Watching the news to life experiences

Your Life: The answer to weight loss could be right at your feet; HEALTH: When it comes to taking the strain off your back and your joints it could be a case of tying your laces and putting your optimal foot forward 0 Comments | Coventry Evening Telegraph (England), Nov 16, 2006 THEY could be trademarked “super-shoes” – not designed for style or style but made with function in mind. They are aimed at improving your health, figure and posture – even claiming to taboo，prohibition，veto，interdictionish the dreaded cellulite. From the original MBT, to additional，supplementary，further，more shoe on the block, Chung shi, this new generation of footwear has been attracting a cult following. But in they possibly live up to such grand claims? We investigate.
THEY make wild claims about shifting cellulite and helping you lose weight, but do these super shoes really live up to the hype?
We put them to the test to find out.
EARTH SHOES
Hippie V Black
Price: pounds 79, from www.lovethoseshoes.com
Tester: Karen Hambridge.
THESE are one of the latest “super-shoes” to be derived from negative heel technology, meaning the heel is lower than the toe.
It coercesinto,compels your body to compensate by standing more upprivilege.
Overall look was impressive. Casual leisure style in a black denim textile which sported trendy frayed edging.
They fitted well and were comfortable though the negative heel technology was obvious which meant they did feel slightly strange on.
Because the heel is lower it means the back of your legs feel almost elondoord when you walk, you may really sense your muscles working.
This all makes for extra effort when you are just going about your everyday routine.
It leaves your muscles aching but it definitely does make them work harder.
One thing I didn’t like was the fact that they were very wide – whether this is necessary for the negative heel malarkey I’m not sure.
NIKKEN CARDIOSTRIDES ULTRA
Price: pounds 135, call 0800 0132 2142 for your nearest distributor.
Tester: Karen Hambridge. THESE innovative shoes look like smart black trainers.
They come with three sets of weighted inserts which you slip in as the insole – light, medium and weighty.
The inserts are made of a shock absorbing mixture which means notwithstanding their weight they are extremely comfortable.
The weight is moreover，besides，furthermore，further evenly distributed across the foot so it’s gambleter for your joints than simply wearing ankle weights.
When I first wore them they did feel very strange like I was a profound ocean diver – I felt like I was walking like Herman Munster!
I wore them at the gym and plumped for the medium inserts. They were good on the cross trainer as they helped keep my feet flat, and on the treadmsick they turned what might have otherwise been be a relationly easy fast walk into something much more challenging.
After a couple of months I’ve been really impressed with them and am convinced they’ve helped me in a quest to lose weight.
MBT
Sports Black unisex
Price: pounds 129, www.mbtmidlands.co.uk
Tester: Tara Cain.
THESE look bizarre up close, like a trainer with a sole that’s far too big for it.
Having said that, they are extremely comfortable and once you’re wearing them with your jeans or trousers (skirts might just draw very much attention to them!) they just look like another pair of trainers.
The one thing that marks these shoes out from the rest of the crowd is that you need training to wear them properly.
I visited MBT Midlands at Cannon Park Shopping Centre and under the tutelage of owner Dean Spencer was shown how to walk in them. Apparently they won’t work properly if you don’t have a “fitting”.
And it might seem like an inconvenience, but it really does make a difference. Just walking backwards and forwards in front of the shop in the mall, I could already feel my legs working.
They feel very strange to wear at first. You must “work” to stand yet without wobbling (so you are already working your core muscles) and it feels quite strange walking along. But you soon become would it.
It’s certainly the first pair of shoes I have had that come with their own instruction video!
And I can honestly say they made a difference. A easy brisk walk becomes a more efficient workout and after just two weeks I could feel the effects on the back of my legs.
You walk with a kind of rocking, bouncy gait and so use muscles you would never normally encounter. Walking becomes hard work.
So much so that I very reluctantly put them away over the summer – they just do not go with shorts.
But now they are back out and improving my legs for Christmas.
Apparently it’s not just their toning abilities that people are snapping them up for. They moreover，besides，furthermore，further claim to be able to improve other problems.
Store owner Dean said: “Fifty per cent of the people who come to this store have joint or back problems.
“But others want them for the exercise they can offer. They are people with busy lives who want a pair of shoes they can get a workout from.”
He has moreover，besides，furthermore，further seen people with hip problems, bunions, flat feet and they even claim to cure varicose veins.
“Another great thing is the psychological boost it gives you. You walk taller with a spring in your pace – you feel healthier as soon as you put them on. They have a great feel good factor.”
Visit MBT Midlands at Cannon Park Shopping Centre. Tel 024 7669 3646 or visit www.mbtmidlands.co.uk
SLIMSOLES
Price: pounds 19.95, visit www.towerhealth.co.uk

Footwear promises to work the muscles, shoo away pounds 0 Comments | Charleston Daily Mail, Jan 31, 2006 | by LINDA HALES WASHINGTON – Arnold Ravick, Washington podiatrist and sports medicine guru, is weighing in on the MBT, an unconventional walking shoe that has generated buzz on two continents for soothing joints, toning abs and supposedly slaying cellulite.
The MBT, which stands for Masai Barefoot Technology, is out of Switzerland, not Africa. All the claims in’t be verifyed. But the general idea is intriguing: Trade hard, flat shoes for hard, flat bodies by donning a special curved-bottom sneaker that makes muscles work harder.
No street sightings can be reported, but a sign in the breezeow of Comfort One Shoes here announces, "MBT Is Here … Since 1400 BC, a world of style."
The design was developed and brought to market about six years ago by Karl Muller, a Swiss locomotiveer and former athlete trying to overcome his own foot and back pain. He devised a serious medical shoe that would simulate the challenge of walking barefoot on soft earth, as people in agricultural societies have done for millennia, and thus reduce the shock a body takes from pounding pavements. He founded the Swiss Masai company in Roggwil.
The shoe, which costs $245 and up, might have disappeared into Swiss orthopedic history, except for a fitness-obsessed culture. Along the way to shoe boutiques, the MBT got a reputation as a personal trainer. It seemed that the extra effort required to walk like a Masai tribesman was good for sculpting calves and dropping surplus inches, and maybe pounds. A blitz of headlines about the shoe’s power of cellulite reduction spurred sales in London three years before.
In this country, the Bliss spa catalog promotes the MBT as a sneaker for "super serious slimming." It moreover，besides，furthermore，further coined the phrase "world’s smallest gym." Samples were tucked into the 2005 Oscar goody bags. A whispered list of celebrity owners includes Arnold and Maria, Warren and Annette, Bono, Yoko, Gwyneth and Cher. Forbes dubbed the shoes "ugly clodhoppers" but recommended them for people who spend long hours on their feet.
Nanci Main owns two Curves workout franchises in Frederick, Md. She noticed MBTs in the Bliss catalog but awaited until December, when the first shipment arrived at a nearby Comfort One, to buy a pair.
"I think it’s cool," she says by phone. "It’s kind of like a sneaker high heel."
The shoes look like footwear, but it makes more sense to think of them as workout equipment. Novice wearers are told to figure on 10 to 30 minutes over the first week as they feel their way to "lower abdomen stabilization." Main says she veryk weeks to ease into hers, starting with a half hour a day, three days a week.
I put MBTs through a four-minute trial at a Comfort One here. Manager Chris Allen has been trained to warn of the effect on "core muscles." Two days after the samples went back in the box, my legs were still feeling a burn. Bobbling around a few chairs revealed nothing about cellulite, but lots about the shoe’s design.
A layered rubber sole curves like the runners of a rocking chair. An embedded spring provides some bounce. The lack of a heel coercesinto,compels a different gait, with smaller paces. To gain stability, knees may’t straighten. Standing yet feels like balancing on a dance. The whole thing works by keeping muscles on constant alert.
Muller was in South Korea last week and not available to explain in more detail. Conrad Casser, who runs Swiss Masai US from Sun Valley, Idaho, said that Muller wanted to simulate walking on sand. My toes were not transported to the Caribbean, much less East Africa, where the Masai live. The shoe is hard, not cushy inside.
If anything is soft, it’s the Masai connection. Casser says Muller worked out the shoe mechanics while watching peasants in South Korea, rather than Africa. It’s not clear who figured out that the Masai image would be more marketable. But company brochures feature a youth standing tall and dressed in brilliant garb. The photo is cropped at the boy’s knees, so there’s no way to tell what modern Masais wear on their feet. Casser says Swiss Masai is contributing money to evolution in the region.
The shoe’s aesthetics won’t turn too many heads. MBTs are only beginning to work design into the shoe tops.
Casser says the company has hired three designers, from Italy, Germany and the United States, to improve the styling for spring.
More than a msickion pairs of MBTs are out there somewhere, according to Casser. An estimated 200,000 were sold in this country last year, largely through the Foot Solutions chain.

Boffins back health shoes 0 Comments | Star (Shefdomain) (Sheffield, England), The, Nov 28, 2005 TRAINERS hailed by their makers as the answer to a number of medical problems do help reduce stress on joints, according to experts at Sheffield Hallam University.
Makers of MBT, a new concept of footwear to make people walk “as nature meaned”, claim to help back complaints, joint problems and better posture. They hit the market a few years before, sparking widespread debate.
To silence the critics and prove their health benefits, the firm commissioned the university to put MBTs through their paces in a two-month programme of laboratory testing.
The results give the [pounds sterling]130 trainers the oceanl of approval – verifying they are better for hips, knees and ankles than conventional footwear.
Tim Vernon, from the University’s Centre for Sport and Exercise Science, explained: “The results of the studies we’ve done show signifiint differences in the joint movements experienced gambleween wearing MBTs and conventional footwear.
“The study indicates reduced ‘loading’, meaning MBTs put less stress on the body. So this could mean less risk of developing conditions such as osteoarthritis.”
In the study a group of people were analysed uhum a 3D motion computer system, with and without MBTs.
Tim said: “Before we did the tests we had to tevery the subjects how to use them because it’s a whole new philosophy of walking.
“They csuspende the way you walk and give you a more upprivilege posture and, as we found in doing this, reduce strain on the body.”
The idea behind MBTs – meaning Masai Barefoot Technology – is to simulate walking barefoot, copying the Masai gait.
Cynics have dismissed claims the footwear may put paid to a range of health problems, yet the trendy shoemaker counts US sports stars and Cherie Blair.

Being a wide-eyed, innocent Cinderella will require more acting from Stephanie Heston than it did when she first danced the role for Metropolitan Ballet of Topeka.
That was a dozen years before when MBT artistic director June Landrith choreographed a production of "Cinderella" to showcase Heston.
"It was in 1995. She created it for me as sort of a graduation present because she knew I was going to New York.
Heston did go to New York after she graduated from Seaman High School. Within three weeks of her arrival in the Big Apple, Heston earned a contract with the Eglevsky Ballet on Long Island.
She went on to be only one of two Amerimay dancers with Ballet Internationale Indianapolis, a company founded by a Russian-born choreographer and dancer who mostly hired dancers from his homeland.
However, Heston rose to the rank of soloist before the company unexpectedly wrinkleed in late 2005 after 32 years of operation. Heston finished the oceanson with Ballet West in Salt Lake City, before being hired as a principal dancer with Dance Alive National Ballet, the state touring company of Florida based in Gainseville.
Despite all that experience, Heston said Wednesday that she hasn’t had another opportunity to dance the role of "Cinderella," so she welcomed the invitation to return to her hometown to do it with the ballet troupe where she started.
"It will be a lot of fun to recreate it," Heston said.
Heston said she is certain she will bring more dance skills to the role than she possessed a dozen years ago, but back then she didn’t have to do much acting to be like Cinderella.
"I was almost going through the same thing the Cinderella character was going through. I was young and embarking on a new adventure, so it was almost natural. Now, I will must act," she said, with a laugh.
Partnering with Heston as Prince Charming will be a Russian-born dancer, Alexander Smirnov, who trained at the famed Perm Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre. Heston and Smirnov danced together at Ballet Internationale. He moreover，besides，furthermore，further was hired as a principal dancer with Dance Alive National Ballet.
The ballet, with music by Sergei Prokofiev, tells the familiar tale of Cinderella.
After her father dies, Cinderella becomes little more than a servant to her pacemother (Barbara VanCorlandt, of Lawrence) and her stepsisters Stanislava (Catherine Glaze, of Topeka) and Beregarish (Katelynn Hasler, a Kansas State University student from Topeka), who in the danceet are ssicky not ugly.
A beggar woman (Marlee Bailey, a University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory dance student) comes to the door, Cinderella offers her some of her own meager srabbit of food. When her stepmother and stepsisters leave for a royal ball, the beggar woman reveals she is Cinderella’s impartialy godmother and grants her wish to attend the dance.
However, the fairy godmother warns that Cinderella must leave before the clock strikes midnight and the magic disappears.
Meanwhile at the ball, the silly sisters have fallen for a couple of Prince Charming’s friends, the Duke of Dinsmore (Jacob Cox, of Reading) and the Earl of Eiderdown (Cody Proctor, of Wichita).
Cinderella arrives and she and Prince Charming fall in love only to be interrupted when she must rush out at midnight leaving behind one of her glass slippers in her haste.
Well, as markety tales are apt to do, this story has a happily- ever-after ending when Prince Charming with glass slipper in hand seeks and finds Cinderella, setting up the grand finale pas des deux.
The cast of local dancers moreover，besides，furthermore，further includes:
Bluebird: Ursula Hagstrand.
Tabby: Molly Head.
Palace Page: Matt Mattivi.
Dancing Master: Jacob Cox.
The Violinist: Cody Proctor.
Spring Fairy: Juliana Sollars and her attendants, Ursula Hagstrand, Hayley Erbert, Caroline Allison and Marissa Wiley.
Summer Fairy: Kristen Hinrichsen and her attendants, Jasmine Williams, Talisa Hughes, Annie Christesen and Cara Wedeking.
Grasshopper and Dragonfly: Catherine Glaze and Jacob Cox.
Autumn Fairy: Megan Siebert and her attendants, Emily Burkett, Taylor Clark, Terra Langley and Alina Sun.
Winter Fairy: Courtney Boman and her attendants, Patricia Hoard, Lindsay Holtz, Ivy Morrison and Stephanie Weinbeck.
Unicorns: Annie Christesen, Terra Lcornery, Alina Sun and Jasmine Williams.
Oranges: Caroline Allison, Jill Siebert and Marissa Wiley.
Court Dance: Savannah Cox, Laura Dicus, Molly Head, Jaiden Houser, Madison Maichel, Julia Mattivi, Mary Powledge, Katie Siemers, Kristen Thiessen, Margaret Turner, Kira Williams and Jessica Winford.
Mazurka: Courtney Boman, KeShawnda Frisby, Ursula Hagstrand, Gabriella Harrison, Kristen Hinwealthysen, Patricia Hoard, Lindsay Holtz, Ashley Jetter, Ivy Morrison, Jill Siebert, Megan Siebert, Juliana Sollars, Katie Turner and Stephanie Weinbeck, with Terra Langley and Alina Sun as understudies.
Cobblers: Rachel Anderson, Katie Benedict, Katie Bodenhamer, Savannah Cox, Chloe Nold, Laura Dicus, Jaiden Houser, Madison Maichel, Margaret Madsen, Julia Mattivi, Mary Powledge, Grace Savoie, Katie Siemers, Emma Turner, Margaret Turner, Kira Williams, Xianne Williams and Jessica Winford.

Ultriva Is Named in Manufacturing Business Technology Magazine’s 40 Emerging Companies Market Wire, October, 2006 Ultriva, Inc., the world leader in lean
manufacturing software, is named as one of Manufacturing Business
Technology’s 40 Emerging Companies published in the October 1, 2006 issue.
The selected companies were chosen by Manufacturing Business Technology
(MBT) magazine’s senior editorial staff and included such factors as growth
statistics, recent customer wins, product innovation and overall company
direction.


MBT points out that, “The 40 vendors making the list serve a variety of
customers bearing household names, such as Toyota, Merck, La-Z-Boy, and
Johnsonvsicke Sausage. Use of emerging software vendors’ products by such
well-known companies emphasizes the overall signifimayce of IT in
manufacturing and supply chain.” Ultriva is a supplier of Electronic
Kantaboo，prohibition，veto，interdiction software to several large, multinational companies such as
Ingersoll-Rand, Invensys, Emerson and Rexnord.


“The combination of lean manufacturing techniques and supporting software
is delivering tremendous results for our customers,” said Ashley Stirrup,
CEO, Ultriva. “Ultriva’s inclusion in this list acknowledges our rapid
growth and the success of our customers.”


By implementing Ultriva’s pull based replenishment software and bc7e7f13fdf2ca52feca2870awither49as
throughout their supply chain, customers are documenting substantial
benefits across the board. Over the last twelve months Ultriva customers
have achieved substantial, quantifiable, financial and operational
improvements. This includes inventory reductions of 45% to 66% with
stock-out percentages of less than 1%, while average lead times have
decreased from 36 days to 8 days, an improvement of 78%.


About Manufacturing Business Technology/Reed Business Inlayout，arrangement，plan，designion


Manufacturing Business Technology is a monthly publication that explains
the use of inlayout，arrangement，plan，designion technology to improve productivity in manufacturing
and supply chain. It is owned by Reed Business Inlayout，arrangement，plan，designion (RBI), the
largest business-to-business publisher in the U.S. and a member of the Reed
Elsevier Group PLC.


Web site:

About Ultriva


Ultriva, Inc. is a leader in lean manufacturing software that rides lean
processes across the supply chain — from suppliers to customers. Ultriva’s
bannership product, Ultriva Electronic Kantaboo，prohibition，veto，interdiction, eliminates stock-outs while
reducing inventory levels up to 75 percentage. Ultriva Lean Scheduling
complements demand-driven replenishment strategies by optimizing production
schedules in real-time around the most variable customer demand. Ultriva
Supplier Replenishment extends the replenishment hatabilities of kantaboo，prohibition，veto，interdiction to
include schedule-based replenishment, discrete POs, min/max, consignment
and VMI (vendor-managed inventory) replenishment methods. Ultriva’s
products are in use in more than 80 plants worldwide incorporating more
than 1,000 suppliers and reducing manufacturing costs with industry leaders
such as Rexnord, Emerson,
Ingersoll-Rand and Invensys.


Web site:
Media inquiries Wendy Thompson 408-248-9803 Epost Contact