Being healthy and living a healthy life means you get to do just that: live. When you make proactive decisions to prioritize health, you are telling yourself that you matter and are honoring the wonderful person you are. Keep taking care of your whole body so you can enjoy what is yet to come.
Incorporate Vitamins and Supplements into Your Daily Regimen
Eating a fully balanced diet that is rich in everything your body needs each day can be an almost impossible task. From keeping up with daily responsibilities to simply having enough time to cook a balanced meal, you may fall short of taking in all the vitamins and minerals you need to stay healthy.
This is where vitamins and supplements can fill in the gaps and augment what your body is missing or needs more of to maintain optimal health. Chinese medicine liver support supplements are an example of high-quality additions to your diet that can be beneficial for your overall health. Of note, it is important to consult with your healthcare provider whenever you intend to introduce new things such as these into your diet. Even supplements in their natural form can have unwanted interactions with any current medication you may be taking. A pharmacist is another source of information if there is a concern for drug interactions.
Reduce the Odds of Getting a Chronic Disease
Anyone can get sick, but there are proactive things you can do to reduce the chance of getting a chronic disease in your lifetime. These steps will help you become healthier on the whole, so why not make them a part of your routine anyway?
The main components of avoiding chronic disease include the following healthy living strategies:
Avoid excessive sun exposure and wear sunscreen.
Reduce alcohol consumption or avoid it altogether.
Eat a healthy diet.
Exercise regularly with a variety of activities.
Maintain social connections.
Prioritize dental health.
Make and keep routine medical appointments.
Watch this video for more information on how to prevent chronic diseases.
Take Preventative Healthcare Seriously
When you get sick, you know that the doctor is in. While that is a nice and comfortable feeling – knowing you can rely on medical care to help you get better. But wouldn’t it be much better to prevent any problems before they begin? One of the best ways you can do that is by keeping up with your routine healthcare appointments. Here are some of the essentials to schedule today.
If you have a pre-existing condition or have had serious health concerns in the past, you will need to schedule medical appointments to stay on top of anything that goes along with these issues and their necessary care or monitoring processes.
Image Credit Use this information as a guide to go forward in healthful living. Use vitamins and supplements as needed. Incorporate ways to prevent chronic diseases by making good choices. Always seek preventative healthcare measures to ensure you are proactive in your efforts to take care of the body you have.
Many people are looking to cut costs at the moment. Finding ways to reduce your monthly bills could be one way to do this. While there are many long-term investments you can make to reduce your bills such as installing solar panels to reduce energy bills, there are less drastic measures that you may be able to implement immediately. Below are some examples of how to reduce these 5 bills.
Energy bills
Heating/cooling accounts for about 48% of the average home’s energy consumption. By relying less on heating and cooling, you could reduce future bills. Wrap up warm in winter and rely more on fans in the summer (these use a fraction of the electricity of air con). Beyond heating and cooling, consider other appliances that guzzle energy. Washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers can account for 14% of household energy usage – make sure you’re not washing/drying half-loads and use the right wash/dry settings to reduce energy usage.
Insurance premiums
When was the last time you shopped around for insurance? You could potentially save money on your health insurance premium by switching to another insurer. Many people stay loyal to one insurer because of incentives like no claims bonuses, but you may find that there are still cheaper deals out there to grab new customers. It’s worth noting that ringing up insurance companies and asking for a price can also sometimes get you access to better deals than you might be offered online.
TV/internet bills
TV/internet is something you can also usually haggle down the price of if you’re willing to ring your provider up. If you threaten to leave, you will often be offered very low exclusive deals by a sales rep to stop you from leaving – these deals are worth taking advantage of. It’s also important to consider what services you actually need. Are you paying for channels that you don’t watch? Reducing the channels available could help you access cheaper rates.
Credit card bills
A simple way to lower your credit card bills is to stop flashing the plastic as often. While paying by credit card can come with incentives and rewards, every purchase you make becomes a debt with interest fees. Switching to your debit card for everyday purchases can lower your credit card bills. Focus on paying off as much of your credit card bills as you can to reduce interest fees – you shouldn’t be regularly maxing out your card. Make sure you’re also taking advantage of the rewards offered by your credit card.
Loan/finance repayments
Loans and finance repayments can take their toll on our finances. It’s important to consider how much interest you are paying and whether it would be worth refinancing. This involves paying off high interest debts with a lower interest loan. Many people are able to save thousands by refinancing mortgages and car finance. Just be wary of exit fees charged by some lenders – these can sometimes make refinancing not worthwhile.
Do you need to relax right now? If you do, you probably don’t have the kind of bandwidth left that means you can go for a walk or call a family member and have a present conversation. You need something simple to do that’s going to help you right now!
Whether you’ve had a long working week or you’ve been dealing with a big family crisis, you’ve now got little energy left, and you definitely don’t have the patience or capacity to cook a nutritious meal or cover the bathroom in candles and incense either!
But seeing as we all relax in our own ways, it’s good to have a long list of potential ideas for simple relaxation methods. This way you can try out a few things that won’t take much effort at all, meaning you can end your day in a comfortable and supportive way.
Let’s make that easier as well. Here’s a little list of simple ways to relax that could work for you.
It’s the simplest and most easy thing to do, but if you’ve got some hot chocolate or cocoa in the cupboard, pop it in a pan and make yourself a good hot drink to sip on. Then grab your favorite blanket and cozy up under it. Whether on your bed or on the sofa, as long as you’re somewhere comfortable and you don’t feel the need to get up again, you’re in the right place. After all, now you’re in the perfect position to have an easily relaxing evening!
Once you’re in position, you can get up to all the other de-stressing ideas down below. For the meantime, make sure you’ve got a big cup to get through and the blanket you’re under is super fluffy and warm!
Put Some Music on
Changing your environment can have a strong impact on your mental health.
Play a Game You Don’t Have to Focus on
Games are meant to be fun, and if you’re already a fan of video gaming in your spare time, loading up one you don’t have to focus on is a good way to replenish your energy. This is likely to be a simple game such as minesweeper or an old game you know well that you’ve already sunk hundreds of hours into.
Load it up, spend at least half an hour on it, and let yourself relax and have some fun without thinking about the world outside. Instead, spend some time in another world, and get involved in character problems that aren’t real and don’t require much thinking or effort from you.
And gaming has been proven to be a very relaxing activity to try out. If you’ve got a free evening to yourself and you really need to recharge your batteries for a while, use this hobby to disengage from reality at hand and take things at your own pace.
Have a Nap
If it’s been a very long day and you just need to shut your eyes right now, feel free to take a nap! It doesn’t even need to be only 20 minutes long – you can sleep for upwards of an hour if your brain and body needs it. Let your body guide you in this moment; not listening to it is what leads to draining days like these happening a little too often!
Curl up somewhere comfortable and take a nap; sometimes it really is the only reliable way to recharge, especially when your energy has been completely drained from you and you feel you couldn’t even take another step!
So, if you’re a bit zombified right now, get some sleep. Or if you feel you’re going to be napping for a long time, just head to bed early and have a very good night. It’s perfectly OK to be in bed by 7pm some nights!
Tense and Release
A form of mindfulness, tensing your muscles for around 10 seconds (or just as hard as you can tense them) and then releasing and letting the tension out can bring you into the moment. It’s a good grounding technique that helps your muscles to let go of that last bit of rigidness that was making you feel on edge.
When you tense and release each muscle in turn, going down your body from your head to neck to your shoulders and so on, each muscle group is going to get its turn. This will ensure you let out tension all the way across your body and you’re not holding onto anything without realising it.
Background Noise and Deep Breathing
If you don’t tend to practice deep, diaphragm breathing from time to time, let your lungs fill as much as you can and make sure you breathe from your belly (and not your chest!). The more you breathe like this, the easier breathing is going to feel, the less pain you’re going to carry in your body, and the less tension you’re going to feel across your shoulders.
Try to keep your feet on the ground as you breathe like this, and then put some background noise on that you can zone out to as you practice. This is a good way to ground yourself and clear your mind from the worst of the thought cycles that are going round it.
The background noise you’re using should be a sound you really enjoy, such as whale song, or a rainy forest, or even ambience from a coffee shop. If you like it, it’s going to be a lot easier to be present with yourself and not your worries.
Take your time trying out deep breathing, as you’re not going to feel immediately relaxed after only a couple ins and outs. It’s even recommended that you should get your breaths down to only six per minute, which can help to regulate the inner cogs and clocks that rule your body and the way it behaves.
Put Something You Love on TV
If there’s a TV show or a movie you’ve always loved to watch, and it doesn’t matter how many times you put it on – you still have fun with it – put it on right now. Having something beloved to watch during low energy periods when you need to recharge can help bring you back to a peaceful peace where it feels easy to breathe.
So put something you love on the screen and lose yourself to it for a little while. If you can clear your mind and end up feeling a bit stronger as a result, that’s a good thing. At the very least watching something relaxing can help you get to bed and get a good night’s rest.
Unwinding before bed is the best way to lull yourself into a comfortable sleep, even if you need to stare at a screen for a bit! And if you happen to fall asleep as you’re watching, that’s perfectly fine too. After all, it only happens every now and then.
If You’ve Got Low Energy, Don’t Push Yourself!
Keep it simple instead! That makes relaxing when you’ve got no energy to do anything else perfectly possible. You can kick back with your feet up and sip a warm drink, tensing and releasing your muscles as you recline, with some warming music or something funny you love on the TV in front of you. What could make for a better evening after you’ve had a hectic and stressful day?
An at-home dad on a mission to keep it real when it comes to food, fun, and raising a healthy, happy family.
