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Certain pain conditions such as tension, constant pain or even chronic pain cause considerable discomfort. To help relieve some of these conditions, a massage to penetrate more deeply was needed. This massage technique is now called deep tissue massage. When muscles are used, they can breakdown in their flexibility and range of motion because fibers start to split. To repair the flexibility, pressure and stroking was found to bring back their natural elasticity. Deep tissue massage penetrates beyond the superficial muscles and gets to the bone.
After performing exercise, you may notice your muscles become stiffer. Exercise breaks down the muscle tissue making the tendons shorter and more fibrous. That is why it is good to stretch muscles before and after exercise. While stretching elongates the whole muscle, massage targets smaller regions for restoration. A deep tissue massage seeks to elongate and stretch the tendons to increase their elasticity and flexibility.
To help with flexibility of muscles and muscle groups, many athletic stars obtain deep tissue massages after strenuous exercise. Sports teams maintain massage therapist on staff to provide frequent deep massage to team members. All of us amateurs do not have a massage therapist on staff, so we must find other means.
More studies have been performed on massage therapy and its benefits. What is common to all the studies is the need to obtain massages on a regular frequency. Your muscles are being worked out on a continuous basis, therefore, the relief of such activity must be on a continuous basis. Restoring flexibility and the elasticity of your muscles requires frequent deep tissue massage. This just makes sense. The challenge is how to get deep tissue massages frequently. Fortunately, massage chairs provide daily pain relief in the comfort and privacy of home.
Technology continues to advance at a rapid pace and deep tissue massage has been integrated into many of the premier massage chair brands. Companies like Panasonic, Omega Massage and others are pushing the limits with ever more varieties massage therapies into their chairs. These massage therapies include air compression, stretching, heating elements, music therapy to name a few. Software programs control all aspects of the deep tissue massage. The program starts the massage more superficially and then gradual works deeper into the muscles working out the tightness, pain and aches.
These massage chair companies are developing therapies for persons who suffer from more chronic conditions such as chronic pain, fibromyalgia, muscle cramping and even carpal tunnel syndrome. Many new features target such areas. With air compression massage, for example, there are airbags for your hands and forearms. The program will gently squeeze, hold and then release. This gentle, repetitive action loosens the muscles, relieves aches and pains. Massage chairs can deliver full body massages from the neck to the feet.
Deep tissue is effective for persons performing regular exercise. It has been shown to increase range of motion and flexibility. You may want to check with your medical advisor to make sure that you can benefit from deep tissue massage. You also may experience some discomfort from a deep tissue massage. Deep tissue massage uses pressure and stroking to relieve muscles to the core. If you have not received one before, then your muscles may ache at first when getting this massage.
To get the full benefit of any massage treatment, it must be performed at a regular, sustained interval. If you exercise regularly, then you should receive massage regularly. Each action like exercise, requires an equal an opposite counteraction like massage therapy. Life is about balance. We know the balance is always changing, so too must the counter balances. Obtaining pain relief is a counter balance to the source of the pain. The healing process is a natural reversal of the damaging process. Look to integrate massage therapy into your routine with a massage chair recliner. They are actually very cost effective in the long run.
Would you like to learn more about a Massage Chair Recliner that has Reflexology massage? We have the best massage chairs from top manufacturers like Omega, Takasima, Sanyo and Panasonic. Find the Best Massage Chair Recliners at http://www.massageunlimited.com for your massage requirements.
NEW YORK ? Sprint dug deep into its pockets in the latest quarter to put iPhones in the hands of its customers. The perennially money-losing company on Wednesday posted its largest loss in three years.
Sprint Nextel Corp., once known for the worst customer service in the industry, has made progress on turning its fortunes around in the last few years. But the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier has still found it difficult to compete with larger rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, both of which sell the iPhone.
So Sprint jumped for the chance to sell the iPhone starting in October, giving Apple Inc. a $15.5 billion commitment to buy phones over four years.
In the October to December period, Sprint activated 1.8 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 7.6 million at AT&T Inc. and 4.3 million at Verizon Wireless.
Sprint said 40 percent of the iPhone users were new to the company, while AT&T usually reports a figure around 25 percent. That meant the phone helped Sprint post a rare increase in the number of subscribers on contract-based plans, which cost more than contract-free alternatives. It gained a net 161,000 such subscribers in the quarter.
But the cost was steep: Sprint estimated that the phone launch widened its quarterly loss by $630 million, or $350 per phone activated. It buys the phones from Apple for around $600, then subsidizes them to sell them for $99 or $199.
The Overland Park, Kan., company is counting on making that money back over time through monthly service fees, but the example set by AT&T, which has sold the phone since 2007, indicates that the iPhone is no path to big profits for phone companies.
CEO Dan Hesse defended Sprint's commitment to the phone on Wednesday. The October release of the iPhone 4S helped the company gain subscribers. Before Sprint had the phone, every new iPhone launch would make subscribers defect to AT&T, and more recently, to Verizon.
Hesse said the iPhone also spurs fewer calls to customer support, and uses less network capacity than smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software.
Sprint's total loss for the quarter was $1.3 billion, or 43 cents per share, in the October to December period. That compares with a loss of $301 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time charges, the loss was 35 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were on average expecting a loss of 38 cents per share, excluding items.
Revenue rose 5 percent to $8.7 billion, matching the analyst estimate.
Sprint shares fell 4 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $2.41.
Analysts say the company faces big challenges in absorbing the cost of the iPhone and of upgrading to its new "4G" data network over the next few years, and the fourth-quarter results represent just the first step in the transition.
Nomura Securities analyst Mike McCormack noted that the company is asking investors to look as far ahead as 2017 for "normalized" financial results, with all the near-term challenges behind it. There's no real way to predict how the company will come out of its transition, he said in a research note.
'Explorers,' who embrace the uncertainty of choices, use specific part of cortexPublic release date: 8-Feb-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
Strategy for maximizing uncertain rewards shows in MRI, math models
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Life shrouds most choices in mystery. Some people inch toward a comfortable enough spot and stick close to that rewarding status quo. Out to dinner, they order the usual. Others consider their options systematically or randomly. But many choose to grapple with the uncertainty head on. "Explorers" order the special because they aren't sure they'll like it. It's a strategy of maximizing rewards by discovering whether as yet unexplored options might yield better returns. In a new study, Brown University researchers show that such explorers use a specific part of their brain to calculate the relative uncertainty of their choices, while non-explorers do not.
The study, published in the journal Neuron, newly exposes an aspect of the brain's architecture for producing decisions and learning, said co-author David Badre, assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown. There was no consensus that a precise area of the prefrontal cortex, in this case the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, would be so clearly associated with a specific operation, such as performing the requisite uncertainty comparison for supporting a decision-making strategy.
"There has long been a debate about the functional organization of the frontal cortex," Badre said. "There has been a notion that the frontal lobe lacks specialization when exercising cognitive control, that it's undifferentiated. This study provides evidence that there is a kind of organization. This is an example of how higher-order functions such as decision-making may relate to the frontal lobe's more general functional architecture."
Stop the clock
To spot explorer behavior among their 15 participants, Badre and Michael Frank, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences, slid them into an MRI scanner and presented them with a game to play. Participants had to stop the sweeping hand of a virtual clock to win points in different rounds. They were told that they could maximize their rewards by responding quickly in some rounds, and slowly in others. The trick is they did not know round-to-round which response prevailed, and the number of points they could win was highly variable. They therefore had to employ a strategy to discover how to maximize their rewards among uncertain options, keeping track of the current expected value of fast and slow responses in each round.
While the MRI scanner tracked the blood flow in the brains of the subjects a proxy for neural activity the game's software tracked their response times in each round. The computer then fed the game's data into mathematical models devised to determine whether participants adapted their response times by taking relative uncertainty into account or adapted in another manner.
Over dozens of rounds a clear pattern emerged. Regardless of which version of the model they used, the researchers found that about half the subjects were engaging in exploratory behavior based on uncertainty: Their choices of response times correlated strongly with the choices that had the greatest outcome uncertainty.
Badre, Frank, and their team then looked at the MRI scans, reasoning that if decision-making is based on relative uncertainty, then the subjects' brains must somehow represent this uncertainty. Sure enough, as relative uncertainty between choice options increased, so did activation in the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. This effect was substantially stronger in the explorers than the nonexplorers.
The result is the first to show that this region of the brain keeps track of relative uncertainty to guide exploration, but is consistent with previous studies that have shown an association between the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex and relative comparisons. It also provides a potential explanation for Frank's previous findings that explorers were more likely to have a variation in a gene called COMT that affects dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex.
From cortex to choice
Frank said researchers still don't know why some people employ the explorer strategy while others do not, but they might not be so different. According to one hypothesis, they all have an aversion to uncertainty and ambiguity.
"The difference could be that some people are averse to ambiguity in the time point where they make a single decision and other people are averse to ambiguity about their strategy over the long run," Frank said.
In other words, explorers may seek to reduce uncertainty by confronting it, rather than avoiding it.
Badre said that while the study has no direct clinical implications, the findings may still inform efforts to understand a broad set of disorders that affect frontal lobe function.
"There are a lot of diseases and disorders that affect the frontal lobes," Badre said. "They affect the ability to live independently, to carry out the day and make good decisions that get you where you want to go. The more we know about the specificity of these systems, the better that you can diagnose and suggest treatments."
###
In addition to Badre and Frank, both affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science, other authors are Bradley Doll and Nicole Long.
The National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke and the National Institute of Mental Health supported the research.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Explorers,' who embrace the uncertainty of choices, use specific part of cortexPublic release date: 8-Feb-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Orenstein david_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862 Brown University
Strategy for maximizing uncertain rewards shows in MRI, math models
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Life shrouds most choices in mystery. Some people inch toward a comfortable enough spot and stick close to that rewarding status quo. Out to dinner, they order the usual. Others consider their options systematically or randomly. But many choose to grapple with the uncertainty head on. "Explorers" order the special because they aren't sure they'll like it. It's a strategy of maximizing rewards by discovering whether as yet unexplored options might yield better returns. In a new study, Brown University researchers show that such explorers use a specific part of their brain to calculate the relative uncertainty of their choices, while non-explorers do not.
The study, published in the journal Neuron, newly exposes an aspect of the brain's architecture for producing decisions and learning, said co-author David Badre, assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown. There was no consensus that a precise area of the prefrontal cortex, in this case the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, would be so clearly associated with a specific operation, such as performing the requisite uncertainty comparison for supporting a decision-making strategy.
"There has long been a debate about the functional organization of the frontal cortex," Badre said. "There has been a notion that the frontal lobe lacks specialization when exercising cognitive control, that it's undifferentiated. This study provides evidence that there is a kind of organization. This is an example of how higher-order functions such as decision-making may relate to the frontal lobe's more general functional architecture."
Stop the clock
To spot explorer behavior among their 15 participants, Badre and Michael Frank, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences, slid them into an MRI scanner and presented them with a game to play. Participants had to stop the sweeping hand of a virtual clock to win points in different rounds. They were told that they could maximize their rewards by responding quickly in some rounds, and slowly in others. The trick is they did not know round-to-round which response prevailed, and the number of points they could win was highly variable. They therefore had to employ a strategy to discover how to maximize their rewards among uncertain options, keeping track of the current expected value of fast and slow responses in each round.
While the MRI scanner tracked the blood flow in the brains of the subjects a proxy for neural activity the game's software tracked their response times in each round. The computer then fed the game's data into mathematical models devised to determine whether participants adapted their response times by taking relative uncertainty into account or adapted in another manner.
Over dozens of rounds a clear pattern emerged. Regardless of which version of the model they used, the researchers found that about half the subjects were engaging in exploratory behavior based on uncertainty: Their choices of response times correlated strongly with the choices that had the greatest outcome uncertainty.
Badre, Frank, and their team then looked at the MRI scans, reasoning that if decision-making is based on relative uncertainty, then the subjects' brains must somehow represent this uncertainty. Sure enough, as relative uncertainty between choice options increased, so did activation in the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. This effect was substantially stronger in the explorers than the nonexplorers.
The result is the first to show that this region of the brain keeps track of relative uncertainty to guide exploration, but is consistent with previous studies that have shown an association between the right rostrolateral prefrontal cortex and relative comparisons. It also provides a potential explanation for Frank's previous findings that explorers were more likely to have a variation in a gene called COMT that affects dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex.
From cortex to choice
Frank said researchers still don't know why some people employ the explorer strategy while others do not, but they might not be so different. According to one hypothesis, they all have an aversion to uncertainty and ambiguity.
"The difference could be that some people are averse to ambiguity in the time point where they make a single decision and other people are averse to ambiguity about their strategy over the long run," Frank said.
In other words, explorers may seek to reduce uncertainty by confronting it, rather than avoiding it.
Badre said that while the study has no direct clinical implications, the findings may still inform efforts to understand a broad set of disorders that affect frontal lobe function.
"There are a lot of diseases and disorders that affect the frontal lobes," Badre said. "They affect the ability to live independently, to carry out the day and make good decisions that get you where you want to go. The more we know about the specificity of these systems, the better that you can diagnose and suggest treatments."
###
In addition to Badre and Frank, both affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science, other authors are Bradley Doll and Nicole Long.
The National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke and the National Institute of Mental Health supported the research.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
I always tell my Creative Writing students at Endicott College to find original ways to write things?to avoid hackneyed language. Well one student poet Emily Pineau writes about how all writers are in a way literary thieves, word pickpockets, that simply organize their loot in different ways to fool their readership.??
When you think about it,?
or don?t think about it,?
or refuse to think at all,?
we share yet it is still?
because they are stolen.?
time
-----Emily Pineau
?
To have your work considered for the LYRICAL send it to:
Doug Holder? 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143 dougholder@post.harvard.edu?
Appreciation At Work based, on the bestselling book ?The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace? by Dr. Paul White and Dr. Gary Chapman, is now available as self-paced eLearning for trainers and coaches at http://www.ULearn24.com and http://www.drpaulwhite.com.
Overland Park, KS (PRWEB) February 08, 2012
Gateway Instructional Design Group is proud to announce the release of its latest eLearning course on http://www.ULearn24.com Appreciation At Work by Dr. Paul White. This self-paced, interactive course is designed for trainers and coaches to become certified Appreciation At Work facilitators and add value to their training business.
Appreciation At Work is based on the bestselling book ?The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace? (Moody) by Dr. Paul White and Dr. Gary Chapman. In this online, self-pace, training course, trainers and coaches will learn how to help supervisors and managers effectively communicate appreciation and encouragement to their employees, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction, healthier relationships between managers and employees, and decreased cases of burnout. Ideal for both the profit and non-profit sectors, the principles presented in this course have a proven history of success in businesses, schools, medical offices, churches, and industry.
Publishers Weekly says about ?The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace?: This is a well-researched, useful book for business leaders that offers a much needed message that won?t wear out with repetition: ?If people enjoy their work and feel appreciated?they are far more likely to have organizational loyalty and work hard.? And Elizabeth H. King, PhD, President CEO, Wichita State University Foundation says ?Over the last few months, I have seen a marked and heightened effort to personalize appreciation not only by supervisors with their staff members but also on a peer?.
Dr. Paul White is a psychologist, author, speaker, and consultant who makes work relationships work. For the past 20 years, he?s improved numerous businesses, wealthy family estates, and non-profit organizations.
The Director of Family Coaching and Personal Development for Navitas Wealth Advisors, Inc., Dr. White has served many multimillionaire and high profile business families to help develop wealth transfer plans and diminish tension around business succession issues. Additionally, he is engaged by national organizations and top universities to consult with their high net worth donors.
As a speaker, Dr. White has given lectures around the world, including North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and the Caribbean. His expertise has been requested by the Milken Institute, Napa Valley Community Foundation, Houston Community Foundation, and Princeton University. He has published extensively in both journals devoted to business and wealth transfer issues such as Worth, Journal of Financial Planning, Journal of Practical Estate Planning) as well as psychological journals like the Journal of School Psychology, Individual Psychology, and Journal of Educational Research.
Dr. White was graduated Magna Cum Laude from Wheaton College, earned his Masters of Counseling from Arizona State University, and received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Georgia State University, where he received the Outstanding Doctoral Student award during his final year of study.
Ulearn24.com is owned and operated by Gateway Instructional Design Group, LLC specializing in affordable and effective web-based teaching solutions for authors, small businesses, schools, non-profits, faith based organizations and others.
Using proven course design methods, quality course authoring tools, secure learning management systems, state of the art multi-media production and qualified subject matter experts, Gateway makes online courses come alive and show measurable results.
Learn more at http://www.ulearn24.com or http://www.drpaulwhite.com
###
For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/2/prweb9176864.htm
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Last week I was thumbing through the magazine, Muscles and Fitness, when I saw this article about a gym in New York. It compared itself to Globo Gym from the Dodgeball movie. While skimming the article, I read the owners profile, in which he explicitly stated, ?Look, fitness isn?t for pussies. And the word Wellness makes me want to puke.?
Misogyny aside, I was wondering if all those steroids were shrinking his brain along with some other things. A lot of people have a limited scope of what they perceive as ?fitness.? Usually that word brings up visions of big muscular guys or ladies lifting three times their body weight. I can happily say that fitness in that sense is mostly a stereotype.
First off, the word ?fitness? actually means ?physically healthy,? which is not necessarily related to how big your muscles are. Secondly, you can be fit in the sense of being physically attractive, but it does not make you well. Wellness is more encompassing because you have to be healthy in mind, body and spirit. It is just as important, if not more important, to include your mind and spirit into your workout.
Let me be explicitly clear if I wasn?t before; THIS IS A WELLNESS COLUMN. Although, I will cover the physiology of working out, a large part of this column will cover the mentality and spirituality of being healthy.
In the following weeks, I want to take UM-D students on a journey to complete health, which again, does not necessarily equate with the physique of Colossus or Rogue from the X-Men. Having a healthy lifestyle is more than just working out; it?s a commitment to healthy eating, better sleeping habits, and decreasing stress.
By just tweaking a few habits, a person can physically feel better than before. Not because they look better (although that is a benefit to a healthy lifestyle), but because their body will function better. Now, obviously, I am not a doctor, and I cannot possibly know every case of every person who reads this, but I can explain what has worked for me. For example, I am a runner. I try to run every day. Do I expect everyone to run four miles every day? Hell no! I said I try to run every day, so it would be extremely hypocritical and unrealistic to expect that everyone else does it.
So what do I mean beyond all this rambling? Everyone, whether skinny, curvy, or muscular could stand some improvement, and everyone deserves to be in the best shape that they deem as acceptable. So look forward to upcoming articles on how to become (or stay) well.
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Public release date: 8-Feb-2012
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