There are many things that play a role in getting healthier. Understanding and knowledge of what to do and why, access to nutritious food, finding a place to get adequate and safe exercise, reducing stress, and mustering up some discipline when you just don’t feel like it, all plays a role. Each of those key factors to getting healthy has multiple approaches or strategies, however, none of them matter if you don’t have one other component that is needed to get healthy…

We all know about hygiene and the basic things we should do to keep our bodies clean and healthy, but do you know about sleep hygiene? Sleep hygiene is just what it sounds like - the things you do to ensure that you are maintaining good, healthy, quality sleep. In fact, with bad sleep hygiene, your body can quickly start to develop some sleep issues and that can lead to all kinds of problems from insomnia to depression to acid reflux or even heart disease!

You probably could easily guess some of the aspects of good sleep hygiene, but do you ever think about how they can affect your overall health and put them into practice?

For years I have jokingly teased my husband over his “7-minute workout”. I mean how much could you really be doing in 7 minutes? He is an active person and gets exercise in many other ways so to me it seemed like “why even bother if you don’t have more than 7 minutes?” I knew that there was some science behind it but it still just seemed like not enough. Recently, I have reflected on this form of exercise and realized there is one very good reason to incorporate a 7-minute workout into your life from time to time other than the research that validates it as being effective.

Let’s first start with the background of the 7-minute workout…

This isn't my first blog discussing the importance of breakfast and it probably won’t be my last. Breakfast has long been touted as the most important meal of the day and as I've mentioned in the past, there is truth and some mistruths mixed in that statement. You see, the timing of breakfast, how most of us think of it as that early morning meal, is not what it’s all about. The magic is in what your breakfast is made of.

Think of breakfast as just what it is, a……

The holidays are upon us. The decorations have been in the stores for two months and the plans are being made for office parties, family get-togethers, parties with friends, etc. The holidays are a time to celebrate and enjoy time with friends and family. However, if you are trying to get your health in order or even just maintain all the hard work you may have already put in, it can also be a time that derails our efforts and motivation. Without a plan you may find yourself thinking or saying things like, “what’s one more small cookie?” or “what’s one more drink?”, or worse, “I guess I have messed up so bad, I will just start fresh with the new year.” Don’t be that cliché. Not this year! If you can make it through the holidays successfully taking care of your health, you will have just set yourself up to go into a new year strong, confident, feeling good and knowing you can tackle one of the hardest times of the year for maintaining health standards. So, how do you do it?