In the previous post, I explained what PMS actually is and in this post I will share some of the things which have helped me to prevent PMS and also studies to support these. What can you do about it? DON’Ts Don't eat chocolate or candies even if you crave them more than usual. These will worsen your symptoms. Use your will power! Don't drink alcohol. It will make you more bloated and worsen your symptoms. Avoid dairy.  Dairy products may cause inflammation in the body and there is hormone residues in milk. Read more  here . Don't stress too much. Stress will increase your cortisol levels which will lower your progesterone levels even more. Read more  here . DO’s Exercise: now is a good time to do other than intense workouts: try yoga or long walks. Diet: eat nutrient dense food. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, berries etc. It is important to eat berries every day. Any types of berries will do. Avoid hormon...

According to a study  20% suffer from PMS badly enough to acquire medical help. Modern medicine may say that you cannot prevent PMS and in the severe cases offers pills or hormonal treatments. However, functional medicine says there is a lot you can do naturally to prevent these symptoms mostly by paying attention to your diet. I am a good example of this: when I changed my diet, all my PMS symptoms disappeared. Nowadays I am mostly surprised when I have my periods because I don’t have all the PMS signs to warn me. And that is a good thing! In this post I will explain what PMS actually is and where does it come from.  Background PMS is all about hormonal imbalance. As your cycle comes to an end, your body’s progesterone and estrogen levels will drop. This will lead to decrease in serotonin and dopamine levels. What does dopamine or serotonine do in your body? Dopamine will make you feel energetic and you will feel good. Serotonine will also affect your mood, appetite...

It´s that time of the year when it really gets dark here in the north as we experience the Polar Night.. If you are not familiar with the concept, Polar Night means a period of darkness north of the Arctic circle when the sun does not rise over the horizon. The darkness of the Finnish winter might catch you by surprise. As I have been living abroad, I think, for me Polar Night is a problem. Seems like every year I struggle more because of it. Winter time and darkness is hard for me.  I struggle a lot especially now when we turned to "winter time" and we have day light only from 8 am until 4 pm and it keeps on getting darker each day.  And I know there are other people who also suffer because of it. So I decided to tell you how I cope with Polar Night. How to survive in Darkness: Accept that this is the time of season when you are allowed to get cozy inside your apartment. Light some candles, wear comfortable clothes and drink some herbal te...

Time for my Florida post. This is not a typical "you should visit that place" post, instead I will tell you my holiday observations about Florida (what has changed over the last 10 years since I was there last time and what surprised me). My Holiday Observations: No wonder Americans are getting fatter every year. We did many road trips along the way and the best decision we made was to make snacks for the ride. On the road there were only Dunkin Donuts,  Wendy´s, McDonald´s , JFK or other fast food chain restaurants which offer you fried chicken, fatty donuts and sugary beverages. Instead our snacks were salads (very good variety of ready to eat salads at Walmart or Publix), carrots, grapes, water and coffee. However, in a perfect world my son would also eat what we eat but as this is real-life my son wanted nuggets and fries 😀 so I let him have them. Is there a vegan trend in US like it is in Europe? I noticed that in normal or regular restaurants there weren´t ...

Photo by  hannah grace  on  Unsplash This year I have really become interested in self-care. I have read many books about it and I've tried to incorporate some self-care in my every week. I have to admit that being a working mum that isn't always easy but I want to learn how to be better at it. Also I want to practise what I preach. As a result of this I thought  I would do a post series about self-care. So here comes the first self-care post. This time it is a guest post from  Brad Krause .  Invaluable Acts of Self-Care You Should Do Today to Boost Your Mental Well-Being Research has found that only about 6 percent of adults practice some form of self-care  every day. This is unacceptable. Self-care, or the practice of doing things of personal benefit to make yourself a better, healthier, happier person, is vital to your overall well-being—especially that of your brain. Don’t be fooled by the other part of your brain telling you it’s se...

I'm back at home and boy it feels good to lie in my own bed and be back on my daily  routines .  As I was travelling home I had a lot of time to think about life and especially social media. By the way it felt great to be off line during daytime. It made me be more present and enjoy each moment without constant disruptions from my phone. This is something I intent to add in my daily life now that I'm back in business.  Back to the topic at hand.. As I was saying about social media, it's interesting how you get a certain picture of someone based on social media. For instance I usually post healthy food pictures because I want to inspire people to eat healthy and I live as I preach. Having said this, I still indulge and I have a sweet tooth. The other day my colleague was surprised as I was having a donut with my tea at work. It made me laugh and I realized that do most people actually think I don't eat "unhealthy" food? The reason why I normally...

It´s fall holiday and I´m in a my favourite country, in the US. It has been a long time since the last time I was here and therefore I am enjoying every moment of my trip! So as I am here I´m trying to live my life and focus on being present and forget about everything else. It has been a hectic fall so I am really enjoying my time without any schedules. Some of you might wonder why I haven't been posting as much as I did in the summer time.. Well, I am trying to find some balance in my life. I am often quite tired after work and I want to relax and spend time with my family and not be on my computer. This new posting pace has been better for me. I have a lot of ideas for blog posts but I haven´t got the time to sit down, write posts and download pictures. That being said, I still love blogging and I came here because I wanted you to have an insight on my trip. I will do a separate post on my trip later.   Below are some pictures of my trip. Can you guess where I am? ...

This blog post´s topic is about an important hormone called Leptin. What is it? Leptin is a protein hormone produced in adipose tissue. Leptin is a satiety hormone and it plays a role in regulating appetite and metabolism. Leptin´s role is to give information to your brains how much fat you have in your body.  Leptin was found in 1954. Back in the days few scientists conducted a mouse experiment in which the scientists were investigating a few mice which were eating all the time and because of that they gained a lot of weight. The reason behind this overeating was the fat tissue and it´s problems of not producing enough leptin. If there is no leptin production, brains don´t have any signals about how much fat tissue the body has.  One of leptin´s role is to decrease our appetite. For example if you have over eaten during Christmas time, you will gain weight. As a result of this Leptin levels will increase in your body and inform your brains to increase your ...