OUTSMARTING THE FEMALE FAT CELL: YOU CANT COMPARE APPLES AND PEARS - IF YOU ARE A PEAR
If you are a pear, you will gain weight first and take it off last in the hips and thighs. Fat cells in the lower body are larger and have more lipogenic-storing enzymes. If you go on a diet or start exercising, it's the upper body that loses fat first. One client was ready to give up exercise because her smaller shoulders and breasts only made her hips and thighs look bigger. Weight will come off the lower body eventually, but those fat cells are resistant and it may take longer than you would like.
If you're an apple, which does run in some families, the ab dominal fat cells tend to be smaller and contain more lipolytic enzymes for quicker weight loss. Estrogen is still making your fat cells stubborn, but, compared to pears, you may respond more quickly to exercise and positive eating habits.
As men and women grow older, these apple and pear descriptions become even more apparent. To visualize this with some humor, one of my clients shared a little joke: "As men grow older they get Dunlop's disease because the belly 'dun lops' over the belt. As women grow older, they get Furniture's disease because the chest eventually falls into the drawers." Oh well, so much for humor.
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Womens health
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ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH: MISUSE
Originally, when Alexander discovered that he was stiffening his neck and pulling his head back, and creating tension throughout his body, he thought that he was the only person to do this, but his investigations confirmed that this pattern of 'misuse' is common to the vast majority of people.
The effect of this misuse is that it interferes with the head/neck/back relationship, which means that a high degree of muscular tension is needed to maintain upright posture and for movement. This muscular tension is distributed unevenly through the body, with an excessive amount in some areas and too little tension in others, and there is a lack of interaction between the muscle groups. Obviously this brings about the very opposite of what we find with good use: being upright becomes an effort, there is a limited range of movement, the joints are stiff and breathing is impaired.
As with good use, misuse refers to our 'thinking'. It involves performing activities in a habitual and automatic way that is harmful to overall use and functioning. This could mean that we allow our emotional state to affect our musculature adversely, for example if we are worried about something we let tension build up in the neck muscles. Or it could be how we perform everyday activities. Observing people in action, we often see a great deal of effort being used, in parts of the body that are not directly involved in the activity. Check for yourself how tightly you hold your toothbrush while cleaning your teeth - or how tightly you are holding this book right now! You will probably find that, like most people, you are using an excessive amount of effort in holding what is a very light object, and in a task that actually requires a minimum of force.
People misuse themselves in different ways. Broadly speaking, a person may hold himself up with too much tension - the 'sergeant major' approach - or he may 'collapse', with over-relaxed muscles. In practice, of course, it is not as clear cut as this; both forms of misuse involve a combination of excess tension and over-laxity. For example, even in someone with collapsed posture, only some muscles are 'over-relaxed', and therefore others have to work all the harder in compensation, and are over-tense.
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Womens health
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