Health Hacks

...and a little Flashback Friday

If you’ve been here following me and my Betsy story for any real length of time, you know that my main thing here on this blog is raising our special girl as naturally, organically, and non-medically as possible. I haven’t really talked about health stuff as much as I’d like, and I realize sometimes that can be kinda boring. When you’ve got such a silly and entertaining girl like Betsy, there’s not a lot of boring happening, and she’s good writing material.

Silly Betsy girl

I’ve written a fair few posts over the years on some of my favorite health hacks, and since today I’m going to talk about some of them, and to hack my writing as well, I’ll be including links to some of those older posts. That way I don’t have to repeat myself too much, and you can choose whether to read more on the different things I’m talking about, or just stick to this post. I am by no means a health guru or expert. Just a mom trying to do her best for herself and her kids. And I’m nowhere near as healthy as I’d like to be. So please take everything with a grain of salt, and only whatever works for you. Not everything works for every body, very few things in this life are one size fits all.

Also, while I’m thinking about it, I want to let you all know that aside from Monday Momlife Memes, I’m taking next week off. My eldest is about to start Band Camp and it’s going to be a crazy busy week. I’ve already got the Memes pretty much ready (and I can put them together decently fast anyway), and so that’ll be all you’ll see from me next week. Life doesn’t slow down, does it? So I’m keeping pace as best as I can.

On to the health hacks!

Eating Healthy

Diet is so much more important than we realize. I’ve always liked to make “you are what you eat” jokes, but that phrase really is true. What we put in our bodies matters. And no two bodies are the same. But one of the best things any of us can do is eat organic foods. We try to do this in our house as much as we can (it does get stupid expensive sometimes). The difference in my own health since eating cleaner has been hard to miss. I also want to point out that just because it’s organic, doesn’t mean it’s healthy! There’s plenty of stuff out there that’s organic, but made with toxic seed oils. Organic seed oils, sure, but they’re still seed oils. Remember in the ‘90s when everything was either low fat or low sugar, and we were often tricked into thinking that made something healthy? (And then we would end up eating way too much of it anyway so that kinda canceled out the supposed health benefits?) It seemed like the things that were low fat had extra sugar or artificial sweeteners (don’t get me started on those evil things!) and the low sugar things were fatty. And now we’re learning that high fat isn’t even necessarily a problem. There always seems to be some agenda behind whatever health trend is being touted. Eating organic foods is definitely a great place to start, but learning your own body and what it needs is super important, too. A simple beginning is to start reading labels, and don’t eat anything with ingredients you can’t pronounce.

Bug Bites

I keep a bottle of Dr Bronner’s peppermint hand sanitizer spray in Betsy’s diaper bag. I mean, I did. I don’t know where it is now, and it was low anyway, so I need to just buy more. Peppermint oil is a natural mosquito repellent, AND it helps ease itching! So I spray some on Betsy (who has super sensitive skin) before we go somewhere (mosquitoes often seem to make it into the car with us), and if I forget to do that and one of those suckers gets at her, I can spray it on her skin to relieve the itching and take down the swelling. When she gets bitten, her bites swell up to big welts, the poor girl! Since I can’t find the spray now, it’s a good thing I also happen to keep After Bite in the diaper bag. This is a homeopathic topical cream, or you can get the gel form, too. We have both, and the gel seems to work well for Betsy. If you want to read my old post about handling mosquitos and their bites, check it out here:

Grounding Sheets

I’ve written several posts about grounding, or earthing, and the many benefits of doing so. If you’re a giant baby like I am, you absolutely do not want to be outside in oppressive summer heat (we live in Georgia, which is not nearly as hot as other places I’ve lived, but it’s still a lot to handle sometimes). I sleep on a grounding sheet, and I just generally feel better doing so. Betsy sleeps more peacefully on one, too. Last week I washed hers and left it in the clean laundry basket for three or four days before putting it back in her bed, and there was definitely a difference. She is a rather sound sleeper—by that I mean both that she sleeps hard and that she makes noise while she’s sleeping! She yells and fusses in her sleep, usually without waking up (just waking ME up). Well the past few days having that sheet back in her bed, Betsy has slept so much more quietly, waking me up way less. I’ll take it!

I’ve written two posts about grounding, one about how it’s helped her and one about me. You can read them here:

Laughter

Laughter heals, no joke! What you take into your mind matters. Choosing dark, depressing stuff to watch and listen to is definitely not good for you. Real talk, turn off that dang news—it’s main purpose is to keep us angry, scared, and divided. So don’t give in to that. Take your power back and make laughter a priority. Watch funny movies and shows. Spend time with people who make you laugh (I’ve got two daughters who excel at that). Learn to extract the humor in the every day mundane—believe me, if you start looking for it, you’ll find it. Laughter teaches your cells that you’re safe. It calms your nervous system. Life is too short to spend being sad and upset! If you like baby laughter in particular, I have got you covered. In fact, if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you’ll find plenty of it (I used to post videos almost every day, maybe I’ll get back to that). Anyway, here’s one of Betsy from today after breakfast.

Move

I’m preaching at myself on this one. I somehow conditioned myself from a young age with the belief that exercise is not fun. I’ve never enjoyed it. Now I do actually enjoy yoga sometimes, IF I can convince myself to actually do it. I like walking, but not in this godawful heat. I’ve always hated running—but for one semester of P.E. in high school we had to run every day, and I absolutely hated it until I actually got good at it. Which didn’t happen until pretty close to the end of the semester, and of course, once I didn’t have to anymore, I didn’t do it at all. So me enjoying running was a thing for like two weeks. My point here is, find some movement you like. OR give yourself credit for what you’re already doing—I really believe if you notice that you ARE moving and acknowledge that movement, it’ll have a much better impact on both your body and mind. Just do something, and give yourself credit. You don’t have to power lift or train for a marathon, unless that’s something you truly want to do. Let your body move in a way that feels good to you, and thank it for being there and doing what it does for you every day.

Other Natural Remedies

One other post I want to share with you today is a whole article I wrote about my favorite natural remedies, like coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, baking soda, and more. I see no need to rehash all that now, when it is all in one place here already:

Well I hope you’ve found something useful and helpful today. What are some of your favorite health hacks and natural remedies? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you so much for reading today! Please subscribe if you haven’t already. If you missed this week’s Momlife Memes, they are conveniently linked below. There’s plenty of ways to connect with me and support my work, please check out some of the methods below. I’ll be back on Monday with the memes, of course. Much love to you, and don’t be afraid to be extra!

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