Depression: You Don't Have to Feel This Way

Symptoms of depression
* No interest or pleasure in things you used to enjoy
* Feeling sad or empty
* Crying easily or crying for no reason
* Feeling slowed down or feeling restless and unable to sit still
* Feeling worthless or guilty
* Weight gain or loss
* Thoughts about death or suicide
* Trouble thinking, recalling things or focusing on what you're doing
* Trouble making everyday decisions
* Problems sleeping, especially in the early morning, or wanting to sleep all of the time
* Feeling tired all of the time
* Feeling numb emotionally, perhaps even to the point of not being able to cry

Getting through depression
* Pace yourself. Don't expect to do everything you normally can. Set a realistic schedule.
* Don't believe all of your negative thinking, such as blaming yourself or expecting to fail. This thinking is part of depression. These thoughts will go away as your depression lifts.
* Get involved in activities that make you feel good or feel like you've achieved something.
* Avoid making big life decisions when you're depressed. If you must make a big decision, ask someone you trust to help you.
* Avoid drugs and alcohol. Both make depression worse. Both can cause dangerous side effects with your antidepressants.
* Physical activity seems to cause a chemical reaction in the body that may improve your mood. Exercising 4 to 6 times a week for at least 30 minutes each time is a good goal. But even less activity can be helpful.
* Try not to get discouraged. It will take time for your depression to lift fully.

Reasons to get help for depression
* Early treatment helps keep depression from getting worse or lasting a long time.
* Thoughts of suicide are common in people with depression. The risk of suicide is higher if you don't get treatment for your depression. When depression is successfully treated, the thoughts of suicide will go away.
* Treatment can help you return to your "normal" self, enjoying life.
* Treatment can help prevent depression from coming back.

Making Love During Pregnancy

There are lots of myths about sex and pregnancy, such as:
- Sex can be harmful or painful during pregnancy.
- Intercourse could hurt the baby.
- Sex can lead to a miscarriage
- The baby somehow “knows and feels” that sex is taking place.

But the fact still remains that:
- Unless your doctor says otherwise, sex is safe for you and your baby during pregnancy
- The baby has no idea what Mom & Dad are doing, so please enjoy yourselves!!
- Sexual activity won't “harm” your baby because your baby is protected by the amniotic fluid in your uterus, as well as the mucous plug that blocks the cervix throughout most of your pregnancy.

Pleasures of Sex During Pregnancy
- Increased vaginal lubrication,
- Engorgement of the genital area which helps some people become orgasmic for the first time or have multi-orgasm
- Lack of birth control
- If you have been trying for awhile, a return to sex as pleasure as opposed to procreational and other reasons.

When Not to Have Sex during Pregnancy
- Your obstetrician has advised against it
- History of miscarriage
- Risk of miscarriage
- Previous preterm delivery
- Leaking amniotic fluid(Your water has broken)
- Vaginal bleeding
- Placenta previa(when the placenta is covering part of the cervix)
- High risk pregnancy e. g Twin pregnancy
- If partner has a sexually transmitted disease or HIV

Sex Drive During Pregnancy
Many women find that pregnancy makes them want sex more than they did before they became pregnant. This sex drive is caused by hormonal changes. Sex drives varies during the three trimesters of pregnancy. Symptoms such as nausea and fatigue during the first trimester can lower one’s sex interest in the first trimester and in the second trimester there is an increased desire for sex which reduces during the third trimester.

Best Sex Positions During Pregnancy
Creativity of both partners would be put to test during pregnancy since the traditional position would not be comfortable and pleasurable. These are some suggestions:

- Side lying, knee pulled up
- Woman on top
- Spooning (Man behind woman, entering through the rear)
- Hands and knees

Not Having Sex, Other Forms of Intimacy
If you have been advised against having sex during pregnancy, there are other forms you can get intimate and express your love to your partner such as:
- Kissing
- Cuddling
- Romantic dinners
- Talking and holding hands
- Soothing baths
- Oral Sex

N:B- Ensure your partner does not blow air into your vagina because it can cause air embolism which can be dangerous for you and your baby.
Understanding, empathy, creativity and humor are of the essence for love making during pregnancy.

Finally, sex should not be avoided during pregnancy unless YOUR DOCTOR SAYS SO!

Dieting, Eating Disorders, and Obesity in America

By Maria Rainier- Guest Blogger

I received a note in my mail box this morning that my insurance company would be raising my premium because between 2007 and 2009, the number insurance carriers in my state who received obesity surgery went up 55%.

How is it that the nation claiming the most lives to eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia (218 deaths annually by the most recent study) is also known as the fattest nation on the planet? The answer is a four-letter word.
Diet. Rather, diet-ing.

The Birth of the Dieting Nation
In a nation with a high-stress daily environment, minimal exercise, and fatty foods, the logical solution is to restrict food intake and increase exercise in order to be what the media (in bed with the diet industry) finds sexually attractive and successful. The American diet industry makes close to $40 billion annually selling pills, foods, cookbooks, how-to guides, fitness DVDs, clothing, exercise machines, and hoaxes.

These profits didn’t exist in the early 1980s before the burst of media flaunting rail-thin models with abnormally large (surgically- or Photoshop-enhanced) breasts and hunky muscle-men. Is it a coincidence that obesity became identified as an epidemic later in the ‘80s?

The Dieting Nation Gains Weight
If you approach a clinician at a treatment center for disordered eaters—commonly believed to be anorexics, bulimics, and other “skinny” eaters—they will tell you a little-known truth: dieting is the greatest trigger of eating disorders. In fact, upwards of 50% of individuals enrolled in dieting programs suffer from BED, or Binge-Eating Disorder.

The logic for this is simple: if you tell yourself you cannot have any “bad” foods (which happen to be yours and all of America’s favorite comfort foods like chocolate, ice cream, bread, pasta, and fried chicken), you will crave “bad” foods all the more. When you tell a child not to have any cookies from the jar, you will find that the child has eaten all of the cookies. Geneen Roth, Good Housekeeping columnist and renowned speaker, first felt she would have a problem with her weight when her mother refused to let her have a second creamsicles, “or you will get fat.” Thus, from age 11 to 28, she cycled through diets and innumerous eating disorders, losing and re-gaining a total of over a thousand pounds.

“Diets are so incredibly seductive because they seem like [they work at first] . . . [and] they are thrilling experiences when they work. If only I could fix myself, I could manage to stay on a diet.” The truth is, however, that they rarely work: 95-85% of people on diets gain the weight back or more within 3 years, and these failed dieters contribute to the obese population, which, in America, stands currently at 73% of our entire population of 307,006,550.

“For every diet,” Roth warns in every speech she holds or book she writes, “there is an equal and opposite binge.”

How We Pay
The consequences of obesity are often deadly: hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The problem with eating disorder research in America, however, is that it is conducted on mostly white communities by white researchers, which feeds the myth that eating disorders are a plight of well-off, college-age Caucasian girls. The myth of African Americans and Latin Americans being immune to disordered eating not only skews statistics but blocks an individual’s road to health. Today, the media pressures people of all races and walks of life to be inhumanly slender and proportioned, fit and beautiful.

Moreover, eating disorders are not limited to “skinny” disorders; they in fact most often result in obesity. By definition, an eating disorder is any habitual kind of eating conducted not to nourish the body but to comfort or fill it, fueled by compulsion and/or emotion. If the statistic mentioned above included all eating disorders and not just “skinny” disorders, the number would be staggeringly higher than 218 deaths per year.

How to Stop
The answer is not to diet. That’s what got us here in the first place.
The answer is to eat what the body needs and desires rather than what we have trained our minds to want. Your body doesn’t feel good after eating that donut because that donut has zero nutrients in it. Your mind wants it, however, because we have trained ourselves to eat comfort foods when we need comforting. Much of Americans’ eating is fueled by compulsion. We must find what is driving our compulsion—insecurity, doubts about our jobs or marriages, stress at work, etc.—and eat to fuel rather than comfort our bodies.

Telling ourselves, “No, you can’t have that,” is the surest way to binge on it later. We must educate ourselves and our children about nutrition and make peace with our inner and bodily selves.

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, researching various online degree programs and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop

5 Tips for Getting in Shape on a Budget

By Gunter Jamemson- Guest Blogger


When you look good, you feel good about yourself; you have more self-confidence and feel like you can take on anything. Everyone wants to feel that way, but not everyone can afford a gym membership—much less a personal trainer. And what about expensive home exercise machines? Forget it. Although all that stuff is nice, you don’t need it to get in shape. Spinning classes at your local gym might help motivate you to work out, but you can get in shape yourself, if you are determined and have the right attitude. Getting in shape doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are some ways you can get in shape without spending big bucks:

1) Run:
Running is one of the very best ways to lose weight fast and keep it off, and it doesn’t cost you a cent. You can run around your neighborhood or on local trails. You can even use free websites like MapMyRun.com and DailyMile.com to map and measure running routes and track your progress over time. You might need some running shoes if you don’t already have some, but most $40 pairs are just a good as $120 running shoes.

2) Buy equipment at a second-hand store:
When was the last time you were at a second-hand or goodwill store? Have you seen all the exercise equipment people get rid of? There’s tons of it, and it’s all really cheap. From large exercise machines to hand weights, get it used at your local second-hand store.

3) Use household items:
If you don’t want to buy weights, you can make some yourself using cans of food for hand weights or jugs of water for heavier weights. You can even use these tips for creating your own weights at home using sand, cans, tennis balls, and more.

4) Play or organize community sports:
City or community sports leagues are usually pretty inexpensive and you can meet new people and make friends by joining. Or you can organize your own regular sports games with a group of friends or families. Playing all-ages kickball with a bunch of families on your block can be just as fun as hitting a few balls around at the baseball diamond with a league.

5) Get free info online:
Stop subscribing to fitness magazines and buying expensive shakes and diet programs. You can get great fitness advice online for free from a number of different sources. And with fitness advice, you can get a lot of free advice on diet and healthy eating programs that can help you replace energy drinks and store-bought protein shakes with cheaper, healthier homemade options.

Getting in shape can be hard. It requires determination and consistency. But it doesn’t require a lot of money—if you do it right. You can get in shape using free resources and items that you already have around the house. And when you get in shape, you’ll be even happier knowing that you did it without having to pay an arm and a leg for a gym membership.


Gunter Jameson writes about several topics including travel, minimalism and Online Classes

Body no be firewood o! by Patricia Omoqui

“Body no be firewood o.”” This is a saying my husband David heard regularly during his growing up years from his father. In turn, my husband reminds me. From the time David met me he was amazed at the Type-A, non-stop perfectionist tendencies I exhibited. I would go from early morning to late at night without a break. In the twelve years he has known me, I have made major changes. However, I admit I still occasionally return to my old ways. When I do, my husband offers me this Pidgin English reminder and a smile.

Our bodies are not firewood made to be burned up. Our bodies are not cheap machines to be run relentlessly and then replaced. Your body is priceless. It is the only one you have. It is the vessel that houses your eternal spirit as you walk life’s path. It is the vehicle through which you interface with the world. Through the body, you speak, touch others, experience the environment and act in the world.

A healthy body is a treasure. When we listen to the signals our body gives us and honor it by taking good care of it, we feel alert and happy. A body that is well-cared for is efficient; it enables us to function at our best. Have you ever noticed that when you are rested you feel better, you think better and you can often accomplish more in a shorter period of time? A healthy body supports our intellect, imagination and intuition.

On the other hand, when your body is sick, life feels confusing and burdensome. You are on-edge with people around you. You do not think clearly. You have trouble being productive at work and at home. Life is a struggle not a joy.

Recently a friend of mine told me, “I do not know what is wrong with me. I am angry. I do not have any nice words left for people.”

This friend had been complaining for some time that he needed a break. I asked, “Are you overtired?”

“Yes,” he replied. “In fact, I feel sick, as if I have the flu.” His body was demanding that he take a break.

He planned a day off. It turned into two and continued through the weekend. The next time we talked, I asked how he was doing.

He reported, “I feel much lighter. My brain is fresh again. I can think clearly.”
I smiled and said, “Why do you think it took a physical breakdown to get you to stop?”

He laughed, “Something is always coming and I always want to do extra. It is seems as if ‘this’ effort matters, just this little extra effort. You know? So I decide, ‘I can’t rest now, no not now.’ I might underperform. People won’t get things done if I am not there managing them. There is also an atom of fear involved. I believe I will lose out if I rest. Deep down, I worry that I will miss the deal.”

“Do you think that you will continue to repeat this cycle?” I questioned.
His response was all too familiar, “No way”. I have learned a lot from this. I must say, ‘No.’ I am not going to play with my rest anymore. Nothing will spoil if I am not there. The world won’t stop for me, so I must step out to rest and care for myself. I must learn to say ‘No.’ I need to choose more carefully what appointments I take, make sure they are truly necessary.”

Have you ever come through a situation like this? Have you ever promised yourself that you would now make self-care a priority only to slip again into a pattern of overwork and exhaustion?

I see myself in my friend. I realize that making these changes is rarely as easy as making a one-time commitment. However, there are some simple techniques I have been practicing that help me to do better at taking care of myself. Perhaps they will help you too.

1. Make a conscious decision to value your body.
It is not necessary to wait until you become sick and tired of being sick and tired to change your lifestyle. Too many of us begin to value our health only AFTER we have lost it. Why not try an affirmative approach? Begin to appreciate your body. Notice the amazing, ever-ready, brilliantly functioning mechanisms the body places at your disposal. Flex your hand. Wiggle your ankle. Scan the room with your marvelous eyes. Develop an awareness of your miraculous body. When we take time to appreciate our body we are more likely to treat it with respect and love.

2. Honor your body’s messages.
Pay attention when your body speaks. Stomachs growl when we need food. Yawns come when we are sleepy. Aches or pains tell us a limb or organ needs help. Respect these signals. Heed your body: Stop. Refuel. Repair. Rest. Move into well-being.

3. Make purposeful choices with your time.
Is your schedule jam packed from dawn to dusk or even midnight? When we overload ourselves, we invite problems. We begin to lose things. We forget details. We make errors. We miss vital points in conversations. Look closely at the way you are managing your time. Are your commitments supporting your goals? Take stock. Remember, calm, focused, purposeful action brings meaningful results.

4. Learn to say, “No.”
Are you committing yourself to activities, friends, meetings and organizations out of obligation? Don’t allow yourself to go through life “sacrificing” and feeling overtaxed. Choose to say a kind but firm, “Thank you for the invitation. I cannot attend at this time.”


5. Schedule periods of rest.
Sometimes the most important action you can take is to pause and close your eyes for a moment. Throughout each day, incorporate health-supporting breaks. Take thirty seconds to breathe deeply. Do a five minute stretch: get away from your desk, have a drink of water, enjoy a good laugh, look out the window, get some fresh air. When you sense your body is becoming depleted, take a day off for some quiet time on your own. Go on holiday and when you do, make sure to incorporate down time and relaxation into your itinerary.

6. Take technology breaks.
Has your Blackberry, IPod, Computer or Facebook page become an addiction? People can wait for your response; it does not have to be immediate. You are not required to be “turned on” 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Do not become a slave. Use technology to help you maintain connections with others on YOUR terms. Give this a try. Put all technology away for a few hours. Yes, turn it all off. Create times during your week when you can be completely where you are, fully interacting with others in your presence or enjoying time alone.


Your assignment this week is to find away to take care of yourself. Aim for health. According to the World Health Organization, health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity but a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.Do not settle for anything less.