Topic: self-help

Hall Pass: Instead of Husbands and Wives, Take a Break From Toxic Friends and Family

Hall Pass is basically the big-budget (and not nearly as entertaining) version of last fall’s indie flick The Freebie, which I blogged about on Blisstree a while back. The flawed, rom-com Hollywood logic in both films goes something like this: Couple has been married for a while, ennui sets in, husband’s eye wanders, wife gives husband a week off marriage in order to rekindle the spark (or, in the case of The Freebie, the couple gives each other one night off work/marriage), hilarity ensues, lessons are learned. On screen, this simplistic concept either works (couple realizes how good they have it) or it doesn’t (couple breaks up over infidelity and moves on), but in real life, things tend to be more complicated (and feature fewer Hollywood celebrities).

I don’t need to issue my husband a Hall Pass for several reasons: 1. He’s too busy. 2. He’s too tired. 3. He’s too cranky. (I’d feel like I’d need to call the imaginary-sex-partner-woman to apologize for him in advance.) And 4. He doesn’t have that philandering quality about him. Likewise, my husband needn’t give me a Hall Pass for the following reasons: 1. I’m too busy. 2. I’m too tired. 3. I’m too cranky. And 4. I’m 28 weeks pregnant, and what guy in his right mind would really be into that? So I’d like to suggest handing out a different type of non-sexual Hall Pass for real life situations: Starting now, I’d like us all to take a week off from our toxic friends and family. (Think of it as giving them up for Lent.) More »

Judging People Is Healthy, Even If You Lose Friends Over It

I was judgmental and lost a good friend, but it was worth it. I did that thing you’re not really supposed to do to a friend, as a friend, which is to judge a friend and tell them that the way they’re living their life is wrong. And this fellow, let’s call him Theo, was a really good, close, longtime friend of mine. He was fun, funny, smart, creative, and entertaining. He had an interesting job and tons of even more interesting hobbies. We loved to eat and drink together, watch movies, and generally just crack each other up. We’d even traveled together quite a bit. We’d text, call, or email each other multiple times a day, just to tell each other really stupid and trivial things that we happened to find hilarious. But eventually, I passed judgment. More »

Hey, Charlie Sheen: There’s Nothing “Bi-Winning” About Bipolar Disorder

There’s a reason why I don’t read a lot of tabloids or visit websites like TMZ. Because when I do, I usually come away terribly offended. I remember when Britney Spears first started taking antidepressants in early 2007, and the tabloids threw that into the same category as her panty-less photos. Really? The two are related? Because I’ve never read a story about, say, a diabetic celeb whose taking insulin was tossed into the same kinds of headlines as, well, a night with porn stars.

Bipolar sufferers and addicts now have yet another “bi-winning” poster boy to represent their serious issues: Just sacked Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen, who apparently thinks that people struggling with mood disorders are a bunch of whiners who can’t get over the egg-salad sandwiches their mommies made them for lunch back in elementary school. “But all my friends had peanut butter and jelly … and they made fun of me…,” Sheen pretended to gripe. More »

In Praise of Drugstore Cosmetics: Long Live Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque

Recently, I spent $38 on a few ounces of moisturizer. Even worse, I had to go to Sephora to get it. For some women, that place is a giant candy store. For me, it’s a hideous carnival of too many fragrances, where the spackle-faced carnies are pushy and poreless. (I can barely apply eyeliner without looking like a prostitute with Parkinson’s Disease. Also, I have pores.)

A few weeks before my mortgage-worthy moisturizer purchase that, need I remind you, cost roughly the equivalent of three movie tickets, I bought an under-eye cream for $25. So far, I’m pleased with both of my purchases, but these pricey beauty buys aren’t nearly as satisfying to me as that old-fashioned drugstore staple: All hail Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque.

It’s not just because I’m cheap (which I often am). For me, when something costs more than $10, it had better work. More »

Chronic Disease Chronicle: How I Live With Crohn’s

Welcome to our brand-new Blisstree series about living with chronic diseases as your perpetual housemate. (I kicked things off a few weeks back with my tales of Hailey-Hailey Disease, a chronic — and very irritating — skin condition.) Each week, in a Q&A or a personal essay, we’ll feature someone who’s living and struggling with a different chronic disease, and how they manage their life navigating such an enormous built-in obstacle. If there’s a specific chronic disease you’d like us to cover, tell us about it in our comments section (anonymously, if you like).

In this week’s post, we talk with Simone Edwards, a 35-year-old wife, mother, career woman, and New York City resident who has suffered from Crohn’s Disease for almost 20 years. Crohn’s Disease is a painful, incapacitating, and often very serious inflammatory bowel disease with no known cure. We asked Simone eight tough questions, and she gave us eight straight (and very compelling) answers: More »

10 Relatively Easy Things to Give Up for Lent — And Maybe Forever

You don’t need to be a good Christian to get behind the tradition of Lent. This 40-day period between Ash Wednesday (this Wednesday, March 9) and Easter is associated with giving up a vice and substituting something positive in its place. (And let’s face it: We all could benefit from a prescribed period of wellness work.) For example, you could try forgoing bad reality TV and instead, devoting those hours to meditation, re-organizing your closet, yoga, reading a book, taking a long walk, going to the gym, or spending some one-on-one time with your partner or a friend. Aside from the whole Jesus thing, giving up something for Lent may just be a more doable version of the New Year’s Resolution, which is usually only a time-honored tradition for a few weeks at most. So here’s our gallery of ten relatively easy things to ditch during a 40-day self-help fast of your own and replace with something more productive. Best of all, you don’t need to tackle ten of them to cleanse your spirit– one will do just fine. Jesus doesn’t judge. More »

How Are You Celebrating The National Day of Unplugging?

That’s right: Today is The National Day of Unplugging. This seemingly radical idea, created by a non-religious group called Sabbath Manifesto, is based on ten principles, including trying to disconnect from all technology for 24 hours, get outside, exercise, hang out with people, not buy anything, meditate, drink wine, read, or just sit in silence by yourself. No Internet, laptop, desktop, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, texting, phone calls, or TV. And the goal is to try this stunt this every week. Are you participating? (Obviously not, if you’re reading this right now.) We love the whole idea of a National Day of Unplugging, but sadly, we’re not so sure we could follow through on it for a full 24 hours every week. (Oh, and we also find it hilarious that Sabbath Manifesto offers an “unplugged” app. Not sure what that says about their faith in our actually being able to succeed in this noble mission.) Check out this video about what other people think about the idea of unplugging, and let us know if and how you could do it in our comments section. More »

Drug Addiction: I Was an Ambien Junkie and Didn’t Know It

I didn’t mean to become a junkie. It just kind of happened. My addiction to the prescription drug Ambien occurred back in 2001. There I was, in my late 20s, happily traveling to a lot of cool domestic and international locations thanks to my job as an editor at a travel magazine. But I’d planned to cut back on my usual 10-day-a-month work jaunts just for the summer, so I could do some serious hanging out at a pretty house I’d rented with a few other friends in New York’s Hudson Valley. It was going to rule: Long weekends, bike rides, nightly barbecues, cold beers, fireflies, picnics on the grounds of historic mansions, inordinate amounts of time logged at local swimming holes, and plenty of nights of good sleep in our sprawling, 19th-century caretaker’s cottage on a beautiful old estate outside a tiny town. Or so I thought. More »

Morning Links: 12 Celebrities Who Live on Farms for Better Health

Serious Spice – An ingredient in turmeric may help cancer drugs work better by increasing their anti-inflammatory effects. (Vitamin G)

Permission to Fail – How to be imperfect and be a whole lot happier for it. (Whole Living)

MOO-vers and Shakers – 12 Hollywood celebrities who live life down on their own private farms. (Ecorazzi) More »

What We're Reading:

No Fear: I Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for Charity

Laura Banks didn’t want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for any particularly spiritual reason. She wanted to climb it because she could. The Toronto resident, wife, mother, and marathon runner was just looking for her next big physical and mental challenge, and she found it in Tanzania on a recent seven-day trek to the 19, 341-foot summit with nine other women from Toronto, their Tanzanian guides, and a medic from Outward Bound. Of course, Banks did have an ulterior motive: She and her group were scaling Mount Kilimanjaro as part of Live Out Loud Adventures, a Toronto-based educational company that combines environmentally-sensitive outdoor expeditions around the world with fundraising programs and community service projects; the goal of this particular trip was to raise money for the Amani Children’s Home in Moshi, Tanzania, which provides support for local street children ages 5-16, and attempts to reunite them with their families.

“I’d always wanted to climb Kilimanjaro because you don’t need a lot of technical skills to do it,” Banks says. “Sometimes the trail is really steep; other times it’s not. You’re literally hiking up the side of a mountain, but I’d been training for a marathon, and have hiked and climbed in Colorado, Arizona, and Utah, so I was pretty confident about my fitness level,” she adds. (Live Out Loud Adventures’ guides do provide their climbers with fitness programs to follow before their trips begin. And, because some BlackBerrys actually work on Mount Kilimanjaro, the LOLA rep on Banks’ trip was able to blog about the group’s experiences every evening.) More »

Oprah’s Ties to Accused Child Molester Points to Irresponsible Reporting

Everyone’s wrong sometimes. Even Oprah. We’ve pointed out the Queen of Talk’s past “oopsies” before, but a recent controversy surrounding Dr. Melvin Levine, a childhood education expert who frequently offered his counsel on her show, has led to yet another rehash of her more serious errors in judgment.

Levine, who committed suicide last Friday after 40 of his patients filed a class-action suit against him for medical malpractice and sexual abuse, consulted on her show years before any news of his patient abuse came to light. These days, there’s no trace of his name or advice on her site, of course, but we don’t doubt that Oprah’s smart enough to dissociate from doctors getting sued for malpractice and child abuse. We just wonder how much she and her staff really investigated his background before inviting him on board as a bona fide expert. More »

Morning Links: Boycott Girl Scout Cookies Due to Environmentally Unfriendly Palm Oil?

Relationship In Ruins? – 7 really bad everyday habits to avoid, because they can destroy your marriage. (Shine)

Cookie Controversy – Some varieties of Girl Scout Cookies (including Peanut Butter Patties) contain palm oil – the production of which is a major cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia, which in turn kills endangered orangutans. (Palm oil is also unhealthier than olive or canola oil.) But two Girl Scouts from Michigan are on a quest to get the organization to change its ways and become more environmentally-conscious. (Grist)

Medical Myths – Can taking certain vitamins and supplements prevent heart disease? Don’t be so sure. (AOL Health) More »

5 Surprising Benefits of Living Alone

There’s a stigma attached to living alone. Of course, in the partying prime of your late 20s, it’s cool to have your own place and be free of the questions, considerations, and nosiness that often come with having roommates. But once you begin your ascent into your 30s and beyond, living alone seems lonely and sad – at least to society and outsiders. Shouldn’t you be partnered up by now, standing hand-in-hand with your one-and-only, looking toward a bright future of kids and a mortgage? Or, at the very least, be living with someone and planning ahead? The answer is no.

Living alone isn’t something one should use to measure his or her societal status.   It’s true that coming home to an empty house isn’t always tons of fun. There’s no one to joke around with, cook with or tell a story to (cats don’t count). It can be bummer on a snowy Sunday afternoon when you wish you had someone by your side with whom to watch that Netflix movie, but take heart – here are five reasons why solo habitation is good for both the soul and the body: More »

Science and Health: Our Rule of 3 Guide for Making Sense of Conflicting Studies

Apples are good for you. Except when they’re not. Worry about fat, but be extra worried about carbohydrates. Eat six small meals a day. Actually, scratch that: Eat three regular-size meals instead.

There’s a reason hundreds of thousands of people throw in the nutrition and exercise towels every day, and it has little to do with the sweat equity involved. Most of them simply get tired of trying to figure out what to believe when it comes to the “rules” that can potentially make their life miserable. Why sacrifice carbs if the complex variety is good for us? Why sip 50 grams of protein if we can only digest 30-35 grams of it in one sitting?

The phrase that comes to mind is “paralysis by analysis.” Some people want complete, concrete answers before striking off on radical lifestyle changes; if they’re looking for that in the wellness industry, the calories they burn will come from sorting through the contradictions. Recently, The Atlantic profiled John Ioannidis, M.D., who argues that upwards of 90% of published medical literature is wrong. Not slightly sketchy. Not the occasional typo. Flat-out wrong. More »

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