4 Ways To Rebuild Your Health After You've Quit Smoking

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So, you’ve quit smoking? Congratulations!

Quitting can be difficult because you’ve got to fight the cravings that come with it, as well as breaking a habit of a lifetime. No matter whether you smoked for a short while, or you’ve finally managed to kick the habit of over 20 years, there can be significant damage made because of this. After you’ve quit smoking, it’s important to rebuild your health, so here are some tips and tricks on what you can do.


Eat a healthier diet

Smoking can quickly deteriorate your health and more often than not, smokers tend to eat a more unhealthy diet because of the changes smoking causes to the tastebuds. Now that you’ve quit smoking, introducing a healthier diet will help your body rejuvenate. Not only that, many people find that when they quit smoking, they put on weight due to needing to keep their hands and mouths busy. Eat a healthier diet for the nutrients and to keep your waistline down!

Get yourself checked out

During the time that you were smoking it’s possible that it caused some sort of damage to your organs. Your heart and lungs are likely to be the main organs that have been affected, so it might be worth asking your GP for a heart and lung scan to check whether you’ve caused any long lasting problems. The sooner you find these problems, the more likely you are to be able to treat them.

Do a deep clean

If you smoked in your house or your car then it might be time to do a deep clean. Particles and chemicals from cigarettes can linger in soft furnishings such as sofas and rugs, and they can also linger in air conditioning filters. Doing a deep clean of your home and car will ensure that you’re not exposing yourself to any dangerous toxins, and also getting rid of any smoke smells which could tempt you back into that nasty habit.

Begin a new exercise regime

Finally, smoking deteriorates the organs and makes them weaker, so when you’ve quit smoking it’s important to put a solid exercise regime in place so that your organs can grow stronger and help prolong your life.



Quitting smoking is a fantastic achievement, so why not boost your quality of life by doing these four things so that you can rebuild your health!

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Beat the Bloat: 5 Simple Steps for Women

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Feeling bloated isn’t nice. It’s especially inconvenient when you’re getting ready to go to an event, you slip on that beautiful dress you bought for the occasion and your stomach sticks out a mile. It doesn’t matter if you avoid gorging on a huge pizza every Friday night. For women, bloating can be part of our natural cycles. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things you can do to avoid it. Here are simple remedies for beating the bloat.

Avoid Sugar Free Candy

You may think you’re doing yourself a favor by avoiding sugar. After all, sugar does cause us to put on weight. However, a lot of sugar-free candy or gums are filled with artificial sweeteners, like aspartame or sorbitol. These ingredients aren’t easy for the body to digest, so they just sit there, right in the center of your stomach. This causes you to bloat. So, when you want to avoid bloating, you’re actually better off sticking to the sugary stuff, or better yet, switch to natural sugars in fruit instead.

Take Your Time

It’s possibly down to the limited time most of us have to take a break, but many of us are eating faster than we ever have before. When you eat quickly, you tend to swallow a lot of gas at the same time. Eating quickly means your body isn’t given as much time to digest your food and the gas sits in your stomach along with it. Both cause bloating. Try taking more time with your food, or if you really can’t afford a longer break, drink a Skinny Tea along with your meal. The organic ingredients will help aid digestion and avoid bloating.

Avoid Stress

Easier said than done, right? However, it’s especially important for women to avoid as much stress as possible. Stress can cause hormonal imbalances which can lead to constipation or diarrhea, both of which can cause bloating. If you feel like you’re becoming overwhelmed, it’s always best to take time out. You could go for a walk while at work, ask your partner to watch the kids while you take a long bath or even go to an exercise class. Taking time out regularly will help to improve stress levels and mental health.

Exercise

Many women believe that bloating can be solved by losing weight. It can’t. Bloating isn’t necessarily weight gain. In fact, it’s often linked to anything but your weight. However, exercise can help you to deal with bloating. It can help you to regulate your meal times and meal portions, it can regulate your bowel movements and help you to stay hydrated.

See Your Doctor

There are times when bloating could mean something more sinister than last night’s big meal. If you’re persistently bloated, it’s important to visit your doctor and have a check-up. It could be that you have a gluten or lactose intolerance and some professional advice on dietary changes, or bloating has also been linked to ovarian cysts and ovarian cancer.

 

Living with bloating can really make you miserable, so give these tips a try and see if they can improve your quality of life.

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When Do You Need A Doctor?

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It’s a good question, and a lot of people simply don’t have the right answer. Some people think that you should go to the doctor whenever you notice a change to your body and of course, this isn’t true. The human body is a weird place, and it can change without reason or rhyme multiple times through the year. A perfect example of this would be blood spots. Now, if you start to see tiny, pinprick dots on your body, you might be understandably worried. It can be difficult when we see a change and don’t know the cause, particularly if it doesn’t appear to be going away.

However, it’s important to understand that a condition like this can be caused by numerous factors. It can occur due to straining. So, if you’ve been lifting heavy items recently, that could be the cause for these blood spots. Or, maybe it’s just age. Lots of people develop these little spots as they get older and this can begin at age 25. Of course, if you look online, you’ll find one of the top results links petechiae to leukemia, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most likely cause. So, when should you visit the doctor?

When It Hasn’t Disappeared

Most changes to your body will disappear within two weeks. That’s true if you have a cyst on your body that you are convinced is a cancerous lump. If within two weeks, it’s gone, there’s no need to take a trip to the doctor. If it’s still there after two weeks, well that’s another matter. But don’t worry, it’s probably still nothing serious, it’s just better to be safe than sorry.

When It Gets Worse

Yes, some times over those two weeks your condition will get worse, or you will see new symptoms. At that point, you should definitely head to an urgent care clinic. The benefit of urgent care is that there are really no wait times. So, if you are worried about your condition, you can get treatment from a doctor immediately. It’s always best to tell someone about your condition first though so you can get a second opinion before taking a trip to the doctors.

It’s worth pointing out that there are plenty of diseases and illnesses where the outlook is brighter when noticed and treated early. However, two weeks won’t make that much of an impact on a diagnosis, and it can keep you from succumbing to paranoia.

When You’re Injured?

You might think that if you have been injured, there’s no reason to visit a doctor. Particularly, if there seems to be no sign of pain or even any permanent damage. Do be careful though because the human body is quite odd. Pain can develop weeks or even months after an injury if it hasn’t been treated properly. That’s why you want the advice of a doctor whenever you suffer an injury.

Hopefully, this advice will help you decide when it’s actually time to see a doctor to stay in good health and when you should just wait for your symptoms to pass.

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Take Better Care Of You: Health Tips For Maintaining Inner Beauty

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It’s easy to forget to take care of yourself sometimes.  With more demands on our time and attention from work, children and family, the importance of keeping healthy can take a back seat.  It’s time to make a change to your health and maintain a better, longer lasting version of yourself.

We all know the rules.  Exercise often, eat a balanced diet, stay hydrated.  But there are other important factors we are missing.  When was the last time you saw your doctor, for example? How long have you been ignoring that ache in your neck? I’ve gathered together a short guide of changes you need to make now. Small changes for a better future.  So sit back, grab a cup of green tea and read on …

I won’t kick start this with hydration but will instead highlight the importance right now and get to it later.  Drink.  Drink 2 litres a day.  Every day.  Instead we’ll start by looking at fitness.

Your heart is the only thing between you and death.  If your heart fails, well that’s essentially the end of it all.  So keeping it healthy and and strong is vital.  Experts advise we take a minimum of 25 minutes of exercise per day. This can range from gentle walking to more high impact sports such as running.  Cardio fitness is the key to a nice strong heart but there are so many exciting ways to get the heart pumping.  Here are three to get you inspired

1: The Quick Morning Cardio Burn

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

If you don’t have time to make it to the gym, wake up and smash a 15 minute cardio wake up call.  Simple exercises like one minute reps of jumping jacks, squat thrusts, sit ups, high chests and running up and down the stairs, repeated 5 times each (Only pick three and mix them up everyday)   Or include a short weight lifting routine as I wrote about in this blog into your quick cardio.  It will give you a super snappy cardio buzz before breakfast.  You can jump in the shower and feel the extra energy boost.  Cardio exercise increases your metabolism all day so you can feel smug that you have set the town of your day and enjoy a guilt three latte at lunch.

 

2: The Enthusiastic Run

Running isn’t for everyone but, don’t knock it until you have given it a good go.  Running with interval sprints of thirty seconds for 30 minutes is a real fat burning cardio boost which will help trim you down whilst toning your muscles.  You need to ensure you have the correct trainers and kit to protect your limbs as this is a high impact sport.  The very best thing about falling in love with running is that it is completely free and you can do it absolutely anywhere.  Put your music in your ears and pound away the miles.  Mix running up with something like swimming to keep your body moving without constant high impact on your joints.

 

3: Think Different!

Horse riding may not look like it’s burning much in the way of calories but a one hour horse ride burns the same calories as a 30 minute run.  It is also extremely good at building up your core muscles and working your inner thigh.  Giving you a cardio and toning exercise all in one.  Make sure you stay safe by wearing all the correct kit and find a local riding school that gives lessons in a school or takes you out and about on brilliant hacks.  You won’t even notice your heart is getting a workout.  You might notice it the following day in your muscles though!

 

If you can include 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise into your daily routine, you will be well on the way to improving the health of your heart.

 

Next on the list of things we usually put on the back burners are regular health checks with a doctor or our dentist.  As we grow older we need to keep an eye on things.  Prevention is most definitely better than cure, but with certain illnesses we can be blissfully unaware of any changes until it’s too late.

Our teeth suffer years of abuse without a good hygienist, so get online and use http://dentists.nhere.me to find a local dentist and go for regular check ups and cleans. This is especially important if you have children.  Kids watching their parents taking care of their teeth are twice as likely to take care of their own.  Make it fun.  Brush together and get your kids to enjoy visits to the dentist.  

Finding a good doctor is also important.  Women over 20 should be having regular smear tests and women over 35 should be having well women tests. Check your breasts often and at different points in your cycle so you get to notice any changes in the shape and feel of them.  If you notice anything out of place, make an appointment and get a second opinion.

 

Keeping a little back for yourself is one of the greatest gifts you can bestow upon your body.  Mindfulness.  Relaxation.  These two simple things are so often forgotten, but without them we can suffer unhealthy habits and even create mental health issues we could have avoided.  Meditation is particularly helpful at putting your monkey mind to task.  Our minds can create huge problems for relatively minor issues.  Learning to control that is the key to lasting inner peace.

Yoga is a fantastic release for stress and can be practiced either first thing in the morning to energize you, or with a little meditation last thing at night to prepare your body for sleep.  You don’t have to find a class to learn the basics with lots of handy tips on line like these, just find a comfortable, clutter free area and a quite 15 minutes then practice the slow, low impact movements whilst allowing your mind to run free of all the chatter.  

Inner peace is something that we need to help us solve problems and make better decisions.  Lying in bed with a million worries and anxieties will lead us to a pattern of no sleep and sluggish behavior.  Lack of sleep can have serious impact on our day to day lives.  Creating havoc with our skin and general health.  Find peace, relax and sleep!

 

Lastly, I mentioned it in the first half of this article, hydration and a healthy balanced diet.

You will not find one article in the world on health that doesn’t stress the importance of drinking pure water every day.  Amounts range, but setting yourself up for the challenge of 2 liters a day, will make remarkable changes in your life.  From your brain to your skin and your general energy levels, water will change the way you take on the world and help you form better decisions.  Cells need water to regenerate so, a little like plants, without regular water we will slowly wither away, health will deteriorate and eventually we’ll die!

 

Clean eating, removing processed and sugary foods from your diet, will give your digestive system a happy detox.  Homemade meals with fresh local ingredients or, better still, home grown ingredients will ensure heart, cell and brain health.  A balanced diet is proven to decrease your risk of many cancers and increase your life expectancy so get to it!

Take better care of yourself, look and feel more beautiful and enjoy life, longer.

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Positive Lifestyle Changes You Can Start Today!

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Having a healthy lifestyle may seem challenging to some, but it doesn’t have to be. Changing for the better doesn’t have to mean you overhaul your life like almost EVERYBODY does with these sudden New Years Resolutions. Even the most minor lifestyle changes can have a positive and dramatic impact on your life. It’s all about routine, commitment and staying focused. Here is a list of possible changes you can make to ensure you’re living the healthiest lifestyle possible.


Have regular check-ups
Start to schedule regular appointments with medical professionals. These could include doctors, opticians, dentists and nutritionists. Each of these experts can help you stay on top of your health and treat any current issues you may be facing. Regular check-ups can also highlight possible medical symptoms before they get worse and advise you on how to care for yourself properly. You can also use these sessions to air your concerns about your family’s medical history or to ask for weight loss guidance. Always visit a reliable Doctor and Dentist to keep all aspects of your body in tip top condition.


Improve your sleeping habits
If you find it hard to get out of bed in the morning and spend your days feeling drained, you need to improve your sleep habits. Start getting up at the same time every day including weekends (I know, I know). This can be difficult but after a few weeks, your body will adapt and get used to the change. It is a self-regulating system, so if you don’t get enough sleep one night, your body will get tired sooner the next day. Therefore making you want to go to bed earlier. Knowing what time you need to get up will also give you the opportunity to plan what time you go to bed to ensure you get enough rest. This can brighten your mood and make your body feel more active. It will also give your body a chance to rejuvenate and prepare itself for the day ahead.

A casual walk on a nature trail.


Making time for exercise
Many people will put off exercise because they don’t have time for it. Everyday life can be hectic and squeezing long gym sessions into your schedule can be difficult. But shorter workouts can be just as efficient and are easier to fit around your work and home life. Research high-intensity short workouts and make an effort to do them every day. Also, try to keep your body moving by walking more and taking the stairs. You could also try jogging on the spot during commercials or joining an evening and weekend sports team. Any additional movement you can give your body will keep your weight down and your fitness levels up.


Make an effort to try at least two of the items on this list and you could be reaping the benefits in no time. Small changes are still valid and give you the opportunity to grow, so don’t disregard them. They may be small, but they could change your life completely. Take your health seriously today and you’ll be more likely to live a long and happy life!

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