Top 3 Ways To Approach Ageing

November 24, 2020 JayneLeave a comment

Image by spider0702 from Pixabay

There is no way you can avoid ageing; it’s going to happen no matter how many anti-ageing creams you buy or how much plastic surgery you have. However, rather than getting down about it, you can enjoy the ageing process and embrace it because there will be plenty of positives to it, too, more than you may think.

Look After Your Skin

One of the things that upsets people most about ageing is how their skin looks, as in some cases, it can make them look older than they are. When you are younger, it’s essential to take care of your skin, and no matter what age you are now, quit smoking and sunbathing because this won’t do your skin any good at all. As you get older, your skin loses its elasticity and can start to sag and wrinkle. There are many creams, and lotions, and face washes you can get to combat the signs of anti-ageing, but the main ingredients you want to look for are ceramides, coenzyme Q10, green tea, vitamin C, and hyaluronic acid, as well as wearing a high SPF sunscreen to reduce sun damage. Zo Skin Health have an array of skin enhancers, and as everyone’s skin is different, it is important to choose something that will target your specific problem or skin type.

Eat a healthy diet

One of the most important things to do in life at any age is to eat a nutritious diet and get regular exercise, but as you get older, this will lower your heart rate and keep you feeling younger. It’s not just what you eat you need to watch, but it’s everything you put into your body. So when it comes to food go for a diet which is low in saturated fats and make sure there are lots of fruit and vegetables, oily fish and whole grains included. It’s also essential to have small amounts of low-fat dairy and lean meat too. Don’t forget that you need to keep hydrated too so make sure you drink lots of water to avoid getting dehydrated as this can leave you feeling tired and confused. Tea, coffee, and fruit juice will also help you to stay hydrated but you should avoid sugary fizzy drinks.

Get Plenty Of Sleep

While this is important at any age, it’s so important that it needs to be reiterated. If you don’t get enough sleep, then you will likely feel tired and grumpy. But not only this, but sleep has so many other benefits. It helps to reduce your stress levels – which, let’s face it, you need as little stress as possible at any age but particularly as you get older. Another benefit is that sleep can actually improve your memory and who doesn’t need that as they age? Good sleep can also lower your blood pressure, can improve your immune system, and help you to maintain a healthy weight, all of which are extremely important as you age.

Baby

Things They Don’t Tell You About Your Post-Baby Body

November 8, 2017 Jayne3 Comments

When I fell pregnant with Sausage, there’s no denying the fact that I wasn’t in the best shape I could have been in; two years of marriage and the “comfort” had set in, with lots of lovely evenings spent together, eating takeaway and watching movies, and it had exactly the effect you#d imagine on my figure. I’d always planned to get in shape before we even considered having another baby, but fast-forward five and a half years and I fell pregnant a LOT quicker than I thought I would after having my implant removed. All of this neglect aside, there are things which happen to your body, post-baby, that a lot of people don’t talk about. Here’s just a few of the things that I’ve had to deal with:

Hair Loss

I’m pretty lucky that I have fairly thick hair to begin with, but after both of my babies the hair loss was shocking. I always lose it from around my hairline which is probably the most annoyingly noticeable place to lose it from, especially as I wear my hair in a ponytail and it can really mess with your confidence. I’m lucky that I didn’t lose enough to have needed to resort to an FUE hair transplant, but it’s something which affects a lot of new mums.

Incontinence

This one is pretty much a universal truth for anyone who’s had a baby – you WILL pee yourself at some point in the future. I know women who’ve done every Kegel exercise imaginable who still break out in a cold sweat at the thought of going on a trampoline or getting a bad cough, and it’s not something we should be ashamed about, it’s just a fact of biology.

Stretch Marks

Because of things like Instagram and women’s magazines, it would be really easy to think that only us mere mortals get stretchmarks and that they’re something to be ashamed of. The fact of the matter is, some people get them, some people don’t. Celebs have the benefit of photo retouching and professional make-up people to make them look perfect but it’s very rarely a reality.

The Pouch

Obviously, not everyone who has a baby ends up with a pouch (you know , that flap of skin on your belly which just WILL NOT SHIFT not matter how much weight you lose) but it’s incredibly common and a lot of women say that their bodies never look the same again after having a baby, which can be hard to deal with, mentally. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never have my 22-year old body again, HOWEVER, I’m working hard to improve my new normal.

Scars

For ages after having Sausage, I found it really hard to look at my c-section scar because it represented a traumatic time in my life. It was jagged and red and made me feel like a failure for not having given birth naturally. Then Husband told me how grateful he was to that scar, how it represented the fact that a doctor was able to remove Sausage from my body safely while she was being starved of oxygen and save her life. As soon as I started to view my scar differently, it changed my whole view and I now love it.

Health

Swimming During Pregnancy

June 17, 2013December 8, 2013 JayneLeave a comment

When I was pregnant with Sausage, particularly towards the end, I was MASSIVE. I had polyhydramnious, meaning I carried an excess of amniotic fluid. Most babies stop moving so much in the last few weeks of pregnancy, simply because they cannot anymore, due to lack of space. Sausage, I think, swam lengths inside me, right up until the day she was born!

Add to this the fact that I had SPD, a painful condition in which my body releases too much of the hormone that we need to make our pelvis loosen up enough to fit a baby through it, as well as being in the largest stage of pregnancy in August, I was one seriously uncomfortable lady. My ankles and hands would swell daily and my movement was severely restricted due to the combination of my various ills.

At the time, it never even occurred to me that swimming probably would have done me the world of good, floating about in the cool water, taking the pressure off of my joints and allowing me to move around in a way that was low impact. I’ve looked into it and there’s even specific maternity swimwear that I could have invested in for my hippo-like form to splash around in! If we ever decide to have another child, I know for a fact that I’ll be using the pool to its full advantage!

Weirdly, (apart from this annoying pad of fat that I had under my bump which made me look like I had a massive beer gut *heave*) pregnancy was one of the few times in my life that I didn’t feel body-conscious. Yes, I was enormous, but I was supposed to be! Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of lifes ‘glowers’, you know, women who look like Mother Earth when they’re with-child, but it made me feel slightly freer about my body, which was a fairly liberating feeling.

If you have any concerns about swimming whilst pregnant, there’s a great article over on Baby Center with some info about keeping yourself safe.