At home or in the office, orchids add a touch of beauty to the environment and bring numerous benefits, making us breathe better and increasing the mood level. The beautiful orchids improve the quality of the air supplying it with oxygen and purifying it from unwanted substances and, thanks to their elegance, help to calm the nerves.

Taking care of an orchid is not difficult and with the right care we can have orchids always flowering at home and at work.
The benefits of orchids
Arranging one or more orchids at home or in the office can improve the quality of life, providing benefits to breathing and mood. According to Feng Shui, orchids also bring luck and prosperity, especially if placed in the bedroom.
Orchids, like all plants, remove carbon dioxide from the environment and produce large quantities of oxygen, a fundamental gas for our body.

In addition, orchids are among the plant species able to purify the air, freeing it from unwanted and potentially harmful substances. In particular, orchids are capable of absorbing the xylene present in the environment.

Xylene is a chemical compound used as a solvent in glues and paints and which can disperse in trace amounts in the air of your home or office. If accumulated in the body, xylene can cause headaches, fatigue and irritability. Placing an orchid on your desk or on a window sill can therefore help you breathe cleaner air both at home and at work.

There are many varieties of orchids, all united by beauty and grace that gratify the eyes and also bring benefits to the mood. Plants and flowers have a proven calming effect on our mind and orchids can help keep the environment more relaxed thanks to the elegant posture of the stems and the delicacy of the beautiful flowers.

Keep an orchid in the office

How to cure orchids
Orchids are fairly easy to grow plants, but if we want them to continue to bloom we will have to give them some simple care.
First of all, orchids need a lot of light, so they should be placed in a particularly bright position but not directly exposed to sunlight.
Orchids can be placed in any room in the home or office, as long as they have the right degree of light and humidity.

The best place to grow an orchid is a window sill or a desk placed near a natural light source.
Like all plants, even orchids do not like to be moved, so once the optimal location has been chosen, this should not be changed.

As for watering, the best way to wet the orchids is to completely immerse the jar in water at room temperature for a few minutes. After that the water must be drained completely, avoiding stagnation that could cause the roots to rot.

To understand when the orchid needs water, just look at the root system of the plant: when the roots of the orchid are well hydrated they appear green, while the color tends to white and silver in lack of water. Orchids are grown in transparent jars just to be able to control the appearance of the roots.

Orchids normally live in warm and humid environments and need the right degree of humidity in the air to be able to thrive: it is possible to nebulize water around the orchids to increase the levels of environmental humidity, but we must carefully avoid wetting the flowers and accumulating water on the leaves.

Finally, pay attention to the choice of soil, which should never be generic but specific for orchids.
With these simple cures orchids will grow healthy and lush, giving beautiful blooms that will continue throughout the year.

SOURCE: Greenme

Physical activity is important for your mental and physical health. However, not everyone is able to go to the gym. Some people work all the time, and they don’t have any time to hit the gym.

Well, it’s time to stop worrying because a 15-minute walk can give you some great benefits. Walking may add seven years to your life, and it also optimizes overall helth.

Sanjay Sharma, professor of inherited cardiac diseases in sport cardiology at St.George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London, explains that we can’t avoid aging, but we can definitely delay it.

You can be fit and healthy in your seventies, and you can also live in your nineties. Physical activity gives you another 3-7 years of life.

Health benefits of regular walks:

High blood pressure

Walk every day to lower your blood pressure and keep it under control.

Digestion

Renowned physiotherapist Tara Aleichem found that walking enhances digestion.

Mobility and body ache

Walk every day to improve your mobility, especially those with PAP. According to the American Heart Association, walking is really important for these individuals.

Strong bones

Regular physical activity makes your bones strong, and increase their density. Walk every day to lower your risk of osteoporosis.

Cognitive performance

Recent studies have found that regular walks improve cognitive performance in individuals of every age group.

Longevity

Make sure you walk every day. The fountain of youth doesn’t exist, but you will live longer if you walk every day.

Mood

A 2016 study found that 20-minute walks improves participants’ self-confidence. It also helps you cope with hostility and anger.

Walking is easy, but you have to make it comfortable. Make sure you wear the right shoes and your clothes should be comfortable, too. Wear something light and comfy, and don’t walk when it’s too hot outside.

Drink plenty of water, and carry a water bottle with you. If you can’t walk alone, ask your friends to join you. You can listen to some music, too. Walk in places that make you calm and happy.

SOURCE: Healthy Food House

International studies have demonstrated the benefits of this exclusive human activity. Saliva movements lower cortisol levels, improve facial expression and communication in parkinsonians. However, aphasics who do not speak can sing

Long considered one of the most mysterious aspects of human life, in particular for its ability to involve us emotionally, choral singing also promotes physical well-being. In fact, more and more studies allow us to go beyond the anecdotal evidence of the benefits of singing action reported by all the singers.

Enhances the immune system and raises the mood

Singing even for just an hour has visible effects on our immune system, as shown by a study by researchers from the British Tenovus Cancer Care and the Royal College of Music. The analysis of saliva samples from 193 choristers after a singing performance revealed a decrease in cortisol levels and large amounts of inflammatory cytokines. The low levels of inflammation in the body could also explain the improvement in mood caused by the practice of singing and reported by the choristers.

However, all the subjects involved in the study, published in the ECancer journal, were already music lovers and engaged in choral activities. Nevertheless, the authors write, “this study provides preliminary evidence that singing improves the mood and modulates the components of the immune system”. In particular, in the presence of oncological diseases. In fact, the choristers studied were cancer patients or their relatives and friends engaged in assistance activities, the so-called caregivers. According to the researchers, the results are therefore quite promising and suggest that singing may be useful for such patients, enhancing the immune system, greatly reducing stress and improving mood.

Singing is like yoga

By requiring regular and controlled breathing, singing regulates the activity of the so-called vagus nerve, which is involved in our emotional life and which for example affects our vocal timbre. Songs with long melodic phrases get the same effect as breathing exercises in yoga, according to the authors of a study by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which also shows the synchronization of the heartbeat of the choristers during the performance of the songs.

Facial expressions and understanding of emotions

Singing helps Parkinson’s syndrome patients with mask syndrome, also known as “Poker Face”. The progressive stiffening of the facial muscles makes these subjects friendly. The inability to show the infinite range of emotions through the face, think of the wrinkling of the forehead, the shrinking of the eyes due to the smile and their relaxation due to surprise, makes them seem erroneously cold and detached.

A static face, also incapable of reflecting the emotions of others as it naturally happens, therefore only hinders interpersonal communication and helps to disconnect these patients from the world. Researchers at the Science of Music, the Auditory Research and Technology Smart Lab at Ryerson University in Toronto, in collaboration with the Royal Conservatory of Music, have discovered that by singing together in a choir, these patients regain facial expressions and the effect lasts until to two months.

A weapon against isolation

According to a study by the University of the West of England in Bristol, conducted on aphasic patients following a stroke or Parkinson’s disease, singing in a choir can improve mood and also the condition of social isolation caused by communication difficulties. In fact, scientists explain, “people with aphasia even when they can no longer speak well, can often still sing. The areas that control language in the brain are different from those that control singing. It is truly miraculous to look at someone who has not been able to talk for months or years to start singing ».

Singing improves hearing

As we age, musicians experience less neural degradation of the sound signal and maintain a greater ability to identify the various voices and variations in sound height in noisy environments. But music education and choral singing are also beneficial for those with hearing loss. In fact, the preliminary results of Canadian researchers show, after only 10 months of singing, significant improvements in the ability to hear a conversation in a noisy environment, the discrimination of sound heights and the neural response to them, as well as improvements in attention. Even short-term interventions therefore could prove useful in case of hearing loss.

Memory benefits

By singing regularly it is possible to slow down the process of cognitive impairment faced by patients with dementia. A group of researchers from the Cognitive Brain Research Unit of the Institute of Behavioral Sciences and the Finnish Center of Interdisciplinary Music Research of the University of Helsinki subjected 89 patients and their caregivers to singing and listening sessions for a period of 10 weeks. The practice of choral singing has improved working memory, executive functions and orientation especially in people with mild dementia and under 80 years of age, while listening to music has been associated with cognitive benefits in patients more advanced stages of the disease. Finally, both singing and listening to music have led to an improvement in mood.

In another language it is better

And if the choral activity is recommended to patients with dementia, due to the effects on memory, new studies show that singing facilitates the mnemonic learning of new texts in children. And this is true even in the case of a foreign language. This is shown by a study conducted by psychologists from the University of Western Ontario in Canada who asked a group of small Ecuadorian speakers to learn a piece in English presented as an oral poem or as a song lyrics. After two weeks of study, those who had learned it by singing, remembering more words, pronounced English better and translated it more correctly than those we had learned in the form of an oral poem. And this best performance remained up to six months away.

SOURCE: Salute della Stampa