How Can You Manage Your Health Using Technology?*

Technology in the modern world is incredible, and is advancing at an impressive rate. One area that’s really taken off is tech for health, and these days it’s easy to monitor, track and improve our health right from our computers or smartphones. Here are a few of the ways you can keep tabs on your health using modern technology.


Photo sourced from this website

Use an Online Doctor

Healthcare in the UK is fantastic, however there’s a significant amount of stress on the system. For this reason when you’re feeling unwell, it could be a few days before you’re even able to be seen by your GP. If you don’t fancy sitting in the walk in centre for four hours, you could use an online dr app. These are real doctors and are able to prescribe medication and diagnose any problems via video chat, allowing you to quickly and conveniently speak to a doctor from the comfort of your home. You don’t have to take any time off work or risk getting ill at the doctors surgery, it’s a fantastic convenient way to manage your health.

Order From an Online Pharmacy

You don’t necessarily need to speak to an online doctor, in many cases you can speak to a pharmacist at an online chemist. These can prescribe various medications that aren’t available over the counter, or can send you your repeat prescription. You save yourself a doctor’s visit and therefore save yourself time and hassle. It goes without saying you should use a legitimate, fully licensed online pharmacy so do your research before placing an order.

Utilise Health Apps

There are tonnes of great health apps out there that can help you manage specific health conditions, your weight, diet or anything else. Have a look in the app store and see what kinds of things will suit you. For diet, weight and fitness tracking apps like MyFitnessPal are useful, Apple also have things like scales which can sync data right to your phone. If you have a condition like diabetes, apps can make it easy to keep track of your blood sugar readings, they can even help you track and remind you to take your medication.

Use a Fitness Tracker

Fitness tracking bands like Fitbit track things like your heart rate and sleep, letting you know exactly how much activity and the quality of sleep you’re getting. They sync to your phone and show the results in easy to read charts and graphs. They can show you where you need to improve, motivate you to work harder when you exercise and generally help you to keep track of your health. You wear them on your wrist just like you would a regular watch so are no hassle to wear. Plus since they tell the time too, they’re a simple replacement for your ordinary timepiece. As you can get different, interchangeable bands they will suit any style.

Do you utilise technology to manage your health? Have you used any of the above, and if so what’s your opinion on it?



*collaborative post

Thanks for reading. Leah xoxo

The last 5 things I bought #2

Hello sugars!

I hope you've had a nice relaxing weekend. We have, as I've not been well.

Here's what's been floating my boat recently.

1. ASOS clear glitter jellies, £7

2. ASOS pink jellies, £7 (same link as before, just select different colour.) Also available in black for £7. (White and grey glitter are also available, currently £10.)

3. Astralagus root, which is great at boosting the immune system for people with chronic illness and also helps take the potency out of colds, flu and chest infections. See this fab article from Wellness Mama for more. Her site is a mine of information for all kinds of wellness tips & I thoroughly recommend it. I bought astralagus root from Amazon but there are lots of different sellers.

4. I have 4 big birthdays in May - my dad, brother and 2 of my oldest friends, so I bought a bunch of gift boxes to put their presents in.

5. This New Look Inspire dress is in the sale for £11 and is also available in coral. 

What have you bought recently?

Thanks for reading.

The last 5 things I bought

Hello loves,

I thought I'd introduce a new post to show I don't always spend all my money on clothes and make up.

My last 5 purchases were:

1. A donation to a Kickstarter appeal for a film called Fattitude. Read more here. 
2. An e book written by Ragen Chastain, one of my fave body-posi people, as prompted by Sarah, who wrote about it, which reminded me I'd never bought Ragen's book. D'oh!
   
3. Virgin coconut oil.
4. Chia seeds.
5. Flax seed oil.

Laura said something recently about the importance of supporting your community, hence purchases 1 & 2. I want to support people who support bodies like mine.

I'm also supporting myself, which is why I've bought a few things from Fushi to help me better my health and well-being. Their virgin coconut oil is not only the cheapest I've ever found, but the tastiest by far. I use it for oil pulling (post on that soon), I'm trialling it as a deodorant (yes really, post on that soon, too!), in smoothies and on toast for a delicious burst of flavour. It's so good for your hair and skin, and of course although it's food grade you can use it for a number of other things.

What are the last 5 things you bought?

Thanks for reading.

What it feels like to be chronically ill

Hello loves,

I want to talk about how debilitating illnesses weigh a person down. I'm writing this for other people in the same situation as me, and I hope to make them feel less alone. No need for pity - just talking about this is helping me process things. My experience is my own and it might be different for others, but this is what it feels like for me.

Firstly, sleep is never guaranteed with Fibromyalgia and CFS/ME or many other chronic illnesses. I have no clue how I'm going to feel when I wake up, or what time I'll wake up. Sometimes I'll be asleep on the sofa by 8pm and other times I'll be laying awake until 7am with bug eyes and a massive headache. When I don't get to sleep until the time when most people are getting up, I hate sleeping through the day. I miss out on precious daylight and try to rush around getting things done so my husband comes home to tea in the oven, a reasonably tidy flat and a fairly presentable wife. It doesn't always happen. I'm always feeling guilty for not doing enough for my husband, and he already asks for so little. Maybe that makes it worse. It's one thing to aim high and fail, but aiming low and still missing is something else.

I'm never short of ideas for anything - blog posts, plans, etc but having the energy to carry forward these plans is another thing. I have dozens of notebooks filled with pages of ideas, ideas I'll probably never get around to covering. I lay in bed every night planning to do yoga and eat great the next day but I feel like hammered crap when I wake up and gradually come alive through the night. Having the energy to take care of myself properly is often too much to ask. I don't usually eat until about 6pm, and instead of a nice home cooked meal, often I'll have a fishfinger sandwich or a ready made pasta on a big bed of salad. I look at photos of myself from a year ago and see much less definition in my waist and wonder if I'm exercising less or eating more, or is this middle aged spread? It feels too hard to stop these changes happening in my body. Do I try to fight it, try to stop these changes in their tracks? Is there anything I can do? Do I have the fight and energy to undo the changes ill health is making to my body or do I accept a slow slide into the invisibility of middle age?

Being chronically ill ain't pretty. It's crusty eyes, bed sheets and pillows thrown all over the room from a tempestuous sleep, lines all over my face from being tangled up in the bedding, hair in a bird's nest from the night sweats and waking up in need of hosing down by the fire brigade. It's feeling like shit and not having the energy or creativity to put the make up on that I know will make me feel human again. It's weight gain, muscle loss, abdominal bloating, rashes and dry skin, smelly body parts and no energy to lift my legs over the bath for a shower half the time, making do with washes and dry shampoo, and feeling so fucking terrible for it being that way.

It's wanting to do everything and having the energy for almost nothing, and it's dread before you do something because you know what comes after - more pain and fatigue. I try not to let it suck all the joy out of my life but when you know you're going to pay for every good thing it can be wearying. It's sleeping all the time or hardly at all, and not making any difference because I still feel like shit either way. It's crushing fatigue which sometimes erases my optimism, but not always. It's making the most of the good days and beating myself up on the bad ones, and there are a lot of the latter. It's avoiding too much movement as that causes pain, and worrying this enforced sedentary lifestyle will be the death of me. A choice - exercise and be in agony or avoid it and be unfit. My breathing the last few months is terrible and I know this last big flare up I had - the one which lasted about 6 months - has seriously fucked up my fitness. I don't know if I have the fight to get it back, and I know if I can't arrest some of the damage my future is a scary place indeed.

It's missing out and knowing it, feeling bad for not being able to do much more than exist, knowing that any hopes or dreams I had for myself have vanished, and learning to live in the day to day as thoughts like that aren't good for my mental health. It's starting off each day with a massive deficit and always trying to play catch up but never quite getting there. Everything is tiring. Everything is hard. It's like jumping into a river wearing a heavy old woollen blanket and then wondering why it's so hard to swim with this massive weight you haven't got used to yet. You should know this impairment is there, but you still expect it to float away one day, but it just gets heavier, like your hope is making it worse. It's being physically (and sometimes mentally) impaired but still holding yourself up to the same standards you did your whole life, and constantly disappointing yourself.
 
Some days it's hard just to get out of bed, knowing the tasks the day holds are too much to think about, let alone do. And just when you're ready to give in or give up, a bittersweet day comes along. You sleep really well for the first time in months and wake up full of enthusiasm and pep. And then, only then, you remember how fucking hard it is the rest of the time, because when you're in this constant grind you don't know anything else, you can't see the wood for the trees. And you so want to run with this gift of a day, but you know what'll happen if you do. So even on the rare good days, they're actually not that good. They're just a reminder of what your life used to be like, like you sent a postcard into your future from a time when you were once well. Remember what it used to be like to work, old self? Remember the joy of long walks and dancing? Remember the excitement of getting up to a new day full of possibility, when your actions didn't have to be carefully weighed and measured for what they'll take out of you? When life wasn't a tally sheet which constantly shows a loss? Remember that? And then you do, and all is sadness.

I constantly wish I could do more, be more, and not have to expend so much energy to exist. It is what it is, and many lessons have been learned about myself and life itself, but sometimes I wish it wasn't quite so difficult. 

Gentle hugs to all the Spoonies out there.

Thanks for listening.

P.S. If I can haul myself out of bed whilst there's still sufficient daylight I'll be posting an outfit later.

Coconut Oil - Nature's wonder product?

Hiya lovelies!

I am a massive fan of coconut oil. I think it's such a versatile item which you can use in so many ways. Before I get started, this isn't a sponsored post. I think everyone should have a pot of virgin coconut oil in their kitchen or bathroom because it's so good for you.

Coconut oil is anti fungal, anti microbial, anti bacterial, anti inflammatory, anti parasitic, anti viral and antioxidant.

Anti fungal -  helps against Athletes foot, fungal toenail infections, yeast infections, ringworm, etc.
Anti microbial - kills microbes or inhibits their growth.
Anti bacterial - kills bacterium or inhibits their growth.
Anti inflammatory - reduces inflammation.
Anti parasitic - destructive to parasites.
Anti viral - inhibits the development of viruses - helpful to use to get rid of cold sores once they appear.
Antioxidant - inhabits the oxidisation of other molecules, which can prevent the production of free radicals, which may damage or kill cells which in turn can lead to disease.

What can you use coconut oil for? 

Just about everything! It would probably be quicker to tell you what you can't use it for. I will go through some of the ways you can use it then tell you about the ways I use it myself.

Edible uses:

Firstly, you can eat it, cook with it, even fry with it. I strongly advise using food grade virgin coconut oil, because it tastes fantastic. I wouldn't want to taste the stuff designed for use on the body! You can use it as a sweetener in tea or coffee, use it in the place of margarine or butter in cooking, and fry with it - the taste is totally undetectable when fried and doesn't break down harmfully like other oils.

Topical uses:

You can get non-food grade coconut oil which you can use on the body. I use this one from Superdrug. You can use it as conditioner, as a cleanser, make up remover and moisturiser, as a shaving 'cream', as a vaginal lubricant, as lip balm, as a massage oil, to help prevent stretch marks, on cracked nipples from breastfeeding, as baby lotion, as a hand, nail and cuticle moisturiser.

Health uses:

To ease a sore throat, on cold sores, for treatment of eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis, to get rid of head lice, as a scalp treatment for cradle cap or dandruff, as athlete's foot treatment, to soothe nappy rash, to ease aches and pains from arthritis and other inflammatory pain conditions. It's good for your heart because the good fatty acids increase good (HDL) cholesterol. It also boosts metabolism.

Animal uses:

Used topically to get rid of fleas, and taken internally to help ease joint problems and to ensure a glossy coat.

Ways I use it:

I put a level tablespoon in my smoothies to add a bit of tropical taste and to make my hair and skin glow with health. I put a level teaspoon in with my porridge for the hair and skin benefits. Sometimes I use it in place of butter on toast - it tastes delicious. I will top it off with banana and some seeds - delicious! If I've run out of agave nectar I'll use it as a sweetener in my tea. When I have a sore throat I eat a level teaspoon straight off the spoon so it melts and tip my head back so it trickles down my throat. Repeated a couple of times a day it soothes the sorest of throats.

I have athlete's foot on one foot so I mix coconut oil with tea tree oil and rub it in it all over my foot (about a level teaspoon of coconut oil and 5 drops of tea tree oil.) I also have three fungal toenails and I use tea tree oil under my toenails where they've lifted from the nail bed (gross!) and rub coconut oil into the nails themselves. I've been doing it for about 3 months and I have some non-fungal nail growth coming through now! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Curanail! Whilst using Curanail I went from 2 fungal toenails to 3, because although they advise you to file down the affected toenails each week, they don't tell you to tape your other toenails up or else you're just spreading fungus spores about everywhere! If you us Curanail, fer God's sake CUT your nails instead of filing them or tape your other toenails up if you must file them.

I use coconut oil on my face after I've waxed my tache and eyebrow stragglies. This is my post-waxing rescue kit:

Elemis body oil, tea tree oil and food grade coconut oil, which I get from Holland and Barrett.

The Elemis body oil is a solid until you immerse the glass bottle into hot water. I tip about a level teaspoon's worth of oil into my hand and rub it all over my face to get rid of any wax residue from the waxing, which is an absolute nightmare to remove otherwise. I leave it on for a few seconds, then wipe it all away with a warm damp flannel, taking all the stickiness with it. Then, to prevent getting spots after waxing I mix about a level teaspoon's worth of coconut oil with about 5 drops of tea tree oil and rub it all over my face. No spots! Before using coconut and tea tree oil on my face I'd get dozens of angry yellow heads in the areas I'd waxed. 

I could use the non-food grade oil on my face, but I prefer to use the food grade oil on my face and the non-food grade oil on my body. Of course if money was no object I'd use the best quality oil with abandon.

Have you ever used coconut oil? Do you want to try it?

Thanks for reading!

Wednesday Waffle - Walks

Hello lovelies!

I want to talk about walks. I've always loved walking.

When I was a child and I needed to think something through, I'd take myself off walking on my own - often barefoot - because I've always been a bit of a free spirit. You might think 'What would a child have to worry about?' but I've always been an old soul, and my mum and dad split up when I was really young so I was often troubled.

There was this one place I used to gravitate to. It's a small burial ground in my home town. It's not a graveyard as it's not attached to a church, but there used to be one there hundreds of years ago. The gravestones are all placed along the walls of the burial ground. It has a spectacular view across the town as it's high up on a hill and I used to stand there for ages trying to work out my problems. I've always felt at peace among the dead.

When I started going to senior school I got plenty of exercise as I lived about 2 miles away from my school and walked there and back every day up hill and down dale as we didn't have a car. Going into my teens I still walked to process my thoughts, but mostly out of necessity. Anywhere local I wanted to go, I had to walk to. I'd always prefer to walk rather than getting on a train or bus. When you're on foot the world's your oyster - you're not crammed in a moving lump of metal with lots of other people, being forced to listen to their noise. I walked miles and miles every week. When I started my first job, again I walked. I had a 2 mile walk each way initially, and once I'd moved house it was a 3 mile walk each way. Any time I was pissed off about anything, I'd stomp around until I'd worked it out of my system.

I was still walking everywhere when I met hubby. It wouldn't be unusual for us to walk 8 or 10 miles in a day on the weekends. We walked on holidays, we walked at home, we walked round London when we'd been to see his parents - you get the picture. 

It was on a holiday in 2007 that my illness first came to light. I'd been feeling quite off for a while, but we had decided to book a caravan holiday in Torquay 3.5 miles away from the town centre so we'd be forced to cram loads of walking in every day. The first day or two I was suffering and thought 'Oh, you've only just finished work, you'll have a couple of days of good sleep and then you'll be fine.' But it didn't get better, it got worse. There were a few times on that holiday where I'd be walking along crying as I didn't feel like I could put another foot in front of the other without collapsing. Plans of our walking holiday were abandoned and we walked part way to town every day and got buses or cabs the rest of the way. Being the optimistic fool I am I just brushed it all off and it wasn't until April 2008 when things really went to pot physically that I knew the future was full of question marks.

I've documented very recently (last week) how things with my health have affected me, but I've never really spoken about how I've had to give up on my love of long walks. I'll talk at the end about the way I've adapted walks to suit me so I can get some exercise when the pain allows it.

When I was first ill, say for the first 3 years, I railed against it hard. I'd try to do the things I liked to do, like walking a long way, until it got to the point where my body was screaming at me to stop. If I had a good day, I thought I was cured. I'd do everything at once and end up feeling awful for days. It's called 'boom and bust' and I've gradually learned not to do it. The big wake up call was when we moved about 4 years ago. Obviously packing up a home is a hard job on its own, but when it came to moving day, I carried just 3 boxes down from our top floor flat one at a time, put them in the van then went back upstairs. After the 3rd box my friend took one look at me and ordered me to sit down. I did feel tired and breathless but I didn't know what she meant until I looked in the bathroom mirror. My whole face and neck was purple. I looked like I was going to have a heart attack. I busied myself with cleaning up and ordering people about as required, but didn't do any lifting from then on. At the new flat I was putting things in the right rooms, and doing some light unpacking (the kettle, oh how lovely to see you again my friend!) but again not really doing any heavy lifting. The aftermath of the move meant I was sleeping for about 14 hours a day (or more) for almost a month. I'd literally get up, have something to eat, fall back to sleep, wake up at teatime, be awake for a few hours then have to go back to bed. Rinse and repeat, do not pass go. Lesson learned.

So after that I curtailed my activities further - I wasn't working, but I still tried to have a pretence of a social life once in a blue moon. As we lived fairly near to town, I'd have little excursions into town and got some exercise that way, but if I took the opportunity to capitalise on a sunny day and have a longer walk, I'd overdo it and have to get to bed as soon as I got in. With Fibro you have a delayed pain reaction, so one minute I'd be fine and the next I'd be in tears of pain and exhaustion. I would literally get in the front door, crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees to our top floor flat (yes another one, what a prat!) get into bed fully clothed (as I didn't even have the energy to take my clothes off!) and be out like a light.

Soon after this point walking to town became too much as walking on concrete for any length of time started to jolt my joints. When we moved again 2 and a half years ago (I did NO lifting or carrying at all this time, ha!) from a place right near town to somewhere about 3 miles out of town I would occasionally still try to walk the whole way. It wasn't pretty. As time went on. I'd walk less than halfway and book a cab for the rest of the journey, and then as I got worse I'd get a cab there and back. So every time I go to town without hubby now, I go there by cab and back. By bitter experience I know if I were stupid enough to try to walk to town tomorrow I'd be in pain for several days afterwards. I have to pick my battles. Some things are just not worth the pain.

We'd worked out that walking around towns was bad news for me a couple of years ago, so we tried forest or country walks, and that summer that was grand up to a point. We'd drive to somewhere where I could walk without hurting myself. I could rest when needed as woodland tends to have lots of benches or logs to sit on and the softer ground was sympathetic to the cries of my joints. As is often my way, when something goes well I want more, more, moaaaaar. After a second walk over this particular weekend we were about to go back to the car when I looked down to close a farmer's gate and BOOM! The next thing I knew I was laying down. As I turned to the left to roll over and get up, I saw asphalt - my head was in the road. At first I thought I just fell, but hubby said I just tipped over backwards suddenly. More to the point there was no sense of falling. None. One second I was latching the gate, the next my head was about to be road pizza. For the second time since I'd had Fibromyalgia and CFS, I'd passed out from overexertion. (The first time it happened I was hoovering. I woke up with a big headache and a lump on my forehead where I'd conked out and bashed my head on the radiator.)

So then I realised this CFS business was a serious bugger and I'd better rethink this walking malarkey. So the walks got shorter, and then other problems appeared. Walking in woods in the summer is fine - the ground is usually dry, but once it starts to rain, there's lots of mud for me to slip in. My legs went east and west respectively while I was trying to climb up an almost vertical slope one time and I almost pulled hubby down with me when he offered me a hand ;) Then CFS made my balance worse, and I started tripping a lot. There are no end of tree branches and holes in the ground in woodland, so hubby found himself having to walk in front of me pointing out every inch of terrain in case I had a fall. It was a massive pain in the tits for both of us. I was scared of falling and hurting myself, and he was probably scared I'd fall on him and flatten him, hahahaa!

For a while it looked like I'd have to give up on walks altogether, but the dead came to save me! I love photography and history, and if I can put them together then all the better. We started driving to old churches with parking nearby. There are always LOADS of benches in graveyards and as they're places of solitude no one minds if you sit on a bench for half an hour. I can walk around taking photos of old gravestones, sit down for a breather if I need one, even eat a spot of lunch if we brought some. When I've had enough we go back to the car to go home.

Another thing I worked out was I can walk a bit further if there are no stupid hills to contend with. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer at times! I have a very gammy knee and it really doesn't like hills. It tends to get a bit irate and start wobbling about dangerously if it has to contend with hills, so another thing we can do now we have the car is drive to somewhere where it's all flat and have a little perambulate. I live in a town which is up and down like no one's business but there is one very flat bit - the sea front. Genius - what do seafronts always have? Loads of friggin' benches, that's what! Why do you think old people love the seaside so much? Benches, mo'fuggers!

So, although I can no longer go on bloody great yomps through town and country, I can adapt walks to my health sitch and still get a little bit of time out in the fresh air, which is what really invigorates me. On the days where I'm really not up to a walk, hubby will sometimes indulge me by taking me on a drive, as just getting out of the house can be a tonic.

In my roundabout, not-at-all-articulate way this is positive, or it's supposed to be. No matter what changes ill health may bring you, it is possible to adapt and still do something that makes your heart sing, just perhaps in a slightly more gentle way than you used to do it.

Thanks for reading!