​There are no true roadblocks to traveling with fibromyalgia it's not unsafe and you shouldn't feel excluded from vacationing when you have the condition, says board-certified rheumatologist Marcia Genta, MD, of the Dallas Arthritis Center and the Methodist Dallas Medical Center.

What's tiring for most people on a vacation though can be downright exhausting for someone with fibromyalgia. Why? Dealing with traffic, long lines at the airport, security checks, and getting around in a place you don't know is stressful, and stress can increase the pain of fibromyalgia.
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Traveling is also physically draining. Carrying around luggage, especially lifting bags into overhead compartments, can lead to injury. Long days of sightseeing without enough rest can also make fibromyalgia symptoms worse.

To enjoy a vacation, take these steps to lessen the impact travel can have on your fibromyalgia.

• Seek out the sunshine. Cold and damp weather has been known to make fibromyalgia pain worse. Summer travel might be a better option than winter.
• Avoid planning trips to arduous terrains. Your destination should be a place that you're interested in visiting, but use common sense when making your plans. "Trekking in high mountains or rafting down rapids, where plenty of repeated traumas are likely to occur, should be avoided," advises Dr. Genta.
• Book a reservation with a modern hotel. A newer hotel with elevators will be easier to navigate than a charming historic hotel that has narrow stairs, Genta says. Even people who are athletic may have trouble carrying luggage up narrow passageways.
• Pack smart. Just as everyone should, try to pack only what you need to avoid having to lug a heavy suitcase. Comfortable walking shoes are a must, Genta adds. And be sure to pack your medication in a carry-on bag (not your checked bag, as it could get delayed or lost).
• Move as much as possible in the plane or car. "A long airplane trip is trying for everyone," Genta says. Moving and stretching in the cabin to avoid stiffness is especially important for people with fibromyalgia. Genta suggests checking in-flight magazines for stretching techniques you can do during your flight. If you're traveling by car, stop as often as needed to stretch.
• Get help with luggage. Always ask flight attendants with help getting a bag into an overhead compartment on an airplane, Genta says. Since picking up a heavy bag from the conveyor belt at baggage claim requires movement that can cause injury, she says, hire a porter to carry your luggage.
• Follow a leisurely itinerary. Although you may want to see as much as you can, don't try packing too many museums or cathedrals into your sightseeing plans in any one day. A stop at a sidewalk café watching the crowds is often more informative (and fun) than a lecture about the place you're visiting, says Genta.

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After an enjoyable vacation, what's the protocol for getting back to everyday life? You'll probably struggle a bit to get back into your daily routine, just as everyone does, Genta says. If you've thought out your travel plans ahead of time and you didn't overdo activity while you were away, you shouldn't need a vacation from your vacation.

After an abnormal EKG, a referral was sent over to my cardiologist which entailed a 24-hour holster monitor first.  As I was calling to schedule my specialist appointment, the receptionist quickly set in place a holster monitor set-up appointment so that my doctor would have a variety of results before I even stepped into his office.  

​A Holter monitor is a small, battery-powered medical device that measures your heart’s activity, such as rate and rhythm. Your doctor may ask you to use one if they need more information about how your heart functions than a routine electrocardiogram (EKG) can give them.

Twenty-four hour Holter monitoring is a continuous test to record your heart’s rate and rhythm for 24 hours. You wear the Holter monitor for 12 to 48 hours as you go about your normal daily routine. This device has electrodes and electrical leads exactly like a regular EKG, but it has fewer leads. It can pick up not only your heart’s rate and rhythm but also when you feel chest pains or exhibit symptoms of an irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia.

Holter monitor testing is also sometimes called ambulatory electrocardiography. There are other types of devices that can be used to measure heart activity for longer periods of time.

Uses for Holter monitoring

An EKG is a medical test that’s used to measure your heart rate and rhythm. It’s also used to look for other abnormalities that may affect normal heart function. During an EKG, electrodes are placed on your chest to check your heart’s rhythm. You may experience heart rhythm irregularities that don’t show up at the time the EKG is done because you’re only hooked up to the machine for a very brief amount of time.

Abnormal heart rhythms and other types of cardiac symptoms can come and go. Monitoring for a longer period of time is necessary to record these events. The Holter monitor lets your doctor see how your heart functions on a long-term basis. The recordings made by the monitor help your doctor determine if your heart is getting enough oxygen or if the electrical impulses in the heart are delayed or early. These irregular impulses may be referred to as arrhythmias or abnormal heart rhythms.

If you’re already being treated for heart problems, wearing your monitor can help your doctor determine if your medicine is working or if changes need to be made. It can also help them to see why you might be experiencing other symptoms of irregular heartbeat, such as dizziness, faintness, or feeling like your heart is racing or skipping a beat.

How it works

The Holter monitor is small. It’s slightly larger than a deck of playing cards. Several leads, or wires, are attached to the monitor. The leads connect to electrodes that are placed on the skin of your chest with a glue-like gel. The metal electrodes conduct your heart’s activity through the wires and into the Holter monitor, where it’s recorded.

You wear a small pouch around your neck that holds the monitor itself. It’s important to keep the monitor close to your body during the testing period to make sure the readings are accurate. Your doctor will show you how to reattach electrodes if they become loose or fall off during the testing period.

You’ll get instructions that explain how to take care of your monitor and what not to do while you’re wearing it. It’s important to avoid bathing, showering, and swimming while you’re wearing the monitor.
You’re encouraged to participate in your normal activities during the 24-hour Holter test. You’ll be directed to record your activities in a notebook. This helps your doctor determine if changes in heart activity are related to your behaviors and movements.

Wearing the Holter monitor itself has no risks involved. However, the tape or adhesives that attach the electrodes to your skin can cause mild skin irritation in some people. Make sure to tell the technician that attaches your monitor if you’re allergic to any tapes or adhesives.

A 24-hour Holter monitor test is painless. However, be sure to record any chest pain, rapid heartbeat, or other cardiac symptoms you have during the testing period.

Accuracy of testing

Keep the Holter monitor dry to ensure it functions properly. Take a bath or shower before your appointment to have the monitor fitted and don’t apply any lotions or creams. Avoid activities that might lead to the monitor getting wet.

Magnetic and electrical fields may interfere with the function of the Holter monitor. Avoid areas of high voltage while wearing the monitor.

In an event where misreadings or false-positives do occur, the Holter may need to be applied again.

Understanding the results

After the recommended testing time frame has passed, you’ll return to your doctor’s office to have the Holter monitor removed. Your doctor will read your activity journal and analyze the results of the monitor. Depending on the results of the test, you may need to undergo further testing before a diagnosis is made.

The Holter monitor may reveal that your medicine isn’t working or your dosage needs to be altered if you’re already taking medication for an abnormal heart rhythm. It’s especially useful in detecting abnormal heart rhythms that are painless and unknown to you.

Wearing a Holter monitor is painless and one of the best ways to identify potential heart problems or other issues. - Healtline

Wearing the Holster Monitor was a bit strange and sleeping was a bit cumbersome.  But, compared to the monitor of seven years ago they have made some advances!  This one was much lighter and easier to complete daily living tasks.  Monitor has been returned, and I now await the results.  

​From the creators of the groundbreaking documentary comes the New York Times bestselling diet plan Sanjay Gupta called “the prescription you need to live a long, healthy life”—a plan to transition to a delicious whole-foods, plant-based diet in just twenty-eight days.

The trailblazing film Forks Over Knives helped spark a medical and nutritional revolution. Backed by scientific research, the film’s doctors and expert researchers made a radical but convincing case that modern diseases can be prevented and often reversed by leaving meat, dairy, and highly refined foods off the plate and adopting a whole-food, plant-based diet instead.

Now, The Forks Over Knives Plan shows you how to put this life-saving, delicious diet into practice in your own life. This easy-to-follow, meal-by-meal makeover is the approach Doctors Alona Pulde and Matthew Lederman (featured in the documentary) use every day in their nutritional health practice—a simple plan that focuses on hearty comfort foods and does not involve portion control or worrying about obtaining single nutrients like protein and calcium.

In just four short weeks you’ll learn how to stock your refrigerator, plan meals, combat cravings, and discover all the tips and tricks you’ll need to eat on the go and snack healthily. You’ll also get 100 simple, tasty recipes to keep you on the right track, beautiful photographs, a 28-day eating guide, and advice throughout the book from people just like you.

Whether you’re already a convert and just want a dietary reboot, or you’re trying a plant-based diet for the first time, The Forks Over Knives Plan makes it easier than ever to transition to this healthiest way of eating…and to maintain it for life.

​Forks Over Knives—the book, the film, the movement—is back again in a cookbook. The secret is out: If you want to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, avoid cancer, and prevent (or even reverse) type 2 diabetes and heart disease, the right food is your best medicine. Thousands of people have cut out meat, dairy, and oils and seen amazing results. If you’re among them—or you’d like to be—you need this cookbook.

Del Sroufe, the man behind some of the mouthwatering meals in the landmark documentary, proves that the Forks Over Knives philosophy is not about what you can’t eat, but what you can. Chef Del and his collaborators Julieanna Hever, Judy Micklewright, Darshana Thacker, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz transform wholesome fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes into hundreds of recipes—classic and unexpected, globally and seasonally inspired, and for every meal of the day, all through the year:
 

• Breakfast: Very Berry Smoothie, Breakfast Quinoa with Apple Compote
• Salads, Soups and Stews: Kale Salad with Maple-Mustard Dressing, Lotsa Vegetable Chowder, Lucky Black-Eyed Pea Stew
• Pasta and Noodle Dishes: Mushroom Stroganoff, Stir-Fried Noodles with Spring Vegetables
• Stir-Fried, Grilled and Hashed Vegetables: Grilled Eggplant “Steaks”
• Baked and Stuffed Vegetables: Millet-Stuffed Chard Rolls
• The Amazing Bean: White Beans and Escarole with Parsnips
• Great Grains: Polenta Pizza with Tomatoes and Basil
• Desserts: Apricot Fig Squares, Bursting with Berries Cobbler . . . and much more!

Simple, affordable, and delicious, the recipes in Forks Over Knives—The Cookbook put the power of real, healthy food in your hands. Start cooking the plant-based way today—it could save your life!

Featuring more than four hundred easy-to-prepare, one-dish meals for the entire family, a brightly illustrated cookbook includes dishes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, side dishes, pot-luck dinners, and special occasions, along with suggestions for variations and substitutions, money- and time-saving tips, cooking hints, and more.

​Say hello to the gluten-free flour of your dreams. Exceptionally high in protein, fiber, and iron, and gluten-free, grain-free, and low-glycemic, chickpea flour is the total package. The Chickpea Flour Cookbook is your go-to resource for using this tremendously versatile and nutritious pantry staple. Chickpea flour―also known as garbanzo bean flour, besan, and gram flour―is simply dried chickpeas ground into a fine flour ready to be incorporated into any number of savory and sweet recipes. Used for centuries in Mediterranean, Indian, and Southeast Asian cooking, chickpea flour is no passing fad. It's all-natural and incredibly easy to use, no gums or starches necessary. Nut-free and soy-free to boot, chickpea flour is a high fiber carbohydrate that doesn't spike blood sugar levels. Its numerous health benefits make it ideal for a wide range of special diets. Better yet, chickpea flour is affordable―a fraction of the cost of other pricey grain-free flours out there. 

The Chickpea Flour Cookbook has over 80 delicious, healthy, easy-to-make recipes to power every meal of the day, including: Loaded Southwestern Chickpea Omelet (egg-free), Pumpkin Spice Waffles, Brown Sugar Banana Bread, Chickpea Tortilla Wraps, Carrot-Sesame Crackers, Sweet Chile-Garlic Crisps, Chickpea Pasta, Baked Coconut-Chickpea Onion Rings, Pumpkin-Sage Gnocchi, Smoky Backyard BBQ Burgers, Skillet Pizza, Sweet Potato Falafel, Double Chocolate Cake, Molasses Spice Cookies, Brown-Butter Blondies, and much, much more.

With The Chickpea Flour Cookbook, clean eating has never been simpler or easier. Beloved treats get a huge nutritional boost without sacrificing flavor or texture. In addition to being gluten-free, all of the recipes are free of nuts, grains, and soy, and the vast majority of recipes in the collection are either naturally vegan (dairy- and egg-free) or include vegan options, making this cookbook accessible to everyone.

Based on the groundbreaking results of his twenty-year nutritional study, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn  illustrates that a plant-based, oil-free diet can not only prevent the progression of heart disease but can also reverse its effects.  Dr. Esselstyn is an internationally known surgeon, researcher and former clinician at the Cleveland Clinic and a featured expert in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives. Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease has helped thousands across the country, and is the book behind Bill Clinton’s life-changing vegan diet.

The proof lies in the incredible outcomes for patients who have followed Dr. Esselstyn's program, including a number of patients in his original study who had been told by their cardiologists that they had less than a year to live. Within months of starting the program, all Dr. Esselstyn’s patients began to improve dramatically, and twenty years later, they remain free of symptoms.
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Complete with more than 150 delicious recipes perfect for a plant-based diet, the national bestseller Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease explains the science behind the simple plan that has drastically changed the lives of heart disease patients forever. It will empower readers and give them the tools to take control of their heart health.

Hundreds of thousands of readers have been inspired to turn their lives around by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn’s Jr.’s bestseller, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. The plant-based nutrition plan Dr. Esselstyn advocates based on his twenty-year nutritional study—the most comprehensive of its kind—is proven to stop and reverse even advanced coronary disease, and is built on the message the Esselstyn family has lived by for years: Your health is truly in your own hands, and what you eat matters.

Mother-daughter team Ann and Jane Esselstyn have decades of experience developing delicious, healthful recipes for both their family and Dr. Esselstyn’s many grateful patients. Now, they combine their expertise to offer you the cookbook companion to Dr. Esselstyn’s groundbreaking book, with more than 125 easy and mouthwatering recipes, brimming with nourishment for your heart and your overall health. From their quick and easy meals like Fast Pasta and Greens and delicious “Sloppy Joes” to their indulgent desserts like their signature Kale Cake and Minty Frozen Chocolate Balls, these recipes will empower you to reclaim your health and discover the pleasures of eating plant-based.

The solution for chronic inflammation, regarded as the cause of most common modern diseases, has been identified! And it is not blueberries. It is something right beneath our feet-the Earth itself!

Throughout most of evolution humans walked barefoot and slept on the ground, largely oblivious that the surface of the Earth contains limitless healing energy. Science has discovered this energy as free-flowing electrons constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning. Few people know it, but the ground provides a subtle electric signal that maintains health and governs the intricate mechanisms that make our bodies work-just like plugging a lamp into a power socket makes it light up. Modern lifestyle, including the widespread use of insulative rubber or plastic-soled shoes, has disconnected us from this energy and, of course, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.

Earthing introduces the planet's powerful, amazing, and overlooked natural healing energy and how people anywhere can readily connect to it. This eye-opening book describes how the physical disconnect with the Earth creates abnormal physiology and contributes to inflammation, pain, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep. By reconnecting to the Earth, symptoms are rapidly relieved and even eliminated and recovery from surgery, injury, and athletic overexertion is accelerated.

This never-before-told story-filled with fascinating research and real-life testimonials- chronicles a discovery with the potential to create a global health revolution.

​Living in New York City, Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) must make the cross-country trip back to her home state of California for the wedding of her younger sister (Mena Suvari). Once with her family, Sarah learns some interesting things from her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine), including the family's inspirational ties to the famous film "The Graduate." But all this leads to millionaire Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner), and Sarah wants answers -- especially since Burroughs might be her real father.

When astronaut Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) returns to Earth after a mission that nearly cost him his life, he decides to take a desk job in order to see his beautiful wife, Jillian (Charlize Theron), more often. Gradually, Jillian notices that Spencer's personality seems to have changed, but her concerns fade when she discovers that she's pregnant. As Jillian grows closer to becoming a mother, her suspicions about Spencer return. Why does it seem as if he's a different person?

​In the early 1960s, Victor Torres and his family moved to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico in search of a new life. The American dream quickly fades as they face a life of want in their adopted home. As a new recruit in a street gang, Victor embarks on a lucrative new drug trafficking business in an attempt to help his struggling family. Victor is quickly enslaved by drug use, and his parents, Manuel and Lila, desperately search to find a way to help their son.

"I Am Sam" is the compelling story of Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a mentally-challenged father raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning) with the help of a unique group of friends. As Lucy turns seven and begins to intellectually surpass her father, their close bond is threatened when their unconventional living arrangement comes to the attention of a social worker who wants Lucy placed in foster care.

Tom and Lauren thwart a watery suicide attempt. The drowning young man turns out to be Danny, who was accused of the murder of an old woman many years ago. Although Tom provided psychological testimony at the trial, he seizes the chance to help.

Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a hotshot prosecutor, is about to leave his post for a lucrative job at a private law firm when his boss (David Strathairn) hands him a seemingly open-and-shut case. Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) tried to kill his wife with a shot to the head and is defending himself in court. All hope for a quick and easy trial fly out the door when Ted proves to be a more cunning and devious adversary than Willy anticipates.

​Hoping to get support from his mother (Naomi Watts) and grandmother (Susan Sarandon), a New York teen (Elle Fanning) prepares to transition from female to male.

Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez), a Chicago reporter, travels to Mexico to investigate the unsolved murders of hundreds of Mexican women taking place over the years near an American-owned factory. Lauren reunites with Alfonso Diaz (Antonio Banderas), her former lover and colleague, who publicizes the murders despite threats from local authorities. Together the pair seek the truth and try to help the survivor (Maya Zapata) of a brutal attack find justice.

​Addie Moore and Louis Waters, a widow and widower, have lived next door to each other for years. When Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbor, the two begin sleeping in bed together platonically, with the innocent goal of alleviating their shared loneliness. As their relationship deepens, however, they each deal with grief and loss, and a real romance begins to blossom.

A woman accidentally kills her husband during a kinky game. Handcuffed to her bed with no hope of rescue, she begins hearing voices and seeing strange visions.