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
By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise
This is a healthier recipe for gingerbread that is grain-free and vegan. The hardest part is buying the chestnut flour. After that, it comes together in just a few minutes and will make your home smell amazing!
Gingerbread
- 125g chestnut flour – you can buy chestnut flour in any organic store
- 2 tsp gingerbread spice blend (see below for recipe or you can buy a ready-made mix)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 3 tbsp almond butter (made only of ground almonds)
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 300 ml water
- zest of 1 organic orange (optional)
(c) copyright HealthFirst 2015
By Dr Penny Fraser, HealthFirst
“Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases”, Ministry of Health, Great Britain 1942:
What you need to know about the flu.
As the mornings are getting mistier and the kids start swapping coughs and colds at school, our thoughts may already be turning to the winter flu season – and how to avoid it.
We use the word ‘flu’ quite freely when someone has ‘just’ a cough, bad cold or fever but actually true influenza, an infection with the influenza virus A, B or C is quite a different affliction. Influenza, the ‘flu’, la grippe, die Grippe, Spanish fever – whatever you call it in your home, it is an illness that needs to be taken seriously.
It is said that the way you can tell the difference between a common cold or influenza is this: You are looking out of the window from your sick bed and see a 100CHF note lying on the grass. If you have true influenza, you just can’t get out of bed to get it!
by Johdi Woodford, Little Bird Pilates
“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting, we are sitting ourselves to death” says Dr James Levine, the Director of the Mayo Clinic at the Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative.
Scary isn’t it? So what should we do about it? Simple, you say, make everybody move to a standing desk, or worse, a treadmill desk, ugh! Can you imagine, talk about being a human hamster, or literally being in the Rat Race? But apparently, researchers have found that sitting down for more than 6 hours per day will greatly increase your risk of an early death. So seriously, what are we going to do about it? Well, now that we’ve all been made increasingly aware of the impending doom by a recent spate of scare-mongering headlines, we’re all going to make sure that we get up regularly from our chair to move around more (read more trips to the water fountain, not more runs to the vending machine!) And that’s it, simple as that, the end to our problems? No, not really. Because, as we get up from our chair, 90% (and that’s a conservative estimate) of us will take our smart phone along and use the time to send a message or two, or check our news feeds, right? And then we’re at risk from the dreaded ‘Text Neck’. Yes, it’s a real thing, according to doctors. It’s caused the constant, downward-looking gaze that puts an enormous strain on your neck muscles. When you’re standing straight, your head weighs about 10-12 pounds. But, as the head comes forward further and further, so the weight of it increases exponentially: at 15 degrees forward, the head weighs 27 pounds, at 45 degrees forward, the head weighs 60 pounds. All this increases the load on muscles that are simply not built for it and can lead to a great deal of damage over time.
By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise
If you are looking for a latte that is free of dairy, soy and refined sugar, you can make it yourself in just a few minutes.
Almond Spice Latte uses a lazy version of almond milk made by blending almond butter made only from ground almonds with water. To that I add some sweet spices and a little maple syrup to sweeten. You can also make a plainer version with just the almond butter, water and coffee or even replace the water for almond milk. The blending action helps create the froth that feels quite latte-like.
Simply combine all the ingredients below and blend, then serve immediately!
By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise
Something I hear often is how 'healthy' people think fruit yoghurt is. Sorry to burst your bubble but have you actually read the label on a fruit yoghurt? At best, it is loaded with sugar - at worst, lots of yucky stuff.
It is time for a really simple, delicious alternative that is free of sugar, dairy, soy and gluten!
This breakfast or snack is creamy thanks to the soaked, uncooked buckwheat and hemp seeds. It’s sweet thanks to the raspberries and dried figs. And it has that little bit of tartness thanks to the lemon.
Once you have soaked everything in the evening, it takes only 5 minutes to blend everything in the morning and can keep for up to two days in the fridge.
And because of the mix of healthy fats, protein and fiber, it is filling enough to be a meal in itself.
