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Natural Methods for Managing Your Blood Sugar

August 4, 2021 By Ann E. Nelson Leave a Comment

Natural Methods for Managing Your Blood Sugar

Image credit: Pixabay.com

Growing old is a natural part of life. Because everyone gets old eventually, we should learn to embrace aging rather than fear it. Unfortunately, modern lifestyles and diets have made it harder to age gracefully. The abundance of food high in trans fats, processed sugars, and much more takes a toll on our bodies, leaving us more vulnerable to dietary and lifestyle diseases.

It’s high time that we as a society took aging seriously. Our previous article on ‘How to Take Care of Your Liver’ touches on this by listing out small lifestyle changes that can help keep your liver healthier for longer.

On a similar note, today we’re going to take a look at simple, natural methods to help you manage another important part of your health— specifically, your blood sugar. Take a look below at some things you can do to avoid harmful blood sugar spikes and all of the nasty side effects that follow.

Up Your Fiber Intake

Carbs can be some of the biggest traps for people living with diabetes or who are struggling to manage their blood glucose levels. Unfortunately, carbs play a big role in the modern diet, so they can be hard to avoid if you don’t have alternatives. A great option is to shift to food high in fiber, instead, like vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

Why is that? According to Verywell Health, fiber is harder to break down than carbohydrates. Because it takes longer to break down, you don’t get those dangerous spikes in your blood sugar levels. Fiber-rich foods also make you feel full for longer, so you don’t feel tempted to snack too often.

Exercise Regularly

Exercise is essential to health and wellness, but you might be surprised to learn that it also plays an important role in managing your blood sugar levels. Sustained physical activity like exercise has been found to lower blood glucose levels and even improve your body’s sensitivity to insulin, lowering the blood glucose levels even further.

But how do you exercise if you have diabetes? Mayo Clinic has listed out helpful tips, including general guidelines for your blood sugar levels before, during, and after exercise. While monitoring your blood sugar so often can seem troublesome, it’s important for keeping track of how your body responds to exercise, as it can differ among people.

Adjust Your Diet

Blood sugar is what provides our cells with energy, and the root of it all can be traced back to our food. Everyone knows that diet plays an important part in blood glucose levels. A modern diet high in trans fats, sugars, and much more can greatly contribute to blood sugar level spikes.

So what’s the best and simplest solution? Adjusting your diet. You can opt for foods that are low on the glycemic index, including green vegetables, bran breakfast cereals, most fruits, and legumes. Brightcore also suggests solutions like ACV, which can come in gummy form and have been found to lower blood sugar levels. By diversifying your food and supplements, you’ll find your blood sugar levels to be easier to manage and more predictable.

Keep Stress Levels Low

Stress can be a surprising contributor to diabetes, and it’s one that you should definitely be paying attention to. Research collated by Medical News Today shows that stress can affect your blood sugar in a variety of ways: through your lifestyle, such as stress-induced overeating, or through prompting hormonal changes that disrupt the function of insulin.

To counteract this, experts recommend making use of techniques such as meditation to lower stress levels. Anger management and stress management training can also help contribute to an overall higher feeling of wellbeing and good health.

Filed Under: Retirement Planning Tagged With: blood sugar

Have you ever thought about your spit?

June 8, 2021 By Ann E. Nelson Leave a Comment

Have you ever thought about your spit? If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t at all, except for when it becomes annoying (like when you exercise and might have too much of it).

But your spit, or your saliva, to be more exact, is really something you should know a little bit more about. That’s because it’s not just water; it’s an actual indicator not just of the health of your mouth, but the health of your digestive tract. That’s because saliva isn’t just water. It’s enzymes and proteins, minerals and antibacterial compounds.

It helps to balance out the pH levels in your mouth, which in turn protects your teeth. And it also can help to heal wounds and get rid of nasty food chemicals. What more should you know about how your saliva functions and how you can make sure it keeps doing its job?

This graphic explains it.

Healthy Saliva, Healthy YouHealthy Saliva, Healthy You

Filed Under: Retirement Planning

DIY Investing, One Way To Keep Focused On Achieving Financial Independence.

January 21, 2021 By Ann E. Nelson Leave a Comment

When my SMSF (Self Managed Superannuation Fund) was established my advisor at the time, Heath Hill, advised me to have my funds allocated between Australian Shares that paid a dividend and cash. As I already owned property it was decided I did not need any more in my retirement super fund. After a few years of attending seminars and joining Investor groups I decided to have a go at DIY Investing and manage my retirement savings super fund. It is one way to keep focused on acheiving financial independence.

I would like to say it is easy but I can’t, you need to be disciplined and you need to have a financial plan for your Superfund. Buying and selling shares is not the hard part. You can save money by setting up your own online broking account and do the trading yourself. The hard part is knowing what to buy, what allocation to have between the various asset classes and when to sell.

Your age plays a part in all of this as well. If you are under the age of 45 years then you have the luxury of more time to invest in property as it is considered a more long term investment. If on the other hand you are over 55 years then other things become important to you such as having income generating assets once work stops.

Invest in Yourself
Retire Well Retire Happy Invest In Yourself

Will I always do it myself? I imagine that once I get into my mid 70’s I will probably just invest in funds that own a spread of the best companies. In the meantime, I am still learning. I have attended a Successful Investor Group and now follow Peter Castle from EasyShareTradingsystems.com.au.

To reduce my risk I have diversified investments across various financial instruments, industries, and other categories. This technique allows my investments to maximize returns by investing in different areas.

I have diversified my investing pool in:-
  • First Mortgage Lending
  • Australian Shares
  • US Stocks
  • UK Start-Ups
  • CryptoCurrency

If you want to give DIY (Do it Yourself) investing a go then you need to learn to invest in yourself, and you need to practice. Our retirement savings will probably be the largest amount of money we have ever had to look after so the earlier you start your financial education the better investor you will become.

Find an organization to join that represents the interests of the investor. In Australia, the Australian Investors Association (AIA) holds an annual conference at the Gold Coast, Queensland every year and is an excellent place to start your investor knowledge.

DIY Investing is doable. It takes time, practice, planning, and patience.

Filed Under: Retirement Planning, Travel in Retirement Tagged With: Invest In Yourself, RWRH

What’s your Retirement Vision? Time To Discover the Secret of Compromise.

June 19, 2020 By Ann E. Nelson Leave a Comment

What’s It Like Living Overseas – Try Before You Buy In PortugalThe retirement vision is something we eagerly await. Some of us have a clearly defined picture of our future retired lives. We know the location, the activities, the travel and dream of the free time. What happens then when this definition of our retired life is not duplicated by our partner? After all those years together, could we possibly want a different life in retirement to them?

“Retirement is a major stressor on relationships, because people are so preoccupied with setting up the financial bedrock of retirement that they don’t think about interpersonal challenges. They don’t think about the lifestyle change,” says Bornstein, co-author of How to Age in Place written with his wife, psychologist Mary Languirand.

Retirement can be about compromise. One of the reasons for disagreement is deciding where to live in retirement. In the past retired folks tended to stick close to their family and friends, and it worked well. They could rely on support as they age. Longevity has increased our lifespan, complicating things. It is now not so simple.

One trend is to downsize and go and live with likeminded golden-agers. The advantage of this move is to reduce the amount of work in and around the house and we also gain the ability to share our lives with others with similar interests.

Another trend is to relocate overseas to achieve a lower cost of living, live in a milder climate and be closer to all those places you wanted to visit but never had the time to go. Increased support for expats via websites and magazine articles has encouraged people to take the plunge and move to a foreign country. If your hobbies and interests are portable then it is not difficult to make the move.

Here are some helpful things you should consider when relocating. Whether you are moving within your state, interstate or to another country, having a register of what is important to you will assist you as you research prospective retirement locations. The reasons for relocating and what is important to you will influence what is on your register.

Tricia Pimental, author and the Portuguese correspondent for International Living, was convinced by her husband to move to Portugal. With a hesitant start, Tricia fell in love:-

  • with the history;
  • architecture;
  • museums;
  • the weather;
  • the Roman ruins in her adopted country

and found the ideal platform to continue her love of writing completing her third book, A Moveable Marriage.

After renting for a number of  years they are now bought their own property to cement their commitment to sharing their dream in new terrain.  Have a listen to Tricia’s story.

As you approach Retirement it is the time to discover the secret of compromise.

Until next time.

Ann

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Filed Under: Retirement Planning

Get Back An Hour Every Day – The Time Crunch Crisis

August 15, 2019 By Ann E. Nelson Leave a Comment

If only I could get back an hour in every day!

The real question is, as a retiree, why would you want an hour back? To get things done, right?

Here are 3 things that get in the road and ways to overcome them so that you get back that hour, everyday.

Overwhelmed by Email

focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us‘Ping’. You’ve got mail it used to say.

But now it’s either a distraction from the important task at hand or more work.

Email can get out of hand and it seems like a mountain of a task to get it back under control.

I have a client who, when we first met, had 6000 emails in his email inbox.

Enter Inbox Zero – a rigorous approach to email management aimed at keeping the inbox empty — or almost empty — at all times. Inbox Zero was developed by Merlin Mann.

Why do you want to have your inbox empty or almost empty?

It eliminates distractions, those emails that shout at you when you are attempting to concentrate on the important tasks at hand.

Some tips to become an email ninja:

Only check your email 3 or 4 times a day, or once an hour, on the hour.

Add a line under your email signature that says something like “I only check my emails 3 or 4 times a day. If it’s urgent, please call me.

Close your email client down when you want to focus on other tasks.

Down tools at the end of the day. Choose a time to finish and set an alarm so that you do finish.

And if you can’t close your email client down, at least turn your notifications off. There’s an hour back just from eliminating the distractions.

Taking on Too Much

One of the main reason people don’t have enough time is because there have filled their schedule so full that there isn’t any peace. No down time. No gaps.

And why, sometimes, do we as retirees take on too much? Sometimes it’s FOMO – Fear of Missing Out.

In the bigger scheme, you are always missing out on something. You can’t be at every meeting, every presentation, every gathering in town. Reduce your focus to what’s important.

One way to do that…Boundaries – say NO. Boundaries are put in place to keep us safe. People interrupt with the best intentions but it isn’t always the right time. You may be in the middle of something important. Put up a boundary. Say no but be polite/diplomatic. An example could be “That doesn’t work for me right now. It could work in two to three hours time, check back then”.

No Systems

Systems give us structure. Without them, life can feel chaotic or a mess. Use some of these to overcome the feeling of helplessness.

Don’t trust your memory – write everything down. You may say ‘Yeh, but I’ve got a great memory. It doesn’t matter. The shortest pencil is longer that the longest memory.

Create a trusted system – somewhere to write stuff so it will get done and not be forgotten. It doesn’t matter if it’s a paper planner (Filofax/notebook) or an app on your phone (OneNote/Evernote/ Notes).

A system beats using scraps of paper (back of an envelope/napkin/notepad/post-it note) that can be misplaced. And I’m sure, if it’s not you, we have all heard someone say ‘It’s around here somewhere’.

Set achievable to do lists, not 100 tasks to be done today. Because with 100 tasks, you are just setting yourself up for disappointment. 10 to 15 tasks and then prioritise them.

Article by Les Watson, Australia’s Time Lord.

Connect with Les Watson Online

Filed Under: Retirement Planning Tagged With: Les Watson, time crunch, time lord

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Recent Posts

  • Natural Methods for Managing Your Blood Sugar
  • Sometimes Life Throws You A Curve Ball and Forces Us Down A New Path
  • Have you ever thought about your spit?
  • DIY Investing, One Way To Keep Focused On Achieving Financial Independence.
  • What’s your Retirement Vision? Time To Discover the Secret of Compromise.

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