Introduction:

Embrace the joy of the holiday season while safeguarding your health with five essential wellness tips, from boosting your immune system to controlling indulgence, ensuring a happy, healthy holiday.

Key Takeaways:

  • Boost Immune System: Stay social but protect yourself from colds and flu by getting enough sleep and considering chiropractic care for immune support.
  • Combat Stress: Incorporate massage therapy or acupuncture into your routine to manage holiday stress.
  • Maintain Exercise: Keep physically active to manage stress and counteract holiday indulgences.
  • Practice Hygiene: Pay extra attention to hygiene to avoid germs, especially when traveling.
  • Control Food Intake: Enjoy festive treats in moderation while prioritizing nutritious foods at home.

How can you stay healthy during the holiday season?

Stay healthy during the holidays by boosting your immune system with enough sleep, managing stress through therapy, maintaining exercise routines, practicing good hygiene, especially when traveling, and controlling food intake to balance indulgence with nutrition.

The season to be jolly is upon us once again and with it, the potential problems of seasonal stresses, overindulgence, winter germs and lazy lethargy. To help you avoid succumbing to the holiday perils and enjoy seasonal festivities to the fullest, here are five wellness care tips to keep you healthy during the Christmas and New Year celebrations.

#1: Keep Your Immune System in Tip-Top Shape

This is a particularly social time of year. It’s a time when you tend to get out more than usual to visit family and friends. Parties and get-togethers abound both at work and at home. There is more to think about, which can get stressful and you will mix with more people than usual, at a time of year when cold and flu bugs most like to get in on the happy gatherings.

With so much going on, it’s important to give your immune system a boost to protect yourself from germs, bugs and health conditions relating to stress. Be sure to avoid falling into a pattern of sleep deficit between now and the height of party time at the end of December. Your immune system will be stronger if you ensure you get plenty of sleep. For an extra boost, now is an excellent time to visit your chiropractor and make sure you’re free of any spinal misalignments which might otherwise upset the balance of your immune system.

#2: Combat Seasonal Stress

Christmas shopping, planning holiday travel, organizing parties and just trying to get everything done before the holidays can all put you under higher levels of stress than you experience during the rest of the year. It’s a great idea therefore, to incorporate some stress-beating therapy into your wellness care protocol to keep the pressure from bringing you down. How about a few massage therapy sessions to relax tight muscles and keep your endorphins flowing? Another ideal way to lower stress and stay energized is to take advantage of the healing power of acupuncture. A few sessions will have you feeling on top of the world and ready to take on all the festive events your schedule can throw at you.

#3: Keep up the Exercise

While your brain will probably be exercised to the max over the coming weeks, it’s all too easy for your physical exercise routines to end up taking a back seat. However this is the time when, if anything, you should increase your physical activity levels. As part of your wellness care program, plenty of physical exercise is most essential during busier times in your life.

Keeping up with your body’s exercise needs can help you keep stress levels under control. Physical activity also burns the extra calories taken in through occasional overindulgences and counteract the effects of more sedentary holiday activities, like sitting through hours of old movie reruns. One way to get motivated and ensure exercise doesn’t get neglected is to bring a new year’s resolution forward and take up a new activity.

The best type of exercise program to begin right now is one that can be practiced at home anytime you have a few spare minutes. Yoga or Pilates classes are just right in this regard and even the first few elementary moves and positions you learn will be good for the wellness of body and mind.

Exercise for wellness

#4: Keep the Bugs at Bay

With so much socializing to do and perhaps a few hours to be spent on holiday travel, you may be more susceptible than usual to germs and viruses. Therefore, paying extra attention to hygiene practices will reduce your risks of contracting something you’d rather not receive over the holiday period. If traveling for example, remember to carry disinfectant wipes with you. Use them to wipe down airplane seat arm-rests, tray tables and other areas you might touch during a flight. Similarly, use an alcohol-based sanitizer gel to clean your hands regularly.

Drink plenty of water during social gatherings and travel. Your mucus membranes are key defenses against germs, but you need to keep yourself well hydrated for them to function effectively. This is particularly important if you are taking a holiday flight, since the air is dry at high altitude, meaning your mucus membranes dry out if you don’t keep drinking water.

#5: Control Your Food Consumption

Of course you are going to indulge in all the delicious festive food treats that come your way at buffets and gatherings. However that doesn’t mean the holiday season is time to abandon all attempts at a healthy diet. Make a commitment to eat nutritious, healthy foods when you are at home and save the fancy stuff for party time. If you will be attending a lot of gatherings and want to avoid overeating, try eating a mint between servings of food and also drink plenty of water. The water will also help you to drink less alcohol and avoid a hangover the morning after a party.

Have a Healthy, Happy Holiday

Everybody deserves to let their hair down over the holiday season. Make sure this year’s holidays are filled with times to remember for the pleasure they brought, not for the time you spent recovering from colds or influenza. Follow the wellness care tips above and keep your body and mind in the best condition possible to get the most from the season of joy.

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