Below you will find a selection of the most recent entries from bloggers in our Family/Health section. To view the entries from individual bloggers, click on the links below:
- Lee Eldrige
The Athlete Tribe
- Dr. Michelle Wright
Dr Michelle Wright is a British-trained General Practitioner and Director of HealthFirst, providing physical First Aid training and Mental Health First Aid training, as well as Health Education, throughout Switzerland (www.healthfirst.ch). She also has a regular radio show about health on World Radio Switzerland. Believing that prevention is better than cure and that we should be treating the root cause of illness, Dr Michelle is also a Lifestyle Medicine enthusiast. - Birgit Suess is a Swiss-American who grew up between the US and Switzerland and speaks English, German and Swiss-German. Because of a worldwide shortage of Speech Therapists, she uses technology to connect special needs students around the world with English speaking Speech Therapists. With almost 20 years of experience as a Speech Therapist and 10 years experience with Teletherapy, she is a pioneer in the Teletherapy world. Her personal specialty is working on social language with high functioning children on the Autism Spectrum. Her passion is finding new and innovative ways to help children with special needs.
- Dr. Irina Schurov is a Nutritional Neuroscientist with a PhD from Cambridge University (UK) and over 20 years’ experience in science and health-providing services. She created and founded LiveRight, an initiative to help others through nutrition and wellbeing strategies. By building an educational platform around healthy eating habits, by restoring the relationships between people and food, by supporting your individual circumstances and through personalized coaching in nutrition, she wants to help you and your family achieve the optimal balance between help and life.
- Dr. Penny Fraser
Dr Penny is a British-trained Emergency Medicine doctor, who lives in Geneva. She is also the mother of two busy little skiers aged 7 and 8. Along with Dr Michelle Wright and her other colleagues at HealthFirst, she has a passion for delivering health education and First Aid training to the English-speaking community in Switzerland
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
By Birgit Suess, Virtually ConnectEd
As parents, we want the best for our children. We want them to develop on the same schedule that is hanging up on the doctor’s office wall, we want them to be happy, do well in school and have friends.
All children face some sort of challenge at one point or another. It is not uncommon for children to have difficult with speech and language. If you are concerned about your child’s speech and language development, here are some things to look for.
Articulation:
Articulation is sounds in speech. The most common errors in English are /l/, /s/ and /r/. These sounds should start emerging around ages 4 and 5, although many children struggle with them until age 8. By age 8 a child should be able to say all the sounds in the English language.
Phonological Delay:
Phonological delays often get confused with articulation delays because the child is saying the wrong sounds, but it’s not that the child can’t say the sounds, it’s that the child doesn’t say them in the correct place. For example, these children often say “tup” for “cup” and “tat” for “cat.” The might also say “gog” for “dog.” For a 2 year-old, this is typical and nothing to worry about, but if your 5 year-old is still mixing up sounds, it’s a good time to bring him or her in to see your doctor or speech therapist.
Stuttering:
Also known as fluency, stuttering is a normal occurrence for everyone once in a while. When repeating sounds, words or having blocks (when there are moments of silence when a child is trying to ‘push’ a word out) become common and/or start to include eye blinking or leg slapping, it’s time to bring your child in for professional help.
Receptive Language:
How well can your child understand language? Does your child not respond to your requests out of defiance, or do they perhaps not understand you? Does your child have difficulties following directions or answering questions? Does your child point to objects instead of ask for them? These are all signs that your child may be having difficulty understanding language.
Photo by Oliver Hihn on Unsplash
By Dr. Irina Schurov, LiveRight
I am sure you have noticed that our days have been getting shorter and that we now experience far less sun light exposure. At this time of year lots of people start to undergo a form of seasonal blues, lack of energy and emotional slumps. People who are especially sensitive to such changes of environment can sometimes be diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Of course, children who experience troubles with learning, concentration, sensory issues and emotional challenges will be even more susceptible to lack of day light. For example, it was shown that deficiency of sun light can potentially lead Asperger’s children to have low self-esteem, feel disappointment, isolation, mood swings and a lack of motivation. Consequently, while everyone feels the shortage of light exposure, we all tolerate and adapt to it in different ways.
From a biological perspective, as the seasons shift, our bodies experience certain biochemical changes, which are absolutely normal! Although humans aren’t as seasonal as animals and we do not hibernate in the winter, environmental changes have a clear impact on our biology!
Our master clock, located in the hypothalamus, responds to light by secreting certain hormones such as serotonin, which helps the body to feel awake, alert and satisfied. When it is dark, serotonin is converted to melatonin, making the body feel sleepy. It is for this reason that lack of day light causes hormonal imbalance, leading to many troublesome consequences, including sleep disorders, behavioral problems, hormonal imbalances and stress. To summarise; HUMANS’ ARE VERY DEPENDENT ON LIGHT!
Have you noticed that during the winter we try to compensate for our low levels of serotonin by reaching for comfort food and eating lots of carbohydrates and sweets? This gives us instant but fleeting satisfaction, which passes quickly and leaves us with long-term consequences such as elevated levels of blood glucose, extra weight, irritability and insulin imbalance.
Here is a quick check list of typical signs of SAD:
1. Depressed mood, low energy during the day
2. Anxiety or irritation, not handling stress well
3. Feeling lethargic and sleeping more than usual
4. Difficulty to concentrate and focus
5. Preferring to stay alone, less socializing
6. Craving for easy carbohydrates and sweets
7. Feeling a need for a sunlight
So, how can we prepare for this year’s winter? Here is a short list of changes you can implement into your routine, to ensure you experience a pleasant and energetic few months!
By Hiba Samawi, Wiser Humans
Back when I worked in the corporate world, travel was a two week affair - and I time which I would wait the rest of the year for to finally go somewhere new and exotic that would allow me to feel alive.
To make this last longer, I even took six months off to travel around the world nine years ago. It was a wonderful experience - and it actually taught me something very unexpected.
It taught me that travel can be an attitude. That travel doesn't have to be to a far flung exotic destination. It doesn't even have to be a time when we are away from our daily lives of work and family.
Instead, we can also apply the aspects of travel we love to our everyday lives.
We can start building a life we already love, that is filling with alive-ness, instead of seeing travel as an escape from an un-alive life.
Here are five suggestions to start bringing travel as an attitude to every day life.
1. Travel as an attitude means embracing discomfort as a necessary path to growth.
Travel is often about taking a small step - or many steps - away from our comfort zone. This moving out of our comfort zone is where magic can happen - where we discover aspects of ourselves we didn’t even know existed.
Everyday life provides plenty of opportunities to push past our fears - from moving away from a situation or relationship that is no longer working to standing up for ourselves, signing-up to a dating app or even opening up a little bit more with someone we care about.
Travel as an attitude embraces all forms of discomfort as a path to growth - not just the physical discomfort of travel, but also the emotional discomfort that comes from personal growth.
2. Travel as an attitude means being open to new experiences wherever we are.
Travel enables us to experience new things — both man made and natural. Seeing kangaroos on a beach at sunrise, taking a helicopter ride or experiencing Angkor Wat at sunset?
Definitely awe-inspiring.
Yet daily life also provides plenty of opportunities for new experiences IF we create them. These can be as small as trying a new café or restaurant in the city we live in, taking a new class, learning a new language, reading a book or buying an unknown vegetable when grocery shopping.
We can make time to watch the sun set after work or take a different path to work. We can always create new experiences.
3. Travel as an attitude sees differences as enriching rather than threatening.
Travel opens our minds to different ways of doing things. It gently, and sometimes not so gently, reveals that other ways, beliefs and attitudes exist - and that they, too, are valid and even fascinating. In doing so, it provides the opportunity to re-examine our own beliefs and habits.
In everyday life, we are faced with different beliefs and attitudes all around us, yet we often don’t choose to see these as intriguing - annoying is probably a more apt description!
Yet we can always choose to be open to differences in opinions and values that come from our family or co-workers - with appropriate boundaries, of course! Accepting them with the same openness and curiosity we show ‘foreign’ cultures can be a novel experience.
Instead of seething with resentment, we could become curious about this difference:
I wonder why my colleague / family member / boss is reacting in this way? How do they see the world differently to me? What is it about their reaction that triggers me?
Perhaps we will notice what Carl Jung wrote - that "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
4. Travel as an attitude means being open to connection.
Away from the cocoon of our known lives, we are more vulnerable and open, both with people we know and people we don’t. And while we don't always stay in touch with those we meet, for a brief moment, we have walked along the same path, and this interaction leaves us all the richer. It can act as a humble reminder, as Maya Angelou wrote, that "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike".
We don’t actually need to physically travel to connect with people or be just a little more open and vulnerable with people around us. We can choose to put our phones down in public places and connect, even if this is just a brief moment of connection.
5. Travel as an attitude means taking distance from life.
Being able to briefly press the pause button on everyday routines provides a bird’s eye view of life. Travel enables us to assess what matters most, to re-evaluate our priorities and what we want or need to change in our daily lives.
A physical change in environment is helpful - yet when this isn't possible we can also explore other ways of gaining a little perspective such as journaling, meditating, yoga, going into nature, therapy/coaching or simply leaving more space to just BE instead of overbooking the week.
Of course, nothing can nor should ever replace real travel. Yet what I have found by bringing travel as an attitude into my life as much as possible is that I no longer see travel as an escape from life. Instead, I see it as a way of enhancing a life I already enjoy.
One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. - Henry Miller
Author's bio
Hiba Samawi is a Psychologist and Coach working in Geneva, Lausanne and online.
A Swiss-Jordanian mix, she has a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Lausanne and is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). She previously ran Healthwise.ch, a health coaching business where she also created healthy recipes.
Hiba uses mindfulness-based behavioural approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). These are more active forms of therapy where, more than just talk, you learn skills for living.
She specializes mostly in difficulties around relationships, emotions, making healthy change and eating, and also offers group sessions, both in-person in Geneva/Lausanne and online.
www.wiserhumans.com
fb.me/wiserhumans
Photo credit: Patrick Fore
By Dr. Irina Schurov, LiveRight
Fruit and berry season has arrived! This is a great time of year when we can enjoy eating these fantastic nutrient-rich products and nourish our bodies with plenty of fibre, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Of course, fruit is a very good replacement for pastries, cookies and other “easy carb” snacks for children. However, it is also very easy to enjoy too much fruit during the summer. Especially, if you or your child has a compromised digestive system.
With this in mind, what exactly do we need to know about fruit?
- Fruit digests quickly and is pushed from the stomach to the intestine very early on. Meals that are especially rich in protein and fibre require much more time and gastric juice to digest. For this reason, fruit does not mix very well with other food groups and can disturb the digestive process of the main meal. It is, therefore, advisable to eat fruit as a snack between meals or on an empty stomach.
- Fruit is very sweet and causes a lot of sugar to be released into the blood, leading to a spike in energy. It would, therefore, be sensible to not eat fruit in the evening when your body needs to prepare for good quality sleep.
- Fruit is rich in a type of sugar called “fructose”. Unfortunately, many people cannot digest fructose very well and, instead, absorb large amounts. Researchers showed that up to 40% of people suffer from a condition called fructose malabsorption, in which fructose is inefficiently absorbed within the small intestine due to a limited amount of the fructose digesting enzyme. It is for this reason that, instead of nourishing our bodies, sometimes fruit can simply sit in the gut and be fermented by bacteria. The result of those bacteria feasting on fructose is a lot of gas and bloating, which makes many people feel uncomfortable. Therefore, eating too much fruit at the same time can cause digestive discomfort.
- Fruit is designed by nature to carry seeds and produce new plants. So, similar to grains, fruit and berries contain certain amounts of antinutrients that can irritate the digestive system. Cooking fruit helps to avoid this effect.
- It has been demonstrated that fructose does not trigger the release of “leptin”, a hormone that signals satiety, and instead triggers the release of another hormone called “ghrelin”, a hunger stimulating hormone. That is why eating fruit makes you want to eat even more fruit. Monitoring your portion of fruit could help bring this situation back under control.
To conclude, while you absolutely should enjoy eating fruit during the summer season, please, think about when and how much of this great food you consume. Eat local, organic, fresh and very ripe fruit to gain maximum benefit from these fantastic products.
Author's Bio
Dr. Irina Schurov is a Nutritional Neuroscientist with a PhD from Cambridge University (UK) and over 20 years’ experience in science and health-providing services. She created and founded LiveRight, an initiative to help others through nutrition and wellbeing strategies. By building an educational platform around healthy eating habits, by restoring the relationships between people and food, by supporting your individual circumstances and through personalized coaching in nutrition, she wants to help you and your family achieve the optimal balance between help and life.
Irina focuses especially on children with ASD and related neurological conditions by addressing the connection between gut and brain by detoxifying, nourishing and resetting a whole body biochemical balance. She provides personalized nutritional support to families and an individual DNA nourishing programme for each child in order to maximise their potential in life.
LiveRight
By Birgit Suess, Sweet Sunshine Speech Therapy
June is here and the children will be out of school before you know it! Mothers everywhere are thinking about how to keep their children occupied for the Summer Holidays. For those mothers with kids who struggle with sensory issues, this can be an even greater challenge.
Going swimming at the lake, hiking, visiting a museum, the park, or going to a movie are some examples of fun summertime activities, but for kids with sensory issues, these simple outings can be extremely stressful. Planning ahead can reduce your child’s stress and make an outing more enjoyable for everyone.
First decide if you should let your child know what to expect in advance. This can greatly help reduce stress for children on the Autism Spectrum but can make things worse for children who worry and overthink about the upcoming event.
If you do feel preparing them for the outing will be helpful, talk to them about it as far in advance as possible, mark it on the calendar and answer their questions. It can be helpful to write up a checklist/timeline of what they can expect to happen.
Be sure to include things they may not like so much, like putting on sunscreen or wearing a hat. But don’t forget to offer them some things they do like, for example, packing their favorite lunch or that you will buy them an ice cream.
Giving children some control over the situation can help make it less stressful. Offering choices within your boundaries can make children feel better about an uncomfortable sensory experience. For example, you can offer a choice of sunscreens, cream or spray, or a choice of when to put the sunscreen on, before we leave the house, or when we get to the lake.
