Table of contents for Issue 201 in WellBeing

Social media shares Research has shown that only about 51 per cent of people read an article before sharing it online. In a new study researchers wanted to examine the psychology of this social media phenomenon. After a series of four studies, they concluded that social media sharers believe that they are knowledgeable about the content they are sharing even if they have only glanced at a headline. Sharing creates this rise in self-confidence because just by the act of putting something online the user publicly commits to an expert identity. This shapes their sense of self and helps them to feel as knowledgeable as they are portraying themselves to be. The researchers note a real danger to this because when people think they are knowledgeable they are more likely…

“No” might be a small word, but it’s often loaded with complexity. It’s not easy hearing No and at times even harder to say No. If you’re regularly saying Yes when you want to say No, it’s easy for resentment and frustration to build and to end up feeling burnt out. When you don’t have clear and healthy boundaries in place you will find yourself saying Yes more than you know you should, or what’s good for you. To create healthy boundaries, where you feel OK about saying No in your personal life and at work, it’s essential to learn how to move past people-pleasing habits and to say No with confidence and empathy. While no one likes to hear No we all want to be seen and heard. It’s…

When I was young, primary schoolaged, the worst thing you could be was lazy. You didn’t have to succeed at everything, but you did have to try really hard at everything. Even through my languorous teen years, the fear of being labelled as lazy kept me working hard. During a brief stint in the corporate world, I realised the only way to succeed was to be exceptionally busy. You had to bemoan it out loud of course, but if you weren’t so busy, you weren’t working hard enough. The extra mile wasn’t really extra at all — it was the compulsory minimum. There are countless problems with this ideology, of course. Problems that, in the last five years or so, have been well discussed. Dubbed generation burnout, millennials are transforming…

Honey and Mustard Chicken Tray Bake Marinade 3 tbsp avocado oil Juice 1 lemon½ tbsp mustard powder3 tbsp honey2 garlic cloves, minced6 chicken thighs Traybake 2 red onions, cut into thick wedges1 sweet potato, peeled & diced2 potatoes, peeled & diced1 carrot or 4 baby carrots8 Brussels sprouts, halved2 tbsp avocado oil Salt & pepper, to season 2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped Preheat oven to 200°C or 180°C fan-forced. Place the marinade ingredients in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Add the chicken and mix well, ensuring the chicken is evenly coated. Cover and place in fridge for at least 15 mins. Place the vegetables in a large baking tray and arrange in a single layer. Toss with avocado oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 30…

Are you living a high-stress life? Is your nutrition optimal or a little off? Is a quality night’s sleep hard to come by? Are you exposed to environmental toxins? If you answer yes to any or all of the above, it’s highly likely that you’re experiencing a degree of excess inflammation in your body. The cascade effect of this inflammation has the ability to age you prematurely from the inside out. So, what exactly is “inflammageing” and how does it impact your skin? A dive into examining what’s going on in the body below skin surface level, plus understanding how to protect yourself from the damaging effects of cellular inflammation, is a beauty and wellness secret you’ll want to know about. Here’s the science behind mitigating inflammation in order to…

Tanning 1 Winner: Eco Tan — Face Tan Water 2 Runner-up: Wotnot — Tan Application Mitt Supplements & Collagens 3 Winner: WelleCo — The Super Elixir™ 4 Runner-up: Edible Beauty — Inner Essentials — Skin + Gut Renew Powder Welcome to the WellBeing Be-YOU-T Awards, Australia’s only natural beauty awards. As we learned from our inaugural beauty awards in 2021, the natural and organic beauty market is growing fast. Here at WellBeing, we are pleased to be standing at the forefront and acknowledging those at the helm of natural beauty industry. Are you ready to discover the faces of natural beauty? We asked you to select your favourite natural beauty products and you voted in your thousands across categories including baby care, anti-ageing, skincare, make-up and hair care. Perhaps you’re looking…

Conspiracy narratives have been circulating since humans started theorising to interpret the world around us. There is historical evidence of conspiracy theories during disease epidemics and in times of societal crisis, dating back to the Roman era of 64 CE. It can be easy to dismiss certain conspiracy theories as paranoid nonsense; however, belief in conspiracy narratives is very widespread. For example, an international survey that took place in 2020 and included 28 countries revealed that one third of people believed a “foreign power/other force” caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Conspiracy theories offer an alternative ideological framework to explain the reason for an unforeseen threat or crisis. We intuitively process situations that threaten our sense of control and seek an explanation to resolve the uncertainty. Believing that a stressful life event…

Tell us, when did White Glo begin and why? White Glo was established in 1995 by Barros Laboratories in Sydney, Australia. Originally, Barros’ aim was to develop highly effective teeth-whitening products for models and actors in the film industry who required on-screen smile enhancement. However, the teeth-whitening formulation developed by Barros Laboratories was so effective that it led to the development of a consumer range for the mass market under the name of White Glo. Today, White Glo’s goal is to provide consumers with dentist-quality teeth whitening at affordable prices. What are your three top tips when it comes to taking care of your teeth and gums? 1 Regular flossing is vital to keep your gums healthy and prevent plaque build-up and tooth decay. You should try to floss as…

First Nations Food Companion by Damien Coulthard and Rebecca Sullivan, photography by Josh Geelen. Murdoch Books, RRP $49.99 The average Australian knows more about kale than warrigal greens, or pine nuts than bunya nuts, but there’s an edible pantry of unique flavours that First Nations people have been making the most of for aeons. In First Nations Food Companion, emerging elder Damien Coulthard and his partner Rebecca Sullivan have compiled a living, growing repository of knowledge with delicious, practical uses. In the informative guide, you’ll find more than 60 of the most accessible Indigenous ingredients including their flavour profiles, along with tips for how to buy, grow and store them. You’ll also find recipes featuring native ingredients, tips for substituting regular pantry ingredients where needed, how to grow an Indigenous…

As I walk through the flourishing gardens that surround the Byron Yoga Centre, I take a deep breath. It’s perhaps my first conscious breath for the day, maybe even for the week. I exhale and let it linger, noticing that my lungs feel full and healthy. I look around. The banana trees have almost doubled since I was here last, the spring flowers are in full bloom and the butterflies flutter happily in the breeze. Passing the 25-metre magnesium pool, I am warmly greeted by Elise, the retreat manager, and offered a brewed chai with nut milk. Lunch, Elise informs me, has just been served: a black rice salad, scrambled tofu and sweet potato fries. The food is delicious and fresh. With most of the produce grown organically on site,…

It’s Monday and your diet has just started. Breakfast: A piece of toast with avocado, kale and eggs. Lunch: A homemade chicken salad with lots of veggies and rice. Afternoon tea: A protein bar. Dinner: Salmon with steamed veggies. Dessert: A whole packet of cookies, ice cream and a block of chocolate. Does this sound familiar? If you need your sugar fix but want to start improving your eating, it might be time to take control of your cravings. When you are eating regularly and have tasty meals and snacks on hand, your blood sugar levels and energy will remain more stable and you are less likely to have cravings or make poor choices. The 80/20 rule, where 80 per cent of your diet is based on healthy wholefoods and…

Men with low testosterone are less able to articulate with fluency and flow, have worse memories and struggle to execute with purpose and precision in the workplace. If you take a bullet train back through the kaleidoscope of history, one theme reverberates incessantly throughout this journey: testosterone has not made the world a better place. World wars that persist in scaled down fashion across the globe to the present day, massive planetary devastation that has seeded climate change which threatens the very survival of planet Earth, and our uppermost preoccupation, sports that embrace the gladiatorial annihilation of the opposition till death does the game end, are all fuelled in some way by the relentlessly destructive masculine catharsis that is testosterone. Simply put, testosterone is not a compassionate, caring, empathetic nurturing…

As someone who has suffered from chronic pain for around 10 years, I’ve almost forgotten what life is like without some form of pain. I was a keen runner and managed to complete a marathon before the pain forced me to quit running, despite several attempts to return to it. Now every day is a battle against the pain, but that doesn’t mean pain is all I have in my life. I’ve found ways to make my pain more manageable. What works for me Over the years, my pain has spread from my neck to my shoulders and back. On my worst days, the pain spreads across the back of my head to the front and gives me headaches which can last for days. The gym equipment got me moving.…

Spring • Vegetables Artichoke, Asian greens, asparagus, avocados, broad beans, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chokos, cucumbers, leeks, lettuce, morel mushrooms, salad onions, spring onions, peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, sweet potato, potato, pumpkin, silver beet, spinach, watercress, zucchini flowers. • Fruit Lady Williams apples, bananas, cherries, cumquats, grapefruit, lemons, loquats, lychees, Ellendale and Murcott mandarins, mangoes, honeydew melons, rockmelons, watermelons, blood oranges, Seville oranges, papaya, pawpaw, w, smooth-leaf pineapple, starfruit, strawberries, tangelos. Summer • Vegetables Asparagus, beans, capsicum, celery, chillies, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, okra, onions, peas, potatoes, radish, sweet corn, watercress, zucchini. • Fruit Apricots, avocados, bananas, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, figs, grapes, limes, lychees, mangoes, mangosteens, melons, nectarines, oranges, papaya, passionfruit, pawpaw, peaches, pears, pineapple, plums, rambutans, raspberries, red- and blackcurrants, strawberries, tomatoes. November • November, AU…

I was recently reminded of the fragility of human life. In times of uncertainty, there’s a part of us that clings to anything we can. We are so confounded by the implausibility of it all that we look outwards, we look beyond. We try rationalising a “why” or a “who to blame”. But the simple fact is that life is unpredictable. We don’t know what could happen in any given moment. We are all born with an expiry date and it’s impossible to know when our time is up. Over the past month, I’ve held my son a little tighter, breathed his delicious scent in deeper, lingered with him asleep in my arms and kissed his sweet cheeks a few million times more. Doing so means the dishes and washing pile…

Dolphin cooperation The formation of alliances and cooperation with those allies is one of the things that has allowed humans to succeed as a species. This ally cooperation was once thought to be unique to humans, but now we know that other species do it. Researchers have been studying bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia for decades now, and they report that male dolphins form first-order alliances of two to three males to cooperatively pursue “consortship” with females. Further, second-order alliances of four to 14 males will compete with other alliances over access to female dolphins and third-order alliances also occur wherein two second-order alliances will cooperate. Just like humans, the dolphins are cooperating to increase access to limited resources. It’s not comfortable to think of female dolphins as…

If you haven’t said it today, then you will probably have written it, “Can you just email me.” Social media may dominate communication among certain portions of the population, but email continues to thrive. More than 100 million new email accounts are generated every year, and in business emails are the lubricant that allows information to flow. We request and supply emails with such a casual ease it is as if there is no cost and no consequence to the act. Yet just like the butterfly who thinks the spider won’t notice if it lands on its web, you are kidding yourself if you think that emails are innocuous. As we shall see as we open the topic that is “email”, the subject line does not matter and to an…

It began with a deafening silence. Like any parent with young children, Shaun knew that’s often not good news. He legged it outside, and there they were, his three little girls, stripped down to their undies, drawing over each other with coloured markers. Even the family dog was sporting bright blue ears and a bemused expression. They had to be out the door in 10 minutes. He took a couple of gulps of air and pushed down the anger that began to bubble under the surface. He thought, you know what — this is pretty darn cute. He hid a smile as they all pitched in to clean up. Calm parenting helps to raise calm kids. With today’s ever-changing world, raising kids that are comfortable, confident and unruffled in the…

Like nature, over time humans have shifted and changed from our natural state of being. Our lives and health have been altered by endless advertisements, content overload and devices that help us work more and think less. While we often strive to rewild our forests and outback, allowing them to heal and restore, it may be time to try giving ourselves the same treatment. Rewilding is being full of wonder and curiosity about the natural world, to ask what you can give back to nature, instead of only taking. It’s getting your hands dirty to help with bush regeneration or growing a vegetable garden. It’s hitting the “power off” or “do not disturb” setting on your phone every once in a while. It’s spending more leisure time beneath trees than…

Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how negative our feelings or dire our situation, we must maintain a positive mindset. This involves denying feelings like anger, fear, disappointment and any other emotions we consider “bad”. By pushing away and avoiding uncomfortable feelings, we bypass how we process the world. Our emotional reality isn’t validated and instead we live in a state of denial. It’s not a good place to be. Denial protects the ego Denial from a psychology perspective, is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a “defence mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem, or with reality, is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality.” Anna Freud suggested that this defence mechanism prevents feelings of anxiety, ultimately protecting the ego from distress. In the…

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common types of digestive disorders, characterised by a group of symptoms including changes in bowel habits, constipation and/or diarrhoea, bloating and abdominal pain. While it’s normal to have digestive troubles from time to time, if you’ve been suffering from abdominal pain for at least three days per month for three or more months associated with two or more of these digestive symptoms, IBS is commonly diagnosed. Common IBS symptoms Changes in bowel habits are one of the most commonly experienced symptoms in IBS. Some people suffer from constipation (less than three bowel movements weekly) or diarrhoea (loose stools several times a day), and some people alternate between the two. There may also be changes in stool colours observed and mucous may…

What is it about cuddling up to a furry friend that many of us find so enjoyable? For some, spending time with their pet is more meaningful than spending time with a person. Losing a pet may even be more devastating than losing a loved one. Most of us don’t see animals or pets on an equal footing to our own kind, yet our pets, along with animals in general, may have more in common with us than we think. Before the onset of COVID-19 half the people in the world owned a pet, and Australia was ranked second in the world for pet adoptions, second only to the US. Since COVID began, dog and cat adoptions increased by a whopping 250 per cent worldwide, with Australia having the highest…

Transhumanism extends to the enhancement of human capabilities in areas that range from sensory functions to better health, life extension and even the lure of immortality. Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of author Aldous Huxley, is widely considered to be the originator of the movement in the 1950s, since when it has evolved steadily. Currently occupying a fringe position in relation to mainstream values, it is nevertheless being advanced by a powerful and influential elite. The transhuman theme is surprisingly common in popular culture. In film, RoboCop is a cybernetic enhancement of a police officer, and Gattaca involves a two-tier society similar to our own where many children are genetically engineered, giving them an unfair advantage. The cyberpunk genre, featuring future high-tech dystopian cities, has a strong transhumanist element. Way back…

non-fiction Make You Happen: Manifest Your Best Self JORDANNA LEVIN, AFFIRM PRESS I’m a sucker for a self-help book, but much as Jordanna Levin writes in her opening chapter, I tend to finish the final chapter full of motivation, only to see it wither and die just weeks afterwards. Make You Happen follows Levin’s bestselling books Make it Happen and Higher Love, and while it’s definitely a self-help book, Levin makes it clear from the first page that you already have every tool you need to succeed in this life. Make You Happen is a guide to cultivating acute, ongoing self-awareness; it’s a journey inward, one that begins and ends with you. You’ll need to buy yourself a notebook along with this book because the book is peppered with exercises…

What initially sparked New Nordic’s founder Karl Kristian Bergman Jensen’s interest in natural beauty and developing herbal products? Karl Kristian Bergman Jensen has worked in the healthcare industry since the mid-1980s. He was an international salesman and product developer. As he travelled around the world selling natural plant products, he was inspired to devote his life to developing herbal medicines and food supplements to increase people’s vitality. “I saw how people of different cultures improved their daily quality of life by adding herbs and fruits to their diet. Their happiness triggered my passion for herbal products. My dream was to establish a company that could develop herbal products adding vitality and years to people’s lives. Products so effective that it would change people’s lives.” At the age of 27 and…

Plants can protect their companions from pests by changing the way they look or by changing the way they smell. This is not an article about roping in your mates to pick the caterpillars off your cabbages. A gentler way, using plants to repel pests from other plants, is also known as a form of companion planting. Plants can protect their companions from pests by changing the way they look or by changing the way they smell. Different pests recognise their food sources in different ways. But a general rule is the more you interplant and disguise the pest-prone plant, the fewer pests you’ll have. Plant 10 cabbages together and you’ll probably lose them to caterpillars. Interplant them with 10 celery bushes, 20 silver beet plants and a few lines…

A 70-year-old otherwise healthy woman limped into the clinic. She was reasonably fit, exercised regularly, ate mainly organic food and generally made an effort to look after her health. However, the cumulative effect of various injuries was starting to impact on her life. She had a history of multiple sprained ankles over the years and had been dealing with these by taking glucosamine to strengthen the ligaments. This had worked quite well and the incidence was significantly less than in her youth. Unfortunately a couple of years ago she had had a major tear to the right medial ligament — a difficult one to heal — her right foot bones had shifted and the bone in her right big toe was now hitting the ground when she walked, causing the development…

Green tea for gut health This new study included patients with metabolic syndrome and also healthy adults. For 28 days the subjects consumed gummy chews that contained either a green tea extract or a placebo. The green tea dose equalled five cups daily. All participants followed a diet low in antioxidants from fruit and vegetables so that any results could be attributed to green tea alone. Results showed that those who took green tea had much lower blood glucose levels than the placebo group. Analysis of faecal samples also showed a reduction in inflammation in the intestines and that intestinal permeability was improved in the green tea group. The absorption of substances through an inflamed and overly permeable gut wall is thought to underly obesity, insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disease.…

Camellia sinensis is a species of shrub in the flowering tea plant family. The leaves and buds of the plant are harvested and processed in a variety of ways, producing a range of different teas, including white tea, yellow tea, green tea, oolong tea, pu-erh (or red tea) and black tea. The different processing methods determine the oxidation level of the final tea, black tea being the most oxidised and white tea the least. Kukicha tea is also harvested from the Camellia sinensis, plant but uses the twigs and stems, not the leaves. The top-quality leaves harvested in spring are the top two or three new leaves (known as tip buds), picked while they still have short hairs underneath. This hand picking is repeated every one to two weeks. Older…

How do you start your day? There’s a lot to be said for discipline, sacrifice and hustle, especially in business and for your mental health. But understanding balance and sustainability is just as important. I’m not a morning person, so I usually wake up around 7am after snoozing my alarm twice. I take my medication (a low-dose SSRI [antidepressant] first thing so I don’t forget), have a shower with at least one minute in cold water, do some breathing exercises, say a prayer, repeat my mantra and head off to work without breakfast (I fast until midday). My maximum creativity window is 9am–12 noon so I do my best to block meetings until the afternoon and reserve this window for ultimate productivity. How has ambition shaped who you are today?…

In recent years, corporate jargon, advertising terminology and psychology-speak have hijacked and integrated words such as “authenticity”, “journey” and “disruptive” into their respective industry lexicons, spinning their meaning from their original usage. Then new interpretations of old words have spilt into common usage which we use without thinking. We take language for granted and yet words are our primary tools for meaningful communication. Over the centuries, the English language has shifted and shaped how we view ourselves. From Latin derivation and Middle English with its Germanic and Dutch roots, modern English as we know it has had many incarnations and it is still shedding its linguistic skin. Jargon, vernacular, street language and slang have influenced how we speak and subsequently how we think. And this is a good thing if…

Cooking with oil is an everyday part of life, but not all oils are created equal. Different oils have different characteristics when it comes to cooking; some are better for sautéing and grilling, others thrive with high-heat cooking, while other oils are best reserved in the later stages of cooking such as drizzling or as a garnish. But how do we know which ones are most suitable for different dishes and culinary techniques? Unfortunately, some oils can’t take the heat in the kitchen. One of the most important factors when considering which cooking oil to choose is the oil’s smoke point. When cooking oils are heated, particularly at high heat, they eventually reach their “smoke point”. This is the temperature at which the oil starts to burn and is accompanied…

Valerie Khoo is many things. She is a businesswoman, a curator, an entrepreneur, a writer and an artist. The thread that connects all these aspects of Khoo’s life is her innate fascination with the mechanisms of how the world works and how you can work with that apparatus to create things of meaning that matter to you. In the process she has made some daring and improbable leaps, such as from being a corporate accountant to working as a writer and into creating a social enterprise in another country. Through it all Khoo has a buoyant attitude combined with an incisive understanding that makes her story at once instructive and inspiring. From Singapore to The Shire Khoo emigrated to Australia with her parents from Singapore and they settled in the…

Many of us grow food for sheer pleasure. Today, cultivating our own edibles has another worthwhile aspect. At the time this article was written, iceberg lettuce was hovering at about $10 each while broccoli fetched $7 a kilo at the checkout. Stats reported by AUSVEG show a more moderate 7.5 per cent overall price increase in seasonal vegetables across the board over the two years to early 2022. More worryingly, the report calls for a bigger markup to compensate farmers hit with hikes of over 40 per cent in agricultural costs like fertiliser, fuel and freight. With increasingly higher food costs almost certain — due to the decline in the use of petroleum and gas and the impact of climate change on our food systems — growing what you can…

Patterns of daylight have governed humans for millennia, but the discovery of electricity, followed by the invention of light globes and domestic lighting, shifted that relationship with light. Fast forward to the 21st century and brightly backlit screens dominate our days and deep into the night when our bodies should be preparing for rest. Lighting affects human circadian rhythms, regulating sleeping cycles and bodily functions and behaviours such as immune responses and appetite. Light can also have acute effects on alertness, attention and mood. The importance of light on health is demonstrated through its therapeutic properties, as reported in the January 2021 edition of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Both natural and artificial light therapy effectively reduce symptoms of seasonal affective disorder and other types of…

A favourite aunt once told me that the boldest way to travel was to head to the furthest point and work your way back. Giant leaps of faith, she declared, were always rewarded, but my plan to reach the very end of the Eyre is hijacked just 40 kilometres off the highway by a sneaky little detour to False Bay. This first arc of blue at the head of the Spencer Gulf is calm and shallow. I walk to the Point Lowly lighthouse and peer across False Bay where Australian giant cuttlefish gather each winter, flirting and flaunting their ever-changing colours in shimmering mating displays. The spectacle is said to be unforgettable and wild, but this bay’s tranquil summertime guise is equally appealing and the warmth of the sea is nothing…

When choosing a safe sunscreen you want to look for non nanoparticles, because this means the particles won’t be absorbed into your bloodstream. I love a sunburnt country, but not a sunburnt body. While we are so fortunate to live in Australia, vigilance is required to protect your skin from the sun’s harsh rays. Most of us have been taught from a young age to “slip, slop, slap”, but what about how to choose a safe sunscreen? Sunscreens work to protect skin from ultraviolet A (UVA) light, which causes premature ageing, and ultraviolet B (UVB) light, which causes sunburn and skin damage; protecting your skin from both is crucial for long-term health. However, sunscreens are not all created equal, and many contain harmful chemicals that have been shown to cause allergies…

My husband recently rescued a two-week-old lamb that could not walk, seemed dull and would not suckle well. Since I’m a small-animal vet, I had to ask my “larger beast” colleagues for advice, and we gave him a course of antibiotics and B vitamins. As always, I wanted a more integrative approach. It makes sense to use plant-based remedies in a herbivore. A search of the internet reveals some lists of ethnobotanical remedies used by indigenous communities and some scientific trials, as well as advice from organic farmers. Most herbs used are familiar to a vet working in small-animal integrative medicine. Herbal options Milk thistle One of the few things I remember from studying pastoral botany and agronomy is that milk thistle (or variegated thistle, botanical name Silybum marianum) is…

Cancer At times, Cancer needs to vanish and find the space for feeling states to wax and wane. Scorpio’s Sun cycle may challenge your privacy needs during early November yet provide a total lunar eclipse to view on November 8. Happily, November 11–21 offers you a recuperative and inspiring period. If it coincides with more demands on your time, make sure you acknowledge the opportunity by carving regular retreats into your schedule as well as simple daily water therapy. December 19–28 offers perfect timing to embrace nature as healer. Leo Leo, above all other signs, knows how to shine. This is a great gift to remember during some of the challenges of early November when many planets may make polarising demands upon you. Already the eclipse axis of 2022 has…

“The irony is I had seen a naturopath for some health issues as a teen,” says “The Amelia Hetherington. “She helped me immensely with my health and, at 16, I even went to an Endeavour College of Natural Health Open Day. I still followed the conventional study path for medicine but eventually I circled back to naturopathy.” Hetherington studied on campus for the first few years of her degree. “The campus has such good energy. Immediately I knew that it was where I wanted to be. In my first degree, students were there because they had to be. At Endeavour, natural health is everyone’s passion project, and they want to learn as much as they possibly can.” “Make sure you suck as much knowledge as you can from your teachers…