Published on: 03 November 2018
Last Updated on: 19 July 2019
Many artists use art not only to express their ideas and thoughts but also to relieve stress. Artists claim that creating art can provide a catharsis for difficult emotions, distract you from your worries and much more. Also, getting into the state of “flow” can also be restorative for your mind. As all the mentioned benefits aren’t enough, you will get a beautiful piece of art in the end.
It is essential to know that art shouldn’t be created and enjoyed only by those who are talented or artistically inclined. Art should be created and enjoyed by everyone. Studies show that art therapy can help you relieve anxiety, depression, and stress. So, if you are feeling tense and need a natural and fun way to unwind, it’s time to get some brushes, colors and a canvas and delve into an art activity. Here are some great art ideas for stress relief recommended by Mac Fine Art galleries.
Create Something Beautiful:
Some people are deeply talented and able to create lifelike paintings, funny cartoons, powerful drawings and similar with ease. Other people may even experience difficulties trying to draw stick figures and hearts. If you are like one of the latter, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try art therapy. In fact, when it comes to stress management and enjoying the benefits of art, talent or the end product don’t matter at all. It’s all about the process of creating art and expressing your feelings. However, if you are not comfortable expressing yourself through a drawing, you could create something that’s just for you in your own personal drawing journal. You don’t have to show it to your friends or someone else.
Create Your Own Mandala:
Art therapists and even many famous psychologists such as Carl Jung have recommended creating mandalas for stress relief. Mandalas are circular designs that often consist of unique patterns and symbols. While making a mandala, you will process your feelings or things you went through in your life. It’s an excellent idea to symbolize some of your feelings, triumphs or losses with unique patterns and colors. There is no need to reveal your story because you may potentially trigger rumination. You just need to root yourself in the moment and allow the entire process to free yourself from negative thoughts or heal yourself from negative emotions. Your mandala can look however you want it. It can be rich with meaning or very basic. All you need to do is have fun. After you are done with drawing, you should also color it. If you really enjoy coloring mandalas but no so much the process of creating them, you can buy mandala coloring books.
Join an Art Class:
If you have enough time, it would be great to join an art class. One of the benefits of attending an art class is that it cements the activity into your schedule and routine. Also, being supported by a group can be a stress reliever in itself. If you don’t have enough time for this, consider taking a one-time workshop or something similar. Consider all your options and see what works best for you.
You Can Always Doodle:
If you don’t have much time for art classes or creating a complex painting at home, you can always dedicate 20 minutes of your time for a drawing session. Remember how you doodled at school when you were bored? It really felt good, right? It’s time to embrace your inner doodler again! You can get a sketchbook for 5-minute doodles, and keep it somewhere handy. If you love writing a journal, don’t forget to beautify the margins with hearts, flowers, smiling faces or whatever else you want. Doodling will let your inner artist slowly come out whenever you have time, and just enjoy life.
I enjoy writing and I write quality guest posts on topics of my interest and passion. I have been doing this since my college days. My special interests are in health, fitness, food and following the latest trends in these areas. I am an editor at Content Rally.
The holiday season is officially over, which means it’s time to start working off some of the extra pounds you picked up at mom’s house. While people generally love the idea of looking like the dudes who do commercials for home-exercise equipment, most of us still hate working out and dieting. If you are one of them, don’t worry. There are a ton of startups offering the kind of motivation you need in the form of mobile apps. Such apps use activity tracking as well as fitness and health risk assessment apps.
Today we’ll be exercising our startup muscles by taking a look at some of these young companies and what makes them tick.
8 Motivations to Start Up Health & Fitness:
Fitness gamification is huge right now, which makes sense given that it adds a much-needed dimension of play to the arduous task of getting fit. A great example of fitness gamification is Tep, which is basically a cross between a fitness tracker and a Tamagotchi; though, in the case of Tep, the star is a niftily-designed giraffe rather than a globular cluster of black pixels.
The more a user exercises, the better the giraffe does (users can buy their long-necked pets treats with rewards points they earn from walking, running and cycling). If users slack off, though, it’s curtains for the poor creature.
According to the app’s creators, a group of five super-talented self-starters from Szeged, Hungary, «Tep’s competitive edge relies on emotional connection and the mental „threat“ that the beloved pet might suffer from the lack of proper physical activity and thus offers a solution for curve fatigue effect.»
Does that sound a little dark? Sure. But it’s for a good cause. The founding team’s goal is to help users lose eight million pounds of fat in the next three years; there’s also talk of buying a giraffe.
The founding team built Tep on their own time and dime, but are currently funded by Traction Tribe and prizes from Microsoft’s Imagine Cup.
Tep is available in beta for Android and Windows phones, with an iOS version coming soon.
Wokamon
If you like the idea of a digital workout buddy helping you toe the line, but giraffes aren’t really your thing, then you might dig Wokamon, which comes to us from Mars Zhu and Hazim Abdul Hamid of Noodum.
Wokamon features dozens of animated monsters that get bigger and stronger as you do. Since it comes with a pedometer and syncs with wearables like Jawbone, Fitbit, and Up, you can be sure that every calorie burned gets counted and fed to your growing army of critters.
Connecting with friends on social media through Wokamon earns you reward points, which you can burn on unlocking new creatures.
Noodum and Wokamon are currently being funded by an $18,000 seed investment from Manchester Metropolitan University’s Innospace Incubator.
Gamified fitness apps like Wokamon and Tep have a lot of options when it comes to future monetization. They can either take the Zombies, Run! The approach of charging for downloads (which works if you’re as niche and well-made as that app) or offer in-app purchases for things like new backgrounds, characters, or crystals and boosters for your pet monsters.
For now, though, we can take advantage of both Tep and Wokamon for free.
Teamster
Teamster is an iOS app that, contrary to its name, has absolutely nothing to do with trucking. What teamster does do, though, is help you connect with other people in your area who are interested in the same sorts of athletic activities as you.
Conveniently, users are able to identify which sports they like and their level of skill in each on a scale of 1 to 5, which means you won’t be totally outmatched when you meet up for a game with other users.
When you find another user who shares your interests and skill set, swipe right in the app to add them to your team. Sounds like Tinder is ubiquitous, doesn’t it? Users can then create activities for other users or teams to join.
Teamster comes to us from the Melbourne based duo of Henry Chan and 22-year old Sam McCallum, who has a background in competitive running, cycling, and skiing.
Actually, 2015 is shaping up to be an awesome year for apps that bring social networking logic to the gym. Take Boston-based Perspyre, for example, which is coming out soon with a beta version for Android and iOS.
The whole point of Perspyre is connecting people who love to sweat and giving them access to workouts, advice, and motivation. Users can log into the app via Facebook and take post-workout selfies, record workouts, and brag about new personal records.
Though it’s admittedly a little intense for beginners, Persypre is perfect for those who are already «motivated and dedicated» enough to willingly visit Crossfit and P90x classes.
Perspyre is the brainchild of Jason Chisholm and Jeremy Mays and has received $25,000 in seed funding from John Piret of the investment firm Newbury Piret & Co.
If Perspyre sounds like it’s right up your alley, keep an eye out for the soon-to-be-launched SternFit iOS app which also gives workout buffs a great platform for sharing pics, tips, and workouts.
Rocket Journey
If your meteoric rise to peak physical perfection is still in the launch phase, you’ll find a helpful companion in RocketJourney, which bills itself as the «smartest and friendliest way to a fitness lifestyle.»
The app’s founding trio of Carlos Ayala, Pablo Artee, and Ernesto Cambuston has received funding from 500 Startups, the seed fund and startup accelerator comprised of Google and PayPal alums.
RocketJourney tracks all of your fitness activities from cycling to yoga to lifting to competitive eating — just kidding about that last one — and verifies that you’ve actually worked out through GPS and wearables integration.
The app motivates you to stick to your fitness regime by giving you points for completed workouts and taking away points for missed ones. The same logic holds true for user-created «teams» which add the pinch of peer-pressure that it just might take to keep you on track.
You can register for updates on RocketJourney’s release on the website.
OneSet
OneSet — «Vine for Fitness» — is another promising app to stay tuned for in the months to come. Users can create 15-second videos demonstrating an exercise or «stack» other users’ videos into workouts.
Since videos are organized by muscle group or goal, it’s easy to find the right moves for you.
OneSet’s founding team is based in Waterloo, Canada, and consists of brothers Amad and Shameel Abdullah, as well as full-stack developer George Xu.
GYM radio
Sometimes all it takes to reach the athlete within is finding the right music to sweat to, or the right gym to do it in.
Though GYM radio’s online music streaming service has been around since 2013, its new iOS, Android, and Windows phone releases have made it easier than ever to get amped up and pumped up at the same time.
The app features three music settings — cardio, gym, and hardcore-tailored to give your workout the right feel. Here’s the best part: GYM radio is completely ad-free, which means your runners high won’t get interrupted by voice-actors pitching toothpaste or discount car insurance.
GYM radio also offers a premium upgrade which, for a monthly or yearly subscription, will let you listen offline, skip songs, and get access to material unavailable on the standard version.
Gymhopper
Gymhopper — «Uber for gyms»- is a Swiss startup that aims to help you find the right gym by offering its users discounted individual training passes. Gyms benefit from the app by getting a little extra exposure as well as a shot at their target market, people who are actively searching for a new place to get sweaty.
Gymhopper is currently in series A fundraising but expects an iOS release later this year.
What can fitness startups learn from RunKeeper?
Figuring out how to actually make money with your app is a problem that can plague even the biggest of startup fish. Each of the aforementioned apps will have to figure out the right monetization strategy for their product and user-base. One good model employed by the leading fitness tracker RunKeeper is to partner with other businesses to provide sponsored advertising to users.
That means Teamster’s users could theoretically get discounts on Nike products for showing up at local softball games, and Perspyre users could get 25% off gym memberships for visiting p90x classes 3 times a week.
There are a lot of good ways to get back in shape, and a lot of good startups out there creating more every day.
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Amid the myriad of health and wellness trends, Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) supplements have piqued considerable interest. Touted as a breakthrough in anti-aging science, these supplements promise various benefits, from extending Lifespan to enhancing cognitive function.
But what are NMN supplements, and how do they work? This article aims to unravel the mystery behind these promising supplements, delving into the science that underpins their potential benefits.
We'll explore their role in replenishing NAD+ levels, their anti-aging effects, and their impact on cognitive function, cardiovascular health, inflammation, eye health, and liver and kidney health. Join us as we navigate the intriguing world of NMN supplements.
Understanding of the NMN Supplements’ working
There has been talks and discussion on the efficacy of NMN supplements. Their efficacy is beyond question. Therefore what you need to understand thoroughly is the work of them. This section contains the discussion.
Extends Lifespan
The quest for a longer, healthier life has been a constant human endeavor. NMN supplements have emerged as a potential key player in this pursuit. The secret to their potential lifespan-extending properties lies within a molecule known as NAD+.
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+, is a coenzyme found in every living cell of our bodies. It is indispensable in energy metabolism, DNA repair, and cellular aging. However, as we grow older, our body's NAD+ levels naturally decrease, which can lead to various signs of aging and age-related health issues.
This is where NMN supplement come into play. NMN is a precursor to NAD+, a compound that participates in the chemical reaction that produces NAD+. When we take NMN supplements, we effectively boost our bodies' NAD+ levels. By replenishing these levels, we may help counteract the effects of aging and potentially extend our Lifespan. In essence, NMN supplements help maintain our cells' vitality, offering a promising approach to healthy aging and longevity.
Has Anti-Aging Effects
Aging is an inevitable part of life, changing our bodies and overall health. However, NMN supplements are seen as a beacon of hope in this arena, promising to slow aging and promote healthier, more vibrant lives.
The allure of NMN supplements is rooted in their capacity to enhance the synthesis of sirtuins, proteins integral to sustaining cell health and lifespan. Often dubbed as "longevity genes," these proteins possess the extraordinary ability to mend impaired DNA, manage inflammation, and oversee the metabolism within cells.
Sirtuins essentially act as the guardians of our cells. SIRTUINS EMERGE when DNA damage occurs due to environmental factors such as UV radiation or toxins or simply due to normal cellular processes. They pause other cellular activities to focus on DNA repair, ensuring that our cells continue to function properly. By doing so, they help maintain the integrity of our cells, thereby slowing the aging process.
Moreover, sirtuins also have a significant role in controlling inflammation. Inflammation is a natural immune response but can become harmful if it turns chronic. Sirtuins help regulate this response, balancing necessary acute and potentially dangerous chronic inflammation.
By boosting the production of these incredible proteins, NMN supplements offer a potent weapon against aging. They help add years to our lives and ensure those additional years are filled with vitality and health.
Improves Cognitive Function
Cognitive function, encompassing memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities, often declines with age. NMN supplements, however, present a promising potential solution to this issue. They work by stimulating angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels in the brain. This process ensures the brain receives abundant oxygen and nutrients crucial for optimal function.
Additionally, NMN supplements support neuroplasticity, the brain's capacity to form and reorganize synaptic connections. By increasing NAD+ levels, essential for energy metabolism in brain cells, NMN supplements can bolster the production of proteins that stimulate brain cell growth and resilience. This dual-action approach of promoting angiogenesis and enhancing neuroplasticity positions NMN supplements as a potent tool for maintaining and potentially improving cognitive health.
Supports Cardiovascular Health
NMN supplements have garnered attention in cardiovascular health due to their potential to support heart function and promote overall cardiovascular wellness. Like every organ in our body, the heart requires significant energy to function optimally. This energy is derived from cellular metabolic processes that heavily rely on NAD+, a molecule whose levels decrease naturally as we age.
By replenishing NAD+ levels, NMN supplements can help ensure that our heart cells have the energy they need to function properly. This can potentially enhance heart function and improve cardiovascular endurance, making activities like exercise easier and more enjoyable.
Additionally, NMN supplements are believed to promote the health of blood vessels. They do this by boosting the production of sirtuins, proteins that help maintain the elasticity and flexibility of blood vessels. Healthy, flexible blood vessels can effectively accommodate changes in blood flow and pressure, reducing the risk of conditions like hypertension. In this way, NMN supplements offer a two-pronged approach to cardiovascular health, supporting both heart function and vascular health.
Enhances Metabolic Efficiency
Metabolism is a multifaceted process that transforms nutrients into energy, disposes of waste, and upholds various critical functions within our bodies. As we age, this metabolic efficacy can decrease, resulting in health complications such as increased weight and tiredness. NMN supplements can amplify metabolic performance by elevating levels of NAD+, a vital coenzyme engaged in numerous metabolic activities. By increasing NAD+ levels, NMN supplements can help maintain metabolic efficiency, potentially mitigating age-related health issues.
Moreover, NMN supplements hold the potential to enhance insulin sensitivity, an essential element of metabolic well-being. Improved insulin sensitivity facilitates more effective regulation of blood glucose levels, mitigating the risk of ailments such as type 2 diabetes. In conclusion, NMN supplements present a hopeful avenue for bolstering comprehensive metabolic health by augmenting metabolic proficiency and insulin responsiveness.
Improves Eye, Liver, & Kidney Health
Vision loss is another common concern as we age. NMN supplements may help protect our eyes by improving retinal cell health. They work by boosting NAD+ levels, which promotes cellular repair and rejuvenation in retinal cells, potentially preventing age-related macular degeneration and other forms of vision loss.
The liver and kidneys play crucial roles in detoxifying the body. NMN supplements can support these organs by improving their cellular health. They enhance mitochondrial function, the powerhouse of cells, which boosts the organs' ability to filter toxins and function optimally.
Embracing The Potential Of NMN Supplements For A Healthier Tomorrow
In conclusion, NMN supplements promise to enhance our health and longevity. They work at the cellular level, addressing the root causes of aging and disease. While more research is needed, the evidence suggests that these supplements could benefit our health regimen.
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City living hasn’t always been dubbed as a healthy choice. However, it appears things have changed dramatically in recent years.
These days, city living is healthier than it’s ever been. Thanks to a dedication to getting people happier and healthier, steps have been taken to improve city life. Here, we’ll look at why it’s become a healthier option to live in the city.
Companies have started to encourage healthier living :
In the past few years, businesses have started to see the benefits of encouraging their employees to lead a healthier life. These days, over 90% of business leaders know just how important wellness is to the productivity of their employees.
After all, the healthier an employee is, the less likely they’ll be to take time off sick. They will also have bundles more energy, making them far more productive than if they were to lead an unhealthy lifestyle.
So, how exactly are companies encouraging healthier living? Well, some provide exercise classes during lunch. Others offer meditation and counseling to protect an employee’s mental health. There are a lot of ways companies are striving for a healthier workplace and it’s really starting to pay off.
Cities have begun adopting green spaces and cycle lanes :
The cities themselves have also become healthier. Authorities are investing in greener areas, as well as adding more cycle lanes. While the reason behind this is largely down to protecting the environment, it has ultimately led more people to become healthier.
At one time, traveling by car was the way to get to and from work. However, as more awareness has been raised about the impact cars are having on the environment, more people than ever before are choosing to ditch their cars and invest in bicycles instead. The introduction of more cycle lanes has encouraged more bicycle stores such as Brompton, to open up in new city locations.
If you take a look at some of the happiest and healthiest places in the world, you’ll see the majority of them use bicycles as their main form of transportation. Is it a coincidence? Absolutely not! Staying active and cycling around rather than driving, really helps to keep you, fitter, while also doing wonders for the environment.
Fitness is now actively encouraged :
Fitness has become extremely popular in recent years. Within cities, you’ll find a huge range of exercise classes, healthy dine-out options, and healthy activities to partake in. People, as a whole, want to get fitter.
Social media has played a large role in the fitness industry boom. Fitness gurus have become extremely popular, encouraging people to get healthier and sign up for local gyms and fitness classes. So, those looking to stay fit and active have plenty of options in the city.
Cities generate more social interaction :
Another more indirect reason people are healthier in cities is that they experience much more social interaction than those living in the country. This is especially true for those living within an inner-city environment.
Social interaction has a strong connection to mental health. Those who do not interact regularly with people, tend to be more depressed, lonely, and anxious than those who do. Of course, the more people there are to interact with, the more active you’re going to be. So, city living helps to improve both physical and mental health.
The above is some of the main reasons cities have become healthier. It’s come hand in hand with environmental protection as people strive to reduce their impact on the environment. Millennials, in particular, are becoming healthier, largely down to the recent campaigns over getting fitter and leading a healthier lifestyle.
