6 Effective Ways to Improve Your Mental Health

Published on: 06 February 2020 Last Updated on: 05 March 2022

Most people focus on building their muscles and abs to look good, but having a great body is not the only determinant of having good health. Another determinant is mental health which is often forgotten even though mental disorders are surging at a rapid rate for the past few years.

Therefore, we should spend time building the health of our brains, and to facilitate that, we have listed here six practical ways you can employ to boost your mental health.

1. Develop a healthy net of relationships:

Humans are made to be social animals, but loneliness has become the norm of modern times. We mostly have digital voices to talk to like Siri and Bixby.

Some reports in the United States have painted an alarming picture that loneliness has the same impact on the lifespan of humans as obesity.

Therefore, avoid isolation and prioritize your positive relationships, and even if you do not have any, look for such connections because they will help you in remaining sane in this insane world.

2. Develop the habit of exercising:

A growing body of scholarship has found a concrete relationship between exercise and reduction in mental maladies like stress, anxiety, and depression.

It is stated that exercise releases ‘feel-good hormones’ called endorphins, which relieve not only the depression but also improve the quality of sleep.

If you find yourself unable to hit the gym, take up some sport like football because it is a more entertaining way of achieving the same set of goals. Although, you are bound to get injured once in a while, but do not let that discourage you. Also, do not take head injuries lightly and get a Neuroquant MRI immediately if you suffer a traumatic brain injury.

3. Keep challenging yourself:

Do not get stagnant in your life, because nothing invites depression and anxiety more than monotony and depression. Therefore, even if you are at a good place in your life, keep setting new goals, and work diligently to achieve them.

4. Pay gratitude for all the things you have:

Nothing ruins mental health more than negative thoughts like counting all the bad things in your life and practicing self-pity. Instead, make a gratitude journal and jot down all the small and big things you are grateful for, like a good family, decent health, your own home, a fun job, etc.

5. Watch your sleep:

Sleeping is a crucial component of a healthy life, such that people suffering from sleep debt for a while tend to develop several mental disorders. Therefore, ensuring a quality sleep is paramount, but be aware that quality sleep is different from quantity sleep. For example, six hours of relaxing quality sleep are much better than nine hours of restless sleep.

6. Take care of yourself:

Take some time for yourself and indulge in relaxing activities like traveling with your best friends, sleeping well, eating healthy, and meditating on the beach. Moreover, indulging in activities like massaging also have multiple mental health benefits like partial relief from stress and anxiety.

You only live once; therefore, it is your responsibility to take care of yourself and live a life full of health, wealth, and wit, such that you are not left with any regrets.

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Keeping Your Lawn Healthy Benefits You as Well

Many homeowners opt for a paved garden to cut down on the necessary workload and keep it tidy with little expense or effort. We have detailed below some examples of the benefits you will be missing out on by not having a healthy lawn and garden. A good lawn and plants can help make us feel better, be more popular with friends and neighbors, while also being a positive force for the environment. Health Benefits of a Garden We may not realize how much an outdoor space can help to keep us healthy and fit. If you are lucky enough to have a garden that is well maintained, you will benefit from having fewer allergies and pests bothering you in the peak season. A beautiful garden will keep pest’s away by not providing them with an ideal environment for breeding, and the pollen count will be lower due to having plants and trees that have a lower pollen count. The university in California has also noted that patients with a view of the gardens recover quicker than those with interior views only, meaning your garden can actually help to cure you of ailments. Along with the physical gains, you will get from having a garden that has been looked after you will also gain from the mental side. Having a beautiful area to sit and relax in after a hard day at the office will reduce stress levels and help those who have attention deficit disorders, allowing them to concentrate more when needed. Socializing Benefits of a Well-cared-for Garden Many homeowners are paying more attention to their outside spaces than ever before. The reason we want to have a great back yard is to create additional living space for the family to relax. If you take care of your lawn and keep the different types of weeds under control, you give your family a great space to eat and socialize. A garden in great shape can also offer young children an additional play area out of the house where you know they will be safe and secure. A common feature in a lot of back gardens is having a space to eat and entertain friends, usually a decking or well-designed patio with a barbeque area that you can use when the weather is good. Gain the admiration of your friends by creating a garden that looks good and provides you with a great socializing space to enjoy. Environmental Benefits of a Garden Possibly the most significant benefit that having a well looked after the garden is the ecological aspect. Having healthy trees, plants and turf will eat up carbon and replace it with oxygen providing a much-needed boost for you and the local environment. Lawns will naturally absorb a lot of the sun’s radiation while also providing a cooling effect whereas patios, concrete and asphalt will store heat and radiate it back in the air which can make the temperatures soar during sunny spells. Good quality turf will help to retain the soil far better than a sparsely seeded lawn, at the same time it will help soak up the rainwater. As the water will not evaporate back into the atmosphere after a mild shower, this will stop your garden from feeling humid and hot throughout the summer months. A well thought out garden will give much-needed help to wildlife by providing a habitat that they can live in while keeping the unwanted pests at bay. Your garden will attract birds and other insects that eat or repel the nasty bugs that no-one wants to see while they’re enjoying the serenity of their yard. Start Your Dream Garden Having a healthy lawn and garden is not as much work as some would have you believe. Choose grass seed that will flourish in your area and start sowing your lawn. Having a good variety of plants and trees that require little maintenance will compliment your lawn area and can be done at a minimal cost. Get down to your local garden center or horticulturists and find out what plants will work in your garden. Don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get in touch with nature once again and don’t hesitate to make this a communal activity for you and your family. Read Also: Looking For A Gardener: 8 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Professional 4 Essential Tools Needed To Maintain Your Garden In The Winter Edmonton Landscape Maintenance Tips

Key Marketing Tips To Gain More Customers For Your Health Care Practice

When you have a healthcare practice, gaining customers can be quite the conundrum. Unlike other brands that offer services and products for a specific niche, your health care practice may have such a huge target market that zeroing in to appeal to a crowd can be tricky. This might be the reason why it can also be such a challenging thing to create a fully-executable marketing strategy for your practice. This doesn't mean it's impossible, though. Sometimes you just need the right kind of push. In fact, today's insights for the digital marketing scene make it quite the budding yet challenging field to penetrate for generally all kinds of practices. For instance, Google users actually use the search engine to conduct 100-billion searches every month. Considering that a whopping 81-percent of consumers do rely on research before making their purchases, that's a whole lot of ground to cover with just Google alone. In fact, 72-percent of consumers who searched locally tend to visit stores within five miles, and given 28-percent of searches pertain to purchases in nearby locations, banking on proper marketing can really get you to places with the right strategy. Marketing For Your Health Care Practice: Where To Start : When you have a bit of a conundrum in terms of your healthcare practice, it might be important to first understand where exactly you're coming from. In the below tips, you may finally be able to zero in on where you're lacking, and finding the appropriate strategies for you to cope with such a problem. Institutions such as Studio 56 can actually help you solve your marketing woes, but it's best you approach these groups after trying these out first: . Make sure you find your voice: When people think of marketing, they normally think it's just a process of getting people "into" your services or products. The reality of the fact is, marketing really also involves a lot of social relations. Marketing taps into the human aspect of sales, which means if you want to get more sales, your healthcare practice needs to be more "human." Your offering to provide health care to your customers might be a good plus, but you've got to offer them something more than other health services aren't providing. Before you provide offers or deals, this has to start with the personality of your brand. What's your brand like? Is it formal and authoritative? Is it caring and motherly? Is it concerned and friendly? There are various voices for you to choose from. . Make sure your marketing is consistent with your branding: When you think of a brand, one of the best ways to see it visually is to create a logo. When you start your marketing efforts, make sure you apply what you see in your logo in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Apply elements from the logo such as the iconography, typography, colors, and shapes, and apply them to your materials so you can be recognized. Likewise, make sure your logo reflects on the personal values you want your customers to feel. Red, for example, implies passion, yellow implies excitement, green implies nature and health, and others. . Make sure your website is built for both desktop and mobile devices: If you have a healthcare practice, you've got to have your own website. This will be a primary backbone of your presence in the digital space. When you have someone designing your site for you, make sure it's accessible by both desktop and mobile devices, so anyone can look into your website even when you're on the go. . Make sure you understand that speed is key: Regardless of where your customers are in the consumer process, speed is important. For instance, you've only got seven (7) seconds of room in order for visitors to get a gist of what your practice is offering for them - you need to make those seconds count. Every time your customer sees a marketing material, make sure your brand's message is explained clearly and properly. When leads subscribe to your email, don't leave them hanging and make sure you respond to their queries. When a customer inquires about a sale, make sure to keep them as updated as possible. Any seconds lost is a chance for the competition to steal your customers. . Make sure availing your service and product is easy to do: What turns off people is the fact that there are too many options for them to choose from. Remember Hick's Law, where the time it takes for someone to decide is proportional to the number of choices they have. In terms of marketing, this can be a bad sign as long decisions might make people avail of simpler services instead. When you offer a product or a service, make sure you offer them in ways that make them easy to access. Make sure forms are easy to fill out, payments are easy to do, shipping won't be much of a hassle, and even wish lists are easy to create. . Make sure you always have a structure built for assessment, reporting, evaluation: One of the most important yet overlooked elements in building a good marketing strategy is the lack of a means of efficient assessment, reporting, and evaluation. Try to make sure there's always an option for both members of your team and customers to provide feedback about their experience. Mesh this with your actual statistics on your various marketing campaigns in order to get a good look at your performance in the marketing field in general. This pretty much enables you to get a bird's eye view of what's working and what's not, and be able to make the proper adjustments. The Bottomline: Marketing For Your Health Care Practice Takes Strategy : Having a healthcare practice to call your own can be quite something to be proud of - after all, you're doing a lot to be able to help other people with their various needs. However, just waiting for patients to come up your door isn't exactly the best marketing strategy you should follow to get your returns. If the above is any indication, key marketing tips to gain more customers for your healthcare practice involves planning, execution, exposure, and sustainability. If you've ever wanted to make sure your healthcare practice gets the right kind of patients it needs, your marketing needs to be spot on as well. Read Also : 7 Health Benefits Of Black Seed Oil How Can Stress During Studies Affect The Health Of Your Children? 7 Signs Which Indicate That You Need To See A Vein Specialist Right Now

Polydrug Use: What Happens When You Mix Cocaine with Heroin?

Cocaine and heroin are among the most potent and extensively used illicit drugs in the world with deeply addictive and destructive potential. When we think of these drugs, we usually think of individuals having either cocaine or heroin addiction, whereas in reality the practice of taking more than one substance at the same time - known as polydrug use - is on the rise. Individuals typically start polydrug use by combining substances to enhance the effects of one or both of them. A very common combination of drugs in polydrug use is cocaine and heroin and in fact, the practice has become so widespread that it now has its own street name: "speedballing." When speedballing, polydrug users take heroin to extend and enhance cocaine’s short-term effects to avoid the crashing come down, essentially by replacing it with opiate-induced euphoria. The Health Risks of Speed Balling with Cocaine and Heroin: Although the effects of speedballing are extremely pleasurable and compelling to users, it is incredibly dangerous. Both heroin and cocaine have significant health risks separately but when used in combination and injected at the same time, these risks are heightened considerably. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and depending on the US state studied, around 36.9% to 98.9% of heroin-related deaths involve other substances. There are few activities in life that have the potential to be more deadly than speedballing and yet it is now a significant issue. Young people experimenting with substances are increasingly being encouraged to participate in speedballing without being fully aware of the risks. Let’s take a look at the differences between cocaine and heroin when used on their own: Heroin: Heroin is made from an extract of the opium poppy and it has been used for hundreds of years as pain relief for significant trauma. The way heroin works are by flooding the brain with euphoria-creating dopamine so as to “trick” the mind into ignoring pain signals from other parts of the body. The euphoria created by heroin is considered the reason it is highly addictive, as it immobilizes the body in the most pleasant way so that the only thing a user can do is lay back and enjoy the feeling. One of the most common ways people develop heroin addiction is by becoming tolerant to its effects, which can happen very quickly after they start using the drug. When the euphoria they seek starts to wane when taking their usual amount of the drug, they will simply up the dose. After a very short while of this addictive behavior, the body will start to develop cravings for heroin every time the user comes down from their high. Some of the withdrawal symptoms emerging if cravings for heroin are not satisfied can be extremely unpleasant and so more of the drug is needed to make them go away. Cocaine: The kind of high cocaine creates depends on the way it’s taken, which is generally by snorting or injecting. The effects of cocaine are generally short-term, lasting around 40 minutes and they are quite opposite to those of heroin. Cocaine is a stimulant that makes users feel a rush of energy, often making them the life and soul of the party. Whereas heroin immobilizes, cocaine stimulates and while on a high from the drug, users tend to talk at a fast pace, enjoying everything around them in an animated way. Cocaine is equally as addictive as heroin although it has a very different kind of appeal. Some people become socially dependent on the drug before going on to developing an addiction, using cocaine as a prop to boost confidence. However, as with heroin, cocaine has a negative impact on the brain's function, which can introduce extra challenges for people seeking to overcome cocaine addiction in heroin and cocaine addiction treatment. The risks caused by speedballing with cocaine and heroin include the following: Whereas heroin stimulates the brain’s production of endorphins, cocaine prevents them from being reabsorbed naturally. This eventually erodes an individual’s ability to enjoy the simplest pleasures in life unless substance abuse is involved. Cocaine is the only drug with the potential to hyper-stimulate the body to the point where the user suffers a stroke. When used in combination in heroin, it is not possible to detect that this is happening and there is a risk of suffering a stroke without any warning and possible death. The effects of cocaine do not last for as long as heroin and so speedballers tend to use more cocaine to prolong their high. This is incredibly dangerous and places the individual at risk of a fatal heart attack. Heroin has a powerful effect on the central nervous system, slowing down its functions when a person is under influence including the heartbeat and breathing. If there is not enough oxygen reaching the brain because a person’s breathing has become shallow after taking heroin, there is a high risk of brain damage or death. Because cocaine is a stimulant, it reduces some of the effects of heroin if taken at the same time. This can mask the warning signs of heroin overdose which include: confusion, dizziness, slurred speech, body limpness, and unconsciousness. Cocaine and Heroin Addiction Treatment for Speed Balling: Addiction is an illness that can be treated so that individuals can move on from substance abuse and enjoy a life in sobriety. Although challenging, the path through detox, rehab, and recovery on a cocaine or heroin addiction treatment program introduces individuals to a world outside of substance use, motivating them to make the necessary changes to overcome their illness. Because of the potency of heroin and cocaine independently, people speedballing face significantly more risks from substance abuse than those abusing one type of drug. The effects on a person's personality, behavior, and psychological state can be extended with both substances which is why holistic therapies such as those offered at the best heroin and cocaine addiction treatment centers are now commonly available as a cocaine and heroin addiction treatment approach. Through learning skills such as meditation and yoga or becoming physically fit through a structured exercise regime, individuals can move on from the difficulties in their lives cause by heroin and cocaine addiction. Read Also: How 12-Step Works As Addiction Recovery Support Addiction Treatment: 11 Tips To Find The Best Rehabilitation Center

6 Effective Ways to Improve Your Mental Health