Are You Making These Personal Hygiene Mistakes?

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In our efforts to stay clean and groomed, many of us make mistakes without realising. Such mistakes can sometimes cause damage to our health. Here are just a few personal hygiene mistakes that you could be making.

Washing your hair daily

If scrubbing your hair with shampoo is part of your daily routine, you could be doing more harm to your hair than good. Washing your hair daily strips it of its natural oils and leads it to become dryer and more brittle over time. Resist the urge to clean your hair every day and you could keep a fuller head of hair longer.

Cleaning your ears with cotton swabs

You should never insert anything into your ear canal. Whilst cotton swabs can be used to get earwax around the ear hole, putting swabs into your actual ears can push earwax further into your ear canal. This can lead to hearing loss or even damage to your ear drum. There are much safer ear cleaning strategies that you can try if you have excessive earwax such as using baby oil to loosen it up. Don’t clean your ears too regularly – having some wax in your ears is natural and healthy.

Clipping your toenails into a curved shape

When clipping toenails, a lot of people try to create a curved shape. This is one of the leading causes of ingrown toenails – instead of growing upwards, nails can start growing into the sides of your toes. Always cut straight across in order to prevent this. A pair of specialist toenails clippers will be straight – avoid using fingernail clippers that are usually curved in shape.

Brushing your teeth too hard

There are lots of mistakes people make when it comes to brushing teeth. One surprising mistake is brushing too hard. Some people can end up brushing their enamel off which can expose yellow dentin beneath the enamel and make teeth sensitive. It’s for this reason that some people with strict dental regimes can still end up with yellow teeth. Make sure that you’re only applying light pressure when brushing teeth – try to brushing in small circles over each tooth rather than using a back-and-forth scrubbing motion.

Not changing your toothbrush regularly enough

A lot of people also fail to change their toothbrush regularly enough. Ideally, we should all replace our toothbrush every three to four months. After this periods, bristles are likely to get damaged and be less effective at brushing teeth. You should also replace your toothbrush after being sick as some of the illness causing germs are likely to stay on your brush no matter how rigorously you clean your brush.

Not cleaning your mobile phone

Many items that we touch daily can never get cleaned. Mobile phones are a big culprit for this – some of us use phones whilst we’re eating and whilst we’re on the toilet and yet never clean our devices. It’s thought that the average phone in ten times dirtier than a toilet seat. You can find smartphone cleaning kits online.

3 Unexpected Reasons Why You're Always Unwell

Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? Here are three unexpected reasons why you might be feeling vaguely unwell, but have been unable to pinpoint why.

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You’re chronically stressed

We all know the feelings of stress in the short term- low mood, anxiety, heart palpitations and an inability to focus. However, if you’ve been experiencing low levels of stress for a long time, you might not even recognise that’s what’s causing your issues. Things like pressures from family, financial stress, work problems and more can all contribute and leave you feeling frazzled over time. If you’re not sleeping well, your mood is low, you can't think clearly and you’re experiencing appetite changes (eating too much or too little) then stress might be the underlying factor. We can never fully eliminate stress in our lives, most of us will always have something going on that we will need to overcome that’s just the way it is. What we can control is the way we respond to things, we can find ways of relaxing and reducing stress rather than adding to it. If you have a bit more money to spend, a spa day complete with pampering massages and treatments could be a great option. Otherwise, a hot bath at home with some nice products and a massage from your other half would do the trick. Try journalling, meditation or find a relaxing hobby. On top of the negative feelings of stress, it can lower immunity opening us up to opportunistic infections and illnesses.

You have a food intolerance

Food intolerances can be tricky things. While they’re not life threatening like allergies can be, if you have a food allergy you’ll almost certainly know what it is. The effects are severe and come on quite suddenly after eating or drinking a certain thing. With intolerances, the effects can take hours, sometimes even a day or more to full come on. They’re not severe symptoms to the point that you’d see a doctor, but they can make you feel generally unwell. You might be tired, achy, bloated or feel nauseous. Because in the time it’s taken for the effects to show, you could have eaten lots of other things since then making it hard to pinpoint exactly what it is. However, if you have your suspicions that it’s food related, there are some things you can do. Certain ingredients like wheat, dairy and gluten are badly tolerated by lots of people so you could start by keeping a food diary and cutting out one thing at a time. Otherwise, you could have a food sensitivity test done by a company like Everlywell who will be able to get to the bottom of which ingredient (or ingredients!) are aggravating you.

You have an underlying medical problem

Lots of medical issues present symptoms that are vague and aren’t necessarily things you’d worry about on their own. But if they’ve been causing you to feel slightly unwell or tired for some time then it’s worth getting checked over by your GP. It could be something as simple as a vitamin deficiency which can be resolved with vitamins and lifestyle changes in your diet. But either way, it’s best to know.

Best Ideas for Getting Better When You're Unwell

Illness is something all of us will encounter in our lives, and the more we can do to deal with it right now, the better it will be. It’s essential that we do our best to look after ourselves and try to work towards getting better and improving nicely. When you find yourself out of action after being unwell, it can be difficult to get your life back on track following illness.

This is something that you need to make sure you work on as much as you can, and there are a lot of factors that can allow you to do this more effectively. The thing to keep in mind is that there is no set process, and everyone is going to deal with this sort of thing differently. But, here are a few options that are going to help you to get better after illness.

Rest is Crucial

One thing that is absolutely crucial when you are trying to deal with this is the fact that rest is crucial. You need to make sure you are getting as much rest as you can, and this is something that can have a massive impact. Ensure that you are going to sleep well and work on recuperating from your illness - this is something that is essential when you are looking to get serious about wellness.

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Take Your Time

A lot of people like to try to rush back to their lives when they are unwell, but this can often make the problem worse. So, you need to make sure you think carefully about what it takes to improve and convalesce in the best possible way, and this sometimes means taking your time and understanding that healing and getting better is a process.

Use Medication & Therapy

There are a lot of options to consider when you are looking to get well after suffering from illness. Some things you can merely sleep off, while more serious problems are going to mean that you need to take medication or have therapy. Energy healing for colds and flu might be a unique idea, but it’s definitely something that works well on illnesses that have no medication. For other sickness, you might require ibuprofen, penicillin, or other medication that should be prescribed.

Consider Rehabilitation

In some more extreme circumstances, you will find that you might need some rehabilitation following your illness. Serious sickness can knock us for six, and it is best to have a little bit of rehab beforehand to help you deal with this as much as possible. There are a lot of things that play a part in this, and you have to make sure you think about this moving forward.

Make sure you do as much as possible to improve yourself and your body and look at the way you are dealing with yourself after illness. There are a lot of things you can do to help you ensure you are making the most of the opportunities available, and you need to have plenty of rest and take the necessary medication to get back to normal again.

The Most Common Skin Problems Women in Their 30s Face

After you reach the age of 25, you’ll start noticing that your skin doesn’t act as it did when you were in your early 20s. More hydration needed, slower cell turnover and various changes appearing on your skin will become more prominent as you reach 30. From rosacea to hyperpigmentation and cystic acne, your 30s may not be so amazing skin-wise, after all. But worry not, because no matter the problem, you’ll certainly find the solution for it.

Hyperpigmentation

Remember how you loved spending summers at the seaside in Greece or suntanning in the countryside when visiting your grandparents? Well, if you’ve spent too much time under the sun, your 30s will let you know you’ve overdone it. Dark spots that pop up out of nowhere and won’t go away that easily are the first sign of hyperpigmentation caused by UV rays. Hormonal changes and certain medications can make these spots even worse, so it’s essential that as soon as you notice them you start using retinoids and improve your skincare routine. They will also promote collagen remodeling and help in exfoliating the skin more effectively too.

Rosacea

Have you noticed that your face suddenly looks flushed and no matter what you do your cheeks stay red? After you reach 30, a chronic inflammatory skin condition called rosacea is likely to occur. From hot beverages or foods through spicy foods to stress, hormonal changes and weather changes, there’s a plethora of factors that will cause redness, blushing and red bumps on your face. It can be the worst inconvenience if you’re visiting a new country, and instead of looking your best while you’re in Dubai, you look like you’ve put on way too much blush on your face. Luckily, you’d be able to turn to some of the renowned skin specialist clinics in Dubai and solve your problem in a blink of an eye. A dermatologist can also prescribe you some of the medications that can help control rosacea effectively.

Psoriasis

Psoriasis is another skin condition that can cause plenty of discomforts and wreck your self-esteem. It is a skin condition that causes scaling and swelling, and even patches of thick, red skin with silvery scales. Psoriasis becomes terribly uncomfortable if it causes itching or starts to feel sore. The elbows, knees, and other parts of the legs are usually the body parts that become affected by psoriasis. However, it can also appear on the scalp, lower back, face, palms and soles of the feet. Considering it’s similar to other skin problems, psoriasis can be difficult to diagnose. In some cases, the dermatologist will need a small sample of the skin to look at under a microscope. The treatment will vary, depending on the type of psoriasis, the seriousness of the disease as well as on the size of the patches and the patient’s reaction to certain medications.

Eczema

Atopic dermatitis is a long-term skin disease that causes almost the same amount of discomfort as psoriasis. Dry and itchy skin, rashes, or red dry patches on the face, inside the elbows, behind the knees, on the calves, on the back of the thighs, and on the hands and feet are just some of the symptoms of eczema. If you are prone to eczema you can get eczema cream for face to help relieve and prevent flare-ups. Stress and genetics are the two main factors that will cause eczema, so it’s essential that you de-stress as often as possible when you notice new patches coming out. Certain types of food may also be the cause so it would be best if you went to see your dermatologist and did all the tests that may tell you what your eczema triggers are. Suntanning the parts of the body covered in eczema is one of the great ways to deal with this skin condition, so the next time you go on a beach vacation in Australia or Hawaii, don't forget to soak up the sun as much as possible.

Just because you've reached your 30s, it doesn't mean your skin problems will diminish. Hyperpigmentation, psoriasis, eczema and rosacea are just some of the skin conditions that many women in their 30s face, so be prepared.