#good-advice

[riverszenonline-blog]

Daily Meditation: I Pay Attention to Good Advice

[healthmagazine-1677-yahoopa-blog]

8 ‘Helpful’ Things That Don’t Really Help People With Disabilities

An interesting conversation picked up on Reddit this week when a user posted the following question to people with disabilities: “What is something that we (presumably people without disabilities) do that we think helps, but it really doesn’t?” In just a day, more than 9,000 comments rolled in, and people living with all types of health conditions — from physical disabilities to developmental delays to invisible illnesses — offered a lot of great insight.

If you’re unfamiliar with what it’s like to live with a health condition, you may not even realize when you’re not actually being that helpful. (That’s OK because that’s where we come in). According to Redditors, here are eight common mistakes people make when they’re trying to help:

1. Helping without asking.

“I love when people help me, but please always ask first, and if I say, ‘No thanks, I’ve got it,’ then go on with your day. Or better yet, strike up a conversation!”

Related: My Son Only Lived for 80 Minutes, but He Helped Save Many Lives

“A friend of a friend of mine who [uses a wheelchair] told us how people constantly offer to push her to her destination, and often times go to start push (sic) her along. One person said, ‘I’m helping!’ as he started pushing her in her chair. She yelled back, ‘No, you’re kidnapping!!’ He stopped.”

2. Changing the way you talk.

“A wheelchair doesn’t make someone hard of hearing. Or stupid. Stop acting like it does.”

“I’m hearing impaired (or hard of hearing, as the Deaf community prefers to put it). Do. Not. Yell at top volume, reeeaaaaaallllllly painfully slow. Just like it isn’t going to help a Spanish person understand the English you are speaking, it’s going to make you look real stupid to me… and everyone else we are around. It might work for you with Grandma, but I’m not your granny. Face me so I can read your lips, speak sharp and speak clear and we cool.”

Related: To the Typical Siblings of a Brother or Sister With a Disability

“Don’t bend down to my level to talk to me, I can hear you perfectly well, and it’s incredibly demeaning.”

“I have an autism spectrum disorder… Just talk to me like you would anyone else, and if I need something explained to me, I will ask. It’s that simple.”

3. Saying “But you don’t look [disabled, sick, etc.]“

“‘But you don’t look sick.’ ‘Well you don’t look like a doctor, but that’s just my opinion.‘”

“The thing is, people without visible disabilities… often hear ‘But you don’t look sick’ as an excuse for the person saying it to not take the condition seriously or not give proper accommodations. In those cases it’s not a compliment, it’s an accusation. It happens way more often than you’d expect, and since it’s not just annoying but often an obstacle to actually getting the help needed to get on with your life, it gets old fast.”

Related: Why Asking for Help With My Eating Disorder Was a Sign of Strength — Not Weakness

4. Feeling sorry.

“I don’t want to be pitied for something I can’t do anything about. It makes me feel less human/inferior.”

“Pity is condescending, it ignores a person’s talents, relationships, accomplishments and joys and paints them as nothing more than a thing that suffers.”

5. Offering medical advice.

“My husband has chronic migraines. I can’t tell you the number of times someone suggests f**king Excedrin. ‘Oh really? I’ve lived with migraines for 20 years and I never thought to try over-the-counter Excedrin! Tell me more about how it helped you with a really bad headache once.'”

Related: What Life Is Like for a Mom and Her 3 Kids With Down Syndrome

“Someone told me cashews could cure depression. I… may not have been the most tactful in my response.”

“Believe me, unless you are a researcher who specializes in my condition, you probably don’t know more about treatments than me.”

6. Calling a person “inspiring” or “brave.”

“I laugh when people call me an inspiration. If they only knew. No Hallmark movies to be made about me anytime soon. lol”

“This! I’m being praised for going to university and doing normal random everyday stuff.What am I supposed to do, sit on my ass all day and wait to die?”

“There’s nothing brave or strong about it. I exist. My strength and courage comes from what I do. Not what I am.”

Related: 12 Things Not to Say to Parents of Kids With Autism

7. Shrugging off an illness you can’t see.

“I have a chronic pain condition. Please don’t tell me it’s all in my head. Everything we experience, we experience through the brain. Of course it’s in my head.”

“Just because someone looks OK to you, doesn’t mean you should treat them like they’re faking it.”

8. Avoiding eye contact or keeping your questions to yourself.

“I have some form of Tourette’s syndrome. I love questions. Questions show concern and interest, and that is (for me at least) infinitely more preferable than awkward tension.”

“I only have one eye. Look, I already know I look different. I understand that your kid is curious. That’s a good thing. Let me answer their questions. They can learn something and find out that I’m still a nice guy even though I look different. Don’t make them feel afraid to talk to people who don’t look exactly like them.”

Related: 10 Signs That You Are a Special Needs Parent

But remember, everyone is different.

“Many of the things that some people don’t want could likewise be things others might welcome. The point is, everyone is different and has different needs and feelings about their situation in life. My advice is engage in a conversation and ask if there is anything you can do. If the answer is yes, help. If the answer is no, fine. This applies to everyone — not just those people with a clear physical impairment.”

By The Mighty Staff

[healthmagazine-1677-yahoopa-blog]

3 Healthy Habits From Toddlerhood Worth Reinstating

Don’t leave the house for the day without a game plan for meals and snacks. A toddler wouldn’t. (Photo by Getty Images). 

Most folks who were fortunate enough to have a reasonably happy childhood look back at that time of life with great nostalgia. To many, early childhood represents a period of life where there was beauty in simplicity – a happy time before life became so complicated, so fraught with stress and worry, so busy.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the complexity we adults face is self-imposed – particularly as it pertains to our health. In fact, when I reflect on who my healthiest patients are, I notice they tend to have one thing in common: They live a lot like my kids did during toddlerhood. Here’s how:   Toddlers don’t leave the house for the day without a game plan for meals and snacks. Look into the purse of any toddler parent, and chances are you’ll find a filled water bottle, a banana, Ziploc baggies loaded with baby carrots, cheese cubes and maybe some crackers or a PB&J. In addition to the loaded purse, toddler parents generally know where they’ll be for lunch that day – and very often, even what they’re going to eat. That’s because no parent in his or her right mind wants to get caught out and about with a hangry toddler in tow – or find themselves without a game plan when the lunch hour rolls around. 

At some point in adulthood, though, we abandon the practice of planning our food for the day in advance – and as a result, we’re at the mercy of whatever vending machine, quick-service food establishment or coffee shop bakery case we encounter when hunger creeps up on us. And yet, we all know precisely at what time our tummy is going to grumble – for a mid-morning snack, for lunch, for an afternoon snack. Why on earth don’t we plan for it? Whether you choose to pack your own lunch or snacks, plan to pick some up on your way to work or simply decide in advance where you’ll be when hunger strikes, thinking ahead helps you best control what goes into your mouth.  And it’s far easier to make a good choice when you’re not starving than when you are.   Toddlers stop eating when they’re full. One of the strangest observations I’ve made when watching my own children eat was seeing my young daughter stop eating midway through a small chocolate macaron. With half a cookie left, shesimply put it down on the table, declared that she was finished and moved on to the next playtime activity on her preschool agenda. Since that time, I’ve seen both my kids walk away mid-slice from favorite treats such as birthday cake or pizza – and, albeit less surprisingly, from typical family dinners when even a favorite food was being served. They just weren’t hungry anymore.

Indeed, before influences such as parental feeding practices, food advertising and portion distortion have the chance to influence them too significantly, young children are typically very good at self-regulating their intake to meet their needs. The instinct to self-regulate in this manner is pretty hard to relate to as an adult living in America, but it’s actually not impossible to recreate with some deliberate behavioral interventions.

I won’t even try to pass myself off as someone who has enough self-restraint to similarly stop eating the last bite of a cookie, but I can say I’ve come a long way in terms of stopping with meals well before I feel stuffed. I started to make progress in my 20s, when I dated a willowy young professor whose lean years as a grad student had trained him well in the practice of saving leftovers for another day. While our romantic relationship ended, its legacy lives on to this day in my enthusiasm for requesting that my server box up even the smallest vestiges of my restaurant meal that, if consumed, would push me over the edge from satisfied to comatose. And at home, I’ve cultivated an enviable Tupperware collection to accommodate leftovers in all volumes, shapes and sizes to the same effect. For me, it’s all come down to shifting my mindset from “this tastes so good I just want to keep eating it even though I’m full” to “this tastes so good that if I stop now, I can enjoy the leftovers again tomorrow for lunch.”   Toddlers invented interval training. In our family, we joke that my almost 4-year-old son still doesn’t know how to walk. Rather, he has two modes: standing still or running. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time with a little person knows they’re prone to constant bursts of energy and activity, punctuated by a brief lull while they contemplate their next move. Why stroll when sprinting will do? Why wait for the elevator when there’s a giant stairwell to scramble up, skipping steps along the way just for sport?

We adults tend to reserve this type of behavior for the gym only, and even then only when under the supervision of a personal trainer egging us on to push ourselves. But opportunity for heart-healthy bursts of cardio activity present themselves daily if you’re open to them, and they can add up in terms of calories burned and fitness conditioning. A very small recent study has even shown cardiovascular benefits associated with one minute of daily, super intense activity just three times per week among obese participants. 

So why not race up the stairs adjacent to the escalator during your morning commute or dash into the stairwell when the elevator arrives at work to see if you can beat it up to your intended floor? Why not jog to the stop sign on alternating blocks as you walk to work? Why not jump over every white line in the parking lot as you head into the mall or grocery store? A toddler would.

[josiedavidmoeb53-blog]

HI ALAN - Words can't describe it! No bother giving up, in fact cigarette smoking now repulses me.