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 Crustless Spinach-Feta Pie makes the perfect healthy, easy addition to your picnics this summer!
This recipe uses frozen spinach. Frozen vegetables (without anything added) are a convenient and healthy alternative to fresh vegetables as they are flash frozen just hours after being picked, ensuring the greatest amount of nutrient is retained.
The beauty of this recipe is that you can have all the ingredients handy and whip it together last minute. I always make sure I have frozen vegetables like spinach in the freezer and Feta is one of my staples as it lasts for months in the fridge. I also always have eggs, as they make the perfect healthy fast food and often keep my garlic peeled in a jar in the fridge.
Quick, simple, tasty and with no extra grocery planning needed – what more to ask for from a recipe?
INGREDIENTS
- 500g frozen spinach leaves (with nothing added)
- 2 medium-large eggs or 3 small eggs
- 2-3 cloves garlic (depending on their size and your love of garlic)
- 1 block Feta cheese, chopped into small pieces
- Salt, pepper & ground nutmeg to taste
METHOD
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Take frozen spinach from the freezer and place in a pot with 2 tablespoons water. Cover pot and leave on medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- While the spinach is cooking, chop the Feta and peel the garlic.
- Once the spinach is cooked, crack the eggs in a bowl and whisk to mix, adding the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Add the mixture to the spinach and stir, then add the chopped Feta and pressed garlic and stir well again.
- Transfer to a pie dish and press down the mixture with a spatula so that it is well packed. Try to include as little liquid as possible when you transfer the mixture to the pie dish.
- Place in the oven for 30 minutes then take it out and leave to cool before serving.
Author's bio
Hiba Giacoletto is a Certified Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) with a Masters Degree in Psychology
Hiba helps people lose weight, feel more energetic or take control of their eating without diets or deprivation. She believes that no one way of eating or living works for everyone and that it is about experimenting to find what truly works for you. She uses a unique blend of NUTRITION + PSYCHOLOGY + COACHING to help people start trusting their body's wisdom to make food and lifestyle choices that enable them to look and feel their best. She is convinced that regardless of what you might have tried in the past, she can help you get unstuck, overcome self-sabotage behavior and find your mojo!
You can book a FREE 45 minute Health Chat via her website, www.healthwise.ch to find out whether Health Coaching is right for you.
www.healthwise.ch
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By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise
Chocolate and Easter seem to go hand in hand - so why not try making your own chocolate this Easter? You need only 3-4 ingredients and it tastes so divine, you will never want to go back to store-bought chocolate!
This recipe uses both cacao butter and coconut oil. Cacao butter is what gives this chocolate that irresistible, melts in your mouth taste but you can also just use coconut oil if you can't find cacao butter.
For this blog, I have invited Ruth Maraundy from our UK office to consider some of the most important questions you should ask your nanny.
Having served her apprenticeship in our Swiss office, Ruth now runs the Rockmybaby office in London. As an expatriate, Ruth understands the challenges parents have in finding quality nannies and babysitters. She knows firsthand the feeling of leaving the house, knowing your children have a caring nanny, with the best credentials. Having moved internationally more than once, Ruth understands exactly what it is like to arrive in a country with small children, know no one and have no family to offer help:
1) Tell me why you chose to be a nanny, what brought you into childcare
This is a very important question because you want to make sure that the nanny you hire is nannying your children for the right reasons i.e. she loves children and childcare and not because she just needs to earn some extra money.
2) How would you structure a day for my children, especially on a miserable wet Switzerland day?
Rockmybaby recommends that all parents suggest from the beginning that they want an “active nanny.” It is very important to hire someone who is proactive, a self-starter and someone who seeks out enriching, educational and fun activities. Switzerland is full of amazing and often free activities. This is a very important question to ask and the nanny should be able to answer it without hesitation. Recently during the interview process a Rockmybaby candidate answered this question by saying “Rainy days are the best days! We do arts and crafts, make our own play-doh, create, rehearse and then perform a show for the parents when they come home from work…” Her enthusiasm and positive attitude was so obvious and sincere!
3) How would you soothe a baby who could not stop crying in public or a 3-year old tantruming?
We have all had situations when our children cried uncontrollably (I am remembering a transatlantic flight and my daughter crying uncontrollably, so much so that we went into lavatory to give the other passengers a break from the noise) it is difficult, embarrassing and can make any caregiver feel powerless. It is important to know how a nanny is going to handle this situation. She should discuss the importance of safety at that moment, especially for a tantruming toddler and being certain that the child cannot hurt them or anyone else. Sometimes a child can be soothed and other times they just need to “ride it out,” but as a parent you need to be sure your nanny can handle this type of situation.
4) What would you do to ensure there is a clear communication between us?
It is very important that the nanny and parents have a constant and on-going dialogue. Rockmybaby recommends a daily nanny diary to record meals, naps, activities, mood etc., especially in the beginning. We recommend for the nanny to send photos during the day so the parents can feel connected to their children. Another way to maintain dialogue and contact is a 5-minute weekly meeting to make sure that everyone is aware about what is happening not only with the children but also in each other’s lives.
5) Tell me about your style of behavioral management
It is very important that you and your nanny or babysitter have a “shared strategy,” when it comes to behavioral management. The nanny or babysitter you choose is going to be spending a lot of time with your children and there will be times when she needs to manage your child’s behavior. As the parent it is essential that you are on the same page as the nanny when it comes to behavioral management or you will contradict each other and your children will receive mixed-messages and this is a disservice to everyone involved the children, the parents and the nanny
Guest blogger's Bio
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Tanya is Swiss by Nationality and lives in Zurich with her husband, Russell, and her two little girls.
After having her second baby, and understanding only too well the challenges of working and having children (with no family support as they are all back in South Africa), Tanya is determined to provide a service, through her franchise business, Rockmybaby, that will help make life a little easier for families when it comes to childcare. She strives to help parents feel confident in the care of their children so that they can have some well-deserved time-out’s for themselves.
Over her career, Tanya has worked in corporate environments, providing recruitment services to clients across different industries.
Miserable kiddies with a fever and a rash are part of being a parent – I’ve certainly been there with my two daughters.
But when is it something that can be treated at home with some painkillers, water and a cuddle? When is it something that needs to be checked by the doctor?
One of the important diseases that must be seen by a doctor is measles (rougeole in French, Masern in German). This is a serious disease caused by a virus that is very contagious - in fact 90% of non-immune people living with someone who has measles will catch it. The disease is spread by coughs and sneezes, as well as contact with objects such as door handles, toys etc. that have the wet spray from the coughs and sneezes on them.
Article by Carolina Rodriguez Barros, Dare to Glow, (www.daretoglow.com) and Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise Health Coaching (www.healthwise.ch)
In Part 1 of our article about pain-free periods, we looked at some spirtual and emotional techniques that we share with clients who suffer from PMS or Premenstrual Symptoms. Part 2 will now focus on nutritional options for helping sufferers deal with a condition that can transform them into a different person in the days before or during your period.
FOOD: NOURISH YOUR BODY IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY
In addition to working on the spiritual and emotional side of PMS and honoring your body’s needs at this time, eating the right foods is a powerful ways to turn PMS around.
You don’t need to eat a perfect diet - try instead to aim for at least 80% healthy foods and fully enjoy the 20% of less healthy foods you allow yourself. This is a more realistic way of making sustainable change.
