The Post- Holiday Season typically presents challenges to both our physical and emotional health. Whether it’s the rush of it all, overextending ourselves physically, Seasonal Affective Disorder from the short days, dealing with difficult relationships, financial stress, inclement weather, or a host of other issues, it can be a tough time.
I’m not an authority on this subject, but I have observed a number of things that can help keep you physically and emotionally healthy through this winter season.
PHYSICAL HEALTH CHALLENGES
There’s are fewer daylight and your skin is almost totally covered with clothing such that your natural vitamin D production is almost nil. Those short days also lend themselves to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which can not only depress your immune system, but also affect you emotionally. Your home and workplace is shut up against the cold, so you have a lack of fresh air and a greater exposure to disease-causing microorganisms. That closed environment also makes it easier for you to get infections from those around you.
Colder temperatures are also more stressful on your body, requiring greater adaptation to stay healthy. So what can you do:
1. Be sure to take at least 5000 i.u.’s of Vitamin D-3 daily — you may need 10,000, especially if you live in a non-sunny climate. 2. Get some fresh air in your home, even if that’s just opening some windows for a few minutes or leaving a window cracked in your bedroom at night. 3. If you are particularly bothered by the short days, consider getting one of the specially designed full-spectrum lights and expose yourself to it in the early morning and late afternoon. 4. Take other immune system stimulating supplements, such as L-Lysine, echinacea, IP6, etc.
I personally take Peak Performance Packs year round to help keep my siystem at optimal health. What do you take or do for the winter?
My R3 journey started around 2017. I wanted to lose weight feel and better about myself. You see, I wasn’t always overweight or obese, I was always fit in spite of my asthma. To keep my lungs healthy, I worked out several days a week lifting weights. I did aerobics two to three times a week. I swam. I biked with the bike club two “short” rides and one long ride every week. I also rode my bike to work 19 miles each way practically every day. I was active and had a great social life.
Then, I gained a little weight, not much at first. After a major asthma attack which landed me in the ICU for several weeks, I gained “prednisone weight” about 20 pounds. I still participated in the Dublin Marathon three weeks after getting out of hospital. I was so full of Prednisone weight, I walked the marathon. (It took five and a half hours.)
Shortoly afterward i participated in an asthma drug study. During that study, I gained 70 pounds.
I had become fat. Not only that friends treated me differently as though I lacked will power or I was lazy. I wasn’t, but…
Around this time my dad went into a nursing home. My mother did not drive, so I became her driver and patient advocate for dad while working 60-hour work weeks and volunteering for local charities. Although I was busy and on my feet all day and water running three days a week, I remained heavy.
At my heaviest, I was 250 pounds and often the heaviest person in the room. I hated it.
At this point, my dad passed, I was now my mothers caregiver. Because of my weight, my doctor suggested human growth hormone injections to see if I could lose weight. His program started out promising, and combined with early morning workouts with a personal trainer, I lost 13 pounds in the first two weeks, but nothing after that. After 3 months we gave up. It wasn’t working for me.
That brings me to that first R3 Challenge around 2017. I took the before picture and submitted it. I didn’t do all that well, but I did lose maybe 10 pounds When comparing the after picture with my before picture you could tell my clothing definitely ldid not look or fit the same. The same clothing is in both photos. If you look closely you’ll see my left arm is in the pants. Most of my work colleagues and friends thought I lost a lot of weight but I hadn’t. I’d lost inches. A Non-Scale Victory (NSV).
I semi-participated in other challenges after that, but never really finished them. My schedule was terrible, I was taking care of everyone and everything but myself. But I finally was j200 pounds thanks to swimming and rowing three times a week. It was progress.
In 2021 my mother passed away and I decided I needed to make life changes. I changed jobs. I put my house on the market. I took a trip to South Carolina to check out the housing market.
2022 arrived. For me, 2022 will forever be “Year of the Shoulder”. The year began with a good purchase offer on my home on January 6. That same day, while at work, I tripped over a case of wine, fell and broke my right shoulder (my dominant hand). My house was closing on January 25. I had 20 days to pack, find a new home and move—all with a freshly broken shoulder. I ended up purchasing a brand new house sight-unseen in Florida with a closing date of January 26 — a day after my New Jersey closing. I was lucky as I was also able to find a good mover to match my timeline. It was a very painful move but i made the 16-hour drive with my mother’s dog.
Once arriving in Florida, it was time to regroup. I found I moved to a new development in a town I had never heard of, but it was now home. Rain was coming down in buckets. I was wondering if I did the right thing. The pain prevented a lot of unpacking (It took nearly a year to find all of my silverware).
Being on Worker’s Comp, I needed to find an orthopedic doctor in Florida who would accept the Worker’s Comp insurance to care for the shoulder. I finally got an appointment for an orthopedist on April 28. I weighed in at his office at 213.
I wasn’t happy. I went on a girls’ trip vacation the following month at nearly 250 and wearing a sling. I was once again the fattest person in the room. I was sick and tired of being overweight, unhappy and in pain. I had to do something.
When I saw the Challenge beginning June 6 – the same day I started Physical therapy — I joined. I figured I couldn’t work and unpacking the garage was still a tedious, painful, one-armed process. I couldn’t even find my scale in the garage, I had to buy a new one! Nor did I have a mirror (It was somewhere in a box in the garage). What could I lose? Weight!
I started the challenge with no expectations at all. Some days were good, some weren’t. My physical therapy lasted the entire length of the challenge. I was in constant pain. When the challenge ended, I was down 25 pounds! I was surprised I lost the weight, since I wasn’t the best at sticking to the plan 100 percent.
The best part, I continued to lose weight (another 15 pounds) after the challenge just by following the Real Life part of R3.
In August, after an 18-month wait, I flew to Washington, DC and Arlington National Cemetery to bury my mother. The flight home was an adventure. After multiple delays and a layover, I arrived at my destination airport, and I woke up two days later in a hospital ICU. Apparently, stress and the pain medication caused a cascade effect resulting in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). I also had never been a diabetic prior to this event, I have no memory of being in an ambulance, in an ER or let alone in an MRI, but I was.
When I was released, to go home —my day trip to DC had turned into a week. I had gained 11 pounds (they said water weight from IVs). It took three weeks to lose the water weight. I followed R3’s Real Life phase. The good news was the endocrinologist approved the R3 plan and liked the idea of my eating five to six times a day to keep my metabolism balanced. By September, my blood numbers were back to normal and I was taken off nearly all of the medications that came home with me from the hospital.
October came and I was down a total of 53 pounds. I decided not to do the Fall R3 challenge. I had a surgical date for a total reverse shoulder replacement on November 16—I didn’t want hospital food ruining my challenge!
Knowing I would be incapacitated for six weeks, I cooked R3-friendly meals—enough for 42 days and froze them tor my recovery meals. By the time of my surgery, I had lost an additional 14 pounds. This time, at the orthopedic office, I weighed in at 146 pounds! I was fully dressed and still in my shoes!
Of course, after surgery, I swelled up and gained 30 pounds! I left the hospital weighing 176 pounds, It took a month to shed those 30 pounds of water weight. Again, I did it by following my R3 Real Life phase.
On December 31, I was 145 pounds.
I’m happy about the weight loss, especially since I wasn’t allowed any workouts other than walking my chihuahua. I admit I feel better about myself now that i’m closer to my ideal weight. My shoulder still needs to finish healing, before I can go back to swimming, water running and rowing, to stay fit, but I’ll get there with R3. I want to lose the last 15-20 pounds for my ideal weight.
R3 is really a lifestyle for me and I know I’ll never go back to being that overweight again.
You may be wondering why I’m posting photos of these boxes? Well,it was 19 years ago that I decided to take a leap of faith for my health and my finances. These brown boxes arrive at my door every month. These boxes remind me that help others and in the process transform my own life. It also reminds me that II made the right decision. Love the products & Love the Company
Getting a knee or hip replacement is a big decision. You should always try conservative treatments first. If, however, they don’t work and your knee or hip pain is significantly impacting your life, you may be ready for joint replacement surgery.
My orthopedist put together this simple quiz to help you determine whether it’s time to consider joint replacement surgery:
Does the pain limit your normal activity? Is it difficult to get up after sitting? Do you have pain even when you’re at rest? Does the pain affect your sleep? Do you have chronic swelling/inflammation or stiffness? Have you received little to no relief from conservative treatments, such as RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), physical therapy, braces, footwear modification, over-the-counter medications like aspirin and ibuprofen, and cortisone/lubrication injections? If you’ve answered yes to most of the quiz questions, you may be a candidate for joint replacement surgery and should speak with an orthopedic specialist.
I know I answered yes to most of the questions and having both hips replaced made a marked improvement in my quality of life and it is great to be able to stand and walk pain free!
My “wish I would find time to do…” list has been too long. Each item is a little black cloud floating over my head waiting to be done. Recently, I began to act on one of those pesky items out of need. The need? My immune system needs me to breathe fresh air daily to support my immune defense against allergens, of al sorts. The decision was to stop work at 3:00 p.m and sit on my lanai with the dog running in the yard for at least 15 – 30 minutes. That bit of time allowed me to check off several things on that long “to do” list . I have used my outdoor seating area more in the last few weeks than I have since I I first purchased it five years ago. That’a sad truth. These minutes have given me time to enjoy a daily relaxing smoothie. Plus, 15 minutes of reading time has me caught up on my monthly work magazine for the first time ever! It also gives me enough time to eat a fat burning,, soreness-preventing, Access bar before my rowing session. I’m slowly incorporating lifestyle changes from my list. You know, “Baby steps” really do work!
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My work is marketing for a wellness manufacturer that has an online store (only). Over the past 15 years, due to an honest R&D at this company, I have learned so much quality supplements. My stomach cringes when I see someone loading up on inferior supplements off a store shelf (we have tested hundreds and hundreds of these) or a kitchen cabinet that looks like the photo.
I know many supplements on the market are a waste of money and often people spend too much for meagre results. I find I need to share what I know about supplements.
Today, I received this testimony from a happy customer that proves my cringing has merit: “Pictures are worth a thousand words: left or right? Hashimoto’s, Celiac, Adrenal fatigue and feel SO MUCH better!! Can’t even tell anymore – thanks to the picture on the left. I don’t share a lot of what I do on my personal page but when someone’s overall health is better because of two products… felt the need to share!” – the products on the left side of the image are from the company I market.
Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it,” researchers wrote in a meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies.
They propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic. The study, published in the journalInterdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013, was completely ignored by the media except for Mother Earth Newsand The Healthy Home Economist.
Now that glyphosate is getting the attention it deserves, being named as the culprit in a $280 million cancer lawsuit and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the state of California, it may be time to look at the chemical’s role in a related disease:
The symptoms of so-called “gluten intolerance” and celiac disease are shockingly similar to the symptoms in lab animals exposed to glyphosate. They study’s authors also reference a recent study on how glyphosate affects the digestive systems of fish. It decreased digestive enzymes and bacteria, disrupted mucosal folds, destroyed microvilli structure in the intestinal wall, and increased secretion of mucin — features highly reminiscent of celiac disease.
Additionally, the number of people diagnosed with gluten intolerance and celiac disease has risen in tandem with the increased use of glyphosate in agriculture, especially with the recent practice of drenching grains in the herbicide right before harvest, which started in the 1980s and became routine in the 1990s. While some suggest the recent surge in celiac disease is due simply to better diagnostic tools (which as you can see above happened around 2000), a recent study suggests it’s more than that.
In 2009, researchers looked for gluten antibodies in frozen immune serum obtained between 1948 and 1954 for gluten antibodies, and compared them with samples from people today. They found a 4-fold increase in the incidence of celiac disease in the younger generation. As further evidence the researchers make the following points:
“Celiac disease is associated with imbalances in gut bacteria that can be fully explained by the known effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria.”
“Celiac disease is associated with the impairment of cytochrome P450 enzymes. Glyphosate is known to inhibit cytochrome P450 enzymes.”
“Deficiencies in iron, cobalt, molybdenum, copper and other rare metals associated with celiac disease can be attributed to glyphosate’s strong ability to chelate these elements.”
“Deficiencies in tryptophan, tyrosine, methionine and selenomethionine associated with celiac disease match glyphosate’s known depletion of these amino acids.”
“Celiac disease patients also have a known increased risk for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which has also been implicated in glyphosate exposure.”
“The incidence of non-Hodgkins lymphoma has increased rapidly in most Western countries over the last few decades. Statistics from the American Cancer Society show an 80% increase since the early 1970’s, when glyphosate was first introduced on the market.”
“Reproductive issues associated with celiac disease, such as infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects, can also be explained by glyphosate.”
Glyphosate residues in grain, sugar and other crops are increasing recently likely due to the growing practice of crop desiccation just prior to harvest, the researchers say. The secretive, illegal practice has become routine among conventional farmers since the 1990s. Ironically, the practice increases yields by killing the crops. Just before the plants die, they release their seeds in order to propagate the species.
Moral of the story? We need to go glyphosate-free, not gluten-free. And that means going organic, especially when it comes to grains and animals who eat those grains.
Now that warmer weather is here, I find I spend more time out in my yard and garden. Finding natural and safe products can sometimes be an issue, but I have found some safe and affordable lawn and gardening care alternatives using my everyday household products.
For killing weeds. I mix 1/4 cup Tough & Tender with 1 gallon vinegar and two cups salt. Apply to trouble spots. For stronger, hardier weeds I add 1/2 Lemon Bright dish soap. The soap is needed to break through the weed’s protective coating. Here is a “how-to” video: https://youtu.be/tINbAl37hvo
Ridding the lawn of gnats, “no seeums” and mushrooms. Spray the lawn with a diluted mixture of Tough & Tender in a lawn sprayer unit. It will kill the little gnats as well as mushrooms that grow in your yard. (Tough & Tender is my go-to cleaning product, It’s one thing we are never out of there are so many uses for it!)
Killing “Yard Bugs”. Mix 1 cup of Lemon Brite dish soap and 1 cup of pre-mixed Breath-Away Mouthwash into a 20 gallon hose-end sprayer and soak your lawn, garden beds and trees to the point that the fluid is running off. Bugs HATE it!
Killing Ants. Spray concentrated Pre-spot Plus on areas ants congregate (don’t use on wood). For heavier concentrations and black ants, combine 1 ounce of MelaMagic and 1 ounce of Sol-U-Mel in a 16 ounce spray bottle and fill with water.
Armyworm caterpillars. Mix 1/2 cup of MelaMagic in two gallons of water to spray. Spray cocoon, nest, and any webs you see. This will also help cutdown on succeeding generations as well as with the ant invasion that follows the armyworms.
All purpose home made spray. A safe and non-toxic bug spray can be made from a combination of ¼ cup of Sol-U-Mel, five drops of T36-C5, 1 teaspoon of Tough & Tender, and 14 ounces of water. Or you can just get the Natural Insect Repellent. (Which we happen to love!)
Sometimes when I eat something for breakfast, like cereal for instance, I find that around two to three hours later I start feeling peckish and a bit tired, instead of reaching for an ever-ready treat from the office kitchen (you know a donut or candy), I make one of these great GC Control shakes.
Not only do I love them for their taste, but they fill that “hole” and provide a boost in energy, getting me back on track. That’s because they provide me a better balance of protein and carbs that last far longer than a donut or candy bar. The link below explains why this product works so well.
Hayseeds Creative 