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What is Your Self-Love Language?

July 22, 2020January 17, 2020 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages describes five different styles of showing your love. Whether it be to your spouse or loved ones. These include;

What Is Your Personal Self-Love Language?

How do you best respond to acts of love done by you for you? Most of us run through our days checking off our to-do lists. Ensuring that the needs of everyone else are met. By the time the day is over, you may be feeling tired or drained. Maybe even overwhelmed by the never-ending list of tasks that are yet to be completed.

Unfortunately, living like this is not benefiting your health or your relationships with;

Family
Friends
Children
Neighbours
Co-workers

It is time to tune in to what your self-love language is and start showing yourself some love.

Make Yourself A Priority

The five self-love languages are the same as what we listed above. However, you are going to be tending to the most important relationship you will ever nurture, the one with yourself.

This concept might feel strange at first. Especially if you aren’t used to focusing your attention on yourself. But I encourage you to power through those feelings. Really work hard on filling up your own love tank so that you can be a more grounded and happy person.

Find Your Self-Love Language

Let’s take a look at how these different types of self-love languages could be applied to our lives.

Words of Affirmation – The inner dialog that you have going on with yourself is vitally important to your health and self-image. Spend time everyday saying nice things to yourself. While you brush your teeth, or in the car on the way to work, tell yourself 3 things that you value and love about yourself. With each passing day this task will become easier as you become more comfortable with having this type of dialog with yourself.
Acts of Service – To perform an act of service for yourself, look at ways to fill your heart with joy. It may be delving into your faith or volunteering at a local charity, or donating something to someone in need.
Receiving gifts – Set aside twenty dollars per week (or whatever you can afford) to use to buy yourself something that you have always wanted, or invest in a hobby.
Quality Time – Spend time doing something that fills you with joy and relieves stress. It may be taking a yoga class, learning how to do a hobby, reading a great book, or it could be as simple as taking a rejuvenating nap.
Physical touch – To show yourself love through physical touch, you could get a massage, a manicure or pedicure, get a new haircut, or get a reiki treatment. Other options would be to sweat it out at the gym or your favourite workout class.

Whatever your self-love language may be, start today by making yourself a priority.

Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Jo-Anne Richardson has almost a decade of experience managing a chiropractic office and educating patients on how chiropractic can allow your body to express optimal health. She is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and holds a Degree in Communications. She loves to experiment with raw vegan recipes, loves to salsa dance, travel and learn new holistic health information to share tips with everyone who visits the office.

How to Detoxify without Retoxifying Your Body

July 22, 2020May 3, 2017 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Everywhere you turn, you hear about detoxifying your body. But what are you not being told?

What do you need to know to detoxify safely without re-toxifying your body?

You can think about it like you would a traffic jam. There are potentially hundreds of cars trying to make their way down the highway but there are only three lanes and when you have so many more vehicles than there is room for on the road, you end up in chaos.

So what happens is that when you are adding in intense detoxification methods, it can sometimes wreak more havoc on your body than if you had just left things alone. So the answer to not re-toxifying your body starts with a very gentle process of a gentle detox.

The main forms of detoxification for your body are through your intestines, kidneys, lungs and skin.

Intestines:

Your intestines rid you of food toxins that you are finished pulling out the nutrients from. This is also a place that bodily toxins are dumped for removal. But often, your digestion can be sluggish from eating too much meat, grains and dairy products. (You should be pooping at least twice per day… if you’re not, you can be sure that you have serious toxic build up in your digestive tract). So the first thing we need to do to start a gentle detoxification is to start moving out those old toxins that are stuck there before we start delivering a whole bunch more toxins for it to process and be overloaded.

Start by increasing your water intake – and add lemon to it to add a bit of a added clean-up assistance. (I love to peel a whole lemon and throw it in my high speed blender with a litre of fresh water, and then strain it to remove the tiny pit pieces that break apart). This will help to start gently encourage movement of toxins out of your intestines.

Then start adding in more fibre to keep your intestines moving. The fibre acts like a broom and sweeps up the toxins and helps to move them out. The best forms of fibre are fruit and vegetables! Eat more than you ever have before!

Kidneys

Your kidneys filter your blood continually, all day long, and never rest. They pull toxins from your blood supply and deliver them to your bladder to be removed from your body in your urine. So yes, you guessed it! More water! 3-4 litres per day and more if you are super active.

Lungs

Your lungs are always delivering fresh oxygen to your body, but they also help to expel toxins on the exhalation. So take a few moments several times through the day to do some deep breathing exercises. AND move that body!! Breathe hard, make it work and make it sweat! We were built to move.

Skin

We chatted about moving that body! Your sweat will help to move toxins out of your body, so try to get some joyful movement into your schedule every day.

Additionally, dry skin brushing is an excellent way to encourage the release of toxins from your skin by using a natural hair bristled brush and very gently brushing your skin from the bottom of your body toward your heart. And from your hands and arms to your heart as well. Use gentle strokes or circles. The keyword is GENTLE – your lymph drainage system is extremely fragile and can only respond and pump the lymph when its movement is gently encouraged.

Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Are You Still Consuming Dairy Products? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Be!

July 22, 2020January 16, 2017 by Jo-Anne Richardson, RHN

Are you a big fan of dairy milk? Did you know that humans are the only species that drink milk past infancy? Also, we are the only species to drink the milk of another animal – that grows to be 1500 pounds!!

If you are still drinking cow’s milk, it’s time to ask yourself two question. Firstly, are you a calf? Secondly, are you aiming to grow to 1500 pounds?

Dairy milk is specifically designed to nourish a baby cow. It contains all of the nutrients necessary to grow a calf into a healthy, 1500 pound adult cow. The same is true for human breast milk. It is perfectly designed to nourish a developing infant.

Dairy milk contains proteins that are much larger than those in human breast milk. As such, it is very difficult for humans to break it down effectively. Because of this, our body identifies dairy milk as an invader in our system. So in response, our bodies go into defensive mode. Dairy sensitivities and allergies can then develop which can wreak havoc on your immune system long term.

Common Dairy Misconception: But If I Don’t Drink Milk, Where Will I Get My Calcium?

The dairy industry has done an excellent job marketing milk to “protect your bones”. Assigning it as the go-to substance to fulfill your daily requirements for calcium. Studies have reported higher contents of calcium circulating in the blood stream after drinking milk. However, what these studies fail to illustrate is the source of where the calcium came from.

Milk creates a very acidic residue inside the body. In order to maintain a healthy pH internally, it must be buffered immediately by an alkaline balance. Your body’s response to this acidic effect (caused by ingesting milk) is to release calcium stored inside your bones. This will buffer the acidic levels and bring them back to a safe reading.

So, yes. After drinking milk, there is more calcium in your bloodstream. However, this is only because your body had to release it from its own storage inside your bones. For more information on bone health, click here to read, “Calcium without Vitamin K2 is a Heart Breaker”.

So Where Will I Get My Calcium?

Where do cows get their calcium? Greens! It is much easier for your body to break down and assimilate nutrients from fruit and vegetables. Especially compared to breaking down dense, heavy foods like meat and dairy products. Include the following in your diet for great sources of calcium that your body can easily use.

For some great ‘green’ recipes, click here to read, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day Recipes”.

Important Tip:

Focus on magnesium if you are worried about your bone health and calcium levels. The majority of adults are deficient in magnesium. As a result, serious health issues may develop. Having excessive amounts of calcium in the body, while having a deficiency in magnesium, can lead to the following according to Dr. Mercola:

Heart disease
Problems with your heart muscle spasming
Sudden heart attack

Be sure you are getting enough magnesium. Eat your green leafy veggies, beans, nuts, seeds, and avocados.