In February we celebrate National Wear Red Day to help promote prevention of heart disease in women.

Let us make healthier choices to beat heart disease. It can be prevented with the right lifestyle – the food you eat, the exercise you do, and the lifestyle you lead.

Let us celebrate Go Red for Women Day every day by adding red healthy heart-healing foods to our meals.

• Try to incorporate more beets into your diet to strengthen the heart, improve circulation, purify/detox the blood, lower blood pressure. Beet Salad Recipes
  
• Try to eat more pomegranates and water melons, and drink more tomato juice to lower your blood pressure. Watermelon and Strawberry ice Cream Recipe
  
• Try to eat half a red grapefruit before every meal, or at least in the morning, before breakfast to lower your cholesterol. Studies show that it helps to loose weight too. Grapefruit and Walnut Salad
  
• Try to add raw red onions (cook with white onions) to all your salads, spreads, side dishes, etc. to cut bad cholesterol. Roasted Vegetables Recipe
  
• Try to eat more red legumes, such as adzuki beans, red lentils and kidney beans rich in both tryptophan (to reduce stress and fight seasonal depression) and heart-healing fiber to reduce your blood pressure, detox your colon and give you more energy. Lentil Recipes
  
• Try to eat red (purple) cabbage to get rid of constipation, which ultimately canlower your blood pressure.
  
• Try to eat more red salmon and red apples (any color) -foods rich in Magnesium to reduce stress.
  

Let us be heart smart, shall we?

Breathe, smile and be happy.

© Irina Wardas, HHC

Women’s Holistic Health and Nutrition Coach and Relationship Expert

The Holidays are the most stressful time of the year.  You may experience one or more to the following: holiday anxiety and stress, seasonal depression, colds and flu, and financial stress. My suggestion: let’s hug!

Are you a hugging person? Actually it doesn’t matter, because if hugging is a challenge for you, it may be even better – we all need challenges from time to time, am I right?

So give hugs to people you love and people you know, and maybe even people you don’t.

I would like to share with you an excerpt from an article about hug therapy stress relief by Michael Clutton.

Hugs are good for any occasion: birthdays, holidays, greetings, good byes or sometimes just because you want to. When you get a hug, you feel warm, fuzzy and complete.  The hug of another person expresses a certain feeling of union and caring.  They’re a friendly way to express appreciation of another person.

There are group hugs, tender lover hugs, around the waist hugs, kissing hugs, sweet and tender hugs and yes, even the grab-ass hug.  There is the awkward “lean in” for the timid and the breathtaking squeeze-you-till-your-eyes-pop hug.

As a stress relief tool, hugging can help us boost our immune system, fight  colds and flu, increase our energy level and avoid seasonal depression.

Let us hug, breathe, smile and be happy.

Irina Wardas, HHC

Women’s Holistic Health and Nutrition Counselor and Coach