Don't Sweat It - Hydrate!

Stephanie Lowery • June 23, 2026

Is water alone enough?

We just enjoyed the longest day of the year! Summertime means hotter days for most us. Have you ever thought if just drinking water IS enough to hydrate your body on a hot summer day?

When you sweat you must hydrate more. With excessive sweat you need to replenish electrolytes. Electrolytes are a subset of minerals that have an electric charge when dissolved in water. They are essential for maintaining fluid balance, muscle function, nerve conduction, and maintaining your cellular energy. Not all minerals are electrolytes, but all electrolytes are minerals. A few examples of electrolytes are calcium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, and sodium which are contained in fresh vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Healthy eating helps hydrate you and helps your body move best.

To make your own homemade electrolyte drink, you can combine purified water, a quarter teaspoon of good quality sea salt, and squeeze in a fresh lemon.

Store-bought electrolyte sport drinks can be high in sugar, sugar-free chemicals or have too much salt. Be aware of what you are consuming in food and drink. The daily recommendation is one teaspoon of salt per day.

You can also add sea salt to your day in the form of 'Do a Dab' or 'Place a Pinch'. You place good quality sea salt on the tip of your finger and dab it on the back of your tongue or place a pinch of sea salt under your tongue, followed by a glass of water. You can Do a Dab or Place a Pinch several times throughout the day.

Replacing electrolytes each morning to start your day with good hydration is a great habit to get into.

Regular table salt is often ultra processed and only has sodium and chloride. It does not contain important trace minerals and goes through a manufacturing process that can add harmful chemicals.

However, a good quality unrefined sea salt has many minerals and trace minerals in it. Here are a few examples:
• Baja Sea Salt has more than 90 trace minerals
• Celtic Sea Salt has more than 80 trace minerals
• Colima Sea Salt has more than 80 trace minerals
• Redmond Real Salt has more than 60 trace minerals

You can always look to find other good quality sea salts. Heavy metals and microplastics can be in sea salt, so investigating which sea salt you choose is important.

Drinking water with electrolytes gives your body necessary energy to run, play, think, and focus.

Consider checking out the book "The Hidden Messages in Water", by Masaru Emoto, which illustrates pictures of frozen water crystals with shapes of various emotions. Additionally, the book "The Fourth Phase of Water", by Gerald H. Pollack, asks and answers many questions about water. Either, or both, books are worth borrowing from your library. Stay curious, it is always possible to discover new ways water can regulate your body.

When your body does not have enough fluid, all your body systems start fighting over what little water is available. Without enough water and electrolytes:
• Your muscles don’t function as well.
• You don’t regulate internal temperature as well.
• You get tired more quickly.
• You don’t absorb and digest food as well.

Proper hydration with mineral support increases your mental health, emotional health and physical health during an active day and contributes to a deep, restful sleep. When cells are hydrated and nourished, the brain can focus on learning all sorts of new skills and remembering them.

There is no one amount of water intake that each person requires because your size, exposure to climate, activity level, and water content in nutrient-rich food all factor into how much water you need to drink every day to remain in homeostasis through hydration.

Water content in nutrient-rich food plus drinking water provides your body with hydration. Most teenagers need a daily average water intake of around 80 to 112 ounces to allow hormones, neurotransmitters, and all cells to do their job.

Be kind to yourself and listen to what your body needs. Pay attention to the to the fluids, foods, and electrolytes you consume. During the summer, and all year round, stay hydrated!

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BECOME The WHOLE Healthy YOU!

Eat Real Food

By Stephanie Lowery • May 27, 2026

Feed your body with real food. Real food from plants is when you eat vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs, and spices grown in natural sunlight and from "clean soil". Real food from animals is when you eat eggs, dairy, meat, and fish from animals raised in their natural habitat. Eating real food will give you the energy needed to exercise. Real food starts from natural, not modified, seeds. Modified seeds are manmade in a laboratory to withstand herbicides and pesticides sprayed on the food grown, without harming the plants as they grow. This results in food becoming antinutrients. Antinutrients interfere with the absorption of nutrients in your body. Nutrients come in the form of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water. These nutrients are part of plants, eggs, dairy, meat, and fish. Eating nutrients as close to their original source is the healthiest option. Unfortunately, there are many toxic chemicals in fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides which contaminate the soil. These toxic chemicals can include things like heavy metals, microplastics, herbicides, poisons, synthetic fertilizer, and run-off from industrial manufacturing. Toxic chemicals sprayed on plants that you or animals eat are harmful to your health. Eating real food delivers nutrients to your body. It is important to know the source of the real food you eat. With plant food, know if it is grown from natural (nonmodified) seeds in clean soil. With animal sources of real food, both from land and sea, know whether the animals eat toxins themselves. Trees and plants grown to produce the plant food you eat (apples, oranges, tomatoes, peas, beans, just to name a few) should be grown in clean soil, without toxic chemicals in it. The grass and plants animals graze upon should also grow in clean soil. When real food (fruits, vegetables, meat, or fish) is mixed with synthetic chemicals, fillers, and preservatives, the nutritional value is depleted, making it full of antinutrients. This is processed food that is made in a factory. It becomes fake food. Make the choice to not ingest chemicals or eat fake food! Learn more about why it's so important to eat Real Food . See the Dietary Guidelines For Americans .

Being Healthy and Feeling Good is a Choice - Your Choice

By Stephanie Lowery • April 21, 2026

Become the Whole Healthy You, Healthy choices blog, Lifestyle choices

Daytime Energy Isn’t Luck - It Starts With Quality Sleep

By Stephanie Lowery • March 17, 2026

Consistent sleep is critical for good health.

Valentine's Day is Over - Break Up with Refined Sugar

By Stephanie Lowery • February 21, 2026

The global rise in diabetes is directly linked to how we make and eat our food today. Because refined sugar is cheap to make and easy to ship around the world, it is hidden in almost everything. Even if a label says a drink or food is "healthy," it usually is NOT! Refined sugar is 99-100% sucrose and is processed in a factory using heat to extract pure sugar, which removes the fiber, vitamins and minerals found in the original plant. Hence the phrase, "added sugar is empty calories", that means there is no nutritional value. When you eat plain sucrose, like in a candy bar, your body digests it almost instantly. This causes a huge sugar rush where your energy spikes, but then it crashes quickly, leaving you feeling tired and cranky. The natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are fructose, glucose, and sucrose. It is nature's way of packaging these foods with needed fiber, vitamins, and minerals. In fruits and vegetables, the three sugars are trapped inside tiny "cages" made of fiber. Your body has to work hard to break those cages open. This means that fructose, glucose, and sucrose enter your blood slowly and steadily. This gives you long-lasting energy instead of a crash. Fruits and vegetables are nutrient-rich and come with a list of benefits: Vitamin C: Helps your body fight off colds. Potassium: Keeps your muscles and heart working well. Antioxidants: Protects your cells from getting damaged. When refined sugar is added to food, it becomes processed food, which is fake food. When you eat fake food it spikes your hormone insulin. When insulin goes up, then glucagon goes down. Glucagon’s job is to take fat and use it as fuel. If you do not have enough glucagon, then you cannot effectively use your fat as fuel. This forces your body to continue storing new energy as fat while being unable to use the fat it already has, wow what a problem! Other hormones that processed food messes up are, ghrelin (your hunger hormone) and leptin (your feeling full hormone). Refined sugar increases ghrelin and decreases leptin, so you stay hungry without feeling full, when you eat fake food. Have you ever started eating something like sugary cereal or donuts and it is hard to stop? Refined sugar increases the amount of dopamine in your brain. Since dopamine makes you feel good, you become addicted to sugar. The end result is that processed,fake food, is full of refined sugar that is driving you to feel good but not full. Yet, the good feeling does not last because of the sugar rush/crash explained above. It turns into a vicious cycle, the more refined sugar you eat, the more your body wants to eat it, because you feel good and you are still hungry. Refined sugar is an addictive substance that has become a world health crisis. Globally, diabetes incidence among children and adolescents has increased by approximately 94% from 1990 to 2021 . Make the Healthy Choice: There is something we can all do to decrease the diabetes epidemic that is a world health problem. Choose to eat real vegetables and fruits that are in their natural state like a sliced avocado or a bowl full of blueberries. Strive to have a variety of colors in the fruits and vegetables that you eat each day. Reach for vegetables and fruits as a snack instead of processed food. Every choice that you make about what you eat matters!

Have you ever seen a miracle?

By Stephanie Lowery • January 18, 2026

A miracle is an amazing or wonderful occurrence. A miracle is something unique. And that is you! You are absolutely unique. In this world of more than eight billion people, there is not one other person who is exactly like you. Even if you have an identical twin, you each have different thoughts, feelings, ideas, talents, likes and dislikes. You can do anything you put your mind and effort into. You can be creative, imaginative, healthy or you can excel as a leader, or in academics, sports, art, theater, music, whatever you choose. You were born at this time to be here now. You were meant to be here, in this place, at this time. You have the power to make all kinds of choices in your life. These are lifestyle choices . You can choose to study to learn fascinating facts, you can choose to practice to become better at music, art, or sports. You can choose to eat healthy. You can choose to be kind to other people, even if people are not so nice to you. All your lifestyle choices accumulate to either improve your health or detract from your health. What you choose is up to you. To make the right choices for you, use your own unique thoughts and ideas. You should not make choices just because other people make that choice, or it is a popular choice. Just like you are unique, each person around you is unique too. What might be good for someone else, might not be good for you. This is bio-individuality . For example, you might like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but a friend might be allergic to peanuts, so he cannot eat the same sandwich. What is good for you might not be good for someone else. Bio-individuality is how you learn about and then figure out which lifestyle choices are good specifically for you. You have your own health needs, your own routines, practices, and things you like to do or not do. Each person around you, family, friends, and classmates also have bio- individuality. To be the healthiest you can be, you need to make lifestyle choices that work for your own bio- individuality because you are unique. You are a miracle!

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