Hu­man be­ings are crea­tures of habit, every day we are used to do­ing the same things in the same places, for the same rea­sons. We usu­al­ly do not stop to think about what we’re do­ing. For in­stance, hav­ing break­fast, a morn­ing cof­fee, scrolling through so­cial me­dia, brush­ing our teeth or hav­ing a piece of choco­late af­ter a meal—these are ac­tions that we are used to do­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis with­out won­der­ing why, we just do them. These are our habits; some are good for us, and some may lead to our demise if left un­al­tered.

Most peo­ple may not know this, but I’m an NLP—Neu­ro-Lin­guis­tic Pro­gram­ming Prac­ti­tion­er—as well. What is NLP? It en­com­pass­es the three most in­flu­en­tial com­po­nents in­volved in pro­duc­ing hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: neu­rol­o­gy, lan­guage and pro­gram­ming. Most times we see peo­ple be­have in such a way that we can’t re­al­ly un­der­stand. In this ar­ti­cle, I will ex­plain some pat­terns in the way you can and may un­der­stand how some peo­ple think and be­have.

Most peo­ple know that fi­bre is es­sen­tial for healthy bow­el move­ments and to pre­vent con­sti­pa­tion. How­ev­er, did you know that di­etary fi­bre pro­vides many oth­er health ben­e­fits in­clud­ing pro­tec­tion against heart dis­ease and re­duc­ing your risk of di­a­betes? De­spite its many ben­e­fits and the fact that fi­bre is com­mon­ly found in many fruits, veg­eta­bles, whole grains and beans, many peo­ple do not get the rec­om­mend­ed 20-35 grams of di­etary fi­bre dai­ly.

“Every fa­ther should re­mem­ber one day his son will fol­low his ex­am­ple, not his ad­vice.” —Charles Ket­ter­ing

This say­ing takes a whole new mean­ing when you’re a care­giv­er. When car­ing for an old­er adult, the lev­el and qual­i­ty of care need­ed makes all the dif­fer­ence to the bet­ter­ment of the ca­ree. That is why, care­giv­er fam­i­ly meet­ings are so im­por­tant.

This is not an ar­ti­cle on which dish­es are best for fresh herbs (we be­lieve fresh herbs be­long in every dish). In­stead, it’s about get­ting the most out of fresh herbs; the key word here is: fresh.

Though we all love to bite in­to a sup­ple, sweet and fleshy piece of man­go, it’s worth know­ing that there’s a lot more to man­go than what most of­ten meets your lips.

Some of you read­ing the ti­tle for this ar­ti­cle may be think­ing that I’ve gone in­sane. It’s my moth­er, this is my way to show her how much I love her, right? Dis­re­gard­ing whichev­er jus­ti­fi­ca­tions oth­ers can come up with, there is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong in be­ing paid to care for a loved one.

There is some­thing spe­cial about Ash­ton. I love all the chil­dren, but some­times, there’s a spe­cial some­thing that is un­ex­plain­able. His mom de­scribes him as a ‘light’ and hon­est­ly, I think that’s the most ac­cu­rate word to de­scribe him. I have had the plea­sure of hear­ing him sing one of my favourite gospel songs ‘Break Every Chain’ and with such in­ten­si­ty, and I am cer­tain his chains will be bro­ken.

Age­ing—it hap­pens to all of us and all parts of us. Our teeth and gums are no ex­cep­tion to the age­ing rule. The truth is, the more we age, the more we are prone to teeth and gum prob­lems but, the good news is that we can slow down the process.

"Hav­ing men­tal health is­sues is a ma­jor pre­dic­tor for sui­cide–al­most every­one who dies from sui­cide has an un­der­ly­ing men­tal health prob­lem. Nine­ty per­cent of peo­ple who die by sui­cide are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some sort of men­tal health is­sue, most of­ten de­pres­sion. So what dis­tin­guish­es those who do from those who don’t?"

Can cer­tain foods re­al­ly af­fect your mood? Pop cul­ture pro­motes eat­ing ice cream af­ter a break-up, or choco­late for pre-men­stru­al syn­drome (PMS) symp­toms but, are sug­ary foods the best to im­prove your state of mind? Or, is it the lack of food that brings on low moods? The lack of spe­cif­ic nu­tri­ents that af­fect how our brain func­tions may just be be­hind that “hangry” (the si­mul­ta­ne­ous feel­ing of hun­gry and an­gry) feel­ing. Let’s ex­plore how food af­fects your mood and con­verse­ly, how your mood af­fects what foods you choose to eat.