Put That Oxygen Mask On Yourself First, Ladies

[00:00:00] Paula
[00:00:00] Paula: Hello, and welcome to chatting with the experts TV show. As you may have known, I am a global podcaster and I’ve been podcasting for years. Recently, I took on this new challenge of expanding my audience view from just podcasting, and it’s not just podcasting, but podcasting to being live on TV with some amazing women that I have known for some years.
[00:01:10] Paula: Today, my guest is not other than an amazing woman. Marva Riley. Marva is an RN, she’s an author, she’s a holistic health and wellness advocate, and an international speaker. Marva is going to be talking about something that’s very relevant and the title of the talk is Put that Oxygen Mask on yourself first, ladies. Welcome to chatting with the experts, Marva.
[00:01:49] Marva: Thank you so much, Paula. Thank you for having me today. How are you doing?
[00:01:53] Paula: I am good. I’m so happy that you are joining me today. And even though I gave a little bit of information about who you are, and what we’re going to be talking about, I always like my guests to introduce themselves. So how about doing that today?
[00:02:09] Marva: Thank you so much for that opportunity. Everyone, my name is Marva Riley. And yes I have been a registered nurse for so many years, well over 30 years. And I’m also an author of four holistic health and wellness books. And an avid, holistic health advocate. I’m also a grandmother.
[00:02:34] Marva: I’m actually getting ready to head to New York to see my grandchildren. I love life and I love people and I love to help people.
[00:02:44] Paula: And that’s why you’re here.
[00:02:46] Marva: Yes.
[00:02:47] Paula: I love the title of your talk today. What could be better than that? Put on that
[00:02:52] Paula: oxygen mask first, ladies.
[00:02:57] Paula: Tell us about that. Why do you say that?
[00:02:58] Marva: As women, you and I know that we tend to put everybody else first. Yep. We take care of everybody. We take care of the husbands, the mates, the spouses. We take care of the children, the grandchildren, the neighbors, the coworkers, everybody else and not ourselves. Yes. And like I said, I’m getting ready to go to New York to see my daughter and her husband and two grandchildren.
[00:03:29] Marva: I’m looking forward to going. One of the things that they do, they say when you get on that aeroplane. They say buckle up and then they nowadays they have robots and or they might have a flight attendant and they demonstrate at the front and they say if anything should happen. If your grandchildren are on this plane.
[00:03:51] Marva: If your husband is on this plane, if your children on this plane, you’ve got to put that oxygen mask on yourself, first. So that you’re alive to help everybody else that you want to help. Now we women tend not to do that. We run ourselves down while we’re trying to take care of everybody else, and then we get sick.
[00:04:16] Marva: So that’s in essence, what I’m trying to say.
[00:04:21] Paula: Wow. And that’s so important. I’ve been talking with a lot of women about the same thing, putting ourselves first makes us feel guilty, makes us, worry, am I being a good mother, a good spouse, a good partner, whatever we may be. But that’s something that we need to understand that the airlines obviously seem to have gotten that memo before we did put on your mask first, and then you can have others help others, so yes, so let’s launch into that, I always thought that, it has to be something to do with our mindset, how we think about ourselves, how we have been socialized to think about ourselves. What do you say to that?
[00:05:02] Marva: Absolutely. The past few days I’ve been listening to Earl Nightingale. A lot of people know about Earl Nightingale, I’ve been listening to his many videos on YouTube because we all need some inspiration sometimes. And yesterday I was listening and he said, the mind is where everything, all change begins in the mind. We know that I’m a Bible reader, Christian Bible reader, and the Bible says be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
[00:05:30] Marva: So until we women, whomever makes the decision here. That we want to do better. We want to take care of ourselves. We want to be healthier. Nothing is going to happen. It has to begin here. You have to make up your mind that I’m not happy with the way things are, whether it’s my finances, whether it’s my health, whether it’s my relationship, whether it’s my business, my job or whatever, we have to make that decision.
[00:05:59] Marva: We have to come to the realization that things could be better. And I want to make it better. And this is my strategy. These are some of the things that I can start implementing, start doing. To make things better in one of my books the weight loss book, I wrote also that the first thing that we have to deal with is mindset, which is one of the reasons why so many people fail when they put this set these new year’s resolution every January, February there about, they have not made up their mind that weight loss and health takes work and I am prepared to do whatever it takes. Yes, I will fail. Yes, I will slide back. Yes, I will mess up. But my mind is made up and I’m going to do all I can to succeed on this health journey.
[00:06:50] Paula: Wow. Yes. So we have to make up our minds that we will stick to this health journey because it’s for our good and it’s for the good of all those who we love and care for as
[00:07:02] Paula: well.
[00:07:03] Marva: Yes. Absolutely. Because the thing is that, one thing a lot of us probably haven’t grasped is that whenever our health fails, it’s not just us that are affected.
[00:07:15] Paula: That’s true.
[00:07:16] Marva: It’s everybody around us. Because you don’t take care of yourself hypothetically.
[00:07:23] Marva: For example, say you don’t take care of yourself. Your blood pressure is high. You don’t eat properly. You eat a lot of saturated fat, a lot of sugar, and stuff like that. And you end up getting a stroke, for example. Then what happens? You can no longer feed yourself. You can no longer dress yourself.
[00:07:40] Marva: You can no longer take care of yourself. But also, perhaps the family was depending on your income to take care of the finances of the family. Now you can’t contribute. Our health, our ill health doesn’t just affect us. It affects not just our family members also, but the community at large. The country at large. Because when you don’t have good health, then the insurance company has to pay so much more Medicaid, has to pay so much Medicare. Someone has to pay so much more and all the money that goes into that comes from everybody else. So it’s a domino effect. So we have to learn not to be selfish really, but to take care of ourselves and know that when we’re taking care of our health. We’re also taking care of our community at large, including our loved ones.
[00:08:31] Paula: And that’s a very good point, the domino effect, because many times, we think it’s just us. Okay. So if I’m not well, then okay, the others can survive, but we, but looking at it as a domino effect, what happens to us affects our loved ones, they are part of the community.
[00:08:47] Paula: It trickles down into the community and, it’s way more than just me. It’s something that affects so many other people. So I like the fact that you use the word domino effect because it’s easy to see that, and understand that, when we put on that oxygen mask first, then it’s the community, it’s the world in general that we are helping. Not just
[00:09:13] Paula: ourselves.
[00:09:14] Marva: Yes, if you think of the airplane. There might be say 200 people, for example, in that airplane. And if the airplane, if it has issues. And you can put your oxygen mask on even though your son, your daughter, your grandchildren are not on that plane, you can help the guy sitting to your left, the guy sitting to your right, the ones in front of you, the one behind you, because the airplane might have may have two, maybe three flight attendants.
[00:09:47] Marva: They can only take care of so many, and there are 200 people on that airplane, but what if the others who put their oxygen mask on are able to assist an elderly person, a child, your neighbor, whatever, somebody who is strong but became anxious or something like that. So that’s the domino effect.
[00:10:06] Marva: We’ve got to take care of ourselves, put the mask on so we are alive because we need oxygen to be alive and healthy so we can help ourselves first and then help other people.
[00:10:18] Paula: I love it. For those of you who don’t know Marva, Marva is very much into eating healthy, eating the right foods and the right proportions. So I know that’s something that you, you want to talk about as well. So that even though we change our mindsets, we also need to know that what we put in our minds, in our minds, yes, what we put in our minds affects us, but also what we put in our mouths affect us. So let’s talk about food and nutrition.
[00:10:44] Paula: How does that help us? Be healthy so that the domino effect, the negative domino effect that can happen because if we are not well can be eliminated.
[00:10:57] Marva: Sure. Now, we’re heading towards the end of the year, January, many people make the New Year’s resolution which is not that I make. New Year’s resolutions every year.
[00:11:11] Marva: I write them down in a book, what it is I’d like to accomplish, how I would like to accomplish it and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes I do accomplish them and sometimes I have to table it for the following year. But every year folks make New Year’s resolutions, health resolutions. You know what I mean?
[00:11:28] Paula: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Marva: And we should, but I find also that many people, what they start out with is the exercise. They sign up for the gym and the gym people are taking all this money out of their credit card every month, auto payment, and they hire a personal trainer that’s charging them X amount of money every session and all of that.
[00:11:53] Marva: Some of them buy the peloton and this equipment and you have all these equipments in your house and new shoes and all of that kind of stuff and they hit the road running come second or third or fourth of January.
[00:12:06] Paula: Yep.
[00:12:07] Marva: But they have not addressed mindset. Usually, and they have not addressed nutrition. Now you could be in that gym lifting all the weights that you want to being on that treadmill for two hours or whatever. If you have not changed the way you eat, you’re not going to get anywhere because. We cannot exercise of a bad diet.
[00:12:37] Paula: I’ll say that again.
[00:12:39] Marva: We have to address. In fact, people don’t realize you can lose all the weight that you want to lose without going to the gym one day without lifting any weights without even doing much of any physical activity. You can.
[00:12:58] Paula: Really?
[00:12:59] Marva: Now, but yes, when you combine the health eating along with the exercise, you’ll get better results, but you can actually lose weight without doing a lot of physical activity. You, in fact, you can lose weight without even going out there and walking the 30 minutes, which is per day, which is recommended by the American Heart Association, just by changing the way you eat, because it is all about the calories that we put in.
[00:13:28] Paula: Okay, tell me more about that, because, we’ve been conditioned to think, okay, yes, we need to eat healthy, but we got to move to, right? We got to, as you say, at the beginning of the year, all of us, I’m included, like. That resolution that I got to lose weight, especially most of us during the holiday period.
[00:13:47] Paula: We eat more of the things that we shouldn’t eat than we normally do. There’s a Christmas celebration. There’s turkey. There’s ham. For those of us on the Caribbean there’s the black cake. There’s sorrel there. Gingerbeer sweetened with a lot of sugar and the list goes on and I have the Nigerian connection.
[00:14:08] Paula: So I also eat, I like to eat then my soups with the pounded yam and the Gari and however it’s seasoned. Sometimes we put a bit too much Maggie in it, but all these things. So this is an eye opener. Tell me. So if I eat properly, I may not need to go to the gym?
[00:14:25] Marva: No, that’s actually not what I’m saying. I’m saying you should go to the gym and you should get outside and walk and you should lift weights and that kind of thing, because health is not… well, that’s the thing. Holistic health addresses the body, mind and spirit and the body part of it, yes, you need to exercise and you need to eat healthy, but you do not have to exercise to lose weight.
[00:14:51] Marva: You can lose weight by changing the way you eat. If you eat, mainly vegetables, low calorie vegetables, like the greens, like the squashes those things, apples and things like that. You’re not eating a lot of calories, so you’re burning more calorie because you burn calorie from breathing. You burn calorie just going around doing your housework. If the calories you’re consuming is more than the calorie you’re burning, then you will gain weight.
[00:15:22] Paula: Yes.
[00:15:23] Marva: It’s all about caloric intake. For example, I went to Jamaica for my dad’s funeral. And while I was there, I ate quite a bit of the Jamaican treats.
[00:15:34] Marva: And when I go on vacation, I generally don’t deprive myself too much. I will eat the things that I enjoy the pastries and stuff in Jamaica, every day I was eating some kind of a meat or something, which when I’m home, I don’t eat like that. So I came back in three weeks with 10 with seven pounds more.
[00:15:55] Marva: Okay. In three weeks, but I had decided that I was good. I’m going to shed those seven pounds and I want to do it in about seven days or so. And then many people said no. I put it on my pages and, people didn’t really think I would do it, but you know what I did? I went on an intermittent fast. Intermittent fasting does naturally reduces your calorie because you’re not eat…
[00:16:17] Marva: I wasn’t eating, but one meal for the day. And actually the one meal was a smoothie at the end of the day. The first day I lost three pounds. Cause the smoothie was green vegetables and the berries like strawberries and stuff that have very little calories. Okay. And during that time I wasn’t there pumping iron and killing myself.
[00:16:40] Marva: No, because when you’re doing intermittent fasting, a lot of times you can’t do a whole lot of physical activity. So the next day I did intermittent fasting again, and I dropped another pound. The next day intermittent fasting, I dropped another pound and the seven pound was gone in less than seven days.
[00:16:58] Marva: So it’s all about the caloric intake, which is why it is very important that is the second thing that we address on our weight loss and our health journey. It’s our nutrition is our diet. If we’re going around eating a lot of bread, eating white rice, a lot of meat and sodas and things like that.
[00:17:17] Marva: And you’re going to the gym and pumping iron and working out for two hours, you’re not going to lose the weight. You’re just not going to lose weight. You have to change the way you eat.
[00:17:25] Paula: Yes, that’s a good point, but I hear a lot about intermittent fasting and I’m sure a lot of people hear it as well. Explain a bit more to me what that is, because yeah, I hear it, but I don’t quite know what it is.
[00:17:38] Marva: Okay. Intermittent fasting is you giving your body an a period of intermittent time or period when you don’t eat anything you drink. Like me, I drink, I’ll drink teas, like the herbal teas and water. And if say, if you’re a coffee drinker, you could have coffee on intermittent fasting, you just don’t put any sugar or creamer in it. Black coffee. Okay. I don’t drink coffee. So say, for example, every day I practice intermittent fasting. So I stopped eating by four o’clock every day. That means I have my dinner no later than four o’clock.
[00:18:14] Marva: And then I don’t, I generally don’t eat anything until 10 or later the next day. So for example, today I ate. Something at six o’clock yesterday afternoon, and I have, and what time is it now? Almost two. I haven’t eaten anything. That’s intermittent fasting. The intermittent period can be longer or shorter as you like.
[00:18:39] Marva: Some people do intermittent fasting where they don’t have breakfast. Some have intermittent fasting where they don’t have breakfast or lunch, and they have, like my friend Marie, she’s doing one meal a day. I’m not sure how long she’s going to do it. She only has dinner, I think, or something like that. So it’s when you skip one or two meals, or all three meals, and you give yourself a period of time to burn the calories and also remembering that our body heal and repair itself when we’re fasting. That’s why we shouldn’t be eating at night when we’re fasting at night, when we’re not eating at night is when the body heals and repairs itself.
[00:19:16] Marva: When we’re eating, the body’s taking in nutrition, but when we’re fasting, when we deny ourself food is when the body is healing. And then the body uses the fat as fuel during that time. So that’s one reason why you lose the weight. That’s so good. It’s a powerful healing tool that a lot of people that are into health are using to heal and reverse health issues. And it’s a powerful tool that one can use to lose the weight and to keep it off for good, because I don’t eat three meals a day.
[00:19:49] Marva: There’s no need for us to eat three meals a day. We’ve been programmed to eat three meals a day, but we don’t need to. A lot of times when we say we feel hungry it’s because we’re thirsty. Drink some tea or drink some water, and it’s also our mind tell us we’re hungry. We’re not hungry, drink some tea, drink some water, and it’ll just go away.
[00:20:09] Paula: That’s really a very relevant point because, as you mentioned, some people with intermittent fasting, just have one meal or two. Not one meal, but or two meals. Okay. But I think the quality of the meal that they have is important because you can have one meal of burgers.
[00:20:28] Marva: That’s right.
[00:20:29] Paula: What would you recommend, if you’re doing the intermittent fasting in a healthy way, because I know you’re you’re into, holistic healing and making sure that it’s the body, the mind, the spirit, all of them are healthy. So what would what type of meal would you recommend for someone who wants to, let’s say start off with two meals a day and they’re doing intermittent fasting because you can’t just be doing intermittent fasting and eating junk food.
[00:20:59] Paula: You mentioned teas. You mentioned berries, anything else?
[00:21:04] Marva: Okay. So when you eating, whether you’re doing intermittent fasting or not, our goal should be to eat a balanced diet. And that means you need to have some fats, some carbohydrates, some protein, and the micronutrients like the greens and stuff like that.
[00:21:21] Marva: That’s what your plate should look like. Fats, carbohydrates, protein, and the micronutrients, which are generally in your salad. Okay. The thing is that one of the reasons why we get into trouble with overweight is that we have too much protein, too much fats, and too much carbohydrates, and not enough micronutrients like not enough of the greens, the spinach, the cauliflower and those low calorie things.
[00:21:46] Marva: I would suggest that say if you’re going to skip breakfast that you have that balance for lunch and that balance for dinner and then you decide what time after dinner am I going to just not eat anything. Okay. You might want to have breakfast and then skip lunch and then have dinner is up to you, but it’s to me it will be better to just go after dinner you fast, just go right into lunch or have a later breakfast, but have a later rather than as soon as you get up.
[00:22:19] Marva: You have breakfast. You could push it back to 10 o’clock. That’s intermittent fasting, but you’re having breakfast a little later and you might have breakfast and you might have lunch and have dinner, but you’ve given yourself a longer interval for your body to process whatever you ate and burn it.
[00:22:35] Paula: That’s good to know. Another question that I’d have for you is if one is going to do intermittent fasting and not eat and have a later dinner, what time would you say is best to cut off? Because I hear different times. Some people say 6 p. m. Some people say 8, what time would you recommend to stop eating in the evening?
[00:22:55] Marva: A lot has to do with what time folks get home from work, what kind of planning you do. And, with regards to evening meals, I used to work 12 hour shifts in the hospital. And what I used to do is bring, I used to have a lunch kit and I would have in the morning, I would have some oatmeal and fruits for breakfast.
[00:23:13] Marva: I would bring my lunch and bring my dinner. And I used to leave work at [7:30] our shift ended at [7:30]. And by the time we gave report, it was eight o’clock. So what I did is at six o’clock every single day, when I’m at work, I would go in the lunchroom and have my dinner at that time. The thing is that it’s recommended that you don’t eat anything like three hours before you go to bed, because it would have given your body a chance to burn whatever you ate.
[00:23:41] Marva: And dinner also should not be your heaviest meal. Because if you’re eating a bowl of rice, a big piece of chicken thigh. And things like that at six o’clock, but you go to bed at eight or even nine o’clock, you’re probably will still have a full stomach. So you’re the lightest at the dinner should be a lighter meal.
[00:24:01] Marva: If you’re having lunch, that should really be your heaviest meal. And then you don’t go to bed with a full stomach. So that’s what I would suggest. That’s what worked for me when I worked at 12 hour shifts, a lot of people have very busy schedules. You have to do some planning. Bring your food to work so you don’t run to the cafeteria and buy junk in the machine and plan if you are gonna get home from work late, bring your dinner and have your dinner at work so that when you go home at eight, getting get home at eight o’clock, you don’t have to eat at that time.
[00:24:33] Paula: That’s very good to know. The planning is important.
[00:24:37] Marva: Very.
[00:24:38] Paula: And plan and that part about, knowing when you’ll get, if you work long hours and you’re getting home late, okay, like you mentioned that you eat it, you used to eat at 6pm and then you knew because you’re getting home around eight, nine, and you didn’t want to go to bed with a full stomach. That’s important.
[00:24:56] Marva: Yeah.
[00:24:57] Paula: Alright. Anything that we talked about mindset, we talked about, are we fueling our bodies? I love your explanation of intermittent fasting. Now I know how to go about it, speaking with the expert. Yeah. And anything else, what about, I know you said you had mentioned that if you eat right and if you eat, a balanced diet, then you may not need to, be pumping the iron and many of us feel going to the gym, making that the most important part of our day after work or after prayer or whatever, wherever you are in life.
[00:25:35] Paula: But I also know you and I know that exercise is a big part of your life. So let’s talk about that to moving your body in the right way.
[00:25:45] Marva: Yes. If you want to optimize your health, you’ve got to combine healthy eating with exercise. It’s not one or the other. Even though I said you can lose weight without going out there and pumping iron and all of that kind of stuff.
[00:26:01] Marva: You can. It’s not the exercise that’s going to make you lose the weight and keep it all. It’s combining the exercise with the healthy eating you start. And folks that are into healthy eating generally are exercise people because they know that they go hand in hand. Exercise is important.
[00:26:19] Marva: In fact, yesterday I was listening to Dr. Kim Williams, who is the head of cardiology at some university of, I think it’s Virginia, one of them. But check out Dr. Kim Williams, if whenever you get a chance, he’s amazing. And he was saying that the American heart association is no longer recommending 150 minutes of exercise per week, which is about.
[00:26:43] Marva: I think that’s about 30 minutes a day. They’re no longer recommending that they have actually doubled it. To 300 minutes a week is a recommended minimum amount of time that we should be out there getting physically active. And that amounts to about 45 minutes of physical activities per day in order to optimize the health of our heart.
[00:27:09] Marva: I didn’t say that now. The American Heart Association said it. The World Health Organization has been teaching doing 150 minutes. per week of physical activity. I’m sure they’re going to collaborate or get on board with the American heart. It is important that we get up and move. So many people have jobs that they sit for hours and hours and hours.
[00:27:31] Marva: You’re going to have to be strategic to have timers or something to get up from the desk, move around, even act in your office, just get moving. Don’t sit on that sofa and watch TV for hours and hours. Get outside because not only is it important to move, but when you get outside, you get the fresh air, you get the sunlight.
[00:27:51] Marva: That’s also part of the healthy. Live in a healthy lifestyle. So many people are so depressed and anxious and have anxiety issues when you eat healthy, when you get adequate sleep, when you get outside and get sunlight and fresh air, when you start exercising, you’ll find that helps your mood. It helps the anxiety. It helps you overall in body, mind, and spirit, and you’ll be a healthier person for doing that.
[00:28:19] Paula: I agree. I agree 100%. There’s a lot of people I speak with who say, I work many hours. How can I get that exercise? Because by the time they get off work, it’s late where they live, it’s cold.
[00:28:32] Paula: It may not be that safe to go outside. Is there a way we can implement that exercise within our work hours, our working day? If you’re sedentary, run up and down the stairs. What suggestions do you have?
[00:28:47] Marva: Yes, that’s one. I remember when I used to work in the last hospital I worked at, there was a fellow that was like, he was a doctor, like 71, 72, and I saw him taking the stairs, five flight of stairs up.
[00:28:59] Marva: I never used to see him doing it before. And I said, Dr. Such and such, what’s going on? You’re taking the stairs over there. I always took the stairs. He said, Marva, I had a heart attack. Yes. I had a heart attack and that was a wake up call for me. So you can take the stairs. You could start by doing one flight a stair, because you’re not going to go from not doing any to doing five. It just doesn’t work that way. You might end up with a heart attack doing that.
[00:29:24] Paula: Right.
[00:29:25] Marva: Start by taking one flight. And you could do that for a week, two weeks, a month, whatever. Increase it and increase it. During your lunch break, you could walk around in your office or outside around your office.
[00:29:38] Marva: Just walk. Take, if you have half an hour lunch break, eat half an hour and walk for 15 minutes. Wherever you’re going, rather than taking the elevator, take the stairs. You know what I mean? During your lunch, there’s a lady in my group that lost 39 pounds since March. And she does office work, doctor something.
[00:29:58] Marva: And she said she does a lot of exercise at her desk. Okay. There’s so many exercises you can sit at your desk and you do things like this for the shoulder and the back and the arms. You can be doing things at this right at your desk. You can do arm exercises, kick your legs, get up, move around, because I also have someone that I know that follows me on social media who had a spinal fracture just from sitting for too many hours.
[00:30:31] Paula: Never heard that. Wow.
[00:30:33] Marva: Hours. Because compression, fat fracture. Okay. So it just doesn’t do us any good to sit for, it is easy to do so though, to sit for hours and you get lost in your computer or whatever you’re doing. And before you know it, you’ve been sitting for four hours, put alarms on your phone to remind you to get up every hours, every hour and just move around.
[00:30:58] Marva: And also if you could get a Fitbit or something. Something that could count your steps that will help you. And then you put a target goal. Say, for example, you say my target is 6, 000 steps for the day. If it’s almost the end of the day, you’ve only done a thousand. You have to, some of them even tap you and say, Hey, it’s time to get up and move.
[00:31:19] Marva: So you see, you have to be strategic and find ways that work with you. They have apps that will remind you to get up and move around. But where there’s a will, you will find a way because it’s not an option. Your very life depends on it. One other quick thing. When you sit for too long or lie down too long, you are at risk for developing blood clots in your calves.
[00:31:48] Marva: And those blood clots can break off from your calf and travel to your lung, and you could end up with what’s called a pulmonary embolus, which most people who get a pulmonary embolus, where they were the. artery that brings blood to the lungs, get blocked and you die because there’s no oxygen supply. So being physically active is super important and could actually be a matter of life and death.
[00:32:15] Paula: I love that. And it’s very important being active.
[00:32:20] Marva: Yes.
[00:32:20] Paula: Could be a matter of life and death. You gave us so many tips on, even if you are someone who has to work at a desk, you said, move your shoulders. You can be moving your legs up and down. You can be moving sometimes to move in your neck, just because all of that burns up energy.
[00:32:38] Paula: Yes. We forget that energy we need and we use up energy when. Any movement, I like the thing about moving your legs because I always think about that, especially I work at the desk a lot. And I think how physicians many times say if you’re going on a long plane ride, take aspirin.
[00:32:55] Paula: And I think it’s almost the same thing as if you’re going to be sitting on your desk for eight hours. So they’re taking aspirin, but making sure that you’re moving, can prevent. As you said, blood clots from traveling up to your lungs. Did you say pulmonary?
[00:33:11] Marva: Yes. Pulmonary embolus, blood clots traveling up to your lung, which blocks the flow of oxygenated blood to your lungs and could potentially kill you. My best friend died from pulmonary embolus. Like, 12 years ago. So I know it is real. And hydration is very important also to help to prevent pulmonary embolus because when it’s hot, the blood gets thick. There’s so much that we could talk about Paula regarding health and wellness and so many tips that we could offer.
[00:33:39] Marva: My son was telling me about a lady who is an avid fitness person that he works with, and they all, it’s all virtual working now at his job. And the lady has, there’s this pad that you First of all, you can get a desk that you can adjust that you can roll and move around in your office.
[00:33:57] Marva: That’s another way in which you can stay active. And the lady has one of those desks and she has a pad that she puts right by the desk that she stands on. And she just has her moving, simulating the walking for the entire time that she’s in a meeting rather than sitting down. She stands and she’s on the pad that keeps her moving the whole time.
[00:34:18] Marva: So you see where there’s a will, there’s a way. There are many options.
[00:34:22] Paula: There are so many options, and this is 2023, as you say, we have the apps. Google is our friend, you can Google solutions for your specific problem. Somebody else has had that same problem, and that’s how Google gets answers, looking at people’s problems and finding a solution.
[00:34:42] Marva: Yes.
[00:34:42] Paula: Well, Marva, I can’t believe we’ve been talking for over 30 minutes. For those who have listened to you, how can people get in touch with you? And then before we go, I’m looking at all those books behind you that you have written and you’ve co-authored.
[00:34:56] Marva: Yes.
[00:34:57] Paula: So how can people get in touch with you and I also want you to tell us a bit about the books that you’ve written that are stationed so prominently behind you.
[00:35:07] Marva: Yes. Okay. So my name is Marva Riley. I am on all social media platforms. I am on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. You can subscribe and I’m on Instagram, Facebook, I’m on TikTok and LinkedIn. You can connect with me on any of those platforms. And I also have a website, rnmarvariley.com. You can connect with me that way also.
[00:35:36] Marva: I have written four holistic health and wellness books. The first one is called eat, sleep, meditate, a nurse’s guide to health. Then my recipe book with over 120 simple, healthy, easy, and inexpensive recipes. My weight loss book, okay, lose weight and keep it off for good understanding the weight loss game.
[00:35:57] Marva: I know how to do it. And my most recent collaborative book from stock to limitless, and they are available on Amazon. Walmart, Target, Barnes and Noble or wherever books are sold online. I even have my books in the Georgia public library and the Jamaica public library system.
[00:36:19] Paula: Wow. So there’s absolutely no excuse for not getting in touch with Marva. And to all my listeners and viewers, thank you so much for spending this 30 minutes with me and with Marva. I’ve learned so much as I’m sure you have. And I do want you to know that every week, At 10 a. m. Pacific or 1 p. m. Eastern Standard Time, you can have the opportunity of tuning in to listen and to learn from chatting with the experts TV show with Paula Okone, because I’m going to have some very interesting and well educated guests to teach us women on how to better our lives and ultimately better the lives of those who we care for and who we love.
[00:37:19] Paula: Thank you, Marva. Marva, you have been just a big blessing to me and I know you’ve blessed others too. Thank you.
[00:37:28] Marva: Thank you for having me, Paula.
[00:37:29] Paula: Absolutely.