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The #1 Overlooked Prep – What You MUST Do Now

The #1 Overlooked Prep – What You MUST Do Now

One of the most overlooked discussions within the prepper community is in regards to personal health but is by far the most requested topic whenever I do surveys on my channel.  So instead of the typical “eat healthily and exercise” article, I reached out to a licensed Occupational Therapist that works with patients on a daily basis training them in diet and exercise routines and I asked him to help me build the foundation for this article.  I’m going to present a lot of information, some you’ve probably heard before, but at the end, I’ll share with you something I recently discovered that has helped me implement what we’ll outline plus I’ll share some personal goals I’m setting.  So let’s jump in.

For this blog, I’m going to start off by pointing out some background information you really need to understand.  Let’s start with a very critical discussion most people have never heard of.  Again, stick around until the end where I’ll discuss a way I’ve learned to practically implement all of this.

Improving Your Healthspan

You have assuredly heard the term lifespan, but have you ever heard of healthspan?  Your healthspan is the length of time in your life during which you are in reasonably good health.  While you might live a lifespan of over one hundred years, if forty of those years are spent in a wheelchair, drug dependent, blind, or dramatically diminished, your healthspan is shorter.  Experts have been able to break down the critical components of an excellent long healthspan by starting with older, healthy individuals and working backward to define what elements of their lifestyle had led them to not only longevity but useful and healthy life…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

How To Lose Weight

If you’re like most of the people around the world who had their lives rocked by the COVID pandemic, staying healthy in 2021 is likely one of your resolutions for the coming year.

And if so, ‘losing weight’ is probably on your list.

Most of us carry more inches around the middle than we’d ideally like and worry about the long-term health risks that can come with being overweight. And with COVID-19, excess weight is a co-morbidity that can dangerously worsen outcomes for those infected.

Yet most New Year’s weight loss attempts meet with failure, usually after only a few weeks. The truth is: dropping unwanted pounds and keeping them off is hard.

BUT….it’s doable. In fact, the pathway to achieve a healthy bodyweight is surprisingly straightforward. It just requires disciplined commitment. Weight loss programs overwhelmingly fail because of psychological reasons or misinformation. If you pick a program based on good science — and keep your mind right while pursuing it — positive results are inevitable.

In this article, which builds on previous advice I’ve written on the topic,  I’m going to recount my own experience (with evidence for you to judge) with finally losing the pounds that had for years stubbornly refused to leave my middle. The keys to my success weren’t complicated nor expensive. And I firmly believe that anyone, regardless of age or situation, can deploy them to similar results.

Why Believe Me?

For those wondering whether they should believe me, take a look at the Before and After pictures below:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should listen to me because I’ve taken this journey.

That’s me in both pictures. In my late 30s on the left and my late 40s on the right.

I know what it’s like to be far too overweight and health-challenged.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Staying Hydrated During The Winter Months Is A Key To Good Health

Staying Hydrated During The Winter Months Is A Key To Good Health

Did you know that drinking more water during winter is crucial to your health and your survival?

Did you know that drinking more water during winter is crucial to your survival? This fact is especially important when you are spending more time outdoors.

Hydration is imperative to achieve proper gut functions, healthy skin and hair, and lubricated joints. With winter right around the corner, many of us are chucking the ice-cold drinks for hot teas or coffees. That’s great, but make sure you are still getting adequate hydration this winter.

Drinking enough water each day is crucial for many reasons: to regulate body temperature, keep joints lubricated, prevent infections, deliver nutrients to cells, and keep organs functioning properly. Being well-hydrated also improves sleep quality, cognition, and mood.

While dehydration is often associated with those blazing hot summer months, winter should be of concern as well. During the winter, we tend to go for longer periods without water, not realizing that breathing cold and dry air causes the body to lose significant amounts of fluid, which would lead to dehydration. People often feel about 40 percent less thirsty in the winter, even though the body’s need for water is unchanged year-round. Because we don’t feel thirst as acutely as well do in summer, we’re less likely to keep a bottle of water handy during cold-weather months.

Here a few ways to make sure that even as the temperatures dip and snow starts to fall, that you get enough water to stay healthy:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

10 Things That Happen When You Start Drinking Aloe Vera – It’s a Game Changer!

10 Things That Happen When You Start Drinking Aloe Vera – It’s a Game Changer!

Drinking aloe vera juice? Why not!? In fact, there are several reasons why you should consider drinking aloe vera daily and this is a game-changer.

Drinking aloe vera juice? Why not!? In fact, there are several reasons why you should consider drinking aloe vera daily and this is a game-changer.

Aloe vera juice has traditionally been a part of many Ayurvedic preparations, medicines, and tonics.  It hasn’t been something Americans think much about, however, unless they end up with a nasty sunburn. Aloe vera, or Ghritkumari, as it is known in Hindi, it is capable of curing a range of ailments with its numerous health benefiting properties. Aloe vera juice has traditionally been a part of many Ayurvedic preparations, medicines and tonics. “It provides complete nourishment to the body,” shares Dr. Ashutosh Gautam, Clinical Operations and Coordination Manager, Baidyanath.

According to Dr. Rupali Datta, “Aloe vera is an important ingredient for food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. Recent studies published in various scientific journals have shown that oral consumption of aloe vera juice can facilitate controlling blood sugar and lowering lipids in diabetics and hyperlipidemia patients.”

Ten amazing things can happen to the human body when we begin to start drinking aloe vera juice, so why not try it?

  1. Fight Digestive Disorders – Daily consumption of aloe vera juice is believed to fight and cure a range of digestive disorders including poor digestion, constipation, acid reflux, and gas. It is also beneficial in boosting appetite and keeping a check on weight gain.
  2. Hydration – Since aloe vera juice is almost all water, drinking it will help hydrate you will be providing all the other benefits mentioned!
  3. Improved Liver Function – aloe is used in Ayurvedic treatments that can improve liver function.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Minutes a Day: How Stretching Improves Your Physical Wellness

Minutes a Day: How Stretching Improves Your Physical Wellness

Stretching is a form of gentle massage for your major muscle groups and important to do before you exercise for the same reasons. It oxygenates the muscles you’re going to use, and at the same time prepares those muscles prior to doing work with them. #ReadyNutrition #PhysicalWellness

Stretching in an instinctive movement and one we see in not only our physical behaviors but in the observation of animals. Looking more closely at our domesticated pets, we see this as a biological response that is ingrained in animals. As a result, they are more agile predators, with better balance and better muscular coordination.

Why is this movement ingrained in animal’s natures?

Stretching is a form of gentle massage for your major muscle groups and important to do before you exercise for the same reasons. It oxygenates the muscles you’re going to use, and at the same time prepares those muscles prior to doing work with them. This will prevent tearing or injuries. That in itself is worth the effort! You stretch before your workout, and after the workout is completed. Stretching will help with your flexibility and will also aid you in offsetting any muscular soreness post-workout.

Don’t become confused: stretching is not the same as warming up or cooling down, but you can combine elements of stretching with both of those to obtain good results. The flexibility portion is very important as well. There are two types of stretching you should be aware of.

  • Static stretches involve flexing or extending the body part and enabling the stretch to occur gradually and carefully.
  • Dynamic stretching is more akin to what we talked about with waking up in the morning…a combination of stretching, extension, and massage.

You will find that it can help you if you have high physical activity in your workday and if you’re on your feet all day long. For the latter, some deep knee bends and then take a seat to massage the thighs and calves, and some calf-raises can help to get the circulation going and delay fatigue.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Change of Season? 6 Healthy Ways To Change Your Activities to Adjust!

Change of Season? 6 Healthy Ways To Change Your Activities to Adjust!

Ready Nutrition - Healthy Ways to Adjust to the Changing Seasons
Ready Nutrition Guys and Gals, this article presents some of the differences you need to be aware of that will directly affect you in your everyday life with the change of season. One of the problems with our modern society (definitely post-agrarian, and really post hunter-gatherer lifestyle!) is the inability to remember that natural laws still govern us in our lives.

Our circadian “pacemakers” are the suprachiasmatic nuclei. These are located in the brain (within the hypothalamus, to be precise), and these are synchronized with the amount of light in the day and the times of the day. To be sure: it is not identical for all people…this is due to genetic differences based upon your heredity and where your ancestors originated. These suprachiasmatic nuclei receive input from light-sensitive cells in your retinas that give you an almost-exactly 24-hour rhythm within your body.

SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

This is an affliction comprised of successive or continuous episodes of depression brought about in the change of seasons (such as late Fall to early Winter, and then repeating again during the Spring-Summer change). One of the key findings associated with a study of this affliction is that SAD-sufferers happen to secrete more melatonin during nights of Fall and Winter. Melatonin is a hormone that greatly affects our sleep patterns.

Coupled with this is the fact that the daylight and daytime hours diminish greatly, bringing about a feeling of sluggishness and over-tired responses. This is natural. We live in an artificially-lit world of light bulbs and computer screens, with an excessive amount of noise during the course of the day. Centuries ago, the winter months were a time to live quietly from what was grown, harvested, and gathered during the warmer seasons.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Be Your Own Medicine

Be Your Own Medicine

Treatment of atomized individuals in a setting of atomized symptoms and treatments is by any measure the opposite of a system that encourages and enables everyone to be their own medicine. 

I recently saw a slogan that encapsulated what’s wrong with the U.S. healthcare system: Be Your Own Medicine. To Be Your Own Medicine is the essence of prevention, and a way of taking full ownership of one’s health, body, mind, diet, fitness and daily habits.

Alas, being your own medicine strips the $3.5 trillion healthcare system of profit, power and control, so the last thing the healthcare cartels want is for us to be our own medicine, as that would reduce our reliance on highly profitable pharmaceuticals, tests, procedures and high-cost facilities.

Note the slogan isn’t “take your own medicine” or “make your own medicine”–it’s be your own medicine, which suggests that health is a way of being, not just a way of consuming, though what we consume is integral to being your own medicine.

Our materialist-consumerist culture focuses almost exclusively on data, so “health” is quickly reduced to FitBit readings, test results and an obsessive monitoring of calories and diets, to the general exclusion of the mind-body as an integral system.

The importance of what we put in our mouths is expressed by the old Chinese saying: disease comes in through the mouth, i.e. what we consume. But what we consume is not limited to food (or what is sold as “food”): it also includes what our minds consume in the way of “news”, entertainment, knowledge, etc., and what inputs we experience as stress.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Surgeon General’s Prescription for Health: Walk More

Surgeon General’s Prescription for Health: Walk More


Walking image via forklift/flickr. Reproduced at Resilience.org.

We’ve always known walking is good for us— it burns calories, reduces stress and helps the environment.

But we never knew how really great it is for us until the just released Call to Action on Walking from US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who explains, “An average of 22 minutes a day of physical activity – such as brisk walking – can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The key is to get started because even a small first effort can make a big difference in improving the personal health of an individual and the public health of the nation.”
Surgeon General Murthy announced a national campaign to encourage Americans to walk more and make all communities safer and easier for walking. His office will partner with schools, citizens groups and businesses to meet these goals.
 
“Walking is a simple, effective and affordable way to build physical activity into our lives,” Murthy adds. “That is why we need to step it up as a country ensuring that everyone can choose to walk in their own communities.”
The landmark report—which is being compared to the Surgeon General’s 1964 warning on the dangers of smoking—is based on definitive medical evidence that moderate physical exercise boosts your health cuts your chances of diabetes, dementia, depression, colon cancer, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and high blood pressure by 40 percent or more.
major study released this year shows that lack of exercise is twice as deadly as obesity, according to Cambridge University researchers who studied more than 300,000 people over 12 years.  Their findings match another comprehensive studythat found sitting for long periods is linked to higher death rates.
This explains why the Surgeon General and a growing chorus of health care experts are singing the praises of walking.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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