The Good Health Shop Blog
Read through our many wonderful articles about being healthy inside & out. We’re here for you every step of the way.
When Dieting Doesn’t Work For You
At any given time 1 in 3 people are on a specific eating regime, with weight loss as a leading reason. Most people are going to be disappointed, because even when successful, lost weight is frequently regained within a few months. While most weight-loss diets can help...
Change-of-Season-Preparedness Checklist
The mornings are starting to feel nippy, the days start later and night falls fast and early. Winter is approaching. We are caught in a lockdown time-warp but mother nature is oblivious to our plight. Are you sure that you are prepared for winter under pandemic...
Am I Spreading The Virus Around?
Image by Prostooleh *disclaimer - this blog is purely my opinion based on the science I follow on PubMed and other similar platforms. Our immune systems are front and centre! Not since HIV Aids has immunity been the focus for so many people. Now though, because of...
One Small Step
Surviving to Thriving – Part 3 You made a list yesterday, even if it’s only in your head. You’re thinking and that puts you ahead of the pack. Now, Pick 1 thing. Choose 1 habit, or 1 symptom, from this list that you would choose to not have if you 'waved a magic...
Lockdown Time Zone ‘every day is Chooseday’’
Surviving to Thriving – Part 2 Lets do a quick health assessment… Are you really 100% healthy? Full of energy?Getting 8 hours of restful sleep?Got a great libido?Anxious and stressed?At your ideal weight?Hair, skin and nails in peak condition? If you really look...
Are You An “I’ll Start on Monday” Kind of Person?
Surviving to Thriving - Part 1 We humans like auspicious beginnings. Whenever we think about changing a habit or starting a new project, we wait for a Monday, a birthday, an anniversary, a new year, a new job, a new week, and we make this the start of The New Thing....
Physical Thriving is perhaps an underestimated topic, purely because we take it so much for granted.
In this series of blogs we are exploring the 5 areas in which all humans should thrive, at age-appropriate levels - Physiological, Cognitive, Emotional, Physical, and Social. Physical Thriving is the 5th and final of the 5, and perhaps an underestimated...
We’re More Fulfilled When We’re Social
In this series of blogs we are exploring the 5 areas in which all humans should thrive, at age-appropriate levels. The first three blogs in this series dealt with Physiological, Cognitive & Emotional thriving. Two are left - Physical, and Social. ...
Emotional Well-Being
In this series of blogs we are exploring the 5 areas in which all humans should thrive, at age-appropriate levels. The 1st 2 blogs in this series dealt with Physiological & Cognitive thriving. 3 are left - Emotional, Physical, and Social. Altered...
Cognitive Health
In Blog 1/5 we took a look at the 1st of the 5 areas in which all humans should thrive, at age-appropriate levels: Physiological. This blog will focus on Cognitive thriving. What do we even mean by thriving on a cognitive level? Well, I suppose remembering is the...
8 hours, preconception through to toddler.
Yesterday (Sunday) I attended an all-day Functional Practitioner’s workshop held by Dr Leslie Stone and Dr Michael Stone, who run a clinic in Oregon and an online site http://growbabyhealth.com/ 8 hours, preconception through to toddler. There was a lot about...
Competition Time!
Some background info I follow a business blog called Storybrand. This week the questions were ‘what is your mission?’ and ‘what is at stake?’. It was thought provoking for two big reasons: It’s not a way we as small business owners are trained to think.There is...
Lifestyle medicine is The Medicine of The Future
‘Health Care’ is becoming a very specific phrase. Health is no longer simply an absence of symptoms. You want to sleep well and wake up feeling as well as possible every day. Some days, when you feel less than good, you might think of yourself as...
Who isn’t tired, right?
This blog is for you if you are prepared to consider that the culprit is probably your eating habits. There’s a compelling wealth of research that closely links the food we eat with our energy levels. Simply, a few relatively easy tweaks will change the picture –...
Are You Ready to Change & Grow?
Facing challenges is inevitable. It might be a rare event, it might be daily struggle. The analogy of a baby’s birth, a difficult process for both mother and infant, is a necessary tussle; perhaps you are not able to reconcile the challenges in your life with...
Was your baby natural born or a Caesar baby?
The most important thing to ever happen to your microbiome, the bacterial environment of the gut, happens when you’re being born. Is your baby restless and colicky? Is your toddler irritable and not sleeping well? Is your small child already exhibiting symptoms...
We are disconnected from the facts that how we live can be harmful to our health.
[Spoiler Alert: tough stuff to hear included] Health Coaching is emerging in response to the rise in chronic illness and the inability of western medicine to address issues in any way significant way. Our health issues have become complex, yet the average doctor books...
Is there really a difference between organically grown veg and regular grown veg?
Do you seek out Organic on a label or prefer Organic when buying fruit and veg? Organic is a fashionable word right now. Strictly speaking anything that grows in the ground or can rot and return to the ground is Organic Material. The way we use it, it means “(of food...
The School insists my child be on Ritalin. I don’t want him drugged. What are my options?
This is not the format to slam into the education system but the truth is that children are not designed to sit still and be ‘taught’ for 6 hours in a row. A U.K Teacher’s page shows this info: Typical attention span: When trying to estimate realistically how much...
Are you Fatigued?
Fatigue seems to be trending. Are you one of the many struggling under the weight of all you are obliged to take on? I think we have lost our way a little bit when we consider all we do and how we support the processes. Many people have physically demanding...
Why do I need fibre in my food?
Dietary fibre is important for our digestive health and regular bowel movements. Fibre helps you feel fuller for longer, can improve cholesterol and blood sugar levels and can assist in preventing some diseases such as diabetes, heart and bowel disease. Fibre helps...
The Bach Flower Remedies
In our quest for radiant, vibrant, energetic good health, it’s the most natural thing to be thinking of physical health. We coach for changes in the Modifiable Lifestyle factors – eating, drinking, moving, sleeping, and coping. We might acknowledge mental health and...
Fat Soluble vitamins and how to make the best of them.
Fat-soluble vitamins are dissolved in fats, so one should take supplements of A,D,E & K, the fat soluble vitamins, with a meal containing healthy fats, like grass-fed butter, avo, nuts, banana, olive oil etc. The next step...
Vitamins are divided into 2 categories – Water soluble and Fat soluble.
Water soluble are all the commoners you know and probably already take – all the B’s and C. Water-soluble vitamins are carried to the body's tissues but are not stored. They are found in plant and animal foods or dietary supplements and must be taken in...
Kombucha & Kefir
11 years ago when I started The Good Health Shop, kefir was a swear word and kobucha wasn’t even a word! Thanks, in part to The Banting Diet proponents, and in part to the resurgence of Ancient Wisdom, these fermented drinks are making a comeback! In this blog I’ll...
Living In Harmony With the Natural World
Despite being in the heat of summer, change of season is just around the corner. Already it’s getting light late in the morning, have you noticed? If we still lived in harmony with the natural world, we’d wake up to the sun and go to sleep in the dark so we’d...
What Makes Rawbiotics A More Effective Probiotic – Understanding CFU Count?
Borrowed words from SAEM A quick look at the range of probiotic products available immediately reveals two segments: liquid (fermented drinks) and dry (capsules, tablets and powders). Dry products come in many shapes and sizes, however the technology behind them is...
What’s All This About Health Promotion?
While you are, or were, a working person with a fixed income, did you save and/or invest for your future? Did you plan your retirement with meticulous precision? If you have already retired, was it worth the effort? All over our website, in our blogs...
Why Should I Manage My Stress?
My adult son works a really stressful job. He’s under pressure all the working hours and is also ‘on-call’ for emergencies 24-7. He eats carefully and gyms as often as his schedule allows; he has a happy home-life and rests on weekends; yet whenever he has a proper...
5 Tips on Choosing Healthier Food
We are so worried about what we eat, and when we eat, we don’t stop to think about HOW we eat… put a good kid in a bad neighbourhood and he’ll probably end up joining a gang; but if you go into a bad neighbourhood in a crowd you have a good chance of leaving...
Too Often We Don’t Realise Our Choices Have Consequences.
The consumption of alcohol, like cigarettes, sugar, wheat, dairy and soya, is a very personal choice. Too often we don’t realise our choices have consequences, and we have little or no control over these biological reactions. When we drink, even a little, the process...
What is a Thermogram and Why Should You Consider it Over a Mammogram?
Both tests can produce images of the breasts, and both offer the possibility of early breast cancer detection, but other than that, they have nothing in common. They’re different tests, produced in different ways, showing completely different things. Mammography...
How will I know if I am deficient in something?
A common question in the health shop is ‘how will I know if I am deficient in something’. It’s a great question, based on our processed foods being devoid of nutrients and modern farming methods depleting our produce – the answer is that if you’re not experiencing...
Health Challenge
I saw the term ‘health challenge’ on the internet, and it really got me thinking… perfectly healthy people can have a health challenge, or even a health crisis, and because we are generally healthy, these speed-wobbles can feel so so serious – we hate being...
Would you define health as ‘the absence of symptoms’?
Do you consider ADD as a medicatable illness? Or a symptom? And if it’s a symptom, can you say of what? Is aging medicatable? Or a symptom? And if so, of what? We have been trained and programmed to believe that aches and pains,...
The Risk of Being Healthy
How many people do you know who are sick? So many people are suffering to varying degrees. You might consider yourself lucky – you’re more well than most. Niggling aches, occasional constipation and the odd bad night can be unsettling; daily stresses like angry...
Why do you supplement?
The most common reason we hear is that ‘I don’t think I eat enough’. It’s not a bad reason. Eat enough organically grown nutritious veg is a better answer. Here’s a question – if you eat broccoli, have you noticed that the broccoli stem is hollow? The hollow stem...
Organic Veg vs Regular Grown Veg
Q: Is there really a difference between organic veg and regular grown veg? A: The main difference between organic veg and regular grown veg is the pesticides. Besides the fact that these are toxic, they do some interesting things to the veggies as they grow. I’ll use...
Functional Medicine vs Conventional Medicine
I refer to the practice of conventional medicine today as The Sickness Industry, and i accept that it sounds disrespectful, and I am aware that I am generalising and that there are good and caring docs out there, but my experience in 53 years of life, 2 children, 20...
Food Has Become a For-Profit Industry
Recently, Carte Blanche blew the lid off fraud in the honey industry. It follows on a recent expose of flavoured olive oil. Its resonant of the fact that the industry that was set up to look after our health doesn't care about our food, and the industry that provides...
What is Colostrum?
We have had a strange number of people asking us for Colostrum Supplements, only to decide they are too expensive when they learn the price, so let me dip into colostrum as a supplement: Colostrum, a nutrient-rich fluid produced by female mammals immediately after...
Supplements are a minefield.
Supplements are a minefield. People's belief systems range from ‘waste of money, expensive pee’ to ‘I can’t function without these’ and every shade in-between. Let me try and clear up a few misconceptions, and by all means if you have any specific questions that...
We need time to heal!
As usual at this time of the year we see lots of strange ‘sickness’ – when your biology wants it to be winter but the weather here won’t play along, germs and bacteria flourish. So we see tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, sinusitis, otitis, and even dermatitis… all...
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
Healthy Living is an idea that we aspire to, without really thinking about the concept in a practical way. We ‘eat healthier’ don’t drink too much coffee and we might even get a bit of exercise in a week, but is this really Health Promotion? Is ‘healthy living’ as...
Healthy Is The New Skinny
Sometimes blogs are easy to write. There’s a collective consciousness at work and a lot of people ask the same questions and I answer so often the blog comes naturally. Other times I can find myself so scattered that there’s no 1 overriding message or issue to focus...
Healthy Snacking
In holiday time, with all the travelling, and especially in the heat, many women struggle with bladder infections and all people can suffer constipation when ‘in transit'. Prolonged periods of sitting still, road food, sugary drinks and long waits for bathroom stops...
How to Deal with Flu…
So you have the flu…. You feel horrible and miserable; you’re full of snot and aching and tearful... what is this germ? Would it surprise you to hear that it is NOT the germ that’s making you sick? It’s actually your body’s biological response to the germ – your...
What is flu?
So you have the flu…. You feel horrible and miserable; you’re full of snot and aching and tearful...what is this germ? Would it surprise you to hear that it is NOT the germ that’s making you sick? It’s actually your body’s biological response to the germ – your immune...
Triclosan – Hormone Disruptor
Triclosan is an ingredient found in toothpaste, antibacterial soap, some lipsticks, mascaras hand wash, wipes… Triclosan is a Hormone Disruptor: Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with endocrine (or hormone) systems at certain doses. These...
Why supplement Chromium?
Chromium is in many foods including brewer's yeast, some meats, potato skins, some cheeses, molasses, spices, whole-grain breads and cereals, and fresh organic fruits and vegetables grown in well-mineralised soil Because WHOLE GRAINS are where the chromium is, diets...