Can Massage Therapy Help Weight Loss?

Most people admit that when they're under stress, healthy eating habits go out the window.  One often eats to fill an emotional need or grab fast food simply because there's no time for something healthy; a stressed-out lifestyle is rarely a healthy one. But weight gain when under stress may also be at least partly due to the body's system of hormonal checks and balances, which can actually promote weight gain when you're stressed out, according to some researchers.

Cortisol is a hormone with many actions in the body. I like to think of it as “the running away from the bear’ hormone.  It helps the body preserve itself and get away from danger by effecting blood pressure and energy. Cortisol has been termed the "stress hormone" because excess cortisol is secreted during times of physical or psychological stress. Studies have shown that stress and elevated cortisol tend to cause fat deposition.
Several studies show massage reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine. Those changes slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and block your nervous system's pain receptors. Massage also increases blood flow to the muscles, which may help them heal.  It often makes you feel good about yourself which then helps you make better food choices.
It could therefore follow that regular massage would help reduce cortisol and stress levels and could thus help with weight loss. Of course weight loss is dependent on a number of factors including resting metabolic rate, food intake, amount of exercise, and especially the types of food consumed and the times of day it is consumed.
So, try a good structured weight loss program and regular massage therapy to see the fat melt off your body!!!
Rosemary Manners

The Obesity Epidemic in Mosman?

Now you may say this isn’t happening in Mosman but look again, it’s here. As I wander along the street I see 5 kilos here and 10 kilos there. Australia, New Zealand and the United States have been fighting it out in the media for the title of “the fattest nation in the world”.  At the moment Australia is winning.  The hard facts are that the majority of our citizens are now over weight or obese- a staggering 60% of all Australians.  You may argue that it’s not 60% in Mosman but look again there is plenty of fleshiness.

It’s even more scary when we consider that in 2010, the contribution of obesity to ill health is greater than that of tobacco smoking. Obesity is the fundamental driver of some of the most significant health burdens our patients face, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoarthritis and dementia.  All these diseases are here, right here in Mosman.

Where are we going wrong? Are we too busy to consider nutrition?  As I wander around Mosman there is certainly evidence of this.  Military Road is chocked with cars and the parks are empty.  Do we have time is sit in a quiet and serene environment to calmly eat our lunch chewing it purposefully or is lunch an, on the run, non event while simultaneously catching up on iphone messages?

What happened to the balanced diet?  What is a balanced diet? Is that wheetbix for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and pasta for dinner?  Or is this wheat with a bit of flavouring?  Do you have protein three times a day or just put a bit in your evening meal?  How about vegetables, are they a little soggy pile in the corner or do they form the backbone of your diet?  These are questions to ask ourselves. 

Can you imagine a new world where food becomes a ritual of health.  The Mosman parks are full at lunchtime as people stop to gather and eat a balanced home cooked meal or pick up a nutritious salad from one of the food shops around the area.  Can you imagine the roads are empty and Mosman residents are walking to the shops leaving their cars behind?  Can Mosman be that village, that village that chooses health as a value that is really important?

Perhaps it is time to stop and choose health, Choose health as being part of our day to day life in Mosman.