Posts Tagged ‘womens health’

Activities Promoting Healthy Aging

August 9th, 2009

Lack of activities can prevent you from living healthy. When you do not enjoy activities, you may feel fatigue or find it difficult to sleep at night. When you awake in the morning, you may feel tired until you finally fall asleep. As we, age our body change and we have to make changes to accommodate our lives.

Having a good night sleep makes the mind think more clearly. A good night sleep also boosts your energy while controlling your weight. You can also make decisions with less stress. Sleeping well at night makes our immune system stronger to keep us healthier. Researchers have proved that a good nights sleep is necessary for our health. Researchers have found that lack of sleep reduces the growth hormones in our bodies, since it changes muscles to fat. Sleep overall is most important, yet it stands behind activities. To improve your health, try walking each day.

Walking will help to loosen our muscles, reduces stress and depression along with anxiety. By reliving these things, it will help us to sleep for a longer and deeper period. So, when we wake up in the morning we feel happier and more rested.

When you exercise, you get a good night sleep, which promotes metabolism. Without the right amount of sleep, our bodies crave energy. Our body will release insulin or glucose into the bloodstream, which slows down metabolism. This action causes the body to gain weight, rather than control weight.

When a person feels exhausted, they will feel weak and repressed from enjoying activities. This leads to additional problems. Sleeping right balances out our bodies giving us, more energy leading to more activities that will satisfy our sleep needs.

What to avoid:
To rest proper and feel active you must reduce your intake of caffeine, nicotine, harmful chemicals, such as over-the-counter meds that keep you awake, alcohol and so on. The chemicals and substances will keep you awake. Try to avoid drinking anything after 8 p.m. in the evening. Nicotine should be avoid if possible, yet if you must smoke try to avoid smoking after 8 p.m.

Start a walking program in the morning to help wake you up, while boosting your energy. You will feel better since the joints will feel flexible enough to move freely. In addition, walking will help you burn fat and calories. You’ll notice a big change in how you feel the rest of the day. Start out walking at a slow steady pace for as far as your comfortable. Each day pick up the pace a bit and walk further. Just remember when walking that you want to work up to a steady brisk walk to make you sweat but not out of breath. Take a short walk before and after meals to calm your nerves, and burn calories too, it will give you energy, relieve that stress from the long day and help you sleep.

If you start a walking program for yourself, it is a lot more fun if you have someone to go with you. Talk to that neighbor you don’t know and maybe they’ll walk with you. Just think about it; you’ll be acquainted with someone new, talk about new things will relieve stress and get in you exercise as well. This might help that neighbor too who maybe hasn’t seen or talked to anyone in a couple of days and than they can sleep better at night.

After walking that brisk walk your doing be sure to cool down. When walking at a vigorous pace your heart rate will go up and it needs to be back to normal. Just walk a bit slow and relaxing until you’ve cooled down.

If you can’t go to sleep at night instead of getting up and turning on the TV try pacing around the house. Do some stretching and shake your arms and legs. Even walking around the house can relax you especially when everyone else is in bed and you can relax more.

Healthy Aging is getting good nights sleep

August 6th, 2009

As we grow older, we need to stay active to keep our bodies and system in shape. The older a person gets the less our bodies want to function so keeping it in shape is very important for all of us, even the younger people.

Sleeping is very important to all of us as we are aging. Aging brings on a different sleep pattern and we need to learn how to control it so when it is time to sleep we sleep well. It is normal as we age that it becomes harder to get a good nights sleep and feel rested when we wake up. Sleeping is as important as our diet and activities.

Did you know that it is hard for woman to sleep more so than men in their aging years? Women have more tendencies to feel stressed out more and they sometimes are just too busy to get themselves into an exercising routine. If you don’t get enough sleep at night, it will reduce your alertness during the day because you’re tired. Long periods of sleepless nights can cause high blood pressure and isn’t good for the heart either.

There are many reasons why some people can’t achieve a restful nights sleep. Sometimes you might sleep but it is a light sleep and we need to have a deep restful REM sleep. Sometimes you may awaken during the night from pain perhaps caused from arthritis. Sometimes you may experience heartburn, which causes you to get less sleep. Snoring or feeling depressed sometimes can also cause you to loose sleep. You may have a stressful day followed by the lack of sleep. Muscles spasms can also cause a person to loose sleep.

How you can reduce the problems that cause you to loose sleep:
Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine can cause us to lose sleep. Try not to drink liquids before going to bed, and stop smoking. Smoking not only harmful to your body but it can cause you to lose sleep. Excessive noise in the house, the TV or radio in the bedroom and snoring are some more reasons that can keep us from sleeping. Don’t try to go to bed and watch TV or listen to the radio; this will only keep you awake longer. You can learn to enjoy exercises to reduce muscles spasms and/or arthritic symptoms. You can also reduce eating unhealthy foods that cause heartburn, or drinking caffeine-based substances before you go to bed to improve your sleeping pattern.

Do you have a pet that sleeps with you? Even though you think they are giving you comfort it could cause you to lose that precious sleep you need. You may not realize it but everytime your pet moves, maybe snores; you can hear this while sleeping. Maybe you might have to get your pet a bed and let him sleep on the floor next to you. If you have allergies, your pet may be the cause, which can make you loose sleep as well.

Napping is not good if you take one during the day for more than 25 minutes. I realize that maybe your not getting enough sleep during the night and you get tired in the afternoon. However, when you lie down during the day and sleep for a long time, when it is time to go to bed, you’ve had just enough sleep that you’re not as tired.

Before you lie down to rest, you should also consider drinking a warm glass of milk. Studies have shown that warm milk helps a person to relax.

The quality of healthy aging

August 5th, 2009

From the day we are all born, we age everyday. As a young person, we don’t think about the later years in our life. We live in a very fast pace world today and it causes a lot of stress in our lives and as time goes on, the stress will affect us increasingly.

Everyone young and old, we all need to take care of our bodies and minds. By taking care of ourselves, it keeps us thinking, moving and helps prevent major illnesses such and cancer and many other diseases. We all have to work at keeping ourselves healthy and there is no better time than right now. The younger you start taking care of yourself the better it is; by starting early your catching things before they have time to progress.

So right now, start of by eating healthy. Keep an eye on that diet and make sure your not overeating, but eat enough to get vitamins you need to have. A good multivitamin is a good way to start adding supplements to what you don’t get in your food.

Food doesn’t always have the amount of vitamins anymore like they use to, and that starts at the farmer’s level. Don’t blame the farmer for this because they are just doing their jobs the same way we all go to ours everyday. The farmer has to add fertilizer, chemicals and even water to their crops to make them grow bigger, faster and for beauty too. Adding all these chemicals eat up all the natural vitamins that you need. Water has chemicals in it too; one reason why your water needs to be tested at least once a year especially if you have well water. Once the food is grown and ready to be shipped it is polished, coated to keep it nice and fresh looking during shipment, which is why this will take away some of the vitamins as well. Try to eat as much, homegrown food as you can and not processed foods. Fresh homegrown food is the best, since you get natural vitamins.

A good multivitamin isn’t going to hurt anyone. It is known that people who take a multivitamin everyday is in better health than someone who doesn’t. Sometimes your doctor may want you to take extra vitamin, as we grow older because our bodies change and sometimes require more of something. In addition, as we grow older our eating habits change and we don’t eat as much or we want to lose weight and don’t eat the right foods. Nevertheless, remember you can lose weight and still eat right.

As we grow older our bodies and mind change. All the stress we had growing up and continue through out our lives. Relieve that stress as much as possible because it can do a lot of harm to us. Stress is known to be a major factor for poor heart conditions, strokes, and it will lower our immune system, as we grow older.

A regular exercise program is good for all ages and helps relieve stress at the early ages as well. If only families took time out maybe as a family with their children and made it a part of their lives that would help relieve it during the younger years.

A person who learns and enjoys exercising on a daily basis will keep during it, as they grow older as well.

Exercising will help the older person to keep those bones more flexible so they don’t get stiff and weak. The heart gets benefit from exercising too. Exercise will cause the heart to produce naturally, by working it harder to keep it highly flavored. Exercising helps to keep our bodies toned up and helps us to lose weight, or at most keeping the weight maintained.

Remember starting early can help later in years to make your life healthier and more contented.

Healthy Aging Starting in your Home

August 2nd, 2009

We can all appreciate the term, aging gracefully. Do we know exactly what this means? When we think of growing older, it is always affiliated with pain and discomfort. We read about ways to improve our inner mind and body but the focus should also be about our environment. By taking care of our surroundings of where you reside, can lead us to a healthy and happy years to come.

It is said that home is where the heart is, and your home should be a place of sanctuary. It should not be a source of element and emotional stress. Creating a healthy home is more complicated than you think. Many of us have allergies that sometimes lead to illness. You may want to remove unwanted carpets or other dust catchers, bathing pets on a regular basis, and investing in an air filter. You will find dehumidifiers and humidifiers online, which can help reduce elements in your home that causes allergies.

Your home should be nurturing. If there is lack of comfort in your living space, try the following:

Bring the outdoors in. Cut flowers bring in pieces of rocks or other natural elements that gives you a sense of nature.

Put green plants in your home. This is essential to filtering indoor pollutants. The recommendation for the quantity of plants is two plants to every 100 feet. In addition, the plants will distribute natural oxygen throughout your home. What a great way to live a healthy aging life.

Fewer items means less frustration, clean out the clutter, let go of the things you do not use or need. If you think you need these items, sit down and weigh out the pros and cons. If you see that the cons are higher than the pros, get rid of it. Let it go.

In addition, take advantage of the sun; allow as much sunlight as possible to flow through your house. This gives you’re home a feeling of warmth. Take care that you avoid direct sunlight however for prolonged periods, since the sun can cause harm.

Did you know that colors effect your emotionally and affect the way you feel in a home? Every color has a significant meaning that could represent our physical and mental state. For instance:

Red room: Energizing, supports energy and passion and creates movement. Great for an exercise room, not beneficial in your bedroom.

Yellow room: Inspires organization, intellectual clarity with happy thinking. Even by using the color yellow as accents instead of painting, all walls will be positive.

Green room: Brings balance and tranquility but has the same energizing qualities. Often used as a calming place for thinking for people in trouble or just needing to feel refreshed, since natural is our first established home. We all love nature, rather most of us do. Green plants, flowers, etc all bring nature into focus, which makes the heart feel good.

White room: Essential for feeling cleansed and purified. Remember that too much white brings a sterile environment that can also become isolated. Make sure to accent a white room with a vibrant color when painting all white. This is a perfect color for ceilings to brighten up with sunlight.

Improving your life could easily start in the home, whether its trying something new with something natural or changing a color, these are easy methods to create harmony and balance in your surroundings, not to mention inspiration and warmth. The more effort you put into aging healthy, the more you will see good results.

Tip: Animals has proven to be a source of healing. Allow a friendly critter to touch your heart.