Category Archives: Health

Simple Steps to Relieve Your Back Pain

Back pain is a common problem that can be a major annoyance and extremely uncomfortable. It can leave you unable to do your normal day-to-day activities and filled with negative feelings as a result. Fortunately, there are some easy things that you can do to help relieve your back pain and bring back the positivity and balance that you need. Want to find out how you can reduce your back pain and feel better? Check out these simple steps!

Stay Active
This is probably the last thing that you want to do when you’re suffering from back pain, but exercise can do wonders for your back! Keep moving, but don’t overdo it. Bed rest or sitting down for too long can actually make your back pain worse.

Sit Up Straight
Even if you threw out your back while heavy lifting, your problem might go deeper than that. If you’ve been slouching for years, that could have set the stage for your current aches and pains. Even if it hurts, try to sit up straight and put your back into the position it was meant to take.

Workout
Again, working out might be the last thing on your mind when your back is in pain. Guess what though? Stronger abdominal muscles and a more flexible body will make you less likely to hurt yourself. Workout your core, do yoga, and try to live a more active lifestyle.

Lift Properly
You’ve heard it a thousand times before, but that’s because it works: lift with your legs, not with your back! Place your feet shoulder width apart with one foot slightly ahead of the other and bend your knees! It’s an easy tip that will save you from a world of pain in the future.

Wake Up Properly
Feel like you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed? Well maybe you did! Sitting up in bed before getting up can put a lot of unnecessary pressure on your spine. Roll over to the side before bringing your feet down to the ground and bringing your body up into a sitting position.

Have any more questions about how you can live a more balanced lifestyle? Take a look here!

Q The Positive
Q The Positive
Older Men Drinking Water After Exercise Healthy Living

Why You Should Drink More Water

Are you feeling tired, sore, and uncomfortable in your own skin? Believe it or not, the source of your problems may be that you aren’t drinking enough water. Staying hydrated has a wide variety of health benefits that can help you feel refreshed and improve your mood. To better understand the advantages of drinking more water, we’ve put together a helpful guide to improving your life with H20. It’s easy – just add water!

Feel Energized

One of the most noticeable signs of dehydration is feeling sluggish and fatigued. Water can give you a quick energy boost and bring you back to a normal level of alertness.

Control Your Weight

You may have heard this one before, but water is great for helping you control your calorie intake! Your body often can’t tell the difference between hunger and thirst, so sometimes drinking a big glass of water can help you feel fuller. Replacing drinks like juice and soda with water can also help you cut down on unnecessary calories.

Detoxify

Drinking more water can help your body push out more toxins and waste by encouraging sweating and urination. This can also help reduce the risk of nasty problems like kidney stones and urinary tract infections.

Rejuvenate Your Skin

By staying hydrated, your skin will feel moisturized and fresh which will give you a youthful glow. A great way to easily look and feel younger!

Regulate Digestion

Water is a key part of the digestive process and can help keep things running smoothly. Improve the health of your gastrointestinal tract and prevent constipation by having a tall glass right now!

Relieve Aches and Pains

Headaches, migraines, joint pain, and back pain are all common side effects of dehydration. If you feel any aches starting to come on, start drinking up before it gets worse!

Have any more questions about how water can help you feel healthier? Don’t be afraid to ask!

Active Older Couple

Improve Your Memory by Avoiding These Habits

Do you have trouble remembering your new coworker’s name? Do you ever forget your best friends’ birthdays? Do you find it difficult to keep track of important appointments? Poor memory can be extremely frustrating, but it turns out that your memory is heavily influenced by your habits. Certain behaviors can actually have a negative impact on how quickly and easily your brain stores memories! We’ve put together a quick guide to some of the bad habits which cause you to have the most trouble remembering things. Avoid doing these and you might find that your memory will be better than ever before!

Not Sleeping Enough

There is a strong relationship between sleep and memory. While you sleep, the areas of your brain which control your memory are actively forging new connections to strengthen the memories which you made during the day. If you aren’t getting enough sleep at night, your brain will not be able to solidify your memories in the same way, and you may end up forgetting important things that you were supposed to remember the next morning.

Smoking

Smoking has been linked to a decrease in memory since it reduces blood flow to the brain and can affect the flow of information. If you’re a smoker and having difficulty remembering things, you should definitely quit. You should quit smoking anyway as we all know the many health problems that it can cause!

Inactive Lifestyle

Exercise is a fantastic way to make you more alert and sharpen your mind. Physical activity can positively affect your brain by encouraging cell growth and improving your mood and sleep patterns. Exercising more can seriously improve your memory, so get active!

Poor Diet

Eating lots of greasy and fatty foods is not only bad for your heart and body, but also your mind. A poor diet can create all sorts of problems for you, but its negative effect on your brain function is the worst when it comes to your memory. Try to eat cleaner and increase your intake of vitamin B12 to boost your memory. Vitamin B12 is found in great foods like shellfish, eggs, and dairy and can improve your sleep and help you remember things.

Have any more questions about how to sharpen your memory? Let us now on Facebook or Twitter!

The 22 Best TED Talks to Inspire Fitness, Health and Happiness

We all need a little inspiration every now and then. Watching a TED talk is a great (and free!) way to learn from the life lessons of a wide range of experts. Thankfully, Greatist has already curated 22 of the best talks in the fields of fitness, health and happiness! Enjoy!

Best TED Talks for Fitness, Health and Happiness Inspiration

Do you have a favourite TED Talk? Share your thoughts with us below!

Problem Sleeping In

Why Hitting Snooze is Bad for You

You know the feeling: It’s Monday morning, your alarm has just gone off, but your bed has never felt comfier. The thought of the weekend being over and having to head off to work shortly makes you want to dive deeper under your covers. You’d do anything to just get a few extra minutes of sleep so you can put off the start of Monday as long as you can. The alarm is blaring and you reach over and hit snooze…. time to head back to sleep.

Hitting snooze is probably one of our favourite things to do. Yes, it gives you a few stolen moments of sleep before you have to face reality, but there are actually a number of negative effects. The next time you try to steal an extra five minutes, consider these facts:

1. The saying “You snooze, you lose” is actually true – you’re setting yourself up to be more tired during the day. If you go back to sleep and enter a new sleep cycle, you won’t have enough time to finish it, which leaves you feeling groggy and tired

2. Maybe you need to go to bed earlier. Consider what time you’re going to bed, if you find that you’re hitting snooze every single morning, you’re probably not getting enough sleep. Turn in earlier and you’ll find that you won’t be tempted to hit snooze

3. You’re throwing off your internal clock – Waking up at 6:30am one day and 7:00am the next is not good for your body. Your internal clock will not know when to feel sleepy, which leads to you staying up later at night and consequently feeling sleepier in the morning