My Wellness Tips

Happy Wellness Wednesday!

How is your overall Wellness?

Overall wellness includes physical health, mental health, spiritual health, nutrition and fitness. 

Watch my YouTube video where I share my top wellness tips to help you live your healthiest life ever!

https://youtu.be/ruSA9tVoxcg

Improve Your Stamina

Are you always wondering why you get worn out easily, or you're always out of energy... Maybe it's time to improve your stamina.  Stamina, is basically the ability to keep yourself going, a key component for athletic performance.  Improving stamina can be done through a variety of means, it will also improve your overall wellness and will help you achieve more in your daily life.  

Here are some tips for improving your stamina:

• Modify diet- adding healthier foods to your diet will improve your overall stamina.  As weight gain starts to sneak up on you, your physical performance will suffer.  Adding more fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains will help you maintain a healthy weight.  Avoid refined sugars, fatty-fast food, junk food, and food that is high in sodium.
• Improve flexibility- physical activities can be difficult when muscles are tight.  Tight muscles  require additional energy to get moving, which can lead to faster onset of fatigue.  So, improving your flexibility will improve your overall stamina... Be sure to stretch before & after exercise, try adding yoga to your daily life, to keep muscles limber all the time.
• Stay hydrated- keeping your body hydrated is essential for it to function well, under any circumstance.  The old '8 glasses of water a day' rule, is still a good baseline for hydration.  Try to limit caffeinated drinks, like coffee, tea, and soda, which dehydrated you and can add unneeded sugar to your diet.
• Get Active- for everyone who wants to improve their stamina in everyday life, getting active in any capacity will help.  Walking, swimming, playing golf, playing tennis, playing basketball, biking, or doing exercises at the gym are great ideas (there's an exercise for everyone) to get the heart & lungs pumping, which will improve your stamina.  *for athletes (beginners to elite)- incorporating interval training, sprints, and/or hill repeats to improve your stamina quickly and greatly.
• Stabilize blood sugar- your brain is responsible for everything that goes on in your body, it sends signals constantly.  The brain runs on glucose, but has no way to store it.  When your blood sugar fluctuates too much, it does crazy things to the inside of your body and can affect your stamina.  When blood sugar levels are too high, the excess is stored as fat, which leads to weight gain and can decrease your stamina.  When your blood sugar drops, your brain has no fuel,  which causes fatigue and can affect your stamina.  Eat smaller meals, more frequent to help maintain a stable blood sugar throughout your day.

I hope these tips help to improve your stamina and your ability to get through daily life.  Whether you're an elite athlete or a professional couch potato... Remember a good stamina is an important part of healthy living and wellness.

Green Tea, are you for me?

Green tea, seems to be one of the newest health kicks, even though its been around forever! It seems to be in everything, even weight loss pills and face cream. But what does it really do for your health, and how should you consume it?  There have been more than a decade's worth of research about green tea's health benefits.  The results have been shown to fight cancer and heart disease, lower cholesterol, burn fat, prevent diabetes and strokes, while staving off dementia.  Green tea has important antioxidants and compounds that help in maintaining good health.  

Green Tea can Fight Cancer?Green tea has antioxidants, called catechins.  They attack the free radicals that can damage DNA and contribute to cancer and blood clots. Grapes and berries, red wine, and dark chocolate also have hardcore antioxidants.  Because of green tea's minimal processing (the leaves are withered and steamed), green tea's catechins, especially epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), are more concentrated.  A synthetic form of EGCG was used in shrinking prostate cancer tumors in mice, with much success.  Even though, human studies haven't returned the same magnitude of success as the lab/animal studies. I am amazed by a few human studies that have shown drinking at least two cups of green tea daily slows cancer growth.  One study conducted in Japan, involved women with Stage I and Stage II breast cancer, found that increased green tea consumption before and after surgery was associated with lower recurrence of the cancers.  Studies in China have shown that the more green tea that participants drank, the less the risk of developing stomach cancer, esophageal cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colorectal cancer.  A recent analysis of 22 different tea & lung cancer studies, concluded that by increasing your daily intake of green (not black) tea by two cups may reduce the risk of developing lung cancer by 18%.  All in all, green tea's EGCG regulates and slows cancer growth and kills cells that are growing inappropriately with a 1-2 punch!

Green Tea can Heal the Heart?In a Japanese study, researchers found that drinking at least four cups of green tea every day may be related to the reduced severity of  heart disease among the male participants.  And a Dutch study found that the more tea consumed, the less severe the clogging of the heart's blood vessels, especially in women.  But note, lifestyle and overall diet were critical to the outcomes of these studies.  But green tea's antioxidants are dilators, they improve the flexibility of blood vessels and make them less likely to clog.  Antioxidant-rich blueberries and pomegranates can do the same.  Green tea, because of its antioxidant value, may have heart benefits, but it's not something Doctors regularly prescribe to people, because there isn't as much evidence as there is in exercise's ability to improve heart health.

Green Tea can Make you Lose Weight?Green tea and it's extract have been shown to fight obesity and lower LDL "bad" cholesterol (two risk factors for heart disease and diabetes ).  In the Japanese study, men and women were given varying amounts of green tea extract for three months. Those who got the highest amount lost fat and weight, had lower blood pressure, and lower LDL "bad" cholesterol.  Taking weight loss supplements that contain green tea extract probably won't hurt, unless you have liver problems.  But the best way to get the most out of green tea, even if your main goal is losing weight, is to drink it.  

The evidence certainly suggests that incorporating at least a few cups of pure green tea every day will positively affect your health.  However it's not going to cure anything and it should not be consumed as a drug.  It can certainly complement an already healthy diet.  When looking for green tea, stay away from "green tea flavored", or "green tea added", go for straight-no additive-natural green tea, either in bags or loose tea.  So, eat your fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, and go ahead, drink as much green tea as you want! 

 Resource: www.webmd.com

Relieve the Headache

Many of you might not know, but I suffer from migraine headaches.  They started when I was a kid, and I still get them, often.  That being said, I try very hard to keep a smile on my face while my head is throbbing.  I try to use medicine as my last resort.  I prefer natural, home remedies before over the counter or prescription meds.  Now, let me say this... I am not a doctor, nurse, or medical professional.  I am only sharing my ways of relieving my headaches, they might work for you and they might not.  If you have any ways to relieve your headaches, please share below.

Okay, back to headaches... Here are some of my natural tips to relieving headaches. Tension, sinus, migraine, whatever...

• Water: I drink water to make sure I'm hydrated. If I catch a migraine early enough, I'll run cold water over my pressure points in my wrists.
• Aromatherapy oils: peppermint, lemon grass, or lavender oil on temples and back of the neck help to relieve tension and relaxes the body.  Other scents have been known to cause more of a headache for me.
• Dim the lights: bright lights can aggravate a headache 
• Rest: I try to sneak away for at least 15-20 min.  I turn off everything, close the blinds, and close my eyes.
• Meditation: quiet time focusing on the breathe, does amazing things for the body's restoration
• Tea or coffee: Depending on the headache tea relaxes me, and the caffeine from coffee or tea, helps when I'm on the go with a headache because it helps the blood flow more freely.
• Walk or run: this works especially if its a stress-induced headache, releases my stress and my focus is off of the headache pain, and on to the run.
• Yoga: some yoga poses like seated neck stretches, cat pose, quarter dog (like downward facing dog, but on your forearms instead of hands), child's pose, happy baby, legs up on the wall (straight or straddle), seated spinal twists, corpse pose (meditation pose) can really help calm and restore the body & head.
• Warm bath or Shower: warm water has an amazing way of relaxing, add a little lavender to help relax even more
• Ice Packs or cool compress: I place them on forehead or on the back of my neck.
• Hair: I make sure my hair is out & loose, tight styles and ponytails don't help either.
• Food: this can be a "catch 22", certain foods are trigger foods for my headaches, so this is a two parter- I watch what I eat to avoid headaches. But the second part of this, is sometimes headaches are caused by hunger, so grab a healthy snack if it's not near a mealtime, and don't skip meals!
• Alcohol: I stay away from all alcohol while I have a headache, it only makes my headaches worse!

Honestly, there are times when my natural remedies do not work, or I'm on the go (on the show floor), and I don't have time for my home remedies... So what do I reach for?  Alieve works well for me, and Excedrin Migraine for those extreme migraines.  I also have a prescription migraine medicine, but my body does some crazy things with that, so it only comes out if a migraine lasts over 36 hrs and none of the other remedies or over the counter meds work.  But all in moderation, because these medicines can have different and negative effects on the body (stomach, liver, etc.).  I hope the next time time you get a headache you try a more natural approach to relieve it, and keep smiling.  If you find you are getting headaches often, track your activity and foods, then contact your doctor, you might discover a trigger.  Stay well and headache-free!