DrDeClutterBlog.com

Losses throughout the year of any kind, human, animal, health, wealth or of spirit can take an extra toll during the holiday weeks. Here are a few steps to take care of yourself during this time.

1. Make time to grieve.

Set aside time to really feel your feelings, cry your tears and let it all go where it needs to. Your body needs to mourn your loss or change all the way through.

2. Get support from others.

It’s not always easy to ask for help. Being “strong” isn’t smart. Being “human” is. Whether you talk to family or friends or see a counselor or minister, you will find layers of grief just waiting to spring forth when you talk to someone else and tell your story once more.

3. Develop skills that help you remember you are a worthwhile person.

You can let grief control you and fall into a deep depression or illness, chipping away at your self worth; you can ignore and deny it and stay busy, keeping your “mind off of it”; or, you can gain knowledge of how to embrace your pain and grow positively from it.

4. Create a physical environment that supports rather than stresses you.

During the mourning process stress levels increase. You need to create a space where you feel safe, comfortable, quiet when you need it and nurtured, even if only by yourself.

5. Take care of yourself.

There are physical as well as emotional aspects of grief. Exercise increases your strength and stamina and reduces your stress. Healthy eating gives your body the good nourishment it needs. Find quiet time. Schedule a massage to stay connected with your body.

Bottom line, grief is hard. Make sure to take the time to face it and deal with it, otherwise it will affect you for years to come.

Sweden spends more annually than our war budget on studies to find out the damage caused by cell phones on our brains and all the flying electricity and microwaves in the air at, through and around us all. A new syndrome has developed since the advent of wi-fi, cell phones and more and more cell phone towers and electric lines, it’s called “electro-sensitivity,” in which people complain that simply being near electricity causes discomfort and pain. Sweden is taking this seriously to the level that they will pay to have aprson’s house shield from the electromagnetic field if they are diagnosed as electro-sensitive.

There is no conclusive evidence that cell phones cause brain tumors, dementia, sterility (laptops and phones being held on lap or in pockets) and other life-long damage, but authorities say to use them wisely and sparingly. Shut them off a few hours a day so that the “pulses” of microwaves stop coming to your phone and to you. Especially around and by children.

I saw a very new at toddling toddler in a store last week listening to “grandpa” say hi on mom and dad’s cell phone. I kept my mouth shut, but my brain was saying, “You are potentially frying your kid’s brains.”

Children’s skulls are thinner and more sensitive to the microwaves pounding through the atmosphere into the phone and the ear, and the brain. At least defend your children and grandchildren from possible adverse outcomes until more studies prove otherwise.

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Oh, those fun people over the pond! We need more of this, pronto!What cool and creative thing can you create in your home, community or area?

Are you too old to be messing around, playing and having too much fun?

NEVER!!

Make sure to have fun on vacation, on holiday, down the street and in your back yard! People who play and laugh more are healthier, friendlier and live longer!

Here’s my friend Jan up in Rochester, MN. She’s sitting pretty in a really big chair on display in front of a store. Jan is going to be a grandma again pretty soon! Go grandma!

“We are driven by five genetic needs:
survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.”
~ William Glasser, M.D.,  American psychiatrist
The developer of reality therapy and choice theory

Life’s short! Organize around fun!

No matter your age, play today! Take a photo and share your fun in the sun!

All the hoopla can get to the best of us.

You know when we’re coming back up for air when we can laugh and create humor of a bad situation.

Do everything you can to take care of yourself and your family, wash your hands one more time, and then laugh!

See past articles on Swine Flu here, and here.

Longmont United Hospital, our local hospital, is having its annual “pharmaceutical take-back day” tomorrow from 8-2 pm just inside the main entrance, and it’s free.

Don’t flush your medications as they go into your water systems and we ALL get to share in the cocktail of pharma for years to come. YIKES! Think estrogen . . . seen any man-boobs lately? I rest my case!! Read more below.

Check with your local hospitals and see if they can take your unused and unwanted medications to dispose of properly.

TIPS ABOUT MEDICATION DISPOSAL

1. DO NOT Flush Them Down the Toilet or Pour Down the Sink

Why? Experts say it may have potential harmful effects on the environment and to us. Disposal via the toilet takes your drugs into the local sewage system. Modern water treatment plants are not fully designed to deal with medication disposal. The long-term health risks posed by consumption of even minute quantities of these medications in drinking water and the full extent of environmental damage remains unknown. 

Plus, these drugs can leach into the local water table, eventually coming out somewhere, like a nearby lake or stream, or even worse out onto your own property, where pets, livestock or wildlife could be at risk.

2. Don’t Throw Them Into the Trash

Safety experts say “no.” First, kids and pets can find them. Then, your trash will eventually make it to a local landfill, where your medications could still have the potential to leach out (see water above).

DO THIS: Many municipal or local trash services now have local household waste facilities where you can safely drop off your medications for incineration. Call your local trash service for options in your area.

3. Return Them to Your Pharmacy

Pharmacies are not required to take back your unused medications, but some will.

DO THIS: Check with your local pharmacies and drugstore chains as some do sponsor regular “clean out your medicine cabinet” drives where customers can return old, expired or unused medications, supplements and other over-the-counter products. Call your local drugstore or pharmacy for options in your area.

4. Return Them to Your Doctor

Not all physicians or doctor offices will take them. Some may not be fully prepared to safely handle the process.

DO THIS: Call ahead to see if your doctor can offer safer medication disposal methods. Plus, as in the beginning article above, check with your local hospital to find out if they have a “take back” day.

 5. Sell them.

Nooooooo! I’m just kidding! But, I know that crossed your mind, right?!

There are plenty of people who have 18+ gallon tubs of bottles filled with medications that “were just not the right one” before the doctor changed the script one more time. It’s very frustrating, not to mention costly, however clean out your tubs and dispose of properly. Let - it - go! See #’s 1-4 above.

A big thank you to one of my readers, Amber Johnson for sending me this great report -  “100 Healthy Hacks to Help You Through Cold & Flu Season.” Click and use it now!

Wow! It’s all here! Keep yourself safe and healthy with these great tips.  Thanks nurses!

 Where has your purse been today?

Where does your purse, tote or briefcase sit when not on your shoulder?

At work it’s on the floor; at home, it gets tossed on the kitchen counter; at the gym it’s back onto the floor or into a well-used locker, and at restaurants, it’s on the table or bench, chair seat, floor and sometimes lap. At the park it goes in the grass or on the sidewalk or dirt; at the beach in the sand or on rocks; in bathrooms it sits on the wash basin counter or bathroom floor; in the car it’s on the floor and in the bar they end up anywhere.

And, whether you switch purses often or just have a favorite one, toting a well-used handbag or “tote” can be hazardous to your health!

What is common to all these places where our purses and bags sit or lay in lumps is another whole world . . . of invisible germs. Lots and lots of germs.

TESTING: So, let’s swab your purse it to see what kind of germs are on it, shall we?

Upon swabbing the bottom and handles of your purse - samples placed in sterile vials and sent off to a lab for analysis -and after incubation and intense testing what we find is pretty disgusting!

A real study at Nelson Labs in Salt Lake City states:
 - “We had several of them that came back with fecal contamination.”
 - “I don’t think they ever realize what they are transferring onto the plate. That is basically like wiping feces on your plate and eating it,” said Rollins, microbiologist.
 - In one sampling, four of five handbags tested positive for salmonella, and that’s not the worst of it. Microbiologist Amy Karen says nearly all of the handbags tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria. Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections and if ingested it can cause serious food illness and sickness, and salmonella and e-coli found on the handbags could make people very sick.

GET YOUR SHOES OFF THE TABLE!
Experts say you should think of your handbag the same way you would a pair of shoes.
If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that’s the same thing you’re doing when you put your handbag on The countertops - your handbag has gone where individuals before you have sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated, emptied bowels, etc!

The scientific word to cover all this would be, “Ew!”

This goes for men and women with briefcases and gym bags of any kind.

SOLUTION
1. Use hooks to hang up your purse where possible, like on bathroom stall doors, etc. and over back of chairs. Here’s a great gadget to help you keep your purse off the floor while sitting at the table. JoeyJunior table hook to hold your purse off the floor and off the table.
2. Never put your purse/briefcase on the table top where food has been (and not cleaned off), floor or other place where feet and feces will naturally have been.
3. Clean, wipe down, launder and clean out your purse regularly. 

The JoeyJunior table hook shown holding purses above keeps your purse off the floor, off the table and safely in your reach! Order here. Comes in 5 beautiful colors.

I have a cold. I wish we could see germs like they show on commercials so that we could side-step them and save ourselves days of leaking, sneezing, coughing, sweating, foggy brain and other such nastitees (not a word, but I like it.)

I’m in my dry coughing, nose leaking day. Nice to be past the scratchy sore throat day.

I took a very hot bath with 2 cups of apple cider vinegar - the recommended treatment to move toxins out of the lymph system and rebalance its acidity. As I sat in the tub I wondered if in Ireland lymph nodes are called nymph nodes?

Anyway, in order to take a bath, I had to clean the tub.

I’ve been taking showers for a long time and not baths, and there’s that dirty-ness around on the bottom of the tub from my feet. So, I sucked it up, literally, and scrubbed out my tub. Luckily, my clogged sinuses kept me from smelling the cleaning products. All good.

Ahhh, a clean tub. I’ve been wanting to do that for so long. In the past I’ve actually hired a cleaning person to clean my bathroom - just the bathroom - for $25! Just a small nice thing to do for oneself now and then.

So, my cold will move out in the next 2 days - a 5 dayer - that’s my plan anyway.

Oh, by the way, another way to head off a cold - which I’d forgotten to do since I’ve not had one in ages - is at the first sign of a cold, take 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in half a cup of water several times a day. Why? The same reason to take a bath in vinegar - the body becomes more alkaline during a cold and the vinegar will help to rebalance the body’s acid level.

 Learn more great ways to use apple cider vinegar to help you get back to health and other uses, natural is good!

My niece and nephew from Nebraska competed this past weekend at the State Games of America in Monument, CO. Thank goodness it was a cool 74 degrees all day. Sun shine and hardly a whisp of a cloud in the sky makes for sunburn central in this altitude.

I carry an umbrella if I have to sit the beating sun more than a minute! But, the kids found a perfect spot in the shade while waiting inbetween events.

Oh, and, yea! I’m very proud of “my” kids! Chase won first in shotput of the girls ages 13-14 GOLD MEDAL! And 16 year old Colton won a SILVER MEDAL in discus. Other races were run but they didn’t get into the top rankings.

How fun to enjoy summer with family and others enjoying healthy, motivated kids doing what they do best.

By the way, I won a few events in shot put and discus in high school too!