Personal Nutrition May Be Best For Your Health, Fitness

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We are aware that getting vital nutrients into the body with what we eat and drink is the best way to maintain health and fitness. While knowing that and following basic nutritional guidelines helps, there is still the question: Am I getting the right amount of vital nutrients for my specific body composite?

A one-size-fits-all diet sounds perfect, but the truth is there is no one catch-all solution to what we should be eating and drinking. Some people may need more potassium in their diet, while others may need to focus on protein and iron to feed their genetic makeup.

This is, obviously, pretty frustrating. It is why people can quickly become disheartened when what they are taking into their body causes them to gain weight or be sick, while others eating a worse diet of nutrients lose weight and remain healthy.

The answer to this problem lies in the science of personal nutrition.

This solution is making some noise in nutrition circles, especially at the top end of the market. The science is pretty simple and works just like personalized medicine. By analyzing your genes, scientists and nutritionists can then determine which foods and supplements will suit you best. Personalized nutrients will allow you to reach your health goals quicker, and it will result in you having more energy and a healthier overall lifestyle.

How these new sciences can help vary. At its most simple level, a wearable device can collect data such as the amount of physical activity you do in a day and your body’s response to that. The next level involves home-testing kits that can use blood, urine, and DNA samples to determine which vital nutrients you are overexposed to or lacking in your body. That data can then be used to formulate a program to adjust what you eat.

Personalized nutritional programs are most often used at the highest levels of sports. This is where athletes need the data on a day-to-day basis to complement their training and performance programs. The trickle-down effect has started, however, with more and more of this technology and science being available to the general public, who also have their own health goals to meet.

Preventing diseases is at the forefront of every nutritionist’s mind. These advances in science will only make their job easier, and personalized nutrition programs will soon become a more significant part of everyone’s life.

Article by Vital Guidance

Best Free Ideas For Promoting Your Sports Events

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It is easy to assume that in the digital age, the only way to promote your next sports event is by going big online. While the internet is undoubtedly a vital tool, not paying just as much attention to promotion and revenue streams offline would be a big mistake.

Here are seven free offline ways to promote your events:

1 – Flyers
Flyers might be the most straightforward tool of any on this list. As a result, they are easy to overlook when thinking about methods for promoting your sports event. Design a flyer that stands out, but make sure it isn’t a sheet of paper so crammed with information that people will find themselves overwhelmed. Then get out there and paper gyms, coffee shops, and any other business that makes sense depending on the nature of your event.

2 – Voicemail mentions
While there is nothing wrong with sticking with the same voicemail message you have had since 2002, it might be worthwhile updating your message to include mention of your sports event. If your work voicemail could also be shoehorned into promotion then go for it, just don’t get yourself in a situation where you could be fired over your event!!

Just keep the message simple and to the point. Mention your signup website and give a brief – a very brief – overview of what the event is all about.

3 – Business partnerships
It is never a bad idea to get businesses on board with your sports event. Asking local businesses for sponsorships – where they give money or items for giveaways in return for publicity – really does help out both parties. It can be daunting going into these situations, sometimes it feels like you think you are demanding money, but having a sales plan in your head while walking through the door will make the conversation go much more smoothly.

Sponsorship searches can be as simple as walking into a business or as involved as attending networking events. Be creative here and see what type of partnerships make sense for your sports event.

3 – Media coverage
Media coverage is important for a local event to be successful. Luckily, we are at a point in time where it is actually easier to pick up this type of coverage than ever before. Local newspapers and news stations are in desperate need of feel-good stories to cover, so get in touch with papers and TV companies to see if you can work together to promote your sports event.

4 – Trade services
If you are running on a budget, it is always a great idea to trade services. Maybe your event needs trashcans and port-a-potties. Instead of directly paying the company, ask to trade entries in the event for their services. This also works at other levels – may be a gym would be willing to trade advertising space in the lobby for free entries – and is all about getting creative in how you want to market your sports event.

5 – Event partnerships
Other sports events in the same sphere don’t have to be your enemy. Instead, use them as a platform to build relationships and increase your visibility. This can be as simple as buying booth space at other events to promote what you have going on. This can obviously get expensive quickly, so how about offering a trade of booth-for-booth with a number of different events, helping everyone out in the process.

You could also work on partnering with other events. Maybe offer a prize for the person/team who finishes with the best-combined record in a series of three different events (including yours). That way, you will instantly pick up more people to take part as everyone loves competition.

6 – Celebrity involvement
You are probably closer to being in touch with a local celebrity than you know. Work your contacts and see who knows who and use that to promote your event. Going outside your sphere to pay for someone to come in can be expensive, but the perfect event host might be as simple as finding out a star football player is the cousin of your neighbor.

7 – Charity partnership
Partnering with a charity such as the Premier Players Sports Foundation is always a great way to make an event more meaningful. You get the benefit of knowing you are helping out a great cause with the work you are doing promoting and working on your event. There are many websites out there that can help link you to a charity, and the other benefit here is that when you have teamed up, you have the power of the charity behind you when it comes to promoting your sports event.

Article by Vital Guidance

Kids Get Sports Injuries From Specializing Too Soon

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At one time there was a school of thought that the best way to ensure your child excelled in a sport was to push them to play that particular sport as early – and as often – as possible. That is how we ended up in a world of traveling baseball and volleyball teams all year round. It is why we still see kids in Canada playing in different regional hockey leagues every three or four months, staying with host families to do so. This is just how sports are supposed to be at the elite youth level.

Recently, though, this concept has come in for plenty of criticism. Ideas that were once thought to be a healthy way of pushing your kids forward in a sport have become old fashioned as more and more research has come out saying that this early specialization does nothing but physically hurt kids. The only real surprise here is just how long it took someone to say that abusing developing bodies with the same physical motions day after day and month after month was doing far more harm than good.

Using the same motion over and over is simply bad for the body. Overuse injuries are seeing kids as young as 12 or 13 in operating rooms needing surgeries on worn-out shoulders and ACL tears. Intense training in this way leads to these apparent injuries, but it can also lead to mental burnout. A sport that was fun at seven or eight can become something a child has no interest in pursuing by 11 or 12 if that is the only sport that they are allowed to participate in.

The answer here is quite obvious – diversification.

Sports should be fun. So let your child have fun. While some see specialization as the only route to a college scholarship, the truth is that by playing different sports you are giving your child the right guidance to succeed both on the field, and in life.

In 1993 professor Andres Ericsson wrote a paper that suggested to become an expert you had to put 10,000 hours of deliberate practice into it. This is a theory that was aimed at musicians, not at athletes. Unfortunately, the method has become the cry of parents who look to specialize their kids in a sport, no matter what more recent research has advised.

“We know pretty definitively that early specialization in sports is not good. It does predispose younger athletes to what we call overuse injury,” said Jonathan Shook, a sports medicine physician with OrthoIndy a sports medicine facility in Indianapolis. “We highly discourage it.”

Playing different sports work different muscle groups. Shooting a ball in soccer is different from a single-leg takedown in wrestling which is different from a tackle in football. To help child become a better athlete, it is vital to train all their muscles to function and work together. Overworking one muscle group to the detriment of others doesn’t do that.

One muscle that especially needs work is the brain. Throwing a fastball over and over and over is mentally taxing. However, if that pitcher also has to think about making a bounce pass as a basketball point guard and his footwork as a quarterback, then he or she will have a much more rounded ability to problem solve in any life situation.

Specialization can hurt young athletes. Given the right guidance, however, a diversified bank of sports will allow youngsters to compete for a college scholarship in their chosen sport when the right time to specialize crops up.

Article by Vital Guidance

Encouraging Children’s Creativity To Help Them Succeed

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Narrowing down a focus on how your child should grow up is usually not a good idea. Giving vital guidance in all aspects of their early life, but not stifling any spirit or purpose, however, is something that should undoubtedly be encouraged.

Some people think that creativity is a birth trait and that you either have it or you don’t. This just isn’t true, with creativity being a learned skill more than something that is decided on genetically. Knowing this means that creativity, like any skill, can be fostered, encouraged, and developed. Given the many paths in life that involve a creative, problem-solving brain in this digital age, it is a good idea to help your children learn how to be creative and show how creativity can be a huge part of their upbringing.

Here a few ideas on how to spike the creativity level of your children:

Don’t always be an alpha

This is a tricky idea to work with at first. We live in a world where fear and the concept of Big Brother watching affect our decision making daily. That fear can certainly lead to decisions and rules that stifle a child’s creativity.

This isn’t saying that we should give three-year-old junior a pair of scissors and see where it goes. It is merely saying that sometimes, when playing or introducing concepts, it is an excellent idea to let the child take the lead. For example, when playing with Lego or working on some other model, don’t just immediately pull out the instructions and go for it. Let the kids work with what they have for a little bit first. Their creativity might surprise you.

Find a creative space

This is a very Zen and New Age sounding proposal, but it is one that makes sense as you provide your child with the vital guidance to be creative.

Creativity is most likely and most often found in areas where there is room to express. This can be as simple as making sure that the playroom is set up to allow for creative play – not having every toy or set of things in a specific place that should never be moved – or as in-depth as allowing spots in certain parts of the garage as dedicated for painting.

Emphasize the arts

Video games are not a bad place to learn how to use creative thoughts and lateral thinking, as long as the game is in the right genre. No child, though, should be relying only on video games and TV for their entertainment.

It is all too easy in 2019 to let the iPad be the be-all and end-all when it comes to playing. Instead, go a little old school. Reading on a kindle is fun, but no e-reader has yet been able to replicate the actual feeling of reading a book. Drawing is essential for creativity too, and it is much more fun when done the way we used to do it, instead of using a finger on a screen as a paintbrush.

Stop caring about achievement

This is probably the most significant single way to allow your child to be creative with your vital guidance. We live in an accomplishment and winning-based society. Your child will undoubtedly learn that soon enough. For now though, who cares if a painting gets finished or if the product isn’t as good as the one put together by the kid across the street. Instead, make sure your child enjoyed any activity as much as possible. Eventually, the results will pay off when your child’s creativity allows him or her to solve a problem that a straight-line thinker would miss.

Article by Vital Guidance

Cats: The Ideal Pet For 9 Great Reasons

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Cat owners sometimes get a bad rap. The mere mention of owning a feline friend can conjure up images of the crazy lady down the street with a one-bedroom condo and 82 strays hanging around all day. Cats, however, actually make ideal pets that can turn into vital relationships over time. Here are nine reasons – just like their nine lives – that make cats a pet worth owning:

1 – Cats are low maintenance

Some people see the independence of cats as a bad thing. They compare the way a cat lives to the way a dog lives and decide that dogs must be better. In truth, the low maintenance of owning a cat can be an amazing thing. Anyone with a full-time job will be better off with a cat, knowing that their pet can self-entertain and be happy without a need for constant attention.

2 – Cats reduce stress

It is scientifically proven that petting a cat will release endorphins into the brain which make you happier. That ability to reduce tension and the stresses of the day by running your hand through Whiskers soft fur is enough of a reason to go out and buy a cat immediately. This reduction in stress will also help you build that vital relationship with your pet.

3 – Cats are eco-friendly

A 2009 study suggested that gathering the resources needed to feed and take care of a dog over its lifetime equal out to that of owning a Land Cruiser. Cats, by comparison, equate to a small hatchback. That is because dogs tend to be feed products based around corn, beef, and lamb, while cats are much more likely to be found eating products based around fish.

4 – Cats bathe themselves

Just ask any dog owner how time-consuming and stressful it can be to bathe their pet. While hounds seem to enjoy finding mud puddles to play in even in the middle of the desert, cats take a much more laissez-faire approach to play. Cats want to be clean and, as such, they will both avoid dirt and clean themselves. This is a much better arrangement than washing your dog or taking it to an expensive pet spa.

5 – Cats kill pests

While they don’t take out all pests, there are a number of household intruders that cats will take down with the precision of the Terminator. Rodents have no chance against cats. Neither do the bugs and spiders that they takedown. The only issue here is that sometimes your pet is so proud of the work that he wants to leave you a present, kind of like the Yakuza, but it feels like that is a small price to pay compared to the cost (and environmental damage) of most extermination services.

6 – Cats help you sleep

A recent study by the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine shows that 41-percent of people surveyed said they sleep better with their pet. This contrasts to just 20-percent who say that sleeping with a cat leads to disturbances in the night. This is a much better percentage of positive responses than any sleep study focused on human partners, with issues such as snoring and tossing around in the night something cats do not do.

7 – Cats are litter trained

Sure, litter boxes aren’t the most fun things in the world to clean. The plus side here though is that having a cat that is litter trained means that there are no accidents in the house to walk in on when you return from a 10-hour shift at the office. Dogs are great, but in the puppy stage, working around them and their bathroom schedule is a nightmare. Cats are just so much more self-sufficient in when and where they decide to do their business.

8 – Cats bring companionship

An Austrian study conducted in 2003 showed that having a cat in the house was the equivalent of having a romantic partner in terms of the affection given and received. Cats remember kindness, and they have the desire and genetic makeup to then return that kindness at a later date. If you are looking for a vital relationship with a pet, then it is simply a stereotype that dogs are more affectionate and therefore better pets.

9 – Cats are entertaining

One of the most important reasons to build a vital relationship with a pet is that they are able to keep you entertained. While having one cat is great, having a pair is so much better as their personalities will shine when they have an interacting playmate. If you add a pocket laser to this equation then you literally have all you need to have fun and hurt yourself laughing for hours.

Article by Vital Guidance

Relationships In Your Community Are Still Vital

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When we think of the vital relationships that we nurture in our lives, we default to a few different things.  Family relationships, romantic relationships, and friend relationships will top that list, with connections in the workplace and with teammates coming in soon after.  One area we may not think to consider, however, are the relationships in our community.

Community relationships are a vital part of society, providing essential connections and tying together a group of individuals who may have nothing in common other than their location.  The U.S. is a country that was founded on such community relationships.  Over time, though, with advances in transport and technology, it has almost become taboo to invest time and care into building relationships in our community.  By doing so, we have cut away an element of society and daily living that can, and should, be enjoyable and worthwhile.

Here are a few reasons why community relationships and community bonding is still essential even in the digital age:

1 – Meeting community leaders
Trusting community leaders and feeling like you matter as an individual is critical.  Good relationships need to be formed by community leaders – be they HOA leaders or government officials – and the people who they represent.  A day or night out meeting local police and other emergency services personnel is a great way to strengthen community relationships and show everyone within a space that they matter and are respected.

2 – Activity organization
Right now the only kickball league in your area is on the far West side of town. As you live on the far East side of the city, this is a problem. The solution is to build your league through the community and have something right on your doorstep that will open up a whole new friend group of people who share the same passion. This will not be an overnight thing, but by starting a game in your community, it is incredible to see what can be achieved over time.

3 – Meeting the neighbors
One of the problems with the world being such a busy place is that the time to build vital relationships with neighbors has kind of fallen away. Most people are likely to have their friends in other parts of the city, often driving a long distance to get to hang out and enjoy the bonding of friendship. While it’s unlikely that Bill across the street will become your best friend, it’s still a good idea to meet Bill and at least know enough about him for small talk.

4 – Better for your health
This is a weird one, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that having a close-knit, walkable local neighborhood and community results in better health for the people involved. A research review from Active Living Research showed that physical activity is associated with a risk reduction from premature death and risk reductions for chronic diseases. Areas that promote walking and other events – with sidewalks, bike lanes, and paths – see much less risk for early death than those that don’t. Taking steps towards building an active local community, or jumping in if it is already there, has long-term benefits that go beyond building good relationships.

5 – Everyone loves a party
Community meetings in a town hall or other such venue might be a tough sell. What is not a tough sell is making the event that builds good relationships much more of a party. A party at the end of the pool season is always a good idea, perhaps one that involves bringing a small donation to eat from the grill. Fancier events could even have local food trucks swing by so people are investing back into the community at large and meeting small business owners at the same time. Just get creative to ensure your community push is well received.

By Steve Wright
Independent writer

Three Ways to Play Defense in Your Stock Portfolio

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Defensive investment strategies share a common goal — to help a portfolio better weather an economic downturn and/or bouts of market volatility. But there are some key differences, including the specific criteria by which particular stocks are selected. If you are nearing retirement or just have a more conservative risk tolerance, one of these defensive strategies may help you manage risk while maintaining a robust equity portfolio.

Tilt toward value

Growth and value are opposite investment styles that tend to perform differently under different market conditions. Value stocks are associated with companies that appear to be undervalued by the market or are in an out-of-favor industry. These stocks may be priced lower than might be expected in relation to their earnings, assets, or growth potential, but the broader market is expected to eventually recognize the company’s full potential.

Established companies are more likely than younger companies to be considered value stocks. These firms may be more conservative with spending and emphasize paying dividends over reinvesting profits. Unlike value stocks, growth stocks may be priced higher in relation to current earnings or assets, so investors are essentially paying a premium for growth potential. This is one reason why growth stocks are typically considered to carry higher risk than value stocks.

Seek dividends

Whereas stock prices are often unpredictable and may be influenced by factors that do not reflect a company’s fiscal strength (or weakness), dividend payments tend to be steadier and more directly reflect a company’s financial position. Comparing current dividend yields, and a company’s history of dividend increases, can be helpful in deciding whether to invest in a stock or stock fund.

The flip side is that dividend-paying stocks may not have as much growth potential as non-dividend payers, and there are times when dividend stocks may drag down, not boost, portfolio performance. For example, dividend stocks can be sensitive to interest rate changes. When rates rise, the higher yields of lower risk fixed-income investments may become more appealing, placing downward pressure on dividend stocks.

Temper volatility

All stocks are volatile to some degree, but some have been less volatile historically than others. Certain mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) labeled “minimum volatility” or “low volatility” are constructed with an eye toward reducing risk during periods of market turbulence.

One commonly used measure of a stock or stock fund’s volatility is its beta, which is typically published with other information about an investment. The U.S. stock market as a whole is generally considered to have a beta of 1.0. In theory, an investment with a beta of 0.8 might experience only 80% of losses during a downswing — and thus would have less ground to regain when the market turns upward again.

The return and principal value of all investments fluctuate with changes in market conditions. Shares, when sold, may be worth more or less than their original cost. Investing in dividends is a long-term commitment. The amount of a company’s dividend can fluctuate with earnings, which are influenced by economic, market, and political events. Dividends are typically not guaranteed and could be changed or eliminated. Low-volatility funds vary widely in their objectives and strategies. There is no guarantee that they will maintain a more conservative level of risk, especially during extreme market conditions.

Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are sold by prospectus. Please consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. The prospectus, which contains this and other information about the investment company, can be obtained from your financial professional. Be sure to read the prospectus carefully before deciding whether to invest.