Reiki – Mechanisms of Healing – Part 2

Fatigue and depleted energy could be addressed with weekly Swedish or Thai massages according to researchers at Teeside and Leeds Universities . One in 5 people experience excessive tiredness at any given time, while one in 10 people have chronic fatigue (Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2018). They invited 20 participants with fatigue and/or depleted energy to receive trestments with a massage therapist.  The participants all agreed to commit to a six-week study and complete diaries describing how they felt after their treatments.  The participants were split into two groups and half of them received three 45-minute sweedish massage treatments and then three Thai massages in weeks 4 ot 6.  The treatment order was reversed for the other ten participants. The results showed that both Swedish and Thai massage relieved symptoms of fatigue or depleted energy by

• reducing stress
• promoting relaxation
• relieving pain
• improving energy

High blood pressure is known as the silent killer becuase of its the link to heart attacks and strokes. The causes of high blood pressure are: Mental stress: Stress can have a severe impact on blood pressure, especially when it is chronic. It can occur as a result of both socioeconomic and psychosocial factors. Some aspects of sex: In general, high blood pressure is more common among adult men than adult women. However, after the age of 55 years, a woman's relative risk of hypertension increases. A recent study compared the impact of medication and exercise for reducing high systolic blood pressure.  The researchers reviewed 197 exercise randomised control trials and 194 randomised control trials looking at medication. While anti-hypertensive medications achived hight reductions in blood pressure that exercise.  Researches concluded that modest but consistent reductions in systolic blood pressure can be achieved with exercise. Reference

In part 1, I looked at the impact of sitting on your muscles,  and in part 2 I started to explore the impact on the rest of your body.  In this post I continue to explore the impact of sitting on your circulatory system including your heart. Heart Disease When sitting for prolonged periods of time, muscles burn less fat and blood flows more sluggishly, allowing fatty acids to more easily clog the heart.  In 2012 Ford & Caspersen in their research paper, Sedentary behaviour and cardiovascular disease: a review of prospective studies (International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 41, No 5 pages 1338 - 1353) showed that the people with the most sedentary time are more than twice as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the least. In 2012 Zedric and Hamilton found that just a few hours sitting suppresses a gene that helps keep your cardiovascular system healthy by controlling inflammation and blood clotting. T W Zedric & M T Hamilton, 2012 Identification of hemostatic genes expressed in human and rat leg muscles and a novel gene (LPP1/PAP2a) suppressed during prolonged physical inactivity (sitting), Lipids in Health and Disease, Vol 11 see http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1476-511X-11-137.pdf Cholesterol Sitting also means that your large postural support muscles are inactive.  When active these muscles produce a quite of beneficial molecules.  One molecule skeletal muscles produce is an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase - which you can think of as a vacuum cleaner for fats in the blood stream.  A study in rats showed that after 24 hours forced inactivity, their lipoprotein lipase acitivity was reduced by 90 - 95%, which led to a 75% drip in the ability of their muscles to remove fats from their bloodstream as will as a significant decrease in "good" (HDL) cholesterol. L Bay & Mark Hamilton, 2003, Suppression of skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase activity during physical inactivity: a molecular reason to maintain daily low-intensity activity, Journal of Physiology, Vol 551, No 2 pages 673 - 682.See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2003.045591/full