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The commonality of bloating can make it seem that bloating is inevitable and that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. But that just isn’t true. So what causes bloating? It may surprise you to find out that many of your common everyday habits attribute to this uncomfortable distention of your midsection. It might also surprise you that it’s not all that difficult to avoid or fight off.

The idea “health is wealth” is a fairly recent attitude shift. Today, we are more concerned than ever with our health, fitness, nutrition, and overall wellness. The trend in health consciousness coupled with medical progress and awareness has resulted in a 30% drop in mortality rates, and a 56% increase in life expectancy, in just 100 years. People are discovering that while money helps to pay for their lifestyle, there would be no life to style without their health. Thus the focal shift is changing from that of a career driven, workaholic society, to a more well rounded and balanced healthy community. More people are embracing the idea that without their health, their wealth doesn’t much matter.

Human socialization is key to leading a healthy and happy lifestyle, unfortunately many of the activities that we have come to associate with socialization are unhealthy and not productive to cultivating lasting or meaningful bonds. More often than not, we rely on restaurants, bars, and other low activity, indoor venues for the setting of our social meetings. We spend our social hour drinking high- calorie cocktails, and eating high grease, low nutrition, fried foods, and statically sitting. After sitting all day at work, it has somehow become natural to meet up with friends and sit some more.

Depression: Are You At Risk?

Depression is a natural and normal emotion that everyone faces at one time in their life or another. It’s when the depression doesn’t go away, and continues to intensify into feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and worthlessness; then a normal case of depression becomes something more dangerous. Prolonged periods of depression are often categorized as clinical depression, if the patient simultaneously has five or more of the following symptoms, for at least a two week duration:

• A depressed mood for most of the day (especially in the morning)
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt every day (or almost every day)
• Feelings of restlessness
• Insomnia or Hypersomnia every day (or almost every day)
• Fatigue (loss of energy) every day (or almost every day)
• Impaired concentration (indecisiveness)
• Lack of interest (or pleasure) in most activities every day (or almost every day)
• Significant weight loss or weight gain
• Recurring thoughts of death or suicide (not just fearing death)

Do you know the difference between foods that are healthy and foods that are just faking it? Are the healthy foods in your cabinets actually unhealthy foods that have been masquerading for so long that it’s just understood that they are good for you, without anyone ever having questioned the packaging? Use this list to clean out your cabinets and ask yourself “Is It Healthy?” even if you think that you know it is.