Personal Health Reset: Day 3 of 30

Today, I am committed to flossing my teeth. I have a complex relationship with dentistry and oral care due to a series of traumatic dental experiences as a child and a horrible orthodontia experience. As a result, I find flossing physically and mentally difficult which results in not flossing often. Today, I am making (and keeping) a promise to myself to floss my entire mouth. 

Please note: Links in this post may include affiliate links which could result in small commissions to me at no cost to you if you purchase through these links. Thank you in advance!

To some this will seem silly, but to those who also have dental trauma, it might make perfect sense: I floss my mouth in sections. I simply cannot get myself to floss my entire mouth all at once. I generally think of my teeth in quadrants and will floss one fourth of my mouth at a time. Today, I will go one fourth at a time, but over the course of the day will make sure I've flossed entirely.

To be totally honest, just typing that out feels daunting due to my past dental and orthodontia traumas, but I know I can do this!

As I am starting this post, it is 1030am and I have a little bit of a cough, a mild fever, body aches, and fatigue thanks to Covid, but this is also the mildest case of Covid I've ever had! I've prepped a water bottle for my first round of water for the day, had a cup of coffee, and have my pill box by my side with my medications and supplements already doled out. 

Last night, I also took care of my mental health by seeing my therapist. She's lovely and such a great fit for me at this point in my life! I have seen several therapists over the last 30 years and while a few have not been great, there are three that stand out as having been exactly who and what I needed during those periods in my life. I always feel better after a session and can ride that positive wave for a few days. She gave the nod of approval for my plan to spend 30 days working on getting 10% healthier (and she read my first two posts in this series before our session! Read the whole series HERE).

One of the things my therapist and I talked about last night was the idea of intentionality and small details as having a big impact. For example, most of us hate having an alarm clock, but what if we buy one that is pleasant to look at and designed in a way that we like? 

I did just that with my current alarm clock--it's not real wood, but it looks like wood and the numbers have a dimmer so you can adjust the brightness. Plus, even the numbers look a little bit like wood when lit up! One of the ways I'm working on my health is better sleep hygiene and weaning myself from having my phone in bed with me at night, hence buying an analog alarm clock. I set the clock up yesterday and dimmed the brightness quite a lot. Although I did take my phone to bed with me last night, I found that I checked it less frequently when waking up throughout the night (I am a lifelong insomniac) and instead looked at the alarm clock. This switch and using a clock I like the look of and that has meaningful features (the dimmer!) will help with my sleep hygiene which should help with improving my health, right? 

THIS* is the alarm clock I chose. I haven't used the alarm function yet, but supposedly this is a great choice for heavy sleepers (I have a terrible time falling asleep and staying asleep, but also have a terrible time waking up in the morning and sleep through most alarms!).

Another area where details matter to me is my pill box. I take enough medications and supplements across the day, every day, that I wanted a pill box I wouldn't mind looking at. It was expensive, but I bought one that I absolutely love--it has a dark and moody floral design and holds 7 days of separate daily containers which each have 4 compartments to spread out your pills across the day. I don't mind having the whole case on my counter as it's pretty to look at, plus it's functional for my lifestyle as I can just take out the day's case and carry just that day's worth of meds with me. Because the whole container is pretty and well designed, I LIKE having it out and visible which translates to being a lot less forgetful about taking my daily medications, vitamins, and supplements. Consistency is crucial in when it comes to these things, right?

THIS is the company where I found my pill box--apparently my exact pill box is out of stock (it's called the Winifred and mine has a lid--there are a lot of styles and options to choose from). 

Along with having a pill case that I like, I also used my Guava app this morning to log that I actually took my morning pills, as well as logging my symptoms, mood, energy level, and a few other details I keep track of. The Guava app has really helped me to keep track of my symptoms for some complex and puzzling health issues and has helped me to be better prepared when I talk to my doctor about my tummy issues, my hip injury, asthma, and any number of other concerns. It's also nice to be able to aggregate all of my health records in one place--you can link multiple health organizations to Guava and it will pull in your records, pull in your vitals, update medication lists, and so on. You can also use it to compare the things you  are tracking to look for emerging or existing patterns! I was in the ER for abdominal pain last weekend, and my records from that visit populated in Guava once they were uploaded into the healthcare institution's system. Guava pulled in not only the doctor's notes but also parsed out things like my blood pressure, heart rate, and so on. You can go into the app and see the historical record of all of these things over days, weeks, months, or even years to see how you are doing over time. You can also manually add these details if you track them at home (like taking your own blood pressure, weighing yourself, etc.).

I've been using Guava for about a year and a half and love it. You can try it out HERE*. 

The Guava app also has some customizable features for tracking which helped me to confirm that barometric pressure can predict if I will likely have a migraine headache or not. By being able to add a tab to track barometric pressure AND comparing it to when I have a headache, I discovered that if the barometer gets near a certain point, I likely will have a headache within a day or two. This allows me to prepare and often ward off the headache through preventative measures. As a result, I've had far fewer migraines than usual lately, although the few I've had have been pretty bad...sigh... I'm still grateful to have fewer than usual thanks to confirming this pattern related to barometric pressure. 

Today, I am doing much like I did yesterday and listening to my body, hydrating, taking my meds and supplements on schedule, resting and napping, but as noted: 

I am FLOSSING MY TEETH today!

Check back tomorrow to see how I'm doing!

* indicates a referal link. Please note, I ONLY link things I truly believe regardless of whether I receive a commission from those links or not.