10 Ways to Keep Your Energy Level Up All Day

Feeling exhausted and continuously struggling to get through your day can lead to shoddy quality work, unsatisfying relationships, and poor physical and mental health. By changing a few things, you can easily adjust your energy levels to live a more fulfilling and happier life. Implement the following ten ways to keep your energy levels up all day.

• Only Consume Natural Sugars – Processed sugars from soft drinks or packaged foods are known to lead to poor moods and lethargic behaviors. Whole fruits, vegetables, or nuts and seeds are a better alternative as they provide other nutrients that work together to process throughout the body differently.

• Exercise in The Morning – Exercise is a great energy booster as it increases your feel-good hormones and decreases cortisol levels that lead to stress. It also boosts your metabolism throughout the day.

• Eat Your Vegetables – Vegetables are high in nutrients that are important for energy levels. Often fatigue is due to an improper diet and can easily be fixed without supplements by adding vegetables. Experts recommend two to two and a half cups of vegetables each day.

• Drink Plenty of Water – A common symptom of dehydration is fatigue. This is because your body is shutting down and trying to cope with less hydration. Make sure to drink enough water for your weight and avoid substituting other beverages. Your body only recognizes water as proper hydration.

• Avoid Caffeine – While caffeine may provide an energy boost to get you going, it won’t provide energy all day long. If you want to keep your energy levels up, avoid coffee or energy drinks. Eventually, your body will adjust and learn to live without it and be better for it too. The dependency only keeps you down.

• Get Sunlight Daily – Lack of Vitamin D is responsible for many symptoms of fatigue. Most cannot absorb Vitamin D properly without adequate sunlight. It is essential to expose yourself to at least fifteen minutes of daylight a day to reap benefits. If you cannot do that, consider purchasing a ‘happy light’.

• Consume Protein – Protein is essential to providing fuel throughout your body. Proteins are low on the glycemic index, making it a great energy source and healthy to boot.

• Get the Right Amount of Sleep – Do whatever you can to get at least seven to 9 hours of sleep each night. Your body requires proper amounts of sleep to rebuild and refresh. Lack of sleep can lead to a downward spiral, so take it seriously. Your organs repair themselves as you sleep, so you need it.

• Don’t Rush Your Daily Tasks – Ease into your day if you can or make the time to. The more time that you give yourself to adjust as you switch activities throughout the day, the better to avoid the stress that can ultimately weigh you down.

• Get Moving – If you have a sedentary job, find ways to take a break or do your job while moving even if it is just moving your legs or arms while you read an email. Experts say the more sedentary you are, the more likely you are to feel lethargic. This is because you are not pumping blood or supplying enough oxygen to your organs.

These are only ten out of many ways that you can increase your energy to get through your days more manageable. Always speak with your doctor before you try something new or if you are experiencing chronic fatigue that wasn’t there before. You know your body the best, so trust your instincts.

What Happens To Your Body When You Never Move?

Our culture today is experiencing a lifestyle shift unlike any other change involving generations past. As modern technology continues to skyrocket toward the future, an almost perfect negative correlation can be found in the amount of physical activity the average individual performs.

While the perils of a sedentary lifestyle are somewhat common knowledge, this article will touch on a few of some of these detriments to specific anatomical systems.

Muscular System

A common trend you will notice as we progress in this discussion is the body’s remarkable ability to allocate resources to specific locations it deems necessary. Muscles are a direct and literally observable example of this trend.

When the muscular system is not frequently exposed to outside stresses and resistances that require muscle tissue to contract and shorten, the body notices and begins to decrease the amount of nutrients and oxygen the muscle receives.

Naturally, this leads to a reduction in overall muscle size and strength. On the contrary, if the body realizes that a muscle or group of muscles is being asked to handle an increased workout on a consistent basis, these structures will receive a greater influx of nutrients, thereby increasing in both size and force output.

Skeletal System

Our bones are specifically designed to provide an overall framework for the body, protect vital organs, store nutrients and specific types and cells and manage the perpetual effect of gravity. When an individual’s lifestyle is devoid of adequate physical activity, the skeletal system, as with most other body systems, begins to deteriorate due to a decrease in the nourishment it receives.

The overall strength of a bone is usually described in terms of bone mineral density (BMD). Processes such as prolonged periods of inactivity and aging are marked by an increase in this parameter. Quite obviously, decreased bone mineral density is highly correlated to increase breaks and fractures, as well as reduced overall functionality an individual maintains.

The Cardiovascular System

Your heart really is the MVP when it comes to persistence. No matter how inactive you choose to be, this organ does not follow suit. Although your heart will continue to function despite an inadequate amount of movement, it is far from immune to it.

Just a few examples of how lack of movement negatively affects the heart are a weaker, less efficient contraction, decreased oxygen uptake and obstructed flow of blood the through body. These issues force the heart to work much harder to keep you alive, which inevitably decreased the lifespan of the heart itself.

Metabolism & Bodyweight

Probably the most obvious consequence of not moving enough is an increase in bodyweight, often times leading to obesity. Your body has a specific amount of calories it requires to maintain vital structures such as the heart, brain and liver. Whatever caloric total remaining after these systems are accounted for is allocated to provide energy towards physical activity and movement.

In a movement deficit, these leftover calories are not burned as full and must be stored somewhere in the body for a later date. As you can probably guess, one of the main storage vessels is adipose tissue or body fat. Digressing back to the effects of inactivity of muscle tissue, specifically the reduction in muscle size due to non-use, metabolism is intricately involved in this process. Lean muscle mass actually has a high demand for calories even while at rest.

The more muscle present in the body, the higher the metabolic rate becomes. To put it simply, there will actually be less of those leftover calories we previously discussed, resulting in less potential for storage in the form of fat.

7 Ways to Become More Grateful

When you are grateful for something, you will show appreciation for it by saying thank you, but the feeling of gratefulness goes much deeper than just showing thanks. It’s more like a feeling than an action. It starts inside your brain and manifests itself by your actions. To increase your feelings of gratitude, follow these 7 ways to become more grateful.

• Keep a Gratitude Journal – One of the ways to become more grateful involves practicing intentional gratefulness by writing down the things you are grateful for each day. You don’t have to be super detailed, just write bullets about your day and the things that brought you that feeling.

• Remember What You’ve Overcome – One way to elicit grateful thoughts is to think about when you overcome something in your life. When you see how far you’ve come, you cannot help but feel good about it.

• Count Your Blessings – Each day take some time to actively count your blessings. You can do this via prayer and thank your creator for those blessings, or if you prefer you can think about them as you fall into sleep, or meditate.

• Keep Track of Those Things That Make You Feel Grateful – When you are living your life if you get a sudden feeling of gratitude, instead of letting it pass, note it. Write it down so that you can think about it more often.

• Tell People Thank You – When people help you, are good to you, polite and do things for you always tell them thank you. Even if it’s their job to do it, be the type of person that is a bright light in their day too by verbally telling them thanks.

• Use Positive Language – When you are talking about things focus on the type of words you use. Try to turn any words with a negative connotation into positive words instead.

• Fake It till You Make It – While you don’t want to stuff your feelings long term, going through the motions by saying thanks, keeping the journal, meditating and/or praying will go a long way to triggering the right feelings of gratitude that you can conjure up whenever you need them.

As you focus on gratitude, something interesting will happen to you. You’ll start to notice the smallest things, like the gentle fragrant breeze after it rains, the smile on your child as he sleeps, and the nice things your spouse does without even thinking about it like giving you a foot rub for two minutes after work while discussing your day. It all adds up to a good life that you want to feel good about.

5 Ways to Let Go and Forgive

Being more forgiving toward yourself and letting go of negatives is vital to the pursuit of happiness. If you are continually thinking about what you or others did wrong and never learn to forgive yourself or others, you are planning a life of regret and disappointment. Instead, prepare for a life of joy and happiness by learning how to let go and forgive.

• What is forgiveness anyway?

First, you must truly understand what forgiveness is, in the first place, to allow yourself this kind of freedom. Often than not, most don’t know the true meaning of forgiveness.

Just because you forgive yourself or someone else doesn’t mean the other isn’t to blame, or you don’t need to recognize responsibility. Forgiving has nothing to do with any of that. Forgiving is the act of releasing yourself from whatever emotions you are feeling towards the action, such as pain or resentment.

• Use mistakes as learning moments.

If you are having a hard timing learning how to forgive yourself for past mistakes, then try to change your mindset. Instead of being mad at yourself, use these moments to learn.

Acknowledge the mistake out loud and tell yourself why you made a mistake. Maybe it was a lack of planning or knowledge that caused the problem. As you gather information, you’ll see that the error was only bound to happen, and now you can prevent it from happening again.

Maybe as you investigate, you will discover that the mistake was never under your control in the first place, and there was no way around it. Unfortunately, you may even learn that you could have prevented it and now must take full responsibility.

It may not be comfortable to learn that, but the more you avoid your position in the matter, the more you will waste your time dwelling on it and not letting it go.

• Allow time and feel your pain.

Give yourself time to be upset but give it a time limit. Don’t ignore what happened or what mistake you may have made. This won’t allow you to heal. You need to own up to it or understand why you are holding on to it so much.

Understand that this will take time. No one has the perfect answer right away, and it may take you weeks or years to fully recover, but that is okay. Life is like that. Don’t create unnecessary stress when it is not needed and will only lead to self-sabotage.

• Know that you will mess up.

Be prepared to fail, and even more importantly, let yourself fail. Humans are predisposed to make mistakes, and it is only natural. Perfectionism is not real. If you didn’t make a mistake and you are dwelling on other people, realize they may not have done it on purpose and may have lacked information too.

No one goes through life without making mistakes. In fact, if you don't make mistakes, likely, you are not learning or progressing in life.

• Consult a therapist or life coach.

If you are having problems letting go and forgiving yourself or others – and this fact is affecting your daily life – preventing you from achieving the success you deserve, don’t be afraid to seek advice from a therapist or life coach.

They will provide guidelines to help you truly understand why you are struggling to let go and forgive so that you can move on.

Keep these tips in mind if you are struggling with learning to let go and forgive. It all starts with a willingness to forgive as well as knowing how to truly forgive. Once you have the knowledge and work to get it done, nothing is stopping your way to satisfaction in life.

5 Ways to Relieve Anxiety During the Holidays

The holidays bring, what seems to some people, as never-ending events, and social gatherings. Unfortunately, this means symptoms of anxiety can be exasperated, which can lead to problems during the holiday and affect your overall happiness.

Not only can the anxiety ruin the holidays, but it can also make everyday life more difficult. If this sounds like you, realize that there are many things you can do to help relieve your anxiety so that you can enjoy the holidays more.

Don’t Change Your Daily Routine

Don’t change your daily routine just because the holiday season is here. Beyond seeing family more, there is no reason to change it up too much. If you have to change it a little, be sure to include the things that are important to your daily life for you. Don’t skip out on the daily meditation, exercise, or self-care as these the things that are known to reduce stress.

Get Sunlight

Go outside or buy a happy light. Many people experience SAD or seasonal depression during the holidays that can produce anxiety. Sunshine or the happy light, which is a way to get simulated sunlight from a full spectrum UV free 10,000 lux bulb, is also a great way to take a break when you are feeling stressed. Go outside and take a short walk, soak in the sun, or plugin that happy light every day that there is no sunshine.

Be Generous

Holidays are the perfect time to be more generous to others as well as to yourself. If you are feeling overwhelmed, pamper yourself with a treat or massage, and treat someone you love while you’re doing it. Offering yourself to others makes you feel good and can lessen the symptoms of anxiety by putting the focus on others.

Set Realistic Expectations

Change your perspective and expectations for the holidays. The more you expect something to happen, the more chances for disappointment that can make your anxiety worse. Free your expectations and even talk with friends and family to make sure you understand their expectations of you. That way, nothing is a big surprise.

If it feels overwhelming, be honest, and tell them. It’s your responsibility to let others know your expectations of them and what is causing you to be unhealthy and full of anxiety. You might even find that your anxiety produced expectations on you that were never there in the first place.

Don’t Strive for Perfection

Perfection doesn’t exist. Don’t strive for it. This will ruin your holidays. Dinnertime, playtime, or certain family events will most likely not go as planned, and this is okay. It is only normal. The more you learn to accept it, the less likely you will disappoint yourself in the end.

There is no reason that you need to permit anxiety to control your life or ruin the joy of the holidays for you or anyone else. Use these tips you’ve just read to relieve your anxiety so that you can enjoy this time of life fully.

Balanced Meals Mean More Nutrients

Everybody knows just how important it is to maintain a healthy diet to improve overall health. But, there’s much more to starting a healthy diet than simply eating foods that are regarded as stereotypically “healthy.”

When you’re beginning a new diet, you need to understand why your body needs specific nutrients throughout the course of the day, the role that balanced diets play in improving health, and how to add variety to your diet to stay interested.

What Your Body Needs

When most people think about diets, they place a heavy emphasis on the number of calories they’re consuming over the course of the day. However, the actual nutrients that you’re consuming are much more important than the calorie count.

That’s because your body desperately needs each of the macronutrients and micronutrients to function properly. These nutrients include:

Carbohydrates

Proteins

Fats

Vitamins

Minerals

Water

Think about it this way. If you’re eating the standard 2,000 calories per day, but you’re eating a diet loaded with fats and sugars, you’ll be much more likely to increase your risk of developing health conditions and gaining weight than if the diet were more balanced.

Your overall goal when it comes to consuming a more balanced diet should be to get the nutrients that your body requires without overdoing it.

Getting too much or too little of specific nutrients can cause negative health consequences that can effectively set your new diet back even further.

Why Balanced Meals are So Important

There are quite a few reasons that balanced diets are considered so important.

First of all, balanced meals contain plenty of nutrients in one meal and allow you to spread out your nutrient consumption throughout the day. Rather than getting all of your vitamin D in the morning, for example, you can get it in smaller portions throughout the day.

This can help you to maintain consistent levels of the required nutrients at all times rather than having them spike with specific meals.

Balanced meals are also much more interesting to consume. With a truly balanced meal, your meal will be stocked full of different tastes, textures, colors, and nutrients. That means you have many more options when it comes to different types of meals that you can make.

Adding Some Variety to Your Diet

In order to stick to any diet, particularly a more balanced diet, you need to add a lot of variety. There are a few reasons for that.

If you get bored of eating the same meals, day in and day out, you’ll most likely revert to your previously unhealthy diet. When you lose interest in eating because the food doesn’t appeal to you or it’s become too repetitive, then you’ll lose focus and get off track.

It also helps to keep your diet much more fun. When you’re constantly cooking new meals, trying out new ingredients, and pairing new foods, you’ll be much more interested in eating, even if it is considered a “healthy” balanced diet.

Variety also allows you to strategically select the nutrients that you’re getting with each meal. By selecting specific foods or ingredients, you can better target the nutrients that you’re lacking in and cut out on some of the nutrients that you’re getting too much of.

Final Thoughts

Before you completely revamp your current diet to eat only healthy foods, you need to take quite a few things into consideration. The most important thing you can do when trying to improve your health is by consuming more balanced diets that are loaded with a greater number of nutrients.

5 Ways to Practice Gratitude During the Holidays

For many, the holidays are a great time to be around friends and family while also being thankful for the things, people, and experiences they’ve enjoyed throughout the year. It is a time where chaos from life slows down just enough to enjoy time with friends and family. Due to this, many people like to use this time to practice gratitude to strengthen their relationships, form new bonds, and increase their happiness.

Make a List

An effective way to remind yourself to be thankful for everything you have is to make a list each day. Create a with a primary list of gratitude that can be viewed daily and create new ones for the things you are newly thankful for that day. The more you are aware of the things you do have, the less time you will be spending worrying about stuff you don’t have. Over time, happiness and gratitude will come more naturally.

Make It Routine

Clear out time in your daily schedule to practice gratitude. Use this time to create your list or talk to yourself about what things made you happy and thankful. Don’t allow your busy schedule to be an excuse when you can easily practice gratitude within five to ten minutes. You can do it on your drive to and from work, on your daily run, or while cooking dinner.

Reflect

Take the time not only to list out who and what you are thankful for but also to reflect. Reflect on the people, things, and experiences you have had to make you feel grateful. This a great way to feel gratitude, but it also gives you time to experience these happy moments all over again.

Do Acts of Kindness

Gratitude can also be manifested by giving back to others who need it. There are always ways to give back every day that do not necessarily require money. Smile and wave at everyone you see, open the door for someone, or give them a caring ear. The holidays are a perfect time for you to volunteer your time at a soup kitchen or help gather food and toys for those who are less fortunate.

Write Thank You Cards

Don’t forget the thank you cards this year. Even if someone did not provide a specific gift and just came by for dinner, send a note through the real mail. Let them know you were happy to see them and enjoyed their company or the present they offered. A personalized thank you card will make everyone feel appreciated and valued while strengthening your gratitude.

Make practicing gratitude part of your routine this holiday season to increase your gratitude. Be generous with your time, love, and be a listening ear or volunteer your time. Gratitude is essential for healthy relationships and to help you lead a happy, fulfilling life.

Ten years ago, someone with depression would be given a bottle of paracetamol and a “get some fresh air” lecture. Insomnia is best sorted with a cup of tea and a bedtime story. 2020 is a little different.

Today, if these people are lucky, they’ll be referred to a psychiatrist for a prescription and told to take part in a “talking therapy”, if they want to continue to receive medical treatment. Therefore, we need to talk about CBD and its potential to treat depression and anxiety.

How is CBD useful for treating anxiety? Anxiety can be caused by a number of things – mostly this is due to imbalanced chemicals and hormones within the human body, and an outdated way of thinking.

These two cause the sufferer’s body to react with any number of not so pleasant symptoms; most commonly these are tense muscles, a quickened heartbeat and an intense desire to escape. Yet the sufferer does not necessarily feel like they are in danger, and cannot always explain why these reactions occur. This makes reacting to the anxiety quite difficult, and it is easy for the sufferer to end up locked in a vicious cycle, with feelings of anxiety becoming almost a default state.

CBD is able to produce harmonizing effects upon the body’s endocannabinoid system whilst reducing feelings of anxiety, fear, and paranoia. This is achieved through the release of the neuropeptide oxytocin, as well as better balancing of the hormones serotonin and GABA.

DO make sure you have CBD or tincture ready to use straight away. The effects are better felt if you take CBD when it is not a foreseen event.

DO try to give your body ample time to enjoy the positive benefits of CBD before the next dose.

DO consider that CBD is not a fast cure, but the results are long-lasting and can permit sufferers to get out of the vicious circle they are stuck in. CBD allows many to face their fears...

Is CBD Oil for Arthritis Really That Good?

Arthritis is a progressive disease that impacts people daily. It usually affects the joints and can cause problems when left untreated. Failure to treat arthritis can lead to short and long-term disability and loss of essential biological functions. Arthritis is most common on weight-bearing joints, including the hips, knees, and spine, but it can also affect non-weight-bearing joints, including the fingers.

Inflammatory and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) occurs when, instead of protecting the joints, your immune system attacks the body’s tissue, including the joints. This can result in joint erosion and may destroy internal body parts, eyes, and other organs.

According to studies, a mixture of genetics and ecological factors may be related to the condition; for instance, smoking is an environmental risk that can spark RA in people with specific genetics.

Receiving treatment early on is an easy way to battle autoimmune and inflammatory forms of arthritis. Patients usually seek treatments that reduce pain, enhance bodily functions, and stop the disease from spreading to other parts of the body. Anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) are the standard treatment for inflammatory arthritis. However, cannabis is now seen as the perfect alternative prescription pills.

CBD oil originates from the cannabis plant. It doesn’t have the psychoactive substance found in THC; therefore, it won’t make you high. Current studies on CBD oil show that it has positive effects on several painful conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. These promising results first appeared in 2008 when a review concluded that CBD reduced pain associated with RA. It also improved sleep quality for patients without any adverse side effects.

According to research conducted in 2016, CBD gel can potentially relieve and reduce joint pain and inflammation in rats. This gives hope for people living with arthritis, but more studies on CBD for treating rheumatoid arthritis are needed...