Christ­mas is no­to­ri­ous­ly a time for overindul­gence, more so in a year when the world came to a halt and the fragili­ty of our ex­is­tence be­came more ev­i­dent. Not be­ing a grinch with your joy this sea­son, but Health Plus want­ed to en­sure, you rev­el in all the fes­tiv­i­ties with­out too much im­pact on your health and waist­line.

Now that 2021 is com­ing to a close, it's time to step on the brakes and give your­self the rest and re­lax­ation you and your loved ones de­serve. Giv­ing the gift of health and well­ness to your loved ones cel­e­brates them for mak­ing it this far and sets the tone for the year ahead. Health Plus picked out per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions that are eas­i­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to any self-care rou­tine, pro­mot­ing calm, re­lax­ation and good vibes all around.

But he is known in the en­ter­tain­ment and ra­dio an­nounc­ing fra­ter­ni­ty as “The Mu­si­cal Sur­geon” and “The Ladies DJ.”

What hap­pens when you mix the fun of board games and the ben­e­fits of ex­er­cise? You get BoardGains, an in­no­v­a­tive fu­sion of the two.

Los­ing a loved one un­ex­pect­ed­ly from a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent, through an act of vi­o­lence, or from COVID-19 is con­sid­ered a trau­ma­tiz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. No one can ever be pre­pared for such a loss. No amount of coun­selling, prayer, jus­tice or com­pas­sion can ever bring a loved one back.

A tra­di­tion­al dense, rich-tex­tured and de­li­cious tast­ing fruit­cake may take months, some­times years to make be­cause of the time tak­en to soak aro­mat­ic spices and dried mac­er­at­ed fruits in wine or rum that go in­to the high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed and sought af­ter del­i­ca­cy around Christ­mas time.

2020 was hard­ly a year where peo­ple would be con­cerned with a mer­maid...or so Monique Rof­fey thought when she re­alised that the launch of her lat­est nov­el, The Mer­maid of Black Conch, had fall­en smack in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic. Like the read­ers of her now-six nov­els, the Trinidad-born British-based au­thor was in for some mag­ic.

We have al­ways heard the phrase from our el­ders that “Our health is in our hands” and it holds true, now more than ever. But does it come down to “How strong is our im­mu­ni­ty?” When we talk of im­mu­ni­ty, we gen­er­al­ly talk of cer­tain foods or drinks that can “boost” our im­mu­ni­ty, or reg­u­lar ex­er­cis­es or eat a healthy di­et that in­cludes foods high in an­tiox­i­dants, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als.

Ed­i­tor’s note: Dr Jonathan Smith orig­i­nal­ly wrote the piece be­low as a let­ter to his lo­cal neigh­bour­hood of about 50 fam­i­lies. It struck a chord, and his neigh­bours be­gan shar­ing it wide­ly with­in their own net­works. Short­ly af­ter, and many tens of thou­sands of email for­wards lat­er, it went vi­ral. Smith, a lec­tur­er in epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty who is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing his PhD in epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, gra­cious­ly grant­ed per­mis­sion to re­post the piece. This piece was writ­ten in 2020 at the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic and pub­lished on WBUR: Boston Uni­ver­si­ty

"A man too busy to take care of his health is like a me­chan­ic too busy to take care of his tools" – Span­ish Proverb.

The Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion has pub­lished their top five rea­sons men put off see­ing a doc­tor:

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health, men seem to be af­fect­ed more se­vere­ly by COVID-19 than women. Oth­er stud­ies from ear­ly re­search sug­gest men are al­so dy­ing at a high­er rate from COVID-19 than women.