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Water is essential to the human body. Science suggests that the body is 70% water and relies on it for a wide array of physiological processes. This fluid plays a critical role in maintaining correct body temperatures, ensuring ideal electrolyte balance and lubricating joints.
Now that you know how vital water is, here is how you can increase your daily water intake.
How to Drink More Water
Set A Goal
Before you increase your water intake, you ought to know just how much water your body needs every day. You can then use this as a starting point for creating your water consumption strategy.
Most health organizations recommend that people take eight glasses of water daily. Although this is not accurate for everyone, you can use it as a guiding framework for the amount of water you should drink.
You may need more water if you:
Live in a hot area,
Are breastfeeding,
Exercise regularly
Work outside for long hours
Start Early
A great way to drink more water is to include it in your morning routine. Most people go about their morning routine in an almost mechanical way, which is great for consistency in drinking water.
For instance, you can start drinking a glass of water as you wait for your kettle to boil or as you clean your braces for straighter teeth. To help you remember to hydrate, keep an empty glass of water near the kettle every night. That way, you will always refill the glass and drink water every morning.
You could even keep some water on your bed stand and take it first thing every morning. Within no time, this habit will be ingrained, and you will increase your water consumption tremendously.
Infuse Flavor
If you find water to be too plain, infuse some flavor into it. You can use citrus fruits like lemons, limes and oranges to do this. Other fruits that will impart a wonderful flavor to your water include strawberries and passion fruits. You could also use herbs or slices of cucumber to make your water tastier.
Use a Water Bottle
If making eight trips to the water dispenser is too tedious a task, why not buy a water bottle that can hold more water? You can always carry the bottle with you wherever you go, which is quite convenient.
Additionally, having the bottle around encourages you to keep sipping water, which will increase your daily intake considerably. Better yet, investing in a reusable water bottle is environmental-friendly as it reduces your use of plastics.
Take Water Before Meals
You could also make a habit of drinking some water before meals. Not only will this increase your intake of water, but it could also help you eat less since you will feel full faster. This is particularly great if you are trying to lose weight.
Conclusion
As you can see from the tips in this post, drinking more water needn’t be overwhelming. You can increase your daily consumption by making a few changes to your daily routine. Start today and enjoy the numerous benefits of adequate hydration.
*This is a collaborative post*
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Half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental health illness or disorder within their lifetime. This statistic is similar in most developed countries throughout the world. While the spectrum of mental health disorders is broad, this does mean many of us will find ourselves at some point in our lives in a rut that it can feel incredibly challenging to get out of. When we do begin to recover, then it is good to take the opportunity to consolidate the recovery by creating healthy habits that will boost our mental health. Here are a couple of handy thoughts about how to get your life back on track when you are ready.
Exercise
Exercise may sound cliche, but the evidence for its mental health benefits is now so strong that doctors prescribe it as a treatment. Exercise energizes you and can help give your life small goals and structure. If you have had a period where your daily living has felt unfocused, then taking time to exercise is highly recommended. The other benefit of exercise, if taken outside, is fresh air. Getting outside is an excellent way of boosting your mental health. It can give your vitamin D a boost, and even seeing nature can reduce stress and anger levels.
Take A Trip To The Dentists
This suggestion might sound a little odd, as the thought of going to a dentist can be anxiety-inducing for many of us. According to the Oral Health Foundation, almost half of all adults are fearful of a dentist's trip. This statistic could be why, during bad periods of mental health, our oral hygiene can decline. If you can build yourself up to it, a trip to the dentist can be a real turning point, proving to yourself that you are capable of retaking control of your life. Dental Excellence can give you a significant boost in confidence. Many dental specialists are happy to talk through anxieties with you and put procedures in place to recover your smile without heightened anxiety. Taking time to focus on your smile can make you happier. By seeing a dentist in a period of good health, you are also future-proofing your smile in the eventuality that your mental health and oral care may decline again. Take the opportunity to protect your smile for when you might need it in the future.
Finally, remember that very rarely is any recovery a straight trajectory from feeling bad to feeling excellent. There may be bumps and setbacks along the way, but none of them are insurmountable. If your exercise or oral care stops, that does not mean you can't pick it up again whenever you are ready. Habits are hard to break, so that you may slip back into an old way of thinking. But habits being hard to break also means that they will be robust and strong once these new habits are established. The healthy habits will make you more resilient and help you maintain a new way of thinking that boosts your life's positivity.
*This is a collaborative post*
An experience that many of us have a lot of the time is this one of your body and mind both feeling as if they are on overdrive the whole time. That can be related to the experience of anxiety, but whether or not it specifically comes with anxiety it is something that can be quite worrying. Overall, it is a feeling of your body working a little too hard, or of being at the end of your tether. In truth, what it normally comes down to is a general experience of pushing yourself too hard and not focusing on your health fully.
Get Rid Of That Belly Fat
One of the earliest signs that you are running on overdrive is when you start to develop that midsection fat around the belly. As well as being, for many people, unsightly, it is also one of the first parts of the body to develop that fat if you are generally unwell and not taking care of yourself. So if you have noticed this, you will find that working on losing that fat is always going to be a strong start to stopping your body from being on overdrive. Yes, it works in reverse.
Stop Overworking
Not all of the signs are physical ones. Sometimes, it’s more a case of what you are doing with your life. For instance, if you have noticed that you tend to be overworking a lot, that is probably a reliable sign that you are on overdrive. Certainly, that will be the result for your health, and it’s something that you are going to want to try and avoid. If you find yourself overworking, ask yourself whether you might be simply trying to escape from something else, or whether you are trying to fill a void. Stop doing that, and you won’t be operating on overdrive anymore to quite the same degree.
Take Steps To Calm Your Anxiety
As we have seen already, being on overdrive has a direct relation to feeling anxious, and this is one area where you can make changes in one by altering the other. Whatever kind of relationship you tend to have with anxiety, there is always going to be something you can do about it, so that is worth thinking about in particular. It might be a simple case of reducing the amount of coffee you drink, trying to get a little more sleep, or even cutting down on smoking by opting for Aspire Finixx instead. However you do it, reducing and managing your anxiety is a hugely important way to stop your body and mind being in overdrive.
Reset Your Stress Response
A lot of the feeling of being on overdrive comes down to this sensation of your stress levels being high all the time. That can happen over time as a response to a number of genuinely stressful experiences or even trauma, to the point where you no longer have a normal response to everyday stresses, but rather an exaggerated one. However, this form of adrenal overdrive can be reversed, and it is one of the central facets of ensuring that you are stopping your entire system from running on overdrive all the time. If you feel wired and as though you can’t turn off your stress response, you can consider trying to increase your blood sugar slightly, so that your body is not in survival mode. You might also benefit from avoiding environmental toxins in the home wherever possible. Above all, however, the main thing to do is to allow yourself plenty of opportunity to rest and - well, reset your system.
Lower That Heart Rate
Another clear sign that your body is working too hard is if your sitting heart rate is too high. In some people, you might even be able to feel your heart rate is high just as you are sitting at your desk or on the sofa. That is a sure sign, but if you are unsure you should look into checking your heart rate for real. If it is high, you should aim to attack this problem head-on and in a number of ways at once, to help overcome it. That means eating right, exercising every day, sleeping well, and avoiding stress. If you can manage all that, your sense of overdrive is going to diminish soon enough, and things will seem so much clearer and calmer again.
Focus on these things, and you should be able to get your body back to normality again.
*This is a collaborative post*
Your health is important, but so very often you will forget to take care of yourself. You take your health for granted, maybe it’s because you’re working too hard, or maybe it’s because other problems crop up and take our attention away from the things that matter the most. Whatever the reason, you need to make sure that you are giving your health the time and energy that it deserves.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the health areas that you should stop putting off dealing with and visit an appropriate specialist.
Your Back
Do you have a bad back? 8% of all adults experience back pain. This could be anything from a twinge through to chronic pain.
If you have back pain, and you leave it for too long without treatment, then you could end up with chronic pain which could be very debilitating, This will affect your ability to do routine tasks and may even prevent you from being able to work.
Our Family Chiropractor can help you though. A chiropractor will use manual adjustments of the spine to treat neuromuscular problems in the back.
Your Eyes
We take our eyesight for granted, but one day it could easily be gone. There are several things that you should be doing in order to take better care of your eyes. Firstly, you should be avoiding looking at bright sunlight. If you do go out in the sun, you should wear high UV factor sunglasses. You should still not look at the sun, even with sunglasses on.
If you spend a lot of time looking at screens, you should make sure that you take plenty of breaks away from the screen to protect your eyes.
Finally, you should make sure that you visit your optician at least once every two years. This will help them to identify any issues that you may be having with your eyesight.
Your Mental Health
Problems with your mental health may be hard to spot. You may think that you just feel a certain way and that you can snap out of it. However, when you have depression, you can’t just snap out of it. It is a problem with your brain chemicals, and it goes deeper than how you’re feeling.
If you are experiencing prolonged periods of depression, anxiety, or stress, then you should reach out and seek help.
You could speak to your doctor in the first instance. They may be able to supply medication or refer you to a counsellor or therapist who will be able to help you to understand your condition and work through some of the emotions that you are feeling.
Your Ears
Your hearing is important, and it is very unlikely that you’ll notice that your hearing is deteriorating until it is too late. However, having your hearing tested often may mean that you spot problems with your hearing. Having your hearing tested may mean the difference between struggling to hear what friends are saying and getting the help that you need to address the problem.
*This is a collaborative post*
There are often times in life when everything seems like it is all too much for us. Stress can build up because of a culmination of a lot of different reasons, and when we are under stress for a prolonged period of time, it can lead us to become anxious and depressed too. Stress can really have a negative impact on our mental health and it is essential that we manage stress when we see the signs of it.
But learning to identify the early warning signs of stress, depression, and anxiety can be tough. Often, these problems gradually build in us without us even realizing.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the ways that you can take care of yourself when you are stressed.
Focus On Getting More Sleep
When we are stressed, depressed, or anxious, it can be hard to get to sleep at night. Or, if you are able to get to sleep, you may not be able to sleep right through the night. You need to be aiming to get eight hours of sleep each night. If you are struggling to get enough sleep then this can have a detrimental affect on your mental health. It can become a vicious circle.
There are a few things that you can do to improve your ability to fall asleep, and the quality of your sleep. Firstly, you can avoid using your phone or tablet for an hour before you go to bed. Use the time before you go to bed to have a relaxing bath or read a book.
When you do go to bed, sprinkle the bed with lavender oil. This will help you to relax.
Use CBD
One way of reducing your stress and anxiety levels is by taking CBD. But what is CBD?
CBD is useful for the treatment of stress and depression. CBD comes from the cannabis plant. But unlike the cannabis drug, CBD doesn’t make you high and there is no risk of addiction when you take it.
Plan Your Time Better
One of the biggest causes of stress is not managing your time effectively. Instead of allowing yourself to become overwhelmed by stress, make a to-do list and focus your energy on working on one task at a time in a methodical fashion. Make sure you proritize your most important tasks.
Don’t Be Affraid To Say No
If you feel as though you can’t say no to things when people ask you to do something, this can cause you to take on too much. In turn, this brings about stress. Learning to say “no” when you are overwhelmed is vital.
Turn To Friends For Support
When you are feeling stressed or low, turn to those around you and talk things through with them. A problem shared is, after all, a problem halved. If you don’t have anyone that you feel close enough to, you should turn to a professional for support. Get in touch with a counselor and talk through your problems with them.
*This is a collaborative post*