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Lifestyle & Wellness

Lifestyle & Wellness

From Greedy to Grateful in 112 Easy Steps

Thanks­giv­ing is tomor­row, so I thought we’d talk about our ungrate­ful lit­tle brats, whoops, I mean our lit­tle dar­ling angels for a minute. But seri­ous­ly, kids can appear to be rather greedy and self-cen­tered at times. It’s in their nature. They are hard-wired for sur­vival but don’t yet under­stand the dif­fer­ence between wants” and needs.” So when they are los­ing their mind because you won’t buy them can­dy at the gro­cery store a mere twen­ty min­utes after you bought them some­thing at the toy store, it’s because their devel­op­ing brains are mis­in­ter­pret­ing your no” as a threat to their needs being met.

Illog­i­cal, maybe. Annoy­ing, def­i­nite­ly. But the abil­i­ty to be thank­ful isn’t born in — it’s a skill that has to be learned.

Conditions & Diseases

Conditions & Diseases

Salt, Sodium, And Hypertension- Oh My!

In no way am I try­ing to ruin Thanks­giv­ing, but we have to talk about one lit­tle cul­prit that makes the hol­i­days a lot less heart-healthy. Salt added to food is a com­bi­na­tion of sodi­um and chlo­ride, and this small crys­tal has a huge effect on our health. Too much salt can raise blood pres­sure and lead to dan­ger­ous flu­id reten­tion, espe­cial­ly in those with dis­eases like kid­ney dis­ease or heart fail­ure. The biggest prob­lem is rarely the salt shak­er, but rather foods found on gro­cery store shelves or at restaurants.

Behavioral & Mental Health

Behavioral & Mental Health

The Magic of Empathy

To get past a dif­fi­cult emo­tion, you need to first iden­ti­fy and embrace that emo­tion. Once you know what you are feel­ing and why, you are able to move into a state of mind that allows for more effec­tive prob­lem solv­ing and deci­sion mak­ing. When some­one tells you to calm down, they are basi­cal­ly sug­gest­ing that you skip right past this step and move imme­di­ate­ly to the prob­lem solv­ing state of mind. That’s just not how we work. We need that in-between step of iden­ti­fy­ing the tough feel­ing and sit­ting with it for a minute before we can move for­ward. What’s miss­ing when some­one says calm down” is empa­thy.

Behavioral & Mental Health

Mental Health Meds: When to Take, When to Hold Off

Research shows that for emo­tion­al symp­toms, includ­ing depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and ADHD, a com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion and ther­a­py is often the best form of treat­ment. But when should you or your child try med­ica­tion? Are there oth­er things you should try first? How does any­one even make that deci­sion? Is there a pill for that? The fol­low­ing is a list of fac­tors to keep in mind as you nav­i­gate this poten­tial­ly over­whelm­ing decision.

Men's Health