Fasciculation is just a fancy name for a muscle twitch. And muscle twitches are minor fine motor movement contractions of a muscle.

Twitching muscles are caused by abnormal nerve activity, and fortunately a muscle twitch is usually painless.

Most muscle twitches are harmless and go away without any treatment. For some, muscle twitching may indicate a neurologic disorder is present.

Fasciculations are common if you are experiencing:

• myopathy
• muscular dystrophy
• spinal muscular atrophy
• ALS ~ Lou Gehrig’s disease
• chronic spinal cord nerve compression

Other non-neurological condition causes for nerve instigated twitching include:

• stress
• caffeine
• exercise
• lack of sleep
• drug overdose
• diet deficiency
• overactive thyroid
• drug side effect ~ diuretics, corticosteroids, estrogens

There is a syndrome of benign (harmless) muscle cramps and fasciculations. This type of muscle or eye twitch doesn’t have any affect on your level of fitness.

Living a lifestyle of healthy eating, exercise, plenty of rest and stress free is your minor twitch way to resolution.

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Your hamstring is the muscle located in the back of each thigh. Its two major tasks is to extend your leg at the hip and bend your lower leg at the knee.

In many straining instances, the root cause for this type of injury is the imbalance of strength between your hamstrings and the significantly more powerful antagonist (opposing) muscle group of your quadriceps. In a movement situation, your quadriceps may have life left in them, while your hamstrings have reached their limit.

So often in the fatigue of overuse or the absence of an adequate stretch, a hamstring tear or strain will notice you that you have taken it way to far. The power of your hamstrings is your limiting factor for propulsion. And that fact must always be heeded or suffer the consequence of an extremely painful pull.

Hamstring injuries are brought to you in degrees, by symptoms of:

• mild strains ~ simple tightening
• more severe ~ sharp pain in full stride
• rupture or tear ~ inability to stand or walk

In some extreme hamstring tears, bruising may appear in a couple of days. Obviously, if you have experienced an extreme tear, like the inability to stand, it is probably enough indication that you need to pay your doctor a visit. Some sewing up might be necessary.

As with most sports injuries, R.I.C.E is the initial treatment of choice. Followed by strength and stretch rehabilitation.

The surest way to prevent a hamstring injury is to stretch it before you use it. Or risk your fitness and lose it. At least reach down in an attempt to touch your toes before you hit the field, or wherever.

You may also find some relief to your persistent back pain once you loosen up your otherwise tight hamstring muscles!

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Homeostasis has one goal ~ to maintain. When your body is exposed to an external or internal environmental stress, it is dealt with through a negative feedback control mechanism.

What this means is that when a stress is presented, your homeostasis mechanism responds in the opposite to negate a stress’ influence. All this in a battle to return you to the prior preset point. Not good if this point is less than optimum health.

A working understanding of this regulatory balancing system helps you understand why you may be finding it difficult to lose weight, or perhaps stick with a fitness program. Essentially homeostasis is hard at work trying to maintain a steady state. In some cases, against all your best efforts.

Homeostasis also has the amazing ability to adapt to a repetitive stimuli, thus creating a new set point. You conditioned your homeostasis to an unhealthy steady state, by overeating or under moving.

Once a new set point was established, you will then need to mentally push your own body to adapt to a newly desired set point, the beauty of adaptation. Did you have a good time establishing an overweight and lazy new homeostasis?

Hope so. Because if you wish to lose those extra pounds, or get your unhealthy self into shape, you will need to battle your own body’s homeostasis. Frankly, it will fight against you initially.

Adaptation takes time and repetition. How long it takes your homeostasis to adapt depends on your particular genetic being. So essentially you must condition your body to maintain less fat or get moving.

Just having a mental desire to change this does not create a new set point. What will change this is conditioning. Conditioning is repetitive stimuli (fewer calories or increased movement) that pushes past homeostasis, and thus setting a new optimum fitness health steady state.

Adaptability is preparing your body for the future based on the past. Don’t get discouraged and lapse back to past behaviors. Push through your homeostasis negative feedback system until it has the opportunity to create your newly desired healthy set point.

Remember, homeostasis didn’t set an overweight steady state overnight, so give it an opportunity to reset to optimum fitness health.

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Sciatica is the term used to describe symptoms when you have a sciatic nerve issue.

Your sciatic nerve is a large nerve running from the lower back down the back of each leg and into your foot. It controls the muscles in the back of your knee, lower leg, and gives feeling to:

• sole of your foot
• part of your lower leg
• the back of your thigh

When you have sciatica, you might experience:

• pain
• tingling
• weakness
• numbness

This feeling can start in your lower back and run all the way down your leg to your calf, foot and toes. Usually only disturbing one side of the body.

Causes of sciatica may be due to:

• a ruptured disk
• spinal stenosis
• injury ~ pelvic fracture

In many cases no cause can be found. And in most cases, sciatica heals on its own, given time and rest.

Self help treatments include:

• hot or cold therapy on painful muscles
• bed rest for a couple of days for inflammation reduction
• after initial rest period, get moving to help reduce inflammation
• nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs ~ ibuprofen, aspirin or muscle relaxants for pain relief

Start stretching exercises and short walks as soon as possible.

If sciatica pain persists for more than 3 months, discuss it with your health care provider for possible cortisone-like drug injections or surgical options.

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Common causes of muscle cramps are:

• dehydration
• lack of minerals
• strain/overuse of a muscle
• not enough blood getting to your muscles

Too little potassium, calcium or magnesium in your diet can cause depletion/lack of these minerals in your body. Also, some diuretics prescribed for high blood pressure can cause potassium loss resulting in muscle cramps.

Not enough blood getting to muscles can be caused by arteriosclerosis in your extremities. This reduction in blood flow can produce cramp-like pain in your legs, calves and feet during exercise, which typically diminishes a couple of minutes after you stop.

Muscle cramps can also be caused by nerves that malfunction, and this malfunction is sometimes due to health problems, like a pinched nerve in your back or neck.

For treatment to relieve the severe pain caused by cramps, try stretching or gently massaging the cramped muscle.

Prevention of muscles cramps starts with consuming a healthy diet, giving special attention to your potassium, calcium and magnesium intake.

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Metabolism is a conglomeration of infinite chemical reactions taking place in your body’s cells that are continuously converting the food you eat into the energy that powers everything you do. This process began when your dad’s sperm fertilized your mom’s egg, and will continue until your last breath, or so.

Certain proteins control this chemical reaction of metabolism, and each chemical reaction is coordinated with all of your body’s functions in order to keep your cells healthy and working properly.

When you eat something, enzymes in your digestive system breaks down:

• fats into fatty acids
• carbohydrates into sugar
• proteins into amino acids

After this breakdown, these molecular compounds are absorbed into your blood for transportation to the cells, the site of energy metabolism. Depending on the current needs of your body, this energy is released for immediate use or stored in body tissues, especially in the:

• liver
• muscles
• body fat

The process of metabolism is a balancing of anabolism and catabolism, which are occurring in your body all the time. Anabolism is all about building and storing:

• supporting the growth of new cells
• maintaining body tissues
• storing of energy for use in the future

Catabolism is all about energy production required for all activity in the cells by breaking down large molecules, usually carbohydrates and fats, to release energy. This energy release provides:

• heats the body
• fuel for anabolism
• muscle contraction for movement

As these larger molecules are broken down, the released waste products are removed through your:

• skin
• lungs
• kidneys
• intestines

How your body controls the buildup and breakdown of metabolism is hormones released from:

• Thyroid gland produces and releases thyroxine, which regulates speed of your metabolic chemical reactions.
• Pancreas secretes various hormones, insulin for one, which dictates which anabolic or catabolic activity takes place.

Metabolism is a complicated chemical process, however most think of it in terms weight gain, loss and calories burned. And the number of calories you burn is determined by:

• how much you move
• your basal metabolic rate
• your body’s amount of fat and muscle

So, if you want to increase, speed up or boost your metabolism the big 3 ways to do it are:

1. move more
2. less body fat/more muscle
3. increase your basal metabolism rate (BMR)

The first two shouldn’t need much explanation. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) deserves a bit of discussion.

Your BMR is a measure of the rate at which a your body “burns” calories while at rest. It can play a role in a tendency to gain weight. Lower basal metabolism bodies will tend to gain more body fat over time.

To a certain extent, your basal metabolic rate is inherited, or sometimes affected by health problems. But exercising more will not only burn more calories, the result of becoming more physically fit will increase your BMR as well. Since BMR is altered by body composition, the more muscle and less fat will almost always increase your BMR.

Best way for boosting or increasing your metabolism is to “get moving”!

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Well known forms of elbow tendinitis are tennis elbow, golfers elbow or little league elbow. However, other overuses of your elbow can result in a similar type tendinitis.

Tennis elbow is usually caused by a poor backhand technique or using a too small racquet’s grip. Signs of tennis elbow include:

• outside elbow pain
• wrist weakness
• wrist extension pain
• finger pain against resistance
• tenderness around the bone on the outside of your elbow.

Treatment for tennis elbow involves:

• ice
• rest
• elbow brace
• gentle stretching
• strengthening exercises

To prevent future elbow pain caused by tendinitis you need to:

• make technical corrections to your stroke
• warm-up adequately in advance
• proper strength training
• gradual return to full level activity

Golfer’s elbow, or little league elbow, is experiencing pain on the inside of your elbow. Symptoms are:

• inside elbow pain
• wrist weakness
• inside elbow pain with use of a strong grip

Treatment and prevention for this type of elbow tendinitis is the same as it is for tennis elbow.

Other causes for your elbow pain may be:

• sprains
• strains
• fractures
• dislocations
• bursitis
• arthritis

Treatment for these will depend on which is causing your pain in the elbow.

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A ganglion cyst may show up suddenly or build up over time. It can get smaller or larger, and in some cases disappear all together.

You may not feel pain from a ganglion cyst, and only know its there because you can see it. Or you may feel a continuous aching pain, made worse with movement.

Since nearly half of all ganglion cysts disappear on their own, watch and wait is usually the initial course of treatment. A wrist brace may help relieve your symptoms while you give it the opportunity to resolve itself.

However, in severe cases, aspiration, using a needle to remove the cyst’s contents, or surgery may be necessary.

No reason to let your fitness regime suffer, brace it and go.

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In this new age, meditation is also being used to help combat various chronic diseases and health problems, such as:

• stress
• anxiety
• insomnia
• depression
• chronic Pain
• physical/emotional symptoms associated with chronic illnesses ~ heart disease, cancer

Meditation that is used as a type of mind-body medicine, focuses on the interactions of the brain, mind, body and behavior, with the intent to use the mind to affect physical functioning in its promotion of health and fitness.

During meditation, your attention is focused on a single subject, with the goal of suspending all other thoughts that would otherwise occupy your mind. This has been shown to induce some changes in the body, notably the autonomic nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system regulates heartbeat, sweating, breathing, and digestion, as well as other. And all this regulating is done automatically.

Most types of meditation have four elements in common:

• quiet location
• focus of attention ~ mantra, an object or breathing
• specific posture ~ sitting, lying down, standing, walking, or in other positions
• open attitude ~ letting distractions come and go naturally without stopping to think about them

Mindfulness Meditation and Transcendental Meditation (TM) techniques are two common approaches to meditation.

Mindfulness meditation originated in Buddhism and is based on the concept of being mindful, or having an increased awareness and total acceptance of the present. This is seen as helping by learning to experience thoughts and emotions with increased balance and acceptance.

TM originated in the Vedic tradition in India and it uses a mantra (repeating word, sound, or phrase) to prevent distracting thoughts from entering the mind. Thus allowing the mind to settle into a quieter state and the body into deep rest state, ultimately leading to a state of relaxed alertness.

Meditation is a fantastic compliment to any fitness regime ~ maintain calm focus on movement (exercise) task without mental distraction.

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Sweat is a salty liquid that your skin glands produce for the sole purpose of cooling your body. Under normal gland sweating conditions, you will generally experience sweats under your arms, on your feet and in the palms of your hands.

Sweating a lot is normal when:

• it’s hot
• during menopause
• when you exercise
• when you are anxious
• when you have a fever

However, sweating too much is a condition called hyperhidrosis. This condition might be caused by:

• thyroid disorder
• low blood sugar
• another health problem
• nervous system disorder

Sweating too little, anhidrosis, can cause your body to overheat creating a life-threatening situation. Causes of anhidrosis are:

• burns
• dehydration
• nerve disorders
• some skin disorders

When your sweat mixes with bacteria, which is naturally present on your skin, it has the potential to cause a stinky smell. Bathing regularly helps control the production of this offensive odor.

Do yourself, and others, a favor by jumping in the shower after every fitness workout for a sweaty bacteria odor wash off.

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