“But I need a fancy gym membership to maintain my health,” comes the reply. There is a myth that to be healthy you must workout seven times a week and eat nothing but vegetables. Of course, this isn’t the case, yet it’s a myth the industry doesn’t want to bust because it makes them money. It isn’t a conspiracy, per se, just a lack of open dialogue.

The truth is that staying fit and healthy is a basic process. It takes hard work and dedication, but a person can achieve their goals at home. Yep, there is no need pound the pavement or hit the gym four or five times a week. For the people that still need convincing, here’s how to be healthy without leaving your home.

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Transform Your Diet

An unhealthy diet is full of carbs and saturated fats. Therefore, you’re more likely to put on weight and increase your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. High blood pressure and cholesterol can lead to the onset of ailments such as heart disease and diabetes. The best thing to do to prevent these conditions is to eat a healthy and balanced diet. From fruit and vegetables to meats, try and keep everything in moderation. The key is to take on a mixture of protein, carbohydrates and fats to help the body run smoothly. Eating so-called superfoods is another neat trick because they contain nutrients which other foods don’t. Fish is particularly helpful thanks to its high omega-3 fatty acid content. The great thing about changing your attitude to food is you can do it at home. Just go online and order your groceries to the house.

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At Home Exercises

Eating a balanced diet is essential, but so is exercising. The idea of working out is where people force themselves into an unnecessary gym membership. Sure, you can workout at home, yet it doesn’t feel as if you are getting the blood pumping. Being in an environment with muscle-bound guys in tight tops, however, feels legitimate. The thing is your body care where you workout as long as you burn calories, which is something to exploit. A well-rounded mixture of home exercises, then, can be just as effective as pumping iron at a gym. From squats to crunches to push-ups and leg crunches, they all take the body out of its comfort zone. If there isn’t enough cardio, then jog up and down the stairs for fifteen minutes. It’s as easy to exercise at home as it is to leave the house.

See The E-Doctor

Yep, seeing a doctor was impossible before the advancement of technology. Nowadays, you can visit a doctor’s surgery for a consultation from the comfort of your living room. All you need is a mobile device with an internet connection according to multiple providers. The way a home health care agency works is with an initial consultation. Once they decide you are eligible for care, they will walk you through their services. Should they need to see you, then the majority of providers will schedule a home visit. Part of staying healthy is taking part in a regular checkup with a medical professional. In 2017, you can do this with a laptop and a Wifi router. The e-doctor will see you now.

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Lie Down

You can eat well and work out three times a week yet your health might not be perfect. Why? It’s because of a little thing called stress. Healthy men and women don’t suffer from high cortisol levels because stress tears the body apart. For starters, the mental impacts turn into physical ones. As such, worrying about a problem can lead to hair loss and high blood pressure. Secondly, it tends to lead to depression and a negative outlook on life. People who are stressed are fatigued and can’t be bothered maintaining their health. So, they eat poorly and don’t leave the sofa for days on end. Thankfully, you can deal with stress at home by lying down on the bed and closing your eyes. Having a couple of hours where you don’t think about anything is a great way to toss your worries aside. The lucky ones have a partner who will massage their troubles away. The thing to remember is that stress is unhealthy and needs dealing with as soon as possible.

It’s nice to get out of the house, especially if you feel cooped up. But, if you don’t get much free time, you can always exercise at home and transform your diet.

Everyone knows that it’s important to save money. We all try to contribute at least some of our funds into a savings account and, over time, it will accumulate and we’ll have plenty to spend on emergencies. However, it can sometimes be difficult determining when we should break the piggy bank and start using it.

One of the biggest issues with using your savings is that it can lead to bad habits. When you start using your savings account for small things like furniture or personal entertainment, you’ll quickly deplete those funds. It’s a good idea to train yourself to never touch your savings, but you can reach a point where you’re saving too much. If you find that you never touch your savings, then this article will give you a few examples of when you should actually break into them and start using it responsibly.

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Paying off your debts

It might sound weird to have savings while you’re still in debt, but it’s actually not too uncommon. Many of us automatically pay money into our savings accounts so it’s not something we actively do, but we sometimes mix it up with essential expenses and thus, we end up with a large amount of savings while still being in debt. Depending on how much debt you’re in and with how many companies, services like debtconsolidation.co can sometimes give you a breather by consolidating all of your debts into a single contract. You can then start using your savings to pay off your debts, and this will help your credit score as well as your personal health. No one likes being in debt because it can be a heavy weight on our shoulders, which is why using your savings account is a perfectly acceptable reason to break into your emergency fund.

When you want to invest

Perhaps your friend has proposed a great business idea to you, or maybe you’ve realised that keeping money in a savings account is rather pointless. Many people chose to invest their money instead of keeping it in a savings account. This is a question that many people have asked themselves, and you can look at this article from moneyadviceservice.org for some advice on how to make that decision yourself. In short, keeping your money in a savings account isn’t going to make your wealth grow, but investing in a business or stocks can be more profitable and will continue giving you money.

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Is there an emergency?

A stash of savings can also be seen as an emergency fund, so if you’re currently experiencing a crisis it may be worth your time to break out the savings and use it for something important. A good example of this is if your laptop breaks and you can no longer operate your company. Replace it immediately so that it doesn’t stop your business in its tracks. Another good example is for your healthcare. If you’re suffering from an illness, then it makes sense to use your savings to pay for healthcare such as medication or a hospital visit.

Living a frugal life is one of the most popular topics online today. With the rising costs of – well, everything – it can be really easy to allow certain elements of life to slide. For some, healthcare is one of those elements that gets left behind. It’s not due to thinking that healthcare isn’t important, we all know how important it really is. However, finances often dictate to us what we can and cannot manage and sometimes health insurance isn’t on the top of the list.

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One thing that any person who lives a frugal life should ask themselves is this: can you put a price on your health? Living without health insurance is not a position most people want to be in. Murphy’s Law states that when you least expect it, the things that can go wrong often will, whether you like it or not. You can bet that you will stop paying for health insurance to save some cash, and it’ll be the day after that you get into an accident or break a tooth and need dental care. Thankfully, there are multiple financing options available for your emergency dental needs and when you get in an accident, you can get some financial grace to help catch up with hospital care payments. For most, though, the choice to ditch health insurance in favour of affording other bills isn’t a personal choice made ‘just because’; it’s a choice made because the alternative is not affording the rent or groceries for the month.

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Learning how you can manage your finances a little better so that you can manage to afford health insurance is going to be key and even living a frugal life, this can be done! Sure, many places offer free medical care for those on a tight budget, but the income thresholds are very strict and therefore if you simply have a higher cost of living for your basics and yet aren’t on a low enough income to qualify for free health, you need to know how to manage. Check out our tips below to help you overcome the financial hurdles of ditching healthcare.

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1. Options! Health insurance has so many more options than you may be aware of so look into plans that are high deductible. You can be covered for the larger, scarier events in life should they happen to you. It’s also important to remember that with a high deductible plan, while it may seem steep on paper, is easier to pay off $1,000 than it is to pay off $40,000! Your workplace should also offer you a health option and if you haven’t been told about it, enquire with your HR department. The rules for having healthcare do vary and if you get it as a perk through your job, it can make it far easier to afford!

2. Out Of Pocket Costs. This is the place most people have an issue; even with health insurance, the out of pocket medical expenses can be difficult to cover. It’s easy to say to have an emergency pot to cover these sorts of costs but when you’ve nothing spare at the end of each month, it gets a little tricky. Reducing the amount that you pay for out of pocket expenses before insurance kicks in includes shopping around for clinics and doctors that cost you less money. You can be smart when it comes to paying for your medical costs, you just have to be aware that you don’t have to stay with your primary caregiver.

3. Payment Plans. It sounds like an easy one, but it’s surprising the number of people who don’t know you can set up payment plans to catch up with your bills. Many clinics and hospitals will allow you to set up a plan to pay off your bill, and while costs can add up quickly, it can be a better option than waiting around to be in pain before you call the doctor and worry about the next bill.

4. Free Clinics. For those who really can’t make any room in their budget, there are free clinics available to give you the best care. There are sliding scale fees on offer that match your income and can make health care far more affordable. This is welcome news for those who fight to pay the basics each month and you can sometimes qualify automatically for your bills paid if you have chronic illness.

Don’t put a price on your health; you matter and being alive and healthy matters, too.

Apart from pain, itching is one of the worst sensations that one can experience. It’s persistent, annoying, and if you give into the urge to scratch then you can do serious damage to your skin.

When itching becomes a chronic problem it is called pruritus, though this is more a term for the symptom than the cause. To find the cause, you’ll need to examine your lifestyle and potentially seek medical investigation. This is often more difficult than it sounds, To determine the true cause can be a process of elimination, but here are four areas you should consider as potential suspects.

#1 – Allergies

When it comes to health issues, allergies are often the source of the problem. The allergy only needs to be mild to cause aggravation. When it comes to chronic itching, allergies are the number one suspect — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to figure out what you’re allergic to. The best option is to ask your doctor for an allergy screening test, which can identify the most common allergies. If this comes back negative, you may still have an allergy that not identified on standard screen. Ask your doctor for antihistamines on a trial basis and see if they make a difference; sometimes, a diagnosis by treatment is the best option you have when it comes to itching.

#2 – Dehydration

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It’s a little-known fact that dehydration can cause itching. There is some debate over how much water we should drink every day, but if itching is a problem for you, then it’s worth upping your water intake and seeing if this makes a difference. Water helps to flush toxins from your body; toxins that may have been building up and causing your itching issues. It’s worth giving it a try just to see if it makes a difference.

#3 – Roundworm

Roundworms live happily in your gut, helping you to digest food and helping keep your gut flora in check. However, they can occasionally become problematic and spread into the rest of your system; itching is the main symptom of this. Take the time to peruse useful information about roundworms and the issues that they can cause. While it’s not pleasant to think about your body playing host to a parasite, it’s even worse to just leave said parasites to feast on you because you don’t like the thought of them! If you suspect you have ringworm, take action, and banish the beasties once and for all.

#4 – Medication

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A number of medications can cause itching as a side effect. If you have recently started taking a new medication, then this should be your first suspect. For the most part, side effects will usually pass after a month or so. If you’re still itching at that point, then it’s worth speaking to your doctor in an attempt to get a differential diagnosis on the problem.

When you have found the cause of your itching, you should be able to treat it successfully — making you happier, more comfortable, and feeling good inside your own skin.