WellBeing

roam

Lao Tzu once wrote, “A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” We couldn’t agree with the Taoist master more! It’s time to toss away your itinerary and ramble, rove and roam wherever you’re called to go. Travelling is one of life’s greatest treasures and comes in many forms. You can travel physically to another state or country, you can travel mentally through the words of a book, or you can travel in your own imagination. Drift through the meandering laneways of a coastal village; float over the Aegean Sea on a boat with some new friends; wander the streets of a unfamiliar city until you find the perfect sunlit cafe and sit, watch and absorb. Give yourself the gift of not knowing what or…

from the editor-in-chief

What mistakes have you made today? Notice I deliberately didn’t ask “if” you had made any mistakes today. It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, it’s more that I do have faith in you to be human. To be human is to err — in fact you’d be defying some pretty outstanding odds if you didn’t. The internet factoid in circulation tells us that we make around 35,000 decisions every day. That figure seems pretty rubbery. It breaks down to around 25 decisions every minute. If you’re settled, nestled into the lounge reading an engrossing book for a couple of hours, it’s hard to see that you make 25 decisions per minute. Whatever the accurate figure is though, it is certainly true that we make many thousands of decisions daily. This…

from the editor

A few months ago, I realised that somewhere between childhood and adulthood I stopped playing. I’d forgotten what it felt like to just “play”, letting that childlike excitement, silliness and innocence run wild. One Saturday morning, I invited my fiancé Henry and some friends to swim a few laps at the local memorial pool. We packed our one-pieces, goggles and swimming caps and set off, ready to get the blood pumping with some vigorous exercise. None of us had been to this pool before, so when we pulled up out the front, we were surprised to see two gigantic red and yellow water slides. “We have to ride that!” I exclaimed to everyone. They all looked at me with smiles, nodding their heads enthusiastically. “Laps can wait, let’s play!” We walked past the…

your say

Did something resonate with you in this issue of WellBeing? Tell us! Write to WellBeing, Locked Bag 154, North Ryde, NSW 1670, email wbletters@umco.com.au, comment on our Facebook page or Instagram account: @WellBeing _Magazine. We reserve the right to edit all letters. All the wonderful things in life I bought my first ever copy of WellBeing (issue #177) a while ago now, purely the natural traveller because the picture protect your health & enjoy your travels on the front cover drew me in. I wanted to be that woman swimming in the ocean. I read through the magazine in the little bits of time snatched between working, being a mum and living life. As I sit in my hammock today, on a gorgeous sunny day in Melbourne, I read about finding my…

recent medical findings for a healthier body

Elderberries for the flu Elderberries have a long reputation as being flu fighters, but researchers wanted to establish exactly how these berries might do their work. To do this the researchers turned commercially farmed elderberries into a juice that was applied to human cells before, during and after being infected with the influenza virus. The researchers found that elderberry stops the early stage of infection by blocking proteins that the flu virus uses to attach to and enter cells. There was another unexpected effect though, in that elderberry also stopped the multiplication of viruses that did manage to enter the cells. On top of all that, elderberry caused cells to release chemical messengers called cytokines that enhanced immune activity. Obviously, if you can block the virus cycle at multiple points you…

interesting slices of life

Fake news, fake morality “Fake news” refers to news or stories that are deliberately created to misinform or deceive readers. Researchers have found that people are not likely to share a story that they perceive as fake news. However, in the study the more times subjects saw the story, the more likely they were to share it and “like” it. Interestingly, the increasing likelihood of sharing a story did not correlate to any increase in perceiving the story to be accurate. For some reason, people feel more comfortable sharing news they know to be fake when they have seen it before. Somehow, people give information they know to be false a moral pass when it is repeated, even if they don’t believe it. It might tie in to the fact that…