World Champion Athletes and Health Advocates Join Current Members to Build Awareness for the Latest Therapeutic Innovations from Human Touch
LONG BEACH, CA July 10, 2019—Human Touch®, the U.S. market leader in high-performance massage chairs, Perfect Chair® recliners, and other wellness innovations, announces its new Wellness Council, consisting of equestrian, Elisa Wallace, professional golfer, Stephanie Kono, triathlete and hyperbarics expert, Alexandra Williams, and returning member, Olympian and Ironman 70.3 World Champion, Andy Potts.
The Human Touch Wellness Council was formed with the intention of sourcing valuable insights from leading doctors, professional athletes, wellness practitioners, and natural healers to further advance the design, function, and needs of the Human Touch product line.
Elisa Wallace is an award-winning equestrian representing the U.S.A. in international competition. She is a 5-star three-day event rider, popular YouTuber, and well-known advocate for American Mustang adoption, off the track thoroughbreds, rider safety, and women in sports.
Stephanie Kono is an LPGA professional golfer earning her first full tour status in 2012 and re-earning her full tour status with her performance at the 2018 LPGA Q-Series. The highlight of Stephanie's 2018 season was winning the second annual Donald Ross classic on the LPGA Symetra Tour.
Alex Williams is a triathlete, hyperbarics expert, and the Founder of Holistic Hyperbarics in Berkeley, California. An EMT, birth doula, and post-surgery masseuse, she has a deep passion for promoting healing and chronic pain relief to patients.
Andy Potts is an Ironman World-Champion, U.S. Olympian, and a three-time winning USAT Triathlete of the Year. He has completed over 200 races with more than 57 first place finishes. As one of the most versatile triathletes in the world, Andy makes it a priority to give back to the sport and its community.
“We are thrilled to welcome this outstanding team of professionals to the Human Touch family,” says David Wood, CEO of Human Touch. “Their diverse experiences, along with their personal and professional dedication to total body wellness will serve to guide us as we continue to develop the most innovative, intuitive, and purpose-serving products possible for individuals with chronic pain, athletes, health professionals, and consumers alike.”
To learn more about the Human Touch Wellness Council, please visit www.humantouch.com/wellness-council
About Human Touch
Entering its 40th year, Human Touch® proudly serves as the country’s leading provider and innovator of high-performance massage chairs, Perfect Chair recliners and other wellness solutions. Committed to creating the most immersive and personalized independent wellness experiences, Human Touch introduces patented massage systems that replicate the touch and techniques used by leading massage professionals. Each product is strategically engineered and designed to address the pains and stresses caused by today's hectic lifestyle using the latest technologies and intelligent ergonomics. Products are available at fine furniture stores, back care specialty stores, and mass-market retailers across the U.S., through international retailers and distributors in more than 40 countries, and online at www.humantouch.com.
Media Contact:Emily WongDirect Ph: 562-733-7358ewong@humantouch.comMeet Alexandra Williams, Founder of Holistic Hyperbarics and Human Touch Wellness Council member.
Well race season is wrapping up and it’s time to review the inner workings of each race and the mechanics of the racecar. But just as important are reviewing films and contracts, team recovery and racecar rebuilding. Not only is the racecar rebuilt but the entire crew needs to take time to rest, refresh and reenergize. It’s during off season that I spend my mornings in the shop, and then head to the office.
In my office I have the iJOY® Massage Chair 2.1 by Human Touch®, and that is where I spend most of my time. This chair is stylish, comfortable and perfect for any space of any size. It is not unusual to see car parts around my office, limiting the amount of room space, plus we also use my office for crew meetings. There is not much room and for that reason the iJOY chair is the perfect size. The iJOY is a smaller portable size massage chair, so it is ideal for my office. The funniest thing about my massage chair is it is NEVER EMPTY! It is not unusual to see my crew fighting over who gets to sit in it.
After getting some heavy work done in the shop, it is nice to have a chair where I can enjoy the benefits of massage. This chair uses long strokes, kneading, compression, vibration and tapping to help relax and energize me while I review race films, post to social media and answer emails. The positive effects of the iJOY massage chair are that it reduces my stress level, back pain and muscle tension.
Outside of the massage effects, the iJOY chair is a comfortable chair. It provides a great place to just sit and relax. I can be found watching TV in it after my workday has ended. The chair has convenient side zippered pockets where I keep the chair remote, tissues and my TV remote. It truly is the perfect chair to unwind.
Dr. James Rouse, Human Touch Wellness Council Member and Naturopathic Physician, shares how he uses the Novo XT massage chair to accomplish his own goals and personal mastery.
Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash
Written By: Dr. Hoon C. Kim, Acupuncturist and Human Touch Wellness Council Member
What is Autoimmune Disease?
Autoimmune Diseases are a group of disorders in which the immune system attacks the body and destroys or alters tissues. There are more than eighty serious chronic illnesses in this category including rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, lupus, thyroid disease, inflammatory bowel disease, Addison's disease, pernicious anemia, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis and Guillain–Barré syndrome.
According to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA) twenty percent of the population suffers from autoimmune disorders. Each disease appears uncommon on an individual basis but, as a group, the disorders make up the fourth-largest cause of disability among women.
Due to the complexity of treating autoimmune disorders, integrative medicine solutions including acupuncture and Asian medicine have received much attention as successful therapies in their treatment particularly for use in providing pain relief, regulating the immune system, managing symptoms and improving overall quality of life.
What Causes Autoimmune Disease?
Under normal conditions, an immune response cannot be triggered against the cells of one's own body. In certain cases, however, immune cells make a mistake and attack the very cells that they are meant to protect. This can lead to a variety of autoimmune diseases which encompass a broad category of over 100 diseases in which the person's immune system attacks his or her own tissue.
The exact mechanisms causing these changes are not completely understood, but bacteria, viruses, toxins, and some drugs may play a role in triggering an autoimmune process in someone who already has a genetic (inherited) predisposition to develop such a disorder. It is theorized that the inflammation initiated by these agents, toxic or infectious, somehow provokes in the body a "sensitization" (autoimmune reaction) in the involved tissues.
As the disease develops vague symptoms start to appear, such as joint and muscle pain, general muscle weakness, possible rashes or low-grade fever, trouble concentrating, or weight loss. The following symptoms may point toward something being wrong: numbness and tingling in hands and feet, dry eyes, hair loss, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, or repeated miscarriages can also be caused by an autoimmune response.
How Acupuncture Treats Autoimmune Disorders
According to East Asian medicine, autoimmune disorders occur when there is imbalance within the body. Imbalance can come from an excess or deficiency of yin and yang that disrupts the flow of Qi, or vital energy, through the body. Acupuncture is used to help the body restore balance, treating the root of the disorder, while specifically addressing the symptoms that are unique to each individual.
Clinical research has shown that acupuncture causes physical responses in nerve cells, the pituitary gland, and parts of the brain. These responses can cause the body to release proteins, hormones, and brain chemicals that control a number of body functions. It is proposed that, by these actions, acupuncture affects blood pressure, body temperature and the immune system.
In addition to acupuncture, your treatment program to manage your autoimmune disorder may involve a combination of therapies including stress reducing exercises, moderate physical activity, herbal medicine and nutritional support.
While attending the CES (Consumer Electronic Show) show this year in Las Vegas with Tough Tested and my racecar, I got to meet the wonderful people from Human Touch. They had come to my booth, stopped to say hello and ask some questions about my racecar. I immediately loved their positive energy. We took some great photos and I promised to check out their booth the next day.
If you have never been to the CES show, let me tell you, it makes for some very long days of standing! My feet and back were aching from standing around for three days. As promised, I still wanted to drop by the Human Touch booth. I figured with all my aches and pains this was probably the best time to go check out massage chairs.
Upon arriving at the booth I could see that it was very popular. There was a very long line to test out these chairs. When it became my turn, I quickly hopped in to a really beautiful red chair. A wonderful 5-minute demo message was started. It was one of the best 5 minutes of the show! When I arrived at the booth, my back on down to my feet were aching. After just five minutes I got up feeling energized and refreshed. My feet no longer were screaming!
There is something you need to know about my history. At about the age of 8, I was diagnosed with Scoliosis. I began with a 15% left Thoracic curve. I had to wear a hard shell preventative brace that covered my entire torso from my hips to my neck for 20 hours a day. After wearing numerous braces, that failed to prevent the curve from progressing, I had progressed to a 40% Left Thoracic curve with a rib hump. My left shoulder was 4 inches higher than my right. The curve caused my chest to begin to impede on my heart and lungs. When I was 15 years old, it was determined that I needed to have corrective Scoliosis surgery. I entered the hospital in Phoenix and came out not only straighter, but with two 12-inch titanium rods in my back.
Since I was very young, all I have ever wanted to do was race. I would race the kids on my street on my bicycle. I was the little kid that loved watching NASCAR on the television. When I was ten years old I began to race Quarter Midgets. Since then I have worked my way up to Bandoleros, Legends, Late Models, Super Late Models and have even had a shot in ARCA and the NASCAR Camping World Trucks. It was when I was racing Legends that I had to take a year off to recover from Scoliosis surgery. I listened to everything my doctor told me to do, worked extra hard in physical therapy and ate extremely healthy. My doctors were amazed when I was fully healed in nine months and wanted to get back in my racecar seat. My Thoracic area is now the strongest part of my back. The only thing I will never be able to do is a back bend, and I don’t think I will ever miss doing that.
It was after learning about my history of Scoliosis and the fact that I am involved in a high impact sport that I was asked to be a part of the Human Touch Wellness Council. I was so honored when asked. I am excited that Human Touch not only meticulously designs their massage chairs, but they truly care about well-being, fitness, wholeness, strength and recovery.
So far I am really enjoying my NOVO XT chair. Delivery was a breeze. I have found my stress level reduced and I am sleeping much better. I am excited to try the chair after a race in my NASCAR Super Late Model. The placement of my rods always causes deep bruising in my lower thoracic area after long periods in my racing seat, and I hope that the NOVO XT will help with this. I am looking forward to sharing with you how well my chair helps me to recover from back pain and accelerates my recovery.
How does Olympian and World Champion Triathlete, Andy Potts, keep his competitive edge? A strict training regimen that just won’t quit.
Learn just what it takes to become a champion from the Ironman legend himself. It certainly isn’t easy, but his training and recovery schedule has helped him to achieve over 28 Ironman 70.3 first place titles since he took home his first Ironman 70.3 World Champion title in 2007.
Learn more about Andy Potts, and how Human Touch products help him to bring his best each and every day, in this press release.
One of the questions that I get asked pretty constantly is how I am able to keep surfing most everyday at my semi mature station in life. In other words, “How does a geezer like you stay out there all the time?” I should preface this to say that it is normally other geezers who are asking this question. When you are young you don’t even think about it, you just do it and there are little or no physical consequences. Geeze, I remember being able to surf all day, like 10 hours, and then woof down a half gallon of ice cream before heading to the dance. Hahaha, ok I just realized that sounded just like the “and I walked ten miles through the snow to get to school and didn’t even have a pair of shoes to wear,” kinda thing. But, you get the idea. When you are 20 your body just keeps going and you don’t think about it. When you get a bit older you start to get sore, your body aches, you get tired and you start feeling like it might be a good idea to “take a recovery break today.” I see guys missing really good days because they are sore and their body just hurts too much to give it another go. This is something I try to avoid as I hate missing good days. At my age you don’t want to miss anything, I mean ya just never know.
So, here is my little guide on how to keep an older surfing body in tune so that you can surf as much as possible without pain. First off, don’t let yourself get fat like I am because it makes it that much harder on yourself. I must like it to be hard because I stay fat, but I really do not recommend it. One key to staying in the water is to pace yourself time wise in the water within what you feel good with. Sometimes it is not so much how long you surf but more how hard you surf while you are out there. If you go out and sit there for 2 hours and only ride a few waves, socializing and trying to pick up babes, it’s not as much of a workout as if you surf hard for one hour, riding a ton of waves and going for it. Know your threshold as far as endurance. It is when you push past it that your body really gets angry and you pay the price afterwards. When you start getting noodle armed it’s time to go in.
Secondly, it is super important to stay hydrated. Make sure you drink some water before you surf and have some on hand after you get out. Even though you are in the water your body needs fluids. This is especially true when surfing in the tropics or warm climates. Coffee, cokes, beer and all that stuff does not hydrate you, just the opposite. Drink a lot of water or some sort of hydrating drink like Gatorade etc. This is very important to muscle recovery. If you get a lot of cramps it never hurts to take a pinch of salt here and there too.
I am a firm believer in massage and I think the older you get the more important it is to help your body come back from strenuous activity, like surfing. It also helps get your body ready for it, much like stretching and yoga. A massage a day can work wonders on keeping you surfing. Of course for most people getting a massage everyday is impossible, either for the expense or just the time it takes out of your day or night. Years ago I got one of those great massage chairs that you sometimes see in stores and like to sit in and wish you had one at home. It is a HUMAN TOUCH massage chair that is made by a company called; you guessed it, Human Touch, out of Long Beach. It feels like a real person and it is fabulous. A few minutes in the morning just before I paddle out to loosen me up a bit, a short sesson after surfing and 15 or 20 minutes in the evening is a perfect massage chair daily regime. I can’t even come close to telling you how great this is for my old geezer body and I strongly recommend one.
If you want to stay in the water as much as possible and you are middle aged or older you might want to consider my little suggestions here. If you feel good you keep the stoke. And if you have the stoke then you paddle out. Simple deal.
By: Dr. James Rouse, Naturopathic Physician and
Human Touch Wellness Council Member
Full disclosure and absolute vulnerability here…have you ever been too tired to keep running but at the same time you felt too scared to stop? I know in my heart that you and I most always have the most powerful and sincerest of intentions to allow for the space of grace to envelope us on demand. Yup, every day we assemble our “to do” list and maybe, just maybe, we courageously insert our self-care towards the end of that long list as an “honorable mention” in the hopes that we may just make it happen.
Then life happens.
No doubt, we are living under the influence of “not enough-ness”. Not enough time, energy, mindfulness and presence. At the end of our daily decathlon we often times find ourselves feeling like we may let ourselves down… again. From there, we can go to the familiar place of finding all the reasons why we missed ourselves… again. Or, we can courageously choose to begin again, right here and now with a self-love, self-care intervention: wellness at the speed of life.
“Oh my, this sounds a bit self-indulgent… a little too self-absorbed…” I get it. How dare you place your SELF at the top of your “to do” list?
How dare you not?
Your ability to rise up each day and create a life you love - one that is awake, present, balanced and fully open to the highest expression of you is fully dependent on your ability to - openly and with enthusiasm - love yourself well-all day long.
Here’s some fun food for thought:
Massage Anywhere: planes, trains and automobiles. Make your commute a moving massage meditation. You will arrive more peaceful, balanced and ready to rock your success. Got lunch? Feed your mind and body the blessing of moving from stressed to blessed… the courageous move from being the human doing to re-claim the human being is done with your Human Touch iJoy Massage Anywhere. Make room for your afternoon delight. As stress hormones love to rise up with each and every email, voicemail and social media engagement, you can lower the drama and raise the positivity while you marinate in massage from your desk, meeting, soccer-mom-dad bleacher seat. All good. Always.
If you’re on the fence as to whether or not you can make the move to the greener pastures of peace, positivity and all out contagion, let me leave you with this: as you make your way into each day living under the influence of your self-care love affair the world will be watching. “They” will follow your lead, you will be a change agent, you will be the leader of the revolution- and you thought this was all about you. Rise and shine wellness warrior!
So, the impact Human Touch has on my life, and the lives of all I know who own their products is uncanny. I am assuming Human Touch is NOT tracking my physical health (as far as I know). I recently purchased a Human Touch PC 8500 chair, and did so without knowledge of a circulation issue with one of my legs. You know…varicose veins, but in my case they were severe and only on one side. Quite unusual. I immediately went to my primary care physician, who stated that this was the worst case he had seen. He recommended surgery, but in the mean time to get compression stockings to compensate for gravity. He said: “You know, one good trick is to make sure to put the compression stockings on while in bed before gravity has had a chance to negatively impact the effect of the compression stockings. He also recommended sitting with my leg raised.
It hit me: Not only does the PC8500 solve the problem of keeping my leg raised: It is one of the main features of the chair, but now I have a way to apply compression stockings which significantly improve their effectiveness.
For compression socks to be truly effective, it is best to put them on when in a position which puts your legs above your heart. Ideally putting your feet in the air for 10 minutes or so prior to putting on compression socks helps by ensuring blood is not pooled in your feet prior to applying the compression socks.
Before starting my day, I grab a pair of compression stockings, get in the chair putting it in the position with my legs almost straight up, and sit for a few minutes while the blood drains from my legs. It works so well that you can actually see the varicose veins disappear. After this short period, I simply put on the compression stockings and start my day! Watching TV or working in this position means putting off the need for surgery just a bit longer, and provides peace of mind, that I’m not further stressing my body for no reason.
Thank you Human Touch for such brilliant designs! It is as though the designers at Human Touch are themselves human, and therefore seem to know precisely what “us humans” actually need.
- Page Previous
- Page 1
- Page 2
- You're currently reading page 3
- Page 4
- Page Next