Cold baths 'ease aching muscles, but may be risky'

Plunging into chilly water can provide a shock to the system and may even be harmful, researchers at the UK Cochrane Centre warn.

After looking at available trial evidence - 17 small studies involving 366 people - they say there is not enough evidence to back the technique.

There may well be other better ways to ease muscular aches, they suggest.

This might include a spot of light jogging or a dip in a warm bath, they say.

The idea behind submerging the muscles in icy water, sometimes referred to as cryotherapy, is to reduce swelling and the associated stiffness and soreness that comes with working the muscles hard.

The trend started in elite level sport, but it is becoming increasingly popular amongst amateur athletes too.

Comedian Eddie Izzard, who last year ran 43 marathons in 51 days to raise money for charity, said his daily ice baths were a necessary evil to stop his "legs inflating to twice the size of an elephant".

In the studies that the Cochrane team looked at, participants were asked to get into a bath or container of cold water after running, cycling or resistance training.

In most trials, participants spent between five and 24 minutes in water that was 10-15C, although in some cases much colder temperatures were used or participants were asked to get in and out of the water a number of times.

Lead researcher Dr Chris Bleakley, of the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, said: "We found some evidence that immersing yourself in cold water after exercise can reduce muscle soreness, but only compared to resting or doing nothing."

But there were too few studies that compared cold baths with other interventions to say that it is the best strategy for sore limbs.

And safety concerns remain unanswered.

Dr Bleakley said: "It is important to consider that cold water immersion induces a degree of shock on the body.

"We need to be sure that people aren't doing anything harmful, especially if they are exposing themselves to very cold water for long periods."

Leonie Dawson, professional adviser to the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: "This isn't advisable for everyone. If someone had an underlying heart condition then the shock could be damaging.

"And for anybody with Raynaud's - a problem of the circulation - it would have a devastating effect on them."

She said it would also be important to ensure that the water was clean for hygiene reasons: "Some rugby clubs have a wheelie bin filled with cold water that the players will use one after the other, even if they have open cuts and injuries from the playing field."

She said, generally, applying something cool on the skin to reduce pain and swelling was safe.

"It makes up part of the PRICE guidelines - Protect, Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation - for managing soft tissue injury.

"But it is worth remembering that some of those gel ice packs you can get go down to temperatures of minus 20 and if you go to sleep with them on you can get a rather nasty ice burn."

Fairbanks man 'plants' palm trees

Evidently nobody told Ricky Blevins you can't have palm trees in Fairbanks, in the winter no less. But that's precisely what Blevins did, and it's helped brighten many a Fairbanksan's day this cold, dreary winter.

The 48-year-old Blevins is the guy who "planted" the two palm trees that sit on the bank of the Chena River near University Avenue. They are visible as you drive over the University Avenue bridge, sticking out like a pair of sore thumbs in Blevins' big, snow-covered yard next to Noyes Slough.

Of course, with bright, yellow LED lights running up the trunks of the trees and green lights wrapped around the leaves on top, they are hard to miss.

"We've had total strangers pull into the driveway to take pictures," Blevins said. "We've got people coming in on snowmachines driving around in circles trying to figure out what they are."

In the summer, Blevins watched boaters stop, get out of their boats, walk up to the trees and rap on them with their knuckles to see if they were real.

The trees aren't real, of course, but they look so life-like it's hard to tell from a distance. Blevins, a sheet metal worker at Holiday-Parks, Inc., built the palm trees in June as a wedding present for his bride, Kelley.

"We were supposed to get married in Arizona but that fell through, so I brought a little bit of the lake-front property back with me," Ricky explained.

The trees, made of sheet metal, served as a backdrop for their solstice wedding, complete with a sandy beach that Blevins trucked in.

"I was only going to leave them up a couple weeks but everybody convinced me to leave them up a little longer," Blevins said. "When it got dark I decided to light them up.

"I've heard a lot of different comments," he said. "I've had people offer to buy them."

The trees are 16 feet tall and each one has five big, green leaves trees bolted to the top. There were six leaves, but he removed a leaf from each tree when he put the lights on in November because he didn't have enough lights to cover six leaves.

The trees are built in three five-foot sections that bolt together. The trees can be disassembled into three sections that nest together.

"I originally made these to ship to our house in Arizona," Blevins said. "After the wedding, I was going to ship them down and plant them in our yard in Arizona."

But the trees were so popular Blevins decided to leave them where they are. He added the lights in November.

It took Blevins, a lifelong Fairbanksan, about a week to build the trees. He used pictures on the Internet and studied palm trees in the yard of his wife's home in Arizona to help guide him. He used elbows to create the distinctive bend in the trunk of the trees.

"Being an Alaskan, I don't have a lot of experience with palm trees," Blevins said. "I was going for a generic palm tree. This is my image of a palm tree.

"Everybody tells me I should put coconuts on them," he said with a laugh.

His 25-year-old daughter, Courtney, painted the trunks and leaves.

"I took her to the store to buy spray paint and said we need brown and green," Blevins said. "She started grabbing all these different greens and browns and blacks and tans. I was getting nervous."

When he got home, Blevins laid the trees out on sawhorses and let her go to work.

"I said, 'I can't watch,'" he said.

The trees "turned out great," Blevins said. "She used like six different shades of green and four different shades of brown with some black and tan mixed in."

Blevins dug holes to plant the trees in the ground, and so far he hasn't had any problem with passing moose trying to reach up and eat the leaves.

The palm trees have provided a psychological boost for both Rick and Kelley during the long, cold, dark winter.

"I told him in the summer we should hang a hammock in between them," Kelley said.

Why You Shouldn't Call In Sick Unless Absolutely Necessary

I thought about calling in sick to teach my classes at the gym last week. I don’t even get up very early. I just didn’t feel like it.

The kids both had stuffy noses that started with a sore throat. No fevers this time, but wasn’t that a faint tickle I felt in the back of my throat? It’s so cold, I thought. I could easily call in and find a substitute for my two classes.

But no, I knew that’s just a slippery slope. And, it's not like I felt terrible. Winter hadn't even officially started. Get up and go, I said, reminding myself that you shouldn't call in sick unless absolutely necessary. I am so glad I did.

About five weeks ago, a new person came into my Yoga/Pilates class, Danielle. As instructors, we are trained to always ask if there is anyone new to class, so we can guide them more fully through movements.

Danielle told me she hadn’t worked out regularly in seven years, but at that time had been a yoga instructor. I welcomed her enthusiastically and we started our workout.

Danielle was older than me; I could tell. I don’t really try to guess a person's age, as I feel I am terrible at it anyway. Also, it doesn't really matter to me. (I constantly forget my mother’s age, which she is somewhat responsible for by telling us, “Age does not matter." I think she’s right.)

Danielle moved through the yoga poses with both familiarity and some slight difficulty, but one of the best parts of yoga is that the movements help you become more balanced and strong very quickly.

After class, I thanked Danielle for coming, and told her I hoped I would see her again. She said she definitely would be back for my classes and then shocked me when she told me she was 67 years old. I would never have guessed.

Danielle did come back. In fact, she came to every one of my yoga classes for the next five weeks. We shared a bit about ourselves as group instructors, our fitness history and our families.

I learned that Danielle would be moving in the new year to the western suburbs of St. Louis, so she could provide more room for her grandchildren to visit. She had mentioned she would try to keep coming to our gym in the Central West End, The Lab.

I am so glad I did not listen to the little devil on my shoulder that morning last week telling me to call in sick. When Danielle walked in to class, she told me it would be her last at The Lab.

She decided she must be realistic. The Lab would be a far drive and she had discovered her insurance company would pay for full membership at two gyms closer to her new home.

We talked and laughed through our final class together.  At the end, as we said our goodbyes, I learned for the first time that her daughter and her family live in Madrid, Spain.

Furthermore, seven years ago, at 60 years old, she walked in the Camino de Santiago in Spain. She asked if I had ever heard of it, and I had not. (My cultural experience is very limited and specific to Germany, my father’s homeland.)

She explained that the Camino de Santiago is an annual pilgrimage in Europe of hundreds of miles, always with the same destination: The town where St. James is buried. People from all walks of life, all over the world and all ages come together for the walk.

Danielle said she wanted to tell me that she realized many things on the walk, but one of the best was that the Camino de Santiago is representative of one’s life.

She said she would meet people and walk and talk with them for maybe 10 minutes or a whole day, and then not see them again the rest of the trip, and that was okay.

Danielle explained how she was glad we had met. She thanked me for being a good teacher and said that now it was time to move on. I said thank you to her as well and that change is good. We both teared up as we hugged goodbye and wished each other well.

People continue to surprise me.

It's likely I will never see Danielle again, but I will never forget her. She had the courage to return to yoga after a seven-year hiatus, walk into a gym class at 67 and get back at it. Not to mention that she walked such an amazing pilgrimage at 60.

She inspired me to never give up, even if you think you already did, and to try new things, like walking hundreds of miles in a foreign land with many strangers.

By doing this, and having the courage to truly live, we can enjoy the journey and the people that come and go while on the trip. Don’t call in sick, unless absolutely necessary. You might miss an important pit stop.

Tansy May Be Used to Treat Herpes, Study Suggests

Tansy, Tanacetum Vulgare, is a flowering plant found across mainland Europe and Asia. From the Middle Ages onwards the plant, whose folk names include Golden Buttons and Mugwort, has been used as a remedy for various conditions, from fevers to rheumatism. However, its supposed medical benefits have always been questioned.

Joint work between research groups led by Dr Habtemariam from the School of Science at the University of Greenwich at Medway and Professor Francisco Parra at the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain, published in Phytotherapy Research, has revealed the clear potential of tansy as a treatment for herpes.

Dr Solomon Habtemariam says: "We have identified several compounds in the plant with strong antioxidant potential. Antioxidants are important for healing wounds and can be used to treat the skin eruptions and blister-like lesions or cold sores that are the symptoms of herpes. The drugs currently available to treat the disease are becoming less effective as the virus is developing resistance to them. Diseases such as genital herpes are also increasing due to immunosuppressive illnesses such as AIDS.

"Our studies have proved the scientific basis for many traditional medicinal plants. We are now able to identify even more structurally complex natural products and those that are present in plants in minute concentrations with our state-of-the-art analytical facilities. In collaboration with our international partners, we are searching for novel antidiabetic, antimicrobial, anticancer, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective agents from natural sources."