Community News
Product Spotlight: OxyFresh Dental Gel

Are you experiencing mouth pain? Try a natural alternative to oral pain gel. Oxyfresh Dental Gel offers instant relief to sore and swollen gum tissues. Condition, soothe and deodorize your teeth and gums with Super Relief Dental Gel from Oxyfresh. With a super-fresh wintergreen flavor, Super Relief Formula delivers powerful healing power with Tea Tree Oil, Chamomile, Aloe Vera, Essential Oils and Folic Acid. Super Relief Gel is formulated with Oxyfresh’s patented odor-eliminating combination of zinc and Oxygene® to promote fresh breath by neutralizing the volatile sulfur compounds responsible for halitosis. Super Relief Dental Gel also helps eliminate canker sores, speeds healing of oral cuts and scrapes, deodorizes oral wounds and conditions irritated gums.

Sarah Sangalang, www.reflectionsdentalhealth.ca

Assessing our Relationships

There comes a time in our lives when we are in need of evaluating our relationships to assess what life is giving and serving us and what is no longer meeting our needs and holding us back. It is important to distinguish between unfinished resentments that need to be expressed and cleared in order to open up communication and ease between friends, versus getting stuck in old entrenched patterns that have nowhere to go and keep being played out. One of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves is surrounding our lives with loving and kind people. Creating an inventory of who is in your life, where you are spending your time and how enriched you are feeling is valuable information. Sometimes a person comes into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime, and we don’t always know their purpose in advance!

D’Arcy Bruning-Haid, www.souls-journey.com

Who Should You Know Better Than Anyone Else?

Have you ever met a celebrity? How many family and friends do you know on a personal level? Whose advice do you take over anyone else’s? Now here’s a good one for you – do you know yourself? Often, we are so focused on work, family, friends and daily distractions that we have never taken the time to get to know ourselves. As an example, I was so busy trying to be the best at everything and become an all-star at life, that for years I ignored myself and the aspects of me that needed TLC, growth, and attention – until my health and happiness reached an all-time low. Then I got to know myself in a hurry! In order to prevent problems from arising OR to dig yourself out of them – I highly recommend that you connect and listen to… You. It may be surprising what you can resolve for yourself.

Shannon Russell, BodyMind Freedom Solutions, www.thedashmethod.com

Float Your Way to Happiness

People generally have heard about floating by the terms “pods” or “tanks,” and start to feel claustrophobic. Float “Cabins” are different. Float Cabins come as large as four feet wide, eight feet long, and nearly seven feet high, and they are easily accessible easy to come out of with standard swing or sliding doors. Within each float cabin, 10 inches of water is infused with up with 1,000 pounds of dissolved Epsom salts, this makes the water extremely buoyant. With the option to remove light and sound, you experience the sensation of floating through space. Other options include the ability to play your own music and enjoy colour therapy as well. Floating regularly helps reduce physical and mental stresses on the body. The brain gives out alpha waves associated with meditation that allows the body to recover from stress and relax. Floatation therapy is a simple way to invest in your own health and happiness.

Fluid Float Studio, www.fluidfloat.com

Have You Tried Kefir?

Kefir is a unique cultured dairy product and one of the most probiotic-rich foods on the planet. Drinking Kefir has incredible medicinal benefits for your digestion and gut health. It’s tart and refreshing flavor is similar to a drinking-style yogurt, but it contains beneficial yeast as well as friendly probiotic bacteria found in yogurt. The naturally occurring bacteria and yeast in combine symbiotically to give superior health benefits when consumed regularly. It is loaded with valuable vitamins and minerals and contains easily digestible complete proteins. For the lactose intolerant, kefir’s abundance of beneficial yeast and bacteria provide lactase, an enzyme which consumes most of the lactose left after the culturing process. Drink up for benefits to your immune system, your bowels (see you later, IBS symptoms!), and your bones. It helps fight allergies, improves lactose digestion, supports detoxification, and even kills candida.

Disability Tax Credit, www.disabilitytaxcreditwinnipeg.com

Positive Mental Health is a Laughing Matter

While living with mental illness is no joke, laughing for positive mental and physical health seriously works. In fact, evidence supports the claim that a joyful heart provides a similar benefit to that of medicine. Although not considered a replacement for medical treatment, some doctors are using laughter as an adjunctive therapy. In the short and long term, laughter has been shown to, 1. Stimulate/boost the immune system; 2. Alleviate pain; 3. Reduce anxiety and stress; 4. Reduce depression; and, 5. Promote a sense of hopefulness. What if you don’t feel like laughing? No problem, fake it until you make it. Physiologically speaking, for the most part, your body doesn’t know the difference. And, faking it often leads to the real thing which may be exactly the health supplement you need to get to the positive side of negative circumstances.

Sean Miller, Canadian Mental Health Association, mbwpg.cmha.ca

Book Club: Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear!

Empowering author Elizabeth Gilbert asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

Did You Know?

Blue corn has been popping up as an ingredient everywhere from tortilla chips to breakfast cereal. New research suggests that anthocyanins, the nutrients that give the corn its blue color, may help protect against metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer!

www.newhope.com

Clean Eating: Spaghetti Squash “Mac ‘n’ Cheese”

Ingredients:

1 large spaghetti squash

3 tbsp coconut oil

3 tbsp spelt flour

2 cups unsweetened almond milk

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp onion or garlic powder

pinch ground black pepper

1 cup (4 oz) any hard cheese, shredded.

Red pepper flakes, to taste. Preheat oven to 375ºF. Wash squash, cut in half lengthwise and remove seeds with a spoon. Place cut side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 40-50 minutes. Let cool and separate into strands with a fork. Preheat medium pot on low-medium heat and melt oil. Whisk in flour and milk until smooth. Add salt, onion powder and pepper; whisk and let simmer for about 4 minutes or until sauce has slightly thickened. Add cheese and whisk again until smooth. Add squash and mix gently with a spoon to combine. Cover and let squash warm through for about 5 minutes. Enjoy!

www.ifoodreal.com

The Mindful Valentine

Valentine’s Day.. a day for celebrating love (and chocolate). I often refer to mindful eating as a way of practicing self-care around food. Taking care of yourself by making conscious decisions that leave you feeling better after eating. Not worse. How do you show love for yourself around food? Write yourself a letter and count the ways you love thee or could love thee. “I eat sitting down. I pay attention to my first few bites. I chew thoroughly before my next bite. I eat anything without guilt. I ask myself if I’m hungry before I eat. I listen to my body to see how hungry I am before my first bite. When I eat too much, I just learn from it and move on. I eat for fuel, nourishment, and pleasure. Every day is a day for showing yourself love around food. Celebrate how you nourish your body and spirit.

Lisa Kehler, Off Your Plate Nutrition, www.offyourplatenutrition.ca

Self-Improvement 101

Is there something about your health, personal life or career you would like to improve? The first step is having the desire to change whatever is affecting you. Once you have a desire, you then begin to focus on the end result you wish to create. Sometimes it is smooth sailing to bridge the gap between a desire and reaching the goal. Sometimes it is a lot of work and effort to get there. How much do our inner blocks, limiting beliefs and self-sabotage affect and hinder our ability to reach our goals? What I have learned is that the inner struggles, strife and negative self-talk we are up against are the major contributing factors preventing us from achieving our desires and goals. The key is to become aware of these inner factors and fully resolve them, which clears the inner path to reach your goals.

Shannon Russell, BodyMind Freedom Solutions, www.thedashmethod.com