health and fitness

VIDEO: Alcohol guidelines may advise 'dry' days

New advice on how much people in the UK should limit their drinking is to be issued following the first review of official alcohol guidance in 20 years.

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My daughter’s mood swings exhaust me

I keep in touch and visit her abroad, but she suffers from anxiety and takes offence at my efforts to help. Annalisa Barbieri advises a reader

My daughter moved from Vancouver to Britain some years ago to go to university; eventually marrying another student. She found stable employment and recently gave birth to her first child. I love her very much, and the geographic distance has been difficult for me to bear, although we talk and email, and I visit regularly, spending time, energy and thousands of dollars per trip to maintain our relationship and be supportive of her pregnancy and labour. The underlying problem is that my daughter suffers from anxiety, and when she is panicked, and especially during pregnancy and after, she can be very hard on herself and those closest to her.

Her mood swings exhaust me. I realise I am dealing with postnatal depression, and am relieved that she has the benefit of a good therapist, a devoted man, friends and support groups. If it weren’t for my grandchild, I’d consider taking a break for a year, and just phoning or emailing. This would be hard on me, and probably on my daughter as well, but I’m tired of holding my tongue in order to keep our limited time together peaceful. (She had an outright meltdown recently, shrieking at me when I made a gentle suggestion about how she might get more rest.)

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New year, new you? Forget it

Old You is the last person you ought to trust when it comes to designing a New You

So here we are again: that time known to publishers as “New Year, New You”, partly because they want to sell life-makeover books and partly because, well… alliteration! I trust we’re all in agreement that “New Year, New You” is preposterous and bad. But it’s preposterous and bad, I’d argue, for some interesting reasons – reasons it’s worth grasping if you’d actually like to make a few lasting changes this year. These all result from one rarely mentioned truth: that by definition, the only person who could successfully bring this New You into being is that feckless, lazy, overcommitted, weak-willed, Twitter-addicted, crisps-munching good-for-nothing called Old You.

And Old You is the last person you ought to trust when it comes to designing a New You. Consider the facts. For a start, Old You doesn’t currently do any of the things he or she claims will make New You happy and fulfilled. (Would you trust a personal trainer who chain-smoked through your sessions and never worked out? Exactly.) Moreover, Old You doesn’t even seem to like himself or herself that much, otherwise a makeover wouldn’t be on the agenda. Clearly, Old You has some issues. Lastly, Old You probably has a long track record of trying and failing to implement change – and yet you’re going to trust this shifty character with your future? That’s like taking your car to a mechanic who botches the repair job almost every time.

from Health & wellbeing | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1Re3Osp
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Drowning in commitments? It's time to stop giving a damn

The key to beating stress is to care less – and if that means wearing your pyjamas to the corner shop, so be it

If you’re like me, you’ve been caring too much about too many things for too long. You’re overextended and overburdened by life. Stressed out, anxious, maybe even panic-stricken about your commitments. I was almost 30 years old when I began to realise it was possible to stop caring so much, but I was nearly 40 before I figured out how to make it happen.

As a self-described overachieving perfectionist, I was anxious throughout my childhood and adolescence. I tackled numerous projects, tasks and tests to prove myself worthy of respect and admiration from my family, friends and even casual acquaintances. I socialised with people I did not like in order to appear benevolent; I did jobs that were beneath me in order to appear helpful; I ate things that disgusted me in order to appear gracious. This was no way to live.