If you are a senior then it is probably already obvious to you that you are not as flexible as you were when you were younger. Doesn’t it also seem to be a bit harder to move around now?

Well, if this is the case, I have some very good news for you. There are some easy to do exercises that can help to increase your freedom of movement and improve your flexibility.

Before you begin any exercise program, it is important that you check with your physician. You want to make sure that the stretching exercises you are attempting will be safe for you to do.

Once you have gotten their okay, remember that you should warm up before you do any stretching exercises. You could start with some arm-pumping or some easy walking.

During or after exercising you may feel some mild discomfort. You might experience a mild pulling sensation. Both of these are normal. However, if you feel pain (especially in your joints) you should stop exercising immediately and see your health care provider.

Remember that you should not bounce while going into a stretch. Instead, you should focus on making your movements steady and slow. By executing this properly, you will help your muscles to stretch naturally.

• Here is an exercise that will help stretch your triceps. It will lengthen the muscles that are in the back of the upper part of your arm.
• Use your right hand to grab the end of a towel.
• Bend your right arm while raising it. Let the towel fall down your back.
• Use your left hand to reach behind the lower part of your back.
• Grab the bottom of the towel with your left hand.
• “Climb” your left hand up the towel. This action should also pull your right arm down.
• Continue “climbing” until your hands touch or get as close as is comfortable.
• Hold the stretch for ten to thirty seconds.
• Reverse your position.
• Do this three to five times.

After doing your triceps stretches, you will probably feel a very pleasant sensation in your arms and shoulders. If you do this exercise and other flexibility exercises you may start to feel younger and be able to do things that you have not done in years.

Although medical science is advancing rapidly, as a senior citizen, you may be considering how you can find the best life insurance. Many people go on the Internet to see exactly what is available.

Today, I am going to do my best to explain why car wreck injuries can be so severe even when it appears there is minor damage.

It’s called “inertia.”

Definition of inertia – the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

What that means is that, if you are traveling at 30 mph and your car is struck head on, your body will keep moving at 30 mph while your car will slow down. In fact, your body will keep moving at that speed until an external force (seatbelt, dashboard, steering wheel) stops you. Well, that doesn’t sound very healthy, right?

Let’s talk about 30mph for just a minute. That really doesn’t sound like a big number when we talk about speed. Especially considering that the current land speed record sits at 760mph! But consider that a shark can only swim up to 25mph. The world record holder in the 100m dash, Usain Bolt, can only muster up 23.35mph. And, the most famous racing horse ever, Secretariat, averaged around 37mph. So, you see, 30mph is not necessarily a low speed and definitely not too low to have some injuries from a car wreck at that speed.

The most common injury from auto accidents must be whiplash.

Whiplash injury: Hyperextension (over-extension) injury to the neck, often the result of being struck from behind, as by a fast-moving vehicle in a car accident. The mechanics of whiplash injury are thought to be as follows: The victim may be first pushed or accelerated forward, pushing the body forward, but the head remains behind momentarily, rocking up and back, and some muscles and ligaments may be stretched or torn. These muscles, in a reflex action, contract to bring the head forward again, to prevent excessive injury. There may be overcompensation when the head is traveling in a forward direction as the vehicle decelerates. This may rock the head violently forward, stretching and tearing more muscles and ligaments. -medicinenet.com

New information from new studies has come about recently. It seems the mechanism of whiplash is to be lifted up from your seat slightly (possibly causing low back issues), then a swift and severe extension of your neck, then dropping back into the seat as the seatbelt catches you, followed by swift and severe flexion of your neck. Basically, you can have a sprain/strain of your low back from the lifting and dropping out of and back into your seat. You can have thoracic sprain/strain from the seatbelt position. And it is obvious that your neck is most likely going to hurt for quite some time. If the wreck is severe enough, you can also have serious tearing of the ligaments and connective tissue in the front and the back of the neck. But, even in minor accidents, you can suffer what is called micro-tearing of these ligaments. Meaning that you can have pain and eventual scar tissue that’s cause isn’t completely obvious from an MRI. This is the most important argument in favor of treatment and complete rehab of an automobile accident injury.

I would say whiplash is definitely the most common injury we see from car wreck patients. The problem is that the insurance companies have a little equation they use to assess what personal injury amount they will pay for. This equation takes into effect the speed at which the car was traveling. Although there are plenty of studies refuting this tactic, they continue to use it. They refuse to tell anyone exactly what the equation is but they still use it. For example, you may be driving a BMW and have very little damage to the car itself but the damage is $4000. Or you may be driving a 15 year old car an have plenty of damage that is only worth $1500. And it is guessed that the insurance companies use the damage amount in their equation which affects the personal injury payout. This is not a good thing. I have said it before in this blog and I’ll say it again. This is why you most likely should call an attorney for a car wreck if the damage is anything beyond a fender bender.

These non 12 step recovery programs could be considered as one of the best methods to cure most of the patients who are suffering from either drugs or alcohol addiction. For, these dozen steps in recovery programs are effective enough to deal with one of the most crucial, at the same time the most neglected, phases of recovery program: the post-treatment period.

It is a common knowledge for anyone who has direct experiences with drug addicts, be they the addicts themselves or having family suffering from addiction, that there is this one big problem those drug addicts constantly struggling even after they finish following the rehabilitation program. And that problem is the urge of coming back, that is to say, to use the drugs again. It has to be made clear therefore that the best treatments of addictive patients should not only cover the ‘in-addiction’ period, but also the post-addiction period. Indeed, it is practically easy to make some patient stop using the drugs. However, it is absolutely difficult to make them stop using the drugs again exactly after they have been declared clean.

In this light of such important notion, it is of your utmost responsibility to look for the programs that will not just cure the patient, but also prevent them from getting addicted again. Luckily, you have such programs with you in this institution. It would be a great unfortunate and loss if you miss notifying such effective programs to cure the suffering members of your family from their own addiction. For, such programs present the best opportunity you could get to help treating the addicted members of your family to have their own future back with them. And what is the better future for them rather than one that could make them stay out of the drugs forever?