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Accept and Empower Yourself with Mindful Strategies
The way that you conduct yourself in your personal and professional life begins with how you use your mind. You can teach your mind to accept yourself and gain empowerment – or you can stay stuck in self-defeating behaviors.
You are what you think. When you want to introduce change into your life, you need to first accept and empower yourself before you begin altering anything. Your mind is the greatest tool that you have for living the best possible life that you can live.
Countless studies have shown that the brain is constantly working. Your brain can be wired to think or cause you to act in a certain way based on how you handle your mind’s ability to tap into your subconscious mind.
When you practice mindfulness, you can empower yourself and fine tune the subconscious abilities that you have. Using mindful strategies, you’ll be able to focus better, lower your stress and boost your confidence and self-esteem.
Once you learn to accept yourself, you’ll be able to have compassion for yourself, too. This will defeat any negative internal talk that you may have been practicing. Meditation is a strategy that you can use to achieve mindfulness in order to accept and empower yourself.
It helps users quiet the mind so that they can be fully in the present and accepting of the emotions and thoughts that they have. Choose a place where you’ll be comfortable so that you’ll be able to feel relaxed.
Some people choose to sit while meditating and others prefer to lie down. You can also practice mindful meditation while you’re walking outside or in your home. Relax and focus on what’s around you and how you’re inhaling and exhaling.
Be aware of the sensations you feel and the emotions that you’re experiencing. Another strategy that’s often used is deep breathing. You can start this the same way that you would with mindful meditation where you find a comfortable place and begin.
But you can also practice deep breathing while you’re active at home or at work. You focus on drawing in deep breaths and slowly releasing them. You can also use mindful replacement techniques.
These are strategies that call for you to be aware of the thoughts that you think about yourself rather than simply letting them pass through your mind. Whenever any negative self talk pops into your mind, you make a conscious choice to stop and correct the thought.
You correct it by replacing it with affirming words that help you accept yourself as you are. This helps you reprogram your thoughts to enable you to feel empowered rather than listening to words that hinder you and create self-doubt.
A Mindful Method to Boost Confidence and Self Esteem
Having confidence means that you view yourself favorably. You know that you can do what you need to do, that you have the skills and talents to be able to handle yourself.
You trust that your instincts, thinking and abilities are sufficient. When you don’t have confidence it means that you struggle to accept who you are. You’ll lack confidence to do things because you simply don’t trust that you can.
You go through life feeling as if you’re not educated enough, skilled enough, smart enough, talented enough, pretty enough, or handsome enough. You judge yourself, often thinking of what you could have, should have said or done, and you always fall short.
What mindfulness does to help you change this and build your confidence is replace the feelings that you’re not enough with the trust that you are. Using mindfulness calls for you to not dwell on your past or on any negative experiences where you feel that you failed or fell short.
It helps you to not focus on the future or on what you hope to be and it helps train you to focus on who you are right now and see that who you are is good enough. You learn to accept yourself – and with that, a strong confidence in yourself is built.
Practicing mindfulness can also boost your self-esteem. Mindfulness can lead you to a life settled in the present. With living in the present comes a non-judgmental acceptance of who you are.
So many people have an internal voice that’s extremely ugly. This internal voice has been conditioned to speak this way by us. The disturbing results are that when we allow this internal voice to have a negative say, we can trigger stress, anxiety and even depression.
This self talk has a direct impact on how you feel about yourself. Learn to be aware of this negative self talk. If you call yourself names, that’s a sign that you’ve been engaging in negative self talk that can lower your self esteem.
Some people call themselves stupid or idiot. When they consider doing something, this internal self talk always tells them why they can’t. You’ll tell yourself things like “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m too dumb to do it.”
When you allow these thoughts to run rampant, you can get into the mindset that you can’t do something – that you’re unworthy – and then your feelings follow that internal self talk until it becomes a belief.
This habit can be so ingrained within you that the negative self talk plays constantly in your mind, so much so that it becomes like white noise. What mindfulness does is bring your attention to the inner dialogue that’s eroding your self esteem.
You learn what this internal conversation is doing to you and how it’s impacting your emotions. Mindfulness helps you learn to accept who you are without expectations or blaming. You’ll gain skills that you can use to learn how to raise your confidence and acceptance of yourself.
8 Smart Reasons to Go Vegan for Heart Health
8 Smart Reasons to Go Vegan for Heart Health
Here’s an interesting story about the changes you can make to improve your heart health although I must admit I wouldn’t go so far as to cut my consumption of meat completely:
“Kim Williams, MD, a cardiologist and the president of the American College of Cardiology, became a vegan in 2003, after finding out his cholesterol levels were high — and it changed his life. He went vegan because he was impressed by how much heart scans of one of his patients improved after she tried a plant-based diet. She went from a high-risk of heart disease to normal risk in a matter of months.
A plant-based diet can decrease plaque in the blood vessels, and lower risk of diabetes and stroke, says Dr. Williams. “If we have a choice, it seems like a vegetarian diet is better.”
The good news for avid meat eaters is that you don’t have to completely quit meat to reap the benefits of a plant-based diet. Simply reducing the amount of animal products in your diet lowers the risk of high blood pressure. Then, as you start replacing meat with fish, or switching to vegetarian, or go completely vegan, your heart-disease risk gradually goes down, Williams says.
“People say eat everything in moderation, and I used to tell people that moderation results in moderate disease instead of severe disease,” he says.
Following are eight of the many ways a plant-based diet can protect your heart from disease”..
Continue Reading Here:https://www.everydayhealth.com/news/8-ways-plant-based-diet-protects-your-heart/
Samsung, Medtronic Partnering on Mobile Diabetes Management
Samsung, Medtronic Partnering on Mobile Diabetes Management
Here’s another great initiative being launched after the Google Lens project announced a while ago; I fortunately don’t suffer from diabetes but I have several friends who (as well as my 14 year old cat!) and I know they would be so happy to have something useful replace that “constantly needing to prick their skin” to test their blood sugar levels!
“Helping diabetes patients find new ways to monitor and treat their diabetes using their mobile devices is the goal of the partnership.
Diabetes patients in the future could be using their mobile devices along with applications and technologies from Samsung and Medtronic to better monitor their disease through a new partnership being formed by the companies.
The effort will merge Samsung’s expertise in consumer mobile devices with Medtronic’s diabetes management systems to find new, easier ways for patients to track their blood glucose levels and live with the disease. The creation of the partnership was announced at an American Diabetes Association conference on June 5.
Managing diabetes for millions of patients can mean wearing glucose monitors and insulin pumps or constantly pricking their skin and testing their blood for sugar levels. To change that, alternative methods are always being evaluated and tested.
The Samsung-Medtronic partnership will seek new ways for diabetes patients and their doctors to remotely view diabetes data and will explore systems that could ultimately integrate mobile and wearable devices into diabetes management systems, according to the companies.”
“By addressing more of the social and emotional aspects of living with diabetes and improving lifestyle fit, we believe that more people worldwide will be able to experience better diabetes control that today’s advanced therapies provide,” Alejandro Galindo, vice president and general manager of the intensive insulin management division at Medtronic, said in a statement. “Medtronic aims to transform diabetes by providing world-class integrated care, enabled by leading technologies, big data, and informatics. Our partnership with Samsung is a key step in providing convenient and discreet access to diabetes data, so together we can provide people with diabetes greater freedom and better health.”
Continue reading here: https://www.eweek.com/mobile/samsung-and-medtronic-partnering-on-mobile-diabetes-management.html
Overweight people who suffered heart attack could live longer than healthy people, says study
Overweight people who suffered heart attack could live longer than healthy people, says study
Well this headline certainly looks very surprising doesn’t it, but before you get all happy and skip your dit and workout routine, make sure to read the whole story for it is obvious that there’s there is just no substitute to a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Overweight people who have suffered a heart attack may live longer than healthy people because certain fats are programmed to guard the body against heart disease, new research has found.
The University of Oxford study suggests that body fat can act as a last line of defence against a heart attack and strokes by releasing anti-inflammatory chemicals.
The findings, to be presented at the British Cardiovascular Conference in Manchester, challenges conventional wisdom that body fat is detrimental to health. It could also explain why some people with an extreme Body Mass Index (BMI) often outlive those with a healthy BMI.
By studying cell tissue samples of patients that had heart surgery, scientists found a series of chemicals were released from certain body fats in the event of a heart attack or stroke, in response to warnings sent out by the heart and surrounding arteries.
Charalambos Antoniades, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at Oxford University, who led the study, said its findings would change how body fats were perceived.
Years of good blood sugar control helps diabetic hearts, study finds
Years of good blood sugar control helps diabetic hearts, study finds
This study is quite important for people suffering from Diabates type 2 since it
confirms that all the efforts they go through on a daily basis are really are worth it.
Day in and day out, for years on end, millions of people with diabetes prick their
fingers to test their blood sugar level. And many may wonder if all the careful eating,
exercise and medication it takes to keep those levels under control is really worth it.
A major new study should encourage them to keep going for the long haul, to protect
their hearts from diabetes-related damage. But it should also prompt them to work with
their doctors on other ways to reduce their cardiovascular risk.
The key finding: that keeping blood sugar levels under good control for many years can
reduce the risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke, heart failure or amputation by
about 17 percent.
And patients may not have to keep their blood sugar levels super-low to reap most of the
cardiovascular benefit. The authors concluded that a long-term average of about 8 on the
measurement called A1C hemoglobin was enough to achieve most of the benefit, but that
many patients can be safely lowered to around 7.
The results are reported in the June 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by a
team from three VA hospitals, the VA Center for Clinical Management Research and the
University of Michigan Medical School. They show what happened to nearly 1,800 veterans
with Type 2 diabetes nearly 10 years after they signed up for a 6 year blood sugar study
that randomly assigned them to either get help achieving “tight” blood sugar control, or
regular care..
Full story link here:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150603181737.htm?
Building a Case for Nutritional Supplements
Building a Case for Nutritional Supplements
It’s true that ideally, we should be getting the essential nutrients we need from food. An organic-based diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables should be enough to keep us healthy. Unfortunately, for the overwhelming majority of us, it’s not.
Sure, relying exclusively on food may keep you from developing vitamin deficiencies, but a dietary approach alone is not going to come close to optimizing your health.
In this post, we’ll look at just a few of the reasons we believe supplementing your diet with vitamins and minerals is a smart move. If you’re on the fence about whether or not you should be taking supplements yourself, this post is for you.
Reason #1: Poor Soil Conditions Equal Less Nutritious Food
Dr. Bernard Jensen was a world-renowned clinical nutritionist who once said that a tomato today is not the same as a tomato from 100 years ago. What he was referring to is the poor conditions of our soil in this day and age.
The first U.S. soil surveys were completed in the 1920s. They all concluded that our soil was depleted of key nutrients like nitrates and carbonates. These soil nutrients are necessary for the growth of healthy crops and ultimately, nutrient-dense food. And that was way back in the 1920s.
So what’s been done since then to improve the conditions of our soil? Well, not much. In the 1930s and 40s, following the Great Dust Bowl, farmers planted soy to reinvigorate top soil. This helped to some extent but certainly not to the degree needed.
Since then, farmers have had to incorporate chemicals into the soil to rapidly improve growth potential. And while this may help to grow crops, it doesn’t necessarily grow healthy crops. The natural conclusion then would be to look toward organically grown fruits and vegetables.
Although we believe that organic produce would be a healthier choice in terms of pesticides, it doesn’t ensure that you’ll be eating nutrient-rich food. Why? Because organic soil is just as devoid of nutrients as chemically treated soil is.
The bottom line is this: Poor soil produces poor crops, and poor crops produce nutrient-depleted food…
Original story link is https://blog.lef.org/2011/10/building-case-for-nutritional.html
to discover the very best in Advanced Supplements to get and stay healthy
How Serious Are You About Life Extension?
How Serious Are You About Life Extension?
We all want to know how to live longer and there are complete industries that revolving around the concept of “life extension”. But is it really possible for a person to extend their life by decades and, if so, how?
There are two thoughts on the life extension concept. The first is ‘how do we live as long as we possibly can?’ from a personal viewpoint. We all want to live past our eighties and if possible far into our nineties. The second is that people want to know how we can reach our biological potential – there are those that suggest that it is possible to live a normal, healthy life well into our hundreds.
To achieve either of these we need to first learn how to slow down the aging process. This means that we need to learn how to delay our physical cells becoming old and damaged and how to ensure that the new cells that are created in their place are as strong as the originals.
Nutrition
We get the building blocks for these new cells from the foods that we eat. This means that by eating certain foods we can expect to be healthier for longer. The obvious examples here are your vegetable and fruit food groups.
The other side of the coin is that there are also foods that cause cell damage and that by consuming these we are actually speeding up the aging process. Examples of these types of foods include those high in fat, refined carbohydrates and refined sugars.
Apart from the food that we eat there is also a fine balance to the amounts that we eat. Eating too much leads to health issues that can shorten our lifespan, just as eating too little can cause malnutrition and disease.
Exercise
Exercise is an essential part of the life extension process. We need to exercise to get our blood moving through our bodies so that it can carry all the essential nutrients to all the parts that need them. Exercise improves our muscular, cardiovascular, circulation and immune systems. This helps us to ward off any damage to our cells by viruses, injury and helps to balance out our hormones and prevent obesity.
Supplements
Sometimes we need a bit of help to get all the nutrients that we need, particularly with those that the body can not make itself. As we age our bodies become depleted of many of these nutrients, so as a part of a life extension plan supplementing these building blocks and nutrients can assist with the prevention of damage to the existing cells and provide the essential ingredients for the rebuilding of healthy cells.
No matter how hard we try, our organs do simply become too old to do the work that they once did for us, but this may not always mean the end of our life. With research into stem cells it is already possible to regrow organs. Who is to say that patients in the future simply do not replace that parts that are failing – much like we replace the parts of a car when they fail?
Cryogenics and nanotechnology that were once reserved for science fiction and horror movies are also technologies that are beginning to be taken quite seriously. Despite advances in these areas I wouldn’t pin your hopes on being able to have a conversation with your great great grandchildren 100 years from now just yet.
You best chance for life extension is to look at where you can improve on your current lifestyle and making the necessary changes. By simply altering your diet or taking up gentle exercise you could even add years to your life expectancy.
Click Here to discover the very best in Advanced Supplements to get and stay healthy
Is All This Screen Time Hurting Your Mind And Body?
Smartphones, Tablets, And TVs: All This Screen Time Is Hurting Your Mind And Body
Here’s an interesting article which I think you will appreciate as well for it explains a couple of things you may be experiencing too:
“Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time catching up on TV shows and movies. I’ll sit on my couch, hook up my laptop to my TV, and binge watch for a few hours. Sometime during the first hour though, my phone comes out. This happens every time. I’m texting friends, checking my social media accounts, googling information about the show I’m watching. By the end of the marathon, there are major holes in the storyline. I usually end up watching these things twice.
Over the past few years, an increasing number of people have been sharing their screen time with other screens. Both the Pew Research Center and Nielsen found in 2012 and 2013, respectively, that about half of smartphone owners use their phones while watching TV. Then, this past April, management consulting and technology services company Accenture found that number rose to about 57 percent. When it came to using other devices, like laptops and tablets, that number rose again to 87 percent of people. That’s a lot of people splitting their attention between devices”
Well I’m sure it does, try spending an evening withgout watching any of your screens and yes that includes your tv set and than go to bed and you’ll notice the next morning that you slept better, seriously try it, you’ll be amazed and hopefully change some of your “bad habits” too
Her’s the link to the full article:https://www.medicaldaily.com/smartphones-tablets-and-tvs-all-screen-time-hurting-your-mind-and-body-335808
How Chronic Pain Fosters Insomnia, And What You Can Do to Get Better Sleep
How Chronic Pain Fosters Insomnia, And What You Can Do to Get Better Sleep
Those who suffer from chronic pain often battle insomnia. It just makes sense that this is the case. The definition for chronic as it relates to illness or sickness is “persisting for a long time or constantly recurring.” So if constantly recurring pain exists in your life, showing up daily and/or nightly, your sleep cycle could definitely be disturbed.
The chronic pain which promotes insomnia and sleeplessness can hit you for a lot of different reasons. Just a few conditions which cause persistently painful experiences are:
• Lower back problems
• Arthritis, predominantly osteoarthritis
• Frequent headaches
• Shingles
• Fibromyalgia
• A lifetime of poor posture
• Traumatic injuries
• Being overweight
Obviously, these are only a limited number of physical conditions, ailments and diseases which can cause frequently recurring aches and discomfort. Since proper sleep depends on you being comfortable, insomnia frequently is a byproduct of the chronic pain you experience.
Fortunately, there are some intelligent and proven ways to treat and even cure your pain related insomnia, which do not involve taking dangerous sleeping pills and drugs.
Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to effectively reduce or even eliminate sleeplessness. This is a short-term psychotherapy treatment, which is in most cases provided by a psychologist or a chronic pain rehabilitation professional. Over time you learn to break the vicious cycles of insomnia and create new patterns of sleeping. Many studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy is considered one of the best treatments for insomnia, even when chronic pain is the cause (1).
In some cases, curing the nighttime irritation which keeps you from sleeping is as simple as changing your mattress. And chronic pain is sometimes created by negative emotions, including anxiety, sadness and even loneliness.
Whether your persistent agony is caused by your emotional state or a physical illness or disease, retiring to your bed at the same time every night and waking on a regular schedule can help you sleep better.
Alternative chronic pain remedies can include massage, acupuncture, osteopathic or chiropractic spinal manipulation and mindfulness meditation. Some chronic pain insomniacs have even found relief from biofeedback technologies. This requires you to wear special sensors attached to important areas of your body. The information that is recorded is then studied, and a treatment prescribed to alleviate your chronic pain, and your insomnia.
Physical therapy, nerve stimulation and psychological therapies can also help alleviate the insomnia and sleepless nights that your pain is creating. Your first move is to contact your doctor and explain how you feel your poor sleep patterns are related to your pain. Just remember that because you are experiencing pain, you do not have to “grin and bear it”. Take a proactive stance in your battle against insomnia and cyclical discomfort, and your efforts will be rewarded.
(1) Mitchell, M. D., Gehrman, P., Perlis, M., & Umscheid, C. A. (2012). Comparative effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: A systematic review. BMC Family Practice, 13, 40.