Sepak takraw requires that the players be able to jump in order to kick the ball over the net.

America has four sports that everyone knows: basketball, baseball, football, and soccer. Depending on who you talk to, you can add in hockey and golf. There are plenty of other sports out there, such as tennis, volleyball, and rugby. The United States of America is home to a variety of ethnicity and people and therefore has a very diverse range of sports that go beyond the typical “American” ones. However, there are many other sports that are not commonly played here in the US and are more prominent overseas. One of those sports is called sepak takraw.

The name is a mix between Malaysian and Thai. ‘Sepak’ in Malay means kick or to kick and ‘takraw’ in Thai mean a woven ball. The two together describe a game where you kick a ball. The reason the name is a mix between the two languages is because they were the two countries that played the game and came to a compromise as to what to name it.

The game is played on a court approximately the same size as a court for doubles badminton. There is a net set up in the center to distinguish the two different sides of the court for the two different teams. The balls used to be made out of rattan because that was the most common material. Now they are made out of synthetic fibers and sometimes have a synthetic rubber covering. When they do not have the rubber, they must have twelve holes and twenty intersections across the entire ball.

There are two teams made up of three players each. The players have set positions, one at the back, one at the front left and the other at the front right. Like volleyball, the person at the back serves and then the teams hit it back and forth across the net. There are more rules, however they are a little more complicated. The most striking facet of the game is that it is played like volleyball except using feet instead of hands. The main rule is that “the use of hands is not permitted”. This requires great skill on the part of the players to be able to be flexible enough to hit the ball and also to jump to kick it. The average speed of the ball is approximately 140 kilometers per hour, that translates to approximately 87 miles per hour which is around the speed of a Major League baseball pitch. That is fast. The scoring of the game is very similar to that of volleyball, using faults and such to award points and scoring.

This game is, in fact, played in the United States. The US belongs to the International Sepak Takraw Federation along with many, many other nations. The King’s Cup World Championships are always held in Thailand and happen every year. The US actually has been a great competitor in sepak takraw games in the past. When they first began competing, the American team went to the National Tournament in 1987 that was being held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They ended up bringing home the gold.

Bikram, or hot, yoga utilizes the familiar poses of traditional yoga in an nontraditional atmosphere.

Hot yoga, also known as Bikram yoga, is an exercise trend that has cropped up more and more in gyms and local yoga studios. You may even have friends who have done it and that testify of the results. Hot yoga is a style of yoga that uses traditional poses but is performed in a studio that is heated to around 105 degrees Fahrenheit. There is also an atmospheric humidity in the room of around forty percent and is kept there for the entire ninety minute class. While this may sound like insanity, sweaty insanity, there is some science behind it. The heated room allows the muscles to warm up slowly and completely which eases muscle tension and greatly reduces the risk of injury when working out. The muscles respond more easily and warm up correctly.

When you do hot yoga, you are receiving all the benefits that you would when you do normal yoga. You become more flexible and your muscles become stronger and more toned. By doing yoga you are not developing a body-builder muscular structure, you are instead making your muscles leaner and stronger so that you will appear more cut than built. As you do more yoga, you will begin to see your cardiovascular system improve as well as your dietary, circulatory, and mental systems. Hot yoga adds the benefit of sweat to a yoga workout. Sweat is one way that a body detoxifies and rids itself of pollutants and chemicals. Also, your blood receives fresh oxygen which helps to improve your circulatory and other systems. This specific type of yoga, according to the creator and Indian National Yoga Champion, will help you lose weight more efficiently and digest foods more effectively.

With any type of yoga, there is a huge amount of the practice that is mental. As the body moves between poses it has time to meditate and focus on whatever the person directs it to. By allowing the mind that time to pause and truly think effectively, yoga lowers stress and anxiety. The measured breathing also helps the body to regulate itself and so the mind has more time to slow down and meditate. This brings a balance between the mind and the body. Balance can help you develop more regular sleeping patterns, decrease stress, and approach the world with peace and patience. Once you become in control of your mind, you are able to see everything clearly.

However, if you do wish to pursue Bikram yoga then you should discuss that decision with your doctor. New practicers may feel dizzy or nauseous when they begin because their body is adjusting to the new, increased temperature. Make sure that if you feel these things that you drink enough water and that you talk to your doctor because it may be something deeper than just yoga. Also, you should not practice hot yoga if you are pregnant because your core body temperature increases and that may have an effect on the fetus.

Hot yoga is worth a try if you like yoga already or you wish to receive the benefits that have been discussed. Take a look at your local gym or yoga studio to see what they offer.

Could this be the next superfood?

Smoothie joints, health food stores, and dieticians have all been talking about the health benefits of the acai berry. The trend has mellowed out considerable over the past year or two, but the craze has not ended. And rightly so because the berry is one of the most versatile fruits out there. It helps people lose weight, combat the effects of aging, increase health and energy, and also fight heart diseases and cancers.

The acai berry is a fruit that is indigenous to the countries of South America and comes from a specific type of palm tree. The fruit itself is short and reddish/purple in coloring. The pigments and substances that create the purple-ish color of the berry also act as antioxidants within your body. What antioxidants do is they neutralize free radicals. Free radicals are byproducts of processes performed by your body and can be harmful to your health. Antioxidants neutralize them so that your body is not harmed by them. Free radicals contribute to the development of various cardiovascular illnesses and cancers. Other berries, such as blueberries, also contain antioxidants.

The oil of the acai berry is also used in some of your beauty products. Instead of using harmful oils, such as palm oil, companies have been using acai berry oil as a substitute. Not only does this oil help your skin to become healthier when you use a product that contains it, but it also fights the effects from the other oils that you used previously. This is because the oil also contains a high level of antioxidants that help your skin greatly.

The main problem is that the effects of the berry have not been tested fully and completely, so therefore doctors are hesitant to give their opinion and endorsement of the berry. Tests are still being run on it to see if it really is the “superfood” that everyone is claiming it to be. Whether it will benefit you more than any other fruit is still a question that is up in the air. All that is officially acknowledged is that it is good for your health as a fruit and will help you to get the nutrients that you need.

Whether it is ‘super’ effective or not, it still works. You need antioxidants in your body in order to function properly and to stave off infections and diseases. It is important that if you want to fight diseases of the heart or fend of various cancers that you ingest the correct amount of antioxidants so that your body is able to perform those actions. Cancer, as well as heart disease, is on the rise in the United States. Do not allow yourself to become a statistic. The acai berry provides an alternative if you do not like blue berries or other forms of antioxidant rich foods. Some people are allergic to one berry and not to the others, in cases such as these the acai berry provides an appealing alternative.

Example of what the flavoring of oxygen looks like.

At some point in your life you were probably introduced to the term “oxygen bar”. An oxygen bar is a, well, bar except you are able to buy air as opposed to alcohol. This wellness concept was introduced in the early nineties and quickly caught on. What patrons inhale is enriched oxygen that can be occasionally flavored, depending on the inhaler’s preferences. You might be wondering why oxygen? We breathe enough as it is, why do we need more of it?

Oxygen is involved in every bodily process that goes on within your body. In fact, oxygen produces approximately ninety percent of the energy that your body uses. Just by breathing, you fulfill a huge amount of your body’s nutritional needs because of what combines to create the air in the atmosphere. So, what does extra oxygen do to your body? Some of the benefits that you can experience when you use an oxygen bar are improved physical endurance, a great reduction of stress, increased energy, and powerfully increased performance. The air that you breathe from these bars have five times the oxygen that regular air has. The result? After using one of these, people experience vitality and feel detoxified because they have expelled many irritants out of their system.

If regular air does not appeal to you, then you may enjoy some flavored air. By bubbling oxygen through aromatic liquids, a “flavor” of oxygen is created. There is a huge array of flavors to choose from. Here is a vastly reduced list: jasmine, vanilla, chocolate covered cherries, lavender lemongrass, mango, pina colada, and sugar cookie. That is only the beginning. From that list alone there are a variety of ‘mixed’ scents and different types of those flavors.

If you do not know where to find one, all it takes is a little bit of research to discover one close to you. You can find one at nightclubs, health clubs, spas, airports, yoga studios, and more. Some people even rent them out for parties and company events. If you want, you can even rent one or buy one for yourself. Companies, such as oxygenbars.com, offer various services and options for those of you who want to purchase one for yourself or for an event that you might be planning. They allow you to purchase everything you need on their website. Supplies include various aromas, nose hoses, and generators.

There are various ways you can use oxygen as well, instead of simply breathing it in. You can have something that is called an oxygen facial. This facial requires someone using a device similar to an air-brusher to pump out pure, high pressure oxygen onto and into your skin. This plumps the skin and gives it an even tone, through a relatively painless procedure.

These are all some options to experiment with if you ever want to delve into the world of pure oxygen and your health. The benefits are great and it is an all natural and organic substance.

To assist in this process a new technology was activity pursued. This new development promised to bypass the transformation of solid to liquid to gas and go straight from one end to the other. Then the pressure was to be shifted so that the frozen water in the compound would turn into a gas and leave the rest stable and solid. The process became known as freeze drying.

The commercialization of freeze drying began during World War II and has continued into today. It has been both a part of commercialized products and specialized needs. It has been used for entrepreneurs who have developed novelties like MonaVie and Dipping Dots for general consumption and the food industry has benefited from it all and it has been used to make astronaut food.

The first step in freeze drying is the initial freezing. It takes the product (food or medicinal) and drops its temperature rapidly and seals it all in. This is accomplished by the aid of liquid nitrogen, solid carbon dioxide, or methanol. More than just quick cooling, however, this process is designed to bring it below the triple point in temperature and pressure (the point where all three stages can exist simultaneously). The material is then prepared for the next stage – drying.

In the drying stage there are two parts – the primary drying stage and secondary drying stage. The primary drying stage is a balance of low pressure and slightly warmer temperature. As the pressure lowers to only a few millibars, the temperature is raised enough for the water to sublime – which is the process of transforming from a solid to a gas without hitting the intermediate liquid phase. This allows for a vacuum to assist in removing the water molecules without the material becoming re-hydrated or unfrozen. Once the initial water has been collected, the secondary phase begins. There the temperature is again modified to be a little higher than before and the water that never froze in the first place is removed.

This process has allowed more food and medicine from around the world to be transported anywhere with little to no decomposition or spoiling. The technique is especially handy when dealing with delicate fruits like the acai berry from South America. While the berry is loaded with antioxidants and healthy nutrients, it lasts only a couple of days off the tree. Instead of being limited to local consumption, freeze drying has allowed this berry to be preserved and later added to drinks and foods that are consumed world wide by a variety of peoples and cultures.

Courtesy of Arthritis Research & Therapy

acid L-Arginine and used by the body to enhance a variety of functions.  The newly discovered substance, a molecule consisting of one atom of nitrogen and one atom of oxygen, was named Nitric Oxide Synthase, or NOS for short.  NO, as it came to be known, proved to be one of the basic building blocks in fields as diverse as physiology, immunology, and neuroscience, so much so that it was named “Molecule of the Year” in 1992, perhaps a rather humorous bit of serious science.

Amino acids have always been viewed as the body’s construction corps, but NO takes pride of place for its variety of functions.  Basically, NO is a vasodilator, which simply means that it acts to dilate, or expand, the body’s blood vessels, thereby decreasing the force that must be exerted by the heart muscle to pump a given volume of blood.  The applications of that one primary function are amazing!

Produced and sold in supplement form, the use of NO can lower blood pressure by expanding the diameter of the blood vessels and thereby improving the flow of

blood, a process which helps to protect the heart while increasing oxygen supply to the body.  NO, as in nitroglycerin pills, dramatically and almost immediately eases the pain of heart attack symptoms, so much so that studies now show nitric oxide as a potential tool in the treatment of angina onset.

But that’s just the beginning.  The body’s immune system cells can release NO to kill bacteria and viral or parasite-borne infection.  NO enhances the bone marrow’s role in producing new blood cells.  It helps in the relief of both pain and inflammation, making it a prime weapon in the fight against rheumatism; in fact, Morphine acts in part by producing nitric oxide.  NO’s basic vasodilator function makes it an ideal component of medications designed to lengthen and heighten sexual stimulation.  It is a transmitting agent for moving messages between nerve cells, and is part of such diverse processes as sleeping, learning, and memory.  It plays a part in feeling pain, and possibly depression as well.  It stimulates brain activity and suppresses tumor growth, including cancerous tumor growth.  NO may even help with diabetes and insulin resistance issues.

Bodybuilders and athletes have discovered nitric oxide, taking it in nutritional supplements such as GlycoCarn which are believed to increase energy, burn fat, and enhance athletic abilities.  The vasodilator properties of nitric oxide translate to accelerated muscle growth because the greater blood flow increases the nutrients delivered to the muscles, thereby allowing them to enlarge under the stress of targeted exercise.  And since NO suppresses inflammation, it is potentially effective in reducing the aches and pains of weight training workouts.

There are seemingly no negative effects associated with NO – unless, that is, you take it and then don’t work out.  You could find yourself restless, energetic, and feeling ‘hyper’, sort of like downing a large energy drink and then trying to take a nap.  And don’t mix it with caffeine; the two would work against each other in your body.  As you get started, you should start with small doses and learn your body’s reaction, then increase the dosage as you go.

We can probably all describe the symptoms of motion sickness from our own experience: pale, sweaty skin, weakness, probably headache and/or dizziness, an increasingly uncomfortable stomach and, inevitably, nausea and vomiting.   Sadly, unlike most sicknesses, vomiting does little to remove the misery: relief only comes with a change in one’s physical circumstances.  The problem is not due to a weak stomach, or a delicate constitution, as many have supposed; the real culprit is our brain.  Lucky us.

This is the way it works:  Our brain receives information about our body’s movement, balance, and relative position from three main sources – our eyes, inner ear, and nervous system.  Our eyes tell us where we are and if things are moving.  Our inner ear tells us if we are balanced and if we are moving.  Our nervous system tells us if we are standing, leaning, sitting, etc.  If the inputs from all three systems agree, we’re fine.  When there is a disconnect, we’re going to suffer.

One sort of disconnect occurs when motion is felt but not seen.  We can become carsick when our eyes see the motionless interior of the vehicle while our inner ear tells us that we are moving – making bumps, curves, and corners our own private source of misery .  We can suffer that same motion sickness in the comfortable interior of a jet plane, or on board the grandest of cruise ships, and for the same reason: we see no motion, but we can surely feel it.

But the reverse is also true: we can suffer motion sickness when motion is seen but not felt.  Consider the impact of an IMAX film on your stomach as you watch airplane dogfights or sudden violent downdrafts.  Simulators such as those used to train pilots or student drivers can have the same effect, as can virtual reality games.  Astronauts very often suffer motion sickness in flight.

Another cause of motion sickness comes when the body both sees and feels motion but the two inputs do not correspond.  This ‘out-of-synch’ feeling can quickly translate to total woe.  For example, there are amusement park rides that simulate gravity through the use of centrifugal force, leaving the susceptible rider greatly distressed, if not ill.

Some of the ills and miseries we have to contend with are products of our modern-day lifestyles; and, to an extent, this is also true of motion sickness – no one ever suffered motion sickness riding in a horse-drawn buggy, where one both saw the buggy’s movement and felt every bumpy inch of it.  But the ancient Greeks knew all about motion sickness themselves; indeed, our word ‘nausea’ comes directly from the Greek word ‘naus’, their word for ‘ship’.  One can only hope they had a cure, since they clearly suffered the disease.