Like Minds is a world class social media conference held in Exeter, UK, and it was a great privilege to attend this on Friday last week to hear a whole day of presentations from many of the great and the good of the social media world.
I am heavily involved in social media, having completely changed and rebranded my ten year old web site from an online pharmacy (MyPharmacy) to a lifestyle portal about health, happiness and success (SuperLiving). I hit the first web boom and gave up the day job on the strength of it, and I need to keep up to date with the second phase of Web 2.0 and the explosion of social media in order to survive. Having had my own business it would be soul destroying to have to go back to a job.
Like Minds has given me a lot of things to reflect on, and now two days on I would like to share some of my reflections with you. [click to continue…]
Watch Jamie Oliver’s passionate speech about the importance of nutrition at the 2010 TED Conference in California. If you weren’t motivated before you will be after. It won him the prize for the best talk to the great thinkers of the world.
Jamie has worked to save lives in his own way using information and education. We have lost our understanding about the power of food. The statistics of bad health are clear, but our perspective of risk has been grossly distorted. The biggest killers today are preventable diseases, not terrorism or crime. Obesity is the biggest preventable killer in the world.
Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) increases your chances of giving up smoking, and it has come a long way since it was a Prescription Only product just a few years ago. It then became Pharmacy Only, and could be sold under the supervision of a pharmacist, and then General Sales List which did not need the supervision. There were, however, still warnings in the product license about using NRT when there were other medical conditions, or during pregnancy, even though these were the people who may have need it most urgently. The drug regulating authority, the MHRA, have now issues a statement saying that there is now considered to be no circumstance where smoking is considered safer than using NRT, and the product licenses will be changed to reflect this as the products come up for review, probably starting next year.
Guest author, ME Therapist Vanessa Cecil, has written a wonderful article on the treatment options for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME). This is something the medical establishment has taken a long time to come to terms with, and has been passed off in the past as a mental condition or malingering. It is now officially recognised, but the treatment options vary widely in their success. Vanessa is uniquely placed to understand ME , having suffered for 17 years before a full recovery, and has since researched and trained in ME Therapy.
Here is a wonderful slide show about enjoying the magic moments of parenthood, by Gretchen Rubin at www.theyearsareshort.com
It is so easy to get caught up in the busy busy routine of day to day living as a parent that you miss the fact that these days are magic to your child. Sharing them together and seeing them through your child’s eyes is so important, because, before you notice, these days and years are gone.
So Eating fish for the brain is spot-on, but it is important to know what is currently recommended. Grandmother was also right about the health benefits of Cod Liver Oil, but the newer Fish Oils are more concentrated. Then there is always Flax Seed Oil if you don’t like fishy ingredients. Low or unbalanced levels of omega-3 is linked with many of today’s chronic conditions of ill health so it is important to understand about it to be healthy.
One person worth knowing, who can improve your happiness, is Gretchen Rubin.
Gretchen has just published a wonderful book ‘The Happiness Project’, which looks at how she took stock of her own life, which was in danger of becoming far less happy than she wanted. It all started on an ordinary sort of day, when Gretchen suddenly looked at someone else and thought ‘That’s me!” and didn’t really like what she saw. Not that it was bad, but that she wanted more. That moment began what was to become her own happiness project, where she used her resources as a writer to examine what happiness meant to her and how she could increase the happiness in her own life. She drew on all the resources she could find. Her book has just been published as a heart-warming yet immensely practical account of how to bring more happiness back into life. Her insights are often deceptively simple, yet she has shown that the small and simple things, applied regularly, have a profound affect on happiness.
The Happiness Project Blog is worth following which gives a flavour of her book. Month one of her Happiness Project is about getting more energy and consists of:
Today a review of the prescription-only slimming medicine Reductil has recommended it’s product license be revoked throughout Europe. Evidence suggests that there is an increased risk of non-fatal heart attacks and strokes with this medicine that outweighs the benefits of weight loss, which is modest and may not be sustained in the long term after stopping treatment. It’s marketing authorisation has already been revoked in the UK.
Prescribers are advised not to issue any new prescriptions for Reductil and to review the treatment of patients taking the drug. Pharmacists are asked to cease dispensing the medicine. People who are currently taking Reductil are advised to make a routine appointment with their doctor to discuss alternative measures to lose weight. There are no health implications if people wish to stop treatment before seeing their doctor. [click to continue…]
This SuperLiving blog is the latest addition to the SuperLiving web site, and we will use it to keep you up to date with interesting items about health, happiness and success from the world at large, and also from our own web site. It is another way that we can help you to live a SuperLife.
SuperLiving has changed a lot since it began ten years ago as MyPharmacy, an online pharmacy with a difference, because which also gave a lot of information about the products we sold and about health in general. A year and a half ago we decided to rebrand because we found the European Trade Mark for MyPharmacy was already registered, and so our business name and web site were not protected. At that time we were already developing SuperLiving as a separate web site, and so we put all our effort into redesigning this from scratch to include MyPharmacy and embrace all our other ideas. [click to continue…]
Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) increases your chances of giving up smoking, and it has come a long way since it was a Prescription Only product just a few years ago. It then became Pharmacy Only, and could be sold under the supervision of a pharmacist, and then General Sales List which did not need the supervision. There were, however, still warnings in the product license about using NRT when there were other medical conditions, or during pregnancy, even though these were the people who may have need it most urgently. The drug regulating authority, the MHRA, have now issues a statement saying that there is now considered to be no circumstance where smoking is considered safer than using NRT, and the product licenses will be changed to reflect this as the products come up for review, probably starting next year.
is available from Amazon.
