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Medicine Ball to Burn Fat and Build Muscle

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Aaron and Blair working out with medicine balls

(MERCY HEALTH PARTNERS) - Medicine balls are a great change of pace from the normal weight training workout. The variety they add can take your exercise program to the next level when you are trying to burn fat or strengthen muscle. These weighted balls are excellent at working muscles that often get ignored in typical weight training programs. So every often drop the weights and pick up a medicine ball. Here are a few of my favorite exercises.

Big Circles - Stand with your feet shoulder width apart with a slight bend in the knees. Hold a medicine ball over your head, elbows slightly bent. Rotate your arms clockwise, using the medicine ball to draw large circles in front of your body, returning to the starting position over your head. Engage your core throughout the entire exercise.

Wood Chop - Stand with feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart. With slight bend in the elbows stand with the medicine ball above your head. Bend at the waist and bring the medicine ball backward through your legs (like you are going to throw the ball through your legs, but hold onto the ball the entire time). Quickly reverse the movement with explosive energy, returning to the staring position.

Squat Press - Stand holding the medicine ball close to your chest, feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Push your hips back, bend your knees, and lower your body until the top of your thighs are parallel to the floor. Explode up as you press the ball up over your over your head. Return the ball back to your chest.

Standing Twist - Hold a medicine ball with both hands in front of your chest and your arms straight. Keeping your arms extended, pivot on your right foot and rotate the ball and your torso as far as you can to the left. Reverse direction, pivoting on your left foot and rotate all the way to the right side. Return to the starting position to complete one rep.

Seated Twist - Sit on the floor with legs straight. Hold a medicine ball with both hands just above your lap. Engage your abdominal muscles and twist your torso to the right and place the ball behind you tapping on the floor. Contract the abdominal muscles and twist all the way to your left side, placing the ball behind you. Return to the starting position with the ball in front, completing one rep.

Perform this routine for 10 to 20 reps of each exercise as a stand-alone workout or at the end of your workout.

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Medicine Ball to Burn Fat and Build Muscle

We Need a Moore’s Law for Medicine

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Technology is the primary cause of our skyrocketing health-care costs. It could also be the cure.

Moores Law predicts that every two years the cost of computing will fall by half. That is why we can be sure that tomorrows gadgets will be better, and cheaper, too. But in American hospitals and doctors offices, a very different law seems to hold sway: every 13 years, spending on U.S. health care doubles.

Health care accounts for one in five dollars spent in the United States. Its 17.9 percent of the gross domestic product, up from 4 percent in 1950. And technology has been the main driver of this spending: new drugs that cost more, new tests that find more diseases to treat, new surgical implants and techniques. Computers make things better and cheaper. In health care, new technology makes things better, but more expensive, says Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT who leads a heath-care group at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Much of the spending has been worth it. While the U.S. spends the most of any country by far, health care is becoming a larger part of nearly every economy. That makes sense. Better medicine is buying longer lives. Yet medical spending is so high in the U.S. that the White House now projects that if it keeps growing, it could, in 25 years, reach a third of the economy and devour 30 percent of the federal budget. That will mean higher taxes. If we cant accept that, says Gruber, were going to need different technology. Essentially, its how do we move from cost-increasing to cost-reducing technology? That is the challenge of the 21st century, he says.

That is the big question in this months MIT Technology Review Business Report. What technologies can save money in health care? As we headed off to find them, Jonathan Skinner, a health economist at Dartmouth College, warned us that they are as rare as hens teeth.

In an essay well publish this week, Skinner explains why: our system of public and private insurance provides almost no incentive to use cost-effective medicine. In fact, unfettered access to high-cost technology is politically sacrosanct. As part of Obamacare, the governments restructuring of insurance benefits, the White House established a new federal research institute that will spend $650 million a year studying what medicine works, and which doesnt. But just try finding out if any of it will be any cheaper.

According to the law that created the institute, its employees cant tell you. The institute, a spokesperson told me, is forbidden from considering costs or cost savings. Its not cynical to speculate why. Five of the seven largest lobbying organizations in Washington, D.C., are run by doctors, insurance companies, and drug firms. Slashing spending isnt high on the agenda.

For cost-saving ideas, you have to look outside the mainstream of the health-care industry, or at least to its edges. In this report we profile Eric Topol, a cardiologist and researcher who is director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego and who once blew the whistle on the dangers of the $2.5 billion heart drug Vioxx. These days, Topol is agitating again, this time to topple medicines entire economic model using low-cost electronic gadgets, like an electrocardiogram reader that attaches to a smartphone.

By brandishing his iPhone around the hospital, Topol is making a statement: one way to fix the health-cost curve is to harness it to Moores Law itself. The more medicine becomes digital, the idea goes, the more productive it will become.

Thats also the thinking behind the U.S. governments largest strategic intervention in health-care technology to date. In 2009, it set aside $27 billion to pay doctors and hospitals to switch from paper archives to electronic health records. The aim of the switchovernow about half finishedis to create a kind of Internet for medical information.

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We Need a Moore’s Law for Medicine

BG Medicine, Inc. to Present at the Baird 2013 Health Care Conference

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WALTHAM, Mass., Sept. 4, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BG Medicine, Inc. (BGMD), a commercial stage company that is focused on the development and delivery of diagnostic solutions to aid in the clinical management of heart failure and related disorders, announced today that Dr. Paul Sohmer, BG Medicine's President and CEO, will be presenting at the Baird 2013 Health Care Conference on September 10, 2013, at The New York Palace, beginning at 2:20 PM Eastern Time (ET).

Audio and slides of BG Medicine's presentation will be webcast at: http://wsw.com/webcast/baird35/BGMD. The webcast will be archived for 30 days following the live presentation on BG Medicine's Investor Relations website at ir.BG-medicine.com.

About BG Medicine

BG Medicine, Inc. (BGMD) is a commercial stage company that is focused on the development and delivery of diagnostic solutions to aid in the clinical management of heart failure and related disorders. For additional information about BG Medicine, heart failure and galectin-3 testing, please visit http://www.BG-medicine.com and http://www.galectin-3.com. The BG Medicine Inc. logo is available for download here

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BG Medicine, Inc. to Present at the Baird 2013 Health Care Conference

Francesco Marincola, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Translational Medicine – Video

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Francesco Marincola, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Translational Medicine
Francesco Marincola is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Translational Medicine, which aims to #39;optimise the communication between basic and clinical science #39; -- a challenge Marincola is well-suite...

By: BioMedCentral

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Francesco Marincola, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Translational Medicine - Video

Going big on technologies at NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine – Video

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Going big on technologies at NTU #39;s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine
The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, jointly set up by NTU and Imperial College London, will pioneer an innovative approach to medical education through technology-driven lessons, simulated...

By: NTUsg

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Going big on technologies at NTU's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine - Video

Growing The Latest In 16th-Century Medicine

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The Italian Renaissance Garden in New York's botanical gardens is inspired by the garden in Padua, Italy, created in 1545.

The Italian Renaissance Garden in New York's botanical gardens is inspired by the garden in Padua, Italy, created in 1545.

The Renaissance Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, a re-creation of a 16th-century medicinal garden, is so lush and colorful, it takes only a stroll through to absorb its good medicine.

The garden, part of a summer exhibit called Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World, is a small-scale model of the Italian Renaissance Garden in Padua, Italy, Europe's first botanical garden.

The landscape includes Mediterranean flowers in multiple colors, fountains and odd plants that many people have never seen, like the opium poppy, with its unusual seed pods. The garden in Padua was created in 1545 as part of the University of Padua medical school, one of the earliest and most important medical schools in Europe.

The opium poppy is the most common source of opium and morphine.

The opium poppy is the most common source of opium and morphine.

"The medical school in Padua started in 1222," Gregory Long, president and CEO of the New York Botanical Garden, explains as he guides visitors through the garden. "The medical school, by the middle of the 16th century, had developed to the point where they had collected plants. Plants were coming into Venice from all over the world, and they were interested in studying their medical uses."

Medicinal plants are used by every culture around the world. Long says 25 percent of modern medicines are based on compounds that were originally derived from plants. Only about 1 percent of plants have actually been tested for medicinal properties they may contain.

Long says the garden at Padua was really a laboratory "to see what would be effective and what would not," he says. "And of course, sometimes plants are poisonous, so you have to be very careful. And sometimes a very good plant that's very helpful to you is poisonous if you take too much."

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Growing The Latest In 16th-Century Medicine

Medicine Park Celebrates 105 Years

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MEDICINE PARK, Okla._Medicine Park turned 105 years-old Thursday, and this weekend the town is celebrating the rich history of its past while looking to its bright future.

The cobblestone community was founded on July 4, 1908 by Oklahoma Senator Elmer Thomas. And Saturday people from all over the state came to Medicine Park to enjoy unique shops, good food, and lots of music.

Founded in 1908 as the first resort in Oklahoma, Medicine Park became known for its cobblestone buildings, scenic views, and the Native American belief in the healing waters of Medicine Creek. From the time it opened, people flooded to the area to visit what some called the "jewel of the southwest."

"Back in the 1920s, there were times when there were over a 120,000 people here. I don't know if we could handle that today but its coming back," said Medicine Park Mayor Dwight Cope.

In its heyday, Medicine Park was visited by famous outlaws, noted politicians and businessmen, families and socialites of the time. Medicine Park Mayor Dwight Cope said Saturday that the town is coming full circle after many highs and lows.

"It has been through all different kinds of times. It has seen good times and its seen bad times. It's kind of in a resurrection mode right now. The last 15 years it has kind of turned around and become a place where people can come have a good time and relax," said Cope.

And as visitors to Medicine Park enjoy a weekend filled with great music, food, and attractions. The 385 people who call Medicine Park home are excited to share the spirit of the town with its visitors.

"We want to share our community with people. We know it's a special place, and we like to share that," said Cope.

This weekend of celebration remembers the town's legacy and combines that history with its new era of prosperity.

"It's just a good place to hangout and get away from everything," said Cope.

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Medicine Park Celebrates 105 Years


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