Share Me That Information

England is a cold country (no secret there!) but we are passionate, well, about our football, that is. Now if you’re American and reading this you may think I’m talking about the game beloved of your countrymen, involving that strangely shaped ball that you, well, throw, on a gridiron, I think you call it. Well, I’m not. I’m talking about what you guys call “Soccer”, the ‘beautiful game’, the most popular sport in the world, played everywhere, and loved by countless millions.

Yes, I am an Englishman, in case you hadn’t already guessed, and I live in the warmth of California, but for most of my life, from the age of around four, when my Dad took me on his shoulders to my first football game, I have been in love with football, and back in my home country I would follow my team anywhere. I lived around seventy miles from my team’s home ground, so even a home game would be a 140 mile round trip for me, but likewise I would think nothing of getting up early on a Saturday morning and driving 250 miles to see my team play away from home at a ground in the north of England.

The game would last 90 minutes, then time to stop somewhere on the way home for a meal and back in my house around midnight. My team? Gillingham. For the first 107 years of their history they won very little, but in the year 2000 they gained promotion to the second tier of English football, the “Championship” and this, to a long, long time supporter like me was sheer heaven. Unfortunately, it was also about the time that I was seriously thinking of emigrating, to marry my American girlfriend, and I finally left England’s shores in 2003. Since then, and probably as a direct result of my not being around to cheer them on, Gillingham have fallen back to the football league’s basement division, but they are in with a big shout of promotion this season back to the THIRD tier.

In my years of supporting “The Gills” I have amassed a huge collection of Gillingham memorabilia, football programmes, scarves, badges, shirts, jerseys, kits, ticket stubs and the like. Now others may prefer to collect Manchester United programmes, or Chelsea ticket stubs, or Arsenal jerseys, but for me there is only ONE team.

There is quite an industry around the collecting of football memorabilia and some rare programmes exchange hands for amazing amounts of money. Businesses exist solely for football memorabilia sales.

Would I go and see L.A. Galaxy, with or without Beckham? No. Would I go and see a Gillingham reserve team playing against a high-school soccer team? YES!

Bob Wilson is a Brit, living in Los Angeles, and is a football fanatic. He runs Its Called Football.com and Buy Football Jerseys

There are medical risks associated with the withdrawal from opiate type drugs up to and including death dependant on a variety of health related circumstances. This is why a medical professional should always play a major role in the sudden withdrawal from opiates, especially when large quantities are used frequently. Opiate withdrawal symptoms will occur if opiate use is abruptly discontinued because opiates are physically addicting. As it happens in any addiction, the body will simply adapt to the presence of the opiate.

Not in itself a treatment for addiction, detoxification is a useful step only when it leads into long-term treatment that is either drug-free (residential or outpatient) or uses medications as part of the treatment. The best documented drug-free treatments are the therapeutic community residential programs lasting 3 to 6 months. No matter how you got addicted, once dependant, you need to endure the pains of opiate detox. Few people have the strength to go it alone, and when the pains get bad and pills can be bought at the nearest pharmacy, it’s hard to maintain resolve.

The philosophy behind the detoxification program for opiates is generally to switch the individual from short-acting opioids, which are more highly addictive, to long-acting opioids. It is much easier to slowly taper or cut back on a long-acting opioid than a short-acting opioid, thus leading to fewer withdrawal symptoms. Until recently their has almost always been a healthy stigma attached to opiate addiction. Not only society’s general consensus was “Once a heroin addict, always a heroin addict.”

Avoiding the severe pain, nausea, agitation, sweats and other symptoms of opiate withdrawal are among the many reasons addicts are motivated to continue taking drugs. Now, researchers have found that disrupting the brain’s stress-response mechanism exacerbates behavioral withdrawal symptoms in mice, and that giving the mice the hormone corticosterone alleviates those symptoms. However, because they don’t have the psychological attachment to the drug seen in addiction, withdrawal symptoms are often less distressing. Some people are able to complete the withdrawal in less than two weeks but for most people the process takes months or even years.
While individual real-life experiences can be a valuable health resource, they must be viewed in the context of evidence-based data and are not a substitute for medical advice.

You should always consult a qualified health care professional before beginning, changing or stopping a treatment. One of the most widely prescribed medications, Vicodin and its related medications, loricet, loritab percodan, and oxycontin are opioid-based pain medications. Vicodin is a derivative of opium, which also used to manufacture heroin. Although many people use pain pills or pain medication for legitimate use, there are many individuals who wind up addicted to pain pills, narcotic medications and other pain medications.

To learn more on finding quality Opiate Addiction Help visit the Opiate Addiction Treatment blog for free information and resources and dealing with such problems as Opiate Withdrawals

Get the help and the answers you need today. Knowing the facts is the first step to helping yourself through the struggles of addiction. blog

Sight reading means that after seeing it written a musician can play the music on his or her instrument with some degree of accuracy. It does not mean that one plays it perfectly, but at least adequately. Some display this ability by humming or singing the written music without the aid of an instrument. Others, by being able to play the music without having to first analyze it, break it down, or practice individual passages.

It is more about recognizing intervals, chords and chord shapes, and groups of notes (phrases) than individual notes. Sight reading is taught (or learned by) most musicians and is often used to measure a musician’s level of musicianship. Sight reading (sometimes called sight singing or sight playing) is very advantageous for the musician. Having the ability to hear the notes in your mind before they are played makes for more accurate playing and learning new pieces in shorter amounts of time.

One of the best ways to speed up the process of sight reading is studying music theory. Knowing the structure and mathematics of music brings about a better understanding of how it is written (displayed on the page). Studying the relationships between notes and chords brings about visual cues that can be used to sight read. And having a good understanding of time and key signatures helps a great deal when seeing a piece of music (and sight reading it) for the very first time. Time and key signatures tell you, in advance, what to expect.

For example, knowing a piece of music is in the key of D (two sharps) tells you that whenever the notes F and C appear, they are played as sharps. And knowing a piece is in 3/4 time gives the musician a great understanding of the time values of notes and rests. Looking for patterns in music is another great way to learn to sight read more quickly. Being able to recognize passages that are repeated allows the musician to look forward and concentrate on other parts of the piece (e.g., knowing that a certain melody line appears many times in a piece of music allows the musician to concern themselves with the music before and after the repeated passage).

Written music also has a degree of symmetry and understanding this can help with an overall sense of music structure. Having recordings of a variety of different kinds of written music is another great way to quickly develop sight reading skills. Carefully and accurately following the recording (with its sheet music) goes a long way in being able to recognize melodies, chords, bass lines and the basic road maps of written music.

Most of those who teach sight reading agree that it is very important to not stop to correct mistakes. They say to never go back to a previous section but to complete the sight reading in one pass. In other words, think of yourself as sight reading a piece with other musicians as in a performance, and you have to keep up with them. Though this might be frustrating for the present, it will speed up the overall process. Later you must go back and practice slowly, but for the purpose of sight reading, keep moving. Finally, we all learn by doing, so the more your practice the skill, the sooner you’ll be able to master it.

Duane Shinn is the author of a free newsletter on piano chords & chord progressions available at “Sight Reading Music”

Vitamin D has become one of the most celebrated nutritional supplements in recent years. Many connections have been made between the vitamin and disease prevention that it’s hard to overlook. Often we hear about calcium and its role in bone health.

However, we would not be able to absorb and use that calcium without the presence of the D vitamin, which also promotes phosphorus use. Additionally, this vitamin strengthens the immune system, presides over cell growth and differentiation, and is used in the prevention and treatment for osteoporosis.

For the best sources of the D vitamin, try a tablespoon of cod liver oil (for 340% of your daily value), 3.5 ounces of cooked mackerel or salmon (for 90% of your daily value), 3 ounces of tuna canned in oil (50% DV), 2 ounces of sardines canned in oil (70% DV) or a cup of vitamin D fortified milk (25% DV). Other sources include eel, catfish, margarine, pudding, fortified ready-to-eat cereals, egg yolks, liver and Swiss cheese. Of course, taking calcium supplements combined with this vitamin will ensure that you get the best of both worlds for a strong, healthy body.

Numerous studies imply that vitamin D and calcium supplements (used conjunctively) promote bone health. The American Medical Women’s Association called for the recommended daily allowance to be raised from 400-600 to 800-1,000 international units per day for everyone over 50.

Their November 2005 study found that nearly 70% of women over 50 and 90% of women over 70 were not getting their recommended allowance of the vitamin. As we age, our bodies slow down in the production of the D vitamin and we may be seeing less sunlight too.

The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society adds that senior citizens also need a higher amount of magnesium. Therefore, for optimal bone health, people over 50 should take a D vitamin/magnesium supplement.

You’ll get 20,000 IU of vitamin D after just thirty minutes of sunlight. Yet when it comes to dietary supplements, doctors recommend less than 2,000 units per day. It is possible to develop D vitamin toxicity. Symptoms include poor appetite, weakness, weight loss, constipation, nausea and vomiting, at best.

At worst, the calcium levels can rise in your blood, causing confusion and heart arrhythmias. Sometimes the body has a hard time ridding itself of the excess supplements, which accumulate as kidney stones. You won’t suffer this toxicity from the sun, yet you must take precautions when choosing a supplement.

Mike Selvon has some great articles. Find out more tips on vitamin d at his resourceful site. We appreciate your feedback at our best calcium supplement blog.

The health and fitness industry is full of lies and misconceptions. One of the biggest misconceptions is that to get lean and defined abdominals, you need to do hundreds of crunches. Not so. So let’s get past all the tricks and gimmicks and put away all the “ab-blasters” and get down to the hard science and fact behind what methods and strategies actually do help you to lose your mulish belly fat and keep it off for life.

Other than diet and proper nutrition, the most critical principle for fat los is how you structure your workouts. The reality is, you do not lose belly fat by doing exercises that target the stomach area. Now don’t misunderstand what I mean, a specific quantity of abdominals exercises are great and they do help to fortify your core and help you maintain a healthy back. But the fact is that direct abs exercises should be a tiny portion of your workout routines.

The bulk of your time should be spent concentrating on full body workouts. Full body workouts that utilize multi-joint exercises that work the largest muscle groups of the body like the legs, chest, and back. Performing full body workouts are a proven method for ridding yourself of that sloppy belly fat for good.

Concentrating on giant multi-joint exercises for the biggest portions of your body significantly increases your metabolic rate both in the workout, and for 24-48 hours after the workout. In addition, this also stimulates a rise in fat-burning hormones in your body. You simply do not get this kind of metabolic and hormonal reply by wasting the majority of your time with “abs-pumping” exercises.

Need to lose belly fat? Well, get moving with some squats, do some presses, some lunges, step-ups, some back and chest work. It is irrelevant per se if it is barbells, dumbbells, or perhaps bodyweight exercises. The key is that you focus on giant multi-joint exercises at a high intensity. That means no long breaks in between exercises. You should keep your rest periods to a minimum. There are different methods for this and many of them work, but I personally structure most of my workouts as follows:

-8 exercises done at high intensity.
-Each exercise is performed for 20 seconds
-Rest for 10 seconds
-Move onto the next exercise
-When all 8 exercises are complete, rest for 2-5 minutes then repeat this cycle

Losing your belly fat for good needs some focus and power in your workouts. My suggestion? Do your full body workouts at home so you have no excuses for not going to the gym.

George is the creator of the BusyBod Workout System. He specializes in at home workout, is a Certified Trainer with over 20 years of experience & a former gym owner. George’s unique approach to fat loss & fitness is built around the idea of saving time so that you can focus your time on things you love doing. You can request his free at home workout quick-start fat loss kit at his blog.