Don’t be scared, you don’t need to drink green poison in order to save money to benefit your health, that is just matcha tea. All the tips that I could think of are for preventing health issues. Because if there are health issues, saving money is the least of the problems. So here are some ways to keep myself healthy and away from doctors:
Stay fit
Buy a bike! It has it all: you will be super eco-friendly, very fit, happier through exercise, sexy legs, protects your knees from the impact that running causes them (I love running, but if you have messed up knees like me, that is not the choice of free sport 🙁 ) and in some cities you can be faster than with a car. Moreover, it is so much cheaper than a car. There are places where you simply can’t live without a car, however most of us don’t need it. If you have a car just for convenience of shopping every two weeks and bringing home a table from Ikea once a year, you might want to spare all that money that goes into maintaining a car: compulsory insurance, fuel, “health” checks, random repairs that you WILL need, maintenance, cleaning, issues with parking and it can go on for a while. If you think you can live without a car, try to bike for commuting, take the tram or train (and bus, if you don’t hate their smell) and a taxi for that table from Ikea once a year.
Another great tip for saving money when you have a bike is to learn how to repair it yourself. Not everything if you don’t want to complicate it and buy all the zillion specific tools, but learning how to change your break cables, true your wheels for free with a zip tie, change your own chain, index your front and rear derailleur can come in very handy. Just watch the GCN channel, everything is there.
If you are a woman (or a man) and are afraid of biking, fear no more, read my blog about why women are afraid of biking here.
Diets
This goes hand in hand with staying fit. Diets are really difficult and we are all happier without them. I am no master at this, but I did notice that eating healthy, doing sport and feeling light makes me more balanced. But we all have different recipes for balance. If you need ideas for pros and cons about two diets I tried, you can check my post here.
Get more sun
Get more vitamin D, not cancer. Strengthen your immune system with vitamin D, for free. Since I discovered the lack of vitamin D in my body and started to take supplements and not cover myself fully in SPF 50+ when the UV was only 2, I stopped having sore throat, coughing and all type of other unpleasant infections.
Now depending where you live, the UV rays can be very strong or moderate. So you do need to know the level of UV rays, in order to avoid burning and… um, cancer. I would recommend this app UVMate – they have a free and a premium version and it is just brilliant and pretty close to reality. Based on our location and current weather conditions (considering clouds), it will not only tell you how high the UV is, but based on your skin type it can tell how many min you have until burn and what SPF you should use.
Dental hygiene
Floss
This won’t save you the annual visits to the dentist, but will decrease the times they actually start drilling in your mouth. I know I sound obnoxious, but floss and not only: use inter-dental brushes. We all hate the person who invented them, but seriously, it is true, after one week of unbearable pain and swollen gums, you get used to them and they are so useful: decreases the amount of plaque, inter-dental caries (which are double expensive, since they need to repair two teeth) and nothing is stuck ever between your teeth.
Gel with high fluoride content (12,500 ppm)
My dentist recommended me to use this gel once a week and don’t rinse my mouth after using it. I had zero caries since! Ask your dentist if you can use it and get a prescription. Don’t buy it on your own, the high fluoride content can temporarily damage your gums (ask me how I know :D). But if you can use it safely, it is a pretty awesome hack!
Use toothpaste with NovaMin
So much controversy about fluoride, I bet about this as well. But it is approved and it seems to help the damaged enamel by creating a temporary repair and reducing teeth sensitivity.
Change your toothbrush every 3 months
The easiest for this is to track it and have reminders for it.
Wash your teeth after coffee and sweets
I sound like a dentist, but I implemented this a while ago and if I don’t wash my teeth, at least I am using mouth wash. It is not only helping to have less coloring on my teeth, but I am not keeping the bacteria partying for too long in my mouth. More importantly, there are times when I don’t eat sweets just because I am lazy to wash my teeth :D.
Have at least one annual professional cleaning with ultrasound
That was all!
Probiotics
Fight the bad with good. Good bacteria can make miracles. I am not talking only about the probiotic in milk, which is awesome and very useful. I am addressing here the ladies! Vaginal probiotics. I am sure many of us fought vaginitis and bacterial infections for pretty much any reason. I mean… who designs a body with not one, but three open holes? I got so many antibiotics from my gynecologist for recurrent infections (because some antibiotics stopped being efficient, of course) that I had to look for some different options. So probiotics are the solutions, intra-vaginal ones. The brands I used are Gynocaps and Muvagyn. I did not use antibiotic because of gynecological issues for more than 4 years, that is a great improvement!
It saves a lot of money and time, no more unnecessary visits to the doctor and no more antibiotics.
Stop watching series 🙁
Oh, how I love binging on HIMYM. But it is not always healthy for my body or mind. Spending time on the couch is necessary during winter, when the days are very short, it’s cold, there’s not enough sun and so on. But couch encourages snacking, drinking and less active use of our brain. So forcing ourselves out of it when the weather is nice can have so many benefits for us in terms of mental and physical health.
This reminds me of MMM post that I recently read which ended very spot on for this subject:
“So if your life needs a boost, try giving up something you enjoy, and replacing it with something that improves your life.”
(https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/09/20/seek-not-to-be-entertained/).
So yes, not all the money saving hacks are fun and flossing is not fun either, but the best way in life sometimes is to take the actions that improve our mood, health, body, even if they are difficult or not fun.
If you would like to have some ideas on how to save money from food, you can check my post here.