Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
Month: June 2023
Health Tip for Today ~ A Diet Change May Help Fight Allergies
Feeling stuffed up from allergy symptoms? Try changing your diet to include foods that might help.
Recently, research has suggested that certain foods can help fight allergies by controlling underlying inflammation, dilating air passages, and providing other relief effects. Anti-inflammatory foods include foods that contain healthy fats, such as olive oil and fish like tuna and mackerel that’s rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Fruits and vegetables are also good sources of inflammation-fighting nutrients. One study found that the staples of a heart-healthy Mediterranean diet, particularly nuts, grapes, oranges, apples, and fresh tomatoes, could provide allergy relief. Researchers focused on Greek children who followed this particular diet and were less likely to show allergic nasal symptoms or asthma.
Blame itchiness, hives, and other discomfort you feel during an allergic response on histamine. Vitamin C can help you with that. “Vitamin C indirectly inhibits inflammatory cells from releasing histamine,” says Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, medical director of the Nutritional Magnesium Association. Studies have shown that high levels of vitamin C reduce histamine and help it break down faster, once it’s released, providing allergy symptom relief.
In addition to its histamine-fighting power, vitamin C foods also provide allergy relief by reducing inflammation — the key to underplaying allergies. “Vitamin C is an antioxidant, meaning it counteracts the inflammatory effects of free radicals,” Dr. Bielory says. Simply put, foods containing vitamin C, such as oranges, strawberries, apples, and watermelon, counteract the inflammatory allergic response.
Health Tip for Today ~ Sitting Too Long Raises Your Health Risk
Take a Break from Sitting
Sitting down all day with no physical activity can increase a person’s risk of developing health conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer. Staying physically active can help to reduce this risk. Sitting all day without adequate physical activity can also impact a person’s sleep quality, mental health, physical and cognitive abilities, and bone health. There is no hard and fast answer to the question of how many hours of sitting is unhealthy. It is different for everyone and can depend on factors such as how much exercise a person does each day.
According to the charity Just Stand, the following thresholds determine a person’s risk of developing health problems due to sitting:
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- Low risk: Sitting for less than 4 hours per day.
- Medium risk: Sitting for 4–8 hours per day.
- High risk: Sitting for 8–11 hours per day.
- Very high risk: Sitting for more than 11 hours per day.
The CDC considers 150 minutesTrusted Source of moderate activity per week adequate to lower the risk of some health conditions associated with a sedentary lifestyle.
Something to Think About ~ Keep Looking Ahead
Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning speaks of prisoners who gave up all hope, “A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. . . . They preferred to close their eyes, and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of these experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge, and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.” Pps. 82-83
Note: Frankl’s description of the prisoners is applicable to us. We need to find meaning in our lives, in our everyday actions. When we don’t have meaning in our lives we, like the prisoners Frankl describes, live in the past when we replay grievances and fail to forgive. When we let go of those things that continue to drag us into the past it is easier to get engaged in something meaningful (there are an infinite number of possibilities) keeping an eye on tomorrow. Keep looking ahead, never backward.
Poem for Today ~ A Lovely Hand
A Lovely Hand
Anonymous
Last night I held a lovely hand,
It was so small and neat,
I thought my heart with joy would burst
So wild was every beat.
No other hand unto my heart
Could greater pleasure bring
Than the one so dear I held last night.
Four Aces and a King
Inspiring Quote for Today ~ Don’t Listen to Your Fears
“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”
Feel Good Tip of the Day ~ I Wake Up Feeling Happy
I wake up feeling happy. I wake up telling the day to get ready because here I come ready or not. I find things usually work out for me. I think it’s more in the attitude I take toward life than in my DNA. I begin and end each day in gratitude. I try my best to connect with other people. My recipe is this: Smile frequently. Lend a helping hand where you can. Constantly talk to yourself feeding yourself with positive talk. Pray with a grateful heart. And, stay away from folks who stay angry and only see one side of a coin. And, don’t pay too much attention to the talking political heads. C’mon, you know it’s going to be a good day. It’s the only one we got.
Something to Think About ~ Finding Meaning in Suffering
Victor Frankl says in Man’s Search for Meaning, “[T]here is also purpose in that life, which is a almost barren of both creation and enjoyment in which admits of, but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, and existence, restricted by external forces, a creative life and life of enjoyment are banned to him . . . if there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an inescapable part of life even as fate and death. Without suffering and death of human life cannot be complete. . . . The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails . . .gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life.” P. 76.
NOTE; When I first read this passage it made sense to me. Each time I re-read Man’s Search for Meaning it continued to make sense for me on an intellectual level. It wasn’t until my wife, suffering from brain cancer, died did I come to understand at a heart level what Frankl meant by finding meaning in suffering. My search for the meaning in my suffering did not ease my suffering, but it gave me deep insights into the lessons that suffering was teaching me. I became a different man, a better man, because of the suffering I experienced.
