This was a really odd one, so I had to read further about it. Apparently, picking up a pen and pad may actually help you to alleviate the symptoms of IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is one of the most common digestive and bowel disorders out there today.  IBS can have a dramatically detrimental effect on your life, your health, and your mental sense of well being.

Why? Because typically, IBS results in a lot of gas, discomfort and embarrassing bouts of alternating diarrhea and constipation. Usually people with IBS experience more of one  or the other. For example, you may have IBS and mostly experience constipation, with occasional bouts of diarrhea, or vice versa. You can imagine, neither of these is pleasant or conducive to a normal life with normal activities.

While the occasional herbal colon cleanse can help normalize bowel habits, you still need to have natural ways to help alleviate the symptoms. One of them is diet. Diets that are rich in fruits and veggies and do not rely a whole lot on red meats and cheeses, which are both constipating foods, are pretty much the gold standard for keeping healthy, regular bowel habits.

On top of that, there are other lifestyle tips that may help you to regulate your bowel habits. Believe it or not, one of them is writing!  It’s not just writing though, it’s the kind of writing. When people go about writing very expressive, deep, and therapeutic thoughts without holding back, apparently their IBS symptoms subside.  It’s almost like a form of self-therapy I supposed, you could look at it that way.

The reasons they think this form of “getting it all out” writing therapy might help with IBS patients is that many times IBS is linked to our thoughts. Stress and anxiety can definitely impact your bowel movements.  Being nervous and having bottled up feelings can quite literally have that impact on your colon, in other words!  Very interesting theory, and I’m sure there’s some truth behind it.

They believe that keeping these feelings bottled up contributes to the symptoms of IBS, just as it contributes to depressing the immune system and affecting your health in other dramatic ways, without you even knowing it.  This means that psychological treatment for the symptoms of IBS may become more mainstream if the findings are further validated.  This totally makes sense, because I believe that all the body’s functions are related to the things we think about and worry about on a daily basis.

I keep around an herbal colon cleanser that I use only when I’m a little constipated.  It’s not something that I think anyone should be using all the time, as any colon cleansing or laxative type of product can have a habit forming effect on the bowels, and create a need for them in order to have regular bowel movements if they are abused for too long.

Even when laxatives are herbal or natural, they can be habit forming, because your whole elimination system becomes “lazy” and relies on these types of supplements to help move things along. It can result in lazy movement of the bowels – that slow, “swishing forward” movement that pushes solid waste through the digestive tract and ends in a satisfying bowel movement.

Some people take herbal colon cleansers and herbal laxatives, and they don’t have much luck with them. It may be that they are taking them at the wrong time of day, or on too full a stomach to get the right results. You usually need to make sure that your stomach is pretty much empty before taking these types of supplements, and you also need to make sure you drink a TON of purified water with them.

Drinking a ton of water will help to bulk up the stool, and this will help to move things along quicker and produce a faster bowel movement. Sometimes if you take it with food, it totally bypasses your whole system, and ends up not even working to make you go to the bathroom.

It might be best to either wait several hours after you eat in the evening to take them, or you can even just do it in the morning, and wait a while before you eat breakfast, say maybe an hour at least.  Or in the middle of the day, between meals could work too.

I’ve always wondered, personally, if an air cleaner would really help us clean up the air we’re breathing at our home. Not only that, but I suspected that an air cleaner might also help clean up the obviously stale and allergen-ridden air where I work, where people sneeze constantly all day and then say they are fine once they get out of the building. This includes me!

Air purifiers claims to help rid the air around you, in a certain radius around the device of common air irritants that are inhaled on a daily basis like allergens such as pet dander, dust, and of course the ultimate lung irritant and allergen, pollen.

People with breathing problems where their lungs are easily irritated by extra pollutants in the air, such as asthma or COPD, which sadly is on a meteoric rise these days, may actually benefit from having an air purifier on hand in the rooms they find themselves in most in their homes. Especially in the summer time and in the fall, when household and outside irritants tend to be at their worst.

Hey, let’s face it, having an air purifier may also give people the good old placebo effect. If they believe they are breathing more pure, unadulterated air, then hey, they may just breathe easier from the simple fact of thinking that way!

It is recommended that you purchase air purifier units that are supposed to clear the air for a larger amount of square footage than what you actually need for the room you intend to put it in. That way, you know that it well-covers the whole area, and won’t get clogged up or whatever they call it with these things, from having too much space to cover.

Also, if your main goal is to filter out irritants due to allergies, then make absolute sure you buy one with a HEPA filter, which filters out common allergens and may help reduce your allergic symptoms.

I’ve learned the hard way on how you can’t plant a lot of different types of perennials  in too much abundance. They just multiply more and more each year, until they totally overrun everything else you have planted in the space. Some are a lot worse than others. I’m speaking of two of my favorite natural plants to have around, because of their wonderful taste in natural teas made with a tea ball, crushing up the leaves and letting them steep for a while. Lemon balm and wild mint.

Both lemon balm and wild mint are excellent for helping to relax that body. Lemon balm in particular is actually supposed to be a stress reliever and a great natural remedy against anxiety and nervousness.  If you add it to your favorite bagged tea for relaxation, like a chamomile or lavendar tea, you’ve got one great recipe for relaxation.

However, both mint and lemon balm will take over a huge area in relatively little time if you’re not careful.  Especially mint, which rapidly reseeds and roots itself, spreading a vast network of roots all throughout a space within one year of being planted. We had a space of about 20 square feet where I planted three mature mint plants last year, in one small area.

This year, the mint’s root network spread over the whole 20 square foot area and took it allover. And it’s not easy to rip all that out either, although I must say it’s been easier than ripping out ivy thus far because the roots are a little easier to tear out of the ground. Mint is an excellent stomach settler and digestive aid, and it’s also a great tea to drink when you want to relax and unwind.

Herbal remedies for anxiety include lemon balm as a common recommendation, and I can see why. Just smelling the sweet, citrusy scent in a tea is enough to calm my nerves and settle the senses.

So, I’ve prided myself on only drinking coffee on the weekends for quite a while now. Sure, I’d have the occasional cup on a week day before work when I just couldn’t do it without the extra zing in my step I get from the specific caffeine you get from a good cup of joe.

But overall, I pretty much just relegated coffee drinking to Saturday and Sunday. And I LOVED drinking my coffee on the weekends. Truth is, if it were up to me and I didn’t believe that caffeine was ultimately not good for you and that drinking decaffeinated, organic green tea with lemon juice was a thousand times better for you, I’d be slugging down the coffee every morning.

There’s just something about the aroma, the feel of the coffee in your hands, the taste of a freshly ground, nice wholesome bean coffee that’s invigorating, inviting and feels like “home”.  And it really does give me the pick me up that no other drink can in the morning, so I supposed it’s a flavor/habit and feel thing for me.

There’s been debate over whether caffeine is truly physiologically addictive, and I am definitely of the camp that it is. Some of the telltale signs I see in myself after sometimes just drinking it two to three days in a row and then going cold turkey is a massive headache and irritability.

And God forbid that I drink it for five days straight for some reason and then decide to go cold turkey.  Then you’re really talking trouble. It’s funny because the headache starts to rage right around the same time every day at work when I experience the caffeine withdrawal, about ten a.m or so, so I’m not sure why it happens then.

Maybe my body’s clock knows that by then if I haven’t had my “fix” then it’s not going to get it and it rebels. Who knows!  While there are some good properties of coffee like antioxidants, it’s the stuff I put in it to make it more palatable that worries me, like the cream and sugar.

Also, coffee beans are typically heavily sprayed with insecticides, so it’s heavily recommended that you buy organic when buying coffee, that way you’re not brewing up a toxic brew!