Category 50 Ways to be Effortlessy Healthier

50 Ways to be Effortlessy Healthier Blog Project

12: Adjust Your Coffee

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Although green tea or water would be better, coffee is not too bad for you and actually contains a large volume of antioxidants. Just remember to switch to black coffee or use skim milk. A skim milk coffee will contain half the amount of calories as one with regular milk.
~ Magazine Excerpt
It is not the caffiene in coffee that is not good for you. (your body even naturally produces it) it is the tannin that can be unhealthy for you, Less milk and more coffee beans that have been filtered several times can be more beneficial. Use proper filter paper for the best removal of tannins. To receive the health benefits of caffeine that include weight loss, stress relief e.t.c, a healthy amount of energy drinks can replace caffeine loss from less coffee.

11: Black Out

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
You will sleep better and feel more rested if your room is ink black when your sleeping and a low level of white-noise. And get an alarm clock that gradually gets louder rather than one that is suddenly noisy so as to gently rouse you from your sleep – it’s the best way to wake up.
~ Magazine Excerpt
Studies have shown that if you get an alarm clock that suddenly wakes you up your stress hormone levels can be up to 15% higher for the rest of the day. Sleeping with mild white noise can reduce stress hormones for the following day by 8%. (ever wonder why you sleep better when its raining? now you do) and sleeping with some source of light in the room can increase your following days average stress levels as high as 35%. So please, turn off those computers, turn off the nightlight’s, put the radio on almost mute and sleep tight.

10: Delay Contact

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
According to research at the University of Illinois in Chicago, showering with your contacts on each morning increases the chance of catching an airborne microbial infection. Put them on post-shower and once your out of the bathroom.
~ Magazine Excerpt
There is two things to take out of this, Put your contacts lenses on after taking a shower in the morning and put them on outside the bathroom, doing both can decrease the chance of infection by a whopping 80%

09: Get Steaming

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Boiled vegetables lose a lot of their water-soluble vitamins to the cooking water. Steaming vegetables helps keep the vitamins intact. These include the eight B vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, folate biotin and panothenic acid as well as vitamin C. Water-soluble vitamins are more common in fruits, vegetables and grains equally.
~ Magazine Excerpt.
Ever thought as a kid if those heavily boiled minted peas were good for you? well they weren’t, even the healthy soluble fibre is lost to the cooking water. you could’ve had pea tea with the water and would do better at your health then those minted peas. You can steam them or if you don’t have a steamer, put them in a microwave. The microwaves only react with the water molecules in the food, its been proven many times it doesn’t break down the vitamins (unless the food gets too hot at ~250+ celcius and it will definitely will break the microwave if it gets that hot.).

08: Joy of Onions

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
If your going to have a doner kebab, treat yourself to onions with it. Onions have significant benefits and boost good type HDL cholesterol, reduce total cholesterol levels and increase blood clot dissolving activity, reducing risk of diabetes…
~ Magazine Excerpt
For my entire childhood i despised onions, i stayed away from them as far as freaking possible. Now i absolutely love them… why? because people I grew up with never knew how to cook then properly. Im sure a lot of people out there remember when your a child and eating all that raw onion in those lettuce salads and how much it made you turn away from them for life. Unless you naturally love those rancid chemicals that onions naturally make to stop things (including humans) eating them you need to do more than chop them up. Steam them, fry them, deep fry them, barbeque them until they are soft and about to fall apart.
Any further cooking will reduce all the good chemicals, if you see black charred onions on the grill, well just remember that cardboard has more nutritional value than those. Cook till theyre soft, will only take a few minutes and they become sweet and tender. Your kids will be more willing to trust any vegetables you put in front of them.
Just remember, Raw onions are designed by mother earth to not be eaten. Cooked onions are far better in almost every case.

07: Ditch the Antiperspirant

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Use a basic deodorant instead. Antiperspirants are designed to trap sweat and that works in opposition with what your body does.
~ Magazine Excerpt
Well obviously if your sweating its because your not removing excess body heat. Ways you can prevent perspiration is to
  • Eat warm food (your body does produce extra heat to warm up cold food and in-turn heat up your body)
  • Wear breathable footwear and wear less layers of clothing

If you are worried about smelling badly because regular deodorant doesn’t work, try different brands that have different active ingredients, some people’s body odour bacteria are resistant to certain active compounds. For example i found out that the zinc related active compound actually makes my body odour worse, now I know I smell pretty good.

06: Take an Aspirin Every Day

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that regular aspirin consumption cut the chances of coronary heart disease as much as 28% in high-risk people that have never had a heart attack or stroke. For Maximum impact on your blood pressure, take a low-dose just before going to bed. With heart disease more of a problem then ever, taking an aspirin to thin the blood is important.
~ Magazine Excerpt
When you sleep your blood pressure rises, adding undue strain on your cardiovascular system, just half a tablet before bed can do wonders over time. Its also proven that you cant become addicted to Aspirin and no withdrawal symptoms occur in any person taking them. By reducing blood pressure you can also reduce the chance of strokes, varicose veins and other blood pressure related issues.

05: Use Mouthwash

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Rinse your mouth with mouthwash that is alachol free. It will reduce oral bacteria which in turn significantly reduces your risk of a heart attack according to researchers at the university at Buffalo. It will also stop your mouth smelling like a blocked drain.
~ Magazine Excerpt
Including for above it can also reduce the risk to diabetes, blood poisoning and increase overall immunity with less bacteria in your mouth. Alcohol free mouthwash is also designed to leave the good bacteria alone and kill the bad stuff, so don’t use sparingly to build a resistance and don’t use too often. Once a day or once every second say is perfect. I have even had mild blood poisoning due that’s linked to not using mouthwash. No longer is it a luxury, it should be a necessity in taking care of your body.

04: Air Out Your Clothes

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment
Remove drycleaning from the plastic wrapping as soon as you get it and air it out for at least an hour. A toxin almost all drycleaners use is a substance called perchloroethylene, and its really not something you want in your body.
~ Magazine Excerpt
This goes for new clothing. Most new clothing have been treated with chemicals, but don’t bother about washing them before you use them first. New clothing have treatments that are oil-based chemicals(as in unless you use scaling water (120+celcius) or soaked in hot sugar soap, they aren’t going to come off). Quite a few other chemicals also react with sunlight so put them on the outdoor clothes line for an hour or so and should be ready to wear without a wash.

03: Games Are Better Than Television

Ashley Kahurangi Leave a comment

Plug in the console or buy an MMO. Researchers at Beth Israel Medical Centre in New York discovered that playing videogames improves your performance in situation requiring precise hand-eye coordination and problem solving skills, keeping neural pathways fresh. Helping you prevent neural diseases like parkinsons, dementia and other diseases in later life. The experience of gaming also releases dopamine which has been found regularly to help improve and develop neural pathways from the brain to the hands. Dopamine is also a natural stress relieving hormone.

~ Magazine Excerpt

Okay, first things first… “I told you so!” It’s not surprising that i’m sure most of my readers remember your mother or relatives saying “games rot your brain” or “there’s no way to earn a living from games” now with proof arising every month about how online games like World of Warcraft, EQ2 and game console games on a Playstation or Xbox improves your mental flexibility into later life. And with the gaming industry beginning to become a trillion dollar industry ifs even easier to make a living from it (even I get paid to play games now). Below I have some physical proof.

This is a recording of mouse actions. Every white dot is a mouse click, black dot means a pause of the mouse movement and the lines represent where you’re moving a mouse. Analytical thinking on the left (3 hours of work) shows very few pauses and hence very few problem solving events occurring, on the other hand on the right with someone playing World of Warcraft for 3 hours shows many pauses and actions.

When you have to complete some creative problem solving you pause, this is so your problem solving processes take full control of your focus. Also games have also proven to be beneficial to user’s self-esteem by increasing their social activity by learning trust, team-work and how to cope better when things turn south.

Also, by using more cognitive processes and moving your arms frequently at a computer means you are burning for calories than if you’re sitting at the television (probably eating snacks) if you’re in the middle of a 20-man team encounter trying to keep everyone organised on killing a creature inside the game I’m sure your too busy to eat snacks while playing the game.

Should it be called “play” anymore? It’s more like “mental training”