It is not often that you can spend $10 or $11 and get potentially life-changing value in return. That is certainly the case with the paperback book “Healing Moves: How To Cure, Relieve And Prevent Common Ailments With Exercise” by Carol Krucoff and Mitchell Krucoff. This easy-reading paperback is available online at Amazon if it is not in stock at your local book store.
“Physical activity can help some diabetics come off insulin and some hypertensives quit their high-blood-pressure medication,” write the authors (Carol Krucoff is a science writer and health columnist for the Washington Post; husband Mitchell Krucoff is a senior staff cardiologist and director of the Ischemia Monitoring Laboratory at Duke University Medical Center). “It can lower cholesterol, ease arthritic pain, lift depression, relieve anxiety, and help asthmatics breathe more easily.” Moreover, the authors believe that exercise helps slow the aging process, improves heart and lung function, increases metabolism, and strengthens the immune system.
Healing Moves is a readable resource for people who want to improve their health with exercise but do not know what exercises to do or how to do them. Carol and Mitchell Krucoff have poured over the available research material from Western and Eastern medical professionals and have created a series of practical exercises to incorporate “healing moves” into your lifestyle.
Individual chapters target metabolic disorders (such as diabetes and obesity); mental health conditions (stress, depression, anxiety); orthopedic disorders (back pain, repetitive stress disorder, osteoporosis); immunological conditions (colds, cancer, HIV); cardiovascular disorders; men’s health; women’s health; and respiratory disorders. For each medical condition, the authors explain the condition, the risk factors for that condition, and how it is affected by lifestyle and how exercise can help to cure, relieve or prevent that ailment. Each chapter offers specific “healing moves” that include specific aerobic, strength, relaxation, mind-body, breathing, stretching, and daily-life recommendations. There are copious illustrations and clear instructions for each set of exercises. The book is targeted at the desk job and sedentary crew who are the least likely to join a health club or participate with the dawn jogging crowd.
The Krucoffs report that less than 25 percent of all adults (and an alarmingly low percentage of children) exercise regularly, and only 30 percent of physicians prescribe physical activity for preventative and therapeutic purposes. Mitchell Krucoff, a practicing cardiologist, could see the harmful result of this inactivity in his patients and set out with his health columnist wife to show not only that exercise was truly beneficial for your health, but also that exercise does not have to be hard work and time-consuming.