Most of us are aware that being outdoors is healthy for us. The fresh air, the sounds and views of nature, and the opportunity to move about more freely contribute to good health. Of course, it is possible to take all of this a step further. After all, your own garden or yard is part of that healthy environment. Are you taking care of yours so it can help take care of you?

The Active Gardener

Your garden can help you increase your core muscle strength and mobility. Tending a well-stocked garden takes a lot of physical work. You might find yourself digging, forking, and edging. Maybe you like the idea of mowing and trimming bushes, hedges and shrubs? Then, of course, is all the potting, planting, and pruning. It’s busy but enormously rewarding. Imagine having freshly cut flowers directly from your own garden as often as you like? Best of all, you’re keeping active, fit and healthy.

Imagine what you could create while getting fitter and healthier. Image source

The Stress Relief

A good garden can offer relief from stress every day. Start with the scents and aromas. Lavender is well known for aiding relaxation. But the floral bouquets from a flower garden can all offer stress relief. They encourage you to inhale deeply. Breathing techniques are a good way to reduce anxiety. Then, of course, you have all the visual beauty to admire. Flower beds and pots full of color can be enormously enjoyable. They’ll put a smile on your face in the toughest of times.

Imagine the view from your home office. What if you could shape and color that view to bring beauty and life to your working day? Even working from home can be stressful sometimes. A few moments staring out of the window when you have a magnificent view can be the perfect release you need.

The Environment

Of course, you don’t have to stay indoors when you work from home. You can sit in the garden and enjoy a wonderfully natural home office instead. Sit on the grass, or enjoy the added benefits of an alfresco dining set. All you need is a beautiful lawn and a little shade so you can stay outside for longer. Good lawns do need Pro Irrigation types of sprinkler systems to be adequately watered. This does mean that there might be moisture on the lawn at certain times of the day, though. Make sure you’ve set the timer for your irrigation correctly, or you might damage your laptop!

Color, aroma, and shape. Image source

If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere quiet, you might even enjoy the sound of the birds twittering nearby. A well-stocked garden full of shrubs and flowers will attract insects and birds. This might make your garden a wildlife haven. You can enjoy watching them come and go. You might even enjoy attracting them to the garden by considering your planting choices and providing feeders. Working this close to nature can be enormously beneficial to your health.

Your outside spaces are the perfect places to nurture if you also want to nurture your own health. Take care of the trees, grass, shrubs and plants in your garden. Then enjoy sharing it with birds and wildlife.

If you’re reading this, then there’s about a 90% chance you’ll end up catching a cold this winter. Colds are like opinions; everyone has them! Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the most annoying symptoms of the common cold, and how you can make them a little less annoying for you.

Don’t let a blocked nose ruin your sleep. Credit

Blocked Nose

A blocked nose is probably the worst symptom when it comes to a common cold. It’s bad enough during the day but gets much worse at night. You struggle to breathe, meaning you have to sleep with your mouth open. Needless to say, this is phenomenally uncomfortable. Thankfully, dealing with this problem is a lot easier than you think. There are loads of nasal sprays you can buy with a built-in decongestant to help unblock your nose in minutes. Use one before bed, and you’ll breathe easy at night. Or, check out the advice here https://www.healthline.com for some ideas that don’t involve any form of medication.

Blocked Ears

No doubt a blocked nose is bad, but I absolutely despise having blocked ears. You feel like there’s too much pressure in your head, and your hearing becomes slightly muffled. What’s more, it’s often impossible to unblock them yourself, making the feeling incredibly annoying. How can you solve this? Well, as noted here https://georgiaent.com, you can visit an ENT doctor for issues with your ears. They can give you a proper checkup and might be able to prescribe some drops that reduce swelling inside your ears and unblock them for good.

Drink a warm lemon drink to soothe your throat. Source

Sore Throat

A sore or tickly throat can be a real pain when you have a cold. It makes it hard for you to swallow, and the tickly sensation can be very hard to get rid of. It’s almost like an itch you can’t quite scratch. There are two main solutions here. The first is to gargle a saline solution to help clean your throat and kill off any bacteria. I found a helpful video that I’ll attach under this point to show you how to make this solution. The second is to drink a hot honey and lemon drink, as it will soothe the soreness in your throat.

Heavy Eyes

I’m not sure if this is a proper medical symptom, but it’s one we can all relate to. You know when you have a cold, and all the congestion in your head just makes your eyes feel heavy? That’s what I’m talking about here. You feel like there are two weights attached to your eyelids, causing them to droop down. You look in the mirror and feel like a panda, it’s such a horrible feeling. The only real way to cope with this is to sleep and rest! Let your eyes close, and try to wake up feeling more refreshed.

If you’re suffering from a cold this winter, then I hope this advice will serve you well. For me, these are the symptoms that cause me the most pain and annoyance. So, use my solutions to calm your cold and make it more manageable.

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It’s safe to say that most of us are not getting the amount of sleep that we need. Due to the modern way we live and the requirements of everyday life surrounding that, we’re pretty much always on the go. And while it may feel empowering to be enjoying a fun life filled with adventure, triumphs and excitement, it sure knows how to knock your health for six. Because exhausted bodies can only do so much, and only go so far before they start to shut off and tell us to slow down. And it’s for this exact reasons that we all need to be focus on our sleep levels a little more.

Right now, you might be thinking that you get enough sleep. But unless you can bag yourself a solid seven to eight hours of quality sleep each night as a minimum, you’re not! And can you safely say that you get that night after night? If you don’t, then you could be put your health at risk – and you will be forced to slow down soon enough. To avoid that from happening, you need to start getting better sleep. And we’re going to show you how by walking through the benefits of better sleep, and then how you can go about getting it.

Why You Need It

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So to kick everything off, we’re going to take a further look at the benefits of better sleep and why you should consider getting some!

Better Brain Function

Do you ever feel completely drained and mentally exhausted? When that’s the case, your lack of sleep is not going to be doing you any favors. Because when you get good sleep, you help not only your memory and cognitive abilities, but you boost your creativity levels too. So if you want to be able to perform better at work, or ace any tests, a good night’s sleep is always going to be essential.

More Energy

And let’s talk about that exhaustion a little more. Because it’s not only your mind that can get tired when you’re sleep deprived, you’re going to have absolutely no energy either. Because when we sleep, we conserve energy. There’s a reason that you always feel so chipper when you’ve slept well. A good night’s sleep will always boost your energy levels.

Healthier Skin

If you’ve ever looked in the mirror after an awful night’s sleep and felt like you’ve aged ten years, you’re not the only one. Sleep can affect your skin. And a lack of it for a long time is going to cause you to age quicker. That’s right, a good night’s sleep can keep your skin healthy. Not only will it fight off those awful fine lines, but you’ll look much more radiant too. There really is a reason it gets called beauty sleep.

Healthier Body

From here, you’re also going to want to think about the benefits sleep has for the rest of your body too. And there are plenty – because sleep can help you stay in shape. If you need to lose a little weight, better sleep will help. When you get some quality sleep, your metabolism will always run better. And if you always feel hungry after a bad night’s sleep, that will stop. Because quality sleep helps to regulate your blood sugar levels too.

Happier Disposition

You’ll also be in a much better mood after getting a good night’s sleep too. Just think about it. You’re usually quite crabby when you’ve not slept well – or even if you’ve just gotten used to sleeping for a few short hours instead of the seven or eight hours that you need. When you do get better sleep, your stress levels will reduce and so will your anxiety, so you can say goodbye to being irritable.

How To Get It

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Now that you’re solid on good levels of sleep, you’re probably wondering just how you’re meant to go from an almost insomniac to a sleeping beauty. Here’s how.

Set Yourself A Bed Time

To start with, you need to set yourself a bedtime. And don’t laugh this often. No, you may not be a child anymore, but bedtimes help you to make sure that you get the sleep you need. By going to bed at the same time each night, your body gets into a pattern. And it will find it easier to sleep the required seven to eight hours a night when you do.

Wind Down

But, before you get to that point, you’re going to want to make sure you prepare for your good night’s sleep throughout the evening. This means you need to start winding down before you hit the hay. Switch off your devices an hour or two before you’re due to go to bed. Have a bath and read instead. This will help to get your mind into sleep mode.

Use The Right Equipment

But you also need the right bedroom setup too. If you’re uncomfortable, you won’t sleep well. So you need to do your research to find a solution that works for you. You’ll find that this zinus mattress review compares the two most popular zinus mattress models, but you also need to find a style that suits your sleep needs. And don’t forget your sheets, comforter, and pajamas too.

Be Mindful

Then, when it’s time to sleep, you should try to be mindful. If you really do struggle to get off to sleep, this is going to be ideal for you. By working on some mindfulness exercises, you should find that you can train your brain to switch off and get into the right state for sleep. Then, you won’t have trouble nodding off at all.

Wake Up Early & Exercise

Finally, you also need to think about getting up nice and early and getting a workout in too. When you do, you’ll find that you are more productive throughout the day and that when it comes to the evening, you’re already tired and ready to get to sleep when bedtime comes around. It’s a win-win.

The human body is a wonderful piece of engineering. It moves, bends, flexes, and permits us to do amazing acrobatics. Of course, then we grow up, and while the mind is willing, the body is less happy to move as it once did. There are several reasons for this.

As babies, the bones are still small and at different proportions of adult bones. And some of the bones are years away from becoming solid, strong, and reliable. As we mature, the muscles strengthen, the limbs lengthen, and the body tends to be used for fewer actions than through childhood.

Hormones will play a part in flexibility over the years, but the bones will remain relatively unchanged for decades. It is only when those hormones drop for women later in life, that we tend to become more concerned about bone health. Osteoporosis is more common than it needs to be for this age group. Have we left it too late?

Milk’s just for kids, right?

It’s true that a calcium enriched diet is essential for growing and developing bones in childhood. In fact, particularly in young men, calcium should be added to the diet until the mid-twenties. Bones can break quite easily should a diet be deficient in this essential mineral.

Picture Credit: From tiny bones, to senior bones – take care of them for life.

It’s not just calcium that can help to ensure our bones are healthy and strong. An all-round healthy diet makes sure there are strong muscles, tendons and fat stores to protect the bones from impact or excessive movement. Joints also need to be cared for. Without regular movement and good circulation, joints can become immobile.

It seems sensible to include exercise in the mix when it comes to developing healthy and strong bones. Over time, the muscles also develop to support good posture and the bone structure. Is a healthy lifestyle from day one really all you need to make sure your bones are healthy for life?

Unfortunately, no. Genetics will always play a part. Other factors such as the environment can also affect your general health. There are many diseases that can affect the bones, like osteoporosis. Rarely, cancer can also form in the skeleton. This requires specialist treatment from an orthopedic oncologist. This is because primary bone tumors are rare so experienced professionals can be tricky to find.

If you are diagnosed with soft tissue, primary bone, or other musculoskeletal sarcomas, you might contact drallison.org to find out what options are available. Reconstruction of the bone and restoration of mobility might be your priority to get your life back on track following treatment. Diet and exercise will again play a major part in supporting this process.

So what are the secrets to taking care of your skeleton, no matter your age?

You might start with diet. Most of us are fed up with hearing that we should be ditching the sugar and only eating fresh produce. Your bone health might rely on this mantra. Sugar is thought to increase the secretion of calcium from your bones. If you have osteoporosis you might inadvertently be worsening your condition each time you eat a candy bar. Some experts think caffeine might have a similar effect.

Give up the extreme or fad diets though. Starving your bones of key nutrients by cutting certain foods from your meals is asking for trouble. You might not like dairy, but it’s a valuable source of calcium. Even after the age of twenty-five, it’s worth eating low-fat yogurts and drinking milk. If you’re lactose intolerant, look for other foods rich in calcium or choose fortified options. Supplements might be a good idea.

Magnesium is another mineral that is really important for maintaining strong bones. If you don’t take a daily multivitamin, then you can still find magnesium in your diet. Whole grain bread and pasta are great. If you have a wheat intolerance, you might need to search for a suitable supplement.

Picture Credit: Many, but not all, of your bone health requirements can be found in vegetables.

The building blocks of strong bones are quite simple, really. Vegetables can provide much of what you need. Natural sources are usually best. One naturally sourced vitamin that good bones need isn’t so safe, though. The Government and health advisors recommend getting your daily vitamin D from a supplement, and not from sunbathing! Vitamin D helps calcium to be absorbed in the bones. Just as vitamin C support iron absorption, these two pals go together as well.

Protein is also needed because bones are made up of collagen. Vegetarians can look to beans and pulses. Fish and chicken can be good sources for others. ‘Proper’ stock can also take advantage of the calcium from bones, while the meat provides the protein needed. Varied diets are ideal, but perhaps many could still benefit from supplements to support bone health.

Last, but not least, your bones need potassium (found in bananas), and vitamin K. K is for Kale, and spinach can provide a healthy dose of this vitamin too. If you bleed or bruise easily, this could be a warning sign that you lack sufficient vitamin K in your diet. This doesn’t just lead to weakened bones, but can also cause tooth decay, heart disease and cancer.

What about the exercise?

Any exercise is obviously better than none. If you want to exercise specifically to strengthen and protect bones, then look to weight-bearing exercise. Lifting, pushing, pulling and swinging can all offer great activities for this purpose. Best of all, many of these exercise choices can use your own body weight to be effective. No extra equipment is required.

Experts state that cardiovascular exercises like brisk walking, dance aerobics, and jogging are still important for overall health. Conveniently, all of these upright activities can also strengthen the bones due to using your body weight and impact on your legs and feet. It’s important to find exercises that you can enjoy daily.

It’s true that HRT can sometimes help reduce the risk of weaker bones and osteoporosis. But it’s important to remember that 1 in 4 men can also suffer this problem. Look at bone health as a lifelong commitment to good diet and exercise.

Today, I want to talk about a health problem that affects millions of people without them even knowing it. As the title suggests, I’m talking about osteoporosis. Below, you’ll find some information on what this condition is, how to treat it, and how you can also prevent yourself from having it. Read on to indulge in all this great info.

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What Is Osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis is a condition that affects most people at some point in their life. It’s mainly an issue for elderly people, but this is often because it’s only diagnosed later in life. The problem itself revolves around your bones. People with osteoporosis are found to have much weaker bones than normal. As a result, they’re likely to be at risk of regular fractures, causing them a lot of pain.

Most people don’t realise they have this problem until they’ve actually fractured a bone and are in pain. You might slip and fall, or get hit with something, causing lots of pain in a part of your body. You go to a doctor, and they say you’ve fractured a bone, then run tests and tell you that you actually have osteoporosis.

It’s common for people to have minor fractures in bones such as their ribs or spine, which cause persistent pain. But, because they’re small fractures, you don’t realise you actually have a broken bone. So, you go about your daily life experiencing on and off pain, not knowing you actually have a fracture caused by weak bones.

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Treating The Problem

You’ll be pleased to know there is a range of treatment problems available to anyone that might suffer from this problem. Primarily, the treatments aim to improve the strength and density of your bones, leaving them less prone to breaks or fractures.

What can you take for osteoporosis? A mixture of supplements and actual medication is the best way forward. On the supplement side of things, you should take a good quality calcium supplement. As these AlgaeCal reviews and testimonials show, many people enjoy improved bone density when supplementing calcium. But, this alone won’t help combat osteoporosis, and there are plenty of over the counter medicines you can be prescribed. It’s well worth seeing a doctor to learn more about this.

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Preventing The Problem

Along with treating osteoporosis, it’s crucial you try and prevent this problem from harming you. People with this condition can prevent fractures by being more careful around the house and taking as much care as possible to avoid falling.

Again, you could turn to supplements if you don’t have this condition but are worried about getting it when you’re older. Calcium should be a big priority, as should the likes of vitamin D. Being active and exercising can also help, as living a sedentary lifestyle can cause your bones to almost waste away as you’re not doing anything.

You don’t have to be old to worry about osteoporosis. I suggest we all make an active effort to prevent this problem from occurring later in life. Otherwise, the slightest knock could result in broken bones, and we’ll spend our retirement years in and out of the hospital.

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The challenge with homecare health is finding a suitable caring professional that is also affordable. When all is well, it’s easy to overlook and underestimate the value of a good healthcare insurance policy but whatever your financial situation with regard to accessing this care, here are some principles on how to approach finding a caregiver.

These principles are universal, in that they are applicable to finding caregivers for younger adults just as much as they are for older adults.

You’ll need to establish the prospective carer suitability on a number of levels. This can be broken down into the following areas:

1. Safety and Security
2. Reliability
3. Care and Compassion
4. Specialist Medical Expertise
5. A Good Fit

SAFETY & SECURITY

Whilst the majority of caring professionals are trustworthy, there are a number of horror stories where carers take advantage of vulnerable patients, particularly the elderly, in the context of financial gain and manipulation. Safety and Security is understandably one of the main priorities that will first need to be established.

Are the prospective carers trustworthy? Have they been fully vetted? Do they have contactable references from previous patients (or the family of previous patients)? Have they undertaken a criminal records check? What is the recruitment procedure?

RELIABILITY

Reliability and consistency are both critical when it comes to home healthcare. Not just whether the patient will receive care on a regular and reliable basis, but will there be consistency, in terms of having one regular carer who is emotionally consistent too. The relationship between carer and patient is reasonably intimate and it’s important the emotional side of the relationship is considered in terms of reliability and consistency.

Will the careworker be reliable? Will they come on a regular and uninterrupted basis? How many different carers are likely to visit each week, or month? What happens if the primary carer is off sick? What happens if there are adverse weather conditions?

CARE AND COMPASSION

This would appear to be a no-brainer, but think about the motivation the carer had to get into the caring profession. Does it come from a place of care and compassion or is it simply a job that pays their bills? Do they have personal experience where their lives were touched by an amazing carer who inspired them to get into this profession, or is it a career choice they were forced into by necessity?

The best way to gauge the carers level of compassion and empathy is to interview them and request references from previous patients, or the families of patients.

SPECIALIST EXPERTISE

There are different types of carers each with specialist skills in specific areas. You want to make sure you work with a carer that is experienced with the particular issue they will be working with. Questions to ask are what sort of training do the care workers receive? What qualifications and experience do they have in this specific area?

The further question to consider is how often is their training updated? Within medicine and healthcare best practice is constantly evolving. You want to make sure the carer has an up-to-date knowledge and actively engages in continual learning.

A GOOD FIT

Having been through the above aspects, the most important thing to look for in a home health care provider is a good fit with the patient. They should meet and see if they get on – this is going to become a very important relationship and a “good fit” is critical.

There is no denying that telemedicine is changing the healthcare sector. It is making healthcare more convenient and more accessible, reducing the number of hospital re-admissions and ensuring more profitable practices. Nevertheless, healthcare professionals need to work hard to ensure telemedicine continues to be a success. With that in mind, read on to discover some top telemedicine etiquette tips so that you can deliver an outstanding service to your patients.

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• Be clear with any post-appointment instructions – If your patient must schedule a follow-up appointment, make sure you tell them this. If your patient needs to pick up a prescription, you should also let them know. Patients can become frustrated when they feel like they don’t know what to do after their telemedicine appointment. Make sure you are direct and clear with any instructions you provide.
• Keep lag time in mind – Not all Internet connections and telemedicine software are created the same, so you may need to accommodate some lag time. It is a good idea to wait two seconds before speaking so that you can be sure your patient has finished talking too. It will help the conversation to flow better.
• Have a set approach – There are many uses of telemedicine, from home healthcare and birth control counselling to minor urgent care and prescription renewal. It’s important to have a set approach in place for dealing with each type of appointment you are handling. This will help you to keep things more organised and ensure you don’t forget anything during your call.
• Communicate when you need to look away – It is likely that you will need to look away from the screen during your web call, as you will have to make some notes. Let your patient know that you are still listening, but you are writing down notes about the appointment as required. This can be obvious when you have a patient in your office, but it’s not so evident over webcam.
• Dress the part – You may be working from your home office, but this does not mean that you should wear a T-shirt and sweatpants. You should dress exactly as you would if you were working at your practice. This will give off a professional vibe, and you will instil confidence in your patients.
• Be punctual – One of the main benefits of telemedicine for patients is the fact that it eliminates the waiting times they usually have to go through when visiting their local practice. You need to make sure that this is the case. Your patients won’t be happy if they have to sit at their computer for 30 minutes, waiting for you to come online. It is a good idea to have a notification system in place, which alerts patient via text or email that you are ready to see them.
• Set up a professional space – Last but not least, you should set up a professional space for your virtual visits. It is important that there are no distractions. Patients want to feel secure that their privacy is protected, which is why a clean and quiet space is a must. Plus, it looks much more professional.