Self-Care Yourself to Wellness

Self-Care is a vital part of life that I think many of us have little to no knowledge of. I know I didn’t 10 years ago. Just like many other people, it took me getting really sick to make me start learning. I don’t want this to happen to you so here I am putting together an article that might inspire you to make healthy choices for your mind, body and spirit.

Every person is different and with that in mind, you have to take time to learn what you need to be at full capacity. What someone else needs might be close to what you need, but not necessarily your ideal. We can do this by really paying attention to our bodies to learning how much and what kind of stress we can handle, exactly how many hours of sleep we need during times of health and when we need to disconnect from the world to catch our breath and reset our mind, body and spirit. (more…)

Learning About COVID-19

This article was last updated on October 25, 2020

COVID-19 is part of a large family of viruses called coronaviruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold and to more severe diseases like: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and SARS-CoV.


Wellness Works NW does not own Forever Fit Gym, if you have questions please contact the gym at 360-425-5611.

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National Kidney Month 2020

March is National Kidney Month

National Kidney Month was started to bring awareness to kidney disease. Often times people don’t know they have kidney disease until their kidneys are damaged so it is important to know if you should be tested.

What Do Kidneys Do?

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Kid’s ENT Health Month 2020

February is Kids ENT Health Month and since pediatric ear, nose and throat disorders are still some of the most common reasons children visit the doctor we thought we should tell you about it.

Common ENT Illnesses in Children

  • Ear infection is the number one reason children go to the doctor.
  • Acute Otitis Media is also know as a middle ear infection.
  • Tonsillitis is inflammation of the tonsils, usually caused by strep throat or the common cold.
  • Sinusitis is inflammation in the sinuses, usually caused by the common cold or allergy and can include upper respiratory or throat infections.

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National Children’s Dental Care Month 2020

February is National Children’s Dental Care Month. This event is meant to bring awareness that for 75 years water fluoridation has helped children stay hydrated while preventing cavities. Thousands of dedication professionals, healthcare providers, and educators want to promote good oral health to children, their caregivers, teachers and the general public.

>>Click her to download promotion posters and activities for children

Interesting Children’s Dental Care Facts

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Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. This national effort is meant to bring awareness regarding abuse in teen and 20-something relationships. Because wellness also includes our mental and physical safety we want to share some information about this topic because EVERYONE deserves a safe and health relationship.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-866-799-SAFE (7233)

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Happy National Toothache Day!

National Toothache Day is Sunday February 9, 2020.

Toothaches can make life pretty unbearable. They can affect your ability to eat, talk, sleep, travel or even kiss your loved ones. Did you know the first bristled toothbrush was invented in 1498? In China people cleaned their teeth with a bristled brush with a handle made of either bamboo or bone. Interesting fact, huh? National Toothache Day was first celebrated in the early 2000’s. No one really remembers who started it but since mouth care is vital to good overall wellness, we though we would share with you some helpful information on how to take care of your teeth. (more…)

Learning About Heart Defects

February is American Heart Month and because we love you we will be sharing several topics related to heart health this month. In this article I will be sharing with you some information about Heart Defects.

According to the American Heart Association, about 9 out of every 1,000 babies born in the United States have a congenital heart defect.

Congenital heart defects are conditions that people are born with when the heart doesn’t develop normally before birth that effect the structure of the heart. In fact congenital heart defects are the most common of all birth defects. They might involve the walls or valves of the heart or the arteries and veins near the heart. These defects might disrupt the flow of blood through the heart by slowing down the flow of blood, making the blood go in the wrong direction or to the wrong place or completely block blood flow. (more…)

Healthy Swaps You Will Feel Good Making

As you travel your path to wellness you will want to become more food conscious. In today’s society is impossible to completely cut out eating out. Americans spend almost half of their food budget on restaurant experiences. Overall restaurant foods are higher in calories, salt and fat than foods created at home; this is true even if the restaurant claims they have made their menu more healthy. A lot of this is because restaurant portion sizes are so much larger than what actual serving sizes should be. We do recommend that spend more time exploring foods at home but when you do go out there are healthy swaps you can make to help you feel better and continue to make your wellness goals. (more…)

Do You Need to Take Dietary Supplements?

Over 50% of all Americans take one or more dietary supplements either on occasion or daily. Although not all people require supplements which generally include vitamins, minerals, herbal products (botanicals), and enzymes, some people can use these products to make sure they get enough essential nutrients and maintain or improve their overall well-being.

What are Botanicals?

A botanical is a plant or part of plant that is found to have medicinal or therapeutic properties. Herbs are considered botanicals. (more…)

Learning About Testosterone Replacement Therapy

What is Testosterone?

Testosterone is a hormone that is created in males & females in humans and some animals. Testosterone is vital to sex drive & sperm production but it also affects bone density, muscle mass, how our bodies store fat as well as facial & body hair. Testosterone affects red blood cell production and even mood stability. Testosterone is created in the testicles in males and, in much smaller amounts, in the ovaries of females after the pituitary gland sends a signaling hormone to induce testosterone production. (more…)

Make Soup! Eat Soup!

Karen and I are so blessed to have people in our lives who care about us and help us while we are growing Karen’s dream of a successful business. The other day one of our clients gave us a small roast and Karen asked me if I could figure out how to make it stretch for about 4 days. I searched the list of ingredients I knew we had in my head, and I told her I would make soup.

Soup is something I ate a lot of growing up. But it was usually out of the can and I never really liked it. I remember 2 times my mom made soup from scratch and it was amazing! My mom was a single mother and she worked a lot. She also doesn’t really enjoy cooking so that soup was like a miracle to me. Since I was the oldest I was stuck with feeding my sisters and I wasn’t very good at it; I was always more creative than my ingredients. But Mom really loved bean with bacon soup and chili from the can and that was probably what my sisters would have preferred when I cooked too. (more…)

How to Pick Your Probiotic Supplement

You probably wonder what all the hype is regarding Probiotic Supplements, but did you know that 70% of our body’s immune system lives in our digestive tract? Poor eating habits, high stress and chronic illness can cause our immune system to become irregular and even disrupt cellular processes. People who live with chronic illness, especially auto-immune disorders need to pay special attention to their digestive health.

Inside our entire digestive system, mostly our intestines and colon, there are 300 to 500 different kinds of bacteria that contain nearly 2 million genes. These bacteria live next to viruses and fungi, making up our gut microbiota. To maintain our health, 90% of the bacteria in our intestines should be good bacteria. (more…)

The Importance of Self-Care

I wasn’t planning for The Importance of Self-Care to be the next article I write for Wellness Works NW; I knew a blog about self-care was brewing, but it wasn’t until Monday afternoon that I understood the timing of this article. You see, Veda is here. If you haven’t read my article about Veda, I will let you know that is what I call the depression that overcomes me at times and tends to push me in directions I don’t want to go. At some point I decided to name her something so that I wasn’t getting mad at myself for my feelings that can be really opposite of what I want to be experiencing. When Veda comes, she makes me VERY tired. So fatigued that it can feel impossible to do anything other than lie in bed and feel bad. It was all I could do to get out of the car and go to bed after church on Sunday and even my little nephew could not get me to fully wake up, and I REALLY love him. (more…)

Is Your Diet a Trusted Wellness Tool or Just a Fad?

Fads come and go but we all need our diet to be a Trusted Wellness Tool. Instead of relying on any Fad Diet, I think we can all say that Healthy Eating should be a goal we all work towards.

I have a beef with diets. It is personal. I don’t mean to color your Wellness Philosophy (more than you want me to) but there are a lot of diets out there. From the sounds of it they are meant for a goal that is quick and referred to as easy, but not…instead of a life-long action plan that meets our Wellness Goals and fuels our day, every day. (more…)

Being Thankful for Keto Caramel Macchiatto Tiramisu

I am super excited to share this recipe with you because it is so DELICIOUS! Karen and I were invited to Jamie’s house for Thanksgiving and she let us know that she was cooking a KETO Thanksgiving. As she listed the menu I noticed she didn’t name a dessert (possibly because she knows I like to make desserts) so I offered to find a yummy one. I found a few but in order to make the group happy we decided on Keto Caramel Macchiatto Tiramisu. I found all the recipes on IBreathImHungry.com. The recipes were meant for a party smaller than mine so I adjusted the amounts. It also called for me to make at least one other recipe, Cream Cheese Pancakes, and because I have never enjoyed sugar free caramel sauce, I googled Keto Caramel Sauce which led me back to the same site and found one that I added to my plans for this wonderful concoction. (more…)

The Many Names of Sugar

There are many names of sugar. There is a lot of added sugar in processed foods. Manufactures often use several kinds of sugar so they can hide the actual amount of sugar in a food item because the rules the FDA requires for food labels require manufacturers to list ingredients by weight. If food makers relied on only a few types of sugar to sweeten and preserve their foods than sugar would appear in the top 3 ingredients and health conscious people and parents would think twice before buying their items. By creating so many names for sugar they can keep the weight of ingredients down so the names of the ingredients can be lower on the label…and make it more difficult for people to recognize how much sugar they are eating when they consume processed foods. (more…)

Living with Central Sensitization Syndrome More Commonly Referred to as Fibromyalgia

I live in a body that hurts. Always. Living with Central Sensitization Syndrome, more commonly referred to as Fibromyalgia has changed my world in many ways. For nearly 14 years Karen G Clemenson has been getting me ready for this challenge because she always is trying to find the positive; eking our every bit of goodness in my life is my greatest tool!

Although there is no specific x-ray, labs or physical exam that makes it easy to diagnose, fibromyalgia is very real. When you have fibromyalgia you are used to chronic pain and tenderness all over your body but there are specific spots that doctors use to diagnose fibromyalgia. These tender points are: (more…)

Fat Cells 405: Fat Cells and Eating Disorders

Welcome to part 4 and the final article in our Fat Cells Series. To think I had thought this would be an easy topic! After all we have learned about adipose tissue, Karen G Clemenson thought it would be appropriate to write about Fat Cells Connection to Eating Disorders. Let’s begin with a quick summary of some of the things we have learned in this series:

  • Everyone needs to have some fat.
  • Our bodies store energy and vitamins needed to create hormones that send messages throughout our bodies in our fat cells.
  • The number of fat cells we have in our bodies is usually set at puberty and stays the same through adulthood.
  • We do not lose fat cells, we shrink them.
  • We lose weight when we burn up triglycerides that fill our fat cells.
  • Used triglycerides turn into waste products that can be eliminated from our bodies through breathing them out, sweating, urinating or having bowel movements.
  • Being obese changes the chemicals in our bodies forever. To change our path toward chronic disease we must be willing to commit to a lifestyle change of proper nutrition and exercise.
  • Our bodies lose and replace about 8% of our fat cells each year.
  • When we have too many toxins in our bodies toxins are stored in our fat cells causing sickness and disease.
  • Drinking plenty of water is one way to detoxify our fat cells.

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Fat Cells 300: Washing Fat Cells

Our bodies lose and replace about 8% of our fat cells each year. Our fat cells also shrink when we lose weight and use up the stored lipids inside of them. One way of helping our fat cells shrink is to get rid of the toxins that build up in our fat cells. Toxins are easily absorbed into our body, they are found in the air, our water, chemicals we work with, the food we eat and more. We absorb them when there are forest fires or people burn trash or other combustibles, when factories make herbicides or bleach paper pulp and many other situations. In the 1980’s the EPA conducted a program called National Human Adipose Tissue Survey and they found that all human fat samples they took contained traces of industrial solvents, dioxins and chemicals. The goal of this article is teach you about washing fat cells. (more…)

Fat Cells 200: How Our Bodies Use Fat

Learning How Our Bodies Use Fat is Changing Me

I know a lot about nutrition and exercise. I have always been fat and my family and doctors have always educated me. In the past I was very active, and at one point, I had committed to working out every day for an hour and successfully lost weight. But I had never committed to a lifestyle change. As I have gotten older I have made a lot of changes because I have watched friends and family deal with aging and now I am chronically ill, I have become sensitive to several foods and some medications I have to take require me to do certain things, however I must admit that I have had trouble committing. I have commitment issues…lots of them. You would think that since my wonderful wife, who is the greatest cheerleader I have ever known, helps so many people that she would be the perfect help for me, but when Karen G Clemenson finally comes home, she is drained. This leaves me to myself because I spend a lot to time alone…for several reasons… (more…)

Fat Cells 101: The Basics

Everyone needs to have some fat cells on their body. Our bodies store energy and vitamins to create hormones that send messages throughout our bodies in our fat cells.

Did you know that no matter what we do our bodies have the same number of fat cells for all of our adult lives?

In 2008, a molecular biologist named Kirsty Spalding discovered this fact and that even if some cells die, our bodies will quickly replace them. Some people just have more fat cells than others. Fat and fatty acids that help nerve development and function make up over half of our brain. Fat develops important hormones in our bodies and also provides shock absorbers for our internal organs and some kinds of fat help to keep us warm. (more…)