Total Wellbeing Blog

Home Organization Tips To Take You Into Spring...

With spring just around the corner, it’s that time of year when we start thinking about giving our homes a deep clean or a complete organization overhaul.

Keeping our homes well organised whilst juggling the rest of our busy lives isn’t always an easy task and can often go to the bottom of our ‘to do’ list with all the other urgent things that we need to do.

Over the next 4 weeks we have some home organization tips to share with you which cover general home organisation, tips for your kitchen, garage, bathroom, home office and bedrooms. 

We start with 2 new articles this week on general home organising and the dreaded garage space – click on the links below to read more...

How to Organize My Home

Garage Organisation Ideas

Tips For Stress - 6 Ways to Deal with the Stress in Your Life

Stress is something that we all experience in one way or another and it is perhaps the number one cause of health problems today.  Here are 6 tips for stress to help you deal with life in a healthy and effective manner.

Talk to people
Talk about the problems you are experiencing with friends, loved ones or a professional. Keeping everything bottled up will only create more problems later on.

Exercise often
Go to the park and walk for 20-30 minutes every day or every other day or join a gym with a friend.  Exercise relieves tension and produces a calming effect and although it can initally seem like more effort when life is busy, you will soon reap the rewards by feeling calmer and sleeping better.

Yoga exercises
Do some breathing exercises or yoga stretches.  Yoga is great for the body and mind and very calming.  Many people avoid yoga as it is viewed as too 'new age' and not proper exercise but it is not the case.  Not only is it very calming, it is also a great way to tone the body and keep you supple.

Listen to music
Music can be a great stress reliever.  Use classical or instrumental music to calm or upbeat music to lift your spirits. Ocean or nature sounds are also a perfect way to release stress.

Eat well
Healthy meals can become an important factor in limiting your stress.  Eating regular meals and avoiding too much caffine and sugar can help.  Caffine and sugar both stimulate and cause slumps which can increase your stress levels if over done.

Sleep well
Sleep deprivation can cause stress. Treat yourself to an early night when you get the chance. Seven to eight hours sleep can make all the difference.

Coping with stress can be challenging.  Sometimes it feels like you seem to be pulled in every direction, trying to accommodate others.  The first priority is to take care of you - if you are not managing your own stress, you won’t be much good to anyone else.

Give yourself a break every now and then.  Buy a new outfit; go to a movie; do something you’ve always wanted to do.  Your family can take care of themselves for one day.  Alone time is just as important to you as it is for everyone else.  Think of yourself as a gas tank; if you don't stop and fill up you tank you will eventually be running on empty.

Put on your headphones, listen and feel the stress melt away...

The Symptoms of Menopause - help and advise from Total Wellbeing Resources

Having trouble sleeping at night?  Waking up in a sweat?  Are you depressed or irritable?  You may have a sleep disorder.  Or you could be going into menopause.  What most people refer to as menopause is actually a pre menopausal stage called perimenopause.  Actual menopause doesn’t start until a year after your last period.  During menopause, your body is much more susceptible to serious problems such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis.  In order to properly prevent serious conditions during menopause, it is helpful to recognize symptoms of perimenopause so you can start treatment and stop problems before they start.

Here are some of the common and not so common symptoms of menopause:

Hot flashes
These are probably the most common physical symptom of menopause.  They occur when you feel like it is terribly hot when the room is at a reasonable temperature. 

Night sweats
This is simply a hot flash that occurs during the night.  Nights sweats can generally wake you from a sound sleep (often covered in sweat). 

Heart palpitations
These are more rare and serious than other symptoms.  You should go to a doctor if you experience any heart related problems.

Changes in the Menstrual Cycle
This is usually the first sign that you’re entering perimenopause, although menstrual changes can be caused my other problems or even just stress.  You may experience a lighter or much heavier flow, early, late or irregularly spaced periods.  You may even miss a few. 

Changes in Mood
You may find yourself experiencing various emotional changes ranging from increased irritability, anxiety or simple mood swings, to more serious problems such as depression.

Changes in Sleep Patterns
Even if you’ve always been a good sleeper, you may stop being able to fall asleep at night or wake up repeatedly and not get back to sleep.  Sleep problems can also be caused by other perimenopause symptoms such as depression and night sweats. 

Sexual Changes
Many perimenopausals have a decrease in sex drive.  You may also notice other symptoms including vaginal dryness.

Other symptoms
Some other symptoms may include incontinence (inability to control urination), dry skin, and hair loss.

While these are not the only symptoms of early menopause, they are the most common.  If you have are experiencing these symptoms, it is recommended you visit your doctor.  This way, you can not only treat any symptoms that are too severe, but also take steps, such as dietary changes, to prevent complications.

For more articles and help for your menopause symptoms, please visit our Menopause section at Total Wellbeing Resources.

Sleep and Weight Loss

Have you been struggling to lose weight?  Have you tried diet, exercise, and even weight loss pills, but nothing seems to be doing the trick?  The trouble may not be with the things you’re doing while you’re awake, but rather the simple fact that you are awake.  Studies have shown that getting more sleep and better quality sleep can help you shed pounds without expensive fad diets.  So if you really want to get rid of those excess pounds once and for all, why not spend less time counting calories and more time in bed?

Getting a good night’s rest makes you feel energized and awake the next day.  If you sleep well the night before, you’re more likely to be able to exercise the next day.  Sufficient sleep can give you the energy to work out harder and for longer periods of time, further fueling your weight loss efforts.

We used to believe that you were hungry when your stomach was empty and full when your stomach had no room left, but we know better than that now.  We now know more about hormones and other chemicals in the body and how they affect hunger.  One of these chemicals is cortisol.  Excess cortisol not only causes us to feel hungry when we’ve had enough to eat; it can also affect the amount of fat we store.  On top of this, cortisol decreases memory retention along with other stress inducing side effects.  Getting sufficient sleep helps return the cortisol balance to normal. 

Two other chemicals that have recently been shown to be affected by the amount of sleep your get are the hormones leptin, which makes you feel hungry, and ghrelin, which makes you feel full.  Reduced amounts of sleep can reduce ghrelin levels and increase leptin levels, causing you to feel you need to eat more when you’ve actually had enough.

Another side effect of sleep deprivation is a change in the way the body metabolizes carbohydrates.  Most individuals have problems fully digesting carbs without sufficient sleep. This means that instead of being burned for energy; these calories are being stored as fat.  Plus, excess carbs in your system can cause a rise in blood sugar levels, along with insulin resistance; these are both symptoms of type II diabetes. 

And if all these reasons aren’t good enough for you, lack of sleep also drops the level of human growth hormone in your system.  While HGH helps children grow bigger, it affects the percentage of fat in proportion to muscle in adults.  Decreased levels of this hormone send even more of the food you eat to be stored as fat reserves, further hindering your weight loss.

So if you’re really serious about losing weight and improving your health, make it a goal to get a full night’s sleep every night.   

The Benefits of Pomegranate in Your Daily Diet

Many of us have heard of the pomegranate; it has been written about in famous literature and even in mythology.  The problem is that far fewer people have ever eaten pomegranate or even seen it.  Pomegranate has tons of wonderful benefits that you should know about.  Once you know everything it can do for you, you may want to include it in your diet on a regular basis. 

Pomegranates help promote heart health and proper circulation.  They contain three times the antioxidants of wine or green tea which, among other things, promote a healthy heart.  Regular consumption of pomegranate juice has been shown not only to stop hardening of artery walls and build-up of plaque; it has actually been shown to reverse these problems. 

Having clear soft arteries helps reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.  If your concern is cholesterol levels, pomegranate has also been shown to lower levels of bad cholesterol and raise your good cholesterol levels.  Another benefit of this improved circulation is that its can help cure impotence. 

The antioxidants in pomegranate give it power to help prevent and even treat cancer.  While pomegranate has been indicated for breast and skin cancer, the most promising research is with prostate cancer in men.  Regular consumption of pomegranate juice can significantly lower PSA levels in the body.  These chemicals are not only an indicator of your risk level for prostate cancer and other problems; they also indicate how well a man will respond to can treatment, radiation and chemotherapy.

In case this isn’t enough of a reason for you to start consuming more pomegranates, there are still more benefits from the amazing fruit.  We already know it’s brimming with antioxidants.  These powerful chemicals have been shown to reduce the affects of aging and prevent Alzheimer’s.  Pomegranate has also been shown in studies to prevent cartilage damage and protect babies from brain damage during birth.  While many of its uses have not been studied, pomegranate has traditionally been used to clear skin, reduce inflammation, and help with sore throats.

So, if this fruit is so wonderful, why don’t we see it to often?  Pomegranates have a short season and don’t keep well.  It’s almost impossible to find fresh pomegranate out of season.  Many areas haven’t grown them until recently, and they had to be shipped from the Mediterranean. 

Now you have several options for getting the benefits of pomegranate all year round.  You can find several brands of pomegranate juice in your local grocery store.  If you’re not a big fan of the taste, you can also find pomegranate mixed with other familiar juices to give it a more pleasant flavor.  Just make sure the product you get is 100% juice and doesn’t have added sugars and fillers.