Everyone has times in their lives when they need help. Looking after your health isn’t always something you can do on your own, especially when it comes to your mental health. In fact, most of the time you need some form of help to deal with health problems. Some issues are easier to get help for than others, though. There’s no shame in seeing a doctor if you have the flu. But some health conditions, like STDs or mental illnesses, have a stigma attached to them and can make you feel ashamed. If you need to ask for help with your health, there are several steps you can take.

Remove Barriers to Asking for Help

There are a few things that can prevent you asking for help with a health problem. Many of them relate to social stigma or your own fears. Maybe you’re scared of seeming weak if you can’t deal with a mental health issue on your own. Or perhaps you’re afraid of the judgment that could arise from revealing you have an addiction or a sexually transmitted disease. It’s important to confront these fears and realize that asking for help can help you overcome them. There will always be people who judge others, but you’re often the one judging yourself most.

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Ask for Support from Friends or Family

When you need support to take care of yourself, your friends and family are the ones who will often be there for you. Whether you need someone to take you to a doctor’s appointment or listen to you share your problems, those who love you just want to support you in any way they can. However, they can also sometimes be the hardest people to ask for support. You might have fears about burdening them with your problems. Remind yourself that they want to be there for you and that you would do the same if they asked you for help.

Find the Right Resources

Knowing where to go for help is important if you need assistance with your health. If you have a physical health complaint, it’s usually not difficult to make an appointment with a doctor who can help you. However, there are some problems for which you might want to explore available treatment options. If you’re dealing with an addiction, the resources at  alcoholrehab.me can help you see what’s available. There are similar review and recommendation sites for various health issues. You might explore medical options, support services, and other ways you can get help.

Know What to Ask For

It’s also a good idea to think about what sort of help you need. If you’re going to ask a friend to help you while you’re ill, what do you want them to do? Would you like them to be a listening ear when you need to talk? Or perhaps you’d like them to provide practical support like helping to cook or clean. You can help others to help you if you know what you’re looking for.

If you need help, don’t hesitate to ask for it, whether from your loved ones or from professionals.

As we get older, many people don’t realize that our health needs change. We don’t necessarily need the same food intake and types of food that we once needed, for example. If you want to make sure you’re taking great care of your health as you age, read on.

You Must Consume The Right Nutrients

As you age, you must make sure you’re consuming the nutrients needed for optimal health. Calcium and vitamin D are important for bone health, while fiber will help you to stay regular. Here’s a list of other nutrients you should be including in your diet:

• Potassium
• Vitamin B12
• Healthy fats

It’s also important to note that you need less calories as you age. For each year, you may need anywhere from 20-50 less calories than you used to. This means you need to watch your food intake closely, as you could reach an unhealthy weight if you’re not careful.

A Fall Occurs Every 15 Seconds

Did you know an older adult falls every 15 seconds and is treated in the emergency room? Every 29 minutes, an older adult dies following a fall. If this could be a risk in your environment, make sure you make it more suitable. It’s also a good idea to wear sensible shoes.

Heart Health Should Be Taken Seriously

Getting regular exercise and quitting bad habits like smoking is crucial to keep your heart healthy. Older adults are more prone to things like heart attacks and cardiac arrest. While things like AED equipment can help, you should still take heart health seriously.

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As we all embark on living our lives to the fullest, there will inevitably be hurdles which we sometimes have to cross. These can be as simple as being late for work, losing your car keys or forgetting about an important meeting. They can also be more serious, such as losing a loved one to preventable diseases.

It is times like this that make us sit up and listen. The word PREVENTABLE runs circles around our brain, and we wish more than anything to turn back the clock and make life changes. But it’s not too late to make a change. For you and your children’s sake, it is important to learn about common diseases and how to prevent them. Small lifestyle changes can be the difference between life and death. Here are five common health issues and how we can prevent them.

Issue: Heart Disease

The most common type of heart disease is coronary heart disease. It occurs when fatty deposits slowly accumulate in your artery walls. These cause the arteries to narrow, thus making it harder for blood to flow through and carry oxygen to your vital organs. If your heart receives no oxygen, it can stop beating and cause you to have a heart attack.

Solution:

The best way to prevent fatty buildup in your arteries is to eat foods which are less dense in saturated fat. Also, keeping active and exercising regularly can make your heart muscle grow stronger and allow it to pump more oxygen around your body.

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Issue: High Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a lipid and is produced by the liver. It performs a vital role in the running of your body, however, if you have too much in your bloodstream, it can lead to thrombosis (blood clots). Thrombosis can also result in a heart attack if the clot occurs in the heart, or a stroke if it reaches your brain.

Solution:

The solution is much the same as for heart disease, eat healthy, keep active and avoid too much alcohol.

Issue: Cancer

The big ‘C’ is the most famous disease in the world and claims far too many lives every year. Cancer can be hereditary, however, the environment also plays a huge part in this illness.

Solution:

Alcohol and Cigarettes are both carcinogens, meaning they can increase your risk of forming cancerous cells. Reducing the amount of alcohol you drink can help to prevent the possibility of cancer. Quitting smoking is also a major way to prevent developing cancerous cells. If you struggle to quit right away, e-cigarettes could be a great alternative. Just click on your cartomizer and inhale nicotine without all the other harmful chemicals.

Exercise Young Zen Balance Yoga Meditation

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Issue: High Blood Pressure

Blood Pressure describes the force at which blood is pumped around the body. If you have high blood pressure, this can lead to aneurysms, heart failure, and strokes.

Solution:

High blood pressure can be prevented by eating healthier food and reducing stress levels in the body. If you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure, it may be a good idea to try out meditation. This is a great way to relax the mind and reset your body.

Even though summer is almost over, those who suffer from allergies still aren’t likely to experience any relief. Pollen might not be flying in the air as much, but dust, mold, and some air fresheners could still cause potential misery through the winter. It might be difficult to escape pollutants in the air, but there might be something you can do to allergy-proof your house; after all, it should be a refuge from all the allergens. If you’d like a break from over-the-counter products, here are a few tricks to help you alleviate allergies in your home, that might also work beyond your front door.

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Bed sheets

Your bed sheets are the biggest dumping ground for dead skin cells, which leads to millions of dust mites. Although the mites themselves are harmless, their fecal matter and body fragments can trigger allergic reactions like eczema and hay fever, and they affect nearly 80 percent of people with asthma. Fortunately, there are simple ways to get around this. Hypoallergenic sheets, made from materials such as wool, cotton, or even some blends of bamboo, which can be found at bamboocrib.com, is more tightly woven, which makes it impossible for mites and bedbugs to penetrate the material, thus reducing the allergens in your bed. You can further eliminate mites by washing your sheets in hot water, and by leaving your bed unmade every morning.

Adjust your thermostat

Mold thrives in moist conditions, which are mostly found in humid homes when you’re trying to keep warm during winter. The most obvious sign that mold has found its way into your home is some dark patches near to the windows where the cold and warm air are most likely to meet. To help control indoor mold, use a dehumidifier or your air conditioner to keep your home humidity close to 50 percent. A device called a hygrometer can also take the guesswork out of measuring indoor humidity. You can compare low-cost hygrometers at kandrsmith.org.

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Use the dryer

It’s admirable that you want to have an eco-friendly home, but if you suffer from allergies then you really should make good use of your dryer. Hanging your laundry out to dry makes it more likely that allergens will stick to your fresh, clean sheets, making your efforts useless. Hot washes and hot dryers will kill dust mites and eliminate allergens from your bed sheets, clothes, and other fabrics, leaving your house completely allergen-free.

Boost your immune system

OTC medication works great at first, but eventually, it will stop being effective. Either your body builds up a tolerance, or the medication makes you so sleepy that you’re still no use to anyone at work or at home. Fortunately, there are plenty of natural remedies that are more effective than medication for helping you feel like a functioning human being, and they can be incorporated into your diet. Probiotics can influence the immune system and potentially correct the root cause of allergic reactions, so this should be your first solution.

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If you suffer from sciatica, you will know that the condition, which is caused by nerve issues in the lower back, causes an extremely intense back and leg pain that can make it difficult to even function normally at its worst.

If your sciatica is particularly bad, you may need to look into spine surgeons who can operate on your herniated disk and hopefully solve the problem. Otherwise, and in the meantime, here are some alternatives that may help:

Acupuncture

A lot of sciatica sufferers have found some relief from the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture, whereby small needles are stuck into the body. There is, however, little scientific evidence to back say whether the practice is truly effective, so try it if you like, but be careful to choose a registered practitioner and do not expect miracles.

Yoga

The Journal of Pain published a study that revealed that people suffering from back pain who practiced Iyengar yoga for a period of just four months, experienced a 64 percent reduction in pain and a 77 percent reduction in disability. Although this study was conducted on back pain, rather than sciatica there is some evidence to suggest that gentle forms of yoga, such as Hatha yoga, can be beneficial for the condition by increasing flexibility and build stronger muscles in the affected area., as well as improving posture, so that sciatica isn’t as aggravated.

Massage

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If you have sciatica, you may well find some relief from massage, but not the kind of gentle, relaxing massages you get at the spa. For massage to be effective on your condition, you need to indulge in a spot of trigger-point therapy which will target the piriform muscle and prevent it from pinching quite so much on the sciatic nerve. You should ensure that you see a trained professional for this, and aim to have a trigger-point massage every 7-10 days.

Anti-inflammatory Oils

Anti-inflammatory oils with active ingredients including capsaicin. And according to some, even St. John’s wort, can help to soothe the pain of sciatica, although it is by no means a permanent solution. Products that contain capsaicin are particularly effective because they help to quickly release pain from the nerve.

Heat/Ice Packs

If you’re looking for an affordable, low-tech solution to soothe your sciatica, you really can’t go wrong with a heat or ice pack which will help to bring down the pain when applied to the affected area for 15-30 minutes at a time as and when needed.

Muscle Relaxants

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Obviously, a lot of sciatica sufferers use over-the-counter painkillers for pain relief, and these can be very effective, but i they don’t work for you, you might want to try some muscle relaxants instead. These will need to be prescribed by your doctor, but they can work quite well if some of your pain is being caused by muscle spasms around your herniated disk.

Although all of the above have found to be helpful by some sciatica sufferers, you should always seek professional medical advice before trying them.

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When you start feeling sick, then it can be very tempting to declare that you’ve fallen horribly ill and start taking every medicine in your cabinet. This can sometimes be the best thing for you, but people often leap to taking various pills and potions far too soon. The truth is that many of us have far more control over our health than we tend to realise. So the next time you’re feeling a little sick, here are a few things that you might be able to use to make yourself feel better.

Staying hydrated

This might sound like the most obvious thing in the world, but a lot of people in the modern age simply aren’t drinking enough water. There’s a tendency among many people to rely on things like tea, coffee and energy drinks. While these things might seem pretty thirst quenching and can give you a great boost of energy, they can actually have a pretty detrimental impact on your levels of hydration. Not only are they not as effective at keeping you hydrated as plain old H20, but they can actually act as diuretics and can end up leaving you even more dehydrated than ever. Not only does this put you in danger of pretty severe illness but it can also lead to tiredness and water retention which can impact weight gain pretty significantly.

Watch what you eat

Of course, we all know that eating too much can leave you feeling sick but what if it’s more serious than that? A lot of people can get so used to feeling sick when they eat certain things that they might not even notice it anymore. If you find that you’re feeling particularly ill after eating certain things, then it might be worth speaking to a GI Doctor to see if you have some kind of intolerance. Whether it’s wheat, dairy or anything else, there are certain foods that can trigger a pretty horrible reaction in a lot of people. It might be disappointing to no longer be able to eat your favourite foods, but that’s a small price to pay to stop feeling sick all the time.

How active are you?

Because of the rise of computers and the decline of manual labour, it’s become more and more common for people to spend huge amounts of their time completely sedentary. The issue with this is that people are spending less and less of their time being active. Not only does this lead to things like weight gain but it also means that people are spending more and more of their time indoors which can lead to things like vitamin D deficiencies and other problems.

Of course, none of these things is designed to replace real medical assistance, and if you’re genuinely worried about your health, then it’s incredibly important that you speak to your doctor as soon as possible. The only thing worse than being too worried about your health is ignoring it to the point where you end up in real danger.

Society wants us to change a lot of things about ourselves as we grow up. Growing into decent human beings means that we need to learn manners, patience, and caution; the kind of traits that children would rather be without. Luckily, we never have to wave goodbye to our entire childhood and, while some people are glad to let go of the nonsense behavior of a child, others are more than reluctant to act their age.

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Here is a handful of habits people across the web declare they’ll never grow out of – so that you can confidently glide down the supermarket in a shopping cart yet again.

The ice cream truck

Can you hear the ice cream truck playing tunes in your neighborhood at the mere thought of it? A van driving around the streets to the joy and frenzy of children is common in many countries, and it’s not just the US and the UK who enjoys this luxury.

Tell little children in Australia, France, and Norway that the truck is outside and they’ll jump straight onto their bicycles as well, chasing the tune until they reach the goods.

Luckily, we never have to grow out of the habit, and people all over the web are swearing their loyalty to it till this day; five, twenty-five or fifty, it doesn’t matter – we love ice cream and especially when we have to work for it.

The bean bag

This teenage-room classic has found a home in the living room of many grown-ups lately. More cost-effective than a luxurious lounge chair and often just as comfy, the trend is real – and if you’re interested in one that’s even tailored for us who would like to accommodate for our inner child as much as possible, you can have a look at this from bag for adults that are young at heart.

It’s the one thing we got right when we were kids, and we’ll sink into one of these until we’re too old to get up on our own.

Running up the stairs

Surprisingly, this is a habit many adults out there declare that they’ll keep doing for as long as possible. Doing it three steps at a time, on all fours, and feeling like ninjas – the adult stair-runners are well into their twenties, and they’ll keep going.

It’s undeniably a faster way to get to the top of the staircase – but if you’d do it for the fun of it, you can find comfort in the fact that those that are particularly young at heart even run up the escalators. So the next time you see someone speed past you in the shopping mall, you know they’re not actually in a hurry – they’re just having fun.

The list goes on, really, and Internet users all around the world are admitting to arguments in the grocery shops with their young children over who should ride the shopping cart, and who should enjoy the swing at the playground.

Perhaps their children will grow into more conventional grown-ups – or perhaps they’ll continue to have just as much fun as their parents.  

Health scares happen to us all at many points in our life. They can even change as we get older, and so dealing with them is essential know-how in navigating life’s mysterious ways. Don’t get bogged down in a worry circuit if you receive a scare or think you have one. Here are a few tips on how to combat a health scare with some personal recovery.

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Do what you need to recover from the fear

Your heart is pounding, your hair is all standing on end, and you have this sense of overwhelming dread. Sound familiar? Fear responses take a toll on our mental health as much as our repeated stress does on our physical health.

Health scares affects us all in a similar way, and recovering from the initial shock of one can take time and often is done improperly. Talk to someone about your fears as soon as you can, whether it be a friend or professional. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Use rehab centers if necessary

This option is for the more serious health scares you’ve experienced. For example, being told you need to stop taking a certain tablet as it’s severely damaging your health but you’ve become dependent on its use. It can seem a little taboo or unnecessary, but using a rehab center such as The Recovery Village after receiving this kind of information or after consulting your doctor on ways to get off of a treatment is one of the best ways to recover from a health scare in the long term. Any withdrawal symptoms can be combatted in an environment specifically designed to get through them.

Rehab is hard to go through and involves a lot of difficulty with adjusting to life when it comes to coming back to the real world. It’s important to know that everyone can accomplish it, however. It may sound scary to go through something like a medical detox, but you can take as much time as you need with well-trained people on your side. It’s a big step to undertake, but it will be worth the time and struggle.

Depend upon advice from trained professionals

It’s extremely easy to go online and find all sorts of unverified information that will scare you in an instant. If you’ve had a health scare and need more information on symptoms or what to do, or if you simply don’t want to have a health scare, keep away from this kind of online boards.

Depending on your doctor’s advice is always the best route forward. Book an appointment and get your fears assuaged or assessed by a professional.

To succeed in life, we have to face challenges that scare us. But we don’t have to do them alone. Look for and use the support you need to get through a health scare and don’t be afraid of what lies ahead. It sounds easy to talk about, but the doing doesn’t have to be difficult either.

No matter how healthy our lifestyle, we all face certain threats to our health as we age. It’s part and parcel of life, and something we have to face head on. Some of these risks, such as back issues, difficulty walking, and increased risk of heart attacks, are at the forefront of most of our minds. But, those are far from the only issues we need to consider. Something we think less about in relation to aging is our eyes.

Of course, we all know that eyesight deteriorates. But, what we don’t all realize is that age opens us up to a variety of eye diseases. And, if they strike, we stand to lose our eyesight altogether. Issues such as glaucoma and cataracts can cause huge problems in older patients. If we go about things right, there are plenty of ways to prevent such issues or at least lessen their impact. Here are a few points you should take forward with you when it comes to your eye health.

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Know Your Family History

We all know that genetics play a huge role in health. As such, parents always pass on significant health histories, such as cancer, or diabetes. But, most of us know less about our family’s eye health. Most of us don’t even consider it. That could cause issues. When you go in for an opticians appointment, they will always ask you about your family history. If your gran has glaucoma, but you fail to mention it, you may well suffer for it. So, take the time to find out these things. Call around anyone who can give you information. A step like this may well save your sight.

Check You Out

Who here goes to the dentist every six months? With a bit of luck, most of you. But, fewer people realize the importance of regular eye checks. We should attend these throughout our lives, but they’re especially important as we age. These checks are the only real way to spot the early signs of eye disease, thus allowing you to take action. In the early stages, there may be no symptoms you would notice, but an eye check could reveal the issue. You should book an appointment at your local eye center at least every two years, more if you already wear glasses. It’s the only way to be sure of your eye health.

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Know The Symptoms

You also need to be aware of the symptoms. How else are you going to know if eye disease strikes? In extreme cases, sight loss will, of course, be the main noticeable symptom. But, there are often signs before things get to that level. Some things look out for include:

• Redness or swelling around eyes
• Blurred, or double vision
• Pain in eye
• Any sudden changes in sight
• Clouded appearance

As soon as you spot any of these things, you should book yourself an appointment with a professional. Even if it turns out to be nothing, it’s better safe than sorry!