Did you know that your body is made up of 70% water?

Drink Water from the faucet – Bottled water is not healthier than tap water but it is much more expensive. Not only that; manufacturers that bottle spring water are drying up those natural resources and the bottling process, plastics bottles and transportation of bottled water are also not good for the environment.

Drink a lot of water – Your body is made up of 70% water (just like the planet Earth) and in the summer you lose a lot of water due to extra sweating. It is important to replenish your body with all the water that it loss in order to maintain the 70% level and not dehydrate. In the summer months when you are outside a lot it is really easy to dehydrate. Even if you are at the beach or by the pool and you do not really feel the heat. Therefore it is very important to remember to drink a lot of water, even in places where it is cool.

Drink only water – Many people already know that it is important to drink a lot and they do - but they drink a lot of coffee or tea or soft drinks. Even though all these drinks are based on water the other ingredients in the drink can often times do damage to you health. Did you know that coffee is dehydrating?

Try not to drink sweet drinks – The big soft drink companies invest millions to entice you to drink their sweet and delicious soft drinks. These soft drinks may be tasty, but are they good for you? They are loaded with fattening calories. It is also reasonable to assume that they also have a lot of artificial flavors, colors and preservatives. Stick to tap water, it is all natural and relatively free.

How do you know that you have drunken enough? It is recommended to drink about 8 cups (1.6 liters) of water a day. Prepare a 1.5 – 2 liter bottle or pitcher of water every day and drink from it throughout the day, with the goal of finishing it by the end of the day. Check yourself and let us know if you manage to finish the bottle/pitcher by the end of the day. Prepare a separate bottle/pitcher for every individual in the household.

Water with a twist – If you find it difficult to drink water because you have become used to the taste of sweetened (including artificially sweetened) drinks, add a twist to give it some extra flavor. Add lemon slices or lemon verbena leaves or mint leaves in the warm months since they have a cooling effect. Add ginger, sage or rosemary leaves in the winter since they have a warming effect.

To your health, your well being and of course your pocket.

Neomi

How to Finance Dental Care

Another friend just old me about the horrible dental work that she needs to get done.

Not only is it not pleasant, to say the least, to sit in the dentist's chair and have your teeth pulled, root canal done or go through the process of getting implants, but the costs are extraordinary! Dental work is a very big concern and financial outlay. So much so that a simple Google search of "cost of dental procedures" brings up a lot of websites dealing with this subject and I even found a dental procedure calculator.

Of the websites that I found, the following are very interesting. What do you think?

http://downloads.pennnet.com/web_dl/1281.pdf

http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/dental_plans.html

What is really interesting is that most dental work can be prevented if you take good care of your teeth to being with.

I am really lucky! My mother had us go to the dentist every 6 months for a periodic check and cleaning and my sisters and I all had braces. I guess that you can say that my mother had high awareness to the importance of dental hygiene. I am not sure if it came out of financial concerns or aesthetic concerns but, no matter the reason, we were at Dr. Fried's every 6 months like clock work.

I follow in my mother's footsteps and my kids and I go for a check up and a cleaning every 6 months. The check up is free and the cost for the cleaning is nominal. I am happy to say that my daughter and I have required very little dental work. My daughter had braced but does not have a cavity in her mouth and I, with very few cavities, have only had to replace a filling or two in the last decade.

My son, has not been as lucky. He is 11 years old and only a few baby teeth have fallen and the rest are holding strong. The dentist and orthodontist (and after seeing the x-ray) decided to pull 4 of his baby teeth to make room for his grown up teeth which are full grown and searching for a way to break out. My son, of course, complained and didn't like that four teeth had to be pulled, but all in all he was very brave and did what he had to do.

If we have not taken care now, his grown-up teeth would have found their way out somehow, and could have damaged the nerves as well as the rest of his mouth (a dentist can better explain the ramification). If it has gotten to that, my son would have needed dental surgery and most likely with general anesthesia. And the costs and the discomfort would have been extraordinary. By the way, it cost us in total 880 NIS (about $220) to have all 4 teeth pulled.

In short, brush your teeth when you wake up and before you go to sleep, floss every evening (this is something that I have to work on) and visit you dentist for a periodic check and cleaning every 6 months.

Mindy