Help Your Child Stay at a Healthy Weight

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The US Department of Health and Human Services asks that you help your child – and your whole family – eat healthily and stay physically active. The healthy habits your child learns now can last a lifetime.

What can I do to help my child stay at a healthy weight?

Help your child stay at a healthy weight by balancing what your child eats with physical activity. Two of the best ways to help your child stay at a healthy weight are to:

  • Help your child and family eat healthier foods
  • Be more physically active as a family

You are a role model.

Parents are often the most important role models for children. When you choose to eat right and be physically active, your child will be more likely to make those choices, too.

Plus, being active and preparing healthy meals together are great ways to spend quality time with your family. Read more

5 facts about your heart that may surprise you

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Edward-Elmhurst Health shared in their Healthy Driven blog that pumping more than 100,000 times a day, your heart is the hardest working muscle you have.

Though not the largest — it’s the size of your two fists clasped together — it is a workhorse, pumping about 1.5 gallons of blood each minute. With each beat, your heart sends oxygen-rich blood throughout your body.

Heart disease, however, remains a leading cause of death. On average, cardiovascular disease claims one life every 37 seconds in the United States.

That’s why it’s important to know how your heart works and what you can do to keep it healthy.

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Vegan Junk Food?

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Planning for the Next Normal at School

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Action for Healthy Kids developed a playbook for school reopening (whether in person or virtual) from Kaiser Permanente’s Thriving Schools initiative aims to equip school and district leaders with evidence-informed guidance for keeping school communities healthy and safe as we shape a new approach to learning. The playbook was created with guidance from more than 30 school health organizations, including AFHK.

The Planning for the Next Normal at School playbook is an evolving collection of recommendations, co-authored by Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Action for Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools Campaign, and SHAPE America to address the total health needs of the school community for in-person and virtual learning environments. The playbook provides a framework to understand, assess, and implement strategies for COVID-19 prevention, social drivers of health, physical activity and physical education, staff and teacher well-being, and mental health and well-being.

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HOW TO CREATE A HIIT WORKOUT

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Dan from Non-Athlete Fitness, where we provide simple and easy health & fitness tips for the unathletically inclined shared with Healthy Lombard that when he hit a plateau in his weight loss goals, he needed a workout to push me through.

A HIIT workout, also known as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workout, helped him break through his fitness plateau and also reaffirmed his commitment to exercise and staying healthy.

Plus, he can perform a HIIT workout with or without equipment, so it’s a super convenient way for Dan to get a quick workout in.

WHAT IS AN HIIT WORKOUT?

HIIT is a workout training technique that alternates intervals of rest or low intensity with intervals of high-intensity exercises. HIIT stands for high-intensity interval training. The intensity level corresponds to how difficult the exercise feels.

Another way to measure workout intensity is to monitor your exercise heart rate. During the high-intensity intervals, aim to increase your heart rate between 90 and 95 percent of your maximum heart rate, MHR.

Calculate your high-intensity interval heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. Then, multiply the result by 90 percent. For example, 220 minus 40 equals 180. 180 multiplied by .90 equals 162. 162 beats per minute are the high-intensity interval target heart rate goal for a 40-year-old who participates in HIIT.

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Everything you need to know about masks

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Annemarie Schmocker, RN, BSN, CICSpecialty: Infection Control & Prevention, who holds an infection prevention and control certification for nurses, shared in the Edwards-Elmhurst Health’s Healthy Driven Blog that at Edward-Elmhurst Health, their  COVID-19 Steering Committee — a team of health system administrators/senior leadership and clinical department directors/managers — meets regularly to discuss new medical literature and findings, and review guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization, Infectious Disease Society of America and various medical societies.Together, they analyze this information and used it to update their infection control and prevention procedures. Universal masking is an important topic on the agenda. Their  current recommendations for our community include:

Masks help reduce the spread of COVID-19. It’s important to wear a mask or face covering when in public settings, around new people, and when social distancing measures are not able to be taken. Masks reduce the spread of COVID-19 to others and when widely used, are most likely to do so successfully. They provide a barrier to individuals who may not know they are infected with COVID-19 and help prevent a person from spreading the virus to others by keeping respiratory droplets (released when someone is talking, singing, coughing, or sneezing) contained within the mask. Masks prevent the droplets from reaching others if 6-feet social distancing cannot be maintained.

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A 2 Minute Tip To Reduce Your Plastic Use

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John Linden just added a page about removing plastic packaging from Amazon boxes because a big part of his home life is finding simple ways to reduce my environmental impact.

John shares that like it or not, Amazon is a huge part of all of our lives. From pet food to skincare, he uses Amazon at least once a week.

The worst part about Amazon has to be all the plastic that products/packaging use.

So John found  @stayplasticfree on Instagram where they shared this AWESOME tip for having Amazon replace plastic packaging with paper.

  • Go to your Amazon account
  • Go to “help/customer service”
  • Go to “contact us”
  • Use the chat option
  • Ask the chat agent to only use plastic packaging when absolutely necessary — and to use degradable packaging in all other cases
  • This will be applied to all future orders

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Kindness is contagious

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Kiwanis magazine and kiwanismagazine.org asks in their recent magazine, “Did you know that science plays a role in how kindness affects our brains and our bodies? ”

“I call it the ‘trifecta’ effect,” says Brooke Jones, vice president of the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. “We all know that when we commit an act of kindness or receive one, we feel good. There is an increase in oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine as well as a decrease in cortisol. But what most people don’t know is that the person who witnesses an act of kindness has the same physiological response in their body with the same increases and decreases in those chemicals. Oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine are ‘feel-good’ chemicals that aid in lowering blood pressure, improving overall heart health and help us feel calmer and less depressed. Cortisol is the ‘stress’ hormone that has been found to decrease in the bloodstream when people regularly participate in kind acts.” Read more

Important Tips for Lifting During Pregnancy

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Rachel Burns has been writing on topics related to fitness and healthy eating for 2 years now.  She specializes in plant-based diets. And, in addition to nutrition, she is also an exercise enthusiast  Rachel shared with Healthy Lombard that weight lifting during pregnancy is doubted by many. If you have been working out even before pregnancy, then you will probably know the right ways to do it. But during pregnancy, you need to be extra careful while lifting weights. Therefore, professional tips are highly important to ensure a harmless workout regime.

Here are some from Rachel. During pregnancy, a lot of physical, mental, and hormonal changes undergo in the mother’s body. Your uterus creates space for the baby by expanding its walls, and your hip joints start shifting and loosening to prepare your body for the delivery. If you have no prior experience of a workout, then we suggest you keep away from a heavy workout during pregnancy because your body might not be able to handle it properly. But if you have a prior workout experience and you know the right tips for a workout during pregnancy, then you can do it without worrying at all. We will provide you with the necessary details and tips for a safe workout during pregnancy.

Tips for Weight Lifting in Pregnancy

If you are wondering, ‘can you workout during pregnancy?’. Yes, you can if you are used to a workout plan even before pregnancy. Whatever be the workout regime you choose, you will have to keep decreasing the intensity with the progress in pregnancy. Make sure that you avoid an insanity workout during pregnancy. We have shortlisted some important tips for each trimester of pregnancy to ensure a safe gym workout during pregnancy. Read more

49 Ways to Take Care of Your Skin

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Jenny McHenry from Gotham Skincare, a blog dedicated to helping people maintain healthy skin has put together a fun article on ’49 ways to take care of your skin’. It’s packed full of good information in an easy to read format.  This guide gathered many skincare methods all in one place so that there’s less confusion in what you can do to get healthier skin.

Washing and Care

1.  Hands

Before you do anything, you should wash your hands. Why? Because you wouldn’t use a dirty cloth to wipe something down, so why should the same apply to the rest of your body, including the face? The primary way to wash your hands should be thorough, so let’s go with the CDC five-step specifications of handwashing since if it’s good enough for the CDC, it’s good enough for us.

First wet your hands with running water, and then lather them in soap. Make sure to get the back of your hands, as well as between the fingers where dry skin can form. Scrub your hands for about 20 seconds before rinsing and then drying them with a clean towel. If you’re concerned about the soap used, a pH-balanced hand wash made for skincare is available.

2.  Face

You should use lukewarm water when washing your face. Extremes in water temperature can cause irritation, so it’s best to have water that’s between those points so that your skin doesn’t get flushed. Micellar water is also a good alternative to lukewarm water, since it contains the micelle molecules it’s named after which breaks down debris like makeup and dirt more effectively.

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