The Five-Minute Workout Even Busy Women Can Fit Into Their Busy Days

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The Five-Minute Workout Even Busy Women Can Fit Into Their Busy Days

In this day and age, we’re all super busy. We have so much going on in every sphere of our lives—we have obligations to our family, friends, and work, and we have a multitude of responsibilities that come with every role we play. So when it comes to fitting exercise into your already hectic schedule, you probably assume you don’t have time for it, and you immediately think “yea right, that’s not happening.”

But research has shown that you don’t have to trudge along on the treadmill for hours at a time or lift 100 pound weights to reap the benefits of exercise.

Studies have shown that brief periods of physical activity do add up, and together, they have a positive effect on our weight and overall health. How brief are we talking? Just five minutes! As busy as we are, we ALL have five minutes to spare

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How Music Can Affect Aging & Memory

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How Music Can Affect Aging & Memory

Have you ever had a super nostalgic moment? I have them every day whether it be on my phone, in the gym, while watching movies, or in restaurants…basically anywhere music is playing.

Music has always been an important part of my life; ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you I am always listening to music!

My love of music developed the most in my teens and early twenties.

Back then, I didn’t fully realize how much music would become an influential part of the rest of my life, and I had no idea that it could help me (and my brain) age healthily!

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What To Eat To Heal Your Gut

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What To Eat To Heal Your Gut

Talk to any holistic health doctor—or Western doctor with experience in alternative medicine—and they will tell you the same thing: gut health matters.

Whatever ailment or health issue you’re dealing with, chances are a) it is stemming from your gut and b) paying more attention to your gut can help.

In this blog post, I’m going to share a few of my favorite gut-healing foods, as well as a few recipes that you can make to incorporate them into your diet! 

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The Effect Of Poor Hydration On Aging

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The Effect Of Poor Hydration On Aging

Going into this year, I’m doubling down on my primary health goals, which are to stay disease-free and alive as long as I can. That means I have to keep my body working well, and of course, that means staying hydrated.

I’ve written numerous posts about the importance of staying hydrated and why it matters for bodily functions—but did you know it also correlates directly to aging?

A recent study showed the connection, and I felt the need to share this info with all of my friends over 50 (and under 50—we don’t gatekeep health here). 

On January 2, 2023, the National Institutes of Health published a study about lifelong hydration and the impact it has on our overall health. We’ve long known the short-term benefits of staying hydrated—from helping us ward off headaches and migraines, regulating our body temperature, aiding our digestion, ridding our body of toxins, and more—but this study underscored the long-term effects

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The Best Of Pure Joy Wellness 2022

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The Best Of Pure Joy Wellness 2022

Can you believe that 2022 will be over in less than two weeks?! This year somehow crawled and flew by at the same time—did you feel that way too?

Regardless of how your year was overall - I hope you’re able to take a step back and reflect on this year. I

As is tradition at PJW, this post will be our annual “Best Of” blog post, where we’ve assembled and curated our most-loved, most useful content into one article. Think of it as our greatest hits from 2022!

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How Your Alcohol Tolerance Changes With Age

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How Your Alcohol Tolerance Changes With Age

Getting older comes with a lot of changes—physically, mentally, spiritually, and more. One of those changes (one I don’t hear many people talking about) is our body’s ability to process alcohol.

As you probably guessed, the older we get, the worse we are at tolerating and handling alcohol.

This has to do with a number of factors, and I wanted to use this week’s blog post as an opportunity to explain what happens to our alcohol tolerance as we age, why it happens, and what to do!

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The PJW Holiday Gift Guide

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The PJW Holiday Gift Guide

The holidays are upon us! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are looking forward to the December holidays. With Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa around the corner, I wanted to help those of you who aren’t fans of gift giving.

I know that picking out gifts isn’t everyone’s favorite activity, so to help you, I’ve built out a healthy gift guide that is bound to have something for everyone on your list!

I hope it makes your shopping experience a little easier. I’ve used all of these products and I can’t recommend them enough.

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7 Lessons I Learned This Year

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7 Lessons I Learned This Year

This week I will celebrate my 66th birthday! Woohoo! Happy, happy birthday to me and to anyone else born on the same day. We Scorpios are so blessed to get another turn around the sun.

I’m fully aware that not everyone gets to be my age. It’s a gift, an honor, a blessing, and a privilege. Each year around my birthday, I enjoy taking a few moments to reflect on what’s transpired over the last 12 months—and to think about how I can keep growing in ways that support my physical health and my emotional/mental well-being.

I’ll be honest with you: This has not been an easy year for me to look back on. Anxiety, Fear, Isolation, Loneliness, Loss, and Grief were my frequent companions.

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3 Tips For Dealing With Stress Around The Holidays

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3 Tips For Dealing With Stress Around The Holidays

While the holiday season can come with a lot of joy, it’s not always the most pleasant time for everyone. Spending time with family and friends can be overwhelming, emotionally draining, and downright stressful for many people. This isn’t to say that you don’t love your family and friends—these feelings aren’t mutually exclusive—but it could mean that you’re heading into the holidays feeling tense and apprehensive. If you are, don’t worry, I’m here to help you!

The goal of this week’s blog post is to help you get ahead of these feelings and give you a few tips that will allow you to make the holidays as happy and stress-free as possible.

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Are You Getting Enough Protein? Here's How To Know

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Are You Getting Enough Protein? Here's How To Know

Of all the macronutrients—fat, carbs, and protein—protein is by far the one we skimp on the most, and it’s arguably the most important. Protein plays a key role in a ton of bodily processes, including building our muscle and preventing muscle loss. It also helps our body repair its cells and tissues, and it helps us make new ones. Protein determines how well our bodies function, and as a result, it influences how we feel on a daily basis.

While protein is important for everyone, it is especially important for us women over 50.

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Why Maintaining A Healthy Sex Life Is The Key To Feeling Younger

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Why Maintaining A Healthy Sex Life Is The Key To Feeling Younger

What does it mean to “feel younger?” To me, it has very little to do with looks. The way I see it, feeling younger means having the energy, attitude, and passion for life that I had in my younger years. It’s a feeling and a mindset, not an appearance or specific look. And over the last decade or so, I’ve realized that there are certain things that help me “feel younger”—one of those things is a healthy sex life.

The title of this article—“Why Maintaining A Healthy Sex Life Is The Key To Feeling Younger”—is a claim I truly stand by. In my experience, sex and pleasure are crucial pieces of the puzzle that is our health and well-being.

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Hip Mobility 101 with Joanna Castro

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Hip Mobility 101 with Joanna Castro

Raise your hand if you have tight hips…is yours up? Both of mine are!

Whether you exercise everyday or not, you may experience an uncomfortable tightness in your hips that makes it harder for you to move. This is because as we age, our joints can become stiffer and less flexible, and overtime we can lose more and more of our mobility.

To help us learn more about mobility—and to give our hips a good stretching out—I’ve enlisted the help of Joanna Castro, a fitness coach and mobility expert.

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Why I Started The Walking Challenge

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Why I Started The Walking Challenge

Fall is by far my favorite season—I love the leaves, the crisp air, and the fall produce—but my favorite part of my favorite season has also arrived… THE PURE JOY WELLNESS FALL WALKING CHALLENGE!!

If you’re in our private Facebook group or subscribe to the PJW newsletter, you’ve probably seen that the Walking Challenge starts THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1! Myself and the rest of the PJW community will be walking for 30 minutes every day, for 30 days straight.

If you’ve participated in the Walking Challenge before, I hope you’re looking forward to joining us again—and if you’ve never done it before, welcome, I hope you’re excited!

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My Top 10 Foods For Aging Well

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My Top 10 Foods For Aging Well

Most women I meet who are over 50 have a few goals in common:

  1. They want to stay healthy

  2. They want to stay alive

  3. And they want to age well!

Well, I’m happy to report that this blog post, and the foods I’m going to tell you about in it, check all of those boxes and pass that test with flying colors. As you know if you’ve read the blog for a while, what we put into our bodies reflects on the outside of our bodies, and it has a direct correlation to how we feel and how we age. The best thing you can do for your body is nourish it with nutrient-packed foods, and in return, you’ll feel and look magnificent.

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These Are The 7 Types Of Rest You Need

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These Are The 7 Types Of Rest You Need

I wouldn’t say that I’ve always been a “well-rested” person. Historically I’ve had trouble getting enough sleep (I’m usually up very early for that reason), and whenever I’ve felt tired or burnt out, I assumed it was because I wasn’t sleeping. That was until I came across the work of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a physician, researcher, author, and speaker, who has worked in internal medicine for 20 years.

In her book, Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, she talks about the seven different types of rest we need to live healthy and fulfilled lives while decreasing stress, fatigue, and feelings of burnout. I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Dalton-Smith.

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What Happens To Your Hair During Menopause

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What Happens To Your Hair During Menopause

If you've gone through menopause or are dealing with it now, you know that it comes with plenty of body changes—our skin, sleep patterns, body composition, you name it. But one lesser known side effect of menopause is hair changes—like hair loss, hair thinning, changes in texture, dryness, dullness, and even scalp sensitivity. This is because of the major hormone shift our bodies experience before, during, and after menopause.

I talked about menopausal hair loss a bit a few blog posts ago, when I recommended the Nutrafol supplement, but I wanted to elaborate on the changes our hair can undergo and tell you about the options you have.

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Pure Joy Wellness Approved - Nutrafol Hair Supplement

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Pure Joy Wellness Approved - Nutrafol Hair Supplement

Let’s face it: The symptoms of menopause are not cute. In fact, they can be downright unpleasant, and even unbearable for some women. We’re talking menopausal belly fat, low libido, constantly having to pee, and more. I’ve talked before about hormonal facial hair, a common side effect of menopause, before on the blog, but I haven’t really talked about hair loss… which is what I’m talking about today. (And yes, I found a fix!)

As most of you know, menopause causes a serious hormone shift in women. Our estrogen and progesterone levels fall, which amplifies the effects of androgens in our bodies (male hormones, like testosterone). As a result, our hair can become thinner/finer, fall out more easily, and grow more slowly, because our hair follicles shrink.

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3 Tips For Coping With Grief, From Patty Lennon

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3 Tips For Coping With Grief, From Patty Lennon

All of this year, I’ve been dealing with something very serious. This is the first time I’m sharing this news with the PJW community.

In late December 2021, my partner of 17 years, Panos, was diagnosed with cancer. He was suave and debonair and smart and funny and twice an olympian. Early on, he received a terminal prognosis, but after consulting with his doctors, we decided to proceed with chemo treatments and I became his caregiver.

From January onward, he grew very, very sick. He was admitted to the hospital multiple times.

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My Morning Routine (And How To Create Your Own)

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My Morning Routine (And How To Create Your Own)

A question I’m often asked by my friends and clients is: What is your morning routine? I actually love answering this question, because it makes me reflect on how far my routines (both morning and evening) have come. The more I’ve learned about wellness over the years, and the more I’ve prioritized my physical and mental well-being, the more effective and efficient my routines have gotten.

AND they’re super sustainable now—I used to have super long routines and I never ended up sticking with them because they demanded too much. Below is an overview of my morning routine, as well as my top three tips for developing your own!

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Why You Need Fermented Foods On Your Plate

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Why You Need Fermented Foods On Your Plate

Taking care of your gut (aka your digestive system, GI tract, etc.) is one of the most effective ways to completely improve your health. That’s because your gut affects every aspect of your well-being—from your skin and overall physical health, to your ability to age well and your mental health. (Seriously, it impacts everything.)

Many people know that gut health is important, but they aren’t sure how to get started in tending to their gut. In this blog post, I talk about one of the most powerful tools you can use to do that…fermented foods!

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