Category Archives: Health

Eating Hacks for Family Vacations

Vacation is a time to kick back, let your hair down, and not worry about cooking a whole lot while away from home. You want to spend your precious time exploring the destination instead of making food. It’s understandable that you’d want to not put effort into thinking about food. However, if you don’t want to gain weight, you have to get proactive with your eating habits. You don’t have to put a halt to enjoying dining out as much as possible — just be more careful and don’t overdo everything.

One of the most common mistakes people on vacation make is underestimating calories. Restaurants are under no obligation to print out the caloric weight of their food, which leaves it up to the diner to figure it out. You’re far more likely to underestimate calories than overestimate. You wind up taking in more calories than you think. If you find yourself in a situation where you want to enjoy your food but not gain weight, use a calorie counting app on your smartphone by entering in the ingredients. It gives you a better idea of how much you’re taking in and lets you enjoy your food without the guilt. You want to return from your vacation the same weight you left, not more.

Take the quiz below from health IQ to learn more about how taking a vacation has the potential to help you gain weight. You might be surprised at how the change of pace and consumption of food and drink adds to your caloric intake.

About Health IQ

HealthIQ’s mission is to improve the health of the world. In pursuit of this mission, they’ve created over 2,000 quizzes and worked with innovative insurance companies to create financial rewards for health conscious people. To date, Health IQ has helped thousand triathletes, vegans, runners, and other health conscious people get an accurate life insurance quote that takes into account their level of health consciousness.  They hope to expand to other financial rewards in the near future.

4 Effective Ways To Maintaining Healthy Teeth

Maintaining healthy teeth and gums often require extra effort than most of us care to give. Proper maintenance of healthy teeth and gums go beyond the regular twice a day brushing routine most of us do. For anyone looking to have functional and healthy teeth throughout their lifetime, they must be committed to giving oral hygiene and dental care the necessary attention. Below, we have listed a few tips on effective and easy ways of maintaining healthy teeth and gums. 

Make proper oral hygiene a habit from an early childhood stage.
Creating and instilling the daily habit of brushing twice and flossing everyday in your young child could go a long way into helping them maintain the habit even during their adult life. Dental care for your young one should commence as early as the child starts teething and the first tooth pops out. You could apply a small soft brush or a damp cloth to clean your child’s teeth. As they grow, it is advisable to supervise them during the first 2 to 5 years, usually giving them directives on how they should go about it. This early training could go a long way in helping them maintain healthy dental lifestyles later on. Make sure to also take them to a reputable dentist Gold Coast residents visit for regular dental checks.

Brushing twice a day and flossing daily
Often sounding cliche, it is known as one the most efficient way of maintaining healthy teeth and gums. Daily oral care helps prevent many dental problems that may occur due to teeth neglected. These problems include decayed teeth, bad breath, bleeding gums and even critical issues like oral cancer. To achieve maximum dental hygiene, you should first make sure you invest in a quality toothbrush. Make a point of changing your toothbrush at least twice in three months because toothbrush wears out quickly even when it’s of high quality. Also investing in the right toothpaste is critical as some toothpaste may cause more damage than good. Therefore, knowing the right toothpaste for your teeth and gums may save you unnecessary dental costs while treating a problem brought about by using the wrong toothpaste.

While flossing might be ignored by most people, it is of equal necessity if you are aiming for healthy teeth and gums. Flossing is most useful as it removes food debris and plaque where the toothbrush is unable to reach. Efficiently flossing your teeth cleans the small gaps that usually a toothbrush cannot get on.

Maintaining a healthy diet and drinking water
It does not take much to maintain a healthy diet other than the choice to do so. Eating healthy food, mainly of fruits, vegetables and meat help in the provision of nutrients required for healthy and strong teeth. These nutrients include calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and Magnesium. Daily dairy intake also helps strengthen the teeth. More often than not, dentists advise people to avoid a lot of sugar intake as it one of the most harmful things for the teeth and gums. Drinking a lot of water helps wash away the food bacteria left in the mouth and also neutralize the pH level that weakens the teeth.

Avoid or quit smoking.
Most dentists would advise their patients to maintain the above healthy habits and also avoid and quit smoking for the patients who smoke. The tar in the cigarettes causes the teeth to turn yellowish and also gives one lousy breath. Smoking also has adverse effects on your health as it affects the production of saliva and can cause throat and lung cancer. Therefore, avoiding cigarette intake leads to better dental care and general health.]

A healthy smile will boost your self-esteem as you can comfortably interact with people without worrying about bad breath or discoloured teeth.

 

What You Feed Your Children Can Impact Mood and Emotional Well Being

Most new moms become interested in childhood nutrition from the very moment they learn that they are pregnant. The recommendation that many doctors give is to feed children as much organic food as possible. Some moms even make a choice to feed their children diets that are free of meat. There are classes that online nursing programs teach to nursing students and even new parents who are interested in childhood nutrition, but that knowledge has to be applied if it is going to be helpful. The truth is that is can be expensive to provide children with healthy meals every day, and even then, they may not respond as positively as you’d hope. Here are a few reasons that you should encourage your children to eat a balanced diet that doesn’t revolve around weight and fitness.

Excess Sugar Consumption in Children

As a parent, you will probably find that your number one battle involves limiting the amount of sugar your children consume. When you offer them a bottle of water, they’ll be asking for a can of soda instead. Not only do you have to be the one to say ‘no’ on a consistent basis, you also have to monitor what your kids eat while they are at school.

Sugar produces a kind of rush, especially when you eat a lot of it at once. While children certainly enjoy the flavor of sugar laden foods, they can also become addicted and start experiencing mood swings and withdrawal symptoms if their intake isn’t monitored.

Feeding Your Child Too Much Salt and Saturated Fat

There are also children who develop a taste for heavy, fatty, deep fried foods early in life. Sodium intake can become a problem in early childhood if kids are not taught about the five main food groups. Most doctor of nurse practitioner programs cover how high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are rising among adolescent patients. Imagine how sad you would be if you found that your child needed to start taking medication to manage his or her high blood pressure as a result of a poor diet. Remember that a child doesn’t have to be visibly obese to be at risk for these kinds of ailments. Kids try very hard to fit in, and being given a poor health prognosis could lead to depressive behaviors.

Putting Extreme Dietary Restrictions on Your Children

While some parents are a little too relaxed in what they allow their children to eat there are kids who have their diets micromanaged down to the teaspoon. Feeding your child nothing but organic foods, banning artificial sugars in your home, and never allowing your child to eat fried foods can certainly lead to better overall health. At the same time, your child may not be happy about having fewer options when it is time to go out to a restaurant or when they want to stay over a friend’s house. This behavior might actually encourage your child to sneak unhealthy foods in excess whenever you are out of sight.

Feed your children fresh fruits and vegetables and try to prepare meals in the healthiest ways possible. You should also talk to your children about how to measure portions properly, but you don’t ever want them to feel like they don’t also have some control over their own diets. Find out what your kids really like to eat and then see if you can all compromise on the way that meals are dished out at home.

 

 

 

 

CBD and Its Efficiency for Epilepsy

When it comes to medical cannabis, more people are familiar with the cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, but there is another cannabinoid that is having a profound effect on many people who are suffering from epileptic seizures.

Cannabinoid That Won’t Get You High

CBD is the abbreviation for cannabidiol which is only one of the multiple cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. The discovery of CBD was first made when it was used specifically to stop an epileptic seizure. Out of all of the active chemical compounds in the cannabis plant CBD is highly prevalent. The primary difference between TCH and CBD is CBD is absolutely non-psychoactive. You can expect to never get that “high” feeling with just CBD. It still relaxes you physiologically, but you will never feel intoxicated.

Who It Helps

The fight and debate continues to rage on about whether CBD and medical marijuana are actually helpful to people with epilepsy. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder whose primary symptom is reoccurring sudden seizures due to the abnormal sensory activity happening in the brain. It is dangerous, and often scary, disorder to deal with as a person with the condition, or a bystander of an epileptic episode.

Due to extreme regulations placed on cannabis by the federal government, it makes it difficult to experiment and have the resources for unlimited testing of CBD. However, testing is possible and results have yielded that CBD does help people suffering from the following conditions that have epileptic seizures as a viable symptom:

  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Muscular dystrophy
  • Parkinson’s disease

People who suffer from epileptic seizures often times don’t drive, and they need to utilize a cannabis delivery business. Green Door West is in the medical marijuana business, and they ensure that their customers have the medicine they need to soothe what pains they may be feeling or any illnesses they may be battling. For many, what they do is life-changing.

 

 

Is Counting Sheep Not Helping You Sleep?

We all have those nights where no matter what we do we can’t seem to drift off, and when we finally close our eyes, we enter a restless sleep and spend the night tossing and turning. Although it’s fairly common to have the odd night where you can’t sleep properly every so often when you become unable to sleep every night that’s when it becomes a real problem.

You can’t function properly when you’ve only had a couple of hours sleep, which is why getting enough sleep is so important, especially when you’ve got little ones to take care of. You can’t get your little ones safely off to school, yourself to work on time, and function properly throughout the day if you aren’t getting the rest that you need.

The good news is that when it comes to not being able to sleep properly at night, there’s normally a cause behind the fact you’re not able to sleep properly, so it’s just a case of determining what that is and finding a way to alleviate the problem. With that in mind, below are some of the most common causes of insomnia and how to fix them so that you can get a better night’s sleep.

Your room is not the right temperature

If your bedroom is too hot or too cold, you will struggle to drift off at night. When you do drift off, you will probably find that you only sleep lightly, meaning that the smallest of noises can wake you up. The first step to dealing with insomnia caused by the room being too hot or too cold is to work out which it is. Is your bedroom too hot or is it too cold? If the room isn’t warm enough, perhaps you could consider putting the heating on a timer to come on intermittently throughout the night. If the room gets too hot, perhaps you could leave a window open slightly so that you can get some fresh air into the space. You will find that once you’ve managed to get the temperature of your bedroom right, you should be able to get a good night’s sleep more easily. The more comfortable your bedroom is in terms of the temperature, the better.

Too much screen time

Studies have shown that people who spend too much time on their smartphones or watching TV before bed ends up struggling to get to sleep at night. The reason for this is simple; it’s because the lighting of smartphone and TV screens causes the brain to be more active which makes it harder for you to relax and drift off. So sleep specialists recommend not having any screen time within an hour of wanting to go to bed, else it can hinder your ability to fall asleep and get a good night’s sleep. Instead of watching TV before bed or scrolling through your social media feeds, consider reading a book, listening to calming music, or doing a puzzle of some sort, such as a crossword or wordsearch. Honestly, if you steer clear of electronic screens before going to bed, your chances of getting a good night’s sleep increase significantly.

Your bed isn’t as comfortable as it could be

Another common cause of not being able to get a good night’s sleep is your bed not being as comfortable as it could be. Whether your mattress is the problem, your duvet is too warm, or your pillows just aren’t the right softness, getting a good night’s sleep can be almost impossible. That’s why it’s important to determine what’s causing the lack of comfort when you’re in bed so that you can fix the problem and get a good night’s sleep. Say the problem is your bedding and you’re wondering what to do when your down comforter is too warm or too lumpy, then your best bet is to replace it. Whatever the issue, if it’s caused by a piece of bedding being too warm, itchy or lumpy, replace it, and the chances are you will start getting the good night’s sleep that you need. If you’re itching a lot at night, it could be that you’re allergic to a certain type of bedding, such as goose down, for instance, so it could be worth looking at hypoallergenic bedding.

 

You’re not relaxing before bed

You know how kids have a bedtime routine? Well, you should have one too, if you want to get a good night’s sleep, that is. Before going to bed, have a bedtime routine that allows you to relax and unwind, ready to fall asleep. Perhaps it could start with a warm lavender or rose bubble bath (both scents are incredibly relaxing), followed by a milky drink, and half an hour of reading your book. If after half an hour of reading your book you don’t feel sleepy enough, don’t force yourself to lay down and close your eyes, read for a little longer until you start to feel sleepy. You will be amazed at how beneficial having a bedtime routine can be and how much better you sleep because of it.

You’re exercising too close to going to bed

It’s all well and good wanting to stay healthy, but if you are exercising too close to when you’re going to bed, it’s going to impact your ability to fall asleep. Believe it or not, despite using a lot of energy when doing a high-paced activity, it actually leaves you more awake than ever because of the endorphins pumping around your body. So it’s important not to exercise in the lead up to when you’re going to bed, else you will struggle to fall asleep. While fast-paced exercise is a bad idea, studies have shown that meditation-based exercise like yoga can actually help you to fall asleep by relaxing you, so it’s fine to do this before bed.

When you’re counting sheep but just can’t drift off, it can be a real nightmare, especially when you’ve got a family and hectic lifestyle to keep up with. Hopefully, the tips and advice above will help you to ensure that you’re getting all the sleep that you need.