Spring it on – Get Healthy

The best part about spring is the end of winter and the days getting longer and warmer. It’s also a time to look after your health, and Christchurch City Libraries has some great health eResources for you to get information on everything from the common cold to yoga. Start with Consumer Health Complete and Health & Wellness Resource Center.

Some things to research may include:

The common cold
These always lurk around into spring – discover what scientists have found so far in their quest for a cure.

Food tribes
Thinking about joining the Paleo gang or doing the plant-based vegan thing? Explore some scientific facts first.

Medicines
The Gale Encyclopedia of Prescription Drugs: A Comprehensive Guide to the Most Common Medications is a great resource if you want to find out more about a medicine that you have been prescribed.

Fighting allergies
Flowers and grasses spring into life and release pollen, which won’t fill you with joy if you suffer from hay fever. Find out the latest information and remedies to help with your allergies.

Getting fit
If you’re starting up your exercise regime again after a winter break, be sure not to injure yourself – get some tips on getting fit.

• Read uncover huraina issue 9
• Download uncover huraina issue 9 [11.83MB PDF)

Drynuary to Movember

Woo hoo it’s Spring?! So maybe it’s time to adopt a new health kick. To be honest, fads are really not my thing and the thought of giving up chocolate or – heaven forbid – coffee makes me feel a little faint. There seems to be something for every month and here’s a list for those of you with more willpower.

• Dry January or Drynuary is the UK version of Dry July, don’t think it would work here as it BBQ / holiday season. There are many articles on the benefits of abstaining from the demon drink. Check out Consumer Health Complete for information on the benefits like weight loss and better sleep.
• Frugal February is perfect remedy to Christmas excesses, spend less and save some cash. If you have indulged too much over the summer, FebFast might be the one for you, another chance to exercise some temperance when it comes to eating and drinking.
• March no catchy name or anything but there is Lent so give up something, sugar or alcohol if you couldn’t face Drynuary or FebFast.
• Grateful in April is a global campaign to get people focused on feeling good about what they’ve already got in their lives. Check out the health benefits of being  grateful with these articles from Heath Source – Grateful-ology  and Gratitude boosts mental and physical health from Heath & Wellness Resource Center.
• Meat free May or No Meat May, plant based diets constantly in the news and what better way to try it out with Meat Free May, it is better for the environment and better for your health. Need some inspiration here is some links to vegetarian cookbooks on OverDrive.
• Junk Free June, run by the Cancer Society. You can pick the junk you remove from your diet can be anything from sugar to fast food, fizzy to lollies your call. We all know that too much junk food is bad for you, but check this article How Junk Food Affects Your Health.
• Dry July – yes, another quit alcohol month. This is the New Zealand version and personally middle of winter seems like a great month to abstain here is some tips to help you Stay Dry this July.  There are other options for July –
  • Plastic Free July and do your bit for the environment and not use plastic for the whole month.
  • Beer and Pie July, the idea here is to celebrate our best pies and beers by consuming one of each everyday in July. This one I am pretty sure has no health benefits and the only gain would be a beer and pie gut.
• Abstain August Not an official event but abstain from your choice – could be sugar, alcohol, beer and pies (especially if you did beer and pie July).
• Steptember – Yes get your fitbit out start moving. Steptember is a fundraising activity supporting those with cerebral palsy. Scientist have collected smartphone data to determine which nationalities walk the most throughout the day check out the article from Health & Wellness Resource Center Which Countries Walk the Most–and the Least?
• Blue September Prostate Cancer Foundation’s national awareness campaign. Wear a blue ribbon, dye your hair blue or hold a blue do and raise money or awareness around prostate cancer.
• Biketober partake in Christchurch’s own festival of cycling and Find Happiness on a Bike.
• Movember the worldwide annual event to raise awareness of men’s health issues such as prostrate cancer, testicular cancer. Personally I dislike the moustache, they remind me of policemen from the 1980s. Searching Movember on Health & Wellness Resource Center I discovered all sorts of fascinating Movember facts like the world record for moustache length is 12ft 6 inches, and that Movember was dreamed up by four Aussies in a Melbourne pub.
• December is just festive, so Have yourself a Healthy Little Christmas with this article from Heath & Wellness Resource Center.

So if you can’t wait for next July to go dry check out some healthy tips from our Health based eResources.

For more on getting healthy:

• Read uncover huraina issue 9
• Download uncover huraina issue 9 [11.83MB PDF)

Beat those change-of-season sniffles

Autumn has arrived suddenly and those cool mornings and nights are playing havoc with our bodies. Boost your immune system with some good info from our:

• Health magazines on Zinio, Press Reader, Health databases and our library catalogue
• Books and eBooks on health
• Keep your fitness up
• Healthy home, healthy you

Or search our catalogue for specific health terms.

Local groups with a health focus

• Healthy Christchurch
• Christchurch City Council Healthy Home Assessment
• Community Energy Action
• Health groups and agencies in Community Information Christchurch (CINCH)

Make sure you have plenty of sleep, eat well, exercise, keep warm and retain social contacts. If you’re in an at risk group, you may be able to get a free flu vaccine.

Winter is coming!

New year, new you

Who do you want to be in 2017? Someone better organised/less stressed/fitter/richer/more fulfilled?

The only thing stopping you is you… or maybe it’s just that you haven’t found the right programme, philosophy or inspiration yet. That being the case, here are some suggestions to set you on the path of the righteous/smug.

Ditching bad habits

We’ve got resources to help you stop smoking, drinking, and advice on how to cope with other addictions and compulsions.

Diet and fitness

There are plenty of titles available with advice on improving your diet, or find an exercise regime that suits your lifestyle.

Or are you just keen to keep your brain fit and healthy? There are programmes and exercises for flexing your cognitive muscles.

Maybe it’s just time to cope better with stress?

Money and finances

Is 2017 the year you show your mortgage who’s boss? Try some titles about personal finance, budgeting, and retirement planning.

Efficiency and organisation

Whether you want some advice on how to attack household tasks more efficiently, bring some orderliness to your possessions, or advice on time management, there are heaps of titles to choose from.

   

Better living, everyone.

eResource spotlight – Consumer Health Complete

Don’t ask Dr Google…

Many of us have searched frantically on Google to answer our burning health questions. Maybe you have had a diagnosis from your doctor recently and want to find out more. It can be incredibly difficult to take in all the information from your doctor or health professional and equally hard to think of questions you need to ask when put on the spot. As tempting as it is to go home and ask Dr Google, it is important that the information we find is accurate and up to date. While it doesn’t replace your health professional, it is a great tool for increasing your understanding.

We have some excellent health eResources available through our website that you can access from home as well as at any of our libraries. These are authoritative and you can feel confident that you are getting the right information. Consumer Health Complete is one such resource. You can find it by selecting the e-resource tab at the top of our website and then selecting Health and Medicine. You will find other e-resources here you may like to explore too.

Consumer Health Complete covers a huge range of subjects on both conventional and alternative medicine, surgical procedures and has a handy medical dictionary. Use the search box to find information on what you are looking for. You can then look at your results in a variety of formats: journals, reference books, encyclopaedias, magazines, medical images, diagrams and videos.

You also have the ability to create an account, should you wish to save your research. It is very user friendly but if you do need some help don’t forget you can contact us for assistance over the phone or you can pop into any one of our libraries.

Lauren
The Library at Te Hāpua: Halswell Centre

Podcast – Overcoming addiction

Christchurch City Libraries blog hosts a series of regular podcasts from New Zealand’s only specialist human rights radio show Speak up – Kōrerotia. This show is created by Sally Carlton.

The latest episode deals with overcoming addiction and covers topics such as:

• What is addiction?
• Why can’t people stop? – chemicals in the brain
• Impact on family
• Barriers to overcoming addiction

This show includes discussion with Doug Sellman, Director of the University of Otago’s National Addiction Centre, mental health and addiction advocate Damian Holt and recovering alcoholic Marg Browne, and co-host Mallory Quail.

Transcript of the audio file

Find out more in our collection

• Find titles about addiction and compulsive behaviour
• Find titles about addiction treatment and rehabilitation
• Streaming video about addiction treatment and rehabilitation
• Find articles about addiction and the brain (access with your library card & password / PIN)

   

More about Speak up – Kōrerotia

• Our page on Speak up – Kōrerotia
• Speak up – Kōrerotia on Facebook
• Contact the host of the show via speakupkorerotia@gmail.com.

The show is also available on the following platforms:

• Plains FM website
• SoundCloud
• iTunes

Aspirational reading

Aspirational books – they tempt me with a promise of perfection.  It used to be parenting books. I took home Ian Grant’s Growing Great Boys and Growing Great Girls. I tried to organise family meetings to talk through our “issues” but like most attempts I had at creating the perfect family, they failed. I should have just read The Honest Toddler : a child’s guide to parenting, it would probably have been just as effective.

The winner of the aspirational titles of all time must be the diet books.  They march out the library doors promising not only weight loss but also complete overhaul of our fat miserable lives…

Loving yourself to great health : thoughts & food : the ultimate diet by the Self Help guru Louise Hay is perhaps the book that promises the most – health, happiness, and spiritual awakening. Greedy girl’s diet second helpings : fab food fast for a slim life promises that healthy food can be fun, and interestingly has a section on guilt free Junk Food!

Interior Design and Cooking are the most aspirational books I flick through these days.  Perfect for the coffee table – and little else – they leave me wanting a house that is a calm oasis of neutral/Scandinavian/eco-friendly/retro cool.

I am however beginning to give up on cooking books as I don’t have the stomach for cashew nut cream or coconut oil, and the word Paleo brings me out in a rash.

I can’t help but love these books.  I take them home for inspiration and ideas along with hope of that magic elixir that will make everything perfect.  For that brief window when I read and wonder, I am transported to the perfect me, the perfect family with the perfect house, and – like reading the much maligned Mills and Boon-  they are time away from the realities of life, and create the opportunity to dream.

The delusions of the aging

My 13 year old niece came to stay with me in the weekend. I had not been in sole charge of a teenage girl before so I planned shopping and physical activities to keep her happy.

I was told by her mother that the weekend was a success, but personally it left me feeling rather bereft. You see despite having turned 40 I still think I am young. For example I still believe that I am perfectly capable of performing any sporting activity I put my mind to. In this case it was at the YMCA’s Clip ‘n’ Climb where you climb up a variety of high walls in a safety harness. I felt perfectly confident that I could beat my niece in a climbing race, but half way up all I could do was stop and concentrate on not vomiting all over the colourful walls. When did I enter my decline? When did my strength and waist leave me? What can be done?

Well, luckily for us there is help at hand from our trusted health eResources:

• Consumer Health Complete – has a great video showing liposuction using what can only be one of my Grandmother’s knitting needles. Ick!
• Health and Wellness Resource Center – has risk assessment tools to estimate your chances of having a stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. It was almost enough to make me put down my peanut slab.
• Health Source – learn about “stuck syndrome” where you feel like you’re hopelessly trapped in a meeting, at work or social gathering so you reach out for bad food for relief – the story of my life!

We have many more eResources for you to examine as well but in short they all say move it or lose it. This is bad news for someone like myself who wants to spend her life on the sofa reading books yet if I want to be able to scale great heights again without encountering my gag reflex apparently it is time to move!

Crossfit at the Library

Chances are you will have heard of Crossfit. It will either strike fear to your bones or have you salivating, depending on what side of the fence you sit (or jump ) on. Perhaps you have tuned into the Crossfit games, labeled rather grandiously as the “premier test to find the Fittest on Earth”, personally I would rather stick needles in my eyes, but each to their own.

Crossfit runs, jumps, pulls and pushes beside its slightly friendlier cousin HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Gone are those long hours spent quietly slogging away on the treadmill or bike, now it’s all over in 30 minutes max and you are left in a pool of sweat, gasping for breath and wondering “why? why? why”?

Crossfit comes with its own language…

Training takes place at The BOX…whatever you do, do not call it a gym, gyms are for sissies. The box is where you do WODS (workouts of the day) and AMRAPS (As many reps as possible) and you embrace the SUCK…ie you get to feel really really bad.

I am not particularly enamoured of the trend. My daughter has joined up and I have been abandoned to muddle my way around the gym on my own, so I am feeling a bit bereft, however in an attempt to get to grips what is obviously appealing to many here is a list of crossfit and HITT titles.

Cool new stuff from the Selectors

Girls Standing on Lawns

Our selector noticed that this interesting and rather odd little book kept getting good reviews so she decided it was worth purchasing. Once she read it cover to cover (which only took less than 5 minutes) she agreed that this was quite a delightful wee book after all.

It is exactly what the title says, photos and paintings of girls standing on lawns with the author pondering and reflecting on the moment caught…

Marae: Te Tatau Pounamu: A Journey around New Zealands Meeting Houses

Bishop Muru Walters is a very well known Anglican minister. He is also a master carver, poet, broadcaster and former Māori All Black. His son Robin is a photographer and filmmaker who is director at Curious Films. Sam Walters, Robin’s wife, is a photographer.

Together the Walters spent three years visiting some of this country’s major meeting houses as well as many of the more humble ones – houses that serve smaller hapū and iwi – to bring together a beautiful photographic book on the meeting house. They are intensively photographed, with detailed shots of their carvings, kōwhaiwhai panels, tukutuku panels and much more. Many are photographed during an event, the images conveying a rich sense of life and activity.

From north to south, from the east coast to the west, and from ancient wharenui to bold new designs, this handsome book, with its engaging personal text, captures the huge variety of New Zealand’s original architecture. It’s a book for all New Zealanders to treasure.

When Books Went to War

Learning that the US government, along with librarians and publishers, decided to dispatch millions of books to American GIs, sailors, and fliers in the Second World War is sure to warm any book reader’s heart.  For many soldiers this was the first time they had come in contact with literature; some were so moved they wrote to the authors!  These books helped ease boredom, alleviated stress and gave a sense of purpose. By the number of starred reviews it has received, this book of books should be a good read.

The Wellness Syndrome

Feeling like you don’t exercise enough, or eat the right foods? You are not alone! The Wellness Syndrome follows people who go to extremes to find the perfect diet, corporate athletes who start the day with a dance party, and the self-trackers who monitor everything, including their own toilet habits.

This is a world where feeling good has become indistinguishable from being good. Visions of social change have been reduced to dreams of individual transformation, political debate has been replaced by insipid moralising, and scientific evidence has been traded for new-age delusions. A lively and humorous diagnosis of the cult of wellness, this book is an indispensable guide for everyone suspicious of our relentless quest to be happier and healthier.