Community News
Travel Tip: Cindy Knows Travel

Traveling, for most, is an exciting and enlightening activity filled with rich experiences and a plethora of surprises. But it can also present challenges, especially in the context of maintaining one’s wellness routine. I recently had the opportunity to travel to Marrakesh, Morocco—a totally outside-the-box trip that I was equal parts excited and nervous about. Morocco, as a whole, has never been at the top of my bucket list. Keeping up with my healthy habits is relatively easy when I’m in, say, Costa Rica or the Virgin Islands, but Morocco presented new challenges. Here are five things you should know when travelling to a country like Morocco: 1. Pack healthy snacks. 2. Download a few meditations. 3. Indulge in a spa treatment. 4. Hydrate all the time. 5. Be flexible and kind to yourself.

Living Your Best Life

How do you live your best life? How do you live a life that matters to you? Your values shape how you live. In an ideal world, your day-to-day activities and your sense of what is meaningful are connected. Life is not always ideal, though. What could change? How do you motivate yourself? Counselling is a safe and neutral place to examine this: to find ways to line your behaviour up with your values, to come up with a plan, and to find ways around the obstacles that arise.

Feeding Pets While Travelling

Dog and cat owners, if you are planning a vacation this summer with your pet, remember to take along ample food for your furry friend! Always use the same food you use while at home – don’t switch brands when away to try to save luggage space, as this will likely cause you and your pet incredible grief. Call ahead to your destination to see if there is a retail store in the area that sells your pet food – this would be the smart way to save luggage space and to keep your pet happy and, most importantly, healthy!

Smile Confidently

Dental implants from offer a great way to replace missing teeth and also provide patients with the option of having removable partial or complete dentures. Implants provide excellent support and stability for these dental appliances. Dental implants are artificial roots (titanium) that are surgically placed into the upper or lower jaw bone by a dentist or periodontist (a specialist of the gums and supporting bone). The teeth attached to implants are very natural looking and often enhance or restore a patient’s smile! Dental implants are strong and durable and will last many years. On occasion they will have to be re-tightened or replaced due to normal wear.

Electromagnetic Energy and Your Health

Heath Canada’s Safety Code 6 was created in the 1950s to protect radar workers’ bodies from being excessively heated by the electromagnetic energy being emitted from radar. The Code was never designed to protect people from long-term, low-level exposures that are below that which heats tissue, but nevertheless damages cells by altering their function. Many devices these days emit low levels of electromagnetic energy, and we are around them all the time. Thousands of scientific studies have shown an association between so-called non-thermal exposures and all classes of disease, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and brain cancer.

Plan Your Financial Goals

Vince Lombardi once said “the man on top of the mountain did not fall there”. Just as it takes planning and effort to scale a mountain, it also takes effort to plan and maintain a spending plan, set financial goals, save for emergencies and retirement. All we do contributes to either the realization of our goals or leaves us short of reaching them. We all want to live our best lives, so get out the pen and paper or Excel spreadsheet and start. Step by step and soon we will be there.

Healthy Aging

Aging is a natural process affected by the environment, genetics, lifestyle, and health, and is unique to each individual. To maintain independence and control requires an active and healthy lifestyle: exercise, healthy diet, intellectual activities, and a variety of social activities. Careful planning is required to maintain basic levels of functioning. Physical inactivity makes your body age faster, causing loss in bone strength, muscle strength, heart and lung fitness, and flexibility. Active living and physical activity improve posture and balance, self-esteem, and weight maintenance; lead to stronger muscles and bones; and contribute to relaxation and stress reduction.

Summer – Time for Change

Whether it’s the long daylight hours or relaxed daily schedules, we seem to let fewer things bother us in the summer. Things are just right for something new or a change!
A very big part of change through clinical counselling is AWARENESS. When we become aware of what we are feeling, thinking, or physically doing, we open a door of opportunity to potentially new choices and decisions that may be better; more of what we genuinely want to feel, think, or do. July can be your month for awareness and change! Contact a registered counsellor for help.

Bio-Hacking for Beautiful Skin

Proper functioning of our skin cells is the foundation of healthy skin, and healthy skin is beautiful skin! As our outermost defence layer, our skin is susceptible to damage: scars caused by acne and burns, stretch marks, hyperpigmentation, and of course wrinkles and fine lines. Micro-needling can treat the root of this damage. During a treatment, special micro-needles are used to create thousands of micro lesions in the dermis, and this stimulates growth factors that induce collagen and elastin production in the skin, improving the function of the cells and thus the texture and appearance!

Music and Brain Plasticity

Brain-imaging techniques have revealed the brain’s plasticity and have identified networks that music activates. The brain areas activated by music are not unique to music. These networks also process other functions. Musical and non-musical functions share systems. For example, motor control and executive control share circuits with music. Music can activate and drive complex patterns of interaction between the other two, so that a stroke patient and someone with Parkinson’s increases movement, and someone with traumatic brain injury increases cognitive functioning, such as problem solving or decision making.

Book Club: Making a Good Brain Great

By Daniel Amen, MD. When our brains work right, we work right. But the brain is easily injured. A bump on the head, sleep deprivation and poor nutrition can all have long-term consequences leading to problems with attention, mood and even dementia. Dr. Amen shares his exciting insights into protecting, repairing and maintaining our brains with good nutrition, supplements and special exercises. A great read!