Word: thyroid
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Linking muscle dysfunction to diseased organs is not entirely out of the mainstream. For years doctors measured thyroid function by testing how fast the tibial muscle jerks when the Achilles tendon is tapped. But for Goodheart, muscle testing is the diagnostic gold standard. He prods and palpates patients head to toe, searching for tiny tears where muscles attach to bone. These tears feel, he says, like "a bb under a strip of raw bacon." When "directional pressure" is applied, the bb's flatten, and slack muscles snap back, their strength restored...
...Leah wanders among the students, propelling the class forward even as she stops to adjust an arm angle here or perform a thyroid-massaging chin tuck there. She urges noncompetition, with oneself ("However you do the posture today is how you should do the posture") and with others ("How can you compare yourself to your neighbor? You don't have the same body!"). Her monologue becomes a mantra, returning my oft-wandering focus back to the pose I'm attempting. Where is my center of balance? Can I feel my spine stretch if I imagine my head and tailbone pulling...
...Yoga may help post-menopausal women. Practitioners at Boston's Mind-Body Institute have incorporated forward-bending poses that massage the organs in the neuroendocrine axis (the line of glands that include the pituitary, hypothalamus, thyroid and adrenals) to bring into balance whatever hormones are askew, thus alleviating the insomnia and mood swings that often accompany menopause. The program is not recommended as a substitute for hormone-replacement therapy, only as an adjunct...
...Some physicians wonder why it would be tried at all. "Theoretically, if you pressed hard enough on the thyroid, you possibly could affect secretion," says Dr. Yank Coble, an endocrinologist at the University of Florida. "But it's pretty rare. And the adrenal glands are carefully protected above the kidneys deep inside the body. To my knowledge, there is no evidence that you can manipulate the adrenals with body positions. That...
...amihotornot.com a website where masochists and narcissists alike post their photos anonymously and let visitors rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. Because high school kids like to go to the site and scan in yearbook pictures from the Most Likely to Keep Using the Thyroid-Problem Excuse category--or snapshots of their shirtless dads--I thought I'd get a 6 or even a 7. Then, feeling cocky, I'd ask my girlfriend Cassandra to post her picture so I could find out whether to trade her in for something hotter, kind of like a cyber-Temptation...