle the compensations for the task at hand prior to ever hitting the ball. These compensations happen at the shoulder, elbow and wrist/hand as I have many clients that come into to me complaining of bursitis, tendonitis and even carpal tunnel just from performing and activity that supposed to make them healthier! Other areas of compensation are the hips, knees and even the big toe.

We will start looking at what we can do prior to playing as well as first thing each day to help us better prepare for this chaotic challenge to the body.



Shoulders: Perform a series of controlled arm swings in a circular motion while keeping the shoulder down (shoulder packed position). This allows you to break up any adhesions that may have formed there and brings blood and nutrition to the area to warm up the joint. Do these straight, across the body and behind the body ( 10 repetitions) to cover all planes of motion. If you find it is difficult keeping the shoulder down, shave off the range of motion and only go as far as you can successfully pack this shoulder. If the shoulder loses contact with the upper arm bone (humerous) while hitting, the force will transfer down the arm resulting in some of the conditions commonly seen with this sport activity.



Elbow: Next we will move down to the elbow. Always do shoulder first, then elbow, then wrist. Proper sequence is important. Start by keeping the upper arm parallel to the ground, point the thumb toward the nose. Rotate the thumb out as much as you can comfortably as you extend the arm forward. You may hear and feel some pops and cracks. This is perfectly fine as long as the pain is not severe (3 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being severe). It’s important to move through a full range of extension available. Once you reach the end range, turn the thumb over and rotate back in. Continue this for 10 repetitions slow and controlled.



Wrist/fingers: Wrist flexion/extension is the first motion to be performed. Hold your arm parallel to the ground and using your wrist as a driver (initiator), pull up as far as you can comfortably and then drive down in the same fashion. If you want to do these while holding your racket that’s fine. Perform 10 repetitions before turning your thumb up and positioning for the next movement which is lateral deviations. Lateral deviations are performed by once again directing the space in your hand where the thumb ends and the wrist begins up toward the sky. Drive down by bringing those areas closer together. Lateral deviations is considered the forgotten motion in the wrist, especially in the day and age of the cell phone/texting craze. Loss of this motion at the wrist will cause excessive lateral motion at the elbow, resulting in lateral epicondilitis or it’s better marketed name, Tennis Elbow!!



Hips/trunk/feet: The last warm-up we will discuss will emphasize the lower body and core. Position yourself facing the fence with your arms above your head (on the fence) as high as is comfortable (this activates the core). Place one foot in front of the other. Lift the front knee until it is parallel to the ground. Using the front knee as a driver, begin to move it toward the fence for 5 repetitions while bending the back knee simultaneously. On the 5^th repetition, stop a few inches from the fence and hold. Begin sliding the knee side to side keeping the same distance from the fence (note the motion you are getting in the opposite hip). On the 5^th repetition in this direction hold in the center and begin to rotate the knee outward and then all the way across to the other side (again note the movement on the opposite hip). Repeat this on the opposite leg, and then repeat the entire sequence with the back leg straight.

Now you’re ready for bed, uh, I mean tennis! This sequence of warm-up exercises should be done in the order I listed them here. In function we call this a top down strategy because we are starting from the top of the head and working our way down. Good luck and have fun!

Military Circuit Training

Parents vs Childhood Obesity

(HealthDay News) -- Many American parents fail to see that their children are overweight or obese, a new poll finds. Only 15 percent of parents said their children are a little or very overweight, but national statistics suggest that 32 percent of kids are overweight or even obese, according to the researchers. In addition, only 20 percent of children in the survey had a parent who was worried that his or her child will be overweight as an adult. However, an estimated 69 percent of American adults are overweight, including 36 percent who are obese and 6 percent who are extremely obese.

The poll results suggest that many parents underestimate their children's current risk for being overweight or obese, and how that risk could continue to affect them as adults, the researchers said. The survey, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Harvard School of Public Health and NPR, asked parents about their children, ages 2 to 17. "We know that nearly one in three kids in America is overweight or obese, and that's a national emergency," Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a foundation news release.
 
"Better nutrition and more physical activity can help turn this epidemic around, and parents have a unique role to play. Knowing the risks of obesity and dealing with the issue proactively can improve kids' health now and prevent serious problems down the road," she said. Gillian SteelFisher is assistant director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program and a research scientist in the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. She said in the news release: "People often have a hard time making the connection between national problems and their own families. Tackling these blind spots can be a difficult, even if necessary, element of public education."
Even though nearly all the parents in the poll agreed that it's important for their children to have eating and exercise habits that help them maintain or achieve a healthy weight, 44 percent of parents said it was difficult to make sure their children have a healthy diet and 36 percent of parents said it was a challenge to make sure their children get enough exercise. The poll also found that between 3 p.m. and bedtime, 60 percent of children ate or drank something that can lead to unhealthy weight gain.

Parents listed a number of challenges they face in trying to help their children maintain or achieve a healthy weight: food advertising (43 percent); foods offered at lunch at school (33 percent); the costs of team sports, gym memberships or exercise equipment (33 percent); lack of good sidewalks near home (31 percent); too few places that serve healthy foods where children can spend time with friends (31 percent). Seventy percent of children in the survey live in households where the family eats dinner together at home on a given night, but 24 percent of the families had the TV on during dinner, or someone used a cellphone, laptop or an iPod during dinner. Only 46 percent of the children live in homes where the family eats together without these distractions. Research suggests that meals without TV and other distractions are associated with lower obesity rates. 

Nearly all -- 96 percent -- of the children in the survey had attended family events in the past year where foods with high levels of fat or sugar (such as chips, fried foods, fast foods and sweets) were served. Among those children, 48 percent live in homes where the parent feels that "family celebrations are a time to take a break from being concerned about eating in a way that can lead to unhealthy weight gain," the researchers found.

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Returning to the Heart of our Ancient Understandings

Before written language, the jnana or knowledge of the rishis was encoded into mythological stories. This included advanced geometry, architectural and engineering concepts, the mathematical constant of the universe, and astronomy, including coordinate planes, precession and its nested cycles of evolving space/time. Our sciences have still not rediscovered all that the ancients knew. 


Facts and details are more difficult to remember than fantastical characters and their unusual experiences and so they were conveyed as stories – written to be remembered and translated by the teller. Sadly, much of the underlying meaning has been lost or poorly interpreted. For most of us, it’s difficult to see mythology as anything but a collection of amusing, tall tales. 



Throughout human history, myths have united us, drawn us into the interior reality, and associated us with the greater whole of creation. They transform the profane into the sacred and create a deep sense of connection to the world and its beings, things and phenomena. This exactly describes the goals of the modern conscious or spiritual revolution and the true aims of yoga. We want to connect with each other and with life’s deeper meaning. We want the living experience to be infused with sacrality and we want to fearlessly rise into the fullness of our human potential. 



Our search for life’s meaning is actually a search for our lost mythology. We are all of the characters in the Sanskrit epics and sacred texts – the gods and demons, the kings and magical entities. They represent the states of being that are realizable within us. As we reconnect with ancestral wisdom, we can reconnect with the deep well of our own internal wisdom and can begin to know and live from the inside-out rather than from the outside-in. 



You can Konnect with the mythological characters and their adventures and misadventures in my Mythic Power Yoga, a premium playshop, series or weekly class at participating studios. You’ll find me for the next three months on Mondays from 6:00-7:30PM at Shri Life Yoga Studio, 4550 PGA Blvd #201 in Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418. Don't forget to visit my Personal K-Page at Madison Moore.