Older adults talking together over a photo album

How Parkinson’s Can Change the Way You Speak and Swallow

Most people link Parkinson’s with a tremor or slower movement.

Fewer know it often affects the voice as well.

The changes tend to creep in slowly. Quite often, a partner or close friend notices them before the person does.

That slow start is part of the problem. When something changes a little at a time, it is easy to put it down to tiredness, age or a noisy room.

In Perth, Perth Speech Therapy sees adults with Parkinson’s at its Subiaco and Alfred Cove clinics, and help with voice and swallowing is closer than many families realise.

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Why You Keep Doing the Thing You've Sworn to Stop

Why You Keep Doing the Thing You’ve Sworn to Stop

Everyone has a habit they’ve promised themselves they’ll break. The late-night scrolling. The third coffee. The cigarette on the way to work, the snack that isn’t really hunger, the glass of wine that’s become most nights rather than some. You decide, with total sincerity, that tomorrow is the day. And tomorrow arrives, and you do it anyway.

It’s tempting to read that as a character flaw. It isn’t. It’s how the human brain is built, and understanding the mechanism takes a lot of the shame out of it.

Perth hypnotherapists like Awaken Hypnotherapy spend much of their week helping people with exactly this kind of stuck pattern, and the explanation they give tends to start in the same place: willpower was never the right tool for the job.

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9D breathwork explained: a powerful tool for mental health and addiction recovery

Do you struggle with meditation? Does your mind race too fast to focus and relax? If this is you, you’re not alone.

Many people go on about how magical meditation is for your mind and soul. And well, it is! But only if you can do it properly.

Thats where 9D breathwork comes in. At Seasons Bali, they’ve been using this technique with people struggling with mental health issues and addiction and honestly, the results speak for themselves.

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Occupational therapy for children: what every parent needs to know

Watching your children grow up is one of the most beautiful experiences life has to offer, but lets not pretend it doesn’t come with its own set of struggles and worries.

If your kid is struggling and you’re not sure why, it can be hard to watch.

Maybe they are struggling to do things like hold a pencil or they get very upset over the texture of their school uniform. These things are small in the grand scheme of things, but can sometimes mean something bigger.

At Kid Speak, while they specialise in paediatric speech pathology, they work closely with occupational therapists and see firsthand how much difference the right support can make for children and their families.

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7 Benefits Of Including An Outdoor Cooking Space In Landscape Designs

7 Benefits Of Including An Outdoor Cooking Space In Landscape Designs

One of the most common queries that landscape designers receive from their clients is about the inclusion of a cooking area within the completed garden.

This can be anything from a small space for a portable barbecue grill to a huge cooking area with multiple burners, a double oven, a grill, and possibly even a refrigerator.

Whichever end of the scale you think your garden might be on, you have to know that having a cooking area in your landscaped garden presents you with so many benefits, apart from the obvious one of the ability to cook outdoors.

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5 Core Principles Of Promoting Health And Wellness Within A Landscaping Design

5 Core Principles Of Promoting Health And Wellness Within A Landscaping Design

When a new landscaping design is needed, various approaches can be taken. Some designs are shaped by the limitations of a small budget.

Other projects allow landscapers the freedom to create almost anything, thanks to an unlimited budget. In some cases, the design is guided by a specific concept that must be reflected throughout the entire landscape.

Another basis upon which a landscaping design might be founded is the desire to create a garden that promotes health and wellness.

On a practical level, this might be due to physical restrictions of the person whose garden it will be and on occasion, there may also be features designed to maximise the experience of being in that garden for those with dementia or Alzheimer’s.

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How to Avoid Deep Vein Thrombosis

Deep vein thrombosis is not only caused by sitting for long hours in an airplane; it can be caused by sitting at your computer desk for long periods without moving. If you are a website designer, computer programmer or an SEO consultant for instance, you can get so caught up in what you are doing that you forget the time and even where you are.  You can even forget to move for hours at a time.

Exercise is essential for a healthy body, but how can you get enough exercise when you have a sedentary job that requires you to sit for long periods of time?  Here are some tips to help you get the kind of exercise you need to remain healthy and avoid problems such as deep vein thrombosis.

  • Get up at least once every hour and stretch, then walk to the water cooler or around the office for a few minutes.
  • While seated, move your feet and legs around to different positions.
  • Balance your feet on your toes and bounce your heels up and down for five minutes. This is easiest if you place your toes under your chair.
  • Lift one foot off the floor and swing it backwards and forwards several times, then change to the other foot.
  • Have a footstool under the computer desk so you can sit with your feet raised up a little for some of the time.

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3 Must Have Juicing Ingredients

3 Must Have Juicing Ingredients

Fruit and vegetables are good for us. Period. But we’re just not eating enough of them. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) only 49.8% of people aged 18 years and over are meeting the health guidelines for the 2 recommended daily serves of fruit and 5 serves of vegetables. So how do we fix it? How do we sneak in your kids’ 5+ per day?

Let’s juice it up! Juicing is a quick and effective way to increase the amount of vegetables in your diet. Base your juices on one of these three amazing ingredients:

  • Go green: Spinach contains loads of essential nutrients that our bodies need such as iron, magnesium, calcium, vitamins A and C and potassium.
  • Go red: Beetroot is full of antioxidants and folate which boosts your stamina and supports liver detoxification.
  • Go orange: Carrots are rich in vitamin A and beta-carotene which are both powerful antioxidants and essential for glowing skin.

Be creative with your juices! Add ginger and lemon for a zesty kick start or some cucumber and apple for a refreshing pick-me-up. When juicing the key is to make sure the bulk contain veggies and not too many fruits which, when juiced, increase sugar content. Try adding coconut water if you need some sweetness.

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Vegan Snacks - What’s the Best?

Vegan Snacks – What’s the Best?

Up to 2.5 million Australians are now vegetarian, with a percentage of those also vegan – eating no animal-based food and using no animal products at all. If veganism is something you’ve considered, but you’ve struggled to find delicious recipes, then you’re in the right place. Here are some vegan snacks that may be worth trying to see if this lifestyle is right for you.

Guacamole on Crackers

Whether you buy guacamole or make it yourself, it’s a delicious and nutritious snack option. You can make it from avocado, lime juice, onion, and garlic, and pair it with your crackers of choice. There are many different guacamole recipes online that could be worth a try.

This vegan snack is one you can have at home, take to work, or even bring to a shared lunch. As an added bonus, it’s an excellent source of fibre, potassium, and monounsaturated fats.

Trail Mix

Whether you’re low on energy or you need a delicious animal product-free snack, trail mix can be the answer. Once again, you can make this food yourself or buy it pre-made. The benefit of making it yourself is you can customise what you put in it.

Most people add nuts, seeds, dried fruit, coconut, crackers, and even chocolate. There are plenty of vegan chocolate options on the market to choose from.

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Speech Therapy Goals And Why They Are Important

Speech Therapy Goals And Why They Are Important

There can be very few aspects of our lives that would not be enhanced by setting goals that we then seek to achieve, and for those who work in support of children’s language development, setting speech therapy goals for children that they are treating can play a crucial role. Setting goals allows them, the child’s parents, and others who have the child’s best interests at heart, to strive for and assess the child’s progression.

Anyone reading this who has set goals in the past, whether personal, for their education, for their career, or for a business they own, will be familiar with how to set goals properly. This will involve making goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. In other words, they follow the tried and trusted SMART goals method.

As for speech therapy goals, many speech therapists will indeed follow the SMART goal formula, however, each speech pathologist can also use their own goal setting methodology. The crucial test is whether the goals being set are working and helping children’s speech and language development, rather than the specific goal-setting process which is used.

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High Calorie-Burning Exercises You Need to Try

Calorie-Burning Exercises

As you finish off the final chocolate biscuit in the packet, it suddenly dawns on you that you now have to exercise for hours to work them off. After all, if you don’t, that adage may come true: a moment on the lips is a lifetime on the hips! However, if you choose the right exercises such as BodyCombat, you may be able to benefit from a far more rewarding calorie-burning experience. Here are some of the best exercises for burning off calories.

BodyCombat

BodyCombat is a high-intensity group fitness class that you can either do with other people or in the comfort of your home. Not only does it push you to your limit by involving many martial arts-inspired exercises, but it enables you to burn up to 740 calories in one session! These sessions run for 30, 45, and 55 minutes – all of which will prove to be one of the best cardio workouts you’ve ever experienced.

Sprinting

Sprinting in intervals can prove to be quite beneficial in the realm of calorie burning, even if it’s not as social as BodyCombat and other group fitness classes. Sprinting can help you to burn around 460 calories in as little as 30 minutes, with two minutes of sprinting then one minute of recovery. What’s more, it’s the pacing that really provides all the benefits. You don’t have to run continuously to work off all those cakes and treats!

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How To Turn Your Landscaping Design Into A Healing Garden

How To Turn Your Landscaping Design Into A Healing Garden

Many products and pastimes without medications can be associated with health, wellbeing, and healing, which most people would consider as alternative therapies. Examples would be the use of pets, art and cooking as therapeutic activities and we can also add into that mix, landscaping.

Whilst landscaping, and the others were have mentioned, might not be the first items your doctor prescribes for you if you are suffering from some kind of ailment, nevertheless, countless examples and case studies show that all of these have offered those who use them, benefits for both their physical and mental wellbeing.

If we focus on landscaping, one of the specific ways in which it can contribute to your well-being is when you have a healing garden created. Given the complexities, planning and implementation work necessary for landscaped gardens, in most cases, they will be created by professional landscaping experts.

However, given that you would have lots of input (after all it is going to be your garden) you can request that your landscaping company include a healing garden within the plans, or go even further, and make your entire landscaped garden a healing garden. Wondering what a healing garden is? Well, read on and we will explain all.

What Is A Healing Garden?

Let us put to bed one misconception and that is a healing garden is not one where you simply grow lots of herbal and plant-based medicines. You could certainly grow them, but they are not the only feature that normally falls under the definition of a healing garden. In truth, the definition is a lot simpler which is a healing garden provides the setting, the ambience, and the surroundings that promote a sense and feeling of peacefulness, relaxation, and harmony.

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7 Reasons Why Dogs Get Dry Skin Dandruff And How To Treat It

7 Reasons Why Dogs Get Dry Skin Dandruff And How To Treat It

One of the things that a visit to a dog grooming service will often highlight is that the dog in question is suffering from dry skin and dandruff. Just as dandruff can be an annoyance to humans, which doubtless accounts for the number of anti-dandruff shampoos which are advertised, dandruff is also a problem for dogs and one which they rely on their owners to resolve for them.

What Causes Dry Skin?

Dry skin and the dandruff which can follow, will occur for several reasons, and the seven most common are outlined below.

  • Skin Infections: Fungal and bacterial skin infections are the primary reason why your dog might suffer from dry skin and dandruff. These infections can make their skin scaly and flaky, and this occurs especially in the folds of their skin. This can also be accompanied by unpleasant skin odours. In the worst cases, you might see evidence of bleeding, pus, and fur loss.
  • Changes in Weather: Although there is much in the news about climate change, we are not suggesting that it is responsible for your dog’s dandruff. However, when the local weather is changeable it can affect your dog’s skin, especially in extremes of hot and cold weather which can cause dry skin and itchiness.

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3 Tips For Landscaping That Does Not Harm The Environment

3 Tips For Landscaping That Does Not Harm The Environment

One of the misconceptions with landscapes and gardening, is that simply that it is always going to be environmentally friendly. According to professional landscaping company Principal Landscapes, the assumption they make is that because they are working with nature, such as plants, that they are contributing to a greener (no pun intended) world.

Unfortunately, whilst a lot of what landscaping involves is more of a help than a hindrance to the environment, there are also many decisions made and actions taken as part of a landscaping project that might be harmful. This is often done through a lack of awareness rather than any deliberate or belligerent act from someone who cares nothing for green issues.

The simple fact is that landscaping, just as with any other activity you can think of, can impact the environment both positively and negatively. The key point we wish to make in this article is that you can take some simple steps to reduce those negatives, and better still make your landscaping a lot more environmentally friendly. Best of all it need not diminish any landscaping designs you might be planning.

Remember That Water Is Precious

The first consideration we would ask you to make is with respect to how you plan to irrigate your garden and in particular the water that will be used for that purpose. Whilst we might not consider water to be limited in the modern towns and cities many of us live in, nevertheless, anything you do that reduces the amount you use is a step in the right direction.

Instead of spraying haphazardly when watering your plants, be aware of what water you might be wasting and try to use it efficiently. You may even go as far as installing a proper irrigation system which saves even more water. A more basic way to save water is to use barrels to collect rainwater, and then use the water in them to water your plants.

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5 Options For Replacing Your Missing Teeth

5 Options For Replacing Your Missing Teeth

If you have any missing teeth, or it is inevitable that you are going to have to have one or more teeth extracted, then it should reassure you to know that there are several options available for you to replace those teeth. These options range from dental implants on one end of the scale with respect to longevity and cost, to dentures at the other, and of course, there are other possibilities in-between.

One piece of advice we hope you will take on board is that your decision with respect to replacing missing teeth should not be made in haste. Bear in mind, your decision could be one that you have to live with for years. Instead, you should carefully weigh up the pros and cons of each, and also take into account the financial implications of your selection given that there is a huge difference in the costs across all your options.

To start along the path of deciding what tooth replacements you finally opt for, we are going to provide you with a brief outline of five of the main options that are available. We hope you find it helpful.

Option #1: Dentures

The option that most people have heard of simply because it is the most popular. Dentures are basically imitation teeth, usually made from acrylic or other plastic material. The ‘teeth are mounted on a moulding that is designed to fit snuggly on the gums.

Dentures can be used to replace an entire set of top and/or bottom teeth. Where just a few teeth are missing the structure will be much smaller and is called a partial denture. In most cases, dentures are the cheapest option.

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Surprising Benefits of Waist Trainers

Surprising Benefits of Waist Trainers

Waist trainers have been growing in popularity for some time. And most people aren’t surprised. They can take your workout to a new level and are suitable for both men and women.

Still, not everyone is convinced that waist trainers can offer benefits. But there are some quite surprising ones that everyday users are finding out for themselves. Some of these are listed below.

They Can Improve Posture

Because of the framing inside waist trainers, you aren’t able to slouch. As a result, whenever you’re standing or sitting, you’re able to maintain excellent posture while receiving much-needed back support.

You Can Feel More Confident

As more and more people start to wear waist trainers while exercising and eating well, their confidence can improve. They begin to see results, and they feel happier about how they look and feel.

They May Be Able to Assist with Weight Control

Waist trainers do not exist to help you lose weight. Still, they can assist with weight control. When you wear them, you tend to find it uncomfortable to consume large portions. So, you can eat little but often, which is something that may be able to give you more control over your weight.

What’s more, with high-quality waist trainers made from latex, they can increase sweating during workouts.

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Does Your Medical Centre Need Digital Marketing?

Does Your Medical Centre Need Digital Marketing?

Whilst the primary goal of a medical centre or medical advice blog is to treat and care for its patients, there would be no patients were it not for its efforts to make itself known to them via marketing. Experts in the digital marketing field have advised that the number one way medical centres can increase their patient and client numbers is via a digital marketing campaign.

This is not an article where we will explain every single element of digital marketing, first because there are so many ways to market online. Second, if you run or manage a medical centre, you are much more likely to want to know how digital marketing can benefit you rather than its mechanics.

So, to better understand how digital marketing can benefit the medical centre or centres you are responsible for, we will explain three main benefits. They are improved reputation/branding, increased revenues, and the ability to compete on level terms with more significant medical centres.

Improved Reputation and Branding

Given the nature of the services offered by medical centres, it follows that the higher its reputation, the better off it will retain existing clients and gain new ones. This is where digital marketing can have a substantial positive impact on a medical centre. It can ensure that it has a brand seen in those online locations where those researching or looking for a medical centre will likely recognise it.

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Dealing With the Mental Health Effects of Disability Discrimination

Disability Discrimination

Most people don’t realise just how debilitating it can be to have to live with a disability. There are many different types of disability, and a lot of them aren’t even visible on the surface. Instead, they linger as mental health problems, unseen physical health problems and even degenerative diseases.

Because of this, a lot of people suffer from disability discrimination within the workplace. Essentially, this is when a disabled employee (regardless of the disability) is treated differently from their able-bodied coworkers. This can range from not having the tools and training to work effectively to not being granted appropriate time off or breaks to manage your disability.

And unfortunately, ongoing disability discrimination can lead to low self-worth, depression and various mental health issues. Because of this, we’ve put together the following guide to help you deal with the negative mental effects of disability discrimination.

  1. Don’t Suffer Alone

First, it’s extremely important to make sure that you never suffer alone, regardless of how embarrassed you are about your mental health and/or disability. There are thousands of people across Australia suffering from similar problems and discrimination, and support is available.

For starters, tell someone close to you about your struggles. This could be a partner, family member or even just a close friend. Seek advice from a psychologist if required, and don’t hesitate to seek legal advice in the case of ongoing disability discrimination.

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