Watershed Solutions Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Health’

“The standard of success in life isn’t the things. It isn’t the money or the stuff. It is absolutely the amount of joy that you feel.”~ Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

“You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.” ~Wayne Dyer, Author and Speaker

“Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.”~ William Feather, 1889-1981, Writer

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.” Brian Tracy, Life Coach

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”~ Confucius, 551-479 BCE, Chinese thinker and social philosopher

Typically, the only place we really concentrate on our breathing is in a yoga class, but we really should be thinking about our breathing throughout the day as abdominal breathing has a plethora of benefits.

Belly breathing a great way to relieve stress as it promotes calmness by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and allows for improved concentration. What’s more, is that it also helps to detoxify your inner organs, promotes blood flow and peristalsis and bolsters out immunity. It also increases oxygen supply to the brain and the musculature.

While it may seem a little unusual at first, belly or abdominal breathing can become second nature if you practice it enough.

How to Breathe from your Belly

Sit comfortably with your back straight and place your right hand on your chest and your left hand on your belly. This will help you to be more aware of your abdominal muscles as you breathe. As you begin to inhale, your left hand should rise substantially and your right hand should be fairly static. As you exhale, your left hand should fall back into your belly and you right hand should, again, be fairly static.

So what does this all mean? By sitting for long, uninterrupted periods of time, we increase the risk of premature death due to cardiovascular disease and general mortality rate by 1.54%.

To make sure we do not succumb to the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle, we’ve got to get moving throughout the day. Take regular walking breaks (at least every couple of hours), so that you body will be able to normalize hormonal levels and increase its ability to process fats and sugars.

Other ways to stay active throughout the day include taking walks during your lunch break, getting up and walking over to a coworkers desk instead of calling or emailing them, and of course, taking the stairs (both ways!) when going to and from work and even when you head downstairs to grab a coffee.

Health costs have become a vital part of today’s business expenses especially in the States. In a WebMd Health Services webinar, healthcare costs were reported to be worth 17% of U.S. GDP and about $25,000 per employee.  Apparently 88% of these costs are attributed to personal lifestyle so it’s important for management to create a culture of health for their employees.

Successful strategies have included benefits (such as cash and work related incentives) to contests, health coaching (which include both online evaluations and onsite professionals), and worksite events.  Benefits have shown to increase participation in health related activities up to 85%. Contests can motivate your employees, especially if they are competitive to change their lifestyle choices. Health coaching can work to change behaviours to promote healthier lifestyles. Worksite events include health fairs to onsite biometric screenings (onsite health evaluators) which can add energy to health initiatives and the workplace.

These payoffs are high and save employers money. Statistics show that in American companies, for every dollar spent on wellness programs, medical costs fell by $3.27. Also, employers who implemented online health watch programs showed dramatic changes in the lifestyles of their employees. In a survey of 20,000 employees, 43% had said that they had started an exercise program, 40% had changed their diet and 26% said they scheduled a preventative exam.

With medical costs growing these days, companies need to start promoting a culture of health. Research shows that an investment in health dramatically decreases the costs of healthcare. A healthier workplace not only increases the well being of employees, but makes them more productive as well.

“Don’t worry, be happy”, a song by musician Bobby McFerrin, is one of most famous songs in the history of jazz music. Being happy can change your life.

According to Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project, being happy brings a lot of benefits to the workplace. They are:

1)      Enhanced relationships as others enjoy being around those that make them happy.

2)      Greater self-confidence which helps them perform better on managerial tasks such as leadership.

3)      Improved creativity because positive moods improve problem solving by making it easier for people to think flexibly

4)      Better health as people who are happy tend to have stronger immune systems.

In the aftermath of the recession, productivity has become the main focus of recovering companies. In the recovery process, the cost of saving a faltering business is substantial. Businesses that are inefficiently using this money are bound to go downhill. A great amount effort must be put in by the business’ employees and executives for workplace productivity to be maximized to its fullest potential.

Smokers can pose significant barriers to workplace productivity. Why?

• On average, smokers tend to be 50% more absent from work than non-smokers.
• Workers that smoke miss five and a half more work days relative to non-smoking employees. That’s 38.5 hours not worked – more than a whole work week!
• High levels of CO₂ produced by smoking promote the human body in making careless mistakes that would have otherwise been avoidable.
• Eye irritation and many other focus-breaking symptoms (such as fidgeting and distractedness) directly affect individual productivity.

Employees who smoke need to be aware that it is very likely that their habit is not only costing them but also their employer. Smokers are potentially a huge cost to their employers in terms of employee benefits and insurance. Complications brought upon by smoking, such as lung cancer, can take out large amounts of money from an employer’s pocket. This is accentuated by the fact that smokers can be a threat, not only to themselves but also to the non-smokers around them. An active smoker in the workplace adversely increases the cost to an entire workplace, making everyone pay for someone else’s addiction.

Smokers who decide to quit will greatly benefit the health and financial status of their employer companies. If smoking employees were to match the productivity and health levels of non-smoking employees, companies will be able to move out of the recession more effectively. Australia has already taken a step in the right direction. The rest of the world needs to follow suit.

Top 10 Reasons to Laugh as suggested by Dr. Madin Kataria

Laughing is a great activity that just seems to brighten everyone’s day. It helps both mentally and physically and makes you feel great. Here are the top ten reasons to break in a good laugh.

1.   Laughter is a stress buster.

2.   Laughter strengthens the immune system.

3.   Laughter is anti-aging.

4.   Laughter is aerobic exercise

5.   Laughter is internal jogging

6.   Laughter is a natural pain killer.

7.   Laughter helps control high blood pressure.

8.   Laughter reduces depression and high anxiety.

9.   Laughter reduces bronchitis and asthma

10. LAUGHTER JUST MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD!

In the last few weeks many of us have gone through a stressful time of year; tax season. Nothing is quite like the scramble for documents, the dread of mistakes, and the fear of Revenue Canada. It is fitting that the week following the tax deadline is Mental Health Week.

According to studies done; over half of Canadians experience stress as a daily occurrence, and struggle with the results to their health . Yet many of us don’t actually manage the stress and instead ignore it putting ourselves at risk.
Chronic stress, or prolonged stress, is what causes many of the harmful effects associated with stress, such as; depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, increased use of caffeine, alcohol or illegal drugs, high cholesterol, and deterioration of interpersonal relationships. Many of these impact each other creating even bigger problems. For example, a poor diet and poor sleep habits combined lead to a weaker immune system and illness. In this way, stress can cause a downward spiral of health, one that has been seen to lead to an early death.

Hence during Mental Health Week, we are providing a number of tips and solutions to help you combat stress as well as our Stress Busters e-book, filled with 5 minutes strategies, which is now available with a free hour of one-on-one coaching.
So drink a little less coffee today and spend time with people you care about and start dealing with any stress you might have piled behind the closet door. First, take a minute to watch this video from our friends at the Canadian Mental Health Association, and share it with your friends and family, and together let’s make this mental health week count.

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