by Fern Shaw | Mar 7, 2019 | Water Boilers, Water Coolers
I always find it fascinating how certain words have certain connotations.
Take the word ‘ginger’. Go on, say it aloud – “Ginger!” What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Hair colour of a much maligned set of people (with a rather amazing DNA sequence I might add)? Freckles sunburn and Children of the Corn type movies? Or does that word conjure up the spice and *horror for me* glacé ginger pieces and similar undeserving of the title of a Sweet?
Ginger in itself is a rather miraculous spice. Its health giving benefits are myriad. It contains nearly a dozen antiviral compounds. Ginger is pain relieving, antiseptic and antioxidant. It is valuable for preventing and treating colds, sore throats and inflammation of mucus membranes.
Ginger reduces pain and fever and has a mild sedative effect that will encourage rest. Drink a tea, or soak fresh ginger in hot water, take as a tincture and include it in your food. Ginger is also delicious in a fruit smoothie or in a healthy water drink combo.
The ginger plant itself: Zingiber officinale is a perennial which can grow to about 3 or 4 feet and produces clusters of pink and white flowers. Although the leaves are sometimes eaten, it is the rhizome or underground stem that is of medicinal and culinary interest. This stem is a chunky root-like thing with a thin brown skin and hard light flesh inside. It is often erroneously called ginger root since the rhizome resembles a root but this is actually not the root of the plant at all but an underground ‘stem’.
Despite it not being a favourite, I can attest to ginger’s stomach calming and settling effects, as well as its ability to both cleanse and invigorate the palate.
The versatility of ginger is such that you can steep it in hot water from your water boiler or let it infuse in cool water drawn from your water cooler and sip on it throughout the day – it’ll help to keep you shored up and resistant to all the workplace chills and summer and winter colds.
*updated from a 2014 blog
by Fern Shaw | Feb 11, 2019 | Water Boilers, water cooler
We often, somewhat mistakenly, assume that keeping hydrated during winter is less important than in summer. As it turns out, the opposite is true.
In winter, in an effort to keep warm, we rely on using heaters, hairdryers and hats which quite literally suck the moisture and oils right out of our bodies, skin and hair. When we’re outside, low humidity and gusty winds don’t help much either.
The good news though is that there are a number of easy hydration options available to keep you smooth skinned, glossy haired and properly hydrated internally too:
Wear layers
Trapping small pockets of air between layers is better than wearing one big chunky coat. A wool or fleece layer is a good idea, as it will be soft and lightweight, and warm air is more easily trapped in the fibres. Fabrics with a piled, terry or textured finish will also be effective at trapping air.
Exercise and keep hydrated!
The urge to hibernate when it is cold is understandable, without the sunshine outside enabling us to soak up Vitamin D; hibernation is a completely natural reaction. That’s why it’s especially important to keep active wherever you can, whether that involves brisk walks (weather permitting) and other alternate forms of exercise: yoga is a good example – it doesn’t have to be a gym.
Because you also need to keep drinking water when the temperatures dip, try to develop a routine at work where you sip throughout the day. One option whether at home or at work, is to use a smaller glass or water bottle. It may mean more trips to the water cooler, but if you’re walking more, that’s being active and when it’s colder, every step counts.
Body scrubs and oils
Frigid temperatures and dry indoor heat cause water to evaporate from your skin because there’s more moisture in it than in the air. Bundling up doesn’t help matters – all those layers keep skin from breathing. Fight back with a one-two punch of body scrub and moisturising lotion or oil. Once a week, exfoliate with a body scrub to help slough off dead cells that make skin look dull. You’ll also find that giving your skin a brisk scrub will warm you right up too. When skin is freshly exfoliated, lotion and oil are better absorbed. To maintain hydration, smooth on the lotion daily after a shower.*
‘Eat’ your water
Fruit and veggies are packed with water, that high water content adds volume and keeps you satisfied without the calories. Soups are also a great way to sneak in some extra water. At AquAid we offer a range of hot and cold water coolers and water boilers which allow you to make your favourite hot water drink while at work or at home.
Maintain a good drinking water habit
Drinking enough water, as boring as it sounds, is still the simplest route to maintaining good ‘external’ physical health. We need to be well hydrated in order to maintain supple skin and unfrizzed hair.
Being fussy can help
A lot of us just don’t like drinking water, period. Try adopting a different approach. Try drinking your water at room temperature. If you’re into branded gear (this isn’t just a children’s domain), then use your favourite cartoon character branded water bottle to drink from if it makes your happy. Figure out what appeals to you. And since your ability to recognise your thirst worsens as you age, today, early this New Year is a good a time as any to start to begin a ‘maintaining good hydration’ habit.
*updated from an 8 Jan 2015 blog
by Fern Shaw | Nov 23, 2018 | Water Boilers, water cooler
Being spontaneous is all fair and well enough in certain aspects of our lives: switching up where you take your holiday or buying a luminous yellow cover for your iPhone or Android where you usually stick with a discreet grey for example.
When it comes to your pocket, health and well-being though, preparation and planning ahead is usually the wiser choice. ‘Be prepared’ after all is the call sign of the Scouts and Guides and who doesn’t appreciate a person who’s prepared for any eventuality!
It’s the same when it comes to your cooler weather drinking water habits. In this regards, though, you needn’t worry: AquAid have you coolered.
But are there real benefits to installing an AquAid Water Boiler? As it turns out, there are plenty, but for the purposes of this article, we’re highlighting just a few:
A water boiler is extremely cost effective, both from an operational and time-saving perspective. Many hours of productivity are lost waiting for the kettle to boil.
The water is kept at the optimum temperature, safe enough that it won’t scald, but hot enough to brew up your preferred hot drink.
Each machine in the range is designed so that you get the most out of your water boiler – from the smaller AquAid Eco Compact Water Boiler through to the larger AquAid Eco Wall Fit LargeFlow Water Boiler.
With the cooler weather now upon us and the temperatures dropping as we head towards the end of the year, it makes good sense to install the right-fit water boiler in your premises as soon as possible – wherever your location or whatever your workspace.
Speak to us at AquAid today.
by Fern Shaw | Jan 31, 2017 | Water Boilers, water cooler
Recently in my neck of the woods we had a huge brou-hau-hau with a well-known ISP (internet service provider). It was a bun fight of note. I don’t know about where you are, but where I am, service providers have a rather unpleasant habit of blaming other service providers. A common excuse is, ‘Oh, the underground cable is broken’ or, ‘the undersea cable was used in a tug-of-war competition between a griffon and Godzilla’ – okay, slight exaggeration there, but honestly, it may as well be as farfetched as that. Or is it?
I stepped away from my usual station at the water cooler – actually let me caveat that with – stepped away from the water boiler (it is bleeding cold you know) and followed the undersea cable. Not literally!
What I think a lot of us don’t realise is that apart from all that we see – telephone poles suspending bundles of cables; the cables installed in our homes connecting to our devices – there’s actually a whole lot unseen going on out there that allows for us to operate in a ‘wireless’ world. But what we see is just a small part of the physical makeup of the net. The rest of it can be found in the coldest depths of the ocean. Here are just a few things you might not know about the Internet’s system of undersea cables.
- Cable installation is slow, tedious, expensive work
*Ninety-nine percent of international data is transmitted by wires at the bottom of the ocean called submarine communications cables. In total, they are hundreds of thousands of miles long and can be as deep as Everest Is tall. The cables are installed by special boats called cable-layers. It’s more than a matter of dropping wires with anvils attached to them – the cables must generally be run across flat surfaces of the ocean floor, and care is taken to avoid coral reefs, sunken ships, fish beds, and other ecological habitats and general obstructions. The diameter of a shallow water cable is about the same as a soda can, while deep water cables are much thinner – about the size of a Magic Marker. The size difference is related to simple vulnerability – there’s not much going on 8,000 feet below sea level; consequently, there’s less need for galvanized shielding wire. Cables located at shallow depths are buried beneath the ocean floor using high pressure water jets. Though per-mile prices for installation change depending on total length and destination, running a cable across the ocean invariably costs hundreds of millions of Pounds.
- Sharks are trying to eat the Internet.
There’s disagreement as to why, exactly, sharks like gnawing on submarine communications cables. Maybe it has something to do with electromagnetic fields. Maybe they’re just curious. Maybe they’re trying to disrupt our communications infrastructure before mounting a land-based assault. (My theory.) The point remains that sharks are chewing on the Internet, and sometimes damage it. In response, companies such as Google are shielding their cables in shark-proof wire wrappers.
- The Internet is as vulnerable underwater as it is underground.
It seems like every couple of years, some well-meaning construction worker puts his bulldozer in gear and kills Netflix for the whole continent. While the ocean is free of construction equipment that might otherwise combine to form Devastator, there are many ongoing aquatic threats to the submarine cables. Sharks aside, the Internet is ever at risk of being disrupted by boat anchors, trawling by fishing vessels, and natural disasters.
After reading all of this, colour me more eddicated and pretty impressed. And perhaps a little more patient when I hear that my lack of connectivity is due to an undersea cable breakage Them there sharks have to eat too you know.
*Extracts from an article at Mental Floss
by Fern Shaw | Jan 23, 2017 | Water Boilers, water cooler
We Britons are big on weather – it’s the go to topic of discussion irrespective of whether we’re chatting with colleagues around the water cooler or family or friends, and it’s the safety topic when you’re chatting to strangers or people you’ve just met.
Discussing the weather isn’t just exclusively a British thing though – it’s pretty much a global go to safe topic around the world. If you’re a southern hemisphere dweller, you’ll invariably be moaning about the heat at the same time that the northern hemispherers will be complaining about the icy winds, the piles of snow, but wherever you reside, there’ll be a whole lot of weather talk going on.
Thing is though, often the weather isn’t really topical, it’s actually quite dull “Here, mate, seen the weather – 1 degree difference between yesterday and today – isn’t that something?” Well, actually, no … it isn’t.
But, whatever our opinion about the topic of weather, there’s no denying it has a huge impact on our behavioural patterns; moods; what we eat; our travel patterns; clothing and what we drink.
F’r instance, in the summer months, we’re constantly on the lookout for the perfectly chilled water (perfectly understandable), but come the winter months, like now, with all the snow and brrr, there’s nothing better than a cuppa to stave off the chill, so you’re more likely to be on the lookout for a water boiler that can provide you with a constant hot water supply throughout the day.
Either way, even if you’re freezing your tootsies off trudging through the snow and all you can think about is a piping hot drink when you get inside, it’s worth keeping in mind that you’re just as likely to become dehydrated in winter as you are in summer, so by all means, drink those hot drinks, but balance out each hot drink with a drink of cold water and keep yourself fighting fit and healthy come rain, snow or shine.
