Tips for Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions

Tips for Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions

This is a great time of year to break old bad habits, or start new, healthy habits. The prospect of a new year makes many people feel like it would be easier to make a fresh start and is a lot like a “clean slate”. It’s a great time to reassess what you’ve been doing, and get rid of what is bad, or what doesn’t serve you. These are often referred to as “New Year’s resolutions”.

Many people think they are silly because they ask the question: “Why wait for the new year to make an improvement?” or they think: “I’ll just fall off the wagon by February, anyway.” Both of these thoughts are true. You don’t have to wait until January 1st to make life changes, and only about 8% of people who make New Year’s resolutions actually see them through. Luckily, there are many different ways to make sure you can stick to them.

The most common of the New Year’s resolutions are to quit smoking, or to get in shape. There are many others, such as to quit drinking alcohol, or to just stop eating junk food and make healthier food choices. The common denominator to these things is to start living a healthier lifestyle.

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Ways to Deal With Holiday Stress

Ways to Deal With Holiday Stress

We all know how damaging stress can be on your overall health. It affects your heart, does a number on your immune system, making you much more susceptible to getting sick, and even causes memory loss. Those are things you definitely don’t need, at any time of the year! The holidays can be hard on people, because there are just so many things expected of us. Our obligations to family and friends shouldn’t make us feel stressed and overwhelmed, but it can happen anyway.

You might have holiday parties to go to, lots of presents to buy, and things to cook and bake and decorate. You might certainly want to do these things, but you’re pressed for time. And then there’s the snow and cold weather adding to the stress of going shopping, standing in line and making your way through the crowded malls and stores to try to get the discounts on the presents you want to buy. All of this on top of a bigger heating bill and other usual bills.

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Things You Can Do With Modern Portable Oxygen Solutions

Adventures You Can Do With Modern Portable Oxygen Solutions

Oxygen therapy has come a long way in how much freedom you can have while receiving it. Here are just a few things you can do today, thanks to advancements in modern oxygen therapy, that you could have never done 10 years ago. There are tips and suggestions to help you do these things, as well.

Use Your Oxygen Therapy In-Flight

Many modern portable oxygen concentrators are approved to be used on board a commercial flight, by the Federal Aviation Administration. When a portable oxygen concentrator is approved by the FAA, it means it’s been found to be completely safe for everyone on board, and can be completely relied upon to deliver the amount of oxygen needed during the flight.

Of course, you would need to make sure the portable oxygen concentrator has enough battery power to last the whole time you’ll need it during the flight. Every airline has its own set of rules for bringing an oxygen concentrator aboard, including a physician’s statement and a certain amount of extra battery power. You must always check with the airline before booking a flight, to make sure you have everything you need.

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New Year’s Resolutions – How to Start Feeling Healthier Tomorrow

New Year’s Resolutions

One simple New Years resolution that you can make is just to feel healthier. There are many things you can start doing today to help you feel healthier, and they work amazingly fast. You may wake up tomorrow feeling better than you did today!

Quit Smoking

It’s amazing how quickly your body starts to bounce back after you’ve quit smoking. You will notice that your senses of smell and taste will become much stronger. The cough you may have, in the mornings especially, will start to decrease as your airways finish clearing out the tar that you’ve been breathing in. Electronic cigarettes that allow you to gradually decrease your nicotine intake are one popular method for quitting smoking. You could also try nicotine patches or gum. Keep your hand busy with other things while you are working on kicking the habit.

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How to Stay Healthy This Holiday Season

How to Stay Healthy This Holiday Season

This is a very familiar scenario for anyone – you’re busy shopping or going out and about, preparing for the holiday festivities, when you realize you’ve caught a cold or even worse – the dreaded flu virus. Anyone who has a clean bill of health will be down for the count for at least a week with the flu, or for a few days with a common cold. But if you have COPD or another chronic illness that compromises your lungs, this could spell big trouble. Not only will you not be able to enjoy the holiday season, but you could even end up in the hospital with an exacerbation.

You don’t have to hide away in your house, however, and miss out on the fun with your family, or the savings in the stores you might be able to find out there. There are many things you can do to protect yourself as much as possible, to keep your risk of illness at a minimum.

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Managing Your Weight Around the Holidays

Managing Your Weight Around the Holidays

During the Holiday season, between Halloween and through New Years, eating becomes a social event. This is the main reason why so many people complain about gaining a few unwanted pounds during this time of year. With all of the delicious foods all around us, and not wanting to offend anyone by not at least sampling their homemade goods, it’s easy to overeat. Gaining a few pounds might not be such an issue, but overeating can be dangerous, especially when it comes to what you are eating.

If you have COPD, eating too much can even make it hard for you to breathe, and it’s easy to start to feel full quickly. Don’t feel obliged or pressured into eating more than you can handle – your family and friends will understand. A full stomach will push against your diaphragm and in turn put pressure on your lungs, which will become uncomfortable and make breathing difficult. Here are a few tips and tricks for avoiding the weight gain, as well as the bloat.

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Three Ways to Relieve Stress and Stay Healthy

Three Ways to Relieve Stress and Stay Healthy

Stress is one of the top contributing factors of many health problems, from high blood pressure to skin rashes. Stress alone might not have caused you to develop COPD, but if you think of it this way, you may have started smoking to calm your nerves when you were under stress. Too much stress over time will begin to wear on your immune system, making it easier for viruses and bacterial infections to make a home in your body. Staying completely stress free in life is near impossible, but there are some things you can do to relieve it for a time, or lessen it.

When people are stressed, they sometimes end up trying to relieve it in some very unhealthy ways. Doing any recreational drugs, including alcohol, binge eating on junk food, or continuing to smoke cigarettes after your diagnosis with COPD, are among the unhealthy habits. Our stress doesn’t always result in these habits, though, they can be much more subtle, such as nail biting, mindlessly picking at your skin or pulling out your hair. Pay attention to your own subtle habits so you can notice when you are stressed. Our bodies tell us things that we don’t consciously recognize.

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How to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle with COPD

How to Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle with COPD

Depending on how severe your diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, you should be able to at least put the progression of this disease at a standstill, as long as you make a few healthy lifestyle decisions. You won’t be able to cure yourself of this disease, only because you can’t reverse the damage that has been done to your lungs. Making everyone aware of COPD is the first step in making sure the disease doesn’t advance so far, that you need to be using a home oxygen concentrator for most of the day. To stay healthy, you will need to ask yourself a few questions.

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The Benefits of Tai Chi for People With COPD

The Benefits of Tai Chi for People With COPD

When you have a chronic lung disease, exercise might be the furthest thing from your mind. You are probably picturing someone running, doing push ups and taking the deep, concentrated breaths needed to bring in the oxygen needed to keep their body going. If you are using an oxygen concentrator for part of the day to get that needed amount of oxygen, you might think that working out is far beyond your reach.

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