Is your excuse for skipping the gym valid? Find out here

As we all know, exercise is vital for managing stress, attaining good sleep, and living a healthy life in general. But when should you push yourself the hardest, and when should you take a break? Which excuses to skip a workout are valid, and which aren’t?

To answer this question, the people over at ThriveGlobal rounded up the most common excuses for skipping the physical activity, along with tips on whether you should work out or chill out for the sake of your well-being. For instance, is the excuse “I’m stressed” valid for skipping a workout? Apparently not. Rather than being an excuse for why you don’t work out, stress should be a reason for why you do hit the gym as it will help you relieve your stress and improve your brain chemistry so that it naturally feels happier.

But what if your excuse is that you’re “feeling tired”? The answer: push through, but listen to your body. The thing with exercise is that it can actually help increase your energy, so it’s worth going through with it. That said, you want to be careful not to do too much if you’re truly very tired, and should pay attention to how you feel throughout your workout. If you push too hard, you might feel over-fatigued afterwards and regret it later.

Want to see what other excuses are valid or invalid for skipping a workout? Look no further. READ MORE

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Apparently, honey can serve as a sensitive indicator of air quality

While honey is perfect for making anything a little bit sweeter, that’s not the only thing honey is good for. According to a recent study, honey can serve as a sensitive pollution detector.

As it turns out, bees pick up on trace amounts of metals as they forage for pollen, which settles on leaves and flowers from the air. When producing honey, those metals can show up in tiny amounts, reflecting the quality of the air in which the bees roam.

In a survey of urban beehives around Vancouver, the hives’ honey was found to contain minute levels of lead, especially downtown and near the city’s port—a testament to honey’s ability to indicate air quality. And with urban hives growing in number and already more numerous than many people realize, tracking pollutant levels using honey may offer an inexpensive way to monitor what’s in the air all over the world. READ MORE

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Want to volunteer, but don’t know where to start? Follow these 3 steps

The beauty of volunteering is that while you’re helping those in your community, you’re also giving yourself a reason to feel good. In fact, some research suggests that volunteering can even help us heal. Having the intention to volunteer is great, but actually getting started is a whole other thing. There are so many organizations that could use a helping hand, and finding the one that best suits you can be tricky. To help you get started, here are three easy steps to follow.

First step: think about what you care about. We’re more likely to follow through and put in hard work when we care about why we’re doing something. Life is busy, and sometimes we can forget to zoom out at the bigger picture and take inventory of where we’d like to be a part of the solution. A helpful way to identify what’s truly important to you is to close your eyes and envision the problem you’d like to solve if you had all the money and resources in the world. This way you won’t be inhibited by doubts or worries about feasibility.

Second step: seek out others with a similar mission. Now that you’ve identified a cause that’s important to you and you’re willing to explore it further, you’ll want to research who’s already doing the work you want to do in your community. You can start by talking to friends, colleagues, and people at local shops and letting them know where you’d like to help. You may unexpectedly find that a friend is part of a group that cooks meals for food-insecure families once a week or that a local restaurant owner is involved with providing leftover food to shelters. If this doesn’t do the trick, you can consider signing up for VolunteerMatch, a free online service that helps match you with volunteer opportunities in your area.

Third step: get started. Searching for volunteer opportunities can be overwhelming and you may have lots of unanswered questions. But once you get started somewhere, you will surely find many answers and start seeing the value of your volunteer work. READ MORE

Aloe Cadabra – each tube is carefully filled over 95% Full of Organic Aloe Vera to moisturize and sooth.

Moisturize
Lubricate
Replenish