For many people, losing weight can be a very long and drawn out process. Some people may not have the mental or physical strength to actually get there, however, there is nobody in this world that lacks potential to reach weight management. Continue reading 5 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Lose Weight
Category Archives: Living and Wellness
Daily living related topics, ranging from beautification to finding peace in life.
Alkaline Trio: Three Alkaline Rich Foods That Will Cleanse Your Body
Our Western dietary habits are harmful to our health for many reasons, one of them being that our commonly eaten foods adversely affect the pH balance of our bodies, rendering them far too acidic. An acid imbalance in the diet is thought to be responsible for a large range of medical conditions, as well as for general feelings of malaise and lack of energy. To combat this, many people recommend an alkaline cleanse diet, in order to restore the body to its right balance between acid and alkaline levels.
One of the many reasons why an acid imbalance causes health problems is that when there is an excess of acid, the body has to draw essential minerals from the bones and muscles, in order to neutralize the acid and restore the balance. This means that a regular diet of highly acidic foods, such as burgers, fried foods and soda drinks, ultimately results in reduced bone strength and lack of muscle tissue. At the same time, the acid is encouraging the presence of free radicals, which promote conditions such as cancer, stroke, diabetes, arthritis and digestive problems. Continue reading Alkaline Trio: Three Alkaline Rich Foods That Will Cleanse Your Body
5 Easy Steps for Meditation
Image Source.Today, I am going to present the secret of life to you. This secret will provide you with love, happiness, and a peace of mind. This secret should come as no surprise to you, though. In fact, I’m sure you’ve heard of it many times before, but this does not mean you have applied it to your life, yet. The secret to love, happiness, and peace of mind is… drumroll, meditation.
A Simple Lifestyle Change: Straightening Your Posture
The posture of a person is a strong indicator of what a person’s bone and muscle structure will look like in the future. Taking the time each day to align your posture and making a habit out of it can be one way to really impact your future health. Straightening your posture is a simple, but highly effective way to make a lifestyle change. Having straight posture is very overlooked in our society, especially with all of the office jobs. Here are just a few of the negative effects that a person can see or feel right away from poor posture.
Misalignment: The most obvious thing that bad posture does to your body is it forces your spinal column to move out of alignment. When you sit for hours at a time with incorrect posture, you can already start to feel your neck, upper back, or lower back start to ache. The misalignment of the spine can eventually lead to herniated discs, which may cause chronic pain and numbness.
Fatigue: This is one of the more surprising, but extremely common results of bad posture. Because your muscles depend on proper alignment to function normally, a misaligned spinal column will make certain muscles work harder than necessary and this will make your body more tired than usual.
Joint Stress: The body has connective tissue in certain areas of the body that need protection from impact. There are some areas on the body that do not have this tissue, and they are not meant to bear much impact, so when you have a misaligned spine it affects these kinds of areas. The result from this can cause short or long term pain. The joints that are mostly affected are the spine, knees, and shoulders.
Flexibility: The term flexibility can also be referred to as your body’s range of motion. Bad posture significantly affects your range of motion. Range of motion is the amount of movement and distance that your joints and muscles will move. When your posture is bad, muscles and ligaments in other parts of your body compensate for your alignment. After time, these muscles and ligaments will become extremely tight and will hinder your movement.
Besides those listed above, there are a lot of other bad effects that can come from bad alignment. There are many health problems in our society and bad posture can be the cause of a lot of those. Straightening your spine is such a simple change that you can apply to your life now! Here are some steps that you should try following as religiously as possible. It would be a good idea to print out this list and hang it somewhere that you will see it everyday.
1. Get rid of bad posture habits: I found this great site that discusses 7 Postural Habits to Make Now to Increase Your Health, and I’d like to start off my list with these. The list offers 7 simple solutions that can be applied to your life in seconds! Some of the things that this article discusses are squatting down, sleeping on your side, and keeping weight on your heels. You can click the link above to read more.
2. Train your posture muscles: There are certain muscles and ligaments in your spinal column that are made to hold your posture for you, but if these muscles are weak and never exercised, then your back will feel pain just from holding a proper posture. Standing up with proper posture and doing simple exercises such as moving your arms slowly up and down can build your back muscles. Also, going to the gym or attending a yoga class can have a significant impact. The importance of behavior modification in this area is key!
3. Take Standing Breaks: This tip is especially important for those of you who have office jobs! No matter how great your posture is while you are sitting, it is still extremely important to stand up, walk around, and stretch your back. Standing up every 30 minutes would be the best, but even every hour is great. You may even want to consider adding a NordicTrack treadmill or some sort of treadmill desk to your office space, so that you decrease sitting time.
4. Exercise: This one is the most obvious and most forgotten tips. Everyone realizes the amazing benefits you can receive from exercise, but even those aren’t enough to keep some of us motivated. However, you can add proper posture to the list of many benefits that exercise does for our body. As mentioned above, yoga is a great way to achieve proper posture and strengthen all those back muscles! Good posture is just another reason to add exercise to your life.
Proper posture is definitely overlooked in our nation. It does not seem like a big issue and people do not even realize the impacts that bad posture can have on their bodies. I hope this article has helped you realize some of the harm that can come from improper posture, and that you can apply some of these changes to your life. All of these changes only take seconds to apply and then eventually they will become habits, and you will be a healthier person overall!
Your TV May Be Killing You
According to an article on MensHealth.com, TV is Killing You, believe it or not all those Jersey Shore reruns really are taking minutes off your life. The article stated that “a new British Journal of Sports Medicine study found that – on average – your life expectancy decreases nearly 22 minutes with every hour of television you watch.” This is actually more than a cigarette!
Vitamins for Busy Moms – A to D Guide
No one says that being a mom is an easy task. It’s a 24/ 7 job. For some, 24 hours a day isn’t enough. No wonder that there are a lot of mommies out there who look older than their real age. Are you one of the unfortunate ones? Well, let me help you.
In this post, you will see the list of the most important vitamins you should take daily. It will help you maintain the strength, without making you look older.
Are you ready? Continue reading Vitamins for Busy Moms – A to D Guide
Exercise Makes You Smarter
A new study conducted at the University of Minnesota shows that exercising makes rats smarter – just another reason that we should be exercising regularly.
Basically, they split some rats into 3 different groups – those who weren’t given access to exercise, those who had an exercise wheel available to them to use as they pleased, and those who were forced to exercise daily for 45 minutes. After 5 weeks, the rats were then tested by exposing them to a noise, and an electric shock that would follow. The rats who were able to associate the noise with the upcoming shock were able to run to the other side of the enclosure to get away from the impending pain. Researchers found that the rats who had exercised were far more likely to figure this out, and get away from the shock. The sedentary rats were likely to just sit there and endure the shock, rather than use problems solving. To read more about the experiment, check it out here.
Studies have been conducted in humans as well, and it’s very apparent that being active is healthy, not only for your body, but also for your brain and mental capacity. Just take a look at this very cool infographic explaining the benefits of exercise in humans.
Exercising to Prevent Sickness
So everyone pretty much knows that being sick totally sucks, not to mention having to go to work doesn’t make things any easier. What would be good is if someone would bring you hot soup while you lied down and read a good book, right? Or, even better than that would be if you could have avoided the sickness, and embarrassment all together. Turns out you could have, but you didn’t, because you were too lazy to exercise and eat right.
That is karma at its finest, treating your body like a lamppost in the winter time and your body contracts a cold and nobody cares—sorry about the completely pointless metaphor. Point is exercise would have prevented everything because that is what exercise does. Besides making you look awesome, perform awesome, and look awesome again because that is really all anyone cares about, exercise keeps your body healthy. The extra blood flow travels throughout the organ systems and carries nutrients around, and all that stuff.
Though everything about the body that has anything to do with organ systems, nutrients or just health in general instantly becomes boring, it is still important to know, at least the basics. There is this one system in the body that is particularly boring and important, the lymphatic system. The only way you can get the lymphatic system to actually do its job is by exercising. So if you are sitting on the couch eating potato chips and enjoying the flu, yeah, your lymphatic system is not doing anything to help you.
If you get up and start running, jump on a trampoline, or swim you can get some good lymphatic stimulation. This is how you could have avoided the total mess you are in. Keep that in mind next time you wonder if you want to be sick in the future. Remember if you do not want to be sick all you have to do is exercise.
The Importance of Behavior Modification in Diet and Exercise
Behavior modification is crucial when it comes to attaining your exercise and diet goals. Taking off weight and attaining a certain level of fitness requires long term habits. Avoiding certain foods, planning meals, exercising regularly and staying hydrated are some of the habits which will help you maintain an ideal weight and remain fit.
Drinking Water
One simple habit you need to establish is to drink sufficient water every day. This is a habit that many people ignore. Staying hydrated helps maintain your ideal weight while also keeping you healthy. At times, you may feel hungry while in reality, you are really just thirsty. Drinking eight or more glasses of water every day will help carry nutrients to your body’s cells, make you feel full more often, and also keep you energized. Read more here to learn The Importance of Water and how to make it taste better if you are not a big water drinker already. Continue reading The Importance of Behavior Modification in Diet and Exercise
Party Sober Crew Promotes Healthy Lifestyle
Healthy lifestyle changes can come in many different ways. Some people might need to get off their butt and start exercising, while others might need to just start eating healthier. Those people however that struggle with addiction need to make healthy lifestyle changes to quit using drugs and alcohol.
When you’re addicted to drugs and alcohol you can’t control your drug use and continue using the drug despite the harm it causes and takes away from the essential vitamins and minerals your body needs. You may want to quit, but most people find they can’t do it on their own. Now those people who have struggled with addiction have people to look up to.
Party Sober Clothing is a revolutionary clothing company designed to promote a conscious, clear state of mind and a positive lifestyle with hopes that we will inspire others to be role models and follow their dreams the same way we have. A portion of proceeds goes to a foundation that gives scholarships to teens and young adults who are seeking help and way out of addiction.
Dominic Suazo and Feril Trevor Davis started Party Sober Clothing following their passion to help those people who have struggled addiction. Suazo and Davis gave an interview with ABC News in Salt Lake city recently where they said that they have had friends who have struggled with addition and have had their own struggles as well.
While some people have cleaned up their act and are role models for those with addiction, Suazo and Davis are trying to make a normal taboo subject something to talk about by designing clothes that sport the message of a clean and healthy lifestyle.
The most revolutionary aspect of Party Sober Clothing is that they are planning to donate a portion of proceeds to a program that will sponsor or fund programs for teens and young adults who need help with their own addiction problems. While a specific fund has not yet been determined the two are hoping that with the recent media coverage they have got that they will get connections and identify an organization soon.
Find out more info on The Party Sober Crew on YouTube
or online @ Partysoberclothing.com
Instagram @PartySoberClothing