The Best Medicine: Exercise Daily

No single option available has a greater impact than exercise on our ability to prevent, manage, and alleviate the behavioral disorders to which human beings are subject.

Granted, other factors – good nutrition, counseling, seminars, proper elimination, etc. – are also important. But without exercise they will not have the overall positive effect on health, longevity and your God-given potential.

It is clinical fact that without adequate exercise we die prematurely. We simply do not function at our optimum – mentally, physically, or spiritually – without exercise.

Let’s use the honey bee as an example. The bee is a highly efficient flying machine that soon folds its wings and takes it easy when put in a zero gravity environment. At first it appears to enjoy the free ride, but within a few days it weakens and dies.

Our human bodies need to struggle. Decades ago as we began to explore outer space, the human body experience weightlessness for the first time and confirmed our need for physical exertion. Without gravity to promote exercise, blood pressure increased and cardio-respiratory efficiency decreased. Along with the loss of muscle tone, these are the major symptoms of aging. In weightlessness, one step beyond no-exercise, the function of the body is omitted. As scientists soon discovered, the human body grows old very quickly during prolonged periods of weightlessness.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recognized this and considered exercise the best medicine. Without it, he proposed, bodies suffered from muscular atrophy (the slow wasting away of muscle tissue) and premature death.

A healthy muscle is long and lean. Exercise enthusiasts develop it in their pursuit of the “long, lean, and mean machine.” A short, squat muscle, nearly saturated with intramuscular fat, is what a neglected muscle can come to look like. With exercise, fatty muscles can be converted into sleek, well-toned muscles. Anyone who can exercise can prevent or reverse the process of muscle atrophy and premature death.

Read More: http://healthmad.com/fitness/the-best-medicine/

Workplace Smoking: How Worse Is It

The cost of cigarette smoking to business is high. Over 77 million work days are lost each year due to the effects of smoking. Business now spends over 50 billion dollars a year on medical care, accidents, lost productivity, and absenteeism.

Absenteeism rates average one-third higher for smokers because smoking severely reduces the effectiveness of the smoker’s natural immune system. Few employers realize that smoking employees can cost them up to $8,000 more per year than nonsmokers.

Two-thirds of the smoke from a burning cigarette goes into the environment. This smoke has twice the nicotine, five times the carbon monoxide, and fifty times the ammonia as the smoke that is directly inhaled. When smokers smoke, the people around them smoke, too. Annually, between 500 to 5,000 nonsmokers will die from lung cancer as a result of other people’s smoke.

If you’re concerned about the problem and would like to begin a campaign in your company to eliminate smoking, perhaps these suggestions will help:

• Establish support for a no-smoking policy. Involve members of top management.

• Provide educational literature to employees.

• Form a task force composed of diverse areas and management. Include at least one individual with research skills.

• Conduct a survey to inform employees that the topic is being examined. You’ll gather valuable data about your employee population.

• Establish a no-smoking policy. Begin educating and informing employees through a well-formed publicity campaign. Put up no-smoking signs, and offer information sessions.

• Offer a “stop smoking” program. You may decide to give bonuses or incentives. Perhaps give small monetary bonuses to nonsmokers, and offer smokers the same rewards if they give up smoking for six months.

• Phase in restrictions gradually. Employees react more positively to changes when given time to adjust.

• Deal with militant smokers. Smoking is a privilege not a right that is subject to other company rules. (Employees aren’t allowed to listen to radios full blast, for instance.)

• Be flexible. You may decide to make adjustments in the program.

Read More: http://socyberty.com/work/smoking-in-the-workplace/

Health as Dominoes - Improve Mind and Body

Just as our homes are in need of care and attention to keep them functioning and to bring out their fullest potential, we also need care and attention to keep functioning and to realize our fullest potential.

When you improve your mind, your body, or your environment, you create a cause-and-effect chain reaction that changes your life; when one of the major divisions in your life changes, so do the other two. It’s like a circle made up of dominoes. Tip one over – start at any section of the circle – and the others follow. Or touch one part of a hanging mobile; the whole mobile begins to move.

Begin one good habit and observe how it affects the other areas of your life. Begin exercising regularly, for example, and see how you will begin to manage your fast forward attitudes and the stress that’s been plaguing you.

That’s the good thing about the three major areas (mind, body, and environment) – they are interdependent.

Perhaps this renewal of attitude and body will help reduce your craving for cigarettes, which will reduce your blood pressure, positively affect your diet and your weight, and contribute, to high energy. Overall, your attitude and your health will be much better. Any positive changes you make will probably contribute to your potential for play, work, worship, and love.

Enter the circle at any point – mind, body, or environment – and your efforts will have an immediate affect on the other areas of your life. Better yet, enter in and make improvements in each of the three areas, and you are sure to send the energy-draining and health-destroying dominoes tumbling. Each time you complete one of the action steps, you are investing in your God-given potential – your bright and exciting future.

Read More: http://authspot.com/thoughts/the-domino-effect/